STAND-UP FOR CHIMPS: Pioneer Square's Comedy Underground will be hosting a charity event for our rescued furry friends over at Cle Elum's Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Put on by Yoram Bauman a.k.a. "the stand-up economist" and founder of Non-Profit Comedy, the stand-up comedy also includes raffle tickets, a slide show, and merchandise for sale. All proceeds of Stand-up for Chimps! will go toward spring planting for the chimps' vegetable garden, and besides money, they will also be taking donations of seeds and seedlings. more ›

FOOD ORGY: Get thee to the Seattle Center this weekend for the annual Bite of Seattle. Over a hundred booths, multiple beer gardens, cooking demos, live entertainment... all in the name of of good, local eating? Sounds like a great weekend event to us! Take advantage of the Just A Bite area, offering mini versions of local restaurant specialties for $3.75 a serving. more ›

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Seventeen teams showed up at the Old Pequliar last night to see if our voice would give out. We managed to get through the evening without having a Peter Brady moment, but we're grateful to those of you who were willing to step up to the mic at a moment's notice. more ›

Admittedly, the only reason we know this is because we submitted a poem and it's on a bus, and so we were invited to the party. Sadly there was never any chance that we were going to stand up in public and read it. Its only purpose is to disrupt the glances of bus riders lingering over the list of things you're not allowed to do on buses in Spanish, the announcement of whichever UW STD study, and the Mechanic of the Year Award. Okay, we really did it for the Slog -- we would have liked to have dedicated it to them officially. more ›

We'll be honest, Ms. Friedberger, we'd listened to the new album, it was...different, we thought why not hear a live show. We were not planning on getting home at 1:30am. But we had never heard a band like this before -- not live -- maybe back in Weimar, maybe back in bienvenue, wilkommen, the perfectly Weill -- but not with this Brooklyn inflection. more ›

Mariner big leaguers are feeling good with the team at 13 games over .500, but if they belonged to an M's farm team, they'd be expecting a pink slip. more ›

There's been a lot of hype about this disc--Clarkson fired her management and pissed off Clive Davis in the process of making it--and you can bet pretty much every reviewer will mention that somewhere in their assessment. We're sheep, so we thought we'd open with that and get it out of the way. We'll be honest. Nobody's going to be giving Kelly Clarkson an award for being a great lyricist, so just get it out... 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 ›

will be Melinda, Blake, Jordin, and Lakisha," but we won't put any money on it. Then, when that's exactly what happens (as it did last night), we'll be all, "Gah! Why didn't we put money on it?" Maybe we should just go ahead right now and say we'll put ten bucks on Melinda taking it all? Anyone in? more ›

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 of violence and conflict. For some reason it's reminiscent of Seattle, but that's not why we bring it up. more ›

Haley's gone. Not surprising. more ›

For our headline, we borrow the words of that magnificent artisan of the English language, Fox Sports Northwest's Brad Adam. Could anyone sum up Felix Hernandez' breathtaking, complete game shutout, no-hit-thru-seven-innings performance last night any better? Probably not, but let's take a look-see. more ›

We knew that Carlos Guillen's 2001 bout with tuberculosis was serious, but until we read this feature by Jon Paul Morosi (formerly of the P-I, now with the Detroit Free Press), we never knew that Guillen was so close to death:

He could barely sleep. He had a fever every night. He battled headaches and weakness. He lost almost 20 pounds. He coughed up blood. Yet, Carlos Guillen continued to play shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. more ›

--The Mariners faced Lou Pinella and the Cubbies in AZ yesterday. more ›

When you occasionally answer the question "What are you doing tonight?" with, "Going to a high-school basketball game," you become accustomed to receiving weird looks from people. No matter. We have an inordinate amount of fun at these games, at least half of which isn't related to basketball at all. more ›

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. more ›

A website entitled "People Against Fundamentalism" is setting up a direct action against the Seattle megachurch Mars Hill for December 3rd at 11am outside their Ballard campus to protest the preachings of Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll. There is a certain...passion to the website's descriptions of Mark and his attitudes towards women, as you can see here: more ›

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Seattle Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas announced today he'll resign at the end of the year, leaving a job opening for anyone who likes getting screamed at. more ›

This guy, Buju Banton, is going to stand up on the Neumo's stage on Wednesday and play a song called "Boom Bye Bye." "Boom Bye Bye," in the context of the song, is meant to convey the fact that Buju has just shot a fag in the head and is bidding him adieu. It seems like an odd booking choice for Neumo's, because the club is located in the heart of Capitol Hill - a mere block from the Wild Rose, which just a post or so ago was credited for helping make Seattle one of the most lesbian-friendly cities in the world - and this is the year 2006, although the song is from way back in the year 1992, when apparently shooting fags was an ok thing to talk about in a pop song. If you happen to be near Neumo's on Wednesday when people are going in or coming out, remember they're there to hear lyrics like the ones below, and maybe you should say to them, hey, shooting gays in the head is stupid. more ›

Forget Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest. The true blockbuster of the summer is Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society's Pirates of Penzance, playing at the Bagley Wright Theatre at Seattle Center. more ›

Something needs to be said about Erica Barnett's article in La Strangeur concerning the possibility that the City Council will make the final decision on the Viaduct without the requisite and meaningless public referendum, and that something is: "Hell Yeah!" Do we have to vote on every damn decision that's made around here? The City Council exists to make decisions on transportation infrastructure. That's what they do. Seattlest's job is to spend a little time every week trying to make them see how any decision besides the one we've made our personal lord and savior is blasphemous, and then to ridicule them when they end up worshiping at the altar of a viaduct rebuild. That's what we do. We're Americans, damn it! We rank voting just above walking on the scale of shit we hate to do! more ›

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. more ›

Think you're safe from profiteering because you're thousands of miles from a natural disaster? Think again, Jack. The robber barons who run Dick's Drive Ins are reaching for your pocketbooks YET AGAIN. They increased prices on practically every product on the menu last month. more ›

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi. more ›

After Wired ran a story documenting the GoogleCenter of the United States a bunch of ists jumped on the opportunity to figure out their own middle. Gothamist, Chicagoist, Bostonist and Seattlest all zoomed in on their creamy GoogleCenters. A crack cartography team is hard at work determining the GoogleCenter of the Ist-a-verse as you read this... more ›

Anyone who thought that our state legislature had any chance at all of forcing Wal-Mart to act less like Wal-Mart raise your hand. Yeah, none of you. House speaker Frank Chopp sat on the "Wal-Mart Bill" yesterday instead of allowing a vote on it, despite a big push by his traditional allies in organized labor. The bill would force employers of 5,000 or more in the state of Washington to allocate 9% of their payroll to health benefits. Chopp alternately doesn't think it will help, doesn't want to piss off businesses and doesn't think it has the votes, or, some say, he made a deal with someone. The world may never know. The P-I speculates that he may be killing the bill in favor of a voter initiative which could help bring out the progressives next election day, but screw that. Progressives will already be out (or mailing it in) to stand up against the homophobes and their jackass king Eyeman. To Seattlest's knowledge no such initiative campaign currently exists and even if it did it's an abuse of the initiative process because the legislation is sitting right there on his desk staring him in the face and all he has to do is put it to a damn vote. Ahem. more ›

Don't wait until the last possible day to apply for the soon-to-be vacant seat on the City Council. Applications are due on Friday, but you know it's going to be crazy, so get yours in now. more ›

You may or may not be aware, but Congress is all in a tizzy (repeatedly) over a number of bills either recently passed or currently on the docket, and reconvened earlier this week to try to get all warm and fuzzy before the year ends. Seattlest did some digging and if any of you are even half as confused as we are, we hope this helps. We're going to break these bills down, James Brown short-sentence-with-rhythm style. more ›