But how were the bands? They sucked. With remarkable uniformity. Well, I shouldn't say that: I didn't see everything, and usually after three sufficiently underwhelming sets in a row, my will would snap like a brittle twig in winter and it'd be time to flee to the safety of the Hung Far Low Lounge. The Hung Far Low may be the nicest place in the whole city. Climb one of two impossibly steep staircases and enter the lemon-yellow restaurant, in which nothing seems to have changed since 1962, right down to the linoleum. The bar is in back--it's time warp seems set about a decade later. Red lights barely illuminate the vinyl booths and woodgrain paneling, though there is a spotlight on the yard-high golden Buddah behind the bar. Our waitress claimed to have been working there for 28 years, and she had the Farrah hair to prove it. The drinks are stronger than Andre the Giant and cheaper than Anna Nicole Smith. It is a lovely, lovely place, and I advise all who go to Portland to visit early and often.

But, ah yes, those wretched bands. Out there, the kids are into this stuff called "emo." While I was aware of the trend, I had no idea that it had flooded the West Coast with a lot of dull turgid howling that sounds like a castrated Husker Du or Nirvana with their amps turned down to 2. It is the sound of the white male wussing out. The first emo band we saw was Pedro the Lion, whose lead singer had the borderline Amish facial hair that purveyors of this genre seem to favor. He seemed upset about many things, none of which I could actually pin down. While the music was annoying at first--they would drone in the way bands do before they kick into some vast cathartic crescendo--but it would neither accelerate or decline in speed, and release would never come. But, if you considered it some kind of death country, it became somewhat more palatable. Especially once we hauled over to Satyricon to see Half Film, who were just plain bad. Mope and wail, mope and wail, mope and wail--if I want that, I'll sit in front of a mirror the next time I have PMS, okay boys? Finally saying heck no to emo, and hoping to stave off hanging ourselves, we headed for Jimmy Mak's to catch some swing. What we got was The Big Swing, a dreadful slap-happy frat boy combo that was cranking out some inept wouldbe neo-Latin tune entitled, I believe, "Una Cerveza Mas," because those were the only words. We began mourning the fact that we missed Fuckpriest Fantastic, which was described by the happy shiny program guide as "violent and horrifying." Other musical lowlights included The Flapjacks, an uninteresting rockabilly band; I figure they must've been downright lousy because a) I love rockabilly and b) I'd had a few My Favorite Martians--the 1201 Lounge's neon-blue, two-straw, seven-bottle magical cocktails--and they still sounded utterly uninspiring. And then there was Chika Chika, a goofy wannabe new wave synth outfit that was best summed up by our Nashville representative, who inquired "does the phrase 'atonal caterwauling' mean anything to you?"

Okay, so the bands at this festival blew, what about the panels? Well, panels are never any fun. (Okay, maybe "Can Music Make You Murder," featuring Krist Novoselic would've been interesting, but we were in meetings all that day. Or "The Road Back: Recovery and Musicians" could've been amusing, but no former junkies were scheduled to appear and I had a plane to catch). We caught part of the "Dilemmas of Regional Music Coverage," which consisted of guys talking about how they go out drinking with this musician or know that one's girlfriend and does this mean they can't write about them anymore? Yes, scene braggadocio disguised as pertinent information. I resisted the urge to raise my hand and say "If I sleep with the guitarist and he was fabulous, but the band is lousy, am I still allowed to say that he has magic fingers?" Then we hit the "Artists: When Your Dream Becomes Your Job" seminar, aka "Like I Really Hated Quitting That Day Job." In attendance were some guy from Everclear who attempted to go incognito in a hat and sunglasses (don't bother, Art, your name's a foot from you face, six inches high) and Richard Bruckner, looking like he wanted to get back in his truck and hit the Burger King drive-thru. Neither of them said a word.

Okay, was their any good swag, at least? No. Aside from the free bottles of Team Nail Polish (The "Thistle" looks just like car paint!) and the fabulous Nordic metal compilation CD, all you had was a lot of stickers and flyers and 7" no one else wanted (though I did find one of Joan Jett covering "I Wanna Be Your Dog" in the discard box).

So we headed for Ozone, a classic black-painted, sticker-plastered (inside and out) record shop; their selection displayed a lot of wise choices, if not vast magnitude, and an especially nice selection of vinyl. Of course our shopping pleasure was dimished by the presence of some kid emo-ing away with his guitar--"She says the Lemonheads are her favorite band/Because their songs are so funny/She says I'll never be a pop star...." You could actually hear half the store muttering "and she's right," under their breath. Most impressive was Powell's Books--a block-square literary supermarket that manages to be even more bewildering than the Strand--"Fiction: A" takes up an entire 25-foot long aisle. At first I was thrilled, but after about half an hour I became somewhat disoriented and could no longer remember books I wanted (hell, I could no longer remember books I'd read). I did, however, manage to pick up a brightly illustrated pocket guide to Sid Vicious entitled "Too Young to Die." It'd probably teach me more than that "Musicians in Recovery" seminar anyway.

After a fun-filled trip to the Wunderland Arcade--where you pay two bucks to get in and all the hundreds of games are a nickel and cokes are 30 cents-- we managed to catch one decent band: the Parliament-Funkadelic crew in the Park (it had nothing to do with NXNW, though). Nobody wore a diaper, but there was a 250-pound man in a leotard and mesh clamdiggers and a fellow with a giant Adidas-logoed Mickey Mouse glove on his head, along with the technicolor-afroed, hot-panted backup honeys. So they gave up the funk and turned this mother out and put on the atomic dog and great mirth reigned.

But, all bad bands aside, my most horrifying memory of Portland has to be the 24-Hour Church of Elvis. Now, this sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? So we innocently climbed two flights of intermittently pink-painted stairs to find a middle-aged woman in sweatpants either greeting or dismissing--couldn't tell which--two bewildered-looking teens who immediately fled through the door we'd entered. The "church" was a railroad apartment piled with candy-colored junk, plastic wedding cakes, Christmas tinsel, Barbie heads, pictures of Tammy Faye Baker--all piled and pasted into vaguely altar-like constructions. The woman began haranguing us about some tour that would take 12 minutes, 10 if she talked fast, a tour that would display to us the many coin-operated shrines to the wonder of Elvis, which were not working right now and the windows that were currently boarded up would soon be full of art and she had just moved so the tour would actually take only minutes, 8 minutes of the wonder of Elvis. Did we want the tour?

"Huh?" said our San Francisco representative.

"Never mind! Forget it! You obviously are not believers! You are wasting my time and your time! You may as well just go to Nordstroms and forget the Church of Elvis! Now, I will give you one last chance, do you want the tour!?"

"Um..." I said.

"Forget it! You've had two chances! Now get out of here! We could have been halfway through the tour by now, but instead you are wasting my time and your time! You don't want to see Elvis or his art gallery! I don't know what you're doing here! Now, one last time, do you want the tour?!"

Finally, our Triangle representative spoke up. "Uh, the reason we're not saying anything is because you're kind of, uh, scaring us."

This seemed to slow her down for a moment, long enough to decide that we may as well take the damn tour. And we did. We saw how the coin-operated prayer booth would, theoretically, work. We sat on the rolling, vibrating loveseat (actually a car seat). We saw the big altar to Elvis at the back, replete with Bionic Woman doll, and were ordered to pray at it. The fact that I immediately began mumbling and crossing myself seemed to throw her off for a moment, but she recovered instantly and began berating our San Francisco representative for not sufficiently inclining his head and having sideburns. Then we were taken into the "Research Center," a room full of ancient computers and televisions, which she claimed would be much more luxurious once the "700 yards of leopard vinyl fringe just ordered from Italy" came in. What did come in was a balding, middle-aged man with thick glasses and she immediately began announcing that he was Elvis and would soon perform for us. Actually, from the looks of his shifty eyes and twitching hands, he seemed more likely to strangle us. Just in time, the doorbell rang and she went to fetch another batch of wayward souls. We saw our chance to escape and seized it, saying we'd seen enough, and she could fully devote her attention to the other disciples. Or something like that. As we fled down the stairs she hollered after us "Tourists! Go ahead! Go to Nordstrom's! Go to Starbuck's!"

"You want us to bring you a latte?!" I shouted back.