Catherine Trieschmann's Crooked, at Theater Schmeater, is such a singular experience that it's a little difficult to encapsulate the joys to be found while watching it. more ›

We're beyond pleased to announce that we had our minds BLOWN last Friday, with an evening with Sea and Cake and Broken Social Scene at the Paramount. Sea and Cake were great openers, and for the first time in a while we noticed that a strong handful of the people in the crowd were just as excited to see them as they were to see the headliners. more ›

After adjusting to the cheery disposition of the folks who run Vera Project, consisting mostly of under agers, we went downstairs to the stage. more ›

Online media is ready to eat its young, we see. Paul Constant, Glenn Nelson, and Chuck Taylor have reviews in on the new, online-only Seattle P-I and it's mostly thumbs down. Each of them seems to think the move to an online platform was a planned transition, and that there should have been some "reinvention" to wow everyone on Day One. Our sense was that thanks to Hearst's poker skills, no one at the P-I was sure until a few days ago that they even had jobs, let alone what they were. Someone was working on a simple, clean mobile interface, but a site redesign had to be out of the question. more ›

David Pogue Hearts Jeff Bezos is the headline for the Seattle Weekly blog post, which asserts, "it's fair to say that [NYT] personal technology writer David Pogue is now officially in love with Jeff Bezos." Except David Pogue doesn't agree that his review of the Kindle 2.0 is such a wet, sloppy kiss and says so in the comments: "Um, no, it's not. Did you read the same article I wrote? I remember writing something far more mixed. Did you skip over these parts?" Pogue isn't Marshall McLuhan, but other than that, it's pure Annie Hall. What Pogue does conclude is "the new Kindle edges even closer to the ideal of an e-book reader." Edges, not leaps. more ›

Every once in a while, we reward someone who writes in with a long, but comprehensible rant comment by giving them their own post. This, readers, is one of those times. Behold, a guest review by someone who really, really like ArtsWest. more ›

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• WaMu really can't catch a break. The Belltowner and PhinneyWood report that their neighborhood WaMu branches were robbed over the weekend.
• Mid Beacon Hill explores "cheap South End fun," including a place that should be on the hipster street-of-dreams, and the Museum of Communications. Being a tourist in your own city is totally fun, so the idea of being a tourist in your own neighborhood strikes us as completely delightful.
• So that's why we didn't have power on Saturday night in the CD. Of course, since we had no power we couldn't log on to check Central District News for updates, but it's nice to know now.

Normally that scenario doesn't turn out well, but the Old 97s' rabid fan base (an acquaintance we ran into described her boyfriend as wanting to perform fellatio on them all) kicked up the energy in the room something fierce. The second opener, Hayes Carll, had us nervous: with the oompah rhythm, lack of backbeat, and the liberal application of lap steel, there wasn't much "alt" about their take on country. But the Old 97s, led by Rhett Miller, emerged to pound out something that sounded a lot more like good old-fashioned rock-and-roll than anything. And the crowd responded by doing something we rarely see in Seattle clubs: dancing. more ›

The show runs every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. through May 10 at Re-Bar.
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Who knew Dr. Lion was from India? more ›

The Seattle Opera Young Artists performance of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Ravel’s Enchanted Child left audiences satisfied last weekend, delivering two acts full of family humor and ironic tales of greed. more ›

According to our current addiction, the Democratic Convention Watch blog, some less than stellar reporting created confusion over the status of Rep. Jay Inslee's endorsement of Clinton. more ›

magazine claims, "You can't swing a dead cat this time of year without hitting a Top 10 List." Never one to waste a perfectly good dead cat, we decided to take a swing and create a Top Random-Number Shows Seattlest Saw This Year. And now, without any further ado, here's how your favorite bloggers broke down the year: more ›

On Saturday, we took our godson, his mom and his dad to Baby Loves Disco. Since we don't have a kid of our own and don't have any experience with kid-themed events, 17-month-old Eli agreed to let us interview him about the party. more ›

"They should take off their left socks." more ›

co-horts Leon Wieseltier and Dale Peck--they accuse of writing literary criticism that "was wholly negative. And, it eventually became clear, indiscriminately so." more ›

Remember SimCity? Seattlest had some incredible towns built in that game, with commercial and residential districts packed full of shiny, tall towers and trains and street traffic all flowing as effortlessly as rivers. Scroll way over to the left to the edge of the city grid; now that is a healthy industrial district, perfectly bisected by a pollution-eating green belt. The landmarks sprouted everywhere and the money and accolades poured in. Of course, it took many hours to bring the little guys to the pinnacle of urban development, and then, since the game never ends, it took another many hours to tinker the place into slums and ruin, rezoning here, tearing out a transportation hub there, until finally you had to unleash natural disasters upon the land just to keep yourself interested. more ›

The Columbia Journalism Review has our number. It's not actually true that Baby Einstein videos "suck the vocabulary out of your kid's brain." Wea culpa. more ›

What can you say about something like Smokey Joe's Cafe that isn't self-evident from the hype that it's the "Longest Running Musical Review in the History of Broadway(TM)"? Either that does it for you or it doesn't. If you're (relatively) young, bent and jaded you probably won't connect with the graying clap-and-sing-along demographic excited by the highly polished but hammy renditions of popular top 40 songs from their childhood. Our friend Andy who tagged along with us described it as being "like American Idol for old people," and dared us to go dance with the one woman in the audience near the stage who was for a few minutes the only person in the room with the requisite cojones to stand up during the closing rendition of Stand By Me. Luckily the man she was with eventually stood up and clapped along next to her so we didn't have to get out of our seat to meet this dare. more ›

You may have seen the urban density photos that came out earlier this weekend. Sightline linked to the site on Friday. You have to create a profile to log in and see all the pretty/ugly pictures, but since you can fill one of those out with either factual or completely made-up information in under a minute by now, it's worth the effort. more ›

Kurt Vonnegut, up there with Twain and Melville and Kesey as the most original American novelists ever in the history of writing stuff, died tonight. He was 84. He'd been in the hospital since a fall a couple of weeks ago. Attention kids: this is what happens if you chain-smoke for 73 years. more ›

THAT STARBUCKS "I WAS A CHILD SOLDIER" GUY: At twelve, Ishmael Beah found himself fleeing rebels, wandering from village to village. At thirteen, he was a soldier in Sierra Leone, hooked on drugs and capable of things he would never have imagined. Now, rehabilitated and living in the U.S., he tells his story in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, in an attempt to raise awareness of the child soldier phenomenon. more ›

Michael Dirda, in the New York Review of Books:

In contemporary America, as Jonathan Raban reminds us in Surveillance, any quest for anonymity—"to live obscurely" according to the Greek ideal for happiness—has grown increasingly difficult, if not impossible. And it's not only an Orwellian Big Brother who is watching. We track each other. We check out the backgrounds of friends, Saturday-night dates, and business associates; we data-mine and Google-search; when on line we worry about hackers, viruses, and identity theft. Schools and playgrounds are patrolled by guards, while spy cameras observe our children in the hallways and bathrooms. Only those who know the code can unlock the steel gates to our "planned communities." Amazon monitors our taste in books. Our cell phones take pictures and record conversations. People can't walk their dogs now without taking along their Blackberry or wearing their Bluetooth.

Washington State 70, Oral Roberts 54: Oral Roberts was the trendy upset pick--nearly 25% of ESPN users expected Wazzu to Coug it (by comparison, less than 5% had #3-seed Oregon losing)--but our faith in Wazzu didn't waver. Though it was close at halftime, we predicted that Wazzu would play their typical strangling defense to open the second half, and they proved us right, holding O-Rob to one field goal in the first six minutes of period two. The Cougs won going away. Wazzu continued their terrific offensive efficiency, committing only six (!) turnovers. Only Bobby Knight's Texas Tech Red Raiders committed as few on the tourney's first day, which should give you some insight into how good a coach Tony Bennett is. more ›

Well, we're finished with World War Z, which means we'll finally have time to pick up Jonathan Raban's Surveillance and that some lucky souls at the library will move up a notch on the hold list. Surveillance, of course, is the first book in Seattlest's Book Club. If you haven't picked up your copy yet, don't forget to ask for the Seattlest Book Club discount at Santoro's Books in Greenwood and Bailey-Coy Books on... more ›

SEATTLEST BOOK CLUB PICK: For March, we're reading Jonathan Raban's Surveillance, set in a not-so-distant future, when everyone's actions are highly monitored. Get a head start on the conversation by hearing from Raban himself. (We'll know if you went or not.) 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 ›

When you lose 108-87 and the recap writer feels compelled to point out that the game "wasn't nearly as close as the final suggests," something has gone very wrong. more ›

The title is a little pun about the Dyson sphere, Freeman Dyson's main claim to fame and the source of his name-check in Star Trek: The Next Generation. more ›

--Seattle Podcasting Network infiltrated Fisher Communications on election night. more ›