Oh great.

That inch-deep acting talent Lindsay Lohan has announced, fresh from her stint in pricey drug rehab at The Cirque Lodge in Sundance, her decision to put down roots in Utah.

The slow pace and wholesome environment here will apparently help Lindsay — who apologizes to her fans, “especially the younger fans” for making some bad choices in the past few years.

No indication in the published stories where she’ll be living. Park City? Too much nose candy temptation. Utah County? Plenty of modest formal gowns to choose from for the next Academy Awards, but with Oxycontin and Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Xanax and Lexapro (did I leave one out?) flowing freely to obsessive and overtaxed Mormon moms, it’s not exactly a safe haven for your standard spoiled Hollywood drug addict is it?

Maybe she can be a tour guide at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

I wish she’d just move on.

OK. OK. I’ve been swamped. Been ignoring this blog again. And some of the most loyal posters on this blog have spoken. They want to discuss the mess surrounding Larry Craig, the U.S. Republican senator from our neighbor to the north and the growing sex scandal enveloping him.

I can’t say I’m surprised. The Idaho Statesman has been chasing down a story about Craig and his long-rumored latent homosexuality for nearly a year. The story has been referred to often in the past couple of days, but in case you missed it, go here. I think the Statesman story nails the issue (so to speak), and it’s a good example of how news outlets frequently have the germ of a story for a long time before an event like Craig’s attempt at a public restroom tryst with a Minneapolis undercover cop breaks and allows them to publish. The Statesman got the goods; good on them. Sometimes the gods of breaking news just smile down on your newspaper and grant you an opportunity to finally tell the full story. So it was with Craig, and news that pretty much proves the gay orientation he has been denying for so long — even as late as yesterday.

So. The man is 62, an ultra-conservative in an ultra-conservative state who has built a Senate career largely on morals crusading. Never seen this plot line before, have we? I’m not sure what I could add. That the Craig scandal is deeply creepy? That, as Mitt Romney, whom Craig was working for in Idaho, says, it’s “disappointing?”

Hmm. I’d say it’s more than disappointing. “Disappointing” is when you’re 12-year-old breaks the neighbor’s window with an errant baseball and lies to you about it. “Disappointing” is when your husband forgets your wedding anniversary.

What is it then? Honestly, it’s crushingly sad. I could get all high and mighty the way so many Repubs did (including our own Utah congressional delegation) when Bill Clinton got caught “not having sex with that woman.” Most mortals who slip up now and again would admit to a bit of glee when a man like Craig gets snared in his own trap of humiliating hypocrisy.

The deeply sad part is the shame Craig must have lived with for god knows how many years. It’s almost a full-time job, I’d imagine, running on a “family values” platform every six years, and headlining conferences with speeches against the “gay agenda.” I can only imagine the self-hatred it must require to try to bring home the bacon from D.C. for your home state while simultaneously making quick side trips to public bathrooms, looking for a blow job from some anonymous male.

One gay activist quoted in a news story earlier this week talked about the way closeted people like Craig live in steady denial about their homosexuality by claiming they only have occasional “urges” for gay sex. Ergo, they aren’t gay, couldn’t possibly be gay, and why would anyone think for a minute they might be gay? An “urge” is just something that happens. You can’t control them.

So I have to think of the old saw: If it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be … a GAY man by the name of Sen. Larry Craig.

Man, if we could simply be true to ourselves, knowing that society would accept us for who and what we are. Sorry if I sound like a Care Bear or Mr. Rogers. But really. Think of the pain and suffering living his truth might have saved Craig’s wife, his family and everyone else caught in his fallout. But mostly himself.

What do you all think?

I have to do a little bragging on someone near and dear to me.

Nineteen-year-old daughter Kit and her blogging partner, Holly (that’s another one, and much younger), will be front and center at this event later in the month. This is a back-to-school marketing event for which they are mucho
excited.

Kit and Holly have been nurturing this blog since last winter. Devoted to the niche (and some might say it’s non-existent) of Salt Lake City street fashion, Kit and Holly are finally seeing their effort pay off. If you go to the Black Chandelier site, you will see Kit on the right, Holly on the left. Kit bought that amazing faux-fur hat with pom-pom strings on eBay last year.

Watch out for these women. They have a future and are powerful indeed.

I just finished a telephone interview with Missy Larsen, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council for Utah. PPAC is the political action committee for Planned Parenthood, and has the legal authority to lobby state legislatures and Congress on family planning and abortion rights measures.

Here in Utah, when the Legislature tries to roll back the clock on women’s reproductive rights to the Mesozoic Era, it’s typically PPAC workers who show up and try to gently talk them out of it. They’re already gearing up for another fight come January, when state legislators are expected to take another spin at overturning Roe vs. Wade.

Missy tipped me off to one of the latest Utah myths concerning sex she’s heard through her line of work (and in this state she hears plenty of them). It’s called “floating.” Apparently, more than a few teenagers and even some college students believe it — the idea being that if you put a penis inside a vagina and then hold very, very still — it doesn’t really count as sex.

“Floating” is such a popular notion in Utah culture it even got a mention in this year’s version of Saturday’s Voyeur, the annual spoof on Utah culture by the Salt Lake Acting Company. Now that’s some street cred for a stupid urban myth, eh?

Sometimes I just want to go plum insane.

In the news business, we never lack for sources to stuff into our stories.

Take, for instance, those who are willing to help children suck up the expected dark ending to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final volume of the schoolboy wizard series. The book goes on sale at 12:01 Saturday morning.

The book is said to involve such scary topics as death and dying. For some kids (and thank God we have a specialist in this day and age to sort it all out for them), the book’s affects could be downright debilitating.

Heavens, how did my generation survive the endings of Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling and The Red Pony? But then, maybe we didn’t.

Be strong, children of 2007.

Can someone tell me how this happens?

And what is this “a family of about” 15 children? I have “about” 15 tomatoes on my plants in the garden. I have “about” 15 pens and pencils in the cup on my desk.

But counting children? Isn’t that sort of an exact science?

Unbelievable.

This post seems to mesh nicely–if sadly–with the previous remarks about remaking our sad and ragtag Salt Lake City Main Street.

A City Weekly reader, Jeanne Allein, just sent me this e-mail:

Emilie Segil Martin left us on July 2nd at the age of 87. Do you know the history of this remarkable Salt Lake woman? In the 1960’s I worked at Adrien ‘n Emilie’s boutique with other young and naïve women . . . seven of us are still living in the SLC area and we spent a delightful afternoon with Emilie at a bridal shower several years ago. Emilie was our mentor and friend and she shared all of her worldly knowledge with us. She helped change the face of downtown Salt Lake, along with her brother, Adrien.

I immediately wrote back to Jeanne. I told her about my first-ever pair of bell bottom pants. Purchased at the Cottonwood Mall Adrien ‘n Emilie store in 1970, they were pumpkin orange, fine-wale corduroy with the widest bell legs you could imagine! My mother even sprung for a cotton knit “body shirt” — purple with orange stripes and a little scalloped edge at the neck and hems of the long sleeves.

What an ensemble! I was 13, in the eighth-grade at Olympus Junior High and HOT.

I know that Adrien Segil was killed some years ago while riding his bicycle in town. That was tragic. And I know that Emilie–who skied regularly at Alta into her hearty eighth decade–was a pioneer along with her brother in Utah’s fashion circles in the ’60s and ’70s. Their shop was on upper Main Street. Very cool place.

I’m sorry to hear of Emilie’s passing. Does anyone else remember their great store?

Running across the Burnside Street Bridge in Portland last week, I came upon this graffiti message spray-painted in purple, letters a foot high, on the sidewalk bordering the vast Willamette River:

CALL YOUR DEADBEAT DAD. HE STILL LOVES YOU.

It was Father’s Day weekend. My mind started whirling. Did a specific dad write it to a long-lost child? Or was it more universal? A manifesto of sorts for all neglectful kids who haven’t stayed in touch with their dads? And did the suggestion tug hard enough to result in any action?

Couldn’t say. All I knew is this was Portland and the public call to action fit this city perfectly.

Also on the waterfront, scores of names of dead service men and women who died in Iraq were scrawled in chalk. “The Names Project,” said the message chalked on the sidewalk at the start of the long list.

Portlanders seem to live their lives out loud — at least many of those who reside in and around the city limits. I saw two anti-war protests on city sidewalks while there, and people gathering petition signatures downtown for an open space initiative, membership in Greenpeace and lord knows what else. I’ve visited there at least a half-dozen times in 10 years, usually for business, so I seldom get out to the suburbs. I’m pretty sure the Portland suburbs are like anywhere else, though — a gone-to-shit wasteland of chain restaurants and car lots. So I choose to stay in my little comfy urban bubble and it serves me just fine.

A group of City Weekly staff members attended the Association of Alternative Newspapers there. We worked during the day but played hard at night. The second night in, I’d had enough of crowds and loudmouths bragging on their newspapers, so I lit off on my own to Northwest Portland, AKA the Alphabet District. I walked from downtown for about 1 1/2 miles until I ran into a series of great bars, sidewalk cafes, coffee houses and nightlife like I never see in Salt Lake City. The host at the little Italian place where I chose to eat and sip Oregon pinot noir gave me the history of the district: a one-time working class area populated by longshoremen and their families. “It’s got the distinction of being the most densely populated neighborhood between San Francisco and Seattle,” he said, obviously proud of that little tidbit.

It’s easy to dismiss downtown Salt Lake as a decaying, even dead place because of its prehistoric liquor laws and clunky approach to nightlife. But it’s more than that. We cling to a culture here that a thriving nightlife is a little too much, a bit too excessive, showy and inappropriate. You see this even among those restaurant and club owners who are trying here: With the exception of the bigger, successful private clubs, too many bars are dark and dank, buried in basements with little or no light. Dirty.

It’s like going there makes you feel criminal, and I can’t believe city leaders want to put that message across.

And then there are the politics of Portland. I always get the distinct sensation when visiting there that speaking out is a public duty. People have opinions and they don’t shrink at sharing them. It’s a stark contrast to my hometown here, where so many people back into a position, or feign politeness or silence at the risk of offending or alienating someone else.

And of course, I do love the green and the clean air. We live in a high desert here in Salt Lake and I love that for its own exceptional qualities. But clean air? Now that is our challenge. I feel certain the next 10 years and the way we go about working on air quality will make or break Salt Lake as a livable and enticing city. I hope we haven’t started too late.

I’ve spent more time than I should admit publicly reading day-after stories on-line about “The Sopranos” damn fine final episode.

Here is a fairly pedestrian story from the Associated Press, which in the best wire story style tracks down the usual “expert quote” to sum up the existential ending to the HBO gangsters-doing-life series.

I’d say that ending the show the way creator David Chase did was masterful, and a lot of the critics agree. We Tivo-ed the show last night because we had evening plans, so we watched it after 10 p.m. Sunday. I went to bed with that last image of Tony Soprano’s face and then the blast-to-black image on the TV screen that ended it all for us. I tossed and turned and kept replaying Steve Perry’s voice on Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” in my mind every time I woke up.

This is what good television does. It keeps you replaying it all, summarizing it all, thinking it over and trying to make sense of it. If TV could produce a great American novel, I’d say it came in the form of “The Sopranos.” That’s just how powerfully it affected me and obviously, millions of other viewers who pay premium prices to zoom in weekly on the human condition–however violent and deeply touching it might be in the very same episode.

This is the best analysis of the long-running show I’ve read. Remnick never writes a bad column, and this is one of his finer pieces.

So now it’s on to–yeehaw–”Big Love.” City Weekly TV god Bill Frost says this, in its own charming way, is the replacement for “The Sopranos.” A great season is in store, Bill says. Don’t hang your hats on “John From Cinncinatti,” which seems very strange and takes too long to explain to us why strange is a good thing. (Bill has seen the first few episodes and says the strangeness won’t be explained quickly enough to keep people interested in a whole season.)

Let me and the rest of mullentown readers know what you think of “The Sopranos” arrivederci episode. And if you love “Big Love” as many of we mullentown readers do, what did you think of the season premiere?

OK. Let’s move on.

I plan on ignoring any further ttstark posts, unless they get so over the top as to cause me a migraine (a malady I’m not given to, so I don’t expect he’ll be much of a future problem). Thanks for all your comments on the topic.

Snarky dweebs like ttstark however, are on my mind of late. City Weekly staff writer Stephen Dark is finishing up a cover story about a cyber-squatter-conman who has a criminal record as long as my arm. The guy has a record as a sex offender (a late 1990s federal conviction for on-line possession of kiddie porn). This little transgression landed the guy on the Utah sex offenders database, so he finds it a challenge to find and keep a regular job. He’s limited to where he can live (restrictions on proximity to schools, child care centers, etc.) so he he resides in his sister’s basement in Utah County. He fills his days with harassing people via the Internet and extorting them by demanding money to clear their names (once he’s tried to destroy them). It’s like the guy has a virtual pen and mucho time on his hands to scrawl insults and threats all over one big bathroom wall.

That’s all I can reveal right now. The story is scheduled to run next issue (May 23). It’s sort of a cautionary tale for people who might not know how closely these creeps operate among us.

If you’re one of the many who read this blog and can’t get a paper copy of CW, you can always bookmark our site: http://www.slweekly.com

If you haven’t read my weekly column in this week’s CW, it’s here. We had a good laugh on Tuesday of this week — the day we run around like crazy chickens to get the paper out. This issue reads like the “All Mitt, All the Time” edition. My main point was to get away from the dominant theme among Utahns these days: that poor Mitt is being persecuted for his LDS membership. I’ll give him that, to a small degree. But as a journalist and something of a social/cultural/political critic, I’m not about to give him a hall pass on his waffling and lukewarm positions.

As I point out in the piece, Americans appreciate flexibility in their president AFTER the election, not BEFORE. A presidential campaign is all about drama. What we want from our candidates during the campaign is guarantee of a spine. And Romney shows nearly every day that he’s in search of his. If he’s found his backbone yet, he really ought to let the voters know.