• The Rainier Valley Post reports that the third (ever!) director of the Union Gospel Mission will retire at the end of the year. That's truly the end of an era.
• Capitol Hill Seattle reports on the Capitol Hill (natch) art walk, newly upgraded to something called Blitz, after a redesign led by Ellen Forney--there's a map and a Facebook page.
• If you're on Phinney Ridge on Friday night, you can see their art walk and "party in the streets."

• Orphan Road has another interesting idea about how to make Seattle greener--this time involving unpaving parking lots.
• The Ballard High School flag was at half-staff today, and My Ballard tells you why.
• Magnolia Voice announces that plans to alter traffic flow on Nickerson Street have been put on hold until the viaduct replacement project is more solidified.

DESIGN: Attention parents! Before you pony up the dough to send your little Da Vinci to Cornish, drop in at the Design Faculty Exhibition and see what the faculty at the Design department (Susan Boye, Jeff Brice, Tiffany Laine De Mott, Jon Gierlich, Jacob Kohn, Claudia Meyer-Newman, Julie Myers, Ellen Forney, Julie Gaskill, Hovie Hawk, BeAnne Hull, Marisa Mangum, Dan Shafer, Hal Tangen, Daniel Thornton, and Junichi Tsuneoka) can do. It's due diligence, people, and worth it for no other reason than because Ellen Forney's name is in the middle of that list. more ›

Yes, all good things must come to an end, but that doesn't mean we have to be happy when they do. So while we're glad to see she's in good spirits about it, we were crushed to hear that The Stranger decided to cut Ellen Forney's Lustlab Ad of the Week cartoon. Obviously, we were big fans. (And does this mean that the July 31 cartoon was her last? There's a trivia question in the making.) Ah, well, at least we'll always have Lust, the collection published by Fantagraphics in February. more ›

We've been Ellen Forney fans since we read "I Was Seven in '75" -- back when it ran in The Rocket. Her latest project is Lust, a collection of the "Lustlab Ad of the Week" cartoons she does for The Stranger, published this month by Fantagraphics. We interviewed Forney about the cartoon at Georgetown's All City Coffee, just down the block from the Fantagraphics store where there will be a book launch party tomorrow night. more ›

This morning's selection from the Seattlest Flickr pool combines wordplay and Ellen Forney, two of our favorite things. (Yes, we're also fond of lust.) Thanks for sharing! more ›

So we woke up with no intention of getting all Gloria Steinem on you early on a Sunday morning, but after searching for the tie that bound together our first day of Bumbershoot, we couldn't help but gloat that the women of Bumbershoot were kicking ass/taking names. more ›

Jim Woodring and Ellen Forney at the Fantagraphics booth at ComiCon this weekend from the Seattlest Flickr Pool, compliments of, surprise, Fantagraphics. more ›

--The Seattle Mystery Bookshop gets sucked into a publisher's con game. [Seattle Mystery Bookshop] more ›

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DONATE: For as much as gamers earn their nerdy reputations (and thus our ridicule), Child's Play gives them a chance to both share their geek pride and help the world around them through donations to help kids in hospitals. You want to help too, right? more ›

Seattle cartoonist confederation "Friends of the Nib" will host a benefit art show at Cafe Racer Saturday night (6-8pm), and according to an email we received from one Max Woodring, "100% of all proceeds from art sales will go to Jason Gooder, who was recently injured in a fall." more ›

Megan Kelso's latest graphic short story collection The Squirrel Mother Stories was a pleasant surprise to Seattlest. Far too many semiautobiographical graphic stories fail to connect with their audience, adopting an artistic style incongruent with the subject or navel-gazing to a degree that renders the story largely masturbatory. Kelso avoids those trappings and creates a collection that resonates with the audience on an undefinable level, plucking emotional strings through simple artwork and in most cases a minimal amount of text. more ›

Yes we do. Ever since moving to Seattle in '93 and discovering "I Was Seven in '75" in, we're pretty sure, the Weekly, back when we read anything but the movie times in the Weekly. more ›

Results are in from partly-local food blog The Ethicurean's recent doughnut taste-off. They pitted doughnuts from Top Pot, Mighty-O, and Krispy Kreme against each other. You should read the entire taste-off account -- very entertaining -- but we'll spoil the results now:

We quickly decide on our favorites. For the Butter Bitch, Top Pot’s old-fashioned is the best because it has a consistent flavor but isn’t sickeningly fake. The cake is nice and moist. Mighty-O’s raspberry chocolate donut is her second favorite. “It’s a close call between the two,” she admits. When I raise a miniature cinnamon donut, she shrugs and says, “I just love those.” The cinnamon minis are in a class of their own. more ›

Yeah, yeah, Amazon is using tags. But Amazon.com is soooo 20th century. more ›

Fans of the "rock'n'roll" genre will presumably enjoy tonight's "Art of Modern Rock" exhibition held in conjunction with the Flatstock poster show series presented by the American Poster Institute. The Seattle Times already scooped Seattlest's team of investigative journalists on the story, but we think the show merits worth mentioning again, in so much as this may turn out to be the only part of the Bumbershoot festival certain members of Seattlest will see this year. more ›

Ellen Forney's "I Was Seven in '75" was, along with Dan Savage's advice column, one of the first things Seattlest "discovered" upon moving to Seattle. The "honest, charming, and good-natured" comic strip was one of the main reasons we picked up The Rocket. We still consider it (along with Freaks and Geeks) one of the most authentic artistic depictions of our preadolescent world. When Fantagraphics published Monkey Food: The Complete "I Was Seven in '75" Collection, collecting all the strips that ran from 1993 to 1998, we snapped up a copy toot sweet. more ›

While Seattlest is familiar with the work of Bay Area cartoonists Eric Drooker and Keith Knight, we have to admit to a less than intimate familiarity with Flashbacks and Premonitions author Jon Longhi, an alleged "urban humorist." This California threesome will stage the Seattle leg of their "Ink, Sweat & Tears" cartoon concert and book tour this Saturday at 7pm in Capitol Hill at Confounded Books, with local cartoonist and Stranger regular Ellen Forney making a special appearance. more ›