Make festivals part of your summer fun

Summer’s here, and we all know what that means.

It’s Festival Time!

Every township, hamlet and trailer park has filled each weekend for the next three months with some sort of dorky theme-based jamboree. It’s all designed to lure you – the witless vacationer – into communities where you will be entertained by marginally talented nimrods and drained of your tourism cash.

Friday’s edition of “7” (The Spokesman-Review’s new arts and entertainment supplement designed for 15-year-old OutKast fans) did a workmanlike job of listing the area’s upcoming goat castrations, hootenannies, beer crawls and nude canasta tournaments.

Unfortunately, the crack staff of “7” missed a few major events. So today I’m taking a break from my usual role as the newspaper’s Iraq war analyst to remind everyone to mark your calendars for…

URINE DOWNTOWN SPOKANE (June 11-13) – Spokane is definitely the place to trickle into. Follow the civic goodwill ambassadors as they take the curious on informative tours of the city’s hot spots for public urination.

The hourly excursions begin outside the Spokane Transit Center, lovingly referred to by people on the go as “Ground Zero.” Wearing lilac hip waders, your Pee-Patrol escorts will point out the many doorways, back alleys and Davenport Hotel flower pots that are treasured by Spokane’s real movers and shakers: winos, street punks and, of course, those too-tanked-to-locate-a-commode patrons of the Big Easy.

Remember: Watch your step when Urine Downtown Spokane!

CdA POVERTY PARADE (June 25-27) – A hulking hotel and floating golf green aren’t the only things Coeur d’Alene can be proud of. Thanks to a certain reptilianaire hospitality czar, this North Idaho city by the lake has also made its mark by creating one of the nation’s fastest-growing minimum-wage economies.

So come and cheer on the well-groomed working poor as they march down Sherman Avenue – with their hands out.

Then follow the parade to the city beach for a $2 all-you-can-eat picnic of Top Ramen and lake water.

They don’t call Coeur d’Alene the “City with a Heart” for nothing.

ART ON TAP (July 10-12) – Seattle has its pigs. Coeur d’Alene has its moose. And now comes Pullman’s public-art-for-charity entry:

Painted beer kegs.

A dozen artists have been commissioned to do the Van Gogh on those containers that have come to symbolize Washington State University even more than Butch the Cougar. The keg creations will be displayed throughout campus before being auctioned off to the highest – and we do mean highest – bidders.

It’s all for a worthy cause. Proceeds from the auctioned kegs will go to the Stop Wasted Students From Falling Off Balconies Foundation.

States the Art On Tap press release: “Our goal is to place trampolines under the windows of all dormitories, sororities and fraternities over two stories tall. We’ll never be able to stop students from mixing alcohol and gravity. It’s Wazzu, after all. But we can soften the landings.”

SPRAWL DAZE (July 23-25) – It’s summer joy for all ages at Washington’s year-old city.

For three special days, Spokane Valley will be the site for exciting activities like, the “Chain Link Fence Scramble,” “Strip Mall Bingo” and “Scavenger Hunt for a Civic Identity.”

An actual working meth lab has been set up in University City parking lot.

But enough fun for the kids.

Parents are encouraged to participate in serious round-table discussions. Compelling topics include: “We’re A City. So Now What the Hell Do We Do?” and “Dumping Tires Along Sprague Avenue: How to Find the Best Spots.”

A parade is also planned at the Spokane Valley city center.

Just as soon as a center can be located.

RUNNING SAVAGE FEST (Aug. 14-16) – Grab a chisel and come help get rid of Eastern Washington University’s ugly past. It’s all part of EWU’s effort to remove the racially insensitive images of the school’s former mascot: a cartoonish hatchet-packing Native American on the run called the Savage.

Before the school changed its mascot to the bland and inoffensive Eagles, the walkway leading into the Eastern athletic complex was paved with bricks etched with the Savage logo.

Get ready for another change. Once the demeaning bricks are cleansed, Eastern plans to unveil a 20-foot statue commemorating its latest mascot switcheroo. Yes, it’s out with the Eagles and in with an icon that better represents the core of the EWU student body:

The Commuter.

The statue, states an EWU spokesman, “was based on an actual 28-year-old, bus-riding student who dreams of one day getting that psych degree and moving out of mom and dad’s basement.”

Go Commuters!