Of all the causes The Stranger has taken as its own—legalizing intoxicants, humiliating conservative politicians, undermining heterosexual tradition—none is quite as drably municipal as high-school dropout DOMINIC HOLDEN's quixotic endeavor against the tunneled highway under downtown. As if the issue hasn't already been settled! As if anyone is at all unclear on The Stranger's position! Mr. Holden has been playing this incomprehensible game for years and has written this selfsame story at least thrice—and nearest I can tell, editor in chief CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE either sleeps through the editing process or is too drunk to remember he's already published these facts before. The impetus for this week's tantrum is nominally an environmental impact report that suggests—in sweepingly theoretical numbers—that traffic in certain intersections will be the same as it is today after the tunnel is constructed. But Mr. Holden could just as easily have been set off into an anti-tunnel tirade by a grocery store flyer or a recipe for shepherd's pie.

Much of the rest of this week's miniscule paper is devoted to the Capitol Hill Block Party, which is an annual festival that drains neighborhood businesses of customers and income. Music editor GRANT BRISSEY, who has never met a sentence he could not mangle into unrecognizability, leads this amateurish foray into music criticism by some of the least interesting writers who have ever successfully managed to find the "on" switches of their personal computers. The foray comprises a pullout guide to the festival as well as four "articles" in the music section proper: One consists of Mr. Brissey grunting two-word questions to a member of a band whose nomenclature is unprintable, one finds Mr. Holden taking a break from writing about tunnels to (what else?) advocate smoking marijuana, one is LINDY WEST hyperventilating about the words "block" and "party," and one is a band DAVE SEGAL describes as sounding like "demonic howls, unhinged squeals, and malfunctioning engine sputters." Well, when you put it like that!

Elsewhere, briefly...

CITY: Oh, please.

VISUAL ART: Hooligans vandalize three homes and JEN GRAVES, ever breathless, is on hand to declare it "art."

BOOKS: This just in—Flannery O'Connor was a talented writer.

THEATER: Skipped it.

CHOW: Is the theme of this issue "Things We've Already Written About Before"? Instead of a proper restaurant review, BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT scribbles out what I believe to be her one millionth review of Burning Beast, a "special" event in which people with purported good taste pay $100 each to go out into the woods and roll around in the mud.

FILM: Nuclear radiation is bad.

SPORTS BLOTTER: Those poor children.

SAVAGE LOVE: Mercifully heterosexual.