The Frames have been an influential rock band for a very long time, as a matter of fact this is the 20th year that the band has been together. They're based out of Dublin, Ireland and so tend to be overshadowed by their musical big brother U2. They've made a solid name for themselves in Europe as well as North America despite that fact. However, you may not have heard The Frames so much as you've heard Glen Hansard or perhaps his side project The Swell Season. Glen was one of two main characters (but basically playing himself in personality and charm) in the movie Once. It was an independent film that found international fame due to it's heart and beauty both visually and musically; if you haven't seen it, we highly recommend you watch it over the long weekend. The other lead in the film was Marketa Irglova, a singer/songwriter from the Czech Republic (also basically playing herself in personality and charm). Out of that film came an amazing group called The Swell Season. All the music in the film was written and performed by the duo and was so successful they decided to pursue it as a band. After a couple years they decided it was time to move on, and thankfully Glen fell back to working with The Frames (though, most of them were helping out with the backing instrumentation in The Swell Season anyway). more ›

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Last night at Benaroya Hall, author Richard Powers read from a new short story called "Modulation." It was classic Powers; a dense, far-reaching, and meticulously vivid tale of a computer virus that infects music player devices via filesharing sites. He weaves the story around four different individuals: a Japanese hacker recently released from prison and now employed by the RIAA to huntdown filesharers, a Brazilian journalist researching soldiers in Iraq who blast ear-crunching music from their vehicles when they go out on missions, a forlorn music scholar on the eve of his retirement from a mid-western University, and a young laptop battler who agonizes over keeping track of the ever-multiplying sub-genres of electronic music and enthralls with his live performances of entirely computerized music that rely heavily on audio samples from early-80s video games. more ›

As a brain-dead "undecided," we were naturally curious when we heard the Implicit Association Test people had set up a Presidential Candidates Test. It takes about 10 minutes, and purports to measure your neurological affinity for Clinton, Obama, Huckabee, and McCain (or little pictures of them). more ›

Riding the bus to work the other day, our heart skipped a beat when we noticed signs taped to the window heralding the arrival of new spring schedules (they're blue!). Once we'd calmed down, we realized how silly it is to get excited over the prospect of a slight change to our bus schedule. It was the kind of self-deprecating experience we figured would make a good lede for a post informing you, gentle reader, of the coming changes. more ›

Among the best movies we've seen at this year's festival is Sugar crafted with care by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the filmmaking team responsible for Half Nelson. The title refers to the nickname of our protagonist Miguel, a young Dominican hoping to make it big in baseball. When we first meet the twenty-year-old pitching dynamo, he's about to leave his homeland for a minor league farm team in small-town Iowa. Of course, he barely speaks a lick of English, and there's bound to be players better than him along the way. more ›

We may have the lowest crime rate in 40 years, but it sure doesn't feel like it. more ›

Absurdistan is an allegorically rich comedy care of witty German director Veit Helmer and filmed in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the tiny titular land, a war of the sexes break out when the local aqueduct ceases to work, and the men are too lazy to fix it. The women declare a strike--no water, no sex--and two childhood sweethearts find themselves feuding instead of consummating their long-standing love. Looks like it's up to the kids to fix the water pipe and get everybody laid. Helmer directs this charming, mostly dialogue-free little film with childlike wonder, with shades of Jeunet in his use of fanciful contraptions, like a gondola on pulleys flying over the town. more ›

Once upon a time in a land not so far, far away, our head exploded. more ›

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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. more ›

We have no idea what their customer service is like, because we long ago left them for WSECU and USAA. But a nightmarish account by one customer, Krissy, manages to make having a barcode stapled to your head seem like a relatively pleasant experience. Her purse was stolen in October, she contacted WaMu to safeguard her accounts -- and she's still dealing with multiple screwups on their end, three months later.:

I wrote my letter, faxed it and mailed it, and naturally, heard nothing. Then on December 31st, I signed online to check up on things. And that very day, there was a whopping credit-reversal in my late checking account, putting it into the negative for hundreds of dollars. I. Was. PISSED. No scratch that -- I *am* pissed, as here I sit on January 9th, 2008 and STILL haven't gotten my credit back -- despite calling Risk Operations and being told "Oh how funny! We received your letter the same day as the credit reversal. Sorry 'bout that. But don't worry, once they process everything they should reissue the credit to the account."

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. more ›

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Siren's Echo, of Oldominion, is sassy, tough hiphop. One of the MCs, Toni Hill, has a rich and powerful singing voice, complete with control and range. Her deep, clear notes got the crowd excited, which is no small feat for an opener. These ladies are some of the first female MCs Seattlest has been able to truly enjoy live (not that we've seen many), and we're looking forward to hearing more from Toni and Syndel. Actually, we enjoyed Siren's Echo more than the next group, Unexpected Arrival, especially since Neema's voice gave out a couple of songs into his set. He hoarsely hollered through the last few tracks, which wasn't pleasant to listen to and didn't garner him many new fans; however, most of his a capella rhyming showed skill and certainly also showed Neema's drive to succeed. The energy definitely dipped during the set, from our perspective on the crowd. We wonder what Neema sounds like live when he's not all raspy and dry. more ›

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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. more ›

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Cascadia's new cocktail menu (now that we've dispensed with Big City interlopers) includes a classic called Satan's Whiskers, a combination of gin (high-end Plymouth, ideally), sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, orange juice, Grand Marnier and (very important) orange bitters. All ingredients we're very fond of, so let's go for it. more ›

You begin to see why a girlfriend might leave him. "And how in the world did you come / to be such a lazy love?" he sings with Cat Stevens' flair for passing judgment, or pleads for time with a barbed hook on the line: " Maybe if you slowed down for me / I could see you're only telling / lies, lies, lies." more ›

When we sat down to do our endorsements we reached a disturbing conclusion. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for anyone. more ›

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. more ›

With the lights dimmed enough to put you at ease, Twisted Cork in downtown Bellevue is the perfect after-work wine bar. Once inside, you are greeted by some of the friendliest hosts in town. If a table is not open, you may relax at the cobblestone fountain bench and peruse a wine menu of more than 100 wines by bottle and glass. more ›

The South Lake Union Streetcar will begin an eight-week test period soon, according to the Seattle Transit Blog. more ›

Hello all-- more ›

this ain't. more ›

Foul weather holds off until Sunday afternoon, leaving plenty of time under cool gray skies for Seattlest & friends to launch a Flexcar and sail out to the farm. Once we get past Redmond, the familiar trappings fall off: shopping malls, housing developments, the last Whole Foods, the last gas station & mini-mart. more ›

Last night's Arcade Fire show was rife with problems. Not with the Arcade Fire, Lord knows they can do no wrong, but with the opening bands, and most of all, with the venue. Somehow, even though the scheduled time for the show was 7:30pm, the time published everywhere---on the Ticketmaster site, in ads for the show, in UW emails, on the goddamn tickets---doors actually opened at 6:30pm and the Gossip started playing right around 7. This would explain why no one was there for their set. more ›

About three lives ago, when we were living in a scientific research station in Ecuador, we watched The Postman (Il Postino) with a group of Westerners. After the movie, which is one of our favorites, we were sitting there, wondering why the room had suddenly gotten all dusty, when a privileged teenage British hipster/tourist named Aelys (pronounced like Alice, but her parents preferred the Welsh spelling) announced that she hadn't liked the movie because it was too slow. Charlie's Angels 2, she liked, but not this. more ›

Once upon a time Seattlest considered North Aurora to be a shithole, to be avoided at all costs. But, eventually, we had to go to Home Depot and a used car lot, and that car rack store, and (doh) the unemployment office, and the movie theater, and IHOP and the European deli and Computer Stop and Chubby & Tubby (so far not Stupid Prices, though) and Kmart, Burgermaster, the cemetery and a hundred other tiny places the memories of which have congealed into one big impression of Aurora Avenue North. Now we consider it one of the most organic, vibrant and honest places in the city. more ›