"Whatever you do, don't do heroin, man."......

Next year’s publication of Itch, Love Stories About Heroin means that if you've been waiting for a full-length, in-depth book about Alice in Chains' Layne Staley—well, don’t get your hopes up. You'd think someone would've managed to write a Heavier Than Heavenish Staley biography by now. After all, Staley's voice was as unique, his contribution to Seattle's 90s music scene (arguably) as important, and his death as grisly as fellow heroin addict Kurt Cobain's.......

So that paper Clay Bennett mask didn't score you the costume-contest office pool? Your Lewinsky dress was irredeemably soiled? It's not too early to think Haloween '08. And we've got the coolest outfit idea for you: Jerry Cantrell. The Alice in Chains guitarist/singer will even trade you his threads for a charity donation. Starting November 5 (and going through 11/26), Cantrell's auctioning off some of "his favorite clothes from key moments in his career" to......

Outfit called Not For Tourists has just published a guide to Seattle. It's a handsome book, looks just like Moleskine journal, complete with oilcloth cover, fat elastic closure, gorgeous paper. The Seattle version is tenth in a series, cobbled together by a design staff in faraway Noo Yawk with input by a locally based "city editor" named Fred Beldin, who contributes occasional music reviews to The Stranger. NFT Seattle starts out with a grid of......

The Halloween crowd was bleeding out of orifices, jack-booted and silk gowned, and they roared at the songs about compulsive masturbation; the sheep fucked and sheared and shot; school kids on heroin and cocaine; the schizophrenic dead under an overpass; the anti-hymn with the chorus "banging in the nails." The Tiger Lillies stood on the Moore's stage beneath red and blue lights that left livid bruises on the smoky air and profaned life in an......

1. Things We Lost in the Fire. There are a few things we liked about this (supposedly based here, though there is nothing to indicate that it actually takes place here) movie---mostly that the heroin junkie played by Benecio Del Toro lives in a flophouse in Renton and that Halle Berry plays a Seattle woman named Audrey, leading to a scene where Del Toro runs after her calling, "Audrey, Audrey, Audrey, Audrey, Audrey!" Call......

There are a lot of things we can see being seized at the border between Canada and the United States: handguns with the serial number filed off, bricks of heroin, briefcases with the radioactivity sign on the side. Hard drives we'd expect to make it through, but unfortunately we'd be wrong. The guy bringing the masters of the songs Chris Walla recorded in Vancouver back down to Seattle had the drive containing them yanked by......

In December 1992, Kurt Cobain and rock journalist Michael Azerrad began a series of interviews that would eventually become the beating heart of Azerrad's band biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. For that project, Azerrad recorded over 25 hours of the rock star's musings and reflections, but until pairing with director AJ Schnack to make Kurt Cobain About a Son, had never released the tapes' contents to the public. This film, then,......

Alice in Chains’ former lead singer would be blowing out candles today had he not said yes, yes, yes to drugs. The Chains gang would likely still be making both crunchy (Dirt) and beautiful (Sap) music. Jerry Cantrell, who co-founded the band with Layne, probably would have written some lighter lyrics and cut his hair. Seattlest would have had the pleasure of seeing Alice in Chains—or the supergroup Mad Season—live. Even more importantly, had Layne......

Amy Winehouse ain't gonna be playing at the Paramount next month: Due to the rigours involved in touring, Amy Winehouse has been advised to postpone her upcoming September US and Canadian tour dates. All ticket holders may obtain refunds at their point of purchase. Amy's European and UK tour dates in October and November remain in place. Plans are being made to reschedule her US tour for early 2008. Until then, Amy has been......

First of all, despite what you read in the Times and the P-I about Donald Byrd's Never-Mind (which came and went over the weekend), it's not all that, as Brendan Kiley says over on the Slog. We've become fans of Byrd's "neo-expressionist" style, but Never-Mind (at this point) is short on style and substance. It came off like "Frank Miller's Never-Mind": an ugly cartoon of drug abuse, of dysfunction, of iconic fame. Not that......

Seventeen years ago yesterday, flamboyant Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin-overdose-induced brain hemorrhage. He’d be 41 this year, near the same age as the guys who, in ’91, got together as Temple of the Dog to commemorate his short life. (Ironically, those guys became some of rock’s biggest acts.) Had Andy kicked the habit, Seattle’s then-music-future might have been dramatically different. His glam personality and look likely would......

When we were kids, we spent a lot of time reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology, soaking up heroic tales and Olympian feuds and tips on using hydraulic dynamics to remediate environmentally damaged areas. When we got to college, we ended up reading more classical mythology, but it didn't have that same wide-eyed appeal (or we were squinting more). Girls & Gods has cranked our eyelids back open. We'd be the first to admit we got lucky......

If he were alive today Kurt Cobain would be blowing out 40 candles on his birthday cake. We were 19 when he died, and were sleepwalking through a higher education that we never asked for at a university in central Illinois where life, frankly, sucked, and it was made worse when we heard that the guy who single-handedly saved us from the ridiculous crap we were filing our ears and minds with until then had......

CASTING CALL: Local director Garrett Bennett is looking for extras to cast in his independent film The Spy & the Sparrow. 3-8pm // First Church of Christ Scientist [1519 E. Denny Way] // $Whatever minuscule remnants remain of your dreams of an acting career BOOKS: Don't wear sweatpants to this event. Erotica writer Jennifer Munro reads from her award-winning work, as does the winner of Hugo House's erotica writing competition. Keep your fingers crossed for......

--Our friend Tad would eat up this story about anti-terrorism exercises being foiled by the size of mail slots. --Gawker parses a stream of Courtney Love's consciousness and pulls out Frances Bean's first word: Pee. --Line Out's got some thing about gay porn appropriating Yellow Magic Orchestra samples that strikes us as funny, but we can't think of anything funny to say about it. --Todd Bishop checks in on Microsoft's Chinese blog policy today......

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a bug bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for......

There's a whole wide world out there, and here's the proof: DCist revels in The University of Maryland's basketball triumphs, marvels at Metro's security strategy, and applauds DC local Katie Couric's new gig. Phillyist is all about the Philadelphia Film Festival. OK, not all about -- they still have time for loitering, underage sex, and random wacky news. LAist would have to send a camera around the world to get shots as bizarre as Katie's......

For the past week, we've been inundated with images of people displaced from their homes. It's all been so heart-wrenching and overwhelming that after a while we just had to turn the TV off. But now that the first season of Lost is out on DVD, Seattlest has no problem with willingly subjecting ourselves to such drama, if only because that's some damn good television. And because these stranded people surrounded by water won't make......

The ad in the Weekly caught our eye: Opium! Graft! Sex! Debauchery! All this printed over a picture of a moll who'd fit right in at Belltown's Whisky Bar. We're suckers for old-timey vice. We had to go on the Underworld Tour – from the people, noted the ad, who brought you the Underground Tour. So we reserved a spot on a recent Friday night tour. Turns out the Underworld Tour is basically the NC-17......

Previously on Seattlest… we warned you about the Goonies 20th Anniversary Celebration set for the June 3 – 5th weekend in Astoria, OR. To meet the investigative news challenges of this story, Seattlest enlisted the help of Seattle Times illustrator and graphics designer Boo Davis, mastermind behind many of that nascent rag’s more groundbreaking scoops. Taking for granted Davis’ prior trips to (and undercover reporting work in) Astoria, Seattlest didnt offer to help navigate, thereby......

Eric Bogosian is a jack of all trades. That's the feeling we get from taking a gander at his IMDB profile and his website's biography/list of works. Ah, but who the f*** is Eric Bogosian anyways? Good question, albeit one that has already been asked elsewhere. He's a playwright, having authored five full-length plays and six full-length solo works, as well as an actor and a screenwriter. In fact, he adapted his two best known......