Gossip That Likes Having Its Privates Scanned.

1. PICK A MOON DOG: Today in awesome bar names: Jacob Carey has applied for a liquor license for the space at 736 SE Grand Ave. (formerly Niki’s Restaurant) under the trade name Dig a Pony.
2. THE WISDOM OF CROWDS: Audiences at the 37th Northwest Film & Video Festival thought more highly than WW did of The Adults in the Room, bestowing the Audience Favorite Feature award on Andy Blubaugh’s self-reflective kinda-documentary. We’re more simpatico with the audience on favorite short and favorite documentary short: They chose Nathaniel Bennett’s Bigfoot comedy, The True Believers, which is terrific, and John Waller’s caving film, Into Darkness, which is pretty darn good for a low-budget film about caving.
3. A FITTING END: When Satyricon closed last month, its final weeks were full of nostalgic shows from throwback Portland bands like the Dandy Warhols, the Obituaries and Quasi. The last days of Berbati’s Pan won’t be quite so epic, but the venue will go out with a pretty huge bang: Five Fingers of Funk, the mythic Portland live hip-hop group that played the Berbati’s Pan venue opening night 16 years ago (and made the club its home base for years afterward), will close the place down this New Year’s Eve. A press release sent this week cited the band as one of recently deceased Berbati’s co-owner Ted Papaioannou’s favorite bands to drink ouzo with “until the sun rose.” But then, anyone who has been in Portland long enough has a couple of good Five Fingers of Funk stories.

1. FOUND A PEANUT: Enjoying the Planters holiday ad blitz with Mr. Peanut voiced by Robert Downey Jr.? Thank Laika/house: The commercial wing of Phil Knight’s Portland animation studio created the puppet animation for the character. The ads starring Mr. Peanut (the first time the Planters mascot has had a voice) were directed by Laika/house’s team of Mark Gustafson and Ringan Ledwidge. Meanwhile, a Planters spokesman assured The New York Times that even though Mr. Peanut speaks in the urbane, dulcet tones of Downey, and has a little male peanut friend who is always hanging around, Mr. Peanut is so very much not gay. “They are, as the saying goes, just friends,” The Times reported. “Benson does not live in Mr. Peanut’s house.” So glad we cleared that up. The two talking peanuts do not live together in a same-sex talking-peanut home, because that would be unnatural.

WWeek 2015