* Corporate stage names make it hard to tell if you’re at an arts festival or a college football bowl game.

* The presence of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy causes Swingers flashbacks; frat guys revert to calling gals “Babies.”

* Velvet painting show attracts white trash, and a wave of unwashed, naked children invades Andrei Codrescu’s poetry performances.

* Canadians descend upon festival and try to pass off their no-good Loonies as currency on unsuspecting arts and crafts vendors; crippling bottlenecks ensue at the Art Market.

* Olodum inspires dreadlocked hippies and clean-cut Seattleites alike to form drum circles, drum circles, and more goddamn drum circles. Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!

* Unwelcome Seafair pirates show up to rumble with Teatro Zinzanni performers.

* Experience Music Project comes to life and slithers across Seattle Center grounds, gobbling up everything in its path.

* Political strife breaks out between food vendors Athena’s Gyros and Gyros! Gyros! Gyros!; hundreds of innocent bystanders are dragged into the melee.

* One Reel announces last-minute patchouli ban, but the strategy backfires when attendees step up the burning of sage.

* Seattle Mime Theater’s silent reenactment of Death of a Salesman confounds audience at Kids’ Stage.

* Bumbershoot.com.

* Main sponsor Starbucks replaces fountain water with thousands of gallons of Frappuccino.

* Earthquake strikes and Memorial Stadium collapses; it wasn’t safe after all!

* Closing mainstage act the Roots plays late-night cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire,” causing remaining Bumbershoot attendees to briefly contemplate a Woodstock-like arson rampage; they then realize that it’s a Monday night and leave peacefully because they have to be at work in the morning.