JUG BAND IDOL: Starting today, Greg Vandy of KEXP's The Roadhouse will hold live auditions for a new jug band. Without a harsh Brit, we're not sure what to expect, but we know it's unmissable. more ›

It was our second play at the Rep in as many months, so we know: a gay character in a Seattle Rep performance this season has about the same odds at survival as a redshirt on an away team mission did in the original Star Trek. That is to say, he dies. Apparently that's how you illustrate "families being torn apart" or something these days. more ›

This is pretty heartwarming stuff. The NBA asks teams who play against New Orleans to do a little community service while they're there. Teams do, often haphazardly, sending a couple of players along to some pre-selected site. more ›

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 Homeland Security. more ›

Back in Emeril's pre-Katrina heyday, chefs and serious foodies used to dismiss it as the Bam! network. Now it's disdained as All-Rachael, All-The-Time. You know, the Food Network, not about cooking so much as lifestyle (travel, glitz), weaponry (knife-wielding, cake-frosting) and tours of candy factories. Deliberate programming choices, made to draw viewers too sedate for Housewives and too chicken for Survivor. more ›

Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU, spoke last night at Town Hall to publicize his new book ) the lower auditorium was full of citizens waiting to voice their displeasure with ACLU policies. Romero didn't get any criticism for defending the Ku Klu Klan, Neo-Nazis, Ollie North, Fred Phelps, and NAMBLA. No, Seattle's citizens wanted to know why the ACLU wasn't actively supporting impeachment. During the Q&A period the air nearly fogged up with liberaler-than-thou sentiment. Romero apparently has some experience quashing critics because he handled interruptions and interjections with aplomb. more ›

To recap our past few weeks spent with Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: the initial disaster set-up was working for us (collect all the characters, watch as they fail to heed dire warnings, shake heads as rain stops coming and wheat stops growing), but Seattlest Michael questioned whether people could really relate to the days of mud-houses and not eating and all that. more ›

Seattle Rep’s 2007-2008 season in the Bagley Wright Theatre begins with Shakespeare’s beloved comedy, Twelfth Night, followed by a powerful play about the Cuban revolution, The Cook by Eduardo Machado. A new play, The Breach about Hurricane Katrina comes next, then the classic Molière comedy, The Imaginary Invalid, and finally Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney brings his skills to a classic Greek adventure in The Cure at Troy. more ›

Providing yet more evidence why you should avoid documentaries with far more than a 35-millimeter pole, the producer of Iraq in Fragments today released a gag-inducing "open letter" to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences calling on them to apologize because someone made a joke he didn't like. more ›

Hurricane Katrina forced the NBA's Hornets to play most of this and last season in Oklahoma City, but they'll play all 41 of their 2007-08 home games in New Orleans.The New Orleans Hornets planned to let a deadline pass Wednesday on the team’s option to play a third season at its temporary home in Oklahoma City. “Obviously we’re extremely grateful for the people in this community, the way they’ve embraced us and have supported us,”... more ›

It's been business as usual since the day after the storm in some Seattle neighborhoods. We eat, we drink, we Christmas shop, we gather all the shingles from the street and life goes on. Meanwhile, the Eastside continues to live red in tooth and claw. It's still mostly dark over there and crowds await Mel Gibson's next gasoline delivery at each service station. Hopefully it'll drive home how much energy it takes to power a 4000 square foot mcmansion full of today's technological wonders when someone's got to wait in line for gasoline to feed the generators. Hey, Eastside, maybe if you didn't try to cheap out of your property taxes by living near the city instead of inside of it you wouldn't be in this mess right now. Something you might want to think about next time the socialist tax collector comes around. more ›

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... more ›

Okay so West Seattle isn't exactly the most convenient place for going out on a weeknight, unless, of course, you live in West Seattle. But for those of us acoustic music enthusiasts here in the cool part of town (ouch!), it'll have to do for now. more ›

Saturday we went to see Ten Tiny Dances, co-curated by Seattle's Crispin Spaeth and Portland's Mike Barber. All the dances are made for a 4' x 4' plywood stage, and this year Barber had decided to tighten the constraints by insisting that the performers stay within a foot or so of the stage if they stepped off. more ›

Q: What's up with gas prices? They shot up after Katrina, then they went back down again, but now it's ridiculous! more ›

Memo to the Showbox: If you are going to open your doors two hours before any music, please let us know that in advance. Otherwise, we will assume you're following standard operating procedure (doors an hour before opening acts) and will arrive accordingly. And then you end up with a grumpy crowd on your hands who have just been given an unexpected extra hour to drink. No one wants that. more ›

On Monday night, Seattlest arrived at the Showbox like we often do, a half hour early so we could sit in the Green Room, have a beer or two, and watch the under-agers patiently waiting in line outside. Our well planned arrival turned out to be somewhat premature however, as we held court with very few other grown-up types in the cozy little bar hugging the south side of the Showbox. Meanwhile, a growing line of minors in faux-punk fatigues wrapped itself around the building like a python to a rat. more ›

Last Friday, Seattlest spent an enjoyable evening at the Columbia City Theatre. We were there to see the new Black Box Opera production, “Sondheim, Newman and Weill.” It’s a cabaret show made up of songs by, not surprisingly, Stephen Sondheim, Randy Newman and Kurt Weill. more ›

Congressman Jim McDermott is calling for Seattle to move quickly on a plan to replace the Viaduct. This leaves us wondering if he’s spending to much time in that other Washington, because clearly he has forgotten how we do things out here. more ›

Professor Jared Diamond might be wicked smaht (said with a proper Bawston accent like his), but he's no Edward Tufte. Stay with us on this one... We've attended one presentation by Tufte, and even considering the potentially drought-worthy material in some people's eyes (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information), he is more entertaining than Space Mountain. Despite the fact that Seattlest is mighty interested in the subject of Diamond's most recent book, that couldn't save his lecture for the Town Hall Science Series last night. more ›

The Senate was asked to support the troops this morning via a defence spending bill that included money for soldiers in Iraq, Katrina aid and, of course, drilling for oil in the Alaskan wildlife refuge. Attaching ANWR drilling to a defence spending bill that must get passed was the brainchild of Senator Stevens of Alaska who has been trying to dig up the refuge for twenty years, a move that Senator John McCain called, "disgraceful" and "disgusting." This is probably his most fail-safe attempt to date and it failed. Screw you, Stevens. more ›

We are officially in the holiday slump as far as shows go. That's hardly the worst thing in the world, since it's good to finally get a chance to rest after all of the madness of the Red Bull Music Academy. A month of consistently great music is enough wear down even the biggest of diehards. So it's time to take it a little bit easier, and to deal with all of the Christmahanukwanzadan festivities and year-end contemplation. more ›

Apple Cup week in Seattle means one thing: really crappy weather (rimshot...crickets). more ›

Q: Why was there a Washington State Cougars flag flying above the Space Needle yesterday? And a Husky flag today? more ›

A healthy slice of the Seattle house music scene got together in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to determine the most effective course of action, and Friday will see the fruit of those efforts with a benefit show at Chop Suey. Proceeds from the night will be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic and Mercy Corps. Even without the worthy cause, the lineup of local openers and headliner Hipp-E (of Hipp-E & Halo fame) all but assures that heads will be nodding and butts will be shaking. Hipp-E hasn't been to Seattle in over 5 years, making this a very anticipated return. more ›

Halloween isn't until Monday, but everyone's going out to celebrate this weekend. So after you put the final touches on the ultimate scary costume (be it a Katrina victim, avian flu, or even *shudder* Harriet Miers), hit the town for one of the many Halloween-themed movies showing on the big screen. more ›

If you loved that great feeling you got in your heart from being charitable after the tsunami and Katrina, well, get ready to give a little more. There was that big ol' earthquake in Kashmir a couple weeks ago, remember? Apparently, most people don't, because the international fundraising is not at the levels it needs to be. While the media has been going on and on about how we're all shell-shocked from "disaster fatigue," Seattlest is thinking that's a lame cop-out (and a condition that could be easily cured by a few stiff drinks). It seems much more likely that, especially in the wake of our own disasters, a great deal of us could care less about 50,000+ dead brown people. more ›

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Why do some people prefer pets? more ›

These questions were submitted by clairvoyant readers. more ›