Here are some Seattle cinema happenings that may put a bright gold star on top of your frenzied denominational holiday preparation... or simply help you survive it. more ›

This week in West Seattle: robberies at both the hands of humans and squirrels, details in last month's medical marijuana dispensary raids, and a vintage Medic One van. Plus, Marty McLaren settles into her new role on the School Board and more community holiday business than you can shake a stick at. more ›

Travelocity wastes an inordinate amount of my time every single time I attempt to use their site. Like an amnesia patient I return over and over just to be reemed once again. I have a feeling I'm not alone. more ›

Saturday morning at 12:00pm, the area around the Troll in Fremont turned bright red... with a little white trim. Santacon descended upon the keeper of the bridge with sightings of Elvis, gorillas, bunnies, and presents alike. It all seemed very jolly. Then, as you look more closely, you noticed several paper-bagged beverages. Suddenly, you realize this isn't so much a family-oriented event as it is the start of a very long day of debauchery. These Santas weren't convening to speak with children about toys, they were coming together to begin an all-day bender. That's right, a Santa pub crawl. more ›

INSIDE OUT: Audiophiles are pedestrian addicts, and we mean that in a nice way, mostly. Though rarely going to destructive lengths for that next sonic fix, there's little they won't do -- if they can afford it -- to reach the upper echelons of high fidelity, surrounding their heads with the newest means in order to pleasure their growing needs. Well, if surround sound is smack, then Tuning the Air is an organic, opium den. Again, in a nice way. Nine acoustic guitarists encircle the small audience, playing off each other and using spatial techniques to titillate the ears of sitting listeners. The group's repertoire includes classical, ambient, rock, and minimalist music. Tonight's performance is the last of the 2010 season. more ›

For the 13th season running, Intiman Theatre is presenting Langston Hughes' popular Black Nativity musical - and this year they've moved over to the Moore. Regardless of your spiritual affiliation, Black Nativity will stir up those feelings of warmth and joy we all long for during the holiday season, with a boisterous celebration of the Christ Child that will get your hands a clappin' and your toes a tappin'. Even the cold-hearted hipsters sitting next to us began (almost imperceptibly) nodding their heads in time to the music. more ›

We're not exactly Scrooges, but most things about the holidays are lame. The music is bad, mandatory hangouts with family are never quite what they are cracked up to be, the human stampedes at the local malls are an unbearable nightmare of consumer frenzy and if we never have to sit through another childrens choir performance it'll be too soon. Decorating is cool and so are parties where people dress up and drink too much, but short of that, we don't exactly look forward to this highest and coldest of seasons. more ›

Christmas Day is for watching movies in the theater while all the suckers who love their kids and don't spend the holidays scrapping with their loved ones are at home, cooking hams and opening stockings and shooting BB guns and the like. While they're all otherwise occupied with merriment, you have a golden opportunity to catch all sorts of movies in that rarest of cinematic environs - a theater full of people who just want to watch the damned movie. more ›

8) Last word about smells …The seat cushion may save you in the unlikely event of a water landing, but it is not, we repeat, NOT, an effective flatulence containment device. Neither is the 2-millimeter thick airline blanket. So, Mr. Sneaky McFarterson, quit turning the cabin into a flying gas chamber. more ›

When Culinary Communion closed last month, they announced that their Lunch Counter and Swinery elements would remain open. However, Beacon Hill Blog reports that the Lunch Counter just lost its lease--and the Swinery is in an increasingly tight spot as it tries to sell its last month's worth of delicious bacon legally. Sad, but there's an upside: The Swinery is selling "Bacon Pimp" t-shirts, free with your purchase of 50 or more pounds of their bacon. Early stocking stuffer idea? We emphatically believe so. more ›

Finally we've found a replacement for clicking updates on political polls--clicking for weather updates on Cliff Mass's blog: "There should be an inch or two by the end of the Wed. morning commute. At this point it looks like temperatures will warm up enough by midday that that the snow might turn very wet or even to rain at the lowest elevations...but we are right on the edge." Then later on Wednesday, another system is headed our way that could bring rain or a lot more snow, depends on how lucky we are. Has anyone read Cliff's book? more ›

BAKE THINGS: Did you read Seattlest Rachael's bomb recipe for molassas cookies earlier this week? They include cardamom, which is an inspired stroke of spice. Today could be your day to try a batch of those. On Sunday, we made Orangette's nutmeg doughnut muffins, and we can highly recommend that recipe as well. Make sure you'll have a few people around to help you consume them, though--those balls of goodness are dense and rich. If you have oranges around (it's Christmas... who doesn't have oranges around?), consider adding a teaspoon or two of orange zest to them. more ›

Seems like everyone's linking to the White House Christmas video, which this year is, yes, completely wackadoodle. But Videogum found the one Holiday-themed video that is even further off the deep end. Behold, Christmas greetings and yuletide cheer from Fred Phelps and his wacko hatemonger friends at the Westboro Baptist Church: more ›

Being Swanson's virgins, we didn't know about the annual Reindeer Festival. more ›

Crown Hill isn’t our favorite neighborhood, but we’ve found the perfect combination Christmas errand to warrant a visit to this forgotten corner of North Ballard. 15th Avenue NW is host to Seattlest’s favorite tree lot and is also conveniently located right on the way to the best of the "Original" Pancake Houses.* And yes, there is a best. more ›

So you thought it was going to be a lot of work, all this holiday cooking? We know, just thinking about it can be exhausting. The spirit of fussy Martha Stewart dueling with the ghost of drop-the-turkey-on-the-floor Julia Child? Top Chef duking it out with Iron Chef? Paula Dean versus Rachael Ray? It's enough to make you send for Chinese takeout. more ›

If Bret Harte was considered the American equivalent of Charles Dickens during his time, as asserted by Taproot director Karen Lund, then The Christmas Foundling (at Taproot Theatre, Tues.-Sat. until through Dec. 27; tix $20-$33, $10 under 25), a Harte-inspired Christmas tale by Norman Allen, would be the equivalent of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. more ›

Warning: First-person singular follows. more ›

The Christ Child and the spawn of Satan, a.k.a. secularists, have been duking it out in Lakewood about who gets to claim "that major event in December involving an evergreen tree and lights on a string." Though Andrew Neiditz, the Lakewood city manager, says he wants to use inclusive language whenever possible to avoid offending non-Christians, he is firmly in Baby Jesus' camp: Neiditz declared that at least on his watch, said wintry event shall be named Christmas and said evergreen shall be named a Christmas Tree. It's the American way. more ›

We don't have a shred of evidence for that headline; it's a gut thing. We're rollin' Jack Fuckin' Welch-style. But Citigroup research analyst Mark Mahaney does predict this will be a Kindle Christmas; he's doubled his sales estimates to nearly 400,000 units. At $359 per, that's over $136 million from a single product. Mahaney says Amazon's e-reader will bring in $1 billion by 2010. This projection is based on the Kindle selling as many units in its first year as the iPod. No one outside of Amazon knows how many that is--Mahaney is guesstimating, using in part the 4,000+ mostly positive Kindle reviews on Amazon's site, more than half of which give it 5 out of 5 stars. Our favorite contrarian response? Peter Kafka says hold on a sec: "iPod users immediately had access to thousands of songs they already owned the minute they synced their machines to their computers. And they could get anything else they wanted for free (if they chose to steal). Kindle users, however, are pretty much forced to pay $9.99 each time they want a new title." more ›

The Seattle Men's Chorus has announced its 2008-09 season and it includes (gay gasp!) Debbie Reynolds. As a girlfriend of ours (the platonic kind) noted, "I bet those men about had a heart attack." Also in the 08-09 season: a Christmas concert called Fruitcake which, according to the press release, will be "soaked in spirits; with a bit of spice, nuts, and fruit tossed in for fun." The release also said the show will contain "music, laughter, and tears." We're not so sure what those boys will be crying about, but okay. more ›

We're by no means theatre majors, but we do loves to get out for some culture from time to time. Which is why this Thursday we're getting dolled up for the 5th Avenue Theatre's "MAME". more ›

Yesterday Seattlest took a few minutes out of a "working at home" day to run up to 45th and the taco truck in the Winchell's parking lot (man's gotta eat), and since the Seattlest household got a turntable for Christmas and Golden Oldies is right there we stopped in after eating (man's gotta rock out). Our record collection is pretty thin, consisting of maybe a dozen or twenty records which is great because we have absolutely no desire to amass those huge boxes of vinyl that DJ's and nerds tend to acquire, but, you know, maybe one box wouldn't be so bad. One box of rotating content, maybe?
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The Seattle Times breaks the story of just how diseased college sports fans have become. The newspaper got about 1,000 emails that Husky fans sent to University of Washington president Mark Emmert, athletic director Todd Turner, and coach Ty Willingham through a public records request. more ›

In a story that's being emailed around the city, mostly with the subject line "Dude, did your dad start jogging?", cops want to find the short, brown-haired jogger who flashed a lady while running yesterday. Writes Levi Pulkkinen of the P-I:

The woman told officers the man pulled up his white T-shirt and dropped his black running tights as he ran past her near the intersection of Wallingford Avenue North and North 54th Street. more ›

Generally after the warm, fuzzy glow of our New Year's hangover wears off, Seattlest is left staring into the abyss of January without much to cling to, except our quickly fading memories of the resolutions we made and the knowledge that tax season is fast approaching. more ›

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Details are starting to leak out about the Carnation woman suspected of killing her parents, her brother and her wife, and their two kids Christmas Eve with the help of a boyfriend. more ›

The snow started to fall in earnest around 4 o'clock yesterday, so we cut the family visit short and headed back up toward Seattle -- it was slow going but eventually the snow changed to sleet and then to rain. Up around Federal Way, traffic came to a halt, though the road was clear. We searched on "I-5 traffic" from our phone, and right away the KOMO story on the shooting came up. We were still about a mile south of the South 320th Street exit. We inched forward and passed the scene, the KIRO mobile crew's antenna towering above it all. This was where a 27-year-old man jumped out of a family vehicle on I-5, began running around hitting cars with his belt, mooning them, trying to get inside, lying in traffic. When a state trooper arrived, the man rushed at the trooper, choked him, and -- not responding to a Taser -- was shot. more ›

Seattlest and the fiancee have a holiday tradition that manages to work out each year, even when our procrastination reaches DefCon Four: Catch the annual Christmas Ship show at Gas Works on December 23. more ›