As we mentioned last week, Fremont's Nectar Lounge hosted a two-night One Be Lo extravaganza this weekend, promising Grayskul, DV-One, and a producer's showcase. It was the first show we've ever attended at Nectar, a classy, high-tech venue with a balcony level full of unbalanced tables, votive candles, and red pepper flake shakers. Next time we're at Nectar, we want some of that pizza we saw around. Hiphop and pizza... is there a combination more......

This weekend Mr. and Mrs. Seattlest drove out to North Bend to cut a Christmas tree down and haul it back to Seattle. No, we didn't hike up Si with an ax and harvest a sapling, although that does sound fun. There's a tree farm out there by the name of Crown Tree Farm. It was our first time getting a tree from anywhere other than those road-side dealies or the enclosures that pop......

All mass transit is not created equal; here in Seattle, a city with buses and, well, nothing else, unless you're specifically talking with someone about monorail or lightrail or streetcars (you know, theoretical mass transit), when you're talking about supporting mass transit, you're talking about supporting buses. And buses suck. Last week, Erica C. Barnett had a column in The Stranger that spoke to our experience riding the bus to and from work daily: It's......

Kim is off to see Susan Werner at the Triple Door Sunday night. This weekend is a toss up for Matt between going down to Portland for the final days of the Body World 3 show at OMSI or heading out west to the The 26th Annual West Coast Oyster Shucking Championship and Washington State Seafood Festival. As previously noted, Seth is going to take The Grand Tour with George Jones at the Paramount. Friday,......

It's not Yeats's centre that cannot hold, it's the right wing. For some time now, to quote The Second Coming,The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The Dems betray us with wimpishness while the radio rethugs rush to attack phony soldiers. Further signs of unraveling: GOP house organ WSJ discovers that business interests no longer trust the GOP. Smart, those corporate business guys. Like all bullies, they can......

Biodiesel drivers rejoice! There's a new place to fill your French-fry-smelling tanks thanks to Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks grand opening of a new, and may we say much more accessible, location, in the Ravenna neighborhood on Friday. When Seattlest dropped by the Espresso Express on N.E. 65th and 15th Ave. N.E. to check out the scene, we were too late for the speeches and celebrations, but did arrive in plenty of time for the yummy......

Slog posted a link to this rumored deal between the Sonics and the Muckleshoot Indians to build an arena in Seattle. Our non-sports friends are wondering if it's true. It's not. Didn't smell right to us (arena deals don't happen overnight--local government has to get involved, and someone would've said something, and, besides, we all know that the owners want to go to OKC) , so we didn't post it and, as it turns out,......

Everyone is jumping on the reunion tour bandwagon these days, and the paleontologists greedy museum directors of the world are not to be left out of the mix. Lucy, the famous (if you prefer science over Hollywood) 3.2-million-year-old fossil, is going on tour too. She's got some contentious bones. The original set of fossils--representing the oldest, most intact human ancestor--has been swept out of Ethiopia, where she was supposed to stay in perpetuity, and is......

Bacon Salt? Seattlest first heard of this a few days ago, but the locally produced vegetarian kosher zero-calorie seasoning salt that tastes just like bacon has been igniting the blogosphere. One of Seattlest's foodie friends let us try some Tuesday night when we were playing trivia. Our response? "Yummy." His response? Extensive cooking notes, America's Test Kitchen-style. Is Bacon Salt as tasty as it sounds? Read on. Overall, Bacon Salt is quite good. It produces......

For those of you just tuning in, yesterday we wrote a little piece about the steam pipe that burst in New York. Apparently it pissed a bunch of people off, and we have to concur that actual true (non-sensationalist) details have been slow to trickle in over here. Everything we've read the last couple of days focuses on a "geyser of steam and debris," which seemed like an overblown fearmongering catchphrase at first, but......

Oh, snap! That should read "The Big Harry and the Potters News This Week." The authors of songs such as "Save Ginny Weasley" and "Gryffindor Rocks" are touring the Northwest, and Friday they end up in Seattle for a performance we hear will be "AMAZING!" Hear more of their indie-HP geek stylings MySpace, then make plans to catch them live. Seriously. A friend of our says they really do rock. July 11th, Wednesday Tacoma Armory......

Ah, the festival. The half-pound Gorge Burger, the ten-dollar beer, the fragrant smell of weed and clove cigarettes carried along by an occasional, much appreciated breeze. And of course, all that music. By the time our feet hit festival ground, Viva Voce were setting up at the Yeti Stage. We got our burger and a beer and settled in for a bit of Seattlest's favorite married rock couple. We hadn't seen Viva Voce live......

Mother Noella Marcellino, who visited Seattle this weekend for the Cheese Festival, knows the secret of life; she's seen it through a microscope. The Cheese Nun, as she's known, started milking cows 30 years ago at a cloistered Benedictine order in Connecticut. A Fulbright Fellowship took her to France to see, touch, smell and taste cheesemaking techniques. Today, having earned a PhD in microbiology, she's considered one of the foremost authorities on the precise details......

When we came across an article today about Google moving some people into Fremont we really wanted it to be into this space--the last green space in Fremont--because...well, who knows. Because then we could pretend that it was Google's fault that there's no grass left in Fremont like we pretend that it's Google's fault that we're bad about responding to email or that we too rarely take the time to smell the grass anyway. Fucking......

Our quest to make it from Renton to Ballard for happy hour was nearly dashed yesterday because some drunken idiot craving attention almost jumped off the Aurora Bridge. It was 4:45 and traffic on 99 North had been light, so things were looking good. As we drove onto the bridge in the right lane, we imagined the earthy, hop-heavy smell of Hale’s lobby. We’d be there by five—one full hour to drink cheap! On the......

There's a classic science fiction short story called The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight that was published in 1955. The narrator of the story walks around a utopia acting like a huge asshole, disrupting lives and smashing up properties. He thinks of himself as the king of the world because everyone around him is too nice--like enlightened and tolerant and kind--to stand up to him. It's a humane and permissive society, completely free......

The Washington Huskies have scored their first points in the Fulmer Cup, an annual competition to see which college football team is the lawbreaking-est. The indispensable, hilarious college football blog Every Day Should Be Saturday started and adjudicates the Fulmer Cup, awarding points for every legal run-in by a team's players, and tallying them at the end of the year. (The cup is named for Tennessee coach Philip Fulmer, whose players may be volunteers, but......

We've heard -- at least 2280 times -- that bacon makes everything better. But seriously: bacon mints? Bacon mints? Archie McPhee's new candy is certainly demented, but is it genius? Each one of these mints tastes like a delicious slice of crispy bacon with just a hint of mint flavor to give it that extra punch! It may sound weird but once you taste it, you'll see that mint and bacon is a match......

Alright Neumo's, what the hell is up with all the incense? We've been in your friendly confines twice this week, and both times the distinct odor of Nag Champa has permeated the air. Now we know that the venue is undergoing renovations. We appreciate the addition of a second bar in the mainroom, and we're reserving judgment on the Bad Juju makeover until it's complete. But constantly burning hippie sticks is not a step......

Rarely will Seattlest agree to drive out of town for anything other than a sunny hike or a day on the slopes. Not with so much to do and so many bands to see right here in Seattle. So when Mrs. Seattlest brought up the idea to drive out to Monroe with a friend to see The Starlings, our initial response was something like, Did you just say Monroe? Really? It's not that we......

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. We picked up the local weekly, which feels smarmily like Seattle's version as so many do (albeit, sadly, the SLC web version makes the Weakly look divine). And what do people......

WEIRD SCIENCE: After we joked around about that Bodies show, we finally made it over there. Highlights: a body shape consisting of only the blood vessel system suspended in the air; diseased brains and lungs; a body stretched out Plastic Man style. Don't go if you have a weak stomach: we like to think we're made of pretty strong stuff but after almost an hour we saw one corpse cross-section too many (the meat......

Local indie comics publisher Fantagraphics Books revealed last week that they'd be opening a brand-new company store in Seattle this Saturday. The new-car-smell storefront shares a space with Georgetown Records at 1201 South Vale Street, which is way, way, down there in the middle of nowhere near Michigan. The store will carry all of Fantagraphics in-print materials and have space for exhibitions. They've still got some empty space on the walls, but it appears......

Today's PI has an article about a new social networking site founded by a couple of ex-Real employees. Shelfari is a place to show off and discuss your favorite books. Founded by former RealNetworks employees Josh Hug and Kevin Beukelman, the three-person company plans today to unveil a Web site that allows people to list book titles, write reviews, recommend books to friends and find like-minded bibliophiles. Shelfari plans to make money by passing leads......

Wednesday, October 4 >>>Central Library, 6:30-8:00pm. If you've been meaning to get a better handle on stem cell research, then... Wait, let's try that again. We'll just let this event speak for its sexy self: "Regeneration Gaps: Promises, Problems and Policies in Stem Cell Research" by Charles E. (Chuck) Murry, M.D., Ph.D. His research focuses on repair of the injured heart. See? You get out of the way, the poetry comes. Free, but you're......

Another copious serving of live tunes (not to mention opportunities to leave your smelly apartment), courtesy of Seattlest. You can thank us later. Tuesday 26th >>> The Presets at Chop Suey. Between The Presets electro-rock and opening acts The Girls and No-Fi Soul Rebellion, this show can't help but to leave you in a sweaty heap by the end of the night. 9pm doors; $8 adv. 21+ >>> DJ Krush at Neumo's. Japan's DJ......

We never claimed to be good at math. Last night our magical tallying gnomes screwed up some addition. Happily, double-checking the stats this morning revealed that while the final scores were, um, creative, the actual 1-2-3 standings are the same. To be fair to the calculation wizards, it was a madhouse at the Old Pequliar last night. 16 teams played trivia -- a record since Seattlest's been hosting. Random stuff we found out: No one......

Call us crazy. Crazy about chicken—especially the organs. We frequently find ourselves at the north end of Pike Place Market, anxious for a stroll through the stands of fruits and vegetables. Oh, check out those perfect plums. The intriguing heirloom tomatoes. Berries, berries, and more berries. Everything looks so gorgeous, so delicious, so fresh… And then comes that smell, the one that overrides everything else in our hearts, minds and stomachs. The smell of FRIED.......

Last week, Seattlest confided that we'd left the confines of this country for places afar. We've got mountain-lust, and are making a vain attempt to trod upon at least a handful of amazing ranges as we see mid-lifeness lurking somewhere around the corner (OK, way the hell around the corner but so be it). And no, we're not talking some misguided "bag all the highest peaks in the world" kind of nonsense, but adventures more......

Last month, Seattlest had Mongolian grill for the first time in years -- Chang's in Renton for lunch. We remembered Mongolian grill as a fun, not-bad meal, but Chang's was, well, kind of gross. The place smells like grease when you walk in, and the meal we concocted was not as satisfying as the stir-fry we make at home. It was mostly just warm and gristly. We decided that Chang's just wasn't good Mongolian grill.......