Happy Hump-Day! I can see you slumping over and sleeping at your desk, so I’ve helpfully ended each news-blip with a BOOM, in honor of the Black Eyed Peas, Brett from FOTC, and the DC Metro transit system. Stay awake! Boom!

For those metro riders who have finally managed to assuage their fears of track-jumpers and crashed cars—stop reading. Prince of Petworth reports that there was more trouble on the red line yesterday. One witness said his car had “a series of explosions, with little fire and sparks everywhere.” Another mentioned a “loud BOOM!” and a decent cloud of smoke at Metro Center. And before that fiasco, the car reportedly stopped to let a sick passenger off the train. Coincidence? Metro says the train “lost one of its collector shoes”. My theory is that there was an X-Men/Heroes/Men in Black character on the train who beat up an invisible bad-guy, and than erased everyone’s memory. Draw your own conclusions. Boom!

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Saturday's 3000-meter steeplechase qualifier was enlivened by the presence of Anthony Famiglietti, a 30-year-old 29-year-old runner from New York who trains in Tennessee. Famiglietti, who looks like he might have made you an Americano, whizzed past you on a fixie, or perhaps sold you weed at some point, studied philosophy, paints, sculpts, and has produced a 12-song CD of ambient music, according to the announcers. He has a Web site that loads slightly quicker than it takes to run a steeplechase, and on it you can buy his DVD, Run Like Hell.

There was a great PIP interview with Famiglietti during the race. I didn't take notes, but in it he talked about how he didn't share the American ideal of success and how he instead tried to embrace pain daily. In the wall-to-wall Phelpsphest, it was about time someone slipped a turd in the punchbowl. "Famiglietti with an...unusual perspective there," one of the commentators coughed out. (I looked for video but no dice; I did find this one, where Famiglietti talks about passion and runs through fire.)

"Fam" was out in front for most of Saturday's race but finished third in the end. Today, in the finals, he finished 13th. Afterward I like to imagine he punched the stadium wall, shouted something about Gregor Samsa, and wandered out into the Beijing night, and a tear-stained sophomore art major chased after him, and now they're planning on moving to Portland.

* Burning question! Why employ a "guest blogger"? Get your own blog! It's easy! Still, yesterday, Prince of Petworth debuted "The Restaurant," a new series by a guest-blogger called Julian: a writer, waiter, and master of the simile. Writes "Julian": "The staff, from what I noticed up front, was attractive and friendly, yet tightly knit–like a potato sack I desperately wanted to cut into with my personality and strong work ethic." Never have I more appreciated the subtle artistry of the "Door of the Day."

* Junior League harmonica player (and wheat-paster) Martin Thomas was ejected from China for protesting for a free Tibet during the Olympic ceremonies, BYT reports.

* Speaking of the Olympics: Despite my policy to ignore them at all costs, gymnastics events are better now, Slate says.

* Meanwhile, says WaPo, ping-pong gets the shaft!

* Local darlings U.S. Royalty have an inaugural video to go along with their inaugural EP.

* Tonight: If you don't wear shorts, they'll cut your pants off. Is that a promise?

Photo by S.³

Yesterday, Olympic officials admitted that 7-year-old "Ode to the Motherland" singer Yang Peiyi was replaced on television by a lip-syncing stand-in, 9-year-old Lin Miaoke. Since the admission, much discussion, unfortunately, has centered on the girls' relative "cuteness." Today, according to the Associated Press, officials insisted that "the decision to have one girl lip-sync another's voice during a song featured in the Beijing Games' opening ceremony was not about who was cuter, but about achieving the best overall performance." AP goes on to report that public outcry over the switch was "directed at the organizers for not going public with the decision rather than at Miaoke, whose performance was highly praised." (For the record: "Miaoke's father, Lin Hui, said both girls are cute.")

If the decision was not, in fact, about the girls' "cuteness" but rather about the integrity of the "performance," it means that China is making history: China has lifted the oft-criticized art of lip-syncing to Olympic proportions. Could an official Olympic team be far behind? Here, my recommendations for the 2012 Olympic Lip-Syncing dream team. See you in London!

Competitor: Milli Vanilli (duh).
Home Country: Germany
Qualification: Cool under pressure. From Wikipedia: "In 1990, during a live performance recorded by MTV at the Lake Compounce theme park in Bristol, Connecticut, the recording of the song "Girl You Know It's True" jammed and began to skip, repeating the partial line "Girl, you know it's-" over and over. According to the premiere episode of VH1's Behind the Music which profiled Milli Vanilli, fans attending the concert didn't seem to notice or even care and the concert continued as if nothing unusual had happened."

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