Hopefully, in 2009, we're all wieners! Drop your winning photos into the Seattlest Flickr Pool.
An artist who "used his own blood as ink" is now cops' main suspect in the murder of Shannon Harps.
Generally after the warm, fuzzy glow of our New Year's hangover wears off, Seattlest is left staring into the abyss of January without much to cling to, except our quickly fading memories of the resolutions we made and the knowledge that tax season is fast approaching.
Seattle-related only in the sense that we are but a minor gathering within the greater worldwide collection of souls who understand why Radiohead is the greatest band ever.
This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer's market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs.
It turns out, it wasn't our booze-addled brains: The Seattle Center fireworks display on Monday night was messed up due to a computer program glitch (Y2K strikes 8 years late!). According to the :
Just in time for New Year's resolutions, Starbucks added a new word to their ordering lexicon: Skinny Latte. That's official SBUX lingo for "nonfat Latte made with sugar-free syrup."
Seattlest David: What's up, computer?
Maybe the first thing we should tell you about Striking 12 at CHAC -- besides the SAD tie-in, the rave reviews, or the fact that only 600 people in Seattle will have the chance to see it -- is that you can win half-off tickets to it. A limited number of $15 tickets are being held for those who correctly answer the following trivia question:
Name at least one of the bands featured the first year Dick Clark hosted Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.Email Ruth with the correct answer and she'll email you back a password to use to order your $15 tickets (on Brown Paper Tickets).
A sign inside Fremont's High Dive states that the little bar's maximum occupancy is 98. Saturday night, with Bellingham's The Trucks in the house, it felt more like 398. Good for the band's young ladies, not so good for the claustrophobic.
We randomly checked out the Walkmen and Kaiser Chiefs show at the Showbox last night, mostly in the dark about their work. Although we had seen the Walkmen live once before, we couldnt remember if they had made much of an impression. During the opening, a friend summed up their sound as "like the Strokes except not irritating." That's a good enough summary although we'd swap out the Strokes with Rod Stewart, who Walkmen lead singer Hamilton Leithauser sounds exactly like and if you don't agree then fuck you.
The first time we saw Kultur Shock, they were opening for Gogol Bordello at Neumo's, and we have to admit, we'd never heard of them. It was an all-ages show, so we were drinking our fill in the Bad Juju lounge next door, until the insane sounds of the band dragged us away from our beers. Quickly we came to regret missing the first half of their set.
Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to.
OPENING: The McLeod Residence, Seattle's premiere lounge/club/gallery, celebrates their grand opening this evening. So if you weren't invited on New Year's, now's your chance to check out the swank digs and the current exhibits.
Our national football correspondent, Pauls Toutonghi, is scouting potential Seahawks playoff opponents for us, and may have found a way to make the Bears' Rex Grossman even worse
Did you listen to The Works this week? We haven't yet. It's cocked and loaded on the iPod which ran out of batteries before we could listen to John Moe talk about Nerd Core and interview MC Plus+. We're not looking forward to it anymore, though, because now we're going to have to listen to it while knowing that John Moe is leaving KUOW. He's moving to Weekend America, which, yeah, is great and all, but what about us, John?
As it should be, it's quiet this week in Seattle, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to do -- especially the closer we get to New Year's Eve. So without further ado, Seattlest's belated gift to you -- some shows:
TRIVIA: By popular demand, there's Seattlest trivia tonight, just one day after we all celebrated the birth of the Lord.
8bitjoystick called Seattlest out yesterday (which we love, btw, whether you do it on your random blog you expect us to magically find, or you have at us in the comments or you send us email. Please, tell us what we're missing and we'll consider it internally and then publicly enumerate the reasons why you're wrong.), and, befitting a blog about video games, 8bitjoystick is all over us for our lack of video game coverage.
Yes, a real pie is baked onstage during the performance. We'd call it a gimmick, but the theatre was crammed with moms and daughters for whom pie-making, apparently, inspired the same kind of emotion as going for it on 4th and 2 with 1:12 left to play. The flour-sifting, butter-chopping, dough-rolling, and pan-trimming met with hoots, gasps, sighs, and chuckles.
Ah, there it is! We take back everything we said about not missing parts of this show. In fact, we almost can't remember life pre-awkwardly forced voice over. This week we're bludgeoned over the head with the fact that it's the New Year and with that comes a New Year's Resolution and a New You, and the putting to rest of your past.
Seattlest did not only see movies, read books, and go to shows this year. Oh my, no. We also ate, and some of us ate very well indeed.
Still hedging your bets about New Year's Eve? For what it's worth, here's what we're doing.
We'd like to alert you to a couple gay-centric blogs out there, and no, we're not talking about the Slog. Seattlest has long considered the Queen City Cruise News' blog to be the authoritative faggy blog in the city and we're sure that they'll continue their great work, but yesterday they posted on the launching of a Seattle Gay News affiliated blog. Our soggy little heart warms just a few degrees every time we see a print pub launch themselves into bloggy space (don't expect a print version of Seattlest anytime soon, though) and we have high hopes that the SGN guys will iron out a few HTML kinks and help keep us appraised as to the whereabouts and goings-on of the gays far into the future. Welcome to the neighborhood - Expect us to come knocking with a welcome basket any time now.
With the on-set of snow and people's cheeks turning a rosy hue, our thoughts turn to that maternal idol indicative of the season--Dina Martina. Dina makes a triumphant return to Re-Bar for her annual Christmas Show. It began running November 25th and will continue until New Year's Eve. Performances are Thursday to Sunday with doors at 7 and curtain at 8. Tickets are $18 cash only. Make your reservations now!
Last week's rejection of the monorail reminds us of an earlier failure by Seattle to produce cool futuristic transport -- no, not the Jetfoil. We're talkin' SST.
Seattlest likes Nick Hornby, we really do. We like his witty, casual style of writing, we like that he's big enough of a music geek to write essays on specific songs, and we certainly like his McSweeney's connection. Most of all, though, we enjoy the movies made from his books. High Fidelity ranks among our favorites, due to its eminently quotable dialogue, great soundtrack, smart use of lists, and John Cusack's lovesick moping coupled with Jack Black's voracious scene-stealing. In fact, this is one of the rare cases where the film is better than the book, with a seamless setting shift from London to Chicago (especially endearing to Seattlest). About a Boy is another good one, in which the Weitzes first displayed a light touch and emotional maturity, and frankly, it's the only Hugh Grant performance we can stomach. As to Fever Pitch...well, we purposely avoided the recent Farrelly Brothers/Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore crime against humanity---which ended up being a box office disappointment anyways---but we hear that the original version of the film, about football and starring Colin Firth, was more than decent.