Which is why I was soaked by the tour's end. Smiling meant dripping.

Perfect for walking 5K home. Nothing makes you forget about distance like a drenching, and the bishop that built Hellbrunn Palace must have been all about that. This tour was trick fountains, just trick fountains.

The brave man and little girl at left are getting soaked from above and below. The brave-ish boy at right is in the archbishop's seat and dry.

Water powered all of the mechanics in the park. Not bad for 1615, eh?

They ranged from massive, moving sets…

… to tiny, path-side scenes. Channels and waterfalls ran underneath.

At the settings above, we were soaked or drying off. Water came from ceilings, walls, floors, statues, even deer antlers on the wall. A grotto that didn't douse you was a concern. Orpheus, what were you up to?

Ah: "Eurydice, whose features bear a striking resemblance to portraits of Countess Isabel Mabon whom the guidebook coyly describes as the Prince Bishop's 'muse,' wears nothing other than a portrait of Marcus Sittikus [the bishop, of course] round her neck." (PDF.) Smart move.

More symbols: Like power, the golden crown rises and falls.

What this symbolized… bet it inspired the magic upside-down faucet.

And the brave, stoic man and the rest of us continue our soaking.

It's a brilliant, deadly kiss-off. Everyone had a theory on why Adrian Holovaty sold his Everyblock to MSNBC and not a newspaper company. To MediaShift this week, Holovaty says the controversy doesn't makes sense and doesn't give a direct answer. But his indirect answer is gold.

It's like asking me, after I put together a band of musicians, why I didn't choose the musician who spoke Portuguese. What difference does it make if a musician speaks Portuguese? I'm going to pick the band member based on how good of a musician he is, not which languages he speaks. That's completely unrelated. Of course, if our band planned to tour in Portugal, it might be a different story, but let's put it this way: the band is not planning to tour in Portugal.

If you care about one medium before all else and not the bigger media picture, you're screwed. Enjoy Lisbon's bar scene (check it, "I'm a Rock Star in Portugal" hat) while we trust ideas and work ethics elsewhere.

First, the allegedly busy thieves. "Over the past 10 years, ring members stole razors, vitamins and hygiene items worth to up to $60,000 a week. They hit as many as 60 stores a week, the Brevard County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Law of Enforcement said Tuesday. Ranging in ages from 53 to 68, the five worked with a 22-year-old accomplice and sold their bounty on Web auction site eBay and through flea markets, authorities say."

Now, the allegedly busy bears: "When Seminole County resident complained that state officials weren't coming after bear complaints, wftv.com called the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. It found the agency is backed up with complaints, fielding 50 to 60 calls per week. … They say the bears are so comfortable that several people have been able to get close enough to snap pictures of them hanging out by the pool of a vacant home."

All brought to us today by the St. Petersburg Times and TampaBay.com, my favorite storytelling paper now fanned by me on Facebook.

I'm sorry tonight to read Lindsay and her family are losing Zipper, their dog of the last 14 decade and a half. It would be hard to explain if you didn't know me as a kid, but Zipper, more than any other dog, was the dog that made me love dogs. I always considered it a compliment that sometimes we resembled each other. From just before we met in '00:

Borntorun–: umph
PlanetL—: wait'll you hear zipper make that exact sound.

For Linz, you in 12/98: "I missed my dog. I'm glad I have a dog again." To your readers — blog posts or not — "I haven't written much about Zipper," you mention — your dog was never far from what you wrote.

The movie is everywhere in Salzburg. It's not the merch so much. Past DVDs, finding a branded music box or any other item is a dozen times harder than finding anything Mozart. It's more how filmmakers ended up everywhere in the city, and you can end up everywhere as well.

(You didn't think the trip pictures were done, did you? Please. There are trick fountains, mountain slides, German rap, and more to come.)

To recap, you've seen the horse gates and ballroom inspiration (set). You've seen the do-re-mi fountain and cemetery inspiration (set).

On my last full day in the city, I decided to track down some Sound of Music spots I hadn't seen — the gazebo and the front of the palace. It had been tricky to figure out what was where. Our palace hosted half of the lake and back patio scenes. When they showed the lake or back walk, that was our palace. But when scenes cut the other way, toward a yellow palace, that was Hollywood. The gazebo scenes had become convoluted as well. Originally in our backyard, the traffic got to be nuts, so they picked up the whole gazebo and moved it to another palace.

Relative locals told me this other palace, Hellbrun, was a 20-25 minute walk. It turned out to be 45 minutes at Cooper-walk speed, about 5K.

Arriving, I was damn happy to find that gazebo where they said it was.

That was about all I took away from the gazebo. Placed next to a wall at the entrance to a park, the setting was pretty much the opposite of secluded. But it was easy for tourists to find. Somewhat disappointed, I was glad the palace was the setting of Sound of Music's courtyard.

Except, while the yellow color was right, the courtyard clearly was not.

The trick fountains out back were a terrific distraction (like I said, that photo gallery is coming), but you should see the photos I took trying to convince myself this was the place and I was seeing the angles wrong.

So, I headed up the path home.

I'd taken a different route earlier. The nun was heading for an abbey on the road (not the abbey). and the carriages and bikes were nice.

And then I came upon this yellow wall, which for once looked right.

Courtyard looked right too. So right. But I doubted. Took a photograph to confirm at home — it checked out, happily. The place was Frohnburg. If there a no-parking sign to take from a palace and stick elsewhere…

Dan Neil introduces me to the term, with hundreds or thousands of people moving in coordination: "There might be something deeper at work here than simple arty set pieces in post-Beijing euphoria. These ads are, after all, demonstrations of mass cooperation, human beings operating harmoniously, collectively and selflessly to make something beautiful. Maybe we've forgotten that we could do that?" I think yes.

Reminds me of the "human statue of liberty" pics from WWI. (Snopes.)

Let me beep you back, in the middle of the evening, at the point when it switches to midnight on my clock, unexpected, disappointing because evening has given up, but there's so much remaining to be considered and shelved from the handtruck or arm-loads, stock that's not taken or bought but counted, priced and put away for someone else. I can walk quickly enough along the service drive and up the hill, but that's happy hour — one sneaker automatically in front of its friend on the sidewalk, forgotten for the duration, just tilting up, ahead — and not destination.

What I had planned to write about tonight was comma restraint. The sentence that prompted the thought got me at the end: "It affects me as one of those moments — certain sentences by F. Scott Fitzgerald, say, or the better turns of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers — when an oxymoronic American dream of aristocratic democracy comes suddenly, briefly true." The line "suddenly, briefly true" was no "suddenly, briefly, true." Coordinating adjectives win, and the appositive adjective loses. We come to each other not for self-emphasis, but to define the rest of it all. There are other sentences tonight. They can help someone else.

Patrick Cooper's anagram name is CRACKPOT OR PIE.

Patrick Kent Cooper's anagram name is CRANKIER, TOP POCKET.

Hmm. Going viral now, learn your anagram name here.

We both know that it's wrong… but it's much too strong… to let it go now…

A streak of waking in the middle of the night — yesterday 4:30 or so — has seemingly been good creatively, but I can't be sure. For as much gets done then, there's a Memento effect when I fall back asleep, on the blue couch, in the bed. How bad has this gotten? Even as I heard the song over and over on radio last week, I'd forgotten I'd seen the new Shakira video. I'm gonna pay the price when I open the closet.