That's what an Olympia mail carrier said about wearing a kilt on the job...to prevent chafing. We wonder what the problem is with the National Association of Letter Carriers who, according TNT, gave his desire to wear a skirt to work a "cool reception." Considering he made his request during their meeting in Boston, we're left shaking our heads. If anyone in this country understands kilt-wearing, we'd expect Bostonians to be a welcoming crowd. Go......

The Boston Phoenix came up with a "Best Of" list, organized state by state, of the greatest bands ever. They chose three categories for each state of our diverse Union: Best Band of All Time, Best Solo of All Time, and Best New Band. Are you ready for Boston's take on Washington's musical legacy? Results after the jump. Hint: Photo by Michael Is Soliloquy. Thanks!......

Our Boston siblings brought our attention to yet another oddity in the Seattle Sonics saga. From our own paper, mind you: "For months, a Boston-area woman thought she was dating a Sonics front-office employee and former NBA player named Jeff Turner, a handsome, 6-foot-8 40-something who was polite, compassionate and respectful." But, of course, it was a flim flam and the aptly named Ronnie Craven was revealed to be neither Jeff Turner nor a......

The Mariners won again last night by the skin of their teeth, shocking a Boston "Nation" whose presence has been hard to ignore throughout the series. The lowly Mariners are inconveniently getting in the way of a mighty "Nation" that strolled into the Emerald City expecting a sweep, and is now left licking its wounds after losing two straight to one of the most embarrassing teams in recent memory. It’s hard to know what......

Seth Kolloen starting covering sports for Seattlest in January 2005. Late last year he took over as editor, before leaving us to become the editor of the brand new Sports Northwest Magazine. We caught up with Seth poolside at the W Hotel to discuss the move to press row, his sports blog, and why he won’t be calling Maggie Gyllenhaal any time soon. How did you get involved with the new magazine? In one sense,......

Ah, the modern age. Starting today, if you witness a crime taking place in Seattle, you can text message authorities the details. Seattle will be the third city in the nation to adopt a text-a-tip program, after Cincinnati and Boston. The program run by Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound, will allow people to send tips anonymously. As of yet, tipsters can't send photo or video evidence to the line. To text a crime tip in......

We got into Memphis last night, and we'll be here for the rest of the week, celebrating folk music along with people from all over the world at the annual Folk Alliance conference. We'll be going on and on about that in articles for another job we have, but we just wanted to take a moment to express how much we love Seattle. We miss Seattle. But mostly, we miss people. There don't seem......

The artists behind Buttrock Suites uniquely combine the dramatic force of '70s and '80s arena rock (AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Boston) with choreography. It's a hard music dance revue, plus plenty of hairspray. Last year, Seattlest interviewed co-founder Diana Cardiff, who told described the choreography as: ...many styles of dance, movement, theater. No two pieces are alike. Each piece has its own take on a song, whether it be in full stereotypical Buttrock fashion/costumes, glammy jazz,......

As after all great magic tricks, we're still puzzled how this was done. God knows we love Ballet -- like everyone else who works around Broadway and Pike. It's not just a restaurant, it's our unofficial cafeteria. We've got the menu memorized, the staff all know we like tea and bring us a pot without asking, the price is always right. But we do eat there a lot, so today we walked into the QFC......

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......

starbucks, howard schultz, sonics...

This Seattlest took one look at the weather forecast and headed to sunny Florida yesterday. Now here we are in our hometown of DeLand, population 24,375 (per 2006 census). Our mother doesn't have wireless at the house, and is operating off a 1997 iMac. It's cute and compact, but slow as hell, so we headed out this morning for the one source of public wifi in town: Boston Gourmet Coffeehouse. A couple of things about......

We don't claim to be an expert on male attractiveness, but if forced to rank television personalities by hotness or notness--well, let's just say that Bill Nye, "The Science Guy", would be closer to Willard Scott than to Matt Lauer. Nevertheless, women--even intelligent, attractive ones--are not immune to Nye's charms (whatever they may be). Take the case of Grammy-nominated oboist, former Stanford professor, and author Blair Tindall (at right). Tindall and Nye were married in......

In an oh-so-scientific survey, a "national emerging health care discount service" we'll decline to name (take that, PR flacks!) discovered that the most caffeinated city in the country out of 20 is ... Chicago! We don't make the top 5 there, but Seattle/Tacoma is number one in coffee consumption -- apparently we've mastered Starbucks lingo enough to order decaf on a regular basis. "58 percent of residents surveyed [said] this elixir of alertness would be......

This last summer, Josh Homme took Billy Gibbons' advice on how to be "the people's band," and instead of hitting places like NYC, Boston and Seattle, when Queens of the Stone Age launched a tour in support of their latest release, Era Vulgaris, they hit up the sort of cities major touring acts never play. Hence the name: the Duluth Tour. That's left Queens fans here in Seattle jonesing for a show. And at......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

What is the Download Festival? First and foremost, it's a music festival consisting of eight bands on two stages. Now in its fifth year, Download 2007 will be happening in Boston, Chicago, San Fransisco and here, at our own Gorge Amphitheatre. Tickets are $60. The Music: Modest Mouse Incubus The Presidents of the United States of America Nada Surf The Thermals The Heavenly States Arthur & Yu Back Door Slam The Other: According to......

Some of the best sports writing anywhere is on FreeDarko, where a group of very smart, very funny people talk hoops in an utterly inimitable way. One of FreeDarko's main contributors, Bethlehem Shoals, has been obliquely referencing a recent move to Seattle, so we thought we'd ask him about it. And about basketball. What brings you to Seattle? Where did you come from? And when did you get here? I followed my girlfriend—I mean, partner—here.......

The combination of a Mariner win and losses by both New York and Detroit last night meant that the Mariners leapfrogged 'em both and woke up today as the leader for the American League Wild Card! This is the first time the Mariners have been in first place of anything since late August of 2003, when we sat in the commissary of a scientific research station in Ecuador and listened over unscrambled Armed Forces radio......

At work the other day, Seattlest was talking to a coworker and friend who originally hails from Minnesota. Naturally, we talked of the bridge collapse. As one would expect these sorts of conversations to go, the conversation logically ended with us looking up the coordinates for the northernmost point in Maine. Just how did this happen? In the course of conversion, it came up that Minnesota, not Maine, is the northernmost contiguous United State. So......

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......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

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......

It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by poop. Finally D.C. contemplated taking Vermont's place as a state and marveled at the GOP lessons learned from the "Macaca Moment." Due to some sad shootings......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......

Wasn't that long ago, matey, we'd be lucky to see any fresh salmon in Seattle. Bristol Bay had a huge sockeye fishery, the largest in the world, but the catch was frozen stiff before it made it to local markets. Now, we're spoiled silly, with fresh, wild salmon coming in from the mouths of rivers all along the Alaska coast: the Yukon, the Taku, the Stikine and, best of all, the Copper. The folks......

One day in the early 90s, then-Husky basketball coach Lynn Nance said to himself, "You know, I'm pretty happy with Prentiss Perkins and Bryant Boston at guard," and declined to offer a scholarship to a young Canadian and UW fan named Steve Nash. And a damn good thing, too. Nash, as we all saw Sunday afternoon, will do anything to stay off the court in crunchtime, including spontaneous hemophilia. Gutless. Just gutless. The 92-93 Huskies......

Vitals: 26 yo RHP. Born in Tokyo, Japan. 6-0, 187. 94-45, 2.99 in Japan. 3-2, 4.36 here. $6.3 million salary. Arsenal: Dice-K throws six pitches--three fastballs: a mid 90s four-seamer (rides high), a low 90s two-seamer (moves down), and a cut fastball that moves away from righties, and three off-speed pitches: a slow 11-7 curveball. a mid-80s slider that he tries to back-door lefties with to strike them out, and his change-up, which is considered......

1. Tim Sweitlik 2. Charles R. Stoner 3. Esteban Steward 4. Merle Belcher 5. Kent Sizer 6. Dollie McCracken 7. Emily J. Newcomer 8. Dale B. Ophelia 9. Gbeble Elkhalifa 10. Eva M. Lust-Wright 11. Epaminondas A. Trimis 12. Gaines L. Lily 13. Ulrich Steidl Fake People in Our Spam Folder: 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12 Actual Washington Residents Who Finished the Boston Marathon: 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13......