Is live theater still relevant in a society where computer users can create high-quality video and distribute it almost instantly via the web? That's been the subject of an ongoing, rancorous debate between two Seattlest contributors, Jeremy and Charles, both former theater artists. Jeremy maintains the theater can yet be a powerful art form -- Charles feels it's a dying, irrelevant medium (most likely wounded by its own hand). To stir them up appropriately, the......

We're sure we don't need to say this, but you can't miss your caucus. This is the first year in our whole time in the Pacific Northwest where it matters what Washington voters think. If you're still wondering where to go, here are two Dem or GOP caucus locators. Caucusing starts at 1pm. We understand that if you know who you support and you don't want to spend an hour or two talking about it,......

Mike Daisey has been in town performing his notorious Monopoly, a controversial monologue exploring the excesses of American capitalism (particularly of the Wal-Mart variety). But this weekend, Daisey turns his withering gaze on the theatre itself, with How Theater Failed America at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. Daisey takes aim at the theater for its manifold failures: its pretentions, its disconnect from the world around it, its self-satisfaction. (Check out a five-minute sample over at......

Reliable sources tell us that if you ask Mike Daisey what he does for a living, he replies that he's "a monologist." Daisey may be the only person in America who introduces himself that way. If only those hordes who introduce themselves as "mortgage bankers" or "members of the Bush Administration" were as good at their jobs as Daisey is at his. We saw his Monopoly Saturday night at CHAC--it's smart, funny, and well......

Monologuist and fascinating human being Mike Daisey arrives in town next week for a Jan 18 - Feb 3 run of his show Monopoly! at CHAC, followed by a shorter try-out of his newest piece, How Theater Failed America. We got Daisey on the horn the other day and took a walk down memory lane with him, a la Dick Cavett, to soften him up before surprising him with hard-hitting questions about how many pictures......

The Hugo House Literary Series kicks off Friday night with "Lost in Translation," and the program features Seattlest-favorite and monologist Mike Daisey, novelist Randall Keenan and historian Lesley Hazleton. We don't know why Seattle ever lets Daisey leave, once we've got him here. He's ours! We should just band him or do that thing like with dogs where they are electronically forbidden to leave the yard. Daisey, et al, have each produced three new pieces......

It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by poop. Finally D.C. contemplated taking Vermont's place as a state and marveled at the GOP lessons learned from the "Macaca Moment." Due to some sad shootings......

If you are a fan, you likely have already heard, but a bunch of "Christian" audience members at one of Mike Daisey's Invincible Summer shows in Cambridge last week not only got up mid-show and walked out, but the apparent ring-leader destroyed Daisey's original monologue outline by pouring water on it. None of the group would talk with him as they walked out. The video on YouTube is, to steal Daisey's words, "incredibly chilling and......

It was a one-night-only monologue, Mike Daisey's Stories from the Atlantic Night Cafe, and CHAC artistic director Matthew Kwatinetz was happily rearranging chairs for a packed house. Backstage, the program informed us, Daisey was taking an hour to scribble away on a yellow legal pad the outline for what would be a brand-new 90-minute-ish monologue, his delivery punctuated only by pauses as he sipped from a glass of water or glared at remembered insults......

SUPER BLOW: A bunch of big guys grabbing each other while wearing skin-tight clothes, with ass-slapping and Prince songs. No, it's not Comeback, its the goddamn SuperBowl. Sorry editor Dan, but we're rooting for the Colts. 3pm // Any couch or barstool will do // Free, but if you start drinking at 10am you'll pay the price by halftime ONE-SHOT MONOLOGUE: For Stories from the Atlantic Night Cafe, Mike Daisey creates his monologue an hour......

Barack Obama has hope, but Mike Daisey has the audacity to sit down just one hour prior to his one-man show, Stories from an Atlantic Night Café, and write an outline that will be his only guide when he steps on stage. Seattlest chatted with Daisey via e-mail as he made the cross-country trek from his home in Brooklyn to Seattle prior to his performance at CHAC on Sunday night. One hour before the show?......

Monday LOCAL AUTHOR, LOCAL AUTHOR: Clear Cut Press presents two of its novelists: Matt Briggs' Shoot The Buffalo is about a boy growing up in Snoqualmie during the '70s. Stacey Levine's Frances Johnson, set in a small town in Florida, details the random choices made by the eponymous Ms. Johnson. 7pm // University Bookstore // FREE SCI-FI SALON: One of the finest authors on the "humanist" wing of American science fiction and fantasy, Paul......

This item on Amazon.com: Courtesy of Maggie over at Mighty Girl. Here's the real product listing. If we could pick one, the most surreal detail of this comes from the tags people gave this item: Update: Yes, it appears that this item got squelched rather quickly, but if you were the person assigned to remove that thing (and by this we are reminded of Mike Daisey's stint as an Amazon.com porn sniffer), dontcha think you......

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......