LIVING LEGENDS: No, not Twiggy. We're talking about the hiphop crew out of Cali, two members of which will be performing at Neumos tonight. The Grouch and Eligh are touring for the holidays (official tour title: "How The Grouch Stole Christmas"), sharing the evening's bill with Bayliens and 206 Zulu cornerstones Alpha P. The duo will release an album called Say G&E in the spring, so attendees tonight should be getting a sneak peek at the new material; we've also heard The Grouch's solo album Show You The World, which fans of underground and indie hiphop (a la Atmosphere) are encouraged to check out. more ›

The New Yorker is reporting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin began actively campaigning for the vice-presidential gig almost immediately after she took the governor's office in early 2007. A key component to her vice-presidential strategy was to schmooze high-falutin' conservatives who were passengers on two Seattle-based Holland America cruise ships in the summer and fall of that year. 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 ›

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they will discuss the Democratic race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. more ›

Think nightlife is getting the short end of the stick in Seattle? Filled with righteous indignation over the way hiphop gets portrayed as Capitol Hill's downfall? We do, and we are, so it was a healthy shock to the system (and yet oddly familiar) to read about this Saudi hiphop group which, to the great chagrin and social shame of the guys' fathers and wives, made it onto MTV Arabia. From the MSNBC story about Dark2Men:

"There are a lot of Saudi rappers, but they're underground because of the wrong impression people have of them," Farhan told MTV's "Hip HopNa" co-host Qusai Khidr, a Saudi rapper who has lived in Florida. "We would like people to hear our words and listen to our message before they judge us."

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We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they discuss McCain’s new frontrunner status, religion in American politics, and Edwards’ departure. more ›

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they review Tuesday's doings in New Hampshire. more ›

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. We’ll be starting with a preview of tonight’s Iowa Caucus. more ›

Local comic journalist (that's a journalist working in the medium of comics, not a journalist covering comics) Peter Bagge made the cover of Reason magazine this month. more ›

The first thing Mike Hargrove did after quitting the Mariners? He followed Alan Jackson's advice and bought a Ford truck. Jim Moore of the P-I talked to Hargrove's car salesperson:

Jerry Korum of Korum Ford in Puyallup read that the Hargroves always said when they retired, they would get a red truck, call it "Retired Red," load up their belongings and drive off into the sunset. more ›

We're trying to decide if we're panicked about the bees. The other day -- sunny, warm -- we were in Volunteer Park in the middle of a patch of clover and it was completely bee-free. It would have been chilling except, like we say, the sun was out and it was in the 80s. We have a lot of respect for bees, and not just because a dead one stuck in some honeycomb took revenge on us from beyond the bee-grave. It's because they always seem to be busy getting stuff done. You rarely spot a bee just fucking around out there. more ›

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... more ›

It's like we were just saying about Starbucks the other day, only if we were the Washington Post instead of a city blog:

For most Seattleites, what Schultz called "the watering down of the Starbucks experience" is stale news -- akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics (which Schultz sold last year) are a losing National Basketball Association team or that Seattle winters are wet. more ›

SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES: Art Spiegelman's 1992 Holocaust tale Maus (based on a true story) won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a comic book. Its success paved the way for the graphic novels thriving today and led to Spiegelman's ten years on the staff of the New Yorker. In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) gathers his recent broadsheets of disenchantment with the war on terror. more ›

Federal Way got all the press, but more than one school in Washington can ban An Inconvenient Truth. Yakima was in on it too. The Associated Press is reporting that a panel of teachers, parents, administrators and right-thinking people have decided that the film can be shown to a Yakima school's Environmental Club. Environmental Club? At least in Federal Way it was a science class. The Environmental Club? What kind of environmental club worth it's charter hasn't already screened Inconvenient Truth. The kind in Yakima is apparently the answer. more ›

*Carrie Clark mp3s here. more ›

Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Spencer Kim. We just caught up with Salon's reaction to James Kim's father's finger point-a-thon in the Washington Post. James Kim is, of course, the San Francisco technology journalist who died in the mountains of Oregon after getting stranded there with his family, and Spencer Kim's article blames the credit card and cell phone companies who put a lot of red tape in front of the transaction and call records of the lost family and he blames the search and rescue people who tried and failed to find his son in time to save him. It's tragic. James Kim's trek through the mountainous terrain in an attempt to save his family after they had been stranded for over a week was heroic. But blame put on Oregon forestry and search and rescue is misplaced. more ›

>>>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!' more ›

-Outdoor advertising leviathan Clear Channel got a contract to wrap some Seattle community transit buses in their advertising. more ›

As we sat down to write this week's Best of the -ists post, a car blaring "21 Questions'" passed by our house. And that started us thinking about how some of the best -ist posts out there have at their hearts questions, some of which are answered, and some of which are left open. Check out the Best of the -ists from this week, and see if you agree. more ›

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. more ›

A couple of national heavies just blew through town to promote either side of our coming senate race and the most interesting things to come out of both visits was the dissent. Maria Cantwell got called out for the Iraq war votes that she's sticking to while she was sharing the stage with Barak Obama. John McCain's finest Seattle moment happened on the radio after his McGavick event. A caller asked about the shady background of a recently hired McCain senior aide to which McCain had no response. Rather, his response was that the guy in question worked for Bush in 2004. Oh yeah, that's clear evidence of a sterling character around Seattle. more ›

Dave Neiwert has an awesome article on resident orca populations in this week's Seattle Weekly in which he issues marching orders to the various people involved with trying to save local resident orca pods. Researchers, there needs to be more evidence that the Snake River dams are depriving the pods of the chinnok salmon that are their main food source. Get to it. Environmental action groups, the Endangered Species Act is a powerful weapon that can be leveraged in court against the dams that are killing those salmon. Chop chop. 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 ›

With theater, Seattlest, as you know, is drawn to the fringe, the daring, mind-altering experience. And those with puppets. But we're excited about Tiny Ninja Theater because the idea makes us laugh until we risk public incontinence. more ›

Time, Boswell once wrote, begins on Opening Day. That's Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell, not the Scottish biographer and noted lothario, James Boswell, who is said to have contracted gonorrhea 17 separate times. No man who sets his personal clock by a professional sports season is likely to get that much play. more ›