Doug has made it his mission to learn one interesting thing per week about Madison, Wisconsin -- ostensibly because, ever the optimist, he's pretty sure one thing is all he'll be able to find.

Last week, for example, he learned that at a certain local bar, Wednesday night is Free Bacon Night. That might be the most brilliant promotion I've ever heard, but this cake comes with rich icing: The beer on special that night is not only called Hamm's, but it comes at seventy-five cents a pint.

This week, though, Madison scored. Gleefully, Doug reported that a whopping two interesting things had come along, and once I picked myself back up off the floor, I admit I was pretty curious.

• There is a thrift store in Madison that sells clothes� by the pound. There are what Doug calls giant troughs of clothing all over the store, and you just load up and weigh it. That is the funniest concept. "Hey, I bought three pounds of clothing today." It's like a butcher's shop for apparel, but without the glass cases, suspicious smells � well, probably there's a whiff or three of something suspect � and the white paper packaging.

  Doug's just a cub reporter, so he didn't report the name of the store, nor what the competitive market rate per pound of clothes might be in Madison. I did, however, find courtesy of Google a Goodwill Outlet in Charlotte that sells them for $1.29 per pound. But Cambridge, Mass., beats that with a "buck a pound" thrift store.

  God bless commerce.

• Another bar might've beaten out Free Bacon Night, or at least tied it for Best Pork-Related Promotion.

  This particular tavern, whose name again escapes Doug (he will have to do better next week or risk punishment), boasts a Wednesday morning promotion called Eggs & Smut. The beer is cheap, the eggs are� eggs, and the porn is complimentary. That's right: porn screened at breakfast, just as it should be.

  Beer, eggs, and porking. While the head on your beer swells, so does Ron Jeremy's. Just as you're wrapping your mouth around a runny yolk, some guy might be drizzling his all over the face of a big-breasted porn star.

I love bar promotions. One of the best dance-club nights I can remember was right after my sophomore year in college, when Doug and I road-tripped to Windsor, Ontario, with his roommate Jason and his girlfriend. We wanted to go there and drink legally, of course, so we headed out on the town and got a cabbie to recommend good local bars. He steered us to a club that happened to be hosting an all Prince night � nothing but Prince music, with giant screens above the dance floor showing Purple Rain on mute.

It was pretty fabulous, although when you're nineteen and able to stand in a bar sucking down longnecks, everything feels pretty fabulous. So maybe we were just easy.

Damn, though, some Eggs & Smut would've gone down nicely the next morning. No pun intended.

Well, maybe a little intended.

The following conversation happened on Passions last night.

Wait, backstory: Beth is psycho, and is wearing a big bag of sugar under her shirt to pretend she's pregnant with Luis's baby � while the real mother of his baby, Sheridan, is trapped in a pit in Beth's basement. Sheridan popped out the kid just as Luis and his family were throwing Beth a baby shower upstairs.

LUIS: Is that� do I hear a baby crying?

GRACE: I think I hear a baby. Eve, you're a doctor � is that a baby?

DR. EVE: It sure sounds like a baby.

LUIS: Beth's been gone for a few minutes. Do you think she just had the baby?

PILAR: We haven't seen her in a while.

ANTONIO: Eve, you're a doctor � could Beth have just given birth to my brother's baby in the kitchen?

EVE: It's definitely a possibility. Sometimes labor happens quite fast.

LUIS: I'd better knock on the kitchen door and see if Beth had the baby.

EVE: I'm a doctor, so I should also probably see if Beth needs me, in case she did just have the baby.

LUIS (calling out casually): Hey, Beth, are you in there? Did you just have the baby?

Now, okay. I� okay. There's� sigh, okay.

This show is brilliant. Only Passions would ever dare to write the above scene. First of all, the assembly of idiots was standing three feet from the kitchen door during the above conversation, and none of them wondered why, if Beth had indeed had the baby, she hadn't been screaming or having painful contractions. And second, the reason they could hear Mystery Baby crying is because the psycho nurse forgot to close the basement window. So everyone could hear the baby's cries as they wafted up into the house... and yet, magically, no one heard Sheridan screaming, "Give me my baby," or Psycho Nurse screaming, "YOU'RE GONNA DIE NOW, BLONDIE."

LUIS (walking into the kitchen): Beth, did you have the baby?

BETH: No.

LUIS: That's funny, I heard a baby crying.

BETH (gesturing to her fake belly): Well, I'm still pregnant.

DR. EVE: Yes, that's true Luis, she's still pregnant.

Yeah. Passions. It's so fantastic.

Someone got here by searching for: waving goodbye clip art Reading: Screening Party, finally, only several months after borrowing it from Jessica. Planning: A Drunky But Funky function. Sort of. Check it out.