Doug Clark

Life seems to be one endless whine for Spokane City Councilman Chris Anderson. I'm willing to bet that, as a child, Anderson was one of those pouty, lip-quivering spoilsports for whom the tennis net was always an inch too high. Nobody probably ever passed him the basketball enough.

Jim and Shirley Sutton had to dip into savings to keep their tiny Peyton Building coffee shop afloat during the messy marathon building of Spokane's downtown bus depot. For nearly two years, they watched their business dwindle because of the barricaded streets and the noise and confusion of dump trucks and jackhammers. But they toughed it out.

Boy, did we ever dodge a speeding bullet with that highfalutin' Pacific Science Center deal. The final ballot count released the other day by the Spokane County Elections Office shows the nays had it by a whisper: Just 350 votes. Saints be praised! The last thing we need is for the city's youth to start stuffing their heads with the wonders of the universe.

Great rivalries flow out of every great competition. Ali had Frazier. Connors had McEnroe. Palmer had Nicklaus. ... When it comes to rolling up a sleeve and offering a vein for humanity, there is none better in Spokane than Pearson and Zweifel.

Sometimes I get so hacked off by the way we taxpayers are reamed, I have to sit down and count to 10. Where better to blow off steam than in a plush, $956 leather chair cozied up next to a $14,000 cherry wood table? Ahhh. The cotton is high out here in Eastern Washington University's posh new conference room.

Thieves roared away with Ted Pulver's purple Jeep, new Corvette and a vintage race car. What's worse, traffic cops won't spot any of the hot wheels cruising city streets. These stolen rigs are fueled by quarters, not unleaded gas.

Artist Jo Maher works on a drawing at his North Side home on Monday. Photo by Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review

Friends didn't want Busse to be the only bald one. File/The Spokesman-Review

The clowns don't do pratfalls under the big top anymore. The flying trapeze is hooked to massive steel light trusses which are attached by 40 cables to the ceiling of Spokane's modern new Arena. Today's incarnation of the "Greatest Show on Earth" is enhanced by computerized lighting and something called "satellite sound."

Having a stranger call out of the blue and say you really need to try Bean-O can be rather off-putting. As I discovered over the weekend, Hank Gunning's Bean-O has nothing whatsoever to do with Beano - the enzyme that supposedly fights flatulence. Thank the Lord.

What price do you put on the dazzling brilliance of a hot September day? What is the value of a deep blue sky? Or a glorious gust of air edged with the slight crisp bite of autumn? A plugged nickel if you're an opportunistic grass seed farmer. These greed-driven folks obviously don't give a damn about such aesthetic concerns.

Yeah, yeah, everybody talks big about wanting responsible government. Baloney on that. The day people start electing sensible candidates is the day we newsmongers run out of juicy material. My worst nightmare is that the voting public suddenly comes to its senses in the Sept. 19 primary. That may sound selfish, but, hey, we've got papers to peddle.

Pink tender morsel, Glistening with salty gel. What the *#$% is it? - Internet Spam haiku entry Choking on my 20th forkload, I got a sudden taste of what life must be like on the O.J. Simpson jury. Misery, misery everywhere. Not a drop of justice in sight. O.J. jurors are lucky, though. They have only Judge Ito and a diet of gruesome double murder to digest.

Ah, elephant ears - Spokane Interstate Fair's greasy, golden, chewy, cinnamony, hubcap-sized carbuncles of sweet slippery joy. Hard to believe any controversy could arise from high-fat dough gods that are gobbled with mucho gusto at our annual 10-day rite of gluttony and fun. Yet a hiccup of discontent percolates along Ulcer Gulch, that aromatic row of fair food vendors where every gastronomic excess is hawked:

Teacher Jim Perry took his lunch to school Wednesday in the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunch box at center. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Gordon Potter

The culprit's letter is now a teaching tool. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Building a better mousetrap has been the goal of every automaker since Henry Ford gave the world the Model A. But a Harrison, Idaho, resident claims his new $25,000 Honda Odyssey van is such a state-of-the-art mouse magnet, you'd think the contraption was made of cheese. Bob Powers is waging a weird battle with the Japanese auto giant. It's all over an invasion of mice that have turned his gleaming, champagne-gray van into a foul-smelling Mousemobile.

In today's segment of "Happiness is a Warm Gun," Commando Doug describes the sound of a Glock 9mm, semiautomatic: "BAH-ROOOM!!" Sorry, I don't want to get too technical. I wasn't even planning on squeezing any triggers when I wandered into the cavernous new "Safe Shooting" indoor range at 1200 N. Freya.

Lately, I've been trying to determine the intelligence of my dog, Elvis. I've always thought of my pet as a dim bulb - about on the brain cell par with a fern or Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend. But an NBC "Dateline" segment on doggy IQ and recent events at the coroner's office have convinced me that I have sold Elvis way short.

This spiffy new three-bedroom house comes with vinyl siding, oak kitchen cabinets and plenty of sweetheart curb appeal. Don't let the $79,950 price tag scare you. The benevolent folks behind this low-income housing project will toss in $23,000 in assorted grants to get a qualified, first-time homeowner in here. "It's a special situation when someone can get into a new home with so much community support," says Scott Maclay, the Windermere real estate salesman trying to sell the gray and white house at 519 S. Arthur.

Alcatraz once held what was scraped off the bottom of the country's crime barrel: hit men, kidnappers, stick-up artists and mobsters like Al "Scarface" Capone. But when it comes to telling lies, those villains who did hard time on the famous 12-acre chunk of rock in San Francisco Bay are punks compared with a Hollywood film crew. Frank Heaney knows the show biz crowd can twist the truth like no others.

Every romance may generate a few sparks, sure, but this affair is one flame-broiled whopper. Todd Espeland and Allison Williams traveled 4,000 miles and four centuries back in time to show off their burning love. The road is long for this couple who eat fire for a living.

I hope James Jones died thinking of fresh worms and a fat bass pulling on the end of his line. That's not such an unhappy ending for an old shoeshine fisherman. James' frail heart gave out July 17, just three days after his 89th birthday. He had no social status, power or wealth, but was a beloved fixture in this city and will be greatly missed.