Hoo-eee, was Chop Suey's stage packed on Friday night! Promised: Macklemore, Gabriel Teodros, Rajnii, Language Arts, Knowmads, Hella Maze, and DJ Marc Sense. Performed: all of the above, plus XPerience, Khingz, and some group called 2012. Sometimes it can be exhilarating and refreshing to have so many artists jumping on and off stage in one night. In this case, it was confusing and overwhelming, and we hardly know where to start when telling you......

It seems like we've been seeing a lot of plays lately with children in them. Into the Woods at the 5th Avenue had kids, and Whistle Down the Wind at the 5th Avenue and A Christmas Carol at the ACT both do. We wondered, who are these child actors? How do they find time to act when there is so much television to watch? So we had a short chat via email with Elijah Ostrow,......

Famous neo-fro advocate Steven Pinker drops in at Town Hall tomorrow night, 7:30pm. Tickets are just $5. He'll be flogging his new book, The Stuff of Thought. Stuff? What's next, the Lintball of Thought? The Harvard psychology professor and writer has spent years learning how children acquire language and then writing books about it without cutting the kids in on a single penny: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate. An unapologetic......

Seattlest got this postcard in the mail a few weeks ago, encouraging us to consider WhySouth.com. It hurt our brain. Look. We may be hip, happening descriptivists. We may read Language Log. We may think Strunk & White should take those sticks out of their asses. But we believe in context, and we believe that an educational institution should send out stuff that isn't just plain wrong. The switch from first person in the......

Ron Rosenbaum, in Slate, has discovered and dissected the worst op-ed article ever written: Stanley Fish's "Getting Coffee Is Hard to Do," in the August 5 New York Times. Rosenbaum spends three amusing pages shredding Fish's article, examining the many, many instances of "unintentional humor" and "comic cluelessness." And he pegs early on one of the shopworn observations Fish attempts to pass off as insight. As Fish notes: First you have to get in......

Are you there Seattle art world? It's us, Seattlest. We're trying our best to talk up your First Thursday openings, but it looks like you've crapped out on us this month. We understand: you're on vacation or something, it's kinda hot out, the BLUE ANGELS are in the sky ... We've got posts to post, however, and damned if we won't find something to recommend from your namby-pamby Art Walk offerings. Here's what we're going......

The mouthbreathers who oppose public transportation are striking early against the roads/transit package that will appear on November's ballot. Unfortunately they are striking with a weapon they have little facility with: The English Language. Obviously, when the heaviest reading you do is of street signs, your spelling gets a little rusty. "Popultion"? And "fewer than 1% of the popultion will ever set foot on it." What's "it"? Ever set foot on the roads? Well you......

Yes, we're Folklife enthusiasts. Where else can you get a funnel cake, a hip-hop spitfest, a latin dance party, and a contest for liars, all in one place? We quoted Prince in the headline because we wouldn't be surprised if he showed up at Folklife this year. There is so much shit going on this weekend, and you don't have to drive all the way to the silly Gorge and pay through your nose......

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......

This is the all-geek edition of Get Out. If you're a normal person with friends and fully-functional social skills you may want to stay in this first Monday in December. MUSIC: If you, like Seattlest, can't pry your earbuds out with a crobar when Joanna Newsom's Ys is playing you should probably check her show tonight. She sounds like Bjork and Kate Bush's lovechild and she looks like an elf. And she plays the harp.......

Wednesday, November 1 >>>Benaroya Hall, 7:30pm. Seattle Arts and Lectures brings prolific big shot and errant van survivor Stephen King by. Maybe you’ve heard of him? For the Constant Reader, it’s an event not to be missed. He'll talk about Lisey’s Story, his latest novel. Tickets $25 and $35. But, like many things in King’s Dark Tower world, they’ve already moved on. >>>University Temple Methodist Church, 7:00pm. Keeping with the All Soul's Day theme,......

Wednesday, October 18 >>>EMP, 6pm. First The Police's Andy Summers gets interviewed by EMP Senior Curator, Jasen Emmons. Then he signs his book, One Train Later: A Memoir. You need tickets to stand in the "Don't Stand So Close To Me" book-signing line, available with purchase of the book from University Book Store. Andy will sign one piece of memorabilia per copy of his book. Did we mention he has a book out? $5......

Wednesday, September 27 >>>Town Hall, 7:30pm. Science and medical writer Thomas Hager tells you all about the drug that you won't hear about on House, M.D.: "The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered disease, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics." But does it make you feel like hugging strangers? $5 at the door. >>>Bella Cosa Foods, 4:00-6:00pm: Federico Bibi lets you taste two organic olive......

All music all the time wears us out, so we decided to hopscotch around Bumbershoot this year and take advantage of the talks, arts performances, and art exhibits. Thinking Globally I We arrived a little late, having forgotten about a little thing called traffic (about half the people on the #8 bus disembarked and hoofed it from Dexter). Ngugi Wa Thiong'o was reading from his Wizard of the Crow (which we think John Updike......