Results tagged “oklahoma”

Howard Schultz says no more layoffs at Starbucks, and if you believe that we'd love to show you our oceanfront property in Oklahoma. Life continues to be unfair: Microsoft's permatemps are protesting a 10 percent pay cut while former president Bush is charging $150,000 per speech but the sun will come out tomorrow next year: Sleepless in Seattle may be adapted for the Broadway stage, exposing a whole new generation to dated stereotypes of this city. Can't wait.

Oklahoma business man and Thunder co-owner Aubrey McClendon has lost close to two billion dollars since last summer. The one-time funder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is being forced to sell his prized wine collection to make money. He occasionally he writes for Seattlest on the subject of technology.

It seemed like every other person we passed had a maroon "Oklahoma" t-shirt tucked into their shorts and a smug air about their head region when we were walking around campus before the UW game on Saturday. By our reckoning (UCLA beat Tennessee, BYU beat UCLA, Washington was a terrible call away from taking BYU to overtime) OU were maybe going to get more of a game than they expected. And then they played the game and, it hardly seems possible, the smugness intensified around the heads of the Oklahoma faithful. Campus still looks beautiful, though. Sprizee took this shot of the sun setting on it and left it in the Seattle Flickr Pool for our enjoyment.

Seattlest Brad has zero inclination to pursue a career as a music reviewer. But because our editor is so nice when she's arm-twisty, here goes:

Clinton is up by a smidge in Texas, it's neck and neck in Ohio, and Rush Limbaugh fans are going big for Hillary.

Wally Szczerbiak, who is on "our list" for single handily knocking UDub out of the 1999 NCAA Tournament and daring to jaw with Gary Payton, is heading out of town.

Tonight the Seattle Symphony gives you Dvořák's "New World" Symphony, which we love, but then so does everyone else so it's not a remarkable that we do. It's a "locals-only" evening, with Gerard Schwarz at the podium, and the Symphony's ace up its sleeve, horn-slinger John Cerminaro. Cerminaro can make that brass curtsy and serve tea if he wants. Why one time in Oklahoma...but we digress.

For the past few years, Aqueduct has been one of the most exciting bands puttering around the Seattle scene. More or less a one-man outfit by Oklahoma-transplant David Terry, supported in his endeavor by an ever-changing crew of musicians, Aqueduct delivers a catchy mix of rock with a pop sensibility (read: great hooks). Aqueduct's 2005 album , and spent late 2007 touring the US with Apples in Stereo.

The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner points out a head-exploding irony in the Sonics' legal case to escape their Key Arena lease.

Schultz is back! In the year since Uncle Howie stepped aside from his day job (running Starbucks) to spend time on sexy stuff like movies and music and yogurt, the company's stock price dropped by half. Not good for an outfit that claims to be the world's most popular retailer. Worse, customers started complaining.

Stealing Seattle's basketball team apparently isn't keeping Sonics owner Aubrey McClendon busy, so he's found another community to screw over: tiny Saugatuck, Michigan.

By now, we've learned not to doubt Husky basketball coach Lorenzo Romar. But every once in a while, some small neuron of unease activates inside our brain, like tonight, against Long Beach State, when Romar had his team playing zone defense for most of the second half while the 49ers got closer and closer and closer. It wasn't so much that LBS was scoring in bunches against the zone, but rather that when the Huskies...

We'd held out hope that, seeing as how the Oklahoma City-based owners of the Sonics flat out admitted they never intended to keep them here, that NBA commissioner David Stern would use his influence to throw the suckers out and find local ownership in Seattle.

Is there any women's sports franchise that's tied to a men's sports franchise in Seattle that has yet to get screwed over by the guys? The Storm--the WNBA contingent of the Super Sonics, and arguably the most passionately-followed team in the city--are dangling on a finer thread than the Sonics themselves under owners who want nothing more than to move the whole franchise to Oklahoma City.

Last night, in the face of too-cold-too-soon autumn weather, we corralled our friend (and friend of the Slog) Carollani into her badass newish car and headed over to the 5th Avenue Theater for the official opening night of --a Broadway-bound musical playing now through Sept. 30.

Mike Hargrove's decided to resume his managerial career. For a semi-pro team. In Kansas. Called the "BeeJays."

Leavenworth, "Washington's Bavarian Village", is a little burgh situated in the Cascades on the other side of Stevens Pass. It lies just beyond the border between the West Side and the other state of Washington. It was originally a railroad stop and hub for the Great Northern Railway.

Save our Sonics & Storm appealed to Seattle pride in a letter to supporters today.

In case you have not seen it Sonics and Storm fans have been "called out" in the Oklahoma City Newspaper owned by the Bennett family.

Continue reading "Sonics & Storm Savers Say: "Seattle, You've Been Called Out""

Sonics minority owner Aubrey McClendon confirms what we all suspected from the start. In an interview with the Oklahoma City Journal Record, he says:

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Save Our Sonics and Citizens For More Important Things' Chris Van Dyk are working together to keep NBA basketball in the city…until 2010.

Clay Bennett and Greg Nickels talked today, and the upshot is that--a year and a day after buying the team, and only a few months after saying he was moving--Bennett wants to reopen talks about staying in Key Arena. So says Jim Brunner of the Seattle Times.

When he named Sam Presti the Sonics' new GM yesterday, owner Clay Bennett also stripped Lenny Wilkens of the title of President and retitled him Vice-Chairman. A source told the Tacoma News Tribune Bennett wanted "to put Lenny out to pasture." Ranching metaphors: just one of the many joys of having your team owned by guys from Oklahoma City.

From Wilkens’ unsavory handling of the announcement of his position of president to his perceived mismanagement of the hiring of a general manager and coach, Bennett was said to be so upset with Wilkens the divide was irreversible.

Continue reading "Lenny Wilkens Out as Sonics' President, Out as Sonics' Announcer, Barely Escapes Glue Factory"

Somehow, we don't expect many people to be reading Seattlest this afternoon (and honestly, if you are right now, please stop and run outside while you can). We'll use the gorgeous weather as a touchpoint for our brief initial comments on Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: Thank god we don't live in the Midwest. That aside, so far we're enthralled with Egan's ability to craft historical figures into living, breathing characters with better depth than we find in a great deal of fiction. He's working a small bit of Lost magic on us, introducing a range of characters all drawn into small-town Dalhart--a once unpopulated stretch of the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle that experienced a sudden boom thanks to deceit and false promises from greedy land developers and a federal government desperate to settle what had been known forever as "No Man's Land."

As we mentioned the other day, Seattlest was very excited for the PNB production of Carmina Burana, but we left a bit perplexed and frustrated. To start, we enjoyed Mark Morris' Pacific, a light and dreamy piece that found our thoughts wandering in a pleasant way about halfway through, befitting of a day spent listening to the ocean advance and retreat while pretending to read a book. It was a short and "limited" (to borrow from Seattlest Michael's summation) composition, but the perfect exemplar of Morris' work: seamless integration of ballet's technique and precision with the freedom and rule-free whimsy of modern dance. We love that he breaks ballet traditions by having group pieces with three men and one woman, all performing the same choreography (sure, later in Carmina Burana we have a woman with three men but stereotypically she's a harpy and they are pining for her), and the costumes were simple and perfectly suited to the choreography.

Really the only thing worth remembering from last night's game was an amazing swing by Ichiro. In the 4th inning, Harden threw him a nasty splitter that fooled him. But he changed his swing mid-stroke, adjusted his bat downward, and reached the ball about a foot off the ground. And he didn't just make contact, which would've been an amazing feat in itself--he lined the ball into centerfield.

The Sonics will play in their possible future home town tonight when they face the Oklahoma City/New Orleans Hornets in the brand new Ford Center.

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,”...

MUSIC: We'd never heard of any of these bands before, but we're pretty sure the bill of Crap Happy Hookers, Eight Hour Disease [mp3] and Wack Job [mp3] at the Central tonight will, at the very least, be loud. It's part of the Central's weekly "Punks and Pints" series.

Who wrote this script? Underdog Boise State gives up 15 points in about ten seconds to fall behind by a touchdown, ties Oklahoma with seven seconds left on a hook and ladder play, gets a TD in overtime on a halfback pass, then goes for the win with a two-point conversion and gets it on a Statue of Liberty play. As our roommate observed, Boise State's coach brings his testicles to the game in two duffel bags. Then, after the game, star running back Ian Johnson asks his girlfriend, a Boise State cheerleader, to marry him (she said yes).

--Go for it, dude.