THE WHAT NOW?: The Master Musicians of Jajouka are the practitioners of (some claim) a 1,300-year-old musical tradition in the small Moroccan town of Jajouka. First brought to the attention of wider audiences by the Beats, who spent a large part of the Fifties in Tangiers, and later by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, who recorded an album with them, it's a singularly rare opportunity to get to see the Master Musicians live. They take the stage tonight at Neumo's; tickets are still available. more ›

Seahawks GM Tim Ruskell didn’t speak to the media all season. We can’t blame him; if we failed three times more than we won we’d keep a low profile as well. more ›

Remembering that 85 percent of all accidents occur in the home, Seattlest has little excuse to stay in town. Where to go? France, of course! more ›

FREE BUSH: Get your mind out of the gutter. We're talking about Gavin Rossdale. He's in town today to put on a free show at everyone's favorite new venue Showbox SODO. Get there early, because we imagine there'll be a line for blocks to get into this thing. We hope he does some solo acoustic versions of all the Bush classics. more ›

The same day that the Seattle Times tells us that two south Seattle cement plants are pumping 100 pounds of mercury into the air each year, we learned from the P-I that the Bush administration doesn't think asbestos causes cancer. Chronic exposure to tiny levels of mercury in the air can give you the shakes and make you stupid, but it also accumulates in the earth and in water. We're probably close to being able to use Duwamish fish to tell the temperature by now. Senator Patty Murray has been fighting for a ban on asbestos, and is disturbed by the "EPA's desire to ignore decades worth of what are considered solid studies documenting the actual hazard of the most common type of asbestos." Happily, Amazon sells an Israeli gas mask for about $40. That ought to filter out some of this, right? more ›

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Down here in the Seattlest newsroom, we rarely find time to pay attention to the upper echelons of the American chattering classes, what with their myopic focus on the Washington (as they relish in referring to us as, in the rare event they mention us at all). But this morning, as the astounding news of Obama's four-peat trouncing of Clinton over the weekend percolated through the commentariat, we noticed an increasingly shrill response from Clinton-supporters like Paul Krugman. more ›

(Full disclosure: we're a long-time Hillary supporter, as you probably know by now.) more ›

The last time we went to see Rick Steves at Town Hall, he was arguing how important it was for "regular Americans" to get out and see the world, to find out how other countries work, how other people see the U.S., or what really useful mass transit looks like. more ›

From the buzz circulating the budding career of Josh Blue, we thought his Saturday evening performance at the Kirkland Performance Center would be full of self-deprecating and occasionally awkward humor. It was not. more ›

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. more ›

Not that there's anything remarkably surprising about this. Most of us here in this hippy haven understand full well that the War in Iraq was forged under false pretense, and there have been plenty of news stories in the past five years to back up our suspicions. more ›

Reliable sources tell us that if you ask Mike Daisey what he does for a living, he replies that he's "a monologist." more ›

Vedder’s first solo music video—for his critically lauded and Grammy-nominated Into the Wild song “Guaranteed”—airs on VH1 (and VH1.com) on Monday. Perfect timing, then, for the ever-more-famous guy to bump into his 1992 self while browsing Easy Street’s vinyl bins. Serendipity! more ›

Dennis McLerran, head of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is "pissed." Governor Schwarzenegger is suing federal regulators. According to more than 500 news articles, The Environmental Protection Agency denied California’s bill to place limitations on vehicle emissions, which would have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent in the next 10 years. McLerran claims in a Seattle Times article the EPA’s decision is purely political, not factual. 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 ›

While trolling through today's Floor Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives for our other job (it's an exciting one), we noticed something that will probably get no coverage anywhere else. However, we think it is important to note when Congress singles out one faith as important. We think it's doubly important to note when the vote is taken while Congress fights with the Bush Administration over funding the government for the next year, haggles... more ›

A few weeks ago, singer/raconteur Jenny Owen Youngs was in town, playing at the High Dive the same time as the Fremont Bridge was being closed evenings, which led to our arriving mid-set in a state of high dudgeon. We decided to skip a half-assed review, and afterwards fired off some impertinent questions via email. We just heard back, and as you'll see, Jenny schools us a bit. Now we adore her even more. If you buy her new album, Batten the Hatches, tell her we sent you. more ›

Conventional wisdom says these days ain't happy ones for pulp-and-print publications. Circulation's down. Ad revenues are down. Everyone wants to read online. So nearly every newspaper, magazine and television news program has a host of blogs these days, to compete with the millions of self-described experts, autodidacts, conspiracy theorists and Chuck Norris-aficionados who propagate the blogosphere with their own brand of citizen journalism (read: poor spelling and poorer grammar). more ›

Is a new front opening up in the Culture Wars? Seattle school officials say no, but King 5's producers not-so-subtly imply yes. more ›

Why is it important to vote? Let Dan Quayle explain: more ›

When we sat down to do our endorsements we reached a disturbing conclusion. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for anyone. more ›

Our favorite local food site has been doing some thinking about politics and the way people in different cities eat and vote. They divided the number of steak restaurants by the number of sushi restaurants in a given city to come up with a "Steak/Sushi Index." Seattle's SSI, for example is 0.75, indicating that we eat more sushi than steak; the SSI of Dallas, TX is 3.01 indicating a preference for steak. Urbanspoon has been able to show that the more a city eats sushi over steak (or the lower their SSI) the more they tended to vote for Kerry over Bush in the last election. more ›

Last year Seahawks kicker Josh Brown publicly announced his crush on Carrie Underwood. He'd even gotten her phone number. But soon after, Underwood was linked to Cowboys QB Tony Romo. more ›

There are a lot of things we can see being seized at the border between Canada and the United States: handguns with the serial number filed off, bricks of heroin, briefcases with the radioactivity sign on the side. Hard drives we'd expect to make it through, but unfortunately we'd be wrong. The guy bringing the masters of the songs Chris Walla recorded in Vancouver back down to Seattle had the drive containing them yanked by Homeland Security. more ›

When you call your memoir Avoid Boring People, as Dr. James Watson did, and then go around the country talking about it, you've set yourself up for a rather easy dig. more ›

Jim Riches, Deputy Chief of the FDNY, is one of the producers of the Urban Legends video that questions the supposedly heroic actions of Mayor Giuliani on 9/11. Jen Carlson recently interviewed him for our sister site in New York. more ›

The unfortunately named Grand Ole Party opened for Rilo Kiley Saturday night to an audience presumably not too familiar with their work. GOP have a strong, simple, raw kind of sound, not unlike White Stripes or Sweet 75, kind of directionless and inert, but impressive and energetic nonetheless. They ended the set with the first song on Humanimals, "Look Out Young Son," which after a couple of listens sounds like the strongest effort on the disc. more ›

We'd be there, but the man's keepin us down. Damn him. The man, that is. Damn the man. more ›

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