Nickels’s Kyoto resolution passed out of the Energy Committee at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Chicago late Saturday afteroon. So, now it’s on to a full floor vote this Monday. You’ve got to hand it to Team Nickels: It looks like they’ve totally out organized the White House on this one.

(Nickels’s resolution calls for U.S. cities to implement local policies that will reduce greenhouse gasses 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012a key component of the Kyoto Protocols. The resolution is an obvious slap at the Bush administration, which withdrew the U.S. from the treaty in 2001.)

Nickels topped off the day with this power quote from the heart of the urban archipelago: “We can’t wait for federal leadership. In order for cities to preserve their quality of life, we must act to reduce the effects of greenhouse gases, and we must act now.”

About 15 minutes ago, the 20-member Environment Committee at the U.S. Conference of Mayor’s in Chicago passed Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’s resolution on the Kyoto Protocols with a unanimous voice vote. (Nickels’s reoslution calls for U.S. cities to implement local policies to meet a key component of the Kyoto Protocols: reduce greenhouse gasses 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.) It’s a slap at the Bush administration, which withdrew the U.S. from the treaty in 2001. “The mayors of U.S. cities need to provide grass roots leadership on this issue,” Nickels told me on the phone immediately after the vote.
In order to get Nickels’s resolution to a full floor vote on Monday,though, it needs to pass another committee, the Energy Committee, later this afternoon.
Nickels said he was able to pass the resolution out of the Environment Committee over initial objections from the Committee Chair, Mayor Patrick McCrory of Charlotte, NC, by scratching a couple of references to the Kyoto Protocols that seemed like partisan slaps at the Bush administration. However, Nickels says, “I was not willing to compromise and take out the language that directly referenced following the Kyoto protocols.”
Nickels says a lobbyist from the White House is at the conference trying to kill his resolution. “Clearly, they were concerned about this,” Nickels said.
Seattleites should give props to the Mayor of Atlanta, GA. Nickels is not on the Environment Committee, and evidently Atlanta’s Mayor Shirley Franklin took up Nickels’s case on the committee and did a stand out job.

Sandeep is dead to me. I never want to hear his name again.

1. Police Beat, written by our own Charles Mudede, is the first real Seattle movie. It’s a beautiful document, and everyone should go see it. Yes, it has flaws. So does every movie. Not every movie maps the inner life of a city by capturing the beauty of its physical being. To every one involved with this quantum leap for Seattle film, massive congratulations.

2. Annie Wagner is on the phone interviewing Miranda July right this second (as Slog comes full circle), and is nervous and blushing and giggly and excited. It’s totally adorable.

After 3 years, brainiac Sandeep “Beam on the Rocks” Kaushik is leaving the Stranger for a job in King County Executive Ron Sims’ office where he is expected to resuscitate Ron “I promoted Julie Anne Kempf & Hired Dean Logan Too” Sims. Good luck with that, Sandeep. I’m not sure if even a one-man political think tank such as yourself will be able to pull it off. We’ll miss you. However, I’m sure Microsoft is relieved that you’re giving up on your true calling here at the Stranger. Here’s your going away card.

The Stranger 1535 11th Ave. ~ 3rd floor ~ Seattle, Washington ~ 98122- 3934 voice: 206.323.7101 ~ fax: 206.323.7203

June 3, 2005
King County Executive Ron Sims
701 5th Avenue, Suite 3210
Seattle, WA 98104

Please consider this is a request under the Public Disclosure Act, RCW 42.17. We would like to review any e-mails, memos, letters or communications about the monorail between Ron Sims’ staff (including Deputy Communications Director Sandeep Kaushik) and Sound Transit; and between Ron Sims staff (including Deputy Communications Director Sandeep Kaushik) and Metro in which Sims’ office (especially Communications Director Sandeep Kaushik) is surreptitiously plotting to destroy the monorail. Please consider this request to exist in perpetuity. As you are aware, you have five business days to respond to this request.

Thank You,

The Stranger

Early this morning I came across this passage in Gadamar’s collection of essays called Hegel’s Dialectic: “[Hegel] sees his procedure [the dialectic] as the true rediscovery of the philosophical demonstration, whose logical form cannot be the one given in Euclid’s systematic presentation of geometery and subsequently analyzed in Aristotle’s Organon.” The appearance of the last word, Organon, surprised me. The first place I saw or heard this word was in the first line of Kate Bush’s absolutely beautiful “Cloudbusting”: “I still dream of Organon/I wake up crying/You’re making rain/And you’re just in reach/When you and sleep escape me…” I have loved this song since first buying the album it’s on, Hounds of Love, in 1986, yet I never bothered to determine what the hell Organon means and why it makes Kate Bush wake up crying. A little research in my library, which has several books on the history of philosophy, produced an answer: Organon is a book of logic by Aristotle. Apparently, it has six parts that mainly deal with interpretation, the classification of things that exist, and syllogistic systems and methods. Now, after all these years (nearly two decades!), I finally know why Kate Bush wakes up crying. A dream of Organon is surely not a happy dream.

Last night brought the broadcast of MTV’s annual Movie Awards, a sort of Oscars-on-spring-break bash that I watched as much of as I could take.

Highlight: Hilary Swank being denied a companion to her Million Dollar Baby Best Actress Oscar by Lindsay Lohan, who captured the Best Performance: Female statuette for her work in Mean Girls.

Legitimate highlight: The Best Movie race featuring such mega-successes as The Incredibles, Spider-Man 2, and Kill Bill 2 all trumped by the grand-prizewinning Napoleon Dynamite.

I didn’t care for Napoleon Dynamite all that much (too small, in almost every way).

But for such a film to score bigger with TRLers than all the star-studded explode-a-thons feels like a step in the right evolutionary direction.

Last night’s beautifully fucked-up theme night Gaybash at the Crescent Lounge reminded meas if I needed reminding of why I love Ursula Android and Jackie Hell so much. They have the scummiest, swankiest genius for parties in town. The night had the off-the-cuff feel of someone’s basement party with Jackie as the Chaperone Most Likely To Fondle You and nudist video footage of girls showering and riding in jeeps, which was weirdly sexy and banal at the same timejust the way nudist video footage should be. There was a rotating cast of people spinning records, with my favorite moniker being DJ Lying Thieving Bitch. Then Jackie delivered one of her inimitable song stylings with the chanted chorus, “Jackie is drunk/the seagull is drunk.” Shawn Surething danced along wearing the most spectacular outfit part showgirl, part gypsy- and he was sporting the finest fake tan I’ve seen so far this season. Best of all, I always become mesmerized watching the regulars sit stone-faced at the bar as the mayhem swirls around them.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels will be introducing his Climate Protection resolutionwhich calls for defying President Bush’s thumbs-down on the Kyoto Protocols by implementing the guidelines at the local levelon Saturday in the Environment Committee at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Chicago at 12:30 our time. The mayor’s team did a vote count this morning and realized they had a better chance of getting Nickels’s resolution through the Environment committee than through the Energy Committee, which is chaired by Red city Mayor Bob Young of Augusta, Georgia, and where the vote count looked pretty bad. (The Environment Committee is also chaired by a Red city mayor, Patrick McCrory of Charlotte, NC, but the mayor’s team has been lining up more votes there according to a Nickels staffer who’s in Chicago.)
Meanwhile, the high-profile rising Democratic Party star, Mayor Martin O’Malley of Baltimore, pledged to get Nickels’s back if the resolution makes it to a floor vote. I’ll keep you posted on Nickels’s affront to Bush.

They’re actually true, all the things people have been saying about this band. They shredded the Crocodile stage last night. I wasn’t sure what to make of the singer’s mildly spastic hand-clap-arm-thrust-shout-to-himself-off-mic moves (retarded? making fun of retards? who’s to say), but I loved watching them happen (often framed by a guitarist-bassist high five tableau in the immediate background). Also, he’s smart and funny; his lyrics and the delivery are the ideal reconciliation of being white and loving hiphop. It’s like this: if you’re old enough to need a reminder of why you once thought rock’n’roll (not just music, but rock’n’roll) was worth devoting your life to, The Hold Steady are about the best one you could hope for.

Continue reading "Um, The Hold MF Steady" »

At the end of a happy day, I really want to thank Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times for writing a long and loving artical on Police Beat the movie. Enuff said. Drink well and sleep well all of you.

Our editorial offices are even quieter than the blog today. Several people are out of town, most of the others are out in the city doing interviews/seeing movies/looking into stories/playing hooky. The rest of usall five-are apparently doing things too boring to blog about.

Like me, for example. I’m doing research on beauty (or lack thereof) in the lesbian community. Think: the Beauty Myth meets Queer studies. Yeah, I told you it was too boring to blog about. You really do not want to have to wade through a Slog post detailing whiny, psuedo-feminist rants (and academic journal articles!) about how the characters on Showtime’s “the L Word” are too pretty and feminine, and butches aren’t represented on the show, dammit. Puh-leaze.

There goes Megan Selingoff to listen to CDs.

And then there were four…

I AM as OVER the whole “Iran’s Hip Protest Kids are Gonna Overturn the Middle East” story line as anyone could possibly be. My hopes have been dashed by the Iranian students one too many times, going as far back as February ‘79. And in 2002, during Scene 2 or 3 or 4 of the “Khatami Kids are Gonna Shake It Up” era, I even wrote a 3000-word article for this very paper arguing that the U.S. should support Iran’s Democracy movement as a smart alternative to Bush’s belligerent Post 9/11 policy. Well, I’m done Done DONE! I’m swearing them off. So, I only point out Time magazine’s latest version of the Iran story , which pretends to be cynical (but obviously still has a crush on the Iranians), because I have to call attention to one exciting passage about, and I quote:“Iran’s hottest underground rock band.” The writer sits in on a rehearsal in a “soundproof bunker inside an abandoned greenhouse in a low-rise complex of concrete apartment blocks on the outskirts of Tehran” and watches the band perform a song called “My Sweet Little Terrorist Song.” Evidently, the tune is a lament on Bush’s “Axis of Evil” with these lyrics: “I just wanna watch Dylan live/I won’t fly into the Pentagon alive.” Damn, I’m crushed out all over again. Anyone know how to get a black-market MP3 of this number? The band is called 127, whatever that may mean.

Beyond the universe of salacity surrounding so many aspects of Michael Jackson and his criminal trial for sexual molestation of a child, there’s a wealth of entertainment of a more intricate nature.

Case in point: The hilarious world of Jackson Family Spokespeople, a scrappy band of lawyers, appointed spokespersons, and celebrity friends who’ve juiced the past few days of verdict-watching with stupidly entertaining drama.

This week’s key yuk-providers:

Continue reading "Why I Love Nothing More Than The Jackson Trial" »

This article in The Guardian exposing ExxonMobil’s hold on the Bush administration (re: The Kyoto Protocols) is just another reason to be psyched about what Mayor Nickels is up to this weekend. Nickels left for Chicago today to attend the National Conference of Mayors where he’s pushing a resolution to get U.S. cities to honor the international environmental accord that Clinton singed on to in 1998, but Bush spat on in 2001 by withdrawing. Nickels goes to Chicago having already gotten 161 cities to sign on. This is Urban Identity Politics at its best. Unfortunately, the two committees that are taking up Nickels’ resolution to honor the Kyoto Protocols are chaired by hostile Red City Mayors: Mayor Bob Young of Augusta, Georgia and Mayor Patrick McCrory of Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ll keep you posted on how Greg does in Chicago.

We expected some freaky shit from Tuesday night’s Gang Gang Dance show at Chop Suey, but nothing quite this freaky. Blood Lines, who opened for New York’s Gang Gang Dance, nearly lived up to their name.

Continue reading "Debacle or Performance Art?" »

In “My Philosophy,” KRS One raps: “…[don’t eat] no goat or ham/or chicken or turkey or hamburger
‘cause to me that’s suicide/self-murder…” Meat is not murder but self-murder, which is why I enjoyed the pork chop at Bill’s off Broadway an hour ago—it was a delicious self-murder.

Burgerama is the best thing to happen to beef patties since buns.

Christopher, didn’t you get the memo? Meat is murder. Please make a note of it. :D

It’s Wednesday. Which means, it’s Burgerama all day and all night at the Deluxe. $4.99 hamburgers (including the ones heaped with delicious bacony, avocado-y things). I will be there for lunch, reading the new issue of The Believer, which I will buy at Bailey/Coy Books on my way…

Burgerama is the best thing to happen to beef patties since buns.

I just saw the new Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Demonlover) movie, Clean, last night, and it’s definitely worth a look if you have Thursday afternoons free—the next screening is at 2 pm tomorrow at the Uptown. The plot is lame (musician overdoses, crazy bitch addict wife tries to reform and get visitation rights to her adorable son), but Maggie Cheung is really, really good in the lead role, and Nick Nolte ain’t too shabby as Albrecht (what a name!), her late husband’s father. The cinematography—mainly featuring gritty urban blight and factories belching jewel-toned smoke—made me a little weak. That’s exactly the kind of cliched beauty I adore. Downside according to me: bad child actor (possibly due to Assayas not being able to direct actors in English?). Downside according to Sean Nelson: it’s hard to tell if the song Cheung records in the last scene is supposed to be any good or not.

I’m listening to the audio of yesterday’s Oregon Senate Rules Committee hearing on a bill that would enact civil unions for gay couples in that state. The committee passed it 3-2, and it’s expected to pass the full Senate. Prospects in the Republican controlled Oregon House, unfortunately, don’t look as bright.

The debate is making my blood boil: I’m only five minutes in, and already Senator Charles Starr (R-Hillsboro) has busted out homophobic arguments against civil unions ranging from ‘gay marriage is bad for children,’ to gays are sluts who can’t commit (‘homosexual individuals’ have hundreds, and often up to thousands, of partners, says Starr), and being gay is nothing more than a lifestyle of “lustful sexual gratification” that “thousands have left [to] become happily married productive citizens of our society.” Oh, dear. (Tell Starr he’s an idiot: sen.charlesstarr@state.or.us.)

Gotta run, Roey Thorpe of Basic Rights Oregon is up, hopefully to smack Starr upside the head. And I’m waiting to get to the part where a Senator Charlie Ringo (D-Beaverton) apparently breaks out a list of the 100+ rights currently denied to gay couplesbut granted to married heterosand asks the bigots which of the rights, exactly, they’d like to deny to people. Inheritance? Hospital visitation? Which?

I know we think we won on the filibuster thing. But think again.

I’m obsessed with the second season of Chappelle’s Show (which apparently a sizeable chunk of America is because it was the best-sellig dvd last week). While his sketches of Lil’ Jon, Rick James, and Prince are hilarious, nothing matches the scathing brilliance of Paul Mooney. He was featured in the first season in a segment called Ask a Black Man, which was so funny and mean it actually made me cry. (They also did a one-off with Mario Cantone doing Ask a Gay Guy, which was wretchedly unfunny). This season Mooney appears as Negrodamus dishing out deadpan racial rage to stupid questions asked by a staged audience. (Sample: “What did Michael Jackson do wrong?” “Michael Jackson shouldn’t have been a singer. He should have been a priest. Then he would have just been transferred.”) Someone give this man his own goddamn show.

“Gaffe” is spelled “gaffe,” not “gaff,” the way I spelled it yesterday.

There’s a great photo up on DailyKos about the “White Christian Republicans.”

It’s Bush signing an anti-abortion bill with the best and the brightest of the R Party arrayed behind him — white and Christian, one and all. The only problem with Dean’s statement about the Rs is that he left out the word “male.” The Rs are the white, male, Christian party, a party that’s increasingly taking on the flavor fascism. Smiling, jack-booted thugs.

Howard Dean called the Republican Party the “white Christian party.”

The white Christians of the Republican Party are flipping out - this is almost a classic example of a “gaff,” as defined by Michael Kinsley: a politician telling the truth in public. The Republican Party IS the Christian party, so long as your definition of Christian only includes evangelicals. The Rs take their marching orders from Dobson, Robertson, Bauer, Falwell. And look at voting patterns: The Rs got, what, 11% of the African American vote in 2004? 20% of the Hispanic vote?

So I think it’s entirely accurate to describe the Rs as the White Christian party. How can they take offense? Aren’t their supporters the ones who run around describing the country as a “Christian nation”?

And who can forget the pulpit/podium — complete with a cross! — on the stage at the Republican National Convention? The GOP is overrun with religious bigot, or “religists” as one Savage Love reader suggested we label them.

As some of you may have heard, this guy named Michael Jackson, who used to be a singer or something, will soon receive a verdict in his criminal trial for sexual molestation.

With the charges finallyFINALLY!in the hands of a jury, I’ve tried to disengage from the sort of (peerlessly intoxicating) speculation that swarms around such trials in advance of their verdicts.

However, this morning, Miss Kelly O asked me, “Come onwhat do you think’s gonna happen???”

My reply:

Continue reading "Well, Since You Asked..." »

At the risk of sounding like a mediocre standup comedian, what’s up with Chicago’s O’Hare Airport? I hadn’t frequented it in a while, but I had the misfortune of having a layover there Monday on the way back from Montreal (whose Trudeau airport is a paragon of civility in comparison) and was appalled by the lethargic swarms of humanity, bloated with lousy food and puffy with jet lag trying to maneuver through its grim confines. To add to this claustrophobic nightmare scenario, the overpowering stench of fried steroidal cow wafted through the stuffy air. I couldn’t help thinking that terrorists would have a field day here. But then I ate a surprisingly tasty roasted vegetable sandwich from Starbucks, of all places, and almost all was right with the world for a minute.

Here is my guess: Bean One, a local and prolific hiphop producer, is going to become (or already is) the most important musician in town. His soon-to-be-released work with singer Choklate, rapper Framework, and the veteran NY rapper Black Sheep is simply stunning and vibrant. The man is a creative volcano, and I’m all excited.

Anne Bancroft has died. She was 73.

Some folks thought the theme of our queer issue last year Where We’re Not Wanted was a little hysterical. If anything, it was prescient.

Urban areas, we pointed out in that package, the places where most homos choose to live, were progressive and relatively safe places for queers to live. The point we made in the 2004 queer issue was that many places in the United States were becoming so intolerant of homosexuals that more and more queers would have no choice but to move to leave rural areas or even urban areas in states like Texas and Virginia. Gay Americans have always been migrants, but with so many state legislatures attacking us, more and more of us would be refugees. The piece was the seed that lead to our post-election Urban Archipelago issue.

Continue reading "Texas to Texan Queers: GET OUT." »

Seattle Monorail Project director Joel Horn, who announced that the SMP had wrapped up its negotiations with the monorail bidder, Cascadia Monorail Company, on Friday, acknowledged to me on Tuesday that the new cost estimate for the monorail was substantially higher than the $1.79 billion estimate released in 2002. That earlier estimate, it turns out, included much lower reserves, agency operating costs, and debt assumptions than the agency now anticipates. For example, the proposal released Friday includes a $200 million contingency fund; the 2002 proposal anticipated just $76 million in reserves. The total cost of the project, Horn acknowledged, could be upward of $2 billion - hundreds of millions more than expected. Horn’s response to charges that the project is “over budget”: Yes, the project will cost more, but it’ll be better. “[$1.75 billion] was a current estimate back in 2002,” he says. “A lot of things have changed since 2002. Yes, the total project costs are up, but we’ll have better taxpayer protection.”

Continue reading "Monorail Over Budget?" »

Here’s a video follow-up to this week’s feature story about Kate Martin’s Greenwood skate spot, part of her crusade to convince the city to build skateparks in great locations (and until then, her own front yard will have to suffice).

Talented neighborhood teen Erik Janecke pulls off an impressive “tre flip,” as the kids call ita 360 degree kick flip. Having never stepped on a skateboard without promptly falling off, I’m in awe.

(I’m guessing one of Kate’s boys filmed the brief clip, and someone added fancy slo-mo effects. Props to them.)

If there’s a better, smarter, funnier, righter music critic at work today than Sasha Frere-Jones, who writes super-insightful pieces like this laser beam to the heart of The White Stripes’ appeal and limitations, for The New Yorker on a regular basis, please feel free to bring him/her to my attention. The line about how Jack White “has succumbed to the indie-rock delusion that the idiosyncratic part of your gift (I have a weird voice, I recorded this all on vintage analog gear in my own house, I have large biceps but also look like Michael Jackson) means more than its universal aspects (my weird voice is appealing, I write great words, my songs are easily sung)” is a perfect encapsulation of a fundamental truth about the last 20 years of pop music. Frere-Jones states the case, makes it true, makes it funny,

Continue reading "My Favorite Writer (today)" »

Matthew Stadler, novelist, essayist, Clear Cut Press editor, and party-thrower (not to mention former books editor at this here newspaper), has been named the first writer in residence for a group of restaurants in Portland called, collectively, ripe. The restaurants are Gotham Building Tavern, clarklewis, and ripe family supper (their lower-case). An excerpt from the announcement:

Continue reading "Matthew Stadler Habitually Eats" »

I like the Nation but their current feature “Urban Archipelago” should have mentioned The Stranger, as we did concoct the concept the day after the devastating presidential election and published a feature, “The Urban Archipelago,” the following week. The Nation’s article should have at least mentioned Seattle, as The Stranger is based in that city.

Here’s the full transcript of Judge Bridges’ ruling.

No Evidence

During the orgy of cheap sentiment that washed over the world after John Paul II’s death, I wrote in Savage Love of my annoyance with straight people who paid attention when the Pope condemned gay people, gay sex, and gay marriage, but conveniently ignored the ol’ celibate when he condemned heterosexual people and heterosexual sex.

We’ve got a new Pope, Benedict, but the same old double standard. Today Pope Benedict/Ratzinger condemned birth control, divorce, gay marriage, trial marriages, and free-style unions, whatever that is, labeling all “anti-family.” (This is, of course, the same guy who defended and covered for all those priests who raped Catholic children in the U.S., Europe, and Latin American.) Of the things on that list, only onegay marriageisn’t about straight people.

So how did the mainstream media report the Pope Benedict’s idiotic comments? Under this headline:

POPE CONDEMNS GAY MARRIAGE AS `ANARCHY’

That was the Reuter’s headline, which was reproduced on Matt “Just Another Breeder” Drudge’s website, The Drudge Report.

It’s maddening. The Pope condemns divorce and birth control, lumps them in with gay marriage, and dismisses all three as “pseudo-freedoms.” But only gay marriage makes the headline, and in most cases it’s only the headline that people will read.

Sigh.

Hey, straight people! The Pope hates you too!

I bet none of you have had the chance to see the Rat City Roller Girls in action yet. While their White Center roller rink digs were charming, the venue only sat a few hundred people. Tickets for the first few bouts sold out in minutes. Those who were able to get in were very, very lucky. I just barely squeaked in last month.

That all changes today.

The June 25 bout is in a new venuea hangar at Sand Point. That means lots more people can squeeze in around the flat track, so the tickets aren’t going to sell out instantly. (Though I played it safe and nabbed my tickets first thing this morning, before posting this alert. I bet they’ll all sell fairly soon.) You should go. I’ll be there, rooting for the Derby Liberation Front. Or the Throttle Rockets. I haven’t decided yet.

The Democrats’ official spin on Judge Bridges “N0 EVIDENCE” ruling is posted below. There’s one thing missing, though. While the Democrats hype Bridges’ denunciation of “proportional deduction” and highlight his statement that there was NO EVIDENCE of fraud, they don’t call attention the more important point that Bridges made: There was NO EVIDENCE that Rossi should have won the election. That’s what the Republicans had to prove. And they didn’t. Bridges was cold on that point, saying of the Republicans’ “evidence” to that end: “There’s none of that here.” To the contrary, Bridges pointed out (almost comically) that the hard evidence actually lowered Rossi’s total. Anyway, I think the Dems should lock into Bridges’ relentless “NO EVIDENCE” mantra and make it their own sound bite. The ultimate point being that the NO EVIDENCE Republicans are sore losers who wasted the public’s time with a near frivolous lawsuit.

Continue reading "Short & Sweet: No Evidence" »

The title of Oasis’ new record, Don’t Believe The Truth, is utterly stupid. I hope Chuck D does the right thing and sues the British assholes.

So, the Jon Pareles piece about Coldplay in the Sunday New York Times basically sums up one of the big contradictions of rock crit. The article was a classic gob of spit aimed at a band that the world lines up to adore. Though it contains a pretty strong slam (“Most Insufferable Band of the Century”), “The Case Against Coldplay” wasn’t nearly as mean as it might have been. Still, it had no other purpose than to stand up and call bullshit on a thing that lots of music fans, and presumably Times readers enjoy. I think that’s a totally fair thing for a writer to do, since there are few things more frustrating than watching as some band you can’t stand gets a free ride from critics and listeners alike based onwhat, looks? Sales? Corporate backing?

Continue reading "Coldplay Smackdown" »

I would just like to state for the record that I’m pissed off about the new Metro route 49. Supposedly Metro needed to split route 7 into two pieces (from downtown south is still the 7; U District to downtown is now the 49) because it’s always late. If the bus is always late, it’s not just because it’s a long route. It’s also because the #7 bus is completely packed—whether it’s in the ID, downtown, Capitol Hill, or the U District—every single time I get on. If they split up the route and added new buses (say, every 10 minutes instead of every 15), things would actually improve. Want to complain? Have at it.

Bridges’ harshest barb came with a bit of pointed analysis at the end of his hour-long “No Evidence” ruling this morning when he said tossing out the election would have been an act of “judicial egotism.” And, take note right wingers, an instance of “judicial activism” that no one should condone. In other words, tsk tsk you hypocrites.

So the Tony Awards were yesterday, and Bart Sher (of Intiman Theatre) lost out to Mike Nichols, who directed Spamalot, and Craig Lucas lost to Rachel Sheinkin, who wrote the book for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. If anyone cares. No one cares. Anyway, it’s not the quality of your wins that counts, it’s the quantity: The Light in the Piazza brought home six awards out of 11 nominations, which is more than any other musical.

The election contest lawsuit in Wenatchee came to a close today with Judge Bridges’ crushing repudiation of GOP claims that Dino Rossi was robbed of victory and is the rightful governor of Washington state. Bridges ruling, despite its measured tone, was a total slap down. Fraud by liberal Democats? Zippo evidence. Proportional deduction? Junk science. Errors in King County? Yes, but Bridges went out of his way to point out that errors occurred across the state. He said that Republicans had cherry picked their felon voters list. He rejected the claim of “partisan bias” in the errors. He said that there was “no evidence that ballots were changed, ballot boxes stuffed or votes removed…” To add insult to injury, he actually subtracted four voters from Rossi’s total, raising Gregoire’s victory margin from 129 to 133 votes. So, goodbye, Gov. Fraudoire. And hello, Dino Lossi.

If you were a fan of ’90s Oregon power pop outfit Marigold, keep your ears peeled for Cabinessence from Eugene, the new band featuring former Marigold-en boys Nathan and Jacob. They played a great set at Hattie’s Hoot last night, following the equally praiseworthy Tom Brosseau. Their songs reflect influences including Graham Parsons, Marc Bolan, and Brian Wilson (someone else in the room dubbed them “Glam Parsons,” which fit), and they have an amazing guy on Hammond keyboards and slide guitar. Jacob said they should have a new record out circa fall - and hopefully they’ll be back in Seattle soon.