With the Mariners taking the rest of the summer off, Seattlest (along with some other local rag) is adopting the Chicago White Sox as our fake team for the rest of the season. This became official with last week’s trade of Ken Griffey Jr (number 17?!?!). Griffey, who last played in a playoff game on October 5, 1997, is now only half a game back in the AL Central. Plus the White Sox are totally......

After a few leisurely days cruising highways and back roads, Seattlest is in our native Chicago. To get here, we had to traverse through southeastern Wisconsin, which on a Sunday evening was unfortunately overrun by FIBS. Being surrounded by these mouth-breathing jerks who weave across three lanes without signaling, who tailgate within 5 feet of your car, and who form a three-mile-long column in the passing lane made us long for you, Seattle. Like Audrey,......

If you're not spending this weekend SIFFing or Sasquatching or otherwise out of town for the three-day weekend, there's plenty of live music for those who spend the holiday in Seattle. Tonight, instrumental Chicago rockers Pelican play the Showbox SoDo. No need to stay for headliners Thrice, just these guys: Or if you like your rock with more synthesizers, head to Nectar for the Presets.......

All About Beer Magazine recently came out with this list of their idea of the 125 best places in the world to have a beer. There are many worthy places on there for sure. But lists like these won't make everyone entirely happy. Here are a few things that stuck out: 1) Of course, the lack of Seattle/Washington places. Stumbling Monk is awesome, but to have that included as the only Seattle place (barely......

For those of you that are info Top Chef, you can check out the full review of last night's episode on Chicagoist. We were excited to see that beer had the spotlight for part of the show, but it was sad to see it was done in such a sell-out, corporate fashion. Check out the embedded clip for the ten-minute Quickfire Challenge (you can forward to the 3:45 mark). The chefs were challenged to......

Wally Szczerbiak, who is on "our list" for single handily knocking UDub out of the 1999 NCAA Tournament and daring to jaw with Gary Payton, is heading out of town. So ladies, get one last look at what you let slip away. He’ll be heading to Cleveland along with Delonte West. In exchange the Sonics get cap room and some spare parts. It’s a smart trade with an eye towards the future-- so feel good......

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......

Being a Chicago guy originally, this Seattlest is definitely a little biased towards this jamband from the windy city (via South Bend, IN). Umphrey's has managed to fill a little bit of the hole left in our musical soul when those four guys from Vermont decided to call it quits a few years ago. These guys can rock your ass off, pull out some sweet, tight jams and they work incredibly well together. In......

The American steakhouse--that dimly lit, mahogany-paneled, mafia-chic hideout for fat cats and their trophy molls--you'd think it would never fly in laid-back, egalitarian Seattle. You'd be wrong. Yet another high-end steakhouse, from Atlanta's 25-unit Capital Grille chain, is opening an outpost downtown, just steps from chain rivals Ruth's Chris (New Orleans, 92 units) and Morton's (Chicago, 70 stores), not to mention a couple of locally-owned, downtown standbys, the Met and the Brooklyn. We were invited......

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they discuss McCain’s new frontrunner status, religion in American politics, and Edwards’ departure. Seattlest: How do you handicap the Republican race following John McCain’s win in Florida? Mark (The New York Times): The GOP in Florida has given McCain true front runner status. It must suck to be a wacko Republican......

Mercer Island is not just the home of the fifth richest man on earth. And 98040 isn't just the wealthiest zip code in our state. It is now known as a childhood home of Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Dunham. Yes, she was born in Kansas. Yes, Obama was in the Midwest this morning, touting his deep Kansas roots. But his mom spent most of her adolescence in Mercer Island, and was a standout member of......

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they review Tuesday's doings in New Hampshire. Seattlest: Thanks for joining us again. We’ll start by asking what do you think made the difference for Senator Clinton in New Hampshire? Jeff (The New York Times): Is what happened in New Hampshire a pro-Hillary movement, or is it a reaction by Stubborn......

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......

This weekend, it's all about Friday and Saturday; Sunday is the Lord's day, so music is taking a night off. Tonight, there's another great Canadian band, Immaculate Machine, at the Vera Project. The pop trio features Kathryn Calder, who just so happens to be the New Pornographers' Carl (A.C.) Newman's niece. Way to keep it in the family. Meanwhile, the High Dive's got so-so-hot Chicago collective Scotland Yard Gospel Choir who, despite mountains of accolades,......

The script to Birdie Blue is the sort that, if there was any justice in this world, would have been unceremoniously trashed by every producer whose desk it crossed. Unfortunately, this being the real world and all, this awful script has been produced off-Broadway and in regional theatres all across the country, despite the fact it's guilty of every terrible conceit and device you could associate with the modern theatre. Nothing would have made us......

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs. Seahawks vs. Deep Dish Pizza Preview On Sunday morning while Shaun Alexander was looking deep......

Saturday, Tera will give herself a VIP tour at the opening of Aritzia. She will follow this potentially hectic event by introducing a friend to her newest wine obsession - Twisted Cork. Sunday she will trek to Qwest and root for Chicago, uh, eh, oops...Seattle. Yes, root for the Seahawks. Jack's heading to the Showbox proper tonight to see Canadian indie pop band Stars. Sunday, he's hoping to see Rex Grossman slip into old......

(This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs.) Chicago and Seattle could not be more different from each other. Chicago is flat; we......

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......

Here are three vaguely computer-related crimes taken from recent headlines in Seattle, Chicago and New England. Seattle: "Man pleads guilty in cybertheft case." A 35-year-old Seattle man has pleaded guilty in federal court to mail fraud and aggravated identity theft in a scheme that utilized peer-to-peer file-sharing programs to gain access to private information from dozens of victims. Gregory Kopiloff admitted during a plea hearing Monday that, through LimeWire and other file-sharing programs, he used......

Corner of 3rd and Union last night, the air's full of crazies. The rabid anti-Hillary crazies, fueled by and fueling right-wing panic even as they convince the mainstream that she's unelectable because she's so polarizing ("Just look at us!"). The Ron Paul crazies, all suited and tied. The 9/11 crazies in search of evil conspiracies. So what do the street crazies have to do with, say, the newspaper crazies? It's the possibility, however small, that......

The Onion AV Club says Mudhoney's 1991 album Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is worth a re-listen. Say they:[EGBDF] came out two months before Nirvana's Nevermind—and in a sense, it's the Bizarro Nevermind ... Every Good Boy in hindsight sounds like the grunge that should've been: ratty, humble, punky, weird, and catchy without resorting to grunting machismo. Our resident grunge expert, Seattlest Clint, is in Chicago for "a wedding of people I've never met" (hey,......

Gluck's operatic masterpiece, the much-neglected Iphigenia In Tauris, premiered this weekend at Seattle Opera. Inexplicably, it's only been staged once at the New York Met, and that was some 90 years ago. In Seattle, never. But it's suddenly hot: San Francisco and Chicago did a co-production with Covent Garden last year, and the Met, looking to spread the cost and risk of staging new productions, asked Seattle to co-sponsor a new Iphigenia, enlisting the......

It’s been five years since soft-rock-but-hard-when-they-want-to-be Brad has released a proper album, and about three years since they’ve played live. Now the local quartet (Shawn Smith, Stone Gossard, Mike Berg and Regan Hagar), one of our favorite bands anywhere, is back in action—they’ve got an album in the works and they’re playing NYC and Seattle this month. And we’re pissed. Brad hits Neumo’s on October 19, after headlining a Tim Robbins-hosted Huntington’s Disease benefit show......

Sometime this week it's going to be announced that Seattle's soccer team the Seattle Sounders will be entering the MLS. GOALSeattle says tomorrow. Our friend in Chicago who knows about these things says it'll be announced at MLS Cup, which isn't until November 18, so we'll discount that and say tomorrow. It seems pointless, by now, to argue whether or not it will be announced. The Sounders aren't selling 2008 season tickets, Paul Allen......

Tonight Earlimart, The Quiet Ones, and OFFICE play the Croc. We already said plenty of good things about Earlimart when they were in town last month, so this time we'll plug OFFICE. In their first ever video, the Chicago boy-girl glam-pop five-piece decided to insert themselves (huh huh) into clips from cheesy 80s porn. Despite the presence of Peter North, it's totally SFW. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have a two-night stand at Neumo's Saturday......

Taking the bus tunnel in to work this morning was pretty cool. Our commute was probably all of four minutes shorter than it's been for the past two years while the tunnel's been closed, but we got to walk a little more and we enjoyed the validity that the undergroundness of it brought to our home>to>work experience (that part might be the Chicago talking...it ain't a commute if you're not underground). It looks exactly the......

Woo hoo! Friends of Seattlest Mean Recess are releasing a CD Saturday at Jules Mae, a release which Seattlest quite possibly personally caused to be delayed, by the way. Man Rockwell and Spanish for 100 are also playing and there's no YouTube for any of them, sadly. Also, Seattlest's own Kim Ruehl is at Cafe Bella downtown tonight at 9. Interest conflicts out of the way, let's go to the video. One of YouTube's big......

Sketch comedy isn't rocket science. Get some funny jokes, present them in a scene, and get off the stage. Simple enough, yet most sketch comedy isn't good, it's pretty groan inducing. Relying too much on bad/tired jokes, yelling, cursing, and sketches that drag on long after the joke has been made. Sketch Fest Seattle goes out of their way to make sure you won't sit through too many of these groups. Now in its ninth......

Municipal WiFi was once all the rage in city governments, but the networks currently in place are falling down where it matters most (poorer neighborhoods, of course) and those cities with time to back out are doing so. Chicago just called it quits. "We realized - after much consideration - that we needed to reevaluate our approach to provide universal and affordable access to high speed Internet as part of the city's broader digital inclusion......