You can watch the video for his “Sick Like Me” single here.

Speaking of crunk, occasional Stranger freelancer Tamara Palmer has written a book titled Continue reading ""Shake those steatopygic curves, bee-yotch!”" »

It’s the must-see movie of the summer, the blockbuster Tom has been preparing to star in all his life. See it here.

Ok, so you know that crazed feeling you got when you first heard Death from Above 1979? That whole, “Holy shit, this is so intense I don’t know whether I want to punch holes in concrete or dance on the roofs of cop cars”? (Or, you know, something like that?). The new T. Raumschmiere is totally that for me right now. The record is out in August on Mute, but damn if it’s not going to be blasting out from turntables long before that. I have to thank Mr. Dave Segal for turning me on to the guy but now I can’t let go. As aggressive as the best punk songs, gritty as you want it, and with a hard techno beat, the upcoming Blitzkrieg Pop is already one of my favorite records for 2005. And I want “Sick Like Me” as my new theme song.

A final word on crunk. At the end of the 19th century, the country gave the city blues music; in return, the city gave the country the most important musical form of the 20th century, Jazz (born 1927-died 1969). At the end of the 20th century, the city gave the country hiphop; in return, the country bumpkins (or rural idiots, as Marx would have it) gave us crunk.

Anyone want to school me further on the nuances of Crunk?

In a nutshell, it’s the sound of crazy drunk (“crunk,” get it?) Southern rappers gruffly shouting feminist-baitingly lewd things at strippers in exotic dancing establishments, set to watered-down 2 Live Crew beats, random video-game bleeps, and snippets of cheesy John Williams soundtrack strings.

Further enlightenment here.

Last night’s SAM Party in the Park was joyful and dusty. My only beef is with the On the Double double-dutch team. Before they took to the stage, the lady jump-ropers were full of sass and promise. Their cheerleader-esque outfits were nicely coordinated, but once they started turning the ropes, nothing else about them was: The girls failed to execute just about every trick they attempted. The short routine was repeatedly punctuated by the anticlimactic thwack of the plastic-beaded rope catching on a leg or the ground, halting the action. I’d seen On the Double before and had chalked that lackluster performance up to them having an off night or a few too many beers. But no, yesterday validated my suspicion: They’re just not good at double-dutch.

A series of polls show the ground falling out from under President Bush in terms of support for the Iraq war. Take your pick, but the latest, from CNN/USA Today/Gallup, shows six in ten Americans opposing the war. And a recent New York Times/CBS News poll found Bush’s approval rating still falling, down to a dismal 42 percent (from 51 percent after his election).

Meanwhile, despite what Dick Cheney recently said about the insurgency being in its “last throes,” more than 1,700 U.S. troops have now died in Iraq and more than 13,000 have been wounded, including several more today. Yesterday, the top U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf contradicted Cheney’s rosy assessment, saying there’s been no change in the strength of the insurgency over the last six months, no evidence of last throes.

Something’s happening here, and the administration knows it. That’s why Bush has scheduled a prime time address to the nation for Tuesday. It’s an attempt to stop public opinion on him and his war from heading into a free-fall. Look for us to live-Slog it.

After reading Trisha Ready’s fine piece in the new queer issue, offering marching orders to the writers of The L Word, I spent somewell, I wouldn’t necessarily call it qualitytime watching bootleg DVDs of season 2, courtesy of eBay. I can’t yet speak to all the issues Trisha raises, though the male fantasy pandering is blatant enough that pretending not to notice would be folly. What I found really impressive, though, was the scene in which Mia Kirshner’s (unbearable) character (my otherwise sweet-natured wife hates that bitch) is outed as the obviously terrible writer she obviously is by guest star Sandra Bernhard. I kept wondering if the show, which is pretty smart for a TV soap opera about an imaginary lesbian wonderland, would ever acknowledge the awfulness of Jenny Schecter. Then they did! Hooray for television!

Tom Cruise continues his aggressive ruination of his marketable stardom with another frantically loony TV appearance, this time on the extremely mainstream Today Show. (For a transcript of the sputtering showdown, click here.)

Best possible fallout from Cruise’s crusade to make everyone hate him: No more starring roles in any Hollywood films that hope to make money, forcing Cruise to make and star in his own movies, perhaps showcasing Scientology-friendly themes, ala Travolta’s Battlefield Earth….

(and corporate assimilation of the rock and roll) I loved this little passage from the latest diary entry at Pete Townshend’s website, detailing a txt msg exchange between Townshend and Bob Geldof about Live 8:

“While we [Roger Daltrey and PT] rehearsed in London for the Samsung event, Bob Geldof sent me a mobile text message in teenage-speak (he lives in a house full of young women so he can speak the lingo better than I). It said ‘R U doin Live8? LOL Bob g’. I found myself thinking that he should know, surely. I replied ‘RH 4 NY charity gig. Will talk 2 Rog. Later. PT’ This seemed very teenaged to me, and I was quite proud of my almost incomprehensible texting.”

Bloody diamond old geezer.

My post on Krump-dancing (see Tuesday, below) raises an important question, at least for this white boy: Now that I know what Krump is, what is Crunk?

I posed this question to Charles Mudede, who performed for me an amazing reenactment of the Crunk, which I wish I could post for all to hear. Alas, Wikkipedia’s definition will have to suffice for now:

Crunk (or krunk) is a specific type of hip hop music, based out of the southern United States, particularly Atlanta, Georgia. While most crunk-style music could be called “Dirty South” or southern rap, the reverse is not necessarily true. Eightball & MJG for example have a more “Southern funk” sound.

Not incredibly enlightenting. Anyone want to school me further on the nuances of Crunk?

What’s the scandal here? Rock songs ARE commercials for beer, cars, shoes, and iPods.

I’m passing along the following info for female musicians anywhere. Rockrgrl Magazine is looking for bands to play their upcoming Rockrgrl Music Conference 2005. If you’re interested, there’s more info here. Patti Smith will be this year’s guest of honor at the event.

Great back-and-forth (linked below) starring City Council Member Nick Licata v. Council Members Jean Godden and Richard Conlin. Licata’s defending his amendmentwhich I wrote about in this week’s CounterIntelto prevent the mayor from earmarking 9,300 bus service hours to Paul Allen’s South Lake Union trolley. (When it comes to buses, dollars are measured in bus service hours.) Nickels’s plan would commit nearly $1 million to the South Lake Union trolley prior to an analysis of citywide need, according to Licata. The debate will be settled when the full council votes on Monday. So far, it looks like Licata only has 4 out of 5 votes necessary to win the fight.

Continue reading "South Lake Union Fisticuffs" »

DAVE SEGAL wrote:

“For Nike, this is business as usual. Ask the (surviving) Beatles and the Stooges. The company’s been trying to drape its image in rock ‘n’ roll rebelliousness (itself a long-dubious idea) for decades.”

Though it’s a huge bummer to think of “Revolution” or “Lust For Life” or any other good song used in a commercial for shoes (or beer, or cars, or fast food, or iPods), it doesn’t bother me because usually, someone, somewhere associated with the artist agreed to it and, presumably got (seriously) paid. And I’m pretty firm in my belief that you can’t begrudge musicians their few opportunities to make a livingespecially when you consider that TV commercials play more (and in many cases better) music than most radio stations. HOWEVER:

Continue reading "Again with the Nike" »

Something happened with our email server today and a whole chunk of our editorial emails seem to be gone (for now or forever). So if you’ve sent something today to us that didn’t get a response (and you don’t think we were ignoring you on purpose) please send it again. Thanks.

For Nike, this is business as usual. Ask the (surviving) Beatles and the Stooges. The company’s been trying to drape its image in rock ‘n’ roll rebelliousness (itself a long-dubious idea) for decades.

The future, as they say, is now.

In the 19th century, an education in architecture was worth shit if the student had never visited Venice; in the 21st century, an education in architecture is worth even less than shit if the student has never seen and walked through the magnificent industrial ruins of Detroit..

oh, man. just when you thought corporate branding of underground culture couldn’t possibly stoop any lower, along comes Nike, straight up stealing the cover of the Minor Threat record to sell their brand. I don’t care for Minor Threat, because (A) I’m not 16 years old, and (B) I think hardcore punk rock and the straight edge lifestyle are, in terms of cultural brainwashing, indistinguishable from evangelical christianity, except, as if it were possible, even more outmoded and useless. I also don’t have much time for the whole punk vs. corporate dialectic. But I have a world of respect for what Dischord is about as a label and a project, and besides, you’d have to be a blind, deaf liar to think this wasn’t outrageous.

Just a friendly reminder that entries in the contest announced in last week’s Nightstand (click here) are due by noon tomorrow. Some smart person who’s good with words will win a $50 gift certificate to spend at University Book Store.

Ex-Seattle guy Sam Jayne is Love as Laughter—and having a rotating set of musicians playing your indie rock jams can be a risky endeavor. I’m proud to report, though, that last night’s Love as Laughter show was a total success, with Jayne backed by two Pretty Girls and going through a short catalog of old and new material that sounded like a scaled down, less pointy-headed Pavement in places. It absolutely melted my heart that he ended his set with my favorite LAL song, “Miss Direction.”

Courtesy of Christopher DeLaurenti:
tatterdemalion (tat·ter·de·mal·ion)
adj: raggedly dressed and unkempt
n: somebody wearing ragged clothes
Christopher used it to describe “dementedly tatterdemalion stuffed rabbits”; I’m naming the mean-spirited, one-legged hobo who hangs out on my street “the tatterdemalion.”

So, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “takings” are Constitutional. The Court ruled 5-4 that local governments can take control of private property in the name of private development if the municipality sees a public benefitlike job growth. (In English: A local government can bulldoze private homes to make way for a WalMart.) What does that mean for King County’s Critical Areas Ordinance? If local governments can go to bat for private interests as a public good, is it also kosher for local governments to control private property in the name of government interests like watershed protection when they see a public benefit? Seems to me like the Court has put the right wing property rights movement in a bind. I love when that happens. Although, I guess it also puts us lefties in a bind. Do we want to support bulldozing homes for WalMart so we can also support watershed protection? It cuts both ways, as most Supreme Court rulings do.

After reading yesterday’s thoroughly upsetting post about Lolita Love, perhaps you wondered, “How come this isn’t illegal?”

The guy behind the instigating email brings this up himself on his website:

I’m only seeking lawful, nonsexual physical contact with young girls, and reporting my experiences on this page to spread the good news of nonsexual girl love to the masses. If some prosecutor thinks that I’m sexually touching prepubescent girls when I say that I’m only nonsexually hugging and cuddling them, then good luck proving that in court (Jacko not guilty!). If anyone knows of anything I’m doing that is illegal, please tell me, because I’m not aware of it.

For an answer, I turned to my best friend from high school and beyond Mindy, who’s also a real live lawyer working in California but who was happy to help me with the Revised Code of Washington.

Continue reading "Lolita Love & The Law" »

Yes, yes, Jack St. Clair Kilby should be praised for revolutionizing music and porn and countless other fields.

But will there come a day when humanity, reduced to automatons by the microchips in their necks, remembers Kilby the way our age remembers Oppenheimer?

Just kidding. I hope.

I don’t want to get into an argument with Dave about microchips, but I would maintain that Jack’s contribution to modern life had an even bigger impact on porn than it did on music.

Dan is absolutely right. Kilby should be worshipped like a god for easing the access of porn to beaters wherever there’s a connection.

Anti-porn crusaders, step off. I’ve heard all your arguments, and I still think porn does more good than bad for our beleaguered species.

So long as we can say, “This is the worst,” it is not the worst.

I just got the news that the Meat Purveyors , Austin’s most ass-kicking bluegrass band (you heard me), have cancelled their Friday night gig at the Tractor Tavern. There’s no word on a make-up date yet. It makes the decision of whether to see their show or Lucinda Williams easier. Besides, John Doe, punk’s Sam Shepard, is opening for her and his new album with its bluesier sound and downhearted vibe is one of his best. And he’s still foxy as hell at 51.

This website brought to you by Richard McIver, a Seattle politician in the old-school, make-no-waves, make-no-decisions, process-process-process style beloved by certain dim writers at Seattle’s dimmer weekly newspaper. Excuse us, but this doesn’t seem so nice, does it?

One of my favorite mags, BusinessWeek, has hired a stud media columnist. His name is Jon Fine and he’s been slaving away for years over at the low-profile Advertising Age, where he consistently broke news about important trends in the industry. BW, which displaced TIME as the zeitgeist American news mag about 15 years ago, got smart and hired Jon away earlier this month. Now, that he’s got a national column, I expect big, important stories from Jon that will help make sense of the Fluid-as-Never-Before media business. He filed his first column this week. Take notice.

So you love music and you love writing and you love the Stranger and you would love to work directly with Underage columnist Megan Seling and you would really love to be our new intern. Awesome. Send an email about why we would love you to jennifer@thestranger.com (subject: I’d love to be the new intern) ASAP. It’s unpaid but the life experience you will get at this paper is something Donald Trump could never buy. Be our next apprentice.

I don’t want to get into an argument with Dave about microchips, but I would maintain that Jack’s contribution to modern life had an even bigger impact on porn than it did on music. Thanks to the microchip, we can all have porn delivered directly into our computers - the info superhighway is paved with porn. It’s practically a porn delivery system.

So the generation of kids out there growing up without having to shoplift porn, like their elders did, have Jack to thank.

The inventor of the microchip has passed away. Jack St. Clair Kilby created the miniature device that allows you to read this post and many other fascinating things on da Internetz. The microchip’s impact on music-making, of course, is incalculably monumental. In the grand scheme of things musical, Kilby is ultimately more important than the Beatles, Kraftwerk, James Brown, Fela Kuti, and 20 more of your favorite pioneers/innovators combined.* Much respect is due.

* I exaggerate, but only slightly.

Because it never gets old making fun of emo.

Erica C. Barnett asked this question on our trusty Slog yesterday. And it looks like she was onto something. PI followed her with a whopping front-page headline this morning.

Eli’s post below reminded me of this amazing (and hilarious) essay from the April issue of Scientific American.

I’m fond of the name “Wesley,” and I’m fond of DailyKos, and I can’t freakin’ wait to start sending large checks to the next Dem who makes a run for the White House - and, yes, I’ll send those checks even if the Dem turns around and, like John Fucking Kerry, says insulting things about gays and lesbians at every third campaign stop.

But… Wesley Clark?

DailyKos hosted a straw poll earlier this week, and nearly 14,000 people voted. And Clark came out ahead, with 26% of the vote. Hillary Clinton got just 10% - the same percentage that voted for Russ Feingold, the Senator from Wisconsin. I voted for Feingold - twice, actually, once from my work computer and once from my home computer. I don’t think Feingold, a liberal Jew and one of the architects of campaign finance reform, has a shot in hell, but I dig him. (He was also one of only a handful of Senators to vote against the Iraq war, but I can’t hold being so damn RIGHT against him.)

I have to admit that I’m shocked - shocked! - that Clark did so well. He tanked, utterly tanked, in the 2004 Dem primaries, and I wasn’t that impressed with him. Were other Dems? Looks that way.

One bright spot: John “Dumber Than Bush” Kerry was the presidential pick of just 2% of the voters. “No Freakin’ Clue” came in at 17%.

This year, when the Kansas State Board of Education decided to hold hearings on the validity of evolution, the media smelled another Scopes Trial.

That trial, held in 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, drew national attention and featured a forceful defense of science and reason against religious fundamentalism. It became a duel of wits that laid bare, for the public, the intellectual emptiness of the creationist position (pushed these days by Seattle’s own Discovery Institute). The Scopes Trial turned into a humiliating defeat for religious fundamentalists, who fell out of favor in the public’s eyes for decades after.

But this year, with fundamentalists again ascendant, scientists didn’t show up to defend evolution in Kansas. Their idea was that attending would only encourage the notion that evolution is debatable. The result? People in Kansas are now likely to be taught that evolution is debatable.

Sometimes there’s crud so quickly.

72 hours after Michael Jackson’s acquittal, this email was sent to Last Days:

Hi David. I’m a bit surprised at your hostility toward Michael and sour grapes over the verdict… Jacko is arguably the most revolutionary figure of our times! I believed him when he said he had physical closeness—but no sexual contact—with young boys, and it inspired me to come out of the closet about my similar feelings for young girls.

Continue reading "Jacko: The Aftermath, Pt. 1" »

The most interesting thing about Krumping is not that the origins of this new dance trace back to a former South Central L.A. cocaine dealer turned clown — although that’s pretty interesting. The most interesting thing is that Krumping appears to be what emerges when you mix evangelical Christianity, urban decay, and the war on drugs. (And David LaChapelle.)

If the publicity surrounding the film can be believed, krumping will soon “explode” from the confines of South Central and spread like a kinetic virus across the country, or at least to the local cineplex. Considering the origins of break dancing and hip-hop, all incubated in landscapes no less benighted than those of South Central L.A., only a fool would take odds against the hype.

Confidential to Fankick!: You are not alone. Here is a tale of a man, Tommy the Clown, whose act was also ripped off — and improved upon.

Just got a phone message from People’s Waterfront Coalition hero Grant Cogswell. What I gather from Grant’s voice mail is that he was trying to attend a Viaduct conference at Benaroya Hall. (Grant and the PWC advocate knocking down the Viaduct, but, unlike the mayor, they don’t want to replace it with a tunnel) The PWC would rather do a series of fixes to the traffic grid downtown and turn the viaduct into a regular arterial, rather than a huge, $4 billion highway. It’s a cool urbanist vision for de-emphasizing cars. Anyhoo: Grant reports that Benaroya security forcibly removed him from the building. DEVELOPING!

I don’t know much about monorails, but $11 billion sounds like a lot. Does every citizen get his/her own solid gold bench or something?

According to the financial figures released by the monorail agency yesterday, yes. (Look in the bottom right corner of the first page.) Using a variety of mechanism - including uninsured “junk” bonds, which carry a comparatively high interest rate of 7 or 8 percent - the monorail’s total debt would grow to $11 billion by 2053. And that’s only if the tax base (the value of cars in Seattle) grows as quickly as the monorail agency has predicted - a brisk 6 percent a year. If it doesn’t, the tax will have to last longer (as long as 2078, in one agency scenario) to pay off the bonds - increasing the total debt even further.

Now, this is super interesting. I just knew that my obsession with text messaging was going to prove justifiable one day. Granted, the situation is a little different—I mainly use it so I don’t have to talk to my friends; they use it because they could be put to death for saying what they think—but I’m not about to let that stop me from feeling at least a little special satisfaction.

Good people:

I’m reading some incredibly great, dark shit by Stranger writer and editor extraordinaire Charles Mudede tonight at Bus Stop. It’s the first night of a new reading series at this relatively new bar (it’s next to Bimbo’s on Pine), and I can’t vouch for what the other curators are doing, but my theme is “The Collected Works of Charles Mudede.”

The reading series happens every Tuesday this summer, and “The Collected Works of Charles Mudede” doesn’t actually take place until sometime in August, but tonight I’m reading a sneak peek of what’s on offer.

Tantilizing quote: “Seattle is deathless, with a quality of light that is as angular as Green River Land, but instead inspires poetry and romance rather than rape fantasies and death.”

Plus, alcohol.

I should have mentioned this sooner, but the best way to see Godard’s Masculine Feminine is with my esteemed colleague Josh Feit sitting beside you. Since you aren’t super likely to have that dream come true (although, you never know), you should still go check it out in its remaining couple of days at the Varsitythrough Thursday. Leaving aside the fact that every day is already 1966 for Josh, and that MF is a definitive document of that moment just before Paris went all the way through the looking glass of history, the film is actually better now than it was when I first saw it, for reasons that have less to do with J-LG’s mastery (though I’d put this one forth as his finest work) than with the difference between being in your 20s and in your 30s.

Continue reading "Number 6 in Japan!" »

Lovers of quality techno have another reason to rejoice: The late, lamented Krakt event will be up and running again every second Saturday at Re-Bar, beginning July 9. Cover is a very reasonable $3.

We suspect that the previous crew of DJsKristina Childs, Jerry Abstract, and Paul Edwards will be expertly commandeering the decks again. Along with Hitgirl’s new Saturday monthly at Baltic Room, U-Turn, techno aficionados suddenly have some regular clubbing options for a change.

I think the POV series on PBS kick-started my passion for weird little documentaries. Actually, I think the bizarre and wonderful film Hybrid, which I saw at SIFF circa 2001 (?), kick-started my passion, and then when POV picked it up for broadcast, I fell in love. POV is a summer series, with a new documentary every week, and it starts this week with The Education of Shelby Knox. In most places, the series launches tonight at 10 pm, but check your listings—the local Seattle affiliate, KCTS, has scheduled it for Thursday, also at 10. I haven’t seen the movie, but it appears to be a straightforward doc about a Baptist teenager from Lubbock, Texas, who becomes a hardcore advocate for comprehensive sex education in Texas high schools. Awesome. The series continues with a bunch of stuff that hasn’t yet been seen in Seattle, plus commercial-free broadcasts of movies you may have missed when they opened theatrically.

The first crime to occur at the Federal Courthouse was the building itself. It is one of the ugliest structures in the downtown area. It has the color of a sick autumn day and the shape of a robotic penguin. When enterting it, one feels the way a frozen Penguin egg must feel when entering the awful space between its parent’s flabby bottom and funky feet. If that buidling had been beautifully built then none of this shooting and grenade nonsense would have happened today.

Earlier this afternoon, Stranger staffers ripped themselves away from their desks, despite today’s harried deadlines, to check out the crazy action outside our building, on 11th Avenue between Pike and Pine. A dozen cops carsthe entire East Precinct’s on-duty staff?swarmed the street, even pulling up onto the sidewalks. One woman sauntered around in a jacket labeled “negotiator.” Another guy, in a bulletproof vest over a t-shirt, paced the sidewalk. Regular-looking cops milled around and conferred. They all seemed concerned with the loft building at the corner of 11th and Pike. But not too concernedofficers weren’t warning passersby to steer clear, nor were they in any sort of hurry. All one officer would say to this passerby was “some guy is having a really bad day,” declining to elaborate unless I lived in the building in question.

My theory? Given the timing and the weird cop attitude, I bet this was some sort of followup to today’s soon-to-be-a-Daily-Show-punchline Federal Courthouse shooting. Ten bucks says the the grenade-man lived in the building, and cops were looking to kick down his door to root around for anti-government propaganda.

So, my cynical thought this morning when Ron Sims & Greg Nickels announced that they had a new plan for the Waterfront streetcar to extend the line South, was this: Greg Nickels was using his behind the scenes muscle to undermine Port Commissioner Paige Miller, who offered up a streetcar plan of her own last March to extend the line north. Nickels, it seemed to me, simply wants to help out is pal Casey Corr, who’s running against Miller for city council.
Voila: It only took Casey a few hours to send out a press release stating: “As I said in March, the solution to the trolley’s future was to look south. By contrast, the port’s proposal took the trolley in a direction where ridership was low and costs were high.”
I don’t know what’s more embarrassing, Nickels’s naked ploy to waste city time hammering out a plan that helps his friend in the election, or Corr’s sloppy, unsophisticated politickingcalling attention to the fact that Nickels is Corr’s daddy!

I hate it when reporters make this kind of error: “Motorists in the Denver metro area fed up with clogged roadways and rush-hour traffic apparently are willing to dig deep to ease congestion and cut down commute time. FasTracks, a 12-year plan to expand bus service and add 119 miles of rail lines, has been called extraordinary not because of its scope, but because voters in a car-worshipping red state approved a $4.7 billion tax increase to pay for it.” (“Denver Transit Plan Touted as Nat’l Model” by JON SARCHE, Associated Press Writer, June 20, 2005).

Denver voted 70% for Kerry and is politcally deep in the blue. FasTracks had nothing to do with “a car-worshipping red state,” but with “motorists in the Denver metro area.”

Check out Anthony Lane hatin’ on Annie Wagner’s favorite movie, Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make Amy-Kate and Jalene’s Bellydancing extravaganza.

But on Friday night, as I was driving down Broadway, I caught a few moments of Streetbeat, grinding their schtick into the brick in front of U.S. Bank, before a crowd of happy gawkers.

Despite their championship title, and the light rain falling, the Streetbeat freaks were working it as hard as ever.

That, my friends, is a sign of true stardom.

But damn, those boys are nasty. (Is there anything they won’t lick or hump?)