Results tagged “uwbookstore”

Chris Cleave's first novel, , got the sort of publicity that you just can't buy: about an al Qaeda bombing in London, the novel was released on July 7, 2005, the day of the London tube bombings.

STELLA! YOU MAKE US YELL-A!: It's a good week when we get to use the phrase "comedic stylings," and the stylings of Stella--that's Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain--fall squarely in the comedic category. We're not really "comedy" people, but even we have seen Michael Ian Black live and laughed like there was no tomorrow--when in fact there was, and that became a whole thing we won't get into. The group has been called "bizarre, nonsensical, and very funny" and "dumb comedy in a suit," if that gives you some idea.

For a MacArthur-proclaimed genius, Linda Bierds is fairly low profile. She lives on Bainbridge Island, teaches in the English department at the University of Washington, and has had tons of poems published in mainstream literary magazines such as The Atlantic and The New Yorker, the holy grail of "someone who's not an MFA student has read my poetry" achievement. Tomorrow night she's at the UW Bookstore (7:00 p.m., free), reading from her new book, Flight.

All of the worst ideas in the history of the world come out of of undergrad business classes. Remember "Bumvertising?" UW School of Business. That's up there with the XFL as far as bad ideas go. As business class projects go, though, a "Girls of UW" calendar doesn't seem particularly bad at first. It's kind of a guaranteed winner, even--It'll sell in spite of you and if you can get free models you'll profit. There isn't a lot of imagination involved and it doesn't scale, so if Seattlest were a business prof we'd give it a low B. We'd give you a pat on the back and a few encouraging words as the calendar flew off the UW Bookstore shelves and then write "not an idea man" in your secret fraternity file. But wait! It's not like this is Evergreen or something, but you're still on campus in the Pacific Northwest--Someone's going to take offense to scantily-clad women with the UW logo plastered all over them and sold through the university bookstore. Did your business plan account for a successful email campaign to get you yanked from the shelves? C! Hold on, though. This kind of piddly crap is great for newspapers and TV news. Maybe your calendar can get in the P-I and the Seattle Times, and then some random city blogs will post about it as a thin excuse to show the pictures... You may sell out of calendars after all, but, you know what? Still a C.

SHERMAN FREAKING ALEXIE: The best-selling author returns with his first novel in ten years. Flight tells the story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a violent search for his true identity. Real Change-published poets (that would actually include Alexie, too) read as part of the program.

TRIVIA: Tonight at the Old Pequilar. Seattlest David hosts. Guaranteed round: sesquipedalianism, or "addiction to unnecessarily long words." Also movies and geography.

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.)

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.

MUSIC: The Cave Singers. One of their MySpace friends commented, "If I was a hang glider I would listen to your music while hang gliding." Um, okay. We might agree with that. Either way, these guys make good down-home music and their guitarist is ex-PGMG.

AIR SUPPLY: Eric Klinenberg’s new book, Fighting for Air, examines how corporate ownership and control of local media has remade American political and cultural life. Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, is interviewed by Michael Fancher, Seattle Times editor-at-large.

FUNNY: Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter are here to make you pee your pants at Neumo's tonight. If you never saw Stella, you probably blinked. It wasn't around very long (on television we mean). If you never saw The State, you probably did see The State but were just really high and don't remember. If you never saw Wet Hot American Summer, well sir or ma'am, that's a shame.

>>>DORKBOT, 7:30pm. We love the name, but saying that they plan to "discuss their innovative approach to immersive, participatory entertainment" doesn't hide the fact that this will be geeks talking about videogames. Free, but only if you know the secret code: 'Knock knock, who's there?' 'Um, dorks?' 'Come in!'

If, like Seattlest, you're a dead-tree-media reading tool of a dying paradigm, you might have read Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series "The Climate of Man" last spring when it was published in The New Yorker. If you prefer your dead-tree media in hardcover, however, you're in luck -- Kolbert's new book Field Notes from a Catastrophe collects all three parts in handy pulped-plant form.

No comments, just schedules. (Because we're lazy, that's why.)

Spin writer Chuck Klosterman is to Nick Hornby as Augusten Burroughs is to David Sedaris.

Seattlest likes Nick Hornby, we really do. We like his witty, casual style of writing, we like that he's big enough of a music geek to write essays on specific songs, and we certainly like his McSweeney's connection. Most of all, though, we enjoy the movies made from his books. High Fidelity ranks among our favorites, due to its eminently quotable dialogue, great soundtrack, smart use of lists, and John Cusack's lovesick moping coupled with Jack Black's voracious scene-stealing. In fact, this is one of the rare cases where the film is better than the book, with a seamless setting shift from London to Chicago (especially endearing to Seattlest). About a Boy is another good one, in which the Weitzes first displayed a light touch and emotional maturity, and frankly, it's the only Hugh Grant performance we can stomach. As to Fever Pitch...well, we purposely avoided the recent Farrelly Brothers/Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore crime against humanity---which ended up being a box office disappointment anyways---but we hear that the original version of the film, about football and starring Colin Firth, was more than decent.

Who doesn’t love pornography? Ok, how about the pornography business? You probably don't know that much about it, but Legs McNeil does. Legs McNeil, former editor of Spin magazine and former editor-in-chief of Nerve, gets down and dirty with his newest book The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of The Porn Film Industry. In the past, his focus has primarily been on music, including Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, a book often considered to be the definitive chronicle of the genre.