Sitting here, looking out our window at the torturous rain and gray skies, thinking about killing ourselves--you know, the usual thing to do when it's June but still feels like February. But what is this? Yet another story about scantily-clad baristas! Joy! Boobs and joy and boobs and joy. This latest assault on our provocative purveyors of coffee, comes from the City of Bonney Lake and their efforts to put a stop to the girls......

"WTOpolice_1" by Seattlest Flickr Pool contributor ntisocl. Daaang, he got right in there. Thanks! We learned our code of behavior from America's suburbs: if the cop's right behind you when you see flashing lights, pull over and turn off your radio. If the flashing lights are on the side of the freeway, slow down a little bit so you can bear proper witness to the speeding culprit's shame. If the flashing lights are parked......

It was Lennon/McCartney Songbook night on Idol last night, and our quasi-local cutie pulled out a country version of "8 Days a Week." She looked nervous and uncertain of how it was going to go, despite her vocal prowess, which wound up iffy as a result. Witness: She looked super cute, of course, but then she opened her mouth and it wasn't stellar. It wasn't hideous, as Cowell called it, but it wasn't stellar. And,......

Seattlest is quaking in their boots (bought especially for the occasion) with excitement for this years SXSW in Austin, Tex. We're making our initial sojourn to the festival and are so pleased to see there will be a strong Seattle contingent joining us in Austin this year. There are, to our calculations, 29 Seattle bands officially associated with the festival this year. These bands will be playing sanctioned showcases, what we will call "the......

It's not so often you get to see a play as thoroughly pleasing as Reefer Madness: The Musical. Yes, we admit: we've bemoaned musical adaptations of movies in the past, and we could find plenty to complain about with this production (occasionally uneven cast, venue leaving something to be desired) if we tried, but really, that's all nitpicking. In sum total, this is the most recommendable and enjoyable piece of theater we've seen in Seattle......

This post is brought to you by, we believe, Seattlest's lone Hillary supporter or, as we like to refer to ourself, Hillpporter. If you travel around the tubes today, you might see all manner of photos of Hillary Clinton looking very happy, surrounded by oodles of confetti. That's because, last night, Hillary brought it, winning the primaries in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island. We kind of wanted to go watch the returns with all......

Hillary Clinton's conviction that our next president must be a "fighter" now has literal representation: Fighter of Foo Dave Grohl has announced his candidacy as an Independent. HARP magazine's new issue showcases the "worldwide exclusive" scoop; the online version of the piece highlights the former Nirvana drummer's "politics" and electability likability. A few snipped-up snippets: On why he’s the right candidate for the job: “Every night when I’m on tour, I bring my message......

One month from today, Salish Lodge & Spa will host the second annual “The Falls Come to Life” dinner and auction to benefit Food Lifeline--the nonprofit dedicated to ending hunger in Western Washington. Guest chefs Armandino Batali, (Salumi) Holly Smith (Cafe Juanita), Jason Wilson (Crush), Johnathan Sundstrom (Lark), and Matt Costello (The Inn at Langley) will each prepare a signature dish for the menu, as well as contribute a culinary experience as part of the......

When we used to work at the Starbucks in the Bank of America building (nee: Columbia Center), one of our duties was to bring up boxes of cups, napkins and other sundries from the storeroom located in the garage on level E, five stories below ground. According to one urban legend in the building, the lowest level of the parking garage was supposed to be the safest place to be in downtown Seattle during an......

Forbes Magazine must have gotten tired of making the same "Richest People in the World" list, because the magazine has moved on to ranking the "Nation's Most Sinful Cities." In order to do so, Forbes came up with measurable methods to rank the proclivity for each of the seven deadly sins in America's urban populations. (For example to measure the sin of "wrath" the magazine used murder rates for cities.) Of course, you're curious, just......

We generally have little use for our jobs, except for the fact that they provide us space and time to construct quality posts for you, dear reader. Also, their paychecks allow us to pay rent and buy cute shoes. Other than that, we'd rather be at home watching CSI or What Not To Wear or playing Rockband. On second thought, jobs do have benefits: free laser printing and free coffee. It's really sort of......

I Will Eat You, I Will by flickr contributor soundonthesound Seattle based lol-cat website I Can Has Cheezburger had an exciting Valentines Day. Yesterday, the site helped coordinate its first LOL-Cat wedding proposal. That's right, someone proposed to his future wife, using the cat-coded language that haunts offices all across America. Using photos of the couple's black cat urging his owner to propose with a mouse instead of a traditional wedding ring, LOL-Cat fan......

Moving Under Sea-Tac by Seattlest Flickr Contributor, Grundlepuck We have a theory that all of the statisticians in America are employed either by Major League Baseball, Consumer Reports, or U.S. News & World Report. This week it was U.S. News & World Report statisticians watching their hard work come to fruition, with the release of the magazine's "Airport Misery Index." Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ranked 10th among 47 of the nation's airports in what the......

The February performance of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues is commonplace in cities across America. In Seattle, "V-Day" will be celebrated with a performance on February 24th at The Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI). Sponsoring the event is the Seattle Office of The National Council of Jewish Women. To advertise the performance, The Council produced the colorful print you see to the right. The advertisement is running in The Seattle Weekly and JT News,......

Is live theater still relevant in a society where computer users can create high-quality video and distribute it almost instantly via the web? That's been the subject of an ongoing, rancorous debate between two Seattlest contributors, Jeremy and Charles, both former theater artists. Jeremy maintains the theater can yet be a powerful art form -- Charles feels it's a dying, irrelevant medium (most likely wounded by its own hand). To stir them up appropriately, the......

We're sure we don't need to say this, but you can't miss your caucus. This is the first year in our whole time in the Pacific Northwest where it matters what Washington voters think. If you're still wondering where to go, here are two Dem or GOP caucus locators. Caucusing starts at 1pm. We understand that if you know who you support and you don't want to spend an hour or two talking about it,......

The ability to endure month after month of days like today is an unappreciated phenomenon unique to this corner of America. Elsewhere winter storms may be harsher in the traditional frozen pipes/paralyzed infrastructure sense, but the psychological toll of Steve Pool’s constant grey "with a chance of light rain" is just grueling. Long-time Seattle residents are not unlike seasoned veterans of a lifelong Chinese Water Torture and Seattlest appreciates the local grit required to......

Mike Daisey has been in town performing his notorious Monopoly, a controversial monologue exploring the excesses of American capitalism (particularly of the Wal-Mart variety). But this weekend, Daisey turns his withering gaze on the theatre itself, with How Theater Failed America at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. Daisey takes aim at the theater for its manifold failures: its pretentions, its disconnect from the world around it, its self-satisfaction. (Check out a five-minute sample over at......

This Seattlest will be heading to a private party tonight, where we will celebrate among our favorite people the fact that Super Tuesday is FINALLY here. But, if you're looking for somewhere more out-on-the-town to get your drink on and watch the returns trickle in, and pancakes aren't your bag, here's the guide for you. Most of these events start at 5pm, and they're all free. Go America! The Paragon is hosting an indie......

We're not fools -- a lot of you will miss this, purposefully, because you don't care about rail-riding hobo culture. But that is your loss. When he was still under 40, the New Yorker called William T. Vollman "one of the twenty best writers in America under 40." He's been to Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Seattle. He's in town tonight to talk about his voluntary hobo-age, chronicled in Riding Toward Everywhere. We read an excerpt of......

The New York Times reports that our esteemed politicians have agreed on "an economic stimulus package", which sounds pretty high-falutin', but it basically amounts to cutting everyone in America a check. If you got a paycheck of any kind last year--even if you made too little to pay taxes--you will get $300. If you have kids, you'll get $300 for each one. If you made more money, you get more. You could get up to......

Absurdistan is an allegorically rich comedy care of witty German director Veit Helmer and filmed in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the tiny titular land, a war of the sexes break out when the local aqueduct ceases to work, and the men are too lazy to fix it. The women declare a strike--no water, no sex--and two childhood sweethearts find themselves feuding instead of consummating their long-standing love. Looks like it's......

[Via Komo] We've been loosely planning our Alaska adventure for a few weeks now. Loosely, we say, because we haven't actually made any reservations yet. Mostly we've just been cruising the web, gathering information and daydreaming about sitting out on the deck of a ferry as it makes its way through the inside passage of America's 49th state. We have routinely been checking the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) website for the summer schedule and......

After winning $3,022,700 from Jeopardy!, Ken Jennings could've retired to a Seattle suburb to roll around in piles of dollar bills. Instead, he became America's answer to Ben Schott, wroting about trivia: a book its history, a regular column in Mental_Floss, a popular weekly trivia quiz, and most recently a hu-frickin'-mungous collection of questions, the Trivia Almanac. In short, he's got the career we've secretly wished we could have since we were nine years......

Reliable sources tell us that if you ask Mike Daisey what he does for a living, he replies that he's "a monologist." Daisey may be the only person in America who introduces himself that way. If only those hordes who introduce themselves as "mortgage bankers" or "members of the Bush Administration" were as good at their jobs as Daisey is at his. We saw his Monopoly Saturday night at CHAC--it's smart, funny, and well......

It was our second play at the Rep in as many months, so we know: a gay character in a Seattle Rep performance this season has about the same odds at survival as a redshirt on an away team mission did in the original Star Trek. That is to say, he dies. Apparently that's how you illustrate "families being torn apart" or something these days. The Breach tells the stories of a disparate group of......

There's a nice little piece over at Crosscut this morning about Georgetown's Rainier Cold Storage Stock House (and the demise of), but just like the neighborhood opposition to the building's demolition, it's too little too late. To be fair, the building's owners broke their way through many walls (a much beloved building that defines a neighborhood, an official Seattle Landmark) with the wrecking ball of public safety: it's going to collapse onto Airport Way,......

Billionaire balloonist Richard Branson is finally doing something to get us closer to the Sun. His Virgin America airline begins cut-rate service to San Francisco starting March 18, and Los Angeles starting April 8, reports the Times' Carol Pucci. In an effort to beat Virgin to the punch, Alaska Air is adding more, cheaper flights to the Bay Area. Other airlines are matching Virgin's fares: weekend round trips of $175 to San Fran and......

Er, not quite. There is an actual, physical monster in Cloverfield, and unlike the no-see-em trailer, the film eventually shows it in all its gruesome glory (and no, it ain't Stay Puft). Opening Friday, J.J. Abrams' camcorder monster movie (which some describe as "Godzilla meets the Blair Witch") covers a terrible day for all of Manhattan and, in particular, for a group of New Yorkers throwing a bon voyage party for one of their......

Could we be any vaguer? No, but that doesn't mean there's still not any reason to get excited. With In Rainbows making its formal debut atop the Billboard charts, Radiohead is set to cover North America in two tour legs, one prior to and one following their recently announced European summer tour (June 6 in Dublin through July 8 in Berlin). There's no exact dates or venues just yet, but the band has confirmed......