We remember 1998 rather well. We were living in Buffalo, NY, smoking a lot of the ganja, playing a lot of the folk music, and occasionally going to class to discuss contemporary literature. Good times. A year later, we would move to Portland and, eventually (by way of New York, New Orleans and Orlando), make our way to Seattle to live happily ever after. We'd never really thought about Seattle much, but MTV's The Real......

The script to Birdie Blue is the sort that, if there was any justice in this world, would have been unceremoniously trashed by every producer whose desk it crossed. Unfortunately, this being the real world and all, this awful script has been produced off-Broadway and in regional theatres all across the country, despite the fact it's guilty of every terrible conceit and device you could associate with the modern theatre. Nothing would have made us......

Adrian Tomine started making comics in his teens when he created Optic Nerve. In it, he tells stories about people who tend to be searching for answers to questions they seem to think everyone else already knows. After a few years putting out Optic Nerve on his own, it was picked up by publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Tomine is coming to Seattle to promote his first full-length graphic novel Shortcomings. Seattlest used it as......

The first thing Mike Hargrove did after quitting the Mariners? He followed Alan Jackson's advice and bought a Ford truck. Jim Moore of the P-I talked to Hargrove's car salesperson:Jerry Korum of Korum Ford in Puyallup read that the Hargroves always said when they retired, they would get a red truck, call it "Retired Red," load up their belongings and drive off into the sunset. Korum called the Mariners and told them he had a......

Since Monday, Seattle's Parks Department has hired buskers such as Hickman to play from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays through September at Pioneer Square and four other parks downtown: Freeway Park, Waterfront Park by the Seattle Aquarium, Westlake Park and Hing Hay Park. Each busker gets paid $30 to play at a park during those hours. The buskers are an expansion of the city's effort during the past two summers to change the......

Monday CALL 911! CALL 911!: Political and economic commentator and White House strategist during the Nixon administration, Kevin Phillips talks about his book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Phillips traces the set of related causes that caused the downfall of historical world powers. That same combination of ills he says -- global over-reach, militant religion, resource problems, and ballooning debt -- is......

Last year, at 22, cellist Joshua Roman became the youngest principal player in Seattle Symphony history. What did you accomplish when you were 22? Yeah, we thought so. Now 23, Roman makes his Seattle solo debut at Town Hall Friday night [tickets], playing JS Bach's 6th Suite, modern composer Gyorgy Ligeti's solo Sonata, and the "daunting and virtuosic" solo Sonata, Op. 8 by Zoltan Kodaly. Your bio says you've played cello with some rock bands--anyone......

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all. Phillyist paid tribute to her this week with a heartfelt letter to her and an obituary. And now, the awkward......

If you want to read the many reasons why the Rafael Soriano for Horacio Ramirez deal sucks, USS Mariner (humorlessly) and Lookout Landing (hilariously--check the poll) can satisfy you. We've got a different take. Yes, Rafael Soriano is a better pitcher than Horacio Ramirez. If he were a stock, or stock, or a stock car, you'd be idiotic to trade him for Ramirez.. But. The Mariners need starting pitching. Without Ramirez, they have two--TWO--for sure......

Seattle needs real world, technology-focused get togethers. Desperately. Microsoft does some things and so do some of the other larger shops in town but they tend not to be general attendance-type events. There's Mindcamp. There's the Penny Arcade thing, sort of. There might be a few others we're not thinking of right now, but come on, we feel like we should be able to name a dozen or so events. Which is why we were......

When we heard about the Lewis County central services director who oversaw the installation of mobile computers with instant message clients in police cruisers and then used the system to make sexy time with a dozen different cops we thought the resulting IM logs would make for fascinating reading. Wrong. Not only is it hideously embarrassing, it's boring as hell and the backwards reading PDFs are awkward to read. There are a bunch of affairs......

Last night on a tip from Seattlest James we watched some of CSI:NY to see how they portrayed a Seattle business that was said to be featured. That's right, Seattlest watches network television because of the product placement, not despite it. What we weren't prepared for was the prominent placement of that kid from Terminator 2 (or, more charitably, Pecker) who turned out to the be the brutally murderous weirdo clue-leaving dude who Gary Sinise......

Man, is there a LOT of Bumbershoot stuff on Seattlest right now. If you're anything like Editor Dan you're hoping for a break in the Bumber action; a contributor's recounting of a trip to Lake Chelan, a reaction to a dunderheaded Seattle Times editorial, or even some lame PR survey naming Seattle 16th Most Fashionable City West of the Rockies. Anything! Well, you can hope for something different, but your hopes will be dashed because......

Last night, Seattlest was a cliché. We sat and sobbed through the entire Seattle Opera production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Strauss's music is lush, lush, lush, and the SO orchestra played it masterfully under the sure hand of conductor Asher Fisch. The music seems to be Richard's homage to the other Strauss, Johann Jr., as it is full of rich Viennese waltzes. The music alone is swoon-worthy, but when combined with the text,......

-Beating someone's ass is no longer good enough in Puyallup. Now if you don't get video of it and post it on the web it never happened. -A group of well-off and well-intentioned conservationists bought a mountain in the San Juans to protect it from development. -The city wants you to go vote on the crappiest roads in Seattle. -Violent crime in the city is up. Rapes are declining. Capitol Hill Seattle Blog breaks......

Interleauge play begins again this weekend. In baseball stadiums all over the West geographical rivals will stare each other down: Oakland vs. San Francisco, Houston vs. Texas, Los Angeles of Los Angeles vs. Los Angeles of Anaheim, and Seattle vs. San Diego. Yeah, we know, the Padres again. While everyone else in the AL West will celebrate a weekend of, "We're neighbors so I hate you," we will end up dancing with the only girl......

NEW is history, say the policy pundits at Cascadia Scorecard. Call us the Sightline Institute instead. (Someone's been busy in the art department turning wonky into wowzers! Ha ha! No, seriously, the site looks hot.) We mention them because of this recent, wonktacular post -- in which they spend a good deal of time talking about Alaskan Way Viaduct-less traffic -- and argue, "Why spend billions of dollars to fix a problem that that city's......

but did you know Cornel West busts some rhymes? Back in the day, we turned to books for West’s philosophizing. But now we can just download it, in hip-hop form. What a difference a decade makes! Even though we didn’t actually read every single thing on the syllabus (and got our cultural studies degree anyway —suckers!) we did spend some QT with CW. "Race Matters," my brothers and sisters. But does West matter anymore? Apparently,......

Seattlest had gotten way too accustomed to festival life. Seeing several films a day, taking the occasional break to eat and walk around Main Street, collecting scads of free stuff, sticking around to hear a director speak about his work...it all became the norm. Sadly, it's back to the real world. Thursday was our last day at Sundance. Even though we were downright exhausted, what with all the movies at midnight followed by early AM......

Seattlest debated on whether to write this post at all. We don't want to come across as negative (not that that slows us down at all in the real world). Never mind those reservations however. Despite the fact that the exhibit itself is winding down for us, we feel its our duty to let our thoughts be known. Our words may come too late for Seattle, but maybe it can help out our friends in......

Once upon a 1998 the Real World was filmed in Seattle and the cast lived on one of the piers down by Myrtle Edwards. They were probably going for a houseboat feel but couldn't find or build anything large enough to contain the cast along with the cameras and equipment it takes to make the World Real. It probably worked in favor of the show because whenever you're trying to brainwash someone it's best to......

Thirty-five journos and Guinness officials (plus two air crews) are loaded into a Boeing 777 that began an attempt at the record books this morning. The flight is trying for the record for the longest continuous commercial flight and will be in the air for nearly twenty three hours as it circles the globe from Hong Kong to London. This sounds to Seattlest like the set-up to a hot new reality TV show more than......

As previously alluded to, Seattlest is unabashed in our love for television. We tend to gravitate toward the good stuff, but we are by no means too highbrow to watch reality TV. Case(s) in point: the gloriously addictive trainwrecks known as Surreal Life 5 and Being Bobby Brown. For us, the viewing of such apocalypse-heralding fare is merely a spectator sport; that is to say, we've got no aspirations to be the castmember who actively......

We get it. You're from California, right? Moved here in the early nineties with the other grunge babies? Or maybe even a few years later with the hundreds of other like-minded hipsters? Level with us: you were part of the dot-com boom, weren't you? And you stayed even after the bottom fell out? Maybe you were here earlier, even? Circa Sub Pop so you and your garage band could be the Next Big Thing?......