MONDAY, MAY 31 This week of major news, minor pimps, and heavy history got off to an appropriately ostentatious start today with Memorial Day, the U.S. holiday commemorating members of the military killed in war. After laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, President George W. Bush praised those who'd made the ultimate sacrifice for this negligible nation. "Because of their fierce courage, America is safer, two terror regimes are gone forever, and more than 50 million souls now live in freedom," said Dubya to what the Associated Press identified as "warm applause." According to the Pentagon, the conflict in Iraq has thus far killed over 800 U.S. troops and wounded nearly 4,700 more, with American soldiers dying at the average rate of two per day throughout the month of May. Today was no exception, with two American soldiers fatally wounded during clashes with Shiite militiamen around the holy cities of Kufa and Najaf.


TUESDAY, JUNE 1
In far stupider news: Today in Virginia, a would-be mother-and-son con team was arrested after allegedly attempting to extort $500,000 from a Cracker Barrel restaurant. According to the Associated Press, the multigenerational grift was set in motion the day before Mother's Day, when 36-year-old Carla Patterson and her 20-year-old son Ricky visited a Cracker Barrel in Newport News. In court documents, Ma Patterson claimed she had already eaten some of her vegetable soup when she scooped up a small, brown mouse, prompting the redneck Denny's to stop serving vegetable soup at all of its 500 restaurants, and inspiring the Pattersons to seek half a million dollars in damages. However, a Cracker Barrel investigation quickly discovered the mouse didn't originate from the Cracker Barrel kitchen. The key: The absence of soup in the mouse's lungs, which suggested the mouse had been dropped in the soup after its death, which investigators attributed to a pre-soup skull fracture. Last week, Cracker Barrel presented its findings to prosecutors, and today Carla and Ricky Patterson were charged with attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit a felony. Jeers for mother-and-son criminals, cheers for rodent autopsists. (Does Cracker Barrel keep one on staff or just on retainer?)


WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2
The week continues with the rare news story whose heart-sickening headline--"Junior High Prostitution Ring Probed in Massachusetts"--is obliterated by the mind-fucking horrors of the story to follow. Published in today's Boston Herald, the story takes place at West Junior High School in Brockton, Mass., where police are investigating a 13-year-old girl accused of pressuring a female classmate--a mildly retarded foster child--into turning tricks for as little as $5. According to an "inside source" at the school, the trysts had been going on for weeks and involve as many as 20 boys from West Junior High and Brockton High School. The Herald reports that the hideous case came to light after two girls told school officials they were solicited by the alleged adolescent madam to join the upstart sex ring. While Brockton police decide how to proceed with charges against the alleged pimp and her alleged clients, the school district has washed its hands of the icky affair, with Brockton Public Schools Superintendent Joseph Bage attributing the lack of disciplinary action to the alleged incidents' alleged occurrence behind a shopping plaza a half-mile from the school. "Once they're away from the school building, they're kind of on their own," said Bage.


THURSDAY, JUNE 3
Nothing happened today (unless you count the abrupt resignation of CIA Director George Tenet, who followed his December 2002 statement to George Bush-- describing evidence of Iraq's banned-weapons programs as "a slam-dunk"--with another whopper, attributing his resignation to "personal reasons." To his credit, Tenet was the driving force behind the investigation into the Bush administration's dangerous and perhaps retaliatory leak of an undercover CIA officer's name to the press; in Tenet's absence, the CIA will be temporarily led by Deputy Director John McLaughlin.)


FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Today George W. Bush paid a visit to Pope John Paul II, where the bedunced president gave the becrumpled pope a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. honor given to civilians, whose significance Dubya diluted by arriving at the Vatican 15 minutes late--"a rare breach of protocol in Vatican City," reports the Associated Press. To retaliate, the pope delivered a bruising indictment of American life, denouncing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops and blasting America's acceptance of such "self-centered demands" as abortion and same-sex unions. Even better, the pope delivered his address in a largely incoherent mumble, with those close to the 84-year-old Parkinson's-ridden pontiff telling Reuters that PJP was "having one of his down days." (Meanwhile outside the Vatican, an estimated 500,000 protesters hit the streets to protest the arrival of Bush and denounce Italy's involvement in the Iraq war.)


SATURDAY, JUNE 5 We knew it was coming, that it was only a matter of time before the tragic inevitability occurred. But as the reports rolled in, we realized that nothing can adequately prepare a nation for such history-altering moments as today's surprise wedding between Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, who married in what Us called a "hush-hush ceremony" with a "tropical Latin theme" held in the backyard of the compulsive bride's Los Angeles mansion. Elsewhere in L.A., Ronald Reagan, the nation's 40th president and the luckiest motherfucker in the history of the world, died. Congrats to J.Ho, good luck to M.Ant, and condolences to the surviving Reagans.

-- In less ambivalent news: Tonight Last Days had the deep pleasure of attending Accidental Nostalgia, Cynthia Hopkins' "alt-country operetta about the pros and cons of amnesia," produced this weekend at On the Boards. As all those lucky enough to attend can attest, the singing/ songwriting/dancing/theater-making Ms. Hopkins is some sort of performance art superwoman, whose press-pack comparisons to Laurie Anderson/Tom Waits/Lou Reed are nearly as flattering to the name-checked superstars as they are to the up-n-coming Hopkins, who should return to Seattle as soon as possible for the rock-star reception she deserves.


SUNDAY, JUNE 6
The week ends with the 60th anniversary of D-day, which made fast friends of war-torn presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac (who put aside petty humanitarian differences to lay a wreath on the hallowed northwest coast of France in honor of those who perished in the Normandy invasion), along with the 58th annual Tony Awards, which made statuette-holders of a record-setting three African-American women--A Raisin in the Sun's Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald, and Caroline, or Change's Anika Noni Rose--and Hugh Jackman.

Send Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com.