My assignment tonight? Covering the Miss Indiana USA pageant at the Radisson. Here's what I want to know: If Miss USA is all about diversity, how come everything reeked of downhome, Christian values and country music and all that, and does The Donald know about this? I mean, I'm not expecting anyone to play "Gett Off" by Prince or stripper music or anything, but this is NWI, not French Lick, and it made me a little ill seeing contestants of color having to shoehorn themsleves into this Southern pageant stereotype. And of course it seemed to be much worse this year than the previous two years I covered the event. Fuckin' Shrub. All I'm saying is, you can make something whitebread while catering to every denominator.

Meanwhile, it was a good weekend up in here. Visited Jill at Customs Saturday and ended up going with her fiance and her to a couple of gallery showings, one by this really talented young artist (from Hobart, even) on whom I could easily have a crush and another by this dude who does a lot with primary colors. But more important? Shiraz, shiraz, shiraz, babies. And it was FREE shiraz, so even better. So after three Lites on top of many glasses of Shiraz and two or three glasses of chardonnay back at Customs, Jill and John decided it would probably be best for me to crash at their crib, which Jill wants me to buy when they move in a year or two. It's a great crib, too -- big enough for me and the boys, and it's in Miller, which I've been dying to move to since forever. So of course now, all I can think of is color schemes.