"Paul Newman at Camp Korey," from the Camp Korey website The news of Paul Newman's death yesterday from cancer has hit Seattlest especially hard. While the 83-year-old actor/writer/director/race car driver/activist/healthy food mogul touched millions of lives with his far-flung work, we were especially appreciative of Newman's work in helping to purchase the Carnation Farm last year and convert it from corporate training center to Camp Korey, a free camp for seriously-ill children. In recent years,......

Courtesy of local politics blogger extraordinaire Goldy at HorsesAss comes a YouTube video of the Washington delegates at the DNC when Michelle Obama takes the stage. We knew we weren't the only person who got teary or swelled up with pride during the speech, and it looks like Governor Gregoire was excited from the get-go...listen to that hooting and hollering!......

Every four years, Seattlest settles in on the first Sunday evening of the Olympics for a heart-warming few hours in front of the TV with our female gymnastics team. It's tradition, like apple pie and hot dogs. These girls ooze America, with their ponytails, cherubic smiles, and noses like buttons. And then along comes Alicia Sacramone, 20-year-old team captain of the U.S. squad. A Massachusetts native, she turned down a full-ride scholarship to UCLA, opting......

Tuesday night, country super star Tim McGraw played a show at the Gorge's ugly step-sister, Auburn's White River Amphitheater. By all accounts, the show was business as usual and all yee-haws until McGraw spotted a man in the front row harassing a female fan. Mid-instrumental break in one of his many hits, the singer had obvioulsy had enough of this "fan" and called for security to kick the guy out. When security didn't respond fast......

What a stable, non-disastrous weekend it's been for us thus far! We're making curried chicken salad, eying the unopened bag of Cheddar Sour Cream Ruffles, and catching up on a week's worth of unwatched YouTube videos. It turns out that when you search for "Seattle" on YouTube, this very helpful National Geographic video about the Nisqually earthquake in '01 (and the fault that runs under downtown Seattle) is the second result. Were you living in......

Love it or hate it, there's no denying the commercial success of Kidz Bop. A big hit with the kids, as well as their parents, the family-friendly Kidz Bop series has sold 10.5 million CDs in the past seven years, no small feat in the dying music industry. And to think, all they're doing is taking pop songs (sometimes current, sometimes retro) and adding incredibly chipper kids' vocals to the mix. Now Kidz Bop is......

Isn't it nice to be able to swerve down the road while gossiping on your phone? Don't you love driving behind texting teens at 70 mph across a floating bridge? Starting July 1st, that will be not just be inadvisable--it will be illegal. In just over two weeks, California and Washington will both enact laws that make it illegal to drive while talking on a handheld mobile phone. You will be able to talk and......

Exactly one month ago, Seattlest told you about the fastest speeder ever clocked on I-5 at a whopping 164 mph. The driver of the speeding motorcycle, Ben Howard Kelly, was arrested on I-5, but claimed he had digital camera footage of his record-setting and law-breaking ride. Seattlest commenter Romulus led the cry for video proof of the incident saying, "He taped himself doing it. The people demand YouTubage!" Well, dear commenter, you ask and you......

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer looked more than a little surprised when a Hungarian man unleashed a verbal and egg-filled tirade today during a lecture at a Budapest university. And thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, you can witness the egging, amongst 608 other Steve Ballmer videos. The man doesn't appear to be angry at Microsoft's latest bid to buy out Yahoo's search engine; rather, he rants about Microsoft repaying Hungarian taxpayers.......

...if you're heading to the next round of caucuses this Sunday. We can't think of any local angle on this, but it's important to share this kind of information with our readers when we find it. Because, let's face it, stuff like this can sway voters, folks. (NSFW, unless you have headphones):......

MUSIC: The Hotel Cafe Tour at Neumo's is sold out, so why not change things up with internationally celebrated Irish pianist John O'Conor at Meany Hall. Impress your friends with an all-Beethoven recital including the "Pathétique," "Waldstein," and "Moonlight" sonatas, and Bagatelles, Op. 126. Melinda Bargreen calls him "spectacularly good." And Beethoven, hell, if Wikipedia is correct, that guy was no slouch either. 7:30 p.m. // Meany Hall, University of Washington // Tickets: $20,......

THEATRE: Suzanne Morrison's one-woman show Yoga Bitch is the tonight's highlight at SPF 2-Sweatproof!, the solo performance festival ongoing at the Theatre Off Jackson. Morrison's show recounts her trip to Bali for a two-month yoga retreat that illustrates, if nothing else, that the path to inner peace and killer abs has some hairpin turns in it. We found a Yoga Bitch excerpt on YouTube and were persuaded to see the whole thing. 7pm //......

Sometimes, there is a local headline that brings us so much strange delight, that we must share it with you. Today's example comes from King 5.com: Owners of Rogue Monkey in Spokane Could Face Jail Time We are quite certain that we will never read such a headline again in a Pacific Northwest newspaper or website, so we're enjoying it tremendously. This is the monkey we told you about earlier this week, who went......

Seattlest was hoping we could avoiding writing about the whole Marine puppy killing on YouTube thing. Just writing that sentence makes our stomach lurch. However, it's a story that just won't go away and which has local connections, so we're here to tell you about it. A Monroe, Wash., family has reportedly been getting threats by mail and phone since their son was named as the possible Marine in the video. In the week......

Vancouver Police have arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of third-degree assault of an officer and malicious mischief, after he terrorized a neighborhood and led police on a slow speed chase on his lawn mower. A very slow speed chase, indeed. Police reported approximate speeds between 3 and 5 mph. The man was found riding his lawn mower through a Vancouver neighborhood when residents began to return home from work. Police were called when he......

Not heeding the lessons learned by Goose and Maverick, a British pilot was recently fired for a low altitude "fly-by" at Everett's Paine Field. British papers reported that the 55-year-old pilot, Ian Wilkinson, was fired after a video of his stunt made the rounds on You Tube. Last month during a "celebratory pre-flight" to mark the delivery of the new 777 for Cathay Pacific, Wilkinson flew the plane just 28 feet above the ground.......

Like anybody else, we appreciate the sentiment of the Presidents' Day long weekend--well, for those of us who have that day off or are able to take it. It provided us the perfect opportunity to temporarily ex-patriate ourselves and pump money into Canada's economy. That's what it's all aboot, anyway. This so-named Presidents' Day has become just a reason for the commercial sector to entice us with Fabulous Savings. Nobody thinks about Washington or......

George Porter (of The Meters) and his band, Porter Batiste Stoltz, are descending upon Fremont's Nectar Lounge tonight, providing you with the opportunity to experience legendary New Orleans dirty funk right here in Seattle. Porter was the bass player for the original Meters back in the '60s and '70s. Russell Batiste, Jr., and Brian Stoltz jumped on the funk train with Porter in The Meters' late '80s reincarnation--the Funky Meters. George Porter, Jr.'s, bass is......

We remember 1998 rather well. We were living in Buffalo, NY, smoking a lot of the ganja, playing a lot of the folk music, and occasionally going to class to discuss contemporary literature. Good times. A year later, we would move to Portland and, eventually (by way of New York, New Orleans and Orlando), make our way to Seattle to live happily ever after. We'd never really thought about Seattle much, but MTV's The Real......

Just in time for MLK Day, a friend emailed us this WTF? moment, brought to you by the automated internet. He's been researching old advertisements for slave auctions, and a Google search brought up this text ad for eBay: Negroes For Sale Looking for Negroes For Sale? Find exactly what you want today. www.eBay.comeBay, you may want to inspect that text ad-generating algorithm a little more closely. For balance on our internet reporting, here's Green......

Jesse Sykes is playing at the Tractor Tavern this Friday and we couldn't be happier about it. Along with Neko Case, we can't think of a local-grown voice that we like better than Jesse's. What makes it even better is that she's billing it as "a special last-minute acoustic show" according to her MySpace page. If you know Jesse Sykes and her music, you already know why this is so exciting. Her melodic, sometimes ephemeral,......

Er, not quite. There is an actual, physical monster in Cloverfield, and unlike the no-see-em trailer, the film eventually shows it in all its gruesome glory (and no, it ain't Stay Puft). Opening Friday, J.J. Abrams' camcorder monster movie (which some describe as "Godzilla meets the Blair Witch") covers a terrible day for all of Manhattan and, in particular, for a group of New Yorkers throwing a bon voyage party for one of their......

If you heard only the NPR news blip on jazz pianist Oscar Peterson's death, you heard that he was "well known for having won many prizes." Not sure what skeleton holiday crew came up with that dismal description. Prizes were hardly the source of Peterson's fame. Musically, Peterson was in a class by himself--never quite a swing player, never quite a bop player. He didn't have a particular style. Art Tatum is known for his......

We have to be honest: We were slightly annoyed when we read the email promoting Seattle School's (of Motel fame) latest event. Anything that calls an organization "insanely exuberant" and says that it is putting on one of the "craziest film events in the history of the city" is trying pretty hard to sound zany and exciting. But as we told Seattlest Audrey, we're a sucker for weird (you should have seen us in college)......

Oh, it's a rollicking time at Seahawks headquarters. Should be, the team's on a five-game winning streak. Head coach Mike Holmgren's certainly in the spirit; he's using his press conference to burn on his quarterback. Says Holmgren: "I worry about [Hasselbeck] when he runs. You guys ever see Gooney Birds landing on a lake?" Mike Holmgren, ladies and gentleman. He'll be appearing next week at the Chuckle Shack in Trenton, New Jersey. We have not......

This weekend, it's all about Friday and Saturday; Sunday is the Lord's day, so music is taking a night off. Tonight, there's another great Canadian band, Immaculate Machine, at the Vera Project. The pop trio features Kathryn Calder, who just so happens to be the New Pornographers' Carl (A.C.) Newman's niece. Way to keep it in the family. Meanwhile, the High Dive's got so-so-hot Chicago collective Scotland Yard Gospel Choir who, despite mountains of accolades,......

It's pouring rain and it's exhausting looking for a new hard drive, so we pull over on Greenwood Avenue, right in front of Herkimer Coffee. It's bustling with people, despite the rain, and we anticipate a long wait. To our surprise, the line moves lightening fast and we're soon faced with two adorable and cheerful baristas. If you want to feel trendy without being surly or "holier than thou," Herkimer Coffee is your place. Although......

Jack has already mentioned Stars at the Showbox, and Katelyn's put the word out about Grayskul and Hangar 18 at Chop Suey. That leaves us to mention M.I.A. and the Cool Kids at Showbox SoDo, or, if you like things a little more old-school, Mudhoney is at El Corazon. Here they are playing "Hate the Police" in Prague: Saturday, it's a Brit-pop double-header with Travis and openers Maximo Park at the Moore. There's also The......

Grayskul's coming home to the 206, and Seattlest will be there to welcome them at their concert on Friday night. We have been thoroughly enjoying Grayskul's 2007 release, Bloody Radio, since it came out in September; the first single from the record, "Scarecrow," is catchy as hell. Grayskul's music is a richly melodic, edgy journey through the weird and the relevant; listen here, and don't miss Grayskul's older stuff, especially from Deadlivers. We recommend "Prom......

The protests being staged at the port down in Olympia by the Port Militarization Resistance seem like a huge operation when you read the papers: Police wearing riot gear fired pepper spray projectiles into a crowd of more than 150 protesters Tuesday night at the Port of Olympia, and several military convoys eventually moved out. Olympia police spokesman Dick Machlan said 43 people were arrested and then released while prosecutors decide whether to charge them.......