Lisa Gangel is her name, but we prefer to call her Lisag Angel. Or, Miss Angel. "Are you coming to bed?" "I'm watching the sports!" "You don't watch sports!" "Yes I do, woman! I'm watching the sports! KING5! I'll be there in a minute!" Such is the room to room yelling between Mr. and Mrs. Seattlest now that we've developed our newfound reason to pay attention to sports. Or people talking about sports type things.......

About three lives ago, when we were living in a scientific research station in Ecuador, we watched The Postman (Il Postino) with a group of Westerners. After the movie, which is one of our favorites, we were sitting there, wondering why the room had suddenly gotten all dusty, when a privileged teenage British hipster/tourist named Aelys (pronounced like Alice, but her parents preferred the Welsh spelling) announced that she hadn't liked the movie because it......

Your Seattle Mariners played their biggest series in four seasons this week. With a chance to overtake the first place Angels if they could win three games, the Mariners won zero games. They got outscored 24-8. Ever see that thing they do at the zoo where hippos eat pumpkins? It was like that. Much of the blame is gonna come down on Mariner manager John McLaren, who took the interesting step of using his worst......

The Mariners announced that they're calling the M's Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday series with the first-place Angels "Lolla-Blue-za." They're encouraging fans to wear blue on game day, and they'll have marketing folks wandering downtown, rewarding fans in blue. One lucky blue-wearer will get to throw out the first pitch! (For those of you who weren't high schoolers in the early 90s, "Lolla-Blue-Za" is a play on "Lollapalooza," a touring music festival that was a huge deal in 1991......

Rob Gordon once said, "The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules." Thanks Rob. Well said. If Rob's take......

There's one person left in Seattle who thinks Sonics owner Clay Bennett is on the up-and-up, and that's state legislator Margarita Prentice. It wasn't the fact that Bennett's ultimate goal was to take the Sonics to OKC that kept the team from getting an arena. No, it was "Seattle's elitist attitude." Says Prentice:I just think it's part of Seattle's elitist attitude that somehow or another we're too cool for sports.Yes, if we weren't such anti-sports......

The great thing about Switzerland -- we'll tie Seattle in shortly, hang on -- is that there's no convenience too small for the Swiss to consider. Everywhere you go, some Swiss person has already been there and added a neat little touch. Not that we don't show that consideration here in Seattle -- last night at the Hopvine we noticed they have little coat hooks just beneath the bar so you don't have to throw......

On a weekend when Blue Angels were literally drenching Seattle skies with violent peals of thunder, Seattle Opera's new production of Flying Dutchman saturated McCaw Hall with vibrant voices and reverberant horns. Dutchman is Wagner's first major work, with roots squarely in the tradition of German romanticism (Beethoven musically, Heine philosophically). He was still years away from composing his interminable, mystical Ring (which, like Seafair, has become a touchstone of Seattle's civic religion). In......

As we speak, the invasion of the obnoxious roaring planes has begun, so we'll just get the "not a fan of the Blue Angels" admission out of the way. Go ahead and slaughter us in the comments. Apparently we're the only one in the world who doesn't go all ga-ga over them. We have no soul, but that's fine. We'll accept that and move on. Speaking of moving on, we'll be moving on down......

Are you there Seattle art world? It's us, Seattlest. We're trying our best to talk up your First Thursday openings, but it looks like you've crapped out on us this month. We understand: you're on vacation or something, it's kinda hot out, the BLUE ANGELS are in the sky ... We've got posts to post, however, and damned if we won't find something to recommend from your namby-pamby Art Walk offerings. Here's what we're going......

Both the Mariners and the Sounders are in second place in their respective divisions, and both played the teams ahead of them last night. We'd promised a friend we'd go to the Sounders game as they were playing their archrivals, the hated Portland Timbers. The Sounders dominated throughout, they had more speed than Portland, and more energy. Frenchy Sebastian Le Toux provided much of the latter, he flew all over the field. By the second......

Not since September 2003 have the M's been in a 2nd vs. 1st division battle this late in the year. With Adrian Beltre hitting the shit out of the ball (30 RBI in July) and the best bullpen in the league, the M's look like contenders. They can prove it a three game series with the Angels that starts tonight. And the team's fate could well be decided by the Weaver family. Jeff goes for......

Yesterday we were down at Pike Place Market feasting on a Three Girls Bakery sandwich and on the way out we spotted the Seafair Pirates making their rounds. "Pardon us, pirates coming through!" they said, making their way through the molasses-like flow of tourists which we thought was probably not authentic pirate behavior. (We wouldn't be completely outraged if a pirate lopped off a head or two of the sidewalk-gawking variety of tourist who's astonished......

Come with us back to our teenage years, will you? Then, the only visiting teams that drew any supporters to M's games were the Yankees and the Blue Jays. Damn it was annoying, to have Mariner fans outnumbered--and we mean this literally--outnumbered--at home games. The Jays no longer draw well, now that, in the A.L. East, they are basically impotent onlookers as the powerful teams battle for supremacy. (Call them the Canada of baseball). Now......

The Angels' Jose Molina pegged out Ichiro at second in the 7th inning of tonight's game, snapping Ichiro's streak of consecutive stolen bases without being caught at 45. Bartolo Colon was pitching. Ichiro hadn't been caught stealing since April 19, 2006, when the Rangers' Gerald Laird got him. Ichiro did establish a new AL record, besting Tim Raines' mark of 40. But he fell short of former Mariner Vince Coleman's record, who stole 50 bases......

Vitals: Bartolo Colon, 33 yo RHP. Born in Altamira, Dominican Republic. 6-6, 245. 144-87, 3.97 career. 4-0, 3.66 in 2007. $16 million salary. Arsenal: Mid 90s fastball, high 80s slider, and a change. Throws nearly 80% fastballs, a pretty high percentage. Recent Battles: Colon beat the M's on April 21, allowing 7 hits and 1 run in 7 innings. He didn't overpower the M's though; he recorded only 1 K. Our Best Weapon: Getting guys......

The Blue Angels, who totally fucking rule, first performed at Seafair in 1952. And despite a crash last month that killed a Blue Angels pilot, they will perform at Seafair again this year. Strap on your safety helmets and stock up on adult-sized diapers, Stranger staffers.......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Little tip to the Mariners, the next time the jewel of your franchise leaves the game with an apparent injury don’t play some happy Van Morrison song about love. Instead, as our friend pointed out, you might want to play something more appropriate, like the Six Feet Under theme. As of this morning not much is known on the severity of Felix Hernandez’s injury. He removed himself from the game in the first inning after......

When you don't have to worry about Willie Bloomquist getting a hit with your job on the line, well, life becomes a little easier. For the third straight day the Mariners double header has been canceled, and this has apparently made the team's coaching staff a little giddy. From the Times' Mariners blog: "Hargrove drew the biggest laughs today when he tackled pitching coach Rafael Chaves in the snow and made sure to rub his......

Yet another postponement, and the new plan is to try to play a doubleheader on Monday, beginning at 10:05 am PST. The M's have a day game in Boston on Tuesday, so this would mean they'd play 3 games in about 28 hours. Not good. Even if they play both games on Monday, that leaves two games that will need to be played sometime during the season. The P-I's John Hickey has the scoop on......

The Huskies released their spring depth chart today, and oh-so-highly touted quarterback Jake Locker is listed as the #1 QB. Locker is expected by the type of Husky fan who spends a lot of time on message boards to lead the program back to excellence. He's 6-2, 210, and fast. Scout.com calls him "a bigger Marques Tuiasosopo with a stronger arm." Here, in pdf form, is all the info about spring football at the UW.......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

--Though he's been rumored to be a candidate for both the Liberty and Long Beach State head coaching jobs, Cameron Dollar says it isn't true. Which means he's probably on a private plane to Long Beach right now. --Sharkansky jumps the shark. --Georgetown's Jeff Green on the Blazers? Oh, please, God, yes. --A-Rod to the Angels? Oh, please, God, no. --Speaking of the Angels, thanks to them you'll learn a new baseball term today: coconut......

The Washington Huskies have scored their first points in the Fulmer Cup, an annual competition to see which college football team is the lawbreaking-est. The indispensable, hilarious college football blog Every Day Should Be Saturday started and adjudicates the Fulmer Cup, awarding points for every legal run-in by a team's players, and tallying them at the end of the year. (The cup is named for Tennessee coach Philip Fulmer, whose players may be volunteers, but......

Last year's Sasquatch line up was good, but not good enough to get us to spend three days at the Gorge. We still prefer the festival in its one-day, all-in-one-fell-swoop form, but with the lineup that's been announced for this year's two-day fest, we may just have to make the trip. Out of the two days, it was Saturday that really made us coo. Bjork *and* Arcade Fire? Consider us sold. There are still......

Sometimes you earn a win, and sometimes the other team gives you one. Here are the all-time screw-ups by opponents that helped Seattle teams win big games. 1) Tony Romo We've pretty much covered this, and it's got to be #1. 2) Jim Sweeney and the 1975 Apple Cup Up 27-14 with 3:01 left and the ball deep in Husky territory, the Cougar coach let his players talk him into passing for a touchdown. The......

BURLESQUE: It's a rare Christmas present that unwraps itself. But Land of the Sweets: The Burlesque Nutcracker collects a bevy of Seattle's ecdysiast superstars in a retro-bawdy performance set to Duke Ellington's score for the holiday favorite. The eye candy includes Miss Indigo Blue, Kitten la Rue, Babette la Fave, Lily Verlaine, Jasper McAnn, Paula the Swedish Housewife, Wes Brockbank, and Waxie Moon. Merry XOXOmas. 7pm and 10pm // Triple DOor [216 Union St., across......

One commenter greeted our proposition that the Mariners could make the postseason next year so derisively, we were forced to do some extra research just to make sure we weren't going nuts. So we fired up the old Seattlest Research-o-Matic 8000 and came to this conclusion: Yes, the Mariners, who won 78 games in 2006, could contend next year. There's precedent for it: In nine of the last ten years, a team's reached the postseason......

--Social interactions diminish in higher density settings? Now that would appear to throw a wrench into the thinking around here. --We thought Post-It Notes weren't good for anything besides annoying our officemates, but it turns out we are dead wrong. --Something has risen up from the ashes of the Infernal Noise Brigade and it looks like they're returning to their roots. --Youtube's got Seattle snow angels. --Global warming must be complete bullshit because it......