WINNERS 1. The players got shafted and the fans are pissed, but at least one Portlander celebrated when the NBA lockout ended last week. KEX's Marty Anderson, who's been keeping a lonely vigil atop a billboard since election day, could finally end his publicity stunt, which had long grown stale. 2. Sunday's premiere of The PJs, Fox Television's new animated series, was watched by 22 million viewers according to Nielson's ratings, edging out such established favorites as The X-Files, which pulled in 21.4 million fans. That's good news for local animator Will Vinton. The man who made the California Raisins famous serves as one of the the show's executive producers. All The PJs' animation--a new technique known as "foamation"--is shot in his Northwest Portland studios. 3. Given her current legal troubles, you'd think Terri Gustafson would have cringed when 20/20 called. Instead the embattled Clackamas County prosecutor came off looking good. In a segment on child-murder statutes, 20/20 quoted Gustafson's claim that Oregon law precludes prosecution of people whose children die as a result of their religious beliefs (an argument that other DAs and the state attorney general say is flat-out wrong). 20/20 also neglected to mention that Gustafson is under indictment for lying to a judge and is the subject of two state bar ethics investigations.

LOSERS 1. For the first time in two decades the Democratic Party of Oregon had a chairman who wanted to serve a second term. So, showing the type of intra-party bickering once reserved for the state GOP, the Democratic faithful promptly dethroned him. Last week Jim Edmunson, a former Eugene lawmaker, unseated Portland lawyer Marc Abrams to win the top DPO post. 2. Pity poor Clackamas County. First there was Sunday's Oregonian story about the sordid squabble between county commissioners Bill Kennemer and Ed Lindquist, who were both trying to get their fiancées the same cushy job with the county transportation department. Then there was Monday's news of a resurrected Portland-only light-rail plan that would drop a long-envisioned southern leg to Clackamas County. 3. Sometimes hindsight can be painful. Just ask Multnomah County Circuit Judge Henry Kantor. Gang member Harry Villa was under indictment for racketeering, along with other Kerby Blocc Crips, when he picked up two more assault charges over the summer. In September, prosecutors asked Judge Kantor to revoke Villa's bail. Kantor declined. That meant Villa was a free man last week when he was the target of a Chinatown shooting spree that injured an innocent bystander.

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Willamette Week | originally published January 13, 1999