OINK OINK, AUUGHHHH!: The NWFF is screening Pig Hunt (an apparently awesome horror movie) today as part of the launch for a new online culture magazine called The Rumpus. That sounds like a good time all around the block, literally, because you can go drink and eat at Vermillion before and after the movie and magazine launch. more ›

At 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning, July 12th, 2,427 bicyclists set out from the Husky Stadium parking lot to make the 204.5-mile Group Health Seattle to Portland Classic in one day. Fifteen minutes before that, we were drowsily slumped over the steering wheel of our car, stuck in the traffic jam on NE 45th St. headed towards University Village. Around us, cyclists with enough foresight to their bikes to the event were zooming downhill, past the poor suckers who drove. more ›

"yellow dragon on pole" by Seattlest Flickr Pool Contributor Seattle rainscreen. Thanks! more ›

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For the past few years, Aqueduct has been one of the most exciting bands puttering around the Seattle scene. More or less a one-man outfit by Oklahoma-transplant David Terry, supported in his endeavor by an ever-changing crew of musicians, Aqueduct delivers a catchy mix of rock with a pop sensibility (read: great hooks). Aqueduct's 2005 album , and spent late 2007 touring the US with Apples in Stereo. more ›

For all those interested, tonight the Capitol Hill Arts Center will be hosting a panel discussion with the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce on the topic of "Is there still room for culture on Capitol Hill?" The impetus behind the event is the generally rapacious rate of condo-conversion and construction that's pushed out notable businesses along Pike/Pine, and now finds its apogee in the sale of Oddfellows Hall, which threatens to displace a number of arts organizations that took advantage of the low rents. Without access to such buildings, arts organizations could face a rapid exodus from Capitol Hill, hastening its transformation to yuppie-land. All those interested should attend. more ›

Hello out there in Seattlest-land, this is your friendly editor Seth. more ›

The fact that Shag's one of the best known artists Roq la Rue has shown makes it a slightly less adventurous show, since everyone already knows what they'll get. But at the same time, what you get is an awesomely glitzy redux of mid-1960s cocktail culture that's blissfully ambivalent about whether it's kitsch or swank. more ›

What a glorious morning! The Sonics have won three of five, Edgar Martinez wasn't in the Mitchell Report, we've got a kickin' holiday party to attend tonight. 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 ›

There was no Seattle Freeze here, as people drank, smoked, and chatted all night long with a mixture of friends and strangers. A lot of people claim that the death of this block is part of the slow death of Capitol Hill culture. In contrast, Seattlest sees last night's festivities as evidence that the spirit of Seattle is alive and well, and that it's going to take more than the demolition of a few buildings to kill that. more ›

In 1987, the British illustrator Martin Handford creates a cartoon character named Wally for a series of children's books. Renamed Waldo for the American edition, he becomes an icon of pop culture. 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 ›

Well, it's been a month, and that can only mean one thing: time for the next free edgy youth culture documentary, care of Scion. Last time around, the topic was blood diamonds in hip hop; this time it's all about nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community. more ›

Adrian Tomine started making comics in his teens when he created Optic Nerve. In it, he tells stories about people who tend to be searching for answers to questions they seem to think everyone else already knows. After a few years putting out Optic Nerve on his own, it was picked up by publisher Drawn and Quarterly. more ›

Tonight's three-man show at Roq La Rue brings three quintessential pop surrealists to town. more ›

It's not that development in itself sucks; it's that our county and city government doesn't believe in development for art's sake, despite all those studies about the half billion the arts return to the community. When we look around, we don't see a lot of public investment in the single most expensive thing that artists and smaller arts organizations have to face: a place to work, rehearse, show, perform. more ›

In 2004, Ken Jennings redefined success on Jeopardy!, banking over $2,500,000 as he won 74 games. Those of us who get paid in bar credit know it's hard to make a living through trivia, but Jennings has done it. He turned his obligatory cash-in-on-your-15-minutes book, Brainiac, into something much better and broader, an examination of trivia history and culture. more ›

Scion's back in town bringing music, art, and culture to the kids. Sure it's subversive corporate lifestyle marketing to the coveted youth demographic, but we do like that it's free. Their art installation is at BLVD Gallery for a few more nights, while their film series is running once a month at the Harvard Exit. Somehow we missed the September film (Mayor of Sunset Strip), but we'll definitely be there tomorrow night for Bling: A Planet Rock. more ›

The Stranger has endorsed a No vote on the RTID Proposition 1 (along with the Seattle Times, but thankfully with more logic and, er, research). Their reasoning? "Rather than letting compromised politicians tell us what's possible, the people should tell the leaders what's needed: more light rail without massive roads expansion." more ›

(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.) more ›

A few weeks ago, Nobel Prize Laureate and co-discoverer of DNA Dr. James Watson blew through town, reflecting on how he's stayed away from stupid people, then delving into his now-customary slurry of sexist patois. Apparently he waited until he got across the pond to London to pull out the big guns:

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really." He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

In December 1992, Kurt Cobain and rock journalist Michael Azerrad began a series of interviews that would eventually become the beating heart of Azerrad's band biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. For that project, Azerrad recorded over 25 hours of the rock star's musings and reflections, but until pairing with director AJ Schnack to make Kurt Cobain About a Son, had never released the tapes' contents to the public. This film, then, playing at the Varsity for just one week, is a gift to Nirvana fans, the Kurt-curious and grunge scholars everywhere. more ›

People are strange. They say Ann Coulter is funny. They pay a $20 cover to have a conversation in a club. At the Showbox a few weeks ago, we saw Lavender Diamond, opening for the New Pornographers, cut their set short after telling the audience it was hard to play with all the talking going on. So we were worried heading back to the Showbox for the Jose Gonzalez/Tiny Vipers show because neither of them promised to be able to crush a babbling crowd into submission like the Pornographers could, and did. more ›

It seems Puget Sound Business Journal writer Jeanne Lang Jones might be a bit upset as she writes, “Now there's a further blow to Seattle fashionistas. The Bellevue Square Nordstrom is getting Prada (designer clothes as part of its remodel; the Seattle flagship store is not).” Jimmy Choo and Neiman Marcus will also be squatting in Bellevue, Jones notes. more ›

Because we know you want to know, it's your weekly look at what is keeping Seattlest engaged this weekend. more ›

Seattlest mentioned in one of our posts about Rick Steves' Town Hall appearance two weeks ago that a friend of ours was racing through Europe with Rick's tour company at the time. Meanwhile, the "Rick Steves' Politics Through the Backdoor with Rick Steves" thing at Town Hall was great (actual title: "Travel as a Political Act"), but we wondered who, exactly, he thought he was converting with it. Rick's a liberal, he was in front of a liberal crowd at Town Hall and, we assumed, his tour groups were made up of similar liberals who were looking to sample some foreign culture and maybe pat themselves on the back a little for their openness to wacky Euro ideas, but weren't necessarily in need of a high colonic to their red white and blue lower intestines. more ›

Slate asked Dan Savage and six other "sexperts" what, despite their experience, they still don't get about sex. Savage's answer:

What I don't understand is ... gee, how people can be so willfully stupid about sex. Sex came first. Before marriage, there was sex. Before religion, there was sex. Before freakin' humans, there was sex. All human cultures, and all our fanciful religions, were constructed around sex, built to regulate and control sex, sanctify and elevate sex. But so many people want to start with culture or religion before they approach sex, as if the former can teach us all we need to know about the latter. Not true. We have to start with sex. I'm not arguing that we should do away with all regulations or controls, or that sex shouldn't be sanctified or elevated. But there are regulations and controls that are idiotic, products of a time when we didn't truly understand human hair growth—or physics or gravity or the movement of the planets—much less human sexuality, and they should be reassessed. I'm thinking of bans on prostitution, bans on same-sex marriage, the promotion of "normal" sexuality (meaning: no kinks), the cultural assumption that the ability to have sex without love is evidence of some sort of mental illness. In these areas, some of our attempts to sanctify and elevate sex run so counter to human nature that they cause nothing buy misery.

Uh-oh. Truly insipid story in this morning's Pee-Eye headlined "College freshmen, profs often befuddled by culture gap." Example: today's 18-year-old freshmen don't know about Apartheid, haven't seen the Godfather movies; their profs have to give mini-history lectures and take in Superbad to learn what the kids are talking about. more ›

Remember a few years back when "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" came out and the Flaming Lips were suddenly everywhere? Mitsubishi started using "Do You Realize" to hawk their cars and Justin Timberlake was dressing up in a dolphin suit and jumping on stage during Lips shows? For a few glorious moments the hipsters and frat boys were humming the same tune, and no one seemed to mind. more ›