Results tagged “foreignlands”

The snow is falling, our dear Seattle friends, it simply isn't falling here. Whistler just announced it is open for business, bagging the ultimate ski resort coup of cutting powder before we cut the turkey. Of course you want to go, but in fondly recalling the days of 1998 when the US-CA exchange rate swung wildly the other way, you fear you can really only afford to stay home and play Ski Resort Extreme Halo 3. We've learned a thing or six going back and forth with our neighbors to the north for many a year now, and so we offer you our quick and dirty guide to saving at least a wee bit of money and time in your BC powder-chasing adventures.

From the papers in Europe, and particularly in England, you'd think that UW student Amanda Knox had already been tried and convicted of sexually assaulting and killing her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perguia, Italy.

Well Dan, I guess you don't even need a bike and a mountain anymore. Here is a RedBull biking event in Budapest--I guess if we can build mountain bike trails under the freeway, they can race their bikes in the subway.

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.

Eaten: An onion burger and brick of fries.

When we were last up in Whistler, local stores had signs next to their cash registers that read: "Exchange rate: on par." We figured they just didn't want to bother with the shrinking exchange rate, but there still had to be one, right? We must still be in better financial shape than Canada, sheesh. No?

The weekend arrived, along with all 40 of our bike clinic clients. Everyone was giddy at the thought of a heli-drop bike ride on Sunday, and the bike clinic was going off without a hitch. Until Sunday, when we ended up again at 9,000 feet, with the sun replaced by snow. Blowing snow, to be precise. And we had a freelance journalist writing for the London Sunday Times riding with us. You know, something like the second largest paper...in the world. We were supposed to show him a fantastic time, and once the flakes started falling we knew everyone was in for an adventure, but not the kind they had signed up for. We'll let our intrepid journalist tell the rest of the story, in the meantime we'll revel in the glory of going down in print as the mountain biking guide who led him astray. And yet we will continue to insist that you're only truly lost if you don't know where you are--we knew where we were, it just wasn't where we wanted to be.

Seattlest spent this weekend visiting friends in Spokane. We know, we know. "Why, in God's name would you go to Spokane?" Trust us, we've heard it before.

Man, if the EU court that stuck it to Microsoft this weekend and Mr. and Mrs. Slowsky were in a race it would probably go off the board for betters. It's. Taking. For. Ever. The crime is Microsoft shutting out competitors by bundling Windows Media Player with Windows, which, to us at least, seems like an ancient issue. What are they going to go after Microsoft for next? Attaching round wheels to an axle? We were all about this issue when it was browsers that were being shut out of Microsoft operating systems, but for some reason we can't get all that excited about media players. Real Player? QuickTime? Fuck 'em. More troubling to us are the protocols that Microsoft has refused to open. Standards; there is a point to it, after all.

The post we wrote yesterday about Rick Steves ("Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world.") seems reasonable if you only know the man through his travel shows on PBS. He was on the Town Hall stage for all of about four seconds last night before destroying that illusion. Actually, he lives in a few different worlds; one here, in Edmonds, Washington, U.S.A., and another in Europe where he spends a third of every year, and the conflict between those two equal something other than "pleasant." Steve was pissed last night during his "Travel as a Political Act" talk. It was an angry, wrathful travel guru working the microphone--A much different animal than the "This is reeeealy great" PBS guy in sensible shoes.

Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world. The voice, the haircut, the folksy European dinners with friends one after another after the other. Just once we want to flip to PBS in time to see Steves in Friedrichstraße going berserk on a ticketing agent, but it won't happen because the world is his oyster. A friend of Seattlest's is currently on a 5-week Rick Steves tour of Europe, which we love telling people because it invariably inspires good feelings. Really, any situation can be dealt with by referencing Rick Steves. "Hey, get your arm out of my car, gringo!" "My friend is in Italy right now with Rick Steves!" We all want to live like Rick. In fact we've paid him a ton of money to teach us how to live like him. Furthermore, he's a good ambassador. He's not loud, rude or otherwise obnoxious. He's not going to go berserk in a train station or turn up on the news in relation to some bizarre hooker-stabbing incident. Further-furthermore, he just seems like a genuinely good guy. The man lives in a pleasant world, and wouldn't it be nice to inhabit it for a while?

Well, after two full days of filmery, we made it back from Toronto in one piece, but not before seeing our last movie of the fest, Sean Penn's powerful adaptation of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer's mega-selling non-fiction book about the insatiable wanderlust that led a young man to drop out of society, tramp around the country for two years, and ultimately die alone in middle-of-nowhere Alaska (for a more detailed summary, check out the paperback's cover).

While our colleagues in Houston wonder "whether the public might actually learn something about early human history from Lucy's exhibition," we're with the Smithsonian on this one. Unlike old, fragile museum pieces of art, Lucy is still an active scientific subject, despite her deadness. As Slate points out, there's still research that can be done with her frail old bones. We thought of a treasure near and dear to our country's heart--the Declaration of Independence--and how, when it has gone on tour, solely copies have been used. (In some cases, "rare original copies" were used, a phrase which will make our brain hurt for at least a few days.) And then we ran across this:

The International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology, a group affiliated with UNESCO, passed a resolution in 1998 saying such fossils shouldn't be moved outside the country of origin. The resolution, unanimously approved by representatives of 20 countries, including Ethiopia and the United States, said replicas should be used for public display.

Next up was Juno, the latest comedy from Jason Reitman. We loved his first feature, Thank You for Smoking, and had heard nothing but good buzz about this flick, which is kinda Knocked Up meets Superbad, if Judd Apatow stopped focusing so much on male friendships and paid more attention to the pregnant girl. As the titular acid-tongued, preggo high schooler, Ellen Page keeps on getting better and better, and the rest of the cast (JK Simmons, Allison Ranney, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman, reunited here with his TV son, sweet baby Michael Cera) ain't no slouch neither. A couple minor quibbles: if anything the film is too cute by half. We don't need pop culture references for the sake of pop culture references: "No, It's Morgan Freeman. I'm here to collect some bones." And we certainly don't need a quirky folk song introducing every goddamn scene (Wes Anderson much?). Still, the film was ultimately very moving -- we always appreciate it when a foul-mouthed movie turns out to have some heart.

One film you won't find on 2007's best-of lists is the first movie we caught on Saturday night, Nothing is Private, the debut feature from American Beauty-scribe/Six Feet Under-creator Alan Ball. It's not that his adaption of Alicia Erian's semi-autobiographical novel Towelhead--the coming-of-age story of a seriously messed-up thirteen-year-old girl living with her strict Lebanese father in early 90s suburban Texas -- is bad, just fundamentally flawed. We just didn't buy that an adolescent so used by nearly every person in her life would be so relatively undamaged, though we did appreciate Ball's restraint in not further abusing a victim via exploitative camerawork. Issues of post-traumatic stress disorder aside, big ups to the ensemble cast, including a hugely pregnant Toni Collette, a seriously conflicted army reservist/creepy racist Aaron Eckhart, and dynamic newcomer Summer Bishil as the young girl at the heart of this darkly comic, occasionally absurdist tale.

Seattle a sports town? After this weekend, sure. Hawks win! Huskies win! Mariners win! Cougs win! Shit, everybody wins.

Starbucks, give 'em credit, is able to do more than one thing at a time. Mark of maturity, that. The papers are full of its plans to expand into every corner of the globe; this week it's Russia. On the domestic front, meantime, they're promoting a slogan to follow up on last year's "Geography is a Flavor." The new catchphrase: "Coffee is Culinary."

One of the great things about Seattle is that it's the gateway to the United States for lots of foreigners. Alaskans, for example, regularly show up at Sea-Tac, wild-eyed and ready to reach for a knife at the first sign of a bear. They've been fleeing the wilderness and arriving on the shores of Seattle since way before regular air service was established. However, last week a particularly 21st century chain of events led one 15-year-old Alaskan to Seattle; she was on her way to North Carolina to meet an internet boyfriend.

Seattle-based journalist Dave Neiwert posted this video today of a "border patrol" down south taking pot shots at alleged border crossers.

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:

Seattlest took a little jaunt up to downtown Pacific Rim Canada the other weekend. Vancouver is the Toronto of western Canada and, just like its gritty eastern counterpart, we just *big throbbing heart* the place. We love its density, its layout, and its landscape. We love the architecture, even its endless kilometers of glass and steel high rises. Moreover, it's a walkable city. If you're a reasonably able-bodied tourist, you should be able to stomp all over Vancouver's geo-stylistically pornographic downtown peninsula without problem.

There's a film crew all set up and shooting some kind of car/shoot 'em up scene right now at 1st and Stewart. We noticed them from our office perched high above the director's chair and ran down to get some shots of our own.

If you need to experience an entirely different kind of pride, head over to Buckley, WA (near Enumclaw) for the second day of the annual Buckley Log Show. If you're like us, you won't know what most of the events actually are, but you've no doubt passed these kinds of competitions on ESPN2, as lumberjacks go head to head to slice, chop, and climb. It's loud and a bit disorienting, but there's something refreshing in knowing that you can end up a world away after less than an hour's drive. And if you're counting the days until the Puyallup Fair, know that the Buckley Log Show has the same scones (although the jam isn't quite as good).

Strasbourg--seat of the European Parliament--has a population of 265,000, less than half Seattle's, yet in the past 15 years it has built four interconnecting lines of light rail with some 50 stops. That's in addition to 35 bus lines, over 250 miles of new bike paths and plenty of bike racks at tram stops.

On the phone, Jim Haynes invites us to come for dinner on Sunday, something he's been saying to visitors for decades. By now, well over 100,000 people--most of them total strangers--have accepted his invitation. Mostly, but not exclusively, American visitors.

Air France is announcing daily direct flights from Seattle to Paris today, beginning June 11. Wow, just in time for that early summer get-away we've been trying to plan. The Port's email release focuses more on Parisians coming to Seattle, of course:

A Canadian mining minster in British Columbia recently flamed someone who wrote in about a policy decision via email. He pretty much tore the guy up and attacked him on the grounds of the guy's questionable Canadian pedigree ("It is my understanding that you are an American, I don't give a shit what your opinion is on Canada or Canadian residents"). Big story. The guy seems to have resigned over it. Shit's in the P-I.

We'd like to be able to say in full confidence that we'd never attend a rave at a pig farm in the country surrounding Vancouver, B.C., particularly if we were invited by this guy, but you never know. That guy is Robert or "Willie" Pickton and he's on trial in Vancouver right now for killing two six people, although it seems like he'll eventually be charged with many more. Like serial killer more. He claims 49, or did at one point. Here's a picture of his spread. We don't want to judge a man's crib --hey, it rains and not everyone in the world lives in condos with fancy furniture in the lobby and doormen-- but that place looks fucking scary and so does he and this trial is making us reconsider Canada. While we don't want to judge, sometimes it's in our best interest - That place, and that guy are the biological justification for our ability to detect "creepy." Stay away from that dude and you'll live longer, your nervous system is telling you. Then again, he's got a big bag of weed and he just wants to party. Out at his pig farm.

While Seattlest Jack was at Crystal, we made a run for the northern border, with promises of a huge dump of snow up at Whistler. We were buzzing as we drove up the Sea-to-Sky from Vancouver, as there was snow on the ground starting in North Van. It was the most snow we've ever seen in that area, the entire drive up from Squamish was a powdered-sugar-covered winter wonderland.

This past weekend Seattlest visited Gothamist's stomping grounds. We were there for the farewell shows of Rainer Maria, but had our days free to see the sights and take in the New York experience. We stumbled upon a once-in-a-lifetime event in the world of street art, and amazing as it was, we couldn't help but to be struck by what lessons it could have for Seattle.