SERENA RYDER: Who doesn't love a Canadian singer/songwriter? Only the very, very small of heart. Our sister site Torontoist called Serena Ryder "up and coming" back in 2005, and she just won the Juno Award (it's Canadian!) for New Artist of the Year in 2008. Plus, Wikipedia says, "Ranging musically between folk, roots, country, and adult contemporary, Ryder possesses a three-octave range." Here she is on the YouTube, here she is on the MySpace. Matt Duke opens, but you're on your own there. more ›

There was a happy commotion on the real Capitol Hill last night at Broadway and Pike. Naturally it involved Journey. (Thanks to Todd for posting the great video above on YouTube. How about an aerial view, you ask?) Over on the other side of the country, DC got down, too. New York took pictures of itself, Chicago understandably took more, Los Angeles was ready for a close-up, Philly got it on video, San Francisco--well of course San Francisco partied, even Toronto celebrated, while London livebloggged. more ›

Tonight, Das Llamas celebrate their new album Class Wars: K-12 at the Comet. The local rock fourpiece stomp out a little bit of everything, from synthy no-wave punk to dirty electro rock, offering up "a platypus of sound that is a new noise in a new era." more ›

Maybe we've seen Outbreak too many times, but this does not sound good: more ›

• Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.
• Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.
• Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only just begun.
• SFist debated the merits of new bronze plaques that will be placed in locations where San Francisco's homeless have died.
• DCist was obliged to respond to the worst Washington Post Outlook column ever published, in which conservative writer Charlotte Allen tried to make the case that women are dumb.
• LAist found Satan's ice cream truck trolling the streets, and they recorded the music.
• Some crafty Torontoist readers didn't like the dearth of ski hills in downtown Toronto, so they just built one of their own on their deck and (of course) recorded a video of them all taking turns on it.
• Bostonist knows the city's subway and bus system, the MBTA, has problems. So does this 17-year-old who submitted a report and told the MBTA brass how to fix it.
• Phillyist explored the possibility of an Ivy League prostitute, while their commenters debated the most ethical approach to proving or debunking the story.
• Londonist spent a little too much time looking at airbrushed operatic private parts, and enjoyed an enlightening comment from someone who was there. more ›

http://seattlest.com/2008/02/28/foo_fighters_da.php">announced his presidential bid.

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href="http://torontoist.com/2008/02/phototo_snowbal.php">photographing a big, organized snowball fight.

Could we be any vaguer? No, but that doesn't mean there's still not any reason to get excited. With In Rainbows making its formal debut atop the Billboard charts, Radiohead is set to cover North America in two tour legs, one prior to and one following their recently announced European summer tour (June 6 in Dublin through July 8 in Berlin). more ›

You may not agree with his conservative politics, but if you like the Mariners, you owe an elaborate tip of the cap to ex-U.S. Senator Slade Gorton. more ›

Well, after two full days of filmery, we made it back from Toronto in one piece, but not before seeing our last movie of the fest, Sean Penn's powerful adaptation of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer's mega-selling non-fiction book about the insatiable wanderlust that led a young man to drop out of society, tramp around the country for two years, and ultimately die alone in middle-of-nowhere Alaska (for a more detailed summary, check out the paperback's cover). more ›

One film you won't find on 2007's best-of lists is the first movie we caught on Saturday night, Nothing is Private, the debut feature from American Beauty-scribe/Six Feet Under-creator Alan Ball. It's not that his adaption of Alicia Erian's semi-autobiographical novel Towelhead--the coming-of-age story of a seriously messed-up thirteen-year-old girl living with her strict Lebanese father in early 90s suburban Texas -- is bad, just fundamentally flawed. We just didn't buy that an adolescent so used by nearly every person in her life would be so relatively undamaged, though we did appreciate Ball's restraint in not further abusing a victim via exploitative camerawork. Issues of post-traumatic stress disorder aside, big ups to the ensemble cast, including a hugely pregnant Toni Collette, a seriously conflicted army reservist/creepy racist Aaron Eckhart, and dynamic newcomer Summer Bishil as the young girl at the heart of this darkly comic, occasionally absurdist tale.
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We've been trying to keep abreast of the latest strike news via the networks as well as our singular Canadian television channel down here but both the quantity and quality of coverage has been most unsatisfying. So we took matters into our own hands. (Confidential to Metroblogging Vancouver: If you don't provide any sort of contact address, we cannot reach you for guest/expert commentary.) We contacted The Vancouverite because we believe in their attractive tag line --"Hyper-Caffeinated Snarky News & Opinion". More importantly, following The Onion's precedent, we assign greater cultural credentials to sites employing the definite article. Here's what Editor Jackson reported about the strike: more ›

Seattlest took a little jaunt up to downtown Pacific Rim Canada the other weekend. Vancouver is the Toronto of western Canada and, just like its gritty eastern counterpart, we just *big throbbing heart* the place. We love its density, its layout, and its landscape. We love the architecture, even its endless kilometers of glass and steel high rises. Moreover, it's a walkable city. If you're a reasonably able-bodied tourist, you should be able to stomp all over Vancouver's geo-stylistically pornographic downtown peninsula without problem. more ›

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Everything we know about dodging the draft by heading to Canada we learned from The Brothers K and popular mythology. So, we don't know much. Little before our time, there. Despite the fact that today's army is all volunteer (and today's Canada is more Conservative) there are still some soldiers waiting out Iraq up north. Almost everyone that this Salon article mentions seems to have already pulled a shift in the Middle East and is in Canada dodging a redeployment. The article talks about these soldiers (they estimate some 250 of them) and the great lengths that Canada has gone to to see that they are returned to the U.S. military. more ›

--Seattlest wants one of these doggie adult toys and we don't even have a dog. It's the Hotdoll. more ›

There are a lot of reasons to like The Ponys (and consequently, to attend tonight's show at Neumos). You could go because you've got Chicago roots, as does the band. You could go because you like your rock to be on the garage end of the spectrum (but without being labelled formulaic). You could go because Pitchfork likes the new record despite spending much of their review likening the band to Sonic Youth minus the "unpredictable noise jams." For us, we'll be going because The Ponys use one of the most beautiful guitars ever made. View the video below to see what we mean. We've seen it before at Pilot Speed and again at SXSW as used by Toronto band Uncut, and we smile to think of seeing it again. An odd reaction? Perhaps, but we'll be front and center taking in the show all the same. more ›

We had a feeling that, after his 4-16 performance in Portland Tuesday, Gilbert Arenas would do something special at Key Arena last night. We were right. Why, oh why, do we ever make plans? more ›

OK, why didn't anybody tell us about Pilot Speed? We showed up early to last night's Annuals show and while they were good and everything we hoped they would be, upon leaving we were talking about the openers and not the band that motivated our attendance. Even our companion (another head of the Seattlest hydra) was in the dark. Well, here's your tutorial. more ›

might be the Best Best of the -ists ever. We're exhausted just thinking about it. 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 ›

High-energy garage rockers Tokyo Police Club could easily have been victims of their own hype, but last night at Chop Suey the kids were more than alright. Their music can best be described as "Strokes nostalgia," as much of it contains the same kinds of nimble guitar licks, arching keyboard lines, and overprocessed megaphoney vocals as everybody's favorite 2001 NYC culture icons (see TPC's call to arms "Cheer It On" [mp3]). While a couple years ago we might have found their sound to be tired or run-of-the-mill, the last Strokes album did sorta suck, and so someone had to pick up where they left off, even if it was four kids from outside Toronto. Seeing Tokyo Police Club perform, we couldn’t help but get a good-natured vibe from them. Like most great bands, lead singer David Monks affects a mild pseudo-British accent, though his voice was rough and scratchy, worn out from all the touring, which hurt his ability to yell when needed. Fortunately for him, keyboardist Graham Wright was there to pick up the yelling slack, as well as beat his tambourine ferociously and engage the crowd in very polite banter. Such nice boys, they even got everyone clapping on a few songs. The band kicked off their brief set by holding up signs to spell out their name before tearing through the entirety of debut EP A Lesson in Crime. As they only have seven songs recorded, and as each of those songs is under three minutes, they had to throw some new material into the mix to fill up their time. Once they get a few more songs, we're sure they'll be back headlining some time soon. more ›

think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for? more ›

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for? more ›

Seattlest has been a fan of NYC's Asobi Seksu since getting a copy of their debut disc from a friend. The KEXP darlings recently released their new album Citrus, and played Chop Suey Saturday to show off their new material (which you can preview in its entirety on their site). Unlike the last time Seattlest saw them play there, the masses showed up, despite the show's early start. Asobi Seksu provided a powerful performance, validating all of the press they've received and our continued fandom. more ›

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? more ›

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. more ›

Celebrate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday with the Bikini Bandits and Phillyist! (NSFW). Speaking of Mr. Franklin, send in a picture of Ben (or Ed Rendell) with a red tongue and win a free t-shirt. And they might have the next YearlyKos in Philly. more ›