It doesn't officially open until January, but if you're a fan of Internet humor, a social activist, a person who enjoys theatre, a person who cares about those living with disease, or just someone who's into the macabre, you should immediately add A Short Term Solution To A Long Term Problem to your 2012 must-see list. more ›

Here are three international triumphs playing in Seattle this week that poignantly jog our sense of humanity's interconnectedness. more ›

Invented holidays are mostly kind of a cheap gimmick, but we like to recognize World AIDS Day because it's always worth raising awareness about a deadly disease that often most affects those least prepared to deal with it. The Space Needle will go red today, Starbucks has all kinds of crazy promotions, Project RED wants to make sure no babies are born with HIV by 2015. There are many ways to celebrate the day—make your own AIDS Day poster, change your profile pic, watch a video or buy some Starbucks to give 5 cents to (RED), attend a Hard Rock benefit for Dunshee House—but probably the most important action you can take is to protect yourself and get tested. Free HIV testing is available in Seattle at: more ›

Last night there were tons of Ron Paul's people outside the Showbox Sodo. Before, during, and after Barack Obama's fundraising event/rally, the Paul supporters waved their signs and interacted with anyone who would give them the time of day. Too bad they couldn't afford tickets to the event due to the current tax structure--if only someone would abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve.... Meanwhile, inside the venue was a crowd of teens, twenty-somethings,... more ›

The Seattle Times and the P-I are both reporting on the story, which if nothing else illustrates a case of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" in action. The Times says:

The vaccine used a disabled form of a common-cold virus to carry three synthetically produced HIV genes into the body. It was hoped that those genes would spur the body to unleash an HIV-targeted immune response using so-called "killer" T cells. Neither the cold virus nor the HIV genes could reproduce, so volunteers could not catch a cold or become infected with HIV directly from the vaccine.

Last Friday we saw Sea Wolf at Chop Suey. We found this Pop Matters review of their first full-length album, but if you'd like to learn more, here's an interview by Sound on the Sound. more ›

Starbucks, give 'em credit, is able to do more than one thing at a time. Mark of maturity, that. The papers are full of its plans to expand into every corner of the globe; this week it's Russia. On the domestic front, meantime, they're promoting a slogan to follow up on last year's "Geography is a Flavor." The new catchphrase: "Coffee is Culinary." more ›

Last night at the Showbox, we were reminded of something Gino Srdjan Yevdjevic said in an interview with us last year: we don't remember the quote entirely, but it was something to the effect of characterizing "world music" as "shit." Not the music or the musicians, per se, but rather the genre, a peculiarly American way of pigeon-holing and marketing foreign music. Gino understood the process only too well: back in the 1980s, he was a glammy Duran Duran-esque pop singer in his native Yugoslavia. Only when war forced him to flee to the US in the 1990s did he become a "world musician," performing traditional Balkans music in restaurants for disinterested diners under the name Kultur Shock. While he admitted the original incarnation of Kultur Shock could have done well, it's easy to see why he rebelled against the entire world-music cachet by adding punk rock guitar to the line-up and starting to yuk it up as a sex-crazed Eastern European immigrant à la Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd's "Wild and Crazy Guys." more ›

That afternoon, [Wolfowitz] took part in a panel on foreign aid with Bill Gates, whose philanthropic foundation has an endowment of $30.6 billion; William Easterly, an economist at New York University who is a well-known skeptic of development policy; and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former bank official who is the President of Liberia. The discussion was held in a large auditorium, and every seat was taken. Gates and Easterly quickly got into an argument about the efficacy of aid programs. Easterly pointed out that research had failed to demonstrate any link between aid and economic growth. In the past forty-two years, he said, Africans have received five hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars in aid, yet there has been no appreciable improvement in their living standards. more ›

COMEDY: Sarah Silverman is the reason we tell people to see "The Aristocrats" and now the woman has a TV show and a movie of her own, where she gets to say "I like to tell people that when God gives you AIDS (and God does give you AIDS, by the way), make...lemonaids." more ›

In some ways, we wish we could experience Sundance every week, but on the other hand, we're pretty f-ing exhausted. So it's a good thing that this is our last day here. We've had a great time with both the movies and the festival-goers. We've had film discussions with strangers everywhere we went, we've argued with film critics, and we've interacted with some really remarkable people, including two Lauras from Portland, a Bermudan film festival programmer, and a wonderfully chatty fag from NYC. Normally, we hate people. We tend to avoid meeting new people (most of them suck), and we definitely aren't prone to striking up discussions with strangers. But at Sundance it's different. Film really can bring us all together. more ›

"You're going to buy it anyway," chirps the (RED) marketing copy. So why not put profits from sweatshop labor to use in the fight to eliminate AIDS in Africa? Do good and look fabulous at the same time. We're not entirely sold on that proposal, but we did have much more fun at the Hotel Cafe Tour [myspace] Saturday night at the Crocodile than we were expecting from a grab-bag of six singer/songwriters (part of a larger touring group who all have played at the Los Angeles venue).
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Seattlest went undercover last night, attending a book launch party for The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Dr. Jonathan Wells, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute. The party was held in the Rainier Square Atrium and was open to the public - when a press release announcing the event popped up on our Technorati watchlist for "book signing Seattle" last month we put it immediately on our calendar. more ›

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. more ›

SIFF enters its second full week with a slew of great documentaries, including the final screening of fair trade coffee doc Black Gold (Tuesday, 9:30pm @ the Egyptian). The directors, Marc and Nick Francis, will be in attendance, as will Tadesse Meskela, an Ethiopian Farm Cooperative Organizer featured in the film. The SIFF screenings mark the first time the directors and subject have been together since the making of the film---and the first time Meskela has seen the film on the big screen. more ›

One week of SIFF down, only three more to go. Starting yesterday, the fest moved on up, to the Eastside. Now through next Wednesday, films will be shown in Bellevue at the Lincoln Square Cinemas. From the looks of it, they've got a strong Friday lined up, with the final screenings of The Giant Buddhas, Prairie Home Companion, and Conversations with Other Women. more ›

We are good Seattle liberals. We feel that there should be much more concern over bears roaming Ravenna (next to none) than gay marriage (at none). This is what we do, it is who we are. more ›

Last night Seattlest was at the second of the UW's Allen Edwards Psychology Lectures, as promised. (The series will air later on UWTV and TVW.) Speaker Judith Auerbach, the evening's "prominent Ph.D." from amfAR, began with a disclaimer that the talk represented her personal views and not those of her employers, past or present, so we perked up at that. more ›

Yesterday Seattlest went to Hana on Broadway for lunch. We were meeting an old college friend there. "You know why I love getting lunch here?" he said, as he sat down. "Because I remember when I used to come here for lunch and get steamed rice with some teriyaki sauce on top. That was all I could afford. I only shelled out the $5 for teriyaki chicken if I felt rich." Ah, college days. more ›

That guy that's usually tapping at his laptop and gazing off into the middle distance at the cafe has suddenly disappeared. He's at home furiously typing his tell-all memoir: "The world knew me as a female refugee from the Phillipines who escaped a life of political oppression, violence, prostitution and drugs but now I must reveal myself as a midwestern white boy who lied about it all to sell a few books. The ironic thing is, none of the fake pain I was writing about can compare to the actual devastation of living with this lie for the past ten years." more ›

On Friday the City Council capped off a busy week by appointing Sally Clark as Jim Compton's replacement. more ›

This weekend, Seattlest will be representing at a high school basketball game, a chamber music concert, a church in Burien, and Alderwood Babies-R-Us, respectively. For the full 411, see below. more ›

This Friday, "America's Funnyman" Neil Hamburger will turn the Funhouse into the Funnyhouse (sorry, but we had to say it before he did). more ›

Another day, another great opening at the Northwest Film Forum. This time it's The Nomi Song, a documentary by Andrew Horn, opening tomorrow night. The subject of Horn's film is Klaus Nomi, an interesting dude, to make a vast understatement. Klaus wasn't "normal" by any means, and this film charts his journey from Berlin opera usher to androgynous robot/alien/New Wave cult icon. more ›

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Yesterday Kevin Shaw failed to make headlines again. The man arrrested and indicted for his murder, despite phone records and DNA evidence linking him to the crime, pleaded innocent yesterday. To date no news article we've been able to track down has mentioned what seems to be the obvious possibility that Kevin Shaw was gay, and his murder was a hate crime. The following article by special guest Mario Paduano wonders why. more ›