1997: in January, Bill Clinton was sworn in for a second term; in August, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash; and a film about a shipwreck, Titanic, was the top-grossing movie. In the vineyards of the Old World, springtime came early, summer was hot, and the harvest was wet. The wine gurus and the voodoo sages swirled and tasted, ruminated and spat. Bah, they said, don't bother. Bah, said Parker. Bah, said Tanzer.......

Those crazy kids at WET have put Ibsen's Hedda Gabler on a crash diet -- the subtitle is "A Pistol Fit in One Act" -- and added what they call "dance and circus vocabulary" to the mix. According to the Weekly, The show is “movement intense,” says director Jennifer Zeyl; actors can and do literally run up the walls.So it won't be your usual neurotic drawing room drama, where people stand there stiffly and occasionally......

Just once, Seattlest would like to go to a show at Chop Suey and not trip on the single step down from the bar on our way to the ladies' room. When it's dark and the music's good, we get excited and forget to "please watch your step!" as per the handwritten sign posted to the right of said step... We hope no one saw us crash. Other than that mishap, we really, really......

The Chemistry That Keeps Us Together, The Purrs' long-awaited follow-up to their breakout LP The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, dropped a couple weeks ago, and we've been listening to it steadily since. Earlier this year, they promised us the album was moving in a new direction, exploring harder rock material, exemplified by the song "She's Got Chemicals," which has been in their set list for over a year now. It opens with......

Time, having surrendered to the whims of sound, had fallen away to some dark corner of the hall and in its place was a band on a mission to go out in style. We had no idea how long the final encore had gone on. We knew only that we didn't care. This wasn't some finale we wished would come to an end, so we could finally walk to our car, pausing for a......

Study up on Jesus. That was the topic for last night's hardest round at Seattlest Trivia. Average score/ 5.9 out of 10. Can you do better? 1) In 1966, the Ku Klux Klan burned Beatles records after who said the group was “more popular than Jesus now”? 2) The Depeche Mode song “Personal Jesus” was inspired by the autobiography Elvis and Me, written by whom? 3) The Jesus and Mary Chain’s song “Just Like Honey”......

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

It's a weekend full of "fests" this time around. A veritable festival of...fests. Including EndFest with the Smashing Pumpkins in a parking lot somewhere, Oktoberfest in Fremont with lots of tasty local bands and Decibel all over the place. Here's a video for Decibel participant Kill Memory Crash: Imperial Teen is at the Crocodile. Not a fest. Hillstomp is at Conor Byrne tonight. Also not a fest. They were playing as a part of fest......

After decades of computing, Seattlest suffered our first hard drive crash last week, taking out our desktop. Well, in true defiance of best practices (Seattlest used to do IT work), we didn't have most of our files backed up, so there are years of memories trapped on a hard drive platter that stubbornly refuses to cooperate. The last few days have been spent ignoring that truth, instead focusing on Frankensteining a new computing rig......

Summertime lunch (pasta, Frascati) with our Paris Pal, and Seattlest carries on about the failures of Velib as if it were the end of Western Civilization. (Velib is the city's brand new, one-way, hourly bike rental program; see "Paris When it Fizzles" entry on our other blog, Cornichon.) When we pass a Velib "station" near the Arc de Triomphe, we triumphantly demonstrate that American credit cards won't work. Then Paris Pal swipes his Amex...the......

This weekend the National Weather service is calling for mid-70s to 80 degrees. You may want to recover from heatstroke by rehydrating in an air-conditioned theater with other bepinkenned Seattleites, and their melanin-endowed friends savoring their little moment of schadenfreude. (Here's the Seattle Times cheat sheet on the various venues.) · We caught the press screening for the not entirely laugh-free Death at a Funeral with a friend who said, summing up Frank Oz's......

Seattlest was recently in the market for an engagement ring. Knowing almost nothing about diamonds, settings, or the metals they bling on, we guessed that finding the right ring was going to be a long, arduous and intimidating quest. We were wrong. It wasn’t arduous. What we did know was where to find rings—thanks to the plethora of radio commercials featuring maddening jingles for Jared, Tom Shane expounding on his pleasure business trips to Bangkok,......

The Blue Angels, who totally fucking rule, first performed at Seafair in 1952. And despite a crash last month that killed a Blue Angels pilot, they will perform at Seafair again this year. Strap on your safety helmets and stock up on adult-sized diapers, Stranger staffers.......

Permit us to bloviate some on the death of David Halberstam today in a car crash, which is utter bullshit considering that the guy reported from fricking Vietnam and he dies in a traffic accident in San Mateo (the car that hit him driven by, in a terrible irony, a Berkeley journalism student) (actually, I'm an idiot, his driver was a Berkeley student, so there's no irony, just terribleness). Halberstam's Summer of '49, about the......

Yes, we think you will be able to spare some change, should you get panhandled by a newly-homeless Napavine family. The family, which Lewis County sheriffs are evicting from their home, owns four Bengal tigers. Now that they are homeless, they're sending two of their tigers to a rescue organization. But, the AP adds with a frustrating lack of detail, "The family is keeping two tigers with them." They're doing what now? We suppose Bengal......

Disappointment is a matter of frustrated expectation. In this case, we blame Sheila Callaghan's account of what prompted her to write this play: The genesis of We Are Not These Hands came to Ms. Callaghan during a trip to China, where in poor villages along the Yangtze, she noted illicit cyber-cafes hidden down side alleys. In news stories at home, she read of the death of 41 students, blown up while assembling firecrackers in......

Steve Jobs announced yesterday that he'll advocate eliminating copy protection for downloaded songs, also known as DRM. We asked our various music dorks what they think. Donte: *yawn*. He doesn't say anything that wasn't already out there, so he spends however many words to say "drm sucks, it's the riaa's fault." Uh, thanks. itunes means squat to me other than a huge proof-of-concept. I'd love for non-drm'ed music to be sold more on principle, but......

BEE: Re-Bar's spelling bee is back after last month's finals. Seattle Weekly writer Gavin Borchert won last time around, spelling words like "festschrift," "cockalorum," and "samadhi" correctly. 7pm // Re-Bar // $5 BOOKS: A train crash sends a poison gas cloud drifiting towards Minot, North Dakota. Someone's got to warn the town, but calls to the offices of all six local radio stations went unanswered by Clear Channel's robot deejays. One died and thousands were......

A local documentarian got nominated for an Oscar whenever they announced these things. We won't divulge his name, because who knows if he wants to be associated with something as stupid as the Oscars. If we ever get nominated blog of the year by the National Association of Illiterates, please, keep it on the dl. Our hate affair with the Oscars began in 1987, when the dreadful "Take My Breath UH-way" won best song over......

What do George Clooney and local SF author Neal Stephenson have in common? The diamond age: Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson's best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions. When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that......

OK, Seattle maybe you're not so bad. Or, maybe someone hasn't caught an incident here like this series of crashes on an obviously icy street in Portland (sorry, couldn't find it on YouTube). The very first driver is by far our favorite: caroming off cars and telephone poles, and somehow accelerating across the same intersection three times until they run into a wall. And even that wall can't stop them. Bravo!......

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. We picked up the local weekly, which feels smarmily like Seattle's version as so many do (albeit, sadly, the SLC web version makes the Weakly look divine). And what do people......

CRASH A PARTY: Tons of local corporate types will be dressing up, drinking up and embarrassing themselves tonight. Wear a tie, act natural, enjoy the open bar and shrimp platter. 6 to 8pm // Just about any hotel, banquet hall or conference center // Free, Baby. MOVIE TIME: If you haven't seen Little Miss Sunshine yet (or purchased the DVD which just came out), then the time is right to hoof it up to the......

MOVIES: The Grand Illusion is not only showing "It's a Wonderful LIfe" tonight, but it's also providing an opportunity to crash the Illusion's holiday party for the staff and friends. "Food, drink, merriment and presents," will be on hand and the 8pm screening is free. 8pm // Grand Illusion [1403 NE 50th St.] // free MUSIC: El Vez is an Hispanic Elvis performer. We've never seen El Vez perform, but since he's doing a Mexican......

Ever see a news story about this kind of thing and think "Holy shit what would it be like to be inside the store when that happens?" Now Seattlest knows someone who can answer that question. The receptionist at our building sent an email this morning that a co-worker of ours had a flat tire and would be delayed getting into work. About an hour later, we get another email that the same co-worker had......

Our bicycle hobo friend tipped us off to the Livejournal coverage of today's crash at 1st and Seneca. Somehow a driver managed to drive his car through the railing and over the cliff down to Post Alley 30 something feet below without killing himself or anyone else. We tried to take some dramatic action shots but the police have it all cordoned off. For better shots taken earlier by presumably the previously linked Livejournal......

Gothamist, among many others, is reporting that a plane has apparently crashed into a building on the upper east side--you can see the exact location on 72nd via Gothamist's Googlemap hack. Currently it is being reported as a helicopter that crashed into the building. You can see pictures at the Gothamist site (national news sites didn't have anything yet, but they've got screen captures from local news up on their site). Update: From Gothamist: City......

Andrew Wright is one of The Stranger's film critics -- and one of two with the initials AW. We hit him up for an interview in May, but it turned out he was kind of busy watching films to prepare for this year's SIFF. Post-SIFF, he was more than happy to answer our questions and give Seattlest a glimpse into one local example of a critical mind. Is being a professional film critic the sweetest......

We'll just come right out and say it: World Trade Center is not as bad as we expected. But then again, we thought it'd be baaaaad. Oliver Stone + Nicolas Cage + a weighty topic = a recipe for disaster. Seattlest went to a screening primarily to see just how bad it could be, but unexpectedly, we smirked a lot less in this film than in United 93. And that's even taking into account......

Peak Oil isn't a story to frighten just kids with anymore. Adults are getting in on it, too. We missed seeing doom-and-gloom purveyor James Howard Kunstler deliver his patented jeremiad at Town Hall last Sunday, but the good news is he's going to be popping up like Caddyshack molehills on the Seattle Channel throughout June. The title of his blog, Clusterfuck Nation, gives you some idea of how he's raised the tone of his discourse......