Results tagged “getout”

It's the first Tuesday in June! Which means it's time to get your nerd on at Seattlest trivia. Here's a warmup. You could win a free pitcher of beer if you know the answer to this question: What two companies founded in Seattle are now corporate siblings of Napster? Email your answer to james (at) seattlest.com. One team with the correct answer wins beer.

Lookit, today is a downright glorious day--way too glorious for the beginning of a workweek. We could encourage you to attend all kinds of events, including scads of SIFF films and at least two shows (the dirty electro of Peaches at the Showbox or ex-members of the Unicorns and Arcade Fire making up Clues at Neumo's). But we won't.

FOR THE WEALTHY BOOKWORMS: Chilean exiled author Isabel Allende is the keynote speaker at a benefit lunch over on the Eastside today, at the Maydenbauer Center. She wrote "The House of The Spirits," an epic generations-spanning magic realism novel about Estaban and Alba and (maybe) Pablo Neruda, among other dozens of acclaimed literary manifestations of genius. If you have the minimum $150 donation to get you a seat at the benefit, this is where you need to be at lunch-time.

MvB is going to get his pound of opening night hors d'oeuvres after seeing the The Merchant of Venice at the Seattle Shakespeare Company tonight. Saturday, if rainy, may involve an all-day LOTR-athon at a friend's in LQA.

INTERNATIONAL TIPPLE TASTING: As a Pacific Rim port, Seattle should really be more broadly acquainted with saké than it is. Enter tonight's premium sake tasting at Umi Saké House in Belltown, a Saké Nomi event designed to familiarize attendees with thirty of the world's finest (and in some cases, rarest) brands. You and your fellow fermented rice enthusiasts will be able to sample a saké whose brand hails straight from 1505 as well as an igloo-brewed variety called "Divine Droplets." Kampai!

We have already recommended you see this band ad infinitum, so we might as well say it once more. Ra Ra Riot is a great Syracuse-based/Seattle-labelled orchestral pop sextet. There's a red-headed, guileless lead singer and two girls on electric strings (cello and violin), and together the band makes high-energy music that sounds good and feels better. Their debut EP was accomplished, and they delivered again on last year's solid full-length The Rhumb Line. Look, at this point, we don't know how many more times we can tell you to see them, but if needs be, we will personally come to each of your houses and knock on your doors until you finally give in. Just go. It'll be great. We promise.

In Ear Park is the latest release from Rossen and Nicolaus, and we kindly direct you to the La Blogotheque Take-Away Show above, featuring the duo wandering around NYC's Chinatown while playing a selection of tunes, including the lovely love song "No One Does It Like You." The moody, harmony-heavy album's been getting good reviews, with the New York Times praising its "sparse acoustic moments and lavishly layered pop--gorgeous and suffused with mystery," while Pitchfork gave it an 8.3. Local neo-Appalachians the Cave Singers open.

If you care at all about surprising chamber folk music, the kind that will move you and make you question what you thought you knew about chamber folk music (did you know there was such a thing?, for example), then you'll get out to Ballard tomorrow night to catch Portland's Loch Lomond. They're the kind of band that we really believe can do anything. We've seen them rip a sheet of paper as a form of percussion before. Brilliant! They'll be joined by Seattle's own equally fabulous Carrie Biell and Husbands Love Your Wives.

It's been a long time since Kim had a tourist to show around, so she's looking forward to giving her father a stellar tour of Seattle and its environs. On the agenda: Chateau Ste. Michelle, Bainbridge Island, the Fremont troll, and plenty of great food--finally an excuse to go to the Kingfish! Before pops arrives, she'll kick the weekend off right, with Sera Cahoone and Zoe Muth tonight at the Tractor.

We're tied in knots over this. We're already going to what should be a great evening of new works at PNB (Morris, Gaines, Millepied, Forsythe), but if we weren't, nothing could keep us from hearing Mike Davis over at the University of Washington.

We've read enough pub trivia answer sheets to be familiar with this phenomenon: A team doesn't know the answer to a question, so they write something witty instead. ("Your mom" being one of the least witty examples.) While some of those answers are genuinely clever, however, we never would've thought to transform fake, funny trivia into a literary form.

THIS, OUR TOWN OF HALLOWEEN: Finally, we have reached the one day of the year when it's actually suggested that you gorge on candy and dress up like someone else! Check out Halloween party options over at The Stranger, and nod to the past by reading up on the history of this haunted holiday over at the History Channel's beautiful H-Ween minisite. This is Halloween! This is Halloween!

This weekend smells like autumn. But if you point your nose in just the right direction, you'll smell something a little brinier, a little boozier; you will catch a whiff of some of Seattle's most creative hiphop, a scent emanating tonight from the High Dive (Grayskul/Champagne Champagne) and at the Rendezvous (They Live!/Fatal Lucciauno) for "The Corner." It's your call where you fork over your cash, but either way you're going to be in the company of Seattle-drenched hiphop greatness.

Way back in February, we went down to Memphis for our other job to commune with all the other folk music nuts at the International Folk Alliance Conference. While there, we stumbled into a late night songwriters-in-the-round showcase that was taking place in someone's hotel room around about midnight, or one of the hours between it and sunrise. It was all a big blur, to be honest. But one of the artists that struck our fancy was one Natalia Zukerman of New York City. Zukerman will be joining forces with Adrianne (of Atlanta, Georgia) this Wednesday to bring some of that swell East Coast action to our little Pacific outpost. They'll set up shop at the High Dive at 9 p.m., and play until someone shuts them down. We recommend you go, and we bet Zukerman would recommend the same. We didn't ask her that when we got her on the phone last week, but we did ask her other things. Read on...

We hit up Moe Bar last night for Happy Hour to toss back a few and discuss Things with non-Seattlest Friends, whereupon we were pleasantly reminded of the establishment's insanely good Happy Hour deals. $2 wells, people! That's five drinks for your tenner, or three drinks if you are a Good Person and tip. You should tip. You should also join Seattlest at Moe Bar on Monday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. for our next official Seattlest Happy Hour to take advantage of said insanely good Happy Hour deal and to chat it up with us.

WORDY SHIPMATES: Sarah Vowell's finally here to read from her book about the thought-life of Puritans such as John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, and Roger Williams. She's "not interested in the whole person," says Vowell in a recent interview with Seattlest Editor MvB. Take Roger Williams: "I'm mostly interested in what he thought about religion, government, community, Indians and how much Roger Williams was getting on his nerves. I don't really give a hoot what he had for breakfast or how he felt about his mom." This is one reading we feel more than comfortable recommending!

A free movie, free booze, and DJ Cide spinning while you socialize beforehand? Say yes to Scion's Route 08, an independent movie series showing in Seattle at the Harvard Exit. Audrey discussed the ins and outs of corporate-sponsored lifestyle marketing events in preview of the last film, Heavy Metal In Baghdad; go read that again so you're spiritually prepared for the onslaught of Scionism, and then RSVP on the Scion website by 5 p.m. tonight in order to get free admission. The movie tonight is Quinceañera, and it looks like a great pick; check out the trailer below, and we'll see you at the pre-funk reception later this evening.

The video above is "Rainbow Claw," off of Tussle's latest album, Cream Cuts, out now on Smalltown Supersound. While that's well worth seeking out, what's more immediately important is the fact that Tussle play tonight at The Comet. While Tussle's recorded output faithfully captures their psychedelic funk jams (no hippie stuff though, don't worry), it's live where the material really shines. The band's rhythm section locks everything into a solid groove, with drumming so precise you could set your watch to it, and basslines you can practically see moving through the room as well as feel in your gut. Add some electronics on top of that and you've got yourself a party. To be honest, the ideal place to see Tussle would be at some dark, drunken, basement DIY party, but a rough-edged venue like The Comet should work just as well.

...if you're willing to pay way more than face value.

If you haven't heard it yet, the above video is for Noah and the Whale's light-hearted poppy single "5 Years Time" off their debut album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down. That catchy song just begs to be used in pretty much every movie trailer—Wes Anderson ones especially—and/or TV ad (we've already seen it in a car commercial). The folky twee British quartet plays a free show tonight at Chop Suey with openers Grand Hallway and Lindi Ortega (8 p.m. doors, 21+). A couple weeks ago we talked to singer Charlie Fink about his band's forthcoming U.S. tour.

It's safe to say that the only person in town who loves Dr. Dog more than us is erstwhile Stranger music editor Jonathan Zwickel. We won't go so far as to say that they "sound like the best band ever," but we do agree that the Philly five-piece have the influences (Beach Boys, Beatles, Steely Dan, The Band, and so on), the sense of melody, and the spot-on harmonies to always put on a rollicking live show. Their new album Fate covers the same territory as their previous four in a good way: this is straight-up musical goodness, and if you can't appreciate their easily accessible homage to classic sounds (we're looking at you, Pitchfork), then you've got no pop soul. Delta Spirit and Hacienda open, but in a perfect world, Dr. Dog would be playing with similarly minded local band The Moondoggies.

Tonight, drink pricey beers at the WaMu Theater (hey, they need the money!) before The Kills and The Raconteurs. You best get there early; believe us, it takes a lotta beers to make Jack White look pretty, but no drinks at all to make him sound good.

Say what you want about American Idol's biggest success story, Ms. Carrie Underwood—including that she can't dance, bless her heart—but it can't be said the woman doesn't have a strong set of pipes. She'll be the last major performer during the Puyallup Fair's final weekend. If there's anything in the show that remotely resembles her performance from last year's Grammy Awards, we'll just die:

Seattle's known already for its pocket-sized parks tucked away on unlikely vistas, but local volunteers in conjunction with the Trust for Public Land have coordinated an event called Park(ing) Day to bring more awareness to the need for community green space. And that's a good thing. Tomorrow, eight close to thirty metered parking spots around the city (click here for locations) will transform into public park land for the day. A few of the sites are offering free yoga, dance, and tea; two of the mini-parks are across from Vivace espresso locations, so you can fuel up while chatting with your neighbors. According to local organizer Isaac Cohen, most mini-parks will open around 9 a.m. and close by 4 p.m.

Tonight's the all-ages Red Bull Big Tune Battle at Neumo's. It's a big hiphop competition (twelve producers are picked to compete, whittled down from the eighty who applied from all over the Northwest and even northern California), and the regional showdown for one of the only legit national beat battles. This year's featured guests are Detroit's Black Milk and Elzhi.

Seattlest listens to a lot of local hiphop, and after awhile most of it starts to sound the same, save a few favorite groups (The Saturday Knights, Cancer Rising, and Grayskul, to name a few). Enter the latest two albums from Seattle hiphop staples Sabzi and Ra Scion. When their powers combine, they are Common Market; they're fighting on our planet's side to take (mind) pollution down to zero, with intricate, erudite-bordering-on-incomprehensibly thick lyrical miracle projects with the themes of rural Kentucky and the tobacco industry.

Slaid Cleaves may not be super known out here on the left coast, but among songwriter circles in the south and back east, he's one of the most respected singer-songwriters on the scene. The man just has a way with words, and he'll be gracing us with his presence next Wednesday at the Tractor. If you're a ZooTunes-hanging Mountain listener who appreciates a good solo acoustic songwriter, then the Tractor will be your place next week. Here he is doing "Lydia," from his covers album. We know Cleaves has plenty of great songs of his own, but we love his version of this one (originally by Karen Poston):

Face it, folks: it's fall in Seattle, and along with cooler nights, leaves changing color, and the beginning of football season, fall also marks the annual Scion independent film series. Yes, it's corporate-sponsored lifestyle marketing aimed at the hip youth demographic, and yes, they just want the kids to buy their damn cars, but we're willing to shill for it when 1) it's free and 2) the films shown are actually worth seeing. The series kicks off tonight with Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the first full-length film made by the good people at Vice:

, Žižek, occasionally derided as nothing more than a party-line Stalinist, has achieved the unthinkable: he's made the philosopher a rock star. Andy Warhol would be proud. Tonight at Town Hall, he speaks about violence.