Just in time for the holidays, Starbucks is teaming up with Costco to offer gift cards at a 20% discount: five $20 cards for $80. Regular gift cards in the Starbucks stores for 10% off. USA Today notes that it's high time Starbucks did something to reward its core customers, especially in these tough times. Shelling out (coughing up?) $4 for a double-tall may not be a whole $700 billion, but might cause some hesitation.......

We’ve spoken highly (sparking some debate) of Pagliacci as our place for pizza by the slice—at least locally. But imagine our surprise while reading a recent USA Today and seeing the Queen Anne location listed as one of the country’s “10 great places for solo diners to pull up a chair.” (The article was put together in celebration of National Singles Week, which started Sunday.) Bar Boulud in New York City with its charcuterie bar......

Vitals: Scott Edward Kazmir, 23 yo LHP. Born in Houston, Texas. 6-0, 170. 24-22, 3.75 career. 2-2, 3.83 in 2007. $424,300 salary. Arsenal: Mid-90s fastball, a slider he'll throw to both sides of the plate, and a change. Recent Battles: Last May Kazmir shut the Mariners out for seven innings, allowing just three singles and striking out nine. Our Best Weapon: Nobody has more than 10 at bats against Kazmir. The Mariners have hit lefties......

Before we get to today's boat, there's a half-assed explanation of the Empress of the North's Alaskan accident online as of yesterday--apparently they were making a turn and hit a rock... Well, cruise passengers should certainly slumber easily in their berths now that that whole thing has been exposed. There's also (another?) entirely fictitious accounting of the accident at The Spoof. Vision of the Seas Royal Caribbean's Vision of the Seas is another standard ship......

--Eddie Bauer resisted an attempt to sell the publicly-traded company to two private firms. --We're still kicking ourselves for being out of town this weekend and missing the science fiction short film fest at Cinerama. Here's a rundown of the films shown. (via Anita who you can still vote for over at Metblogs) --ATM fraud: it happened to us recently, and it sucked. Not on this scale though, because, well, we'd be tapped after......

All-everything Husky recruit Spencer Hawes is having arthroscopic surgery tomorrow. Something's floating around in his knee. From the UW press release: The 7-foot center is projected to be sidelined for two to four weeks, but a true timeline for his return won't be available until the day after the surgery at the earliest. "This is obviously a setback for Spencer and our program," said [coach Lorenzo] Romar. "But, we are very optimistic based on what......

College football coaches, who gave the Huskies their only National Championship back in 1991, have bestowed upon the current team a very special honor—Also Receiving Voteites. A glance under the most recent USA Today Coaches Football poll shows that the Huskies have received three votes. Meaning some coach voted them 25th and another one voted them 24th, three coaches voted them 25th, or a single coach voted them 23rd. Either way Ohio State's Jim......

When he's not making doody in his diaper, Mike Holmgren is spitting up creamed carrots or screaming for his "binky." Apparently. In March, Mike Holmgren was still blaming the refs for the Hawks' Super Bowl loss (we still contend it was Holmgren's shitty clock management and predictable abandonment of the running attack which costs the Hawks the game). And now we learn of yet another example of infantilism. Mike Sando at Seahawks Insider points us......

Former Mariner first round pick Ryan Anderson is out of baseball and enrolled in culinary school, we learned from U.S.S. Mariner today. The M's picked the 6-10 Anderson in 1997, optimistically hoping he'd become the second coming of Randy Johnson. He was known to fans (though hopefully not to his girlfriends) as "The Little Unit." A series of elbow injuries ruined his career, and now he (select inane baseball/cooking comparison below): 1) Ok's hamburgers......

USA Today reveals that America's next would-be culture czar is already enthroned as (gulp) the nation's barrista baron. Little did Jerry Baldwin, Ziv Siegl and Gordon Bowker expect, when they sold their modestly successful coffee company to the determined guy they'd once hired to do their marketing, that he'd turn Starbucks into the world's most frequented brand. And yet, and yet. Not satisfied with the company's phenomenal growth, Howard Schultz wants to be even more......

If you want to avoid the media's glare, you probably don't want to beat an opponent by 84 points. But the Chief Sealth girls' basketball team did just that. And the Seattle Times fixed them in their sights. Today's paper screamed this damning front page headline: Coaches violated rules to build state's top team. And reporters Christine Willmsen and Michael Ko don't pull any punches in the lead, either: The Chief Sealth High School girls......

According to this USA Today story (hat tip to the Spurge), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will attempt to reach a younger audience next year by publishing the Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges manga Peach Fuzz in their Sunday comics section starting early January. The comic in question (sample here) about a delusional nine year old girl and her pet ferret, was first published earlier this year by Tokyopop after the artists submitted the work to that......

After years of insisting that “good citizens” were the key to winning ballclubs, the Mariners have hired one of baseball’s notorious bad guys, Carl Everett. The move improves the Mariners offense (whether the degree of improvement is worth Everett’s reported $3.4 million salary is in question). It’s also exposed an ugly vein of local intellectual elitism. The move was a poorly-kept secret so already the local Internets are buzzing with commentary—and laughter. Because, besides getting......

Pac-10 Coach of the Year Jim McLaughlin and Pac-10 Player of the Year Sonja Tomasevic will lead the Husky women's volleyball team this weekend in Fort Collins, Co., where the Dawgs start the NCAA tournament as the top seed in the West Regional. The Huskies (26-1) meet Siena (20-11) Friday night in the first round of the 64-team tournament. Last year, Washington made the Final Four, but lost to eventual champion Stanford. This year's Final......

After starting the season with four straight wins, the University of Washington men's basketball team snuck into the Associated Press Top 25, garnering one more point in the AP's voting/rankings system than Iowa State. They still don't rank in the USA Today/ESPN poll, finishing just out of the top 25 with the 27th most votes. The Dawgs, who have won 25 consecutive home games (one behind current streak leader Gonzaga), play at home tonight at......

On Friday, Issaquah High pulled off its second earth-shattering upset of the year, defeating Bellevue High's nationally-ranked football team. What makes this such a big upset? Check out Bellevue's resume: --Four-time defending state champions --Winners of 30 consecutive games --Ranked 10th in the country by USA Today --Ranked 1st in the state by the Seattle Times This isn't the first time Issaquah's shocked the prep sports world. Earlier this year, they knocked Seattle Prep out......

They crushed #3 Long Beach Poly Saturday night at Qwest Field, and today USA Today ranks the Bellevue High School Wolverines #12 in the country (and #2 in the West). We don't know how many high school football teams there are in the U.S. One would think at least 10,000, so a #12 ranking ain't small beans. Bellevue coach Butch Goncharoff has an unbeatable system--a high school program with its own farm system (nine junior......

Seattle-area high school sports teams are proving that they deserve to be considered among the nation's elite. Earlier this year, Bellevue High's football team defeated national powerhouse De LaSalle, which hadn't lost a game in thirteen years. And on Saturday, the Garfield High women traveled south and beat Piedmont (Oakland) High, ranked #2 nationally by USA Today. Garfield, though #1 in Washington's 4A classification, wasn't even ranked among the top 10 teams in the West.......