When we read that the Seattle Times had a large feature on the top paid CEOs in the Pacific Northwest, we wondered what the point was. Everyone knows Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Jeff Bezos—all local CEOs—are richer than God. And it turns out everyone, this Seattlest included, is wrong. According to the Times piece, the best paid local CEO in 2007 was James Voelker, who runs Bellevue's InfoSpace—a company we've never heard of.......

Tonight through Saturday, On the Boards is presenting a world premiere from the John Jasperse Company. Jasperse is a New Yorker-recommended choreographer, and that's more than you've done, admit it. Misuse Liable To Prosecution is a 5-dancer work "about capitalism, having capital and not having capital, worth, wealth, whoring, begging, stealing, seduction, philanthropy and blood money. Everything used in the production, all the props, costumes and sets were either found, borrowed or stolen." Electric harpist......

A big 'thank you' to Seattlest commenters for making the previous two posts on the Gas Works Park Mystery Party the definitive places for speculation and conjecture. Just this morning an unregistered guest indicated that they'd received an email asking for actors to "protest" the party at $100 a head, which kind of dulls the luster on a previous commenter's note that Melinda Gates's birthday is August, 15. Anyway, in lieu of any actual, factual......

We got these "Complimentary VIP" tickets in the mail about a million years ago advertising some "wealth creation workshops" at various hotels around Seattle. We finally got around to calling them to see what the hell this was about and the phone answerer acted completely sketchy. We asked where the Income Strategies Institute is located and she said, "I can't answer that. All I can tell you is: somewhere in Utah." WTF!?? We asked......

Monday 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. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 LOCAL AUTHOR: Maya Sonenberg, the Creative Writing Program Director at the UW, presents a......

Monday WOMEN & MONEY: Personal finance expert and author, Suze Orman talks about the complicated and dysfunctional relationship that women have with money in her book, Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 AGORAPHOBES TAKE HEART: Everything you’ve been told about dating is wrong. Love Will Find You is a new approach to love from dating expert Kathryn Alice. It may be the first dating......

When we were kids, we spent a lot of time reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology, soaking up heroic tales and Olympian feuds and tips on using hydraulic dynamics to remediate environmentally damaged areas. When we got to college, we ended up reading more classical mythology, but it didn't have that same wide-eyed appeal (or we were squinting more). Girls & Gods has cranked our eyelids back open. We'd be the first to admit we got lucky......

Activist journalism is a shifting target -- yesterday's activism doesn't always apply. (You'd hope because it's been assimilated by the mainstream.) Here's the classic face of mental illness local media usually provides. But regular, conscientious reporting has got to focus more on the wealth of treatment modalities and medications "made available" to people who may or may not be able to judge between them. And how even doctors are snowed under by pharmaceutical data.......

We don't know if you caught this weekend's Seattle Times article on the downfall of an Eastside mortgage company, which suffered a mini-Enron implosion this spring. We note that the local business media never saw it coming, due to the proximity of their lips with the company's ass. To the Puget Sound Business Journal, Merit's founder Scott Greenlaw was "an up-and-coming businessman," the Times points out. In 2004 Washington CEO magazine proclaimed Merit one......

No, the Other Theater: The new movies out this weekend are shite, so this is your chance to catch up on the wealth of quality films already in theaters. Babel, Borat, Casino Royale, For Your Consideration, The Fountain, Little Children, Marie Antoinette, The Queen, Stranger Than Fiction, and Volver are all continuing their Seattle runs. Go now before you get back-logged further with the scads of Oscar contenders released later this month. Movie time......

Ep 4's credo is first do no harm. Its the Hippocratic oath, but surgeons, Meredith opines, are hippocrites. In a guilt-fueled turn at the griddle, Izzy contemplates her $8.7 mil. While manically making breakfast, she nearly pours OJ over the check. (Note the 5 Spot menu on the fridge). She's more than OK, she's rich, she says. And she's going to cash that check just as soon as she cleans out her hospital locker. Uh-huh.......

-Tacoma, sinking under the weight of its own...traffic. -It may not seem like it yet in Seattle, but around the world it's hotter than it's been in the last 400 years. -They say that Rachel Corrie owns one half of this whole town, with political connections to spread her wealth around. -Is local tech video blogger Bre Pettis going pro with Make Magazine? -A group is leafletting Starbucks locations encouraging them to use better......

As promised, Seattlest attended the PTSD lecture given at the UW last night. This was the first installment in this year's three Allen Edwards Psychology Lectures, and we're delighted to report that it's okay to come even if you aren't, you know, medically credentialed or what-have you. (Advance registration is "required," although they also "register" at the door. Seattlest initially had visions of having to fake a psych degree on our way in: goatee, pipe,......

Sundance is a whole other world---a world in which all anyone talks about is movies; a world where you can easily make the acquaintance of a writer for the Cleveland Free Press, a biotech researcher/filmmaker from San Francisco, or an L.A.-based events planner; a world that has as many Blackberries as ski boots. We've found ourselves falling into the festival's "mountain chic" style. We've taken to wearing bright orange vinyl knee-high boots (urban galoshes, if......

Say what you like about our rain, or how we all drink too much coffee; hell, hurl expletives at one of our many giant megalomaniacal corporations. But please New York, please please don't start calling us "Allentown." Boasting an image of Paul Allen that is creepily Nixon-ish, the New York Times fluffs out an article (site registration required) starting with the Seahawks rise to Super Bowl contention, and proceeding from there to rattle off a......

Seattle often gets hung up on genre conventions. Whether digital ("I spin deep, east coast, jazzy disco tech-house.") or analog ("My band plays indie, emo, post-rock, instrumental math-core."), pigeon-holing seems be forever be the name of the day. Rather than realizing that such labeling is all but useless to most people, artists and writers only help to further marginalize a public left overwhelmed by the dearth of less-than-useful tags. While that might be the M.O.......

We recently started reading Tom Bissell's Peace Corp Revisited book Chasing the Sea, but when we came upon this interview today it struck us that cultural imperialism through the Peace Corp is so 1980s. Hip and happening now is Seattle-based EarthCorps. The environmental magazine Grist interviewed EarthCorp program director Su Thieda yesterday: Where were you born? Where do you live now? I was born near Los Angeles and currently live in Seattle. What's been the......

"Un bel di"! That's from Madame Butterfly. Seattlest knows from culture, see. Now we will pour ourselves some Moet while we fill you in. You'd think this would be a regular thing, but no! Just in time for Halloween, Saturday marks the first Seattle Opera Costume Shop sale in twenty years. More than 18 racks of costumes and accessories go on sale to the public this Saturday, from 10am to 6pm. Prices start at......

Mayoral candidate Al Runte did some damage in the primary a few weeks ago and unfortunately looks like he might be the only viable option (definitions vary) to Greg Nickels in November. Seattlest thinks it's going to take a whole lot of protest votes to pry the mayor from the teat of developers, though, and so far Runte hasn't displayed the kind of support that can get that done. Cheers to him, however, for identifying......

All-time catchingest Mariners catcher Dan Wilson announced yesterday that he will retire--but not before he attempts to don the tools of ignorance one final time. It's more reminiscent of the Japanese retirement ceremony than anything we typically see in American baseball, but Wilson, who has missed most of this year with a knee injury, will try to play at least one last inning in the Mariners' final series of the year. In 12 seasons as......

You're looking at the official map of Seattle's Downtown Ride-Free Area. You may not know it, but this kind of thing makes Seattlest mad as hell. We have a dysfunctional relationship with Metro where we just suffer silently. Today we're publicly asking who would like to keep their job and earn praise by accomplishing an essential but heretofore-ignored responsibility of Seattle public transit: Where's a useful freaking map, guys? For god's sake, we just want......