Two years ago NPR did a story on Sicilian singer/songwriter Carmen Consoli trying to break into the U.S. music charts; we don't know if that happened, but last night at the Triple Door there was an appreciative audience clad in stylish wool sweaters and hand-tooled leather footwear, and who evidently needed no subtitles. She's a bit like Italy's Ani DiFranco, known for her feminist indie-rock sensibility--but she's also Italian enough to play a concert in......

"Quite a few people in the world have seen my penis. So that's kinda cool." We've known for a while (thanks to Kirsten Anderson) that the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind is all grown up and basically normal. But last night, NPR's All Things Considered aired an interview with the now-17-year-old Spencer Elden, sharing his story with comfortable liberals nationwide. Spencer still seems like a normal high school kid, and, as seen above,......

NPR's quiz show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! hasn't taped an episode in Seattle since 2001, but last night at the Paramount, they had a sold-out venue full of Seattleites dressed up in their best fleeces eager to clap and guffaw on cue. Apparently, a radio show that runs about forty-five minutes on the air takes more than twice that live, including a humorously eerie segment at the end of the night where the cast......

NPR IN DA HOUSE: Seattlest was kind of surprised to hear that tickets are still available for NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me live show at the Paramount tonight. We've never personally been to a live radio show before, but we do love the N to the PR, and we're guessing this'll be well worth your time. In case you don't mack on the NPR, it's the silly quiz show that takes a humorous look......

BOOKS: Attention Chicago-watchers: NPR's Peabody-Award-winning Scott Simon is at the Moore Theatre tonight reading from his new book, Windy City: A Novel of Politics. It's a political comedy for which Simon had to come up with names for his 50 fictional Chicago aldermen; his wife named all 50 for him but he's not co-crediting her with the writing. Well, well. This is his second novel; his first is about the making of a teenage......

What are you supposed to say about a play that bored you to tears but isn't exactly bad? This was the question we were mulling over last night after seeing Kevin Kling's How? How? Why? Why? Why? at the Seattle Rep. Kling is best known as an NPR contributor, which explains the audience's lustful appreciation of the show; How? How? Why? Why? Why? is basically an amalgam of This American Life and Prairie Home Companion,......

FILM: If you see only one documentary about fonts this year, make it Helvetica. New York taxi numbers are also in Helvetica. The font is on IRS tax forms, U.S. mailboxes, and ConEd trucks. The 50-year-old sans serif font spells out countless logos: Sears. Bloomingdale’s. JCPenney. Crate & Barrel. Target. Fendi. Jeep. Toyota. Energizer. Oral-B. MetLife. Nestlé. Once you realize Helvetica is everywhere, says Hustwit, "you just can’t stop thinking about it." 7:15, 9pm......

Every once in a while at a Town Hall reading, we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we're awake. Is this really true? Did over 150 people just pay $5 to hear a lecture on behavioral economics? Obviously it helps to be interviewed on NPR. Or maybe it was the New Yorker story by Elizabeth Kolbert. Whatever the reason, there are 117 holds (and climbing) on Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational at the Seattle......

If you heard only the NPR news blip on jazz pianist Oscar Peterson's death, you heard that he was "well known for having won many prizes." Not sure what skeleton holiday crew came up with that dismal description. Prizes were hardly the source of Peterson's fame. Musically, Peterson was in a class by himself--never quite a swing player, never quite a bop player. He didn't have a particular style. Art Tatum is known for his......

Jonah Lehrer, editor of Seed Magazine and author of the blog The Frontal Cortex has written a terrific book centered around this thesis: Creative people discovered truths about how our mind works well before scientists did. In the book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Lehrer shows how the work of some famed authors, artists and even cooks anticipated neuroscience discoveries. Here's how he tells it:I actually argue that Proust anticipated some fundamental discoveries in modern neuroscience.......

If you saw the film Once, you know that one day Irishman Glenn Hansard met Czechwoman Marketa Irglova and they made beautiful music together. Actually, there's a whole backstory there. Martha Wainwright opens for them tonight at the Moore. The band/album, The Swell Season, is named after a novel by Czech author Josef Skvorecky who may be better known for his novel, The Engineer of Human Souls, a little Stalin smack from back when people......

The first thing to know about Devra Davis is that she's not speaking from the sidelines: she's director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is an environmental health expert, professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. So when she said that the war on cancer has been almost......

Whether you're a fan of melodic noise-rock (not always a contradiction in terms) or just never got over a childhood obsession with dinosaurs, Pterodactyl is the band for you--especially if you like post-rock that doesn't take itself too seriously. They'll be playing at the Sunset tonight with two awesomely named bands we know absolutely nothing about: Nudity and Same Sex Dictator. What we do know is that Pterodactyl has put out a well-reviewed debut......

Last night at the Showbox, we were reminded of something Gino Srdjan Yevdjevic said in an interview with us last year: we don't remember the quote entirely, but it was something to the effect of characterizing "world music" as "shit." Not the music or the musicians, per se, but rather the genre, a peculiarly American way of pigeon-holing and marketing foreign music. Gino understood the process only too well: back in the 1980s, he......

--By a--if you can believe this--unanimous vote of the Seattle School Board, Maria Goodloe-Johnson is the new superintendent. --You already couldn't listen to Don Imus in Seattle, but now it's a nationwide thing. --The hiker who died in a fall at Baker Lake this week was also a rocker. --Mariners vs. Boston postponed due to this. --According to the P-I, Seattle has other blogs. --Local boy Luke Burbank on his new, as-yet-untitled NPR show. --How......

Monday FANTASTIC FICTION SALON: Novelist, nonfiction author, and short story writer Terry Bisson has swept every honor in the science fiction field as well as France's Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. He joins Hugo House's Writing Fantastic Fiction workshop series, where he will teach "Who Likes Short Shorts? We Like Short Shorts!" 7pm // Hugo House // $4 donation ARTS & LECTURES POETRY SERIES: "Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty." That's......

This just in: 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. In the Leo......

Dorkbot, we've missed you. If our attendance record for the monthly technology and art event has been spotty at best recently --we've only been to one meeting since it lost the CoCA digs-- it's not because of the scheduled themes. They've all been awesome: Multimedia Performance at the Abbey, Innovation in Games back at CoCA, remote aerial photography at CHAC (actually we did get to that one)... New curator whatshisname (can't find it on the......

Jesse Thorn, member of sketch comedy group Prank the Dean, produces his public radio show from his own living room in Los Angeles. At first, Seattlest thought that was code for "I am unemployed and play a lot of XBox" but it turns out he actually does have a radio show (this is still ambiguous on the "unemployed" detail), and even more to the point: it is very good. For many, even those of us......

Our actual drive time won't change, but it's about to feel shorter. Morning host Deborah Brandt is leaving KUOW in mid-February: At KUOW, Deborah Brandt, who has been the local host for "Morning Edition" for nine years, is departing in mid-February. Derek Wang, who had been weekend host, will succeed Brandt. Wang, in turn, will be replaced by Jamala Henderson. Excuse us while we reconsider our skepticism about karma. The mighty John Moe may be......

KARAOKE: Wednesday night is always karaoke night at the Little Red Hen, an outpost of country music that's inexplicably smack dab in the middle of Volvo-driving, NPR-listening, holiday-tree-owning Green Lake. The crowd veers toward the early-20s spectrum, so if you need a break from parties where people discuss mortgages, the new Whole Foods, and their fucking jobs, this is the place to go. Tip: Bring cash so you can buy beer from the guy with......

Since there's a pretty heavy overlap between the set of people who read this site and the set of people who listen to KUOW, we're going to guess that most of you already heard of Conservatize Me by KUOW's John Moe, despite our inexcusable failure to review this entertaining, thought-provoking book. For those who haven't, profuse apologies. The #1 thing we enjoyed about this book is that it's the first we've read of this genre......

Here's to the ice melting away because there are some good shows this week. Tuesday 28th >>> Cat Power at the Showbox. Chan Marshall plays the piano and sings. Our heart breaks. That's just how it is. She's on NPR, too. *mp3: The Greatest 8pm doors; tickets $30 at the door. >>> The Lemonheads at The Crocodile. Evan Dando's spent the last few years focusing on drugs solo work, but now he's brought back......

Has Seattlest mentioned that we are in love with Sufjan Stevens? Yes, we love him, but it's totally not in a sexual way. Though we certainly appreciate his boyish good looks (and nicely toned arms), for us to touch someone with such wide-eyed childlike wonder would surely make us a pedophile. More than anything, we'd love to hold him close to our bosom, thereby protecting him from the cold, cruel world. Still, when a......

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......

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. Torontoist does their first post in franglais, gets ready......

Tomorrow morning, a local boy's going to try to make toothpaste confiscation funny: One of the few shows produced by NPR that actually achieves wit on a regular basis, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me, is gonna be guest-hosted by a Seattleite for the next three weeks. As our kids slouch back to school weighed down with our expectations for their futures, it might lighten their loads to hear a little about Luke Burbank, Nathan......

Vernor Vinge (rhymes with windy) wound up the Clarion West summer reading program last Tuesday. Vinge is the author of several award-winning science fiction novels (including the SF mystery Marooned in Realtime recently featured in local library webcomic Unshelved). Vinge read from his latest novel, Rainbow's End. A near-future work set around 2025, it's a departure from his far-future space opera novels A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon The Deep, but a......

Her-own-drum majorette and alt-boy dream date Neko Case was interviewed on NPR's World Cafe today. The latest chapter in the singer's story is a solo album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which serves as one of those rare pleasurable paradoxes: offbeat but faithful to the classics, artsy but accessible, emotional while remaining intriguingly playful. We don't think it's airing on KUOW -- NPR's website says it airs Sundays from 7-8 pm, but KUOW's weekly schedule......

Seattlest loves John Moe, so we figured it was high time we interviewed him. Don't know Moe? He's the voice behind KUOW's The Works, Power of Voice (sometimes), and amusing weather updates. He's also a frequent contributor to McSweeney's, a blogger, and an author with a book to promote. How did your career path lead you to KUOW? Have you always wanted to be a disembodied radio voice, or did you stumble across the......