Seattle-based Mars Hill church is expanding. Pastor Mark Driscoll's style is modern, and appealing to the irreligious, but new converts might be buying in to more than they bargained for. more ›

Don't call them fair-weather churchgoers--these masses stood in rain and wind to get their Easter service on. more ›

What other church in our area besides Mars Hill (or, perhaps, The Stranger) could possibly have attracted the attention of a national television show looking to talk about Satan? This Friday, ABC's 'Nightline' will film a half-hour segment at Mars Hill, of course. more ›

Walking down Broadway, we smiled at the thought of these boots as evidence of some Raptured soul, but then wondered if, really, a pair of boots here and there is all we might see anyway. Odds seem pretty good. more ›

CACOPHONY: British extreme metal band Cradle of Filth, Norwegian black metal group Satyricon, and Greek death metal band Septic Flesh will converge upon the Showbox at the Market tonight for a riotous, maybe-possibly Satanic, soul-chillingly shockerrific celebration of the dark side this evening. Wear your cutest black leather/nose chain combo and hit up that mess; don't forget your ear plugs. more ›

Did any of our readers catch Mars Hill Church's feature on Nightline last night? ABC ran their three page 'summary' of the feature online yesterday with the beautiful headline, "Pastor Dude's Mega-Church Draws Crowds." (It's almost as good as the New York Times' Driscoll headline, "Who Would Jesus Smack Down?") We're wondering when the program will be online so we can catch the visuals. West Seattle Blog tweeted overnight that their site received a "miniblitz" of folks who had, presumably, seen the program and were googling for more info about Driscoll and homosexuality--a subject which didn't figure prominently in ABC's write-up. We love us some generous national media attention, don't we, Mars Hill? more ›

PILLOW TALK: Almost no one we know gets a terrific night's sleep these days. Either it's restlessness or insomnia or neighbors, but it's tricky to get sleep to shroud you in his purple cloak. Dr. Catherine Darley, a naturopathic doctor from The Institute of Naturopathic Sleep Medicine has put together a Sleep 101 seminar (seminars do put us to sleep!) on what normal sleep is, and what can go wrong: sleep disordered breathing (and its effects on the cardiovascular system), insomnia, et al. And she'll talk about how sleep deprivation affects you, and how a sleep disorder can increase obesity. more ›

Part of the Capitol's holiday display, an "atheistic billboard" from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that caught the eagle eye of Bill O'Reilly and caused Gregoire some embarrassment on national television, was filched and delivered to a radio station here in Seattle this morning. What radio station did the thief deem worthy to possess said billboard? KMPS, naturally: 94.1, the country station. Yeeeehaw, let the games begin! more ›

A couple Seattlest haters made it to the Guild 45th last week for a preview screening of Religulous (starting its run this Friday at the Neptune). This is definitely worth checking out, despite the weak moments, like when Maher asks some religious guy, "If heaven's so great, why don't you just kill yourself now?" Lame and inane! Organized religion really is comedy gold, like Maher says, but it would be a hell of a lot funnier without his condescending lectures, smug eye-rolling, and the ten-minute-long montage of nuclear explosions (cue the voice of Mr. Mackey: "Nuclear war's bad, mmkay?"). more ›

Seattlest's Ronald is in Italy, sending back missives on what's notable for the rest of us who lost any hope of travel--and early retirement--when the market went south yesterday. more ›

Katelyn: I want you all to know that I take this issue very seriously, and as such I will be quoting all of you in my story. more ›

Have you been just aching to hit the open sea in style? more ›

In January of this year, the Weekly's Brian J. Barr described local trio the Cave Singers as "an updated version of the Anthology of American Folk Music. Not the graduate-student, learned interpretations of folk music circa 1962, but folk music approached by way of punk rock. It's sparse, melodic, and simultaneously creepy and alluring, like the widow mourning graveside in Johnny Cash's 'Long Black Veil'." That was enough to get Matador Records interested, who signed the band in May and released their debut album Invitation Songs last month. more ›

We were first turned onto Susan Werner back in our New York days when she played a free show at the World Trade Center. We were broke and all about free things, and we had a nice healthy respect for the sort of music the show sponsor WFUV felt like sharing with the world. We were impressed then by her candid poetics and a particularly lovely tune called "Time Between Trains" that stuck with us quite a while. more ›

Slate asked Dan Savage and six other "sexperts" what, despite their experience, they still don't get about sex. Savage's answer:

What I don't understand is ... gee, how people can be so willfully stupid about sex. Sex came first. Before marriage, there was sex. Before religion, there was sex. Before freakin' humans, there was sex. All human cultures, and all our fanciful religions, were constructed around sex, built to regulate and control sex, sanctify and elevate sex. But so many people want to start with culture or religion before they approach sex, as if the former can teach us all we need to know about the latter. Not true. We have to start with sex. I'm not arguing that we should do away with all regulations or controls, or that sex shouldn't be sanctified or elevated. But there are regulations and controls that are idiotic, products of a time when we didn't truly understand human hair growth—or physics or gravity or the movement of the planets—much less human sexuality, and they should be reassessed. I'm thinking of bans on prostitution, bans on same-sex marriage, the promotion of "normal" sexuality (meaning: no kinks), the cultural assumption that the ability to have sex without love is evidence of some sort of mental illness. In these areas, some of our attempts to sanctify and elevate sex run so counter to human nature that they cause nothing buy misery.

Seattle. Portland. Which one's better? You may say: "How can you choose? Each has their good points. It's like asking which religion is better." Guess what, asshole, that Negative Nellie attitude is the reason nobody ever asks for your fucking opinion. Jerk. Yesterday, Jeremy Barker advocated the pro-Seattle position. Now, it's Portland's turn. more ›

Seattle. Portland. Which one's better? You may say: "How can you choose? Each has their good points. It's like asking which religion is better." Guess what, asshole, that Negative Nellie attitude is the reason nobody ever asks for your fucking opinion. Jerk. To the debate! First up, it's a pro-Seattle opinion. more ›

"Neighbors fear development" has become the Seattle equivalent of "dog bites man." Of course neighbors fear development. That's what they do. more ›

On a weekend when Blue Angels were literally drenching Seattle skies with violent peals of thunder, Seattle Opera's new production of Flying Dutchman saturated McCaw Hall with vibrant voices and reverberant horns. more ›

Saturday we were at Smith with friend Wade just before heading down to the Triple Door to hear Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter [MySpace], and we were saying that while we liked the band we didn't get the goosebumps some people do and were curious to hear her live to see if maybe that would give us religion. It was warm and humid and the rain was coming down harder, and we finished up the sweet potato fries and went to go see what would happen. more ›

Christopher Hitchens filled Town Hall to overflowing last night to talk about his new book, . It was nearly standing room only. Seattlest was one of the last people to squeeze into the hall and find a seat. Apparently Seattle has a lot of atheists. Who knew? more ›

Through June 10 // McCaw Hall // Tickets $18-$145 more ›

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 at work in the U.S. today. more ›

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!" more ›

A NADER REMEMBERS: Recalling his childhood in Winstead, Connecticut, former presidential candidate and longtime political and social activist Ralph Nader offers 17 values a child should learn to become a conscientious adult. Not helping elect neo-fascists was, unfortunately, #18. more ›

We hadn't been to the Comet for awhile, but everything looked just the way we left it. Everyone was just as scruffy and working-class-bluesy and it wasn't until we sat down and talked to them later that we discovered they were from Perth, Australia, and worked at Microsoft and Amazon. We holed up in the "Being John Malkovich" lounge upstairs (complete with 3/4-size red door marked "Private") trying to guess who that maddeningly familiar band was they were playing on the stereo (Social Distortion) until Prosser's melancholic indie-alt-country pulled us downstairs. more ›

At the Elizabeth Kolbert talk last December, UW professor Stephen Gardiner echoed Al Gore and Jimmy Carter's sentiment that the looming crisis posed by global warming is a moral predicament more than a political, religious, or scientific one (albeit, it is all of those other things as well, just not as urgently so). Today we read about a joint coalition formed by both evangelical and scientific types aimed at convincing the current administration and congress (and other evangelical and science types) to work together. Legendary biologist and self-proclaimed "scientific humanist," E. O. Wilson was, not surprisingly, one of the signers. We hope more religious leaders step forward (they're supposed to care a smidge about morals, right?), and that scientists don't shy away from working with them to move from arguing to action. more ›

We returned to the homeland over the holidays. Lugged skis and snowboards to the land of 3.2 beer, special garments, and the "Greatest Snow on Earth" only to find they had half the snow base compared to what we have here. Everything seemed backwards. more ›

--The city of Seattle's only skatepark at Seattle Center is scheduled for destruction and will close to the public after today. more ›

Tuesday night, still-rising-from-kitchen-roots icon Rachael Ray was whisked into the University Bookstore to smile her sorta-loony smile, say catchy, vaguely strange stuff (Yum-o!), and sign a bare minimum of 300 books for an endless stream of star-struck fans. more ›