Doggy Bag: Today's Odds and Ends

Slim news: In its piece on Larry Bain and Let's Be Frank at the Aspen Ideas Festival, 7x7 does stretches worthy of a bikram class. There are ... rumors that the White House could be serving the LBF dogs for their annual Fourth of July picnic. As Bain put it: "I'm not allowed to say, but people are talking to people who are talking to people." Not a lot to wrap your lips around there. But it allows Bain an opening to flog LBF as perhaps the ultimate expression of grass-fed populism. We're skeptical that a wiener priced at $5.50 (at LBF's Marina shop) could be anyone's democratic ideal, especially one so über-skinny. Sorry -- not buyin'.

Sick party: Duh -- everybody knows you can't get H1N1 from a rack of babybacks. Still, Hot Food Porn suggests throwing a swine flu party on the Fourth. It starts with a BBC news item -- idiots hosting meet-'n'-greets with the infected, hoping the non-sick will walk away with disease immunity. Talk about effed up. Porn can't resist offering his own tips for mixers: Encourage double dipping. Dip the chip, take a bite and dip it again and again and again. Or this: Reinstate childhood classics like Spin The Bottle, Seven Minutes In Heaven or just plain old raunchy saliva exchanges. Sounds a lot like the pre-Pride brunch we dropped in on last Sunday.