Results tagged “commentary”

Not to belabor this story, but we think the issue of the rights of bicycle riders to the road is an important one. We ride on the city streets every day and, though some commenters on our post about changes we'd like to see made to Critical Mass in Seattle think that every driver goes out of his or her way to be respectful to us, we know it's not true. Seattle still has a lot to do for bike riders. Our streets are not very safe, nor welcoming to us.

For the record, this Seattlest is a daily bike commuter who knows and appreciates the rights and responsibilities of biking in an urban environment. We also have a friend who was beaten by cops a couple years ago during a Critical Mass demonstration. While this post isn’t specifically about Friday’s incident at Seattle's Critical Mass on Capitol Hill, the event (and one just as scary in New York City) moved us to share these thoughts.

Are food safety and food tasty mutually exclusive goals? You have to ask after both Zesto's and Wild Ginger show up on the P-I's list of Seattle's dirtiest restaurants.

In November, Mike Hamilton adds this racist joke political commentary to his notorious Uncle Sam billboard: In December, massive floods dunk that section of I-5 into suspiciously biblical amounts of water. Co-inkydink? Or is someone "up there" even more displeased with Hamilton's latest message than everyone else who's seen the billboard?...

Of that much, we are certain, given Ted Miller's nine hundred word essay on Christal Morrison's "killer looks." First off, he's right. The girl is absolutely stunning -- in that bible school, girl-next-door kind of way. In fact, we'll readily admit that when we saw her smiling face on the front page of this morning's PI, we cut straight to page D1 for the full-size photo. Yeah, she's not bad. After cooling ourselves off with...

Attention Pearl Jam fans and Flatstock attendees: You need the new, superfancy art book Pearl Jam vs Ames Bros: 13 Years of Tour Posters.

Someone just forwarded Seattlest the coolest Washington State ferry pictures of all time saying they were embedded in an email going around the office. We'll paste them all below, in order and with the authors commentary intact. If you took these or if you know of a place online where we can link to these, please email Seattlest. [UPDATE: We've been directed to the Bitter End blog, although he didn't take them either. Ross Fotheringham took them, it turns out. Thanks for coming forward, Ross--We removed the cropped versions in favor of your tagged ones.]

Seattle's known as one of the least-churched cities in the U.S. But consider this recent report from the Barna Group, which found that three out of every four American adults interpret literally the Bible story in which Jesus rises from the dead after being crucified and buried. The numbers are taken from a thousand-person telephone survey. There's some interesting poll information there, and some even more interesting commentary from the Barna Group ("Your partner for information, strategy, execution and transformation!" says their website):

A minority of the people who believe these stories to be true consistently apply the principles embedded in these stories within their own lives. It seems that millions of Americans believe the Bible content is true, but are not willing to translate those stories into action. Sadly, for many people, the Bible has become a respected but impersonal religious history lesson that stays removed from their life.

We've been trying to keep abreast of the latest strike news via the networks as well as our singular Canadian television channel down here but both the quantity and quality of coverage has been most unsatisfying. So we took matters into our own hands. (Confidential to Metroblogging Vancouver: If you don't provide any sort of contact address, we cannot reach you for guest/expert commentary.) We contacted The Vancouverite because we believe in their attractive tag line --"Hyper-Caffeinated Snarky News & Opinion". More importantly, following The Onion's precedent, we assign greater cultural credentials to sites employing the definite article. Here's what Editor Jackson reported about the strike:

, is about a very different set of Chinese women trying to communicate their thoughts.

"Pretty," she said of Joshua Petker's "There Is a Light that Will Never Go Out."

Through June 10 // McCaw Hall // Tickets $18-$145

1) How did you get the picture of Segway mom? Spare us no detail!

Somehow, we figured we just might meet up with Editor Dan on last Saturday's Viaduct tour. So it was no surprise when he called out our name and we saw him and Mrs. Seattlest walking our way.

Howard Schultz is probably enjoying his first relaxing day in a while today after the Starbucks shareholder's meeting yesterday. At least, he finally had a chance to explain to everyone just what the hell he was talking about with that whole memo thing. You remember the memo--we're talking about the one where he complained that Starbucks had lost its way in the name of growth and had become a cookie cutter retail chain that was squeezing the romance out of caffeinated beverages. When he was dictating that memo it must have occurred to him that he'd be standing on the stage inside McCaw Hall someday soon explaining it. Yesterday was the day.

Well, we're finished with World War Z, which means we'll finally have time to pick up Jonathan Raban's Surveillance and that some lucky souls at the library will move up a notch on the hold list. Surveillance, of course, is the first book in Seattlest's Book Club. If you haven't picked up your copy yet, don't forget to ask for the Seattlest Book Club discount at Santoro's Books in Greenwood and Bailey-Coy Books on...

Ditto what the Stranger said, unfortunately - This show did kinda suck. The crowd seemed really excited about The Blow, but they came out and delivered what was more of a staged representation of a high-energy show (complete with self-referential commentary: "This is the part where I do such and such!" Such and such occurs.) than an actual high-energy show. And when we say "they" we actually mean "she." The Blow is supposed to be a twosome: she kind of sing-shouting and looking all cute; he doing the beats. The people we watched the show with (hey guys, email) spoke highly of the CD and were severely disappointed by the deejay's no-show. Can't make it all the way up from PDX to open for of Montreal, dude? Of Montreal wasn't all that, it turns out, anyway. We left halfway through, so maybe it picked up after Seattlest and some of the other dead weight cleared out, but we doubt it.

Charges against Marie Robinson have been dropped and she'll probably be turned over to a state mental hospital. Marie Robinson was facing murder charges after authorities arrived at her apartment to find her drunk with two of her three children starved to death - a 6-week-old and a 16-month-old died (although she believes they were "kidnapped by a secret police agency that wants to stop her from doing scientific research"). Her 2-year-old lived by eating uncooked rice and pasta.

MUSIC: Kled, with a lineup that boasts some of our favorite band names in town, including A Gun that Shoots Knives and We Wrote the Book on Connectors.

We returned to the homeland over the holidays. Lugged skis and snowboards to the land of 3.2 beer, special garments, and the "Greatest Snow on Earth" only to find they had half the snow base compared to what we have here. Everything seemed backwards.

The PI's John Cook offered the best short summary of what's new at Zillow in his Venture Blog today:

Big changes at Zillow.com today, with the company overhauling its Web site to include user-generated for sale listings, a real estate wiki and a new service called "Make Me Move" that allows any home owner to set a dream price for their home on the site.

Well, that was weird. We like the Cat Power, don't get us wrong. But, in retrospect, we would have skipped Chan Marshall's set at the Showbox last night. We wish she had. It all started with her complaining about wearing size 26 pants when she's really a 28. "I fucked up," she said, dryly. (We thought that was banter but she kept hitching her pants up all set long, even unzipping them onstage, a move some heartily applauded. She was dressed all in black, it turned out.)

>>>UW iSchool at Kane Hall, 7:00-9:00pm. "Voices in an Empty Room: Five Apologies for the Narrative": Children's author Richard Peck discusses his writing and teaching careers, and his experiences with the kids today. He'll read from On The Wings Of Heroes, his new novel about a World War II childhood. Free with RSVP. Kane Hall, Rm. 220.

What's the kindest thing you can say about the Empty Space Theatre closing its doors after 35 years? It can't be this, in the comments section over on the Stranger's Slog:

No story or snide blog commentary, we just thought this was a cool photo.

Seattle baseball fans will be watching Oakland vs. Detroit in the ALCS to see if ex-Mariner Carlos Gullien can exact revenge on the A's for giving the Mariners a colossal asshole-drubbing this season, and to listen to former Mariners manager/savior, Lou Pinella, provide colorful commentary on FOX.

Friday night's performance by Dorky Park at On the Boards was surreal on many fronts. Seattlest was running late for the show, and as we screamed past Queen Anne Ave N. on Roy street with zero idea where we'd be able to park, someone pulled out of a street parking spot one block from OtB. We slid into the spot and then into the theater, where we promptly scored a seat dead-center in the fifth row (the primary benefit of attending anything solo, there' s usually an orphaned seat like that). The lights dimmed, and came back up on a stunning dark-haired woman, center stage wearing a bombshell red dress with matching red heels. It all went to hell from there.

We sat down to write something about congress's attack on internet gambling and the parallels to Washington state's recent anti-online poker legislation, but a few quick Google searches that started out as "research" morphed into an hour of Texas Hold 'Em. An hour, it turns out, is exactly as long as it takes a complete idiot to lose $1000 of play money at a poker table.

If you go see only one play about possibly pedophiliac priests this year, we can heartily recommend you make it John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. Shanley's play, set the year after Zapruder's Zoomatic became famous, pulls you back into the context of a much different time, when nuns wore habits, the Catholic Mass was a mumbled Latin, and the priesthood enjoyed a less tarnished status.