1a. Bumbershoot is a yearly arts festival that occurs over Labor Day weekend at Seattle Center. "Bumbershoot" is another word for "umbrella." This year's Bumbershoot headliners include the Zombies, the Breeders, and a host of comedians, visual artists, and celebrities. Now that you know all this, do you care? Why or why not?

1b. Please explain, in nauseating detail, how you could run a better arts festival than One Reel, the producers of Bumbershoot. You need not supply any supporting evidence that you could run a better festival—we'll just take your word for it.

2. In The Stranger's too-long Bumbershoot Guide, EMILY NOKES interviews young people at Southcenter Mall about Kendrick Lamar. This "joke" stretches on for approximately 1,600 words, which is nearly twice the size of The Stranger's arts coverage this week. Using your knowledge of history, list three other bad jokes that went too far. (For example, onetime Domino's Pizza mascot the Noid, the 21st- century career of David Hasselhoff as a self-aware talentless hack, and Jerry Lewis's Holocaust comedy-drama The Day the Clown Cried.)

3. MARTI JONJAK has contributed an interesting and useful column in the Bumbershoot Guide about the festival's fashion components. If Jonjak is so knowledgeable about fashion, why do most Stranger writers continue to dress as though they were toddlers forced to choose outfits from a 1982 JC Penney catalog? Explain the importance of fashion in 100 words or less, in the hopes of persuading Stranger writers to stop wearing outsize free promotional T-shirts and the same pair of jeans they've worn for eight years running.

4. PAUL CONSTANT, who is presenting at Bumbershoot, has written an article alleging that the best parts of Bumbershoot are those panels and presentations that have been put together by or include Stranger staff. The article is accompanied by an illustration of Constant's head wedged up his own ass. Using blue or black ink, please draw a map of the exact point where winking self-awareness crosses over into blatant self-promotion.

5. Literally nothing of value has been published in the anemic regular issue of The Stranger that accompanies this week's Bumbershoot Guide. If you ran a flailing alternative weekly newspaper, what would you have published this week? Why do you think The Stranger decided not to do that? recommended