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 ›

While trolling through today's Floor Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives for our other job (it's an exciting one), we noticed something that will probably get no coverage anywhere else. However, we think it is important to note when Congress singles out one faith as important. We think it's doubly important to note when the vote is taken while Congress fights with the Bush Administration over funding the government for the next year, haggles... more ›

Okay, friends and neighbors. December is a huge month for local hip-hop, and not just because of Blue Scholars' The Program. This week, Chop Suey's got you covered for Monday and Tuesday with the Parker Brothaz tonight (GMK will be there! We love that guy!) and freestyle master Eyedea & DJ Abilities tomorrow night. Over in Fremont, Nectar's offering Waves of the Mind and Gabriel Teodros/Abyssinian Creole on the 13th (there are nine acts on the bill, as a heads up) and an apparently two-night-long extravaganza featuring One Be Lo and Grayskul (along with some big name producers and djs) on the 15th and 16th. more ›

Excavators are our favorite pieces of heavy construction equipment. They are the most churlish. They throw destructive tantrums with their Trogdor-like arm as their hydraulic motors exude that sweet sweet mechanical whine. On the other hand, we hate that they frequently, callously, and disrespectfully knock down things we like. In this case, Seattle's lost another fine 24-hour joint. We've had many a slooooowwwwwwwwww wee-hours plate of greasy fries there; friends of ours ended up on a first date there. Where will silly late night memories get lubricated with bad coffee now? more ›

Here are things you don't want cops to find when they search your apartment:

Four computers, two printers, a scanner and an industrial machine that makes identity cards...$17,500 in cash, dozens of credit cards and fake driver's licenses, and keys to unlock many of the apartments and mailboxes in [your] upscale apartment building...a book titled "The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims," as well as a newspaper article on "How to Spot Fake IDs."

Observation: Seattlest James hosts trivia at the Old Pequliar on the first Tuesday of the month. 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 ›

Sometimes the world really is a beautiful place. Specifically when there's beer involved. Jack's meeting friends on Saturday for a session of oak-aged beer tasting at Brouwer's Big Wood Fest. He'll then spend the rest of the day rubbing his tum tum and smiling a lot. Thrilled about the possibility of the year's first snow fall, Kim will spend as much of the weekend as possible getting over the cold that's been lingering for a... more ›

Ski season is, thankfully, here and Seattlest couldn't be more excited. In fact, even though our friends are completely lame and won't go with us, we're off to Crystal tomorrow to take advantage of cheap lift-ticket prices (and cause we're jonesing). For a variety of reasons though, we don't own any of our own equipment and are not yet ready to buy our own stuff. So before heading out to catch some early-season slope action,... more ›

Redmond native and actual Guitar Hero Carrie Brownstein did some work on the advertising of the game Rock Band. You might have seen these commercials; four rocker-lookin types sit around and cut on each other in the jaded and weary fashion of musicians on the road. That's not her work, thank god. She was on a different team pushing a different concept. Anyway, she's got an article up at Slate today about her experiences with the game, which, ultimately, she ends up kind of liking in an "it's not as evil and fake as American Idol" kind of way. Of course anything less than an absolute trashing of the game leads us to suspect she's still on the payroll, but she's a music writer so we'll say no. It's an interesting take on the game either way. more ›

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Indie underground vets Les Savy Fav manage to be both experimental and catchy. It's a tough balancing act, but the NYC quartet pulls it off with aplomb, especially on latest (and greatest) album Let's Stay Friends. The art-leaning band with academically-inclined lyrics is equally well-known for its intense live shows, with frantic frontman Tim Harrington providing a great deal of the spastic energy and wildman antics, as well as the costumes and gratuitous nudity.... more ›

Art-punk quartet Les Savy Fav has scored the best reviews of their ten-year-plus career for their latest album Let's Be Friends. Truth be told, we never really paid attention to the band until this release, probably because the term "art-punk" is a mite too pretentious for our tastes. Whatever the case, the angular new album totally does it for us, from the heady statement of intent on opening track "Pots and Pans" to the... more ›

Thanksgiving doesn't allow for us Seattlesters to partake in our usual rock and roll lifestyles. Instead it's friends and family and mellow times about the house. Our drinking's liable to be more restrained and coordinated with a heavy meal of rich food. (Seattlest Geoff offered some choice beer recommendations earlier this week for those who've got a pit-stop planned on the way to grandmother's house tomorrow.) And according to the weather report, it's going to be cold but clear tomorrow, with morning to afternoon sunshine to make that drive a little more pleasant. more ›

Tonight and tomorrow, it's your last chance to see one of the year's best-reviewed documentaries at the Grand Illusion. King Corn follows two friends who move from the East Coast to the Iowa heartland to raise an acre of the highly-subsidized titular crop and follow it through the "corn industrial complex." It ain't pretty, but the film helpfully points out the extent to which corn is a part of the average American (and the average American cow's) diet, whether or not you realize you're eating it. Goodbye, wholesome summer meals and hellooooo, high-fructose corn syrup and obesity! Good thing that the protagonists and director provide the awful truth with a wink and a sense of humor, a la Super Size Me. more ›

In this corner, we have the accused, Amanda Knox, Seattle's girl-next-door and alleged participant in the murder of one. Google News hits: about 1,811. In the other corner, Risperdal aka risperidone, one of the most widely used anti-psychotics in the world, approved for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and marketed off-label for the "irritability" associated with autism, Asperger's, ADHD, and being teen-aged or elderly, and related to the deaths of at least 1,000 people (according the... more ›

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. more ›

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Saturday, Tera will give herself a VIP tour at the opening of Aritzia. She will follow this potentially hectic event by introducing a friend to her newest wine obsession - Twisted Cork. Sunday she will trek to Qwest and root for Chicago, uh, eh, oops...Seattle. Yes, root for the Seahawks. Jack's heading to the Showbox proper tonight to see Canadian indie pop band Stars. Sunday, he's hoping to see Rex Grossman slip into old... more ›

Nothing ages as poorly as sketch comedy television. You remember it being it hilarious, but when you sit someone down in front of a "Mr. Show" or "Kids in the Hall" or "Ben Stiller Show" DVD, invariably, the first episode passes in uncomfortable silence before you have to admit that, at the time, it was hilarious, but maybe it would have made more sense to watch a few clips on YouTube instead of buying the boxed set collector's edition DVDs. more ›

Why hip-hop? more ›

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. more ›

You begin to see why a girlfriend might leave him. "And how in the world did you come / to be such a lazy love?" he sings with Cat Stevens' flair for passing judgment, or pleads for time with a barbed hook on the line: " Maybe if you slowed down for me / I could see you're only telling / lies, lies, lies." more ›

We would like to take a short minute to let you know what we did on Sunday night instead of hitting up the Rakim/Ghostface/Brother Ali show for $32. Instead, Seattlest trundled over to The Comet, where we got to sit down (albeit in rickety wooden chairs), drink $4 whiskey sodas, and enjoy the hooting and hollering of a crowd of thirty at the Nite Owls show. We had never been to a show at The Comet; the one time we'd even considered stopping in for a drink, we heard the strains of hiphop coming from Havana across the street and we went there instead. As it turns out, we love the Comet and we love the low-key, gruff, rough-and-ready hip-hop we heard there on Sunday. more ›

The night's first piece paired the Northwest Symphony Orchestra with Michael Shrieve, a badass, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer who played with Santana at Woodstock. The combination of heavy percussion and hearty strings and brass had our knees bouncing. Next up was Messina, a funny, chatty guy with endless reserves of enthusiasm for the cause his symphonies support. The tango "Dance of the Rain" featured Dance Contemporary performers and Andre Feriante on acoustic guitar. The orchestra's string section paid perfect compliment to Feriante's deft fretwork. more ›

Mateo Messina, a Seattle native, has been composing television and film scores and penning symphonies for 10 years. His most recent score is for the upcoming, buzz-magnet comedy Juno. His latest symphony will be heard tonight at Benaroya Hall's (sold out) Symphony Legacy concert. (That's him above, at last year's show.) more ›

A couple of Seattlest haters and their friends went to the SIFF Cinema last night to check out the new Coen Bros. movie, which is still every bit as good as we already said it was when we saw it months ago. Lucky for us No Country for Old Men is more along the lines of vintage Coen masterpieces like Blood Simple and has absolutely nothing in common with the turd-arific misfires of their more recent crap, which might be the only sign of a loving and forgiving God than anything you're going to get out of the Coen's trademark brutal-ass nihilism. Warning to whiny pussies: Don't go see this movie if you're already depressed; it won't help. more ›

If you are very lucky, old friends will on occasion fly across the country to visit you. They’ll sit on your couch and tell you which of your college chums became a body builder. When necessary, they’ll gently remind you whatever dating mishaps have recently befallen you, nothing could top the Beckett-quoting fool you were smitten with freshman year. These friends are to be treasured, given fresh towels and mints on their pillow. The morning after they arrive, when they make not a peep about your tiny bed or your 5’5” shower head--well then, then they should be given popovers. Steaming hot, fluffy popovers. Preferably with cheese and fresh jam. more ›

Last year Seahawks kicker Josh Brown publicly announced his crush on Carrie Underwood. He'd even gotten her phone number. But soon after, Underwood was linked to Cowboys QB Tony Romo. more ›