Prepare yourselves for all kinds of anti-Islam vitriol in the coming days and weeks; stuff that will likely dwarf anti-teabagger sentiments and provide some sort of twisted justification for prolonging our military's stay in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-On a more upbeat note, Will Wilkinson maintains that Maine was just a hiccup:

"My new dog groomer has a husband. He told me so Tuesday afternoon. We live in Iowa where, since April of this year, a man can legally marry a man. Since May, it has been possible in Maine to do the same. Or it was until Tuesday, when a slim majority of Maine voters chose to repeal their state’s new same-sex marriage law. Some conservatives are elated. Over at National Review, Maggie Gallagher was dancing a jig. "The People have exercized [sic] their veto. This is huge. I am so happy," she gushed. But traditionalists shouldn’t be so happy. Because this is not so huge. My dog groomer still has a husband. And marriage equality is coming back to Maine."

-Erik Wemple's "Final Thoughts on Allen v. Roig-Franzia" is a worthwhile read, and not just for the gratuitous cock-sucking references.

- The National Journal reports that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading conservative think tank which prides itself on rejecting any sort of government approach to environmental preservation, is in the red:

But this year, amidst economic turmoil, contributions are down 15 per cent and the group is running a deficit of roughly 10 per cent, Smith told National Journal's Under The Influence. That comes to about $450,000 worth of red-ink--though some sources suggest the hole may be deeper. Smith says the group's reserves have cushioned the loss and that he has seen an uptick in fundraising recently.

This kind of financial upset isn't just common in the think tank community--the American Enterprise Institute, home of the Iraq War, faced calamity earlier this year--it also gives layers of meaning to the phrase "currency of ideas."

-To bring us back full circle, The Agitator has the link to a series of ACLU video profiles of "Gitmo prisoners detained, tortured, and then released without charge." Proving, once again, that sick shit begets sick shit.

*UNWANTED SLUMBER PARTY: WTOP reports that a Georgetown student discovered a strange man in her bed yesterday morning. The G'town Cuddler strikes again? Police aren't sure:

"She screamed, he fled, and detectives responded," says D.C. Police Commander Matt Klein, "and subsequently took a report for a second degree sexual abuse."

The only description detectives have is the man had a scruffy beard.

*ALONG THE SAME LINES: WUSA9 has the story of Richard Abner Simon, who is being charged with "Felony Indecent Liberties" after being accused of exposing himself to a 10-year-old girl in Arlington.

*WASHINGTON POST WRITES GRAF ABOUT INTERVEW SUBJECT TWITTERING ABOUT WASHINGTON POST INTERVIEW:

Kaitlyn [Maher], one of the top 10 finalists on "America's Got Talent," who has an upcoming Disney movie and debut album, was still very much a 5-year-old. Already, though, her Twitter account read: "kaitlynmaher Is looking forward to 'Washington Post' reporter visiting tonight to do an interview with her! :)."

*...and Rebecca Armendariz of the Washington Blade takes the Post to task for its NOM "puff piece." To wit:

Did everybody read the Washington Post's puff piece on the hate-spewers at the National Organization for Marriage that ran on Friday? The one that basically said, "Hey gays, we're going to not only run this sunny portrait of a bigot, but also plaster a photo of him and his lovely wife across the top of the page!" The one with the headline, "Opposing gay unions with sanity and a smile"?

*TONIGHT'S CITY LIGHTS PICK: Traffic at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. As Erik Wemple observes: "Stress is the essence of Michael Douglas." Also, special prize for anyone who can answer the following: Why does AFI use the British spelling for "Theatre" but the American spelling for "Center"?

Photograph by Flickr user striatic, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Why the whole world loves/hates the Washington City Paper, Michael Jackson's immortal soul, and some Friday zen, after the jump.

• Howie "the Howitzer" Kurtz sums up what Gawker called a "beautiful" cover thusly: "...it pushed the journalistic envelope with a three-word phrase in the cover headline, which was posted online Tuesday. The phrase--which can be rendered here only in sterile, Starr report-like language--is a colloquial term for an act of oral sex performed on a man. The headline sparked a wave of angry calls to the alternative weekly, complaints from a handful of distributors and charges of racism from Barry supporters yesterday." One of those offended was this lady, who, for lack of a name, we will call "Pinker Bell." Word around the office is that Pinker Bell lit into Jason Cherkis' ass over that cover (that blurry thing to the right is Cherkis). Is that funnier than the cover itself? YOU DECIDE! Editor Erik Wemple makes an appearance and defends the decision really well (seriously). Only problem with Kurtz's column: "City Paper trumpeted its cover online as a "collector's edition"--a bit of a joke, since all of its 72,000 copies are free." Actually, if he cared to look inside the front cover, he might've seen that we doubled the newsstand price (DOUBLE-FREE) for this special collector's edition.
• NEXT: Is Michael Jackson in Heaven? All the MJ coverage made me gag, but this Daily Beast hypothetical by the guy who writes all those religious pocket books considering Jackson's soul is just too good to pass up: "God’s pity aside, Jackson exhibited behavior one doesn’t expect from the heaven-bound, from his alleged drug addictions to his accused pedophilia. Still, those don’t automatically exclude him from paradise, says Chris Seay, the pastor of Ecclesia Houston and president of Ecclesia Bible Society. “We shouldn’t be surprised to find someone like Jackson in heaven,” he says, calling attention to biblical passages like Matthew 7:21-23. “Jesus makes it most clear that we will all be surprised to see that the beautiful and upstanding people we thought were ‘locks’ for heaven did not make it in, and the people we thought hell was created for might have the largest palace on our golden street.”" My take on Seay's philosophy is that to get into Heaven, we should all commit a sex crime right before we die; groping your Hospice nurse should do.

• And now a video for your summer, courtesy of Cinco products:

For the second year in a row, contributor Jeffry Cudlin won the arts criticism category for his work, which this year included the following: "Pine of the Times" about the Martin Puryear retrospective at the National Gallery of Art, "Sheet Smart" about the Christo and Jeanne-Claude exhibit at the Phillips Collection, and "Pain by Numbers," a wrap-up of what D.C. museums did and didn't offer in 2008.

Editor Erik Wemple won first place for media reporting/criticism with his cover story "One Mission, Two Newsrooms" about the Washington Post's struggle to bridge the cultural and geographic divide between its print and online operations.

In the elusive "innovation/format buster" category, the cover story some loved and others hated---"Washington City Paper Files for Chapter 86 Content Bankruptcy"--- also took home first-place honors. The piece by Wemple, Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon, and Asst. Managing Editor Jule Banville was written and presented in the form of a legal document spoofing both the changing nature of City Paper's journalism and and the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by our paper's owners, Creative Loafing.

Creative Loafing's Atlanta paper received second-place honors in the feature category for the first-person account, "Sober," by Thomas Wheatley. The Chicago Reader, also our sister paper, received two second-place awards. Ann Ford was so honored in the arts feature category for "Life Without a Script" and columnist Ben Jarovsky's "The Works" was named in the column (political) category

The AAN Awards are open to its 130 member papers. Most of the altweeklies in U.S. cities (plus a few in Canada) enter the contest each year. This year, the top all-time AAN Award winner, the L.A. Weekly, led the pack with four first-place awards. In the 14-year history of the awards, Washington City Paper has won the second-most overall awards in the top-circulation categories: 51.

On to the day's business.

• Tom Morello has a new album out. The eponymous Street Sweeper Social Club features someone even more politically incoherent than the joker who sang dirges for the UAW while mainlining Sony's green: Boots Riley of the Coup. If you don't know anything about the Coup, then congratulations, you don't listen to shit! Like Morello, Riley is a delusional tool. Unlike Morello, he never found a way to turn his band into a major-label commie megaphone. Morello has come a long way since huffing tear gas at that Miami free trade protest--despite evidence that free trade has lifted millions of people out of poverty and that tear gas is bad for you. His promise that he would do something outrageous during the Republican National Convention was overshadowed by people who actually did outrageous things during the Republican National Convention. If Street Sweeper Social Club is his idea of a revolutionary followup, well, I'm not one to call him out. The album has some funny lyrics thanks to Riley, who could've gone places if he wasn't so caught up in trying, at various times, to start race and class wars. Is the album worth the money? No. But if you're hellbent on listening to their radical leftism--and no, radical isn't over the top: these dudes advocate domestic terrorism against wealthy folks--download that shit for free. (It's revolutionary! Fuck capitalism!)
• In case you missed it, Housing Complex Day occurred/was/happened yesterday. Nothing was good enough for Walter Gagliano. Head honcho Erik Wemple harassed interviewed folks outside of Home Depot. With Darrow Montgomery beside him ("not in front of or behind" him), Jason Cherkis interviewed the kind of salt-of-the-earth people who make people like me feel guilty for bitching about ANYTHING. And that's not even the half of it. Seriously, spend a little time perusing yesterday's coverage at the Housing Complex.

The Association for Alternative Newsweeklies announced finalists for its annual prizes today, selecting Washington City Paper as a top contender in four categories: Photography, Arts Criticism, Media Reporting/Criticism, and Innovation/Format Buster.

Staff photographer Darrow Montgomery, who's been shooting for City Paper for 23 years, is among the top three entries for the highest circulation category (50,000 and over). This is the fourth time Montgomery will be honored by AAN. He was given honorable mention for his work in the 2008 awards.

Galleries writer Jeffry Cudlin, who won the top prize for arts criticism last year, was again named a finalist for 2009.

Editor Erik Wemple was named in two categories. His cover story about the Washington Post's struggle to merge its print and online operations, "One Mission, Two Newsrooms," is a finalist in the Media Reporting/Criticism category.

Wemple also contributed to the finalist in the Innovation/Format Buster category, "Washington City Paper Seeks Content Bankruptcy," along with Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon and Asst. Managing Editor Jule Banville.

The Village Voice takes home the most nominations this year with nine. Our sister papers were also nominated. Creative Loafing Atlanta is a finalist for Feature Story for a first-person piece, "Sober," by Thomas Wheatley; the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky is a finalist in the Political Column category. Entries from 57 papers made the final cut. Winners will be announced at the annual AAN convention on Friday, June 26, in Tucson.

Only one other paper, LA Weekly, which has a grand total of 68 nominations, has received more AAN awards than Washington City Paper, which now has 51.

Finalists for the Blog category have not been announced.

Pictured: One of Darrow Montgomery's nominated photos, which appeared with Ruth Samuelson's cover story, "Truce and Consequences," about a turf war in Shaw.