Today was kind of a rough news day here in Seattle. Even Jesus Obama let us down a little bit today by announcing he's going to expand Bush's faith based programs. Meanwhile, California's talking about letting everyone have pot, whereas our own local officials are limiting the access even sick people get to good weed in Washington. Before we pack it up and head home for the day, we figured we'd put it to you......

We had such a nice time this weekend at our little gay getaway on Bainbridge, we thought we'd give our hosts a shout out. First, we'll get the bad news out of the way. Something we weren't so thrilled about was our weird dinner at Cafe Nola downtown. The food wasn't bad, it was just a weird array of ingredients (carrots garnished the scallops-and-roasted-red-pepper-sauce dish, for example). We're not your typical foodie, but we......

We just read Melanie McFarland's farewell column and we're a little choked up. It's good news for her -- she's off to become a TV editor at IMDB. But we're out a reviewer who likes all the right shows for all the right reasons. McFarland's that rare breed of critic who has high standards and knows when to check them at the door. She won a place in our hearts forever with her reviews of......

It's 3:30, and the rain has stopped up here at Seattlest HQ. We even see a little sun shining through. Good news, as we spent the past three hours bailing out our basement, which Green Lake is attempting to claim as a satellite branch. The governor has declared a statewide emergency, and the storm is now officially a killer--two people died in Chehalis when a dike ruptured, reports KOMO. Here are the major road closures:......

Winds the likes of which haven't been seen in nearly eight months are set to descend on our little burg tomorrow night. Forecasters say it's fifty-fifty right now whether they'll miss us to the north or land right on top of Duvall's fragile little power system. The good news is that everyone's generators haven't even had time to gather dust, much less make their way onto Craigslist. In fact, Seattlest even has some propane cannisters......

Lately the Seahawks' offense has been about as offensive as a Bastyr College commencement address. Against Pittsburgh on Sunday, they didn't score once (much like your average Bastyr College commencement speaker, unless we're talking about scoring weed). What's wrong? Well, it sure ain't the coach. Mike Holmgren has called the plays for four Super Bowl teams--as easy as it is to blame the coach, we can rule it out in this case. Thus, it's the......

It’s been hard for us to admit this, greenie that we are, but a vote for Prop. 1 is in order, at least from this Seattlest's perspective. This has been hard because we're as environmentally friendly as they come. We ride our bike; compost; and we reduce, we reuse and leave the recycling as only as the last step of a long process. So the news we saw when we opened our e-mail this morning,......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

Pearl Jam capped off this year’s three-day Lollapalooza blowout on August 5, and as anyone who knows much about the band might expect, singer Eddie Vedder badmouthed Big Government (Mr. Bush) and Big Business (BP Amoco) on stage. If you weren’t lucky enough to be there (as we weren’t), but caught AT&T’s “live” Blue Room webcast of the band’s performance, you missed some of Eddie’s poli-sci jabs because they were strategically removed. What did......

The good news is that you can sign up for an official Seattlest commenter profile now. It'll have a little bit of information about you and the comments you've made in the past and even some comments that have been posted in reply to your comments. Neat stuff, particularly the part that displays comments on your comments. That stuff is difficult to keep track of on your own. The bad news is that you can......

When a Californian real estate developer announced this week that he was determined to bring a Major League Soccer team to the Pacific Northwest it was good news for some and bad news for others. Fans of the game in Seattle and Portland, where Michael Keston is proposing to set up the MLS expansion team, should welcome the chance at entry into the U.S.'s highest league. MLS in Seattle has always been a long-shot with......

The advisory vote on the Viaduct is in and a crushing defeat has been issued to the “No and Hell No” campaign by write-in candidate “Hell No and No.” With strong turnouts in West Seattle, Magnolia and Capitol Hill, voters voiced their opinion on the mayor’s tunnel: as of 11:30pm, 69.88% responded in the negative to a tunnel-surface hybrid--a dramatic “Hell No” in our book. And voters rejected the elevated structure alternative with a less......

A King County Metro bus driver was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of peeping into a woman's apartment window in Ballard. Fresh off the heels of their whopping 4.3% ridership increase announcement (*yawn*); now this mess. Good news is that with this guy behind bars, his bus may actually be able to pick up a few more riders.........

Everyone likes to set things on fire, so don’t lie. The good news is that in cooking, pyromania is often sanctioned. There exist a plethora of dishes that necessitate lighting a big alcohol fire, or flambéing. Our personal favorite is Crêpes Suzette. The histories of Crêpes Suzette are at times conflicting, but it is generally accepted that Henri Carpentier made them first. Sometime before the turn of the century (about the same time that the......

Rainier Beach (public school): Black fans. O'Dea (private school): White fans. That's the stereotype. So, tonight, as we bounded across Henderson Street toward our car after Rainier Beach's Metro league semifinals 52-46 win, and a black teenage girl asked "Do you know who won the game?," we smiled. We were about to deliver good news to this Beach partisan, we thought. "Rainier Beach won," we reported. "Awwww, DAMN!" she said, scrunching her face up in......

So. The Huskies. The team that's our city's best chance at a 2007 championship trophy, and they can't even beat the Cougs. Historical fact: No team has ever lost to Washington State University and gone on to win the championship of anything. But here's the good news: because the Huskies are in the nation's best conference, they have six more games against ranked teams, and three against teams ranked in the top 10 (Oregon, Pittsburgh......

THEATER: The Brown Derby Series, which debilitated audiences last year with their staged production of Trapped in the Closet, is back, this time they're doing Total Recall. With Seattlest favorite Dusty Warren! Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm // Re-bar [1114 Howell] // $12, 21 and over only, runs through Thursday. No reservations, you may want to line up early. SPORTS: #1 O'Dea hosts #4 Chief Sealth. You've gotta see a game at O'Dea's gym......

Two weeks ago we were watching American Experience: Influenza 1918 on PBS, because something else was a repeat. So we were reminded that between spring of 1918 and the end of that year, 675,000 Americans died of the flu -- 20 million worldwide-- and no one still knows why, precisely. (In fact, about 36,000 Americans die of the flu annually.) But then just last week, we saw this article in the Seattle Times, which......

If you're in the mood for some wide-eyed, Kool-Aid stained boosterism, look no further than this article in today's P-I. It's in response to the New York Times piece announcing a condo-sales slump. The tone is strictly "move along, nothing to see here." It begins: Seattle's market was not to blame for a recent decision to change a planned 34-story downtown building from condominiums to apartments. Rather, the slumping condo markets in cities such......

Last week, Governor Gregoire displayed punting skillz we hadn't suspected she had when she told Seattle voters she was forming a new band called The Deciders and good news, we were all in it! It got us musing about how what to do about the Viaduct has bogged down into name-calling between fractious camps. (Here we wave merrily at the Slog, David Sucher, and WSDOT.) Arguments on all sides are astoundingly technical and never......

We couldn't help but notice that maitre d' Mikel Kanter from Vancouver's Elixir bistro is telling tourists an awfully familiar story: He also offered that the term "Skid Row" was coined just outside the window for the logging skids that led to the water in earlier times. Skid Row, of course, became a term for the down and out, and there's nothing down and out about Vancouver these days. Wait a minute. Skid Row? Doesn't......

--Hooray! There were fewer racial slurs at last night's school board meeting! --The winter blues have hit Kirkland. --In Carville vs. Dean: The Battle of the Bald, one local activist is firmly in the Dean camp. --Who knew--a helpful skinhead! --12.9% of Seattle's population is gay and the remaining 87.1% is really gay, making us the second gayest city in the U.S. --There is good news and bad news concerning local salmon populations and......

Have you been down in your basement lately? Well we have, and bad news, it's flooded. The good news, however, is that it will still be flooded tomorrow. So instead of spending all night mopping and spreading out towels, come on down to The Old Pequliar in Ballard for Seattlest Trivia Night. There are huge cash prizes, three dollar Newcastles, and cheap tacos. $5 per team. Teams capped at five. The trivia starts at 8pm.......

If it's not a great Gatsby, we can blame F. Scott Fitzgerald's preference for establishing mood at the expense of story arc. The good news is that this production revels in atmosphere: Tom Lynch's pitch-perfect set design and Jane Greenwood's gorgeous '20s costumes -- combined with Scott Zielinski's dreamily radiant lighting -- conjure up exactly the right nostalgia for a time that never was. We could have done without the itinerant saxophonist, whose bluesy......

If you saw any of the Hawks win yesterday, you saw Shaun Alexander hobbling around gingerly. Turns out he's got a broken foot, and he could miss as much as a month. Here's the thing about foot injuries--they can recur, they don't heal well, and they are impossible to ignore. A guy can play football with a broken wrist, but you can't stay off your feet, no way. Maurice Morris, who's a good back but......

The Husky secondary allowed 323 passing yards to San Jose St. in Saturday's win. The Spartans completed 80% of their passes. Yes, 80%. You might not complete that high a percentage in practice. Why even have a defense? Post-game, excuses came fast and furious. Coach Tyrone Willingham: "It is difficult to shut down everything in [the passing game]." (also, apparently, to shut down anything) Def. Coordinator Kent Baer: "I think some guys got a......

Seattlest is very upset today, and finding it hard to look anyone in the eye. Why are we sad? Tomorrow is the final day of business for all Larry's Markets in the Seattle area. See? Just typing this has made us weep uncontrollably, which is very embarrassing to do in an office full of people we barely know. Now everyone is staring and making sly comments under their breath. Granted, Seattlest could stand to......

-Microsoft's confirmed that, yes, Toshiba is making the Zune and, no, it probably won't suck as bad as you think. -Some unknown amount of mail was stolen from the loading dock of a Capitol Hill post office. -There's a seawall cam? C'mon, let's get that thing up on Seattle.gov, guys. -A military investigator has found "reasonable grounds" to prolong, amplify and intensify the trial of Ehren Watada which could be taken as good news......

The Port of Seattle has made the pages of both local dailies the last few days. Knowing the Port, they're feting the PR department. Only it isn't good news: in the Seattle Times, the headline is Port fine with 30 percent drop in earnings, while the P-I's reads Port hires auditor at twice the price of state office. The Port's history of independence from reality (and oversight) regularly results in backslapping based on exceeding......

Pho. Take a look at the sign, and the Vietnamese text looks like it’s asking you questions: Want a piece of me? Can you even pronounce me? (Try “fuh”.) This beef noodle soup is the perfect remedy for fighting a cold, a depleted wallet, or the winter blues. And our favorite place to get it is Pho Than Brothers. There are a few in the area (the cracked vinyl seats at the University Ave location......