Sitting at a neighborhood bare that my guidebook tells me is "popular with the students."

Approaching from a few blocks away it sounded like a Czech radio station was broadcasting from the place. Rounding the corner into the roundabout, there is a crowd of people crowding a booth and a man with a microphone.

Flashes going off. Several people with raised shot glasses. Moving closer.

Much to my dismay, "Over the Top" must have just been released on DVD here because this bar is having an arm wrestling contest. Brackets on a dry erase board filled in by a brunette in a white fur coat.

Disappointed they weren’t celebrating the release of "Bikini Car Wash Company" or "Caged Heat," a classic "women in prison" film. Sit down and order a beer as two large men with shaved heads approach the ring or table (not sure what you call arm wrestling area) as the MC fires up "Eye of the Tiger."

Not interested in these two brutes, but the next match featured two lanky blondes. But I guess they were only the winners of the women’s bracket because they were showered with prizes ... bottles of liquor from the company who sponsored the event and t-shirts advertising the liquor from the company who sponsored the event.

To the winners go the spoils. For not five minutes after the prizes were passed out, our two champions and their three male companions were pounding on the table and hoisting victory shots poured from the prize bottles.

Filed my second story on Monday—it’s a weekly for you busy beavers who are churning out large chunks of copy on a regular basis—re: a conference with a lot of former political heavyweights.

Only covered the first half of the damn thing because of our Monday afternoon deadline, but interviewed the former Czech president, the former director general of the WTO, James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute and Jim Woolsey, the former director of the CIA re: global coexistence in the 21st Century, which was the title of the conference.

This was a thinly veiled, but calculated maneuver to avoid using the phrase "instability in the middle east" or the word "terrorism" in the conference’s title. And that was fine by me because I had little fear of somebody trying to clip the former P.M. of Canada.

Looks like it should be decent clip … not edge of you seat stuff but at least more interesting than fighting invasive weeds in Oregon’s state parks.

I pitched one story to my editor who told me to keep it on the backburner. But as I was sitting here waiting for my next assignment I decided to be proactive. Since there was a business angle to the thing, I ran it by the business editor to make sure one her reporters wasn’t working on it. Nobody was. Now somebody is … and it’s not me.

The 306 Report (plus a few others)

Our boy Pete Frost is getting hitched in two weeks and a comment on this blog last week made me laugh. He said, “Two more weeks of being single.” Ha.

I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting fiancé (or Joey as I like to call her) a few times but she seems like a lovely young lady. I mean she quit her fucking job to follow a tobacco chewing journalist to South Carolina for Christ’s sake. She could be tired of the Minnesota winters but I doubt it.

Disappointed that I can’t make the big dance at the end of October, but I’ve managed to get my hands on autographed original pressings of "Punch While Rap" and "Still Mitch" (you have these connections when you are a level three spread team member) that I hope will contribute to a little ass shaking or at least some hearty laughter at the reception.

Pete and Joey ... we wish you the best.

Little do they know I’m going to be conducting my job search from their couch come January. Got my fingers crossed for that 50 inch flat screen. Good luck on present opening day.

Dickie has decided to stay in Venezuela despite being robbed at gunpoint and witnessing his first pistol whipping. We are glad he is safe and we are jealous of the proverbial .44 Magnum he can now pull out at job interviews.

Rafa is in Mee-am-eee and as his English slowly disappears we hope his dancing skills reappear.

Nery ... well last I heard he was bartending and peddling coke in Pittsburgh (which is far more lucrative than journalism) while trying to land a job at the Packet with Pete. Steve, FYI: Pete told me they aren’t looking for a Nintendo reporter.

Christine has finally stopped working pro bono for the Times of Northwest Indiana and is being flown to Arkansas at the end of the month for a big interview at the big paper down in Little Rock.

Sara Michael is doing the impossible … making a living freelancing, before she heads down to Central America for some Spanish lessons.

Jessica Bloustein ran a half marathon and lived to write about it. She also apparently has a new job, although several requests for more information on said job have been ignored.

Hugh S. Moore is somewhere between India and Tibet. He has not posted a blog entry in over a week and we hope that is because he on a mountain somewhere, high above the havoc of last week’s earthquake.

Analeed would neither confirm nor deny that she met her future husband at the Englaqi conference she in Boston and if she is still in the Middle East, we hope she is also safe and sound.

Me. I’m getting booted out of the beer garden.

And Ill Mitch ... well he’s Still Mitch.

That is all.

Note: not as blog savvy as Dickie so here's the link to Caged Heat: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071266/