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Good Morning, Portland! Last Friday, I declared Labor Day weekend the last truly hot weekend of summer. And it's true; today will be hot, but tomorrow and Sunday are high 80s so I am still technically riiiiiieeeeeght—I can be wrong. If we can make it through the weekend next week is like a bouquet of mid-70s. Now, let us news.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Due to projected temperatures hitting high 90s today, Portland Public Schools will release students who attend school in buildings without air conditioning three hours early.

• Also extreme: Portland's air quality. Today the area will see ranges from moderate to unhealthy, due to a confluence of wildfires in (and north and south of) Mount Hood National Forest. Check your area's air quality here.

•Is the airport run by anti-urbanist-haters?! you may ask, upon hearing that Portland International Airport is offering two-hour parking vouchers to people interested in its newly revamped main terminal. [Disclaimer: You need to spend $25 at a pre-security shop or restaurant on their list to receive the vouch.] But seriously, fuck off for encouraging people to drive to the fucking airport. Trimet spent 215 million and we all spent MONTHS on shuttle buses to make Better Red go ahead, but I guess no one matters but youuuuu and your ceeeeeeillling.

• Oh, speaking of nothing mattering but a pet project, the Mercury's 2024 Fall Arts Guide hit stands yesterday—yes, it's in print. It looks wonderful, which more due to our art director and  cover designer  than anything I did. Her lewks are also due to the deceptively simple yet surreal paintings of local illustrator Carson Ellis, whose art you'll find on the cover. It just sort of lined up that we published right as Ellis was releasing a beautiful new book and showing her work at art gallery Nationale. Taylor Griggs talked to her about the work, which captures her "bickering but inseparable friendship" with her future husband Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy.

• Arguably the BEST PIECE IN THE ARTS GUIDE is "Trash, But Make It Art" by Elinor Jones, wherein she describes the mascot of the Paris Games as "a weird blob that looked like a beret fucked a triangle and their baby was drunk." 

• Some of you know I'm really riding the creepy "dark fantasy" AI trend at the moment. Which led me to make this:

 
 
 
 
 
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• There's some interesting bickering going on between Oregon Republicans and the Libertarian Party of Oregon. OPB's Dirk Vanderhart hosted Oregon Capital Chronicle's Julia Shumway on this week's Politics Now to unpack why the state's GOP is trying to kick Libertarian's off the ballot.

• Hollywood Theatre brought out some receipts this week, sharing a screengrab of a conversation with a visitor who apparently took photos inside a theater, during a screening. I feel somewhat removed from the "you should be grateful" personality types, these days, but I do remember making sandwiches for them. What is Portland even for if not to be a place where we stay off our fucking phones at the movies.

• Test your local art knowledge in this week's Pop Quiz PDX, with heady questions like:

 
 
 
 
 
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• There're bunch of tickets dropping this morning, but I expect the Murder City Devils tickets for their Jan 4 Rev Hall show to be sold out, Blood Brothers style. Still, "Press Gang" has to be one of my favorite songs to listen to when I'm feeling sorry for myself.

NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• A new development in the story of another tragic and preventable high school shooting: Yesterday the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the father of the 14-year-old mass shooter who killed four people at Atlanta-area Apalachee High School. The father faces charges that include "second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon," the Associated Press reports. This approach follows an April conviction—the first such instance—where two Michigan parents received sentences of ten years for failing to secure the semiautomatic handgun their son used to kill four at his school.

• Republican nominee for Vice President JD Vance called school shootings "a fact of life" at a rally in Phoenix yesterday, showing his depth of understanding of the situations that lead to them, thusly: "if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets" he said. Vance called for increased security at schools so that "psychos" will find them unassailable, which shouldn't seem like a good idea to anyone who doesn't want their child to live in a lockbox.

• Speaking of the youths, the youth vaping is DOWN, according to a federal survey of over 29,000 students in grades 6-12. The drop, from 7.7 percent in 2023 to under 6 percent, brings estimates of teen vapage to a ten-year low. FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed the decrease to all the wigging out about e-cigarettes and forcing reusable e-cigarettes (like Juul) to get rid of delicious flavors and only sell menthol and tobacco ones. Curiously, disposable vapes are still allowed to churn out the cotton candy juice.

• Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges—of evading a tax assessment, failing to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return—yesterday, the New York Times reports. You'll see some explainers out there this morning about the Alford plea, which is like maintaining your innocence while also accepting punishment for the crimes of which you are accused. They tried that, but prosecutors didn't like the idea of HB maintaining his innocence, so his lawyers agreed he would just plead guilty instead.

• When I'm upset, I don't want you to fix it.

@erichwithanh I hope this reaches the right audience #fyp #lotr #galadriel #relationship #babe #humor ♬ original sound - Erich