It was touch and go there for a minute.

The day before the deadline to get films in for Hump!, The Stranger’s first annual amateur porn contest, we had received just THREE entries. By 5:30 PM the next day we had 43 locally-produced, amateur porn and/or erotic films in the building.

After watching all the films I have to say that Hump! is a smashing fucking success. We’ve got films that are brilliant, films that are hot, and films that are deeply, deeply creepy. And we’ve got films that are all of the above.

Of the 43 films that entered, 20 made it past the first round of judging and are in competition for the grand prize. These 20 films will be shown in their entirety. But we want everyone who entered to get at least a few moments on the screen, so clips from the other 23 films will be also be shown.

So who determines the winner? YOU DO! The audience will be given ballots and YOUR votes will determine who wins the grand prizea trip to sunny Las Vegas.

There will be just two screenings of Hump! next Saturday, August 20, at the Northwest Film Forum, at 6:00 and 8:30 p.m.. Tickets ARE ON SALE NOW at TicketWindow locations. They’re $15, and they’re cheap at that price. There are only 125 seats at Northwest Film Forum, so that means there are only 250 tickets TOTAL for Hump! You would be a fool to miss this, so get your tickets ASAP!

Staffers, please note: There are no staff comps. If you want to see Hump!, you’ll have to buy a ticket too. Sorry about that. Only folks who made a porno for Hump! are getting free tickets. If you want free tickets for next year’s Hump!, well, you know what you must do…

Remember that bit in The Parallax View, where The Man attempted to brainwash Warren Beatty by forcing him to watch a short film distilling all of society’s ills? This is kind of like that, only with rednecks. Without fear of hyperbole, I can say that it is one of the most glorious things ever.

Did you know that Seattle is home to perhaps the world’s only erotic mime? I saw her perform last night. I found her act one-part mime creepy, one-part animatronic-marionette cool (and no parts erotic). I wondered if there’s such a thing as a mime fetish, but I can find no evidence of it on the internet.

…conservative radio gabbers will walk the earth. Check out this post on Daily Kos about radio hack Mike Gallagher’s despicable counter protest to Cindy Sheehan’s efforts in Crawford, Texas.

As of last night, the local Democratic legislative district organizations (which, in Blue Seattle, are the defacto neighborhood political bodies) have all now issued their endorsements in this year’s municipal races.

Here are the results:

37th District (SouthEast Seattle)

Mayor: Nickels
Pos. 2 (Richard Conlin’s seat): Richard Conlin
Pos. 4 (Jan Drago’s seat): Jan Drago/Angel Bolanos (dual endorsement)
Pos. 6 (Nick Licata’s seat): Nick Licata
Pos. 8 (Richard McIver’s seat): Richard McIver/Dwight Pelz (dual endorsement)

43rd District (Cap. Hill, U. District, Wallingford)

Mayor: No Endorsement
Pos. 2 Conlin
Pos. 4 Drago
Pos. 6 Licata
Pos. 8 Pelz

36th District (Magnolia, Queen Anne, Ballard)

Mayor: No Endorsement
Pos. 2 Conlin
Pos. 4 No Endorsement
Pos. 6 Licata
Pos. 8 Pelz

46th District (North Seattle)

Mayor: No Endorsement
Pos. 2 Conlin
Pos. 4 No Endorsement
Pos. 6 Licata
Pos. 8 McIver/Pelz (dual endorsement)

34th District (West Seattle)

Mayor: Nickels
Pos. 2: Conlin
Pos. 4: No Endorse
Pos. 6: Licata
Pos. 8: Pelz/Robert Rosencrantz (dual endorsement)

P.s. I heard a pretty interesting story about the 34th Meeting that sheds some light on the Nickels Machine’s heavy effort to back Casey Corr. I’ll post that in a second in a separate SLOG entry.

First up, the rumors of Courtney Love’s suicide have been proven false by the Drudge Report:

FALSE COURTNEY LOVE SUICIDE RUMORS FILL INTERNET: LAPD Officer Kathi Simpson of the Media Relations office says detectives report that the suicide in the 8500 block of Mulholland Drive in the Mount Olympus area does not involve a celebrity. Off duty police officer reportedly killed self early in morning in secluded area off famous drive…

Unfortunately, it sounds like Love might be chasing the old chemical train again, as the Page Six item below suggests. This makes me sadCourtney’s choice of pudgy sobriety over svelte messiness was, to me, the most impressive work she’d done since The People Vs. Larry Flynt. But perhaps the chants of “fat, fat, FAT!” drove her back to the drugs. (I blame you, Adrian Ryan!)

Page Six report on Courtney’s “druggy” behavior:

Continue reading "Love's Not Dead" »

“Seattle—Elephant experts [at Woodland Park Zoo] are getting ready to send an ill-tempered 38-year-old pachyderm to Tacoma, where she’ll join two other females not known for their social graces.”This is how it will always be between Seattle and Tacoma: Seattle stands for grace; Tacoma stands for rough. This is not a dialectic; the two cities will never reconcile their differences.

This is just priceless. Here is a taste of the article from the Vancouver Sun: “‘Neo wants YOU for the priesthood.’ That’s the implicit message in an edgy vocations poster that shows a Catholic priest wearing a long black cassock and trendy sunglasses — a pose based on movie ads for The Matrix.”

So… the revised second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary may be out (thanks, Maud Newton), but you still have to pay loads of money to get access, unless you’re affiliated with an educational institution or your publisher boss is really, really nice (eh, Mr. Keck? how about it?). But I just discovered the OED Word of the Day, which is way better than any other words of the day out there, because (duh!) they’re down with exhaustive etymology.

Also fun: the new BBC appeal for amateur etymologists. Who’s a dork!?

Playing dirty only works if you can stand your ground. Obviously, instead of withdrawing the ad, NARAL should have gone Swift Boat on their critics’ asses and waited out the controversy… Now, they look both wrong and cowardly.

We should send Rev. Buddy’s column to the Faith & Freedom Network, so its staff can soak up his infallible wisdom.

The group Washington Evangelicals for Responsible Government (WERG)you may remember them as the homophobes who had two lobbyists in Olympia this year, fighting against marriage equality and the civil rights bill, and the group that organized the anti-gay fest while the Supreme Court heard testimony in the marriage equality case on March 8has sneakily changed its name to the more innocuous “Faith & Freedom Network.”

From their website:

First in July of 2005, WERG changed its name to Faith and Freedom Network to better express their action to defend faith and freedom. They then merged the new organization with Faith and Freedom Educational Foundation, founded by Gary Randall in 2004.

***

The Faith and Freedom Network will expand its efforts into the entire Northwest.

That’s right, we’ve got a new group that’s dedicated to bringing a conservative Judeo-Christian theocracy to Washington and Oregon. Help me keep an eye on them. (It’s not hard to do: their new website has a blog that lays out the agenda of the day).

“A new treatment strategy has shown promise in helping to transform HIV into a curable infection,” reports the Associated Press.

Key to the prospective new treatment: valproic acid, an anti-convulsant drug that’s shown promise in awakening HIV lurking in dormant cells.

An explanation of why this is important comes from the AP:

HIV infection is incurable because current drugs only work when the virus is multiplying, which occurs only when it is in an active cell. However, HIV sometimes infects dormant cells, and when it does, it becomes dormant itself. While the virus poses no threat in its resting state, the sleeping cells sporadically wake up, reactivating the virus and causing it to multiply. Patients must continue to take medications for the rest of their lives so they can fight the virus when it comes out of the reawakened cells. Only if every last infected dormant cell is wiped out - or the virus purged from these cells - can patients stop taking medication and be virus-free…

Continue reading "Cure for HIV?: The Valproic Acid Test" »

This guy over at Americablog agrees with me that NARAL’s Roberts ad was fair play.

Michael Moore stay away from Crawford.

The conventional wisdom among timid, self-hating Seattle Democrats and their consultants right now is this: The Monorail debacle is giving Seattle a bad name statewide and so, it’s fanning the gas tax repeal movment. Oh dear me, we better scrap this monorail thing pronto as a way to defuse I-912.

Setting aside the messed up logic here (hello? the gas tax is exclusively for roads, while the monorail is mass public transit), Seattle’s leaders should start looking out for Seattle, not looking over our shoulder. The response to the disapproval we’re getting from the rest of the state shouldn’t be to cave. No, I-912 should actually inspire us to stand up for ourselves and stand by the monorail. The very fact that we can’t fund transportation in concert with the rest of the state is the reason we should turn to our own mass public transit solutions. I say come up with a new finance plan, and show the rest of the state that we’re serious about transit.

i gotta say that i seriously fucks with KEXP’s positive vibrations. reggae needs a bit a sunshine and a dividend of leisure to be truly effective…both of which have thankfully been in ready supply the past few saturday morns. BO.

I realize there’s no shortage of things to do tonight, but I must offer one more suggestion: JJ Wandler’s annual “Fucked Jukebox” at Chupacabra (6711 Greenwood Ave N, 706-4889) in Greenwood/Phinney.

Here’s the deal: JJ (former DJ manager at the Tin Hat, current bartender/booker at the High Dive and all-around fabulous human being) pulls together 10 of his friends to play “the best bad music ever.” This does not mean a round of “ironic” guilty pleasures—this means an onslaught of the most retarded stuff you can imagine: hilarious heavy metal, scary kids records, pop songs that everyone wishes had never been written, yet still love. In other words, you will laugh your ass off and get in ridiculous arguments with your fellow revelers about what constitutes “bad, bad” and “good, bad” (a fight almost broke out over Billy Squire last time).

The people with quality bad taste causing all the trouble include Crocodile publicist/booking agent Pete Greenberg, various Sonic Boom employees and yours truly. The insanity commences at 9:30 and will last until JJ decides to bust out Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian.” And naturally, it’s free.

So I spent two hours at City Hall yesterday watching strippers testify about the city’s proposed new regulations (a “four-foot rule” that would effectively outlaw lap dances; a rule mandating what one woman described as “cafeteria lighting” in strip clubs, and another that would bar strippers from taking tips directly), and while I remain unconvinced that strip clubs are - as one dancer put it - unequivocally harmless, “relaxing entertainment,” I still think the new regulations are needless harassment of a single, legal industry. (A “temporary” moratorium, in place since the late `80s, prohibits new strip clubs in the city.) By bringing Seattle in line with suburban cities, the new rules will eliminate any incentive to open strip clubs in Seattle - and may put some of the four remaining clubs out of business.

But that, of course, is exactly the point. The Seattle City Council doesn’t want strip clubs inside city limits. More to the point, they don’t want to have a debate about the ban, because coming out against it would mean coming out in favor of the sex industry - and, in the wake of Strippergate, nobody wants to do that. Especially in an election year.

Continue reading "Re: Sexy, Sexy City Hall" »

As if Zimbabwe did not have enough grief on its plate, more bad news is coming its way. The matriarch in the TV show Dallas, Miss Ellie, has died. During its long run in the 80s, the popularity of Dallas in Zimbabwe was second only to God.

I’ll just get out of the way and let the Associated Press describe this one:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A man who left an accident scene was tracked down with the help of some cheerleaders who witnessed the crash and turned his license plate number into a cheer, police said.

The crime-fighting cheer squad hails from Ypsilanti, Michigan’s Lincoln High School, and obviously, they deserve a prize.

They do make these devices that turn your iPod into a stereo, so you don’t need radio at all should you choose that option.

Personally I like the weekend AM shows…the reggae show and “Preaching the Blues.” It’s music that rarely makes it on the radio. And with the reggae show it opens things up beyond the all-Bob-Marley-all-the-time concept. Plus it’s nice to ease into the morning a little bit.

For the late night programming, though, I (surprise) love the punk show, “Sonic Reducer” which is on Saturday nights. Now if only they’d get a good metal show in one of those nighttime slots….I understand the desire for music that creates ambiance but it’d be great to balance that with a little more of the “kick out the jams motherfucker” sound, whatever that may be.

“I drink a lot of Haterade. It’s my only vice.” Dave Segal

The Couples iPod. It would have dual inputs for headphones (with extra long cords) so friends/lovers can both simultaneously listen to the unit.

They do make a headphone jack splitter (I think you can find them at Radio Shack), which could plug into an iPod, and then you can plug dual headphones into the splitter.

That set-up gives me visions of iPods falling on the floor if one of the pair makes a sudden move. And what a fight that’d cause…yikes.

I don’t do this often, but the complete lack of consensus in this week’s reviews of The Night of the Iguana is hilarious.

The first horse out of the gate was Misha Berson at the Seattle Times: she says John Procaccino and Suzanne Bouchard, the leads in ACT’s latest, “aren’t merely convincing as Shannon, a washed-up former minister, and Hannah, a genteel but steely sketch artist. As the night in question unfolds, these esteemed Seattle actors actually seem to sizzle and burn through their roles, as if passing through a refiners’ fire.” Blacksmithery? Hot.

Steve Wiecking at the Weekly gets downright vituperative: “The production is so miscast, in fact, that there’s a loud voice in your head screaming ‘Liar!’ each time a character onstage utters a line that does not fit the description of the performer we’re watching.” He singles out Procaccino for especial venom, and actually confesses to having “a soft spot for Suzanne Bouchard” (!), quibbling only over her age.

(Freelancer Gianni Truzzi at the P-I is a little confusing, but he observes that there’s no sexual tension, and blames that deficit on Procaccino.)

For my part, I liked Procaccino (differing from Truzzi and Wiecking), thought the show was cast mostly by type (again disagreeing with Wiecking, though I do agree Patricia Hodges was all wrong for Maxine), have what one might call a hard spot for the irredeemably bland Suzanne Bouchard (differing with Wiecking), and certainly can’t see the “summer storm” Berson blissfully invokes.

Who’s right, oh Forums readers?

I switch on the iPod. But that’s as annoying as KEXP’s Saturday morning programming, for two reasons. A) the iPod is a one-person thing, and I tend to share my Saturday AM’s with my girlfriend. She’d probably get annoyed if I plugged in when riding shotgun in the car or at the breakfast table.

Msgr. Eugene Clark, the 79 year-old rector at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan accused of having an adulterous affair with his “longtime personal secretary,” a married woman, stepped down today. I wrote him up here and on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, where I’m guest blogging all week, on Wednesday.

New York Newsday reports that the Roman Catholic priest once blamed the Catholic sex-abuse scandal on “the campaign of liberal America against celibacy.” Now we know the monsignor himself was a deep-cover, highly-placed operative in the War On Celibacy.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as my Catholic mom likes to say. It’s a sad day for practicing Catholics, St. Pat’s, and, of course, for that every-dwindling band Catholic priests who can keep appearancesand their black trousersup. Still, we did get two great new euphemisms out of this scandal: I’m going to keep referring to my boyfriend as my “longtime personal secretary,” if only to keep the number of posts on this blog that touch on homosexuality to a minimum. That’s one.

The other? The cuckolded husband of Msgr. Clark claims that his wife told him she was “sorting books,” when she was, he alleges (and he has video), actually holed up in a hotel room with the Msgr. Eugene “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” Clark. I intend to spend some time “sorting books” with my “longtime personal secretary” this evening.

Right after I shower with my son, of course.

I say props to NARAL for pointing out the connection between Roberts’s argument on behalf of the radicals and the actions of those radicals. I think it’s fair game. Conservative attack ads connect liberals to bad guys all the time, with far less convincing ties. Exhibit A: Remember Riechert’s ads against Dave Ross, linking Ross to al Qaeda?

Big deal if NARAL is blurring the distinction between Roberts’s position that the administration was not trying to defend the demonstrators’ conduct but rather trying to “defend the proper interpretation” of the statute. Roberts’s took the terrorists’ side in the matter, and it’s fair game to run footage of the terrorists’ handiwork. Republicans blur those fine-tuned distinctions all the time (Democrats are for socialism, crack addicts, and frivolous lawsuits.) Three cheers to NARAL for returning the favor. Democrats should do this sort of thing more often.

Continue reading "Re: Ads Write News" »

Amy: Change at radio stations is glacial. Be your own DJ. Take control of your aural environment. It’s empowering.

That’s usually what I do, Dave. I switch on the iPod. But that’s as annoying as KEXP’s Saturday morning programming, for two reasons. A) the iPod is a one-person thing, and I tend to share my Saturday AM’s with my girlfriend. She’d probably get annoyed if I plugged in when riding shotgun in the car or at the breakfast table. B) I count on KEXP (among other sources) to turn me on to a great new song or bandthey’ve got a vast libraryso I can add enough great stuff to the little machine for it to count as my own personal DJ.

Hey, at least the kid has a mother and a father. But does his dad shower with him? From today’s Seattle Times.

James Dobson cites some peculiar advice for parents who don’t want their little boys to grow up to be gay cowboys. The gem below, currently up on Dobson’s website, is from anti-gay quack Dr. Joseph Nicolosi:

Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

I don’t know whether to file this ridiculous/tragic or tragic/ridiculous.

And it’s wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. I have two older brothers, Bill and Ed. We had the same father, also Bill, and he played the same games with us. I don’t recall ever showering with my dad, but I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t drag my brothers into the shower and waggle his penis in their faces either. So it seems unlikely that my want of face-time with dad’s cock made me gay. And somehowonce again, we had the same Dadmy brothers managed to grow up straight.

I have a son, and I don’t shower with him, and I can’t imagine that the Docs Dobson and Nicolosi want me to. My boyfriend, however, does occasionally shower with our son; he takes him swimming at the Y, and you have to shower before you get into the pool. But I kind of doubt that seeing my boyfriend’s penis in the YMCA showers made our son straight. (I’ve been examining my boyfriend’s penis for more than 10 years nowin the shower and other locationsand it hasn’t made me straight.) And I’m convinced our son is straight.

Why? Because the first time he picked up a football he threw a perfect spiral.

What I want to know is, how does a modern leaderespecially one with an atrocious track recordget away with a Hitlerian ‘stache like Mugabe’s?

Proving that the Man can’t always squash the punks, a civil court in NY ruled that legendary Bowery club CBGB’s can’t be evicted. While that’s good news for a space legendary for helping lay the groundwork for the ’70s punk scene, my favorite part of this CNN report is the subhead, which states the judge ruled the club “shouldn’t be punished for not noticing it owed its landlords money.” If only that were the case for broke punks everywhere, eh?

What I and my countrymen would do to swop Robert Mugabe with Ron Sims. If that were to happen, if this dream became a reality, I’d move back home in a minute. Mugabe as King County Executive would teach that Sharkansky character a lesson and a half.

Hey Charles, you want to weigh in on this? Our conservative columnist, Stefan Sharkansky, insists on comparing Ron Sims to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. On his blog yesterday he titled a post “Where does Ron Sims think he is, Zimbabwe?” Meanwhile, check out some of his past posts:

running Sims’s pic side by side with Mugabe’s.

And Here’s his Ron Sims Mugabe Watch.

Is this, like, racist? Or…am I racist? Or: What the fuck do you make of this?

Okay, I admit I just don’t like reggae. And I’m usually up and about on Saturday mornings catching up on errands or puttering around my apartment. I’d like to be able to switch on KEXP while I do that, and have a better soundtrack than Bob Marley.

If SLOG entries had sub-heads, this one would be “Let’s Have Another Bisexuality Argument!” The New York Times has a dumb article today about an interesting phenomenon: the return of the girl crush.

As the article briefly notes, the acceptability of girl-on-girl crushes has waxed and waned, reaching a high point in the late 19th century, when (mostly adolescent) girls would write goopy letters to each other stating their mutual desire to hug and kiss all night long (this book, which I haven’t read, seems to be the definitive lay introduction to the passionate friendship vogue, though I think it probably makes the argument that the girls were proto-lesbians and not really passionate friends at all).

I use the phrase “girl crush” all the time, and I think the article is right to say that the phenomenon is more about admiration and emulation than lust, but wrong to claim there’s no erotic component whatsoever.

On girl crushes, see also the film Mädchen in Uniform and Simone de Beauvoir’s awesome first novel, L’Invitée.

Please, everyone join me in asking KEXP to move Positive Vibrations from Saturday morning to a weekday evening slot.

A) It’s a reggae show. Perfect as pot smoking background music, an activity better suited to an evening slot than an early Saturday morning slot. Right?

B) For those of us who can’t listen to the radio at work, it’d be nice to catch a classic KEXP variety mix (a la John in the Morning), on a weekend morning.

C) Okay, I admit I just don’t like reggae. And I’m usually up and about on Saturday mornings catching up on errands or puttering around my apartment. I’d like to be able to switch on KEXP while I do that, and have a better soundtrack than Bob Marley.

You’re not going to believe this, but the most soulful singer working today (in my ‘umble opinion) is a white British bloke named Jamie Lidell. Check out his new album, Multiply, and be astounded. This is a total departure from his last solo disc, the warped and weird IDM opus Muddlin Gear, but it’s actually a logical progression if you’ve been following Lidell’s Super_Collider project with Cristian Vogel. Finally, with Multiply we have a 21st-century soul album worthy of the legacy of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, and Al Green.

Okay, so maybe NARAL’s latest ad fudges the facts when it came to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ role in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, argued before the SCOTUS in the early ’90s. (Josh, this seems like your beat.)

But isn’t ironic that NARAL had to run a misleading ad for me to even hear about the facts of the case? Thanks, New York Times, for the five (five!) paragraphs describing the case, the issues at stake, and Roberts’ involvement on the front page of today’s paper. It’s just too bad the facts weren’t on the table before NARAL’s aggressive campaign required reporters to dig ‘em up.

Between the music forums and the opinions people give at various shows around town, everyone’s got an opinion on Seattle’s indie radio station KEXP. One of the great things about being a community supported station is that they actually listen to what people love and criticize about the music they play. The punk show, “Sonic Reducer,” for example, came about because listeners rallied the station asking for a show of louder, faster acts. Hit up their latest request for listener feedback here (the Programming Survey link is to the left of the screen, below the daily schedule).

And what is this big news story all about? It’s about as American as you can fucking get. The story concerns a convict and his super loyal wife, who shot a prison guard down, liberated her shackled husband, and went on a road trip that began in Tennessee and ended today in a motel in Ohio. The convict is black; the moll is white. It’s as if a myth from the dark heart of the South materialized and went into motion. This is the stuff of the pro-KKK movie Birth of A Nation. But what the clansmen in that early motion picture really feared was not black men raping white women but black sexual sorcery. They feared sexual enchantment. That is the secret history of the South—the evil root of the lynches that became Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” The (ugly) white women in the news story was a prison nurse; she met the (handsome) convict (who had just began a 35-year sentence), and was instantly enchanted by what can only (and crudely) be called “black dick.” Once enchanted there was no turning back to any other kind of dick. America, protect your women! America the terribly beautiful.

I wrote an item in Live Wire recently about a local musician, Michael King, who was allegedly attacked on Broadway a couple weeks back by a driver witnesses say he got into an argument with. King’s family and friends are still looking for more witnesses or anyone who may have more information on what went down. I’m reposting a description of the events of that night/early morning of July 17 below (it was taken from the music forums) in case someone can help these guys out.

Continue reading "Re: Ex Feeder Bassist Attacked on Broadway" »

This morning, ABC News, with help from KOMO-TV, reports on Ben Rogovy, the 22-year-old UW graduate making waves with his “inexpensive and highly visible tool to publicize his Web site.” Rogovy’s patented name for this promotional tool: bum-vertising, wherein panhandlers are given food, water, and an undisclosed amount of cash to supplement their signs for spare change and mercy with signs advertising Rogovy’s web site.

According to ABC, Rogovy’s “bum-vertised” signs have been on U-District and Wallingford street corners for a month, and of course there’s been controversy.

On one side is Rogovy, who says he’s making use of an untapped labor force, giving panhandlers a job while getting thrifty advertising for business. On the other side are homeless advocates, who denounce Rogovy’s practices as exploitation of a most vulnerable class of citizen. On still another side (it’s a triangle) are the semanticists, who just really hate the name “bum-vertising.”

Full story here.

A most tasteful and cannily punitive omission: The name and address of Rogovy’s bum-vertised website, which ABC News says “purports to be an online directory that connects poker players from around the globe.”

The homeless helping entrepreneurs help gamblers.
And so it goes.

I finally watched Miranda July’s movie, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and because her movie was in competition with my movie at Sundance, I will never ever pass judgment on it. I just want Annie Wagner to know that I have seen this movie with my own eyes. However, I will share this quote and leave it at that:

“The ‘beautiful soul,’ lacking an actual existence, entangled in the contradiction between its pure self and the necessity of that self to externalize itself and change itself into an actual existence, and dwelling in the immediacy of this firmly held antithesisan immediacy which alone is the middle term reconciling the antithesis, which has been intensified to its pure abstraction, and is pure being or empty nothingnessthis ‘beautiful soul,’ then, being conscious of this contradiction in its unreconciled immediacy, is disordered to the point of madness, wastes itself in yearning and pines away in consumption.”

G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit

So he’s cancelled his two live appearances in Seattle.

Now here’s a mashup to get excited aboutminimalist composer Philip Glass laying the foundation over which MC Eight spits wicked. This comes from an album titled Glassbreaks, stitched up by DJ BC. Thanks to Stranger intern Nick Scholl for doing the legwork.

I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s new (and third) book, Killing Yourself to Live and I thought it was great. Nevermind the reviews that say it’s self-absorbed, narcissistic, and/or pointless (they’re out there) because while it is less about the history of death in rock and roll and more about his tumultuous relationships with women (three, mainly), it’s still manages to be a very entertaining, smart and honest read. And it’s short, so even if you hate it, you lose what? A day and half? Take the chance.

And FYI: Klosterman is going to be at the University Book Store on Aug 18th. So do your homework.

As first noted by the finely-tuned ears of Maerz and subsequently by myself, the Emergency is the new local band you want to catch now before they really take off. They’ve just been added at the last minute to tonight’s WIRE show at the Baltic Room. I’ve seen them twice in the last 2 weeks, but I’m rearranging my schedule just so I can see them tonight. Doors are at 9pm.

Some of you may remember ex-Seattle resident Zach Cowie from his days as a Sub Pop employee. He’s now working at Drag City in Chicago, where he helped uber-underground artist Gary Higgins re-release an old record called Red Hash. Check out Dave Segal’s review of the CD here and an interesting piece from Sunday’s New York Times getting into how the CD came about, went underground, and resurfaced thanks to Cowie’s hard work here.

From the view point of an African, I can see that Superman’s widow is dying of stress. Her husband was crippled, and spent a big chunk of his life severely confined to a chair machine. Then he died miserably. Then she got cancer. It’s stress for real.

Just popped into City Halland at the right time! The place was packed with foxy ladies. I mean packed. There was a public hearing about the mayor’s proposed 4-foot rule (which would make lap-dances geographically impossible), and the dancer community (along with their families) came out in full-force to protest the proposed changes.

Barnett was there frantically taking notes on the testimony, so I’ll leave it to her to file a full report later, but I wanted to report on one smart comment I heard from a council staffer standing in the back: “I’ve never seen so many women in city hall. It’s great. Now, if they’d stay around, and we could organize them on other issues like equitable medical care for women and company health plans that include birth control.”

Right wingers are up in arms over this hokey Planned Parenthood video (downloadable from the soundtrack producer’s site, as the link at Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, where it originated, is mysteriously dead).

Why? Because the animated pro-choice superhero zaps a trio of zombie-like anti-choice activists picketing a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Yup. She blasts them…

…with a condom gun. The anti-choicers are encased in condoms! Haw, haw!

Except that the gun doesn’t just encase the demonstrators in condoms…

…it blows them up.

“That’s more like it!” exclaims [the superhero] Dianysis. “Open for business!”

Now, I ask you, if the American Life League’s Web site featured a cartoon depicting an ALL superhero blowing up nonviolent Planned Parenthood activists, would Planned Parenthood just shrug it off?

I think we all know what would happen. There would be an uproar.

From the conservative blogger Dawn Eden.

The Laser Dome at Pacific Science Center has added NIN to its laser-light lineup!

Sad news about Dana Reeve. I’m with you on the smoking ban necessity, Jennifer (and I’m voting for it regardless of its imperfections). However, though it is the number-one risk factor, one can’t assume cigarette smoke is always the culprit in lung cancer. My neighbor died young from lung cancer a few years ago and he never smoked nor worked in (or even hung out in) smoky environments. There are myriad risk factors, including other types of air pollution, vitamin A deficiency, and heredity.

I’ve had quibbles with Seattle radio station KEXP, but sometimes it pleasantly surprises me. This morningfor the first and probably last time everI unexpectedly awoke at 6:30 to the Beatles’ “Within You Without You,” the most underrated song on that group’s most overrated album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I realized that arising to George Harrison’s quasi-mystical existentialism and rudimentary sitar playing is a fantastic way to start the day. You should try it.

Last night I was at Safeco Field watching Felix Hernandez make his first home start with the Seattle Mariners. He pitched eight near-flawless innings, allowing just five hits, no walks, and no runs. He struck out five. It was amazing.

Up on the mound Felix has a poise well beyond his 19 years of age. He’s built like a fire hydrant, but throws a wicked 97 mile/hour fastball that leaves batters spinning like a top. He also has a nasty slider.

The Mariners truly suck this year, but if their pitching staff can keep from destroying Felix’s arm, next year looks much more promising.

I just heard that Christopher Reeve’s widow, Dana Reeve was diagnosed with lung cancer, which is especially tragic news because she didn’t smoke. So how’d she get it? Word is she worked as a cocktail waitress for years….can we pass the fucking smoking ban already? Yeah it’s a bummer that there’s a rule in there about how close you can stand to a building when you smoke but I’m running out of patience. When it’s your job to be in specific bars that allow smoking—and especially when you’re a non-smoker—the idea of getting lung cancer or even anything remotely close to that is totally appalling.

There seems to be a drought of news about the CIA leak investigation. Maybe people are trying not to upset Robert Novak again, for fear of what he might do next, given his recent public freakout. But for those thirsting for more speculation and hypothetical blame-placing regarding the infamous leak, Vanity Fair is coming out with an article that sees Time Magazine and The New York Times as having been part of a conspiracy to cover the leak up. The Columbia Journalism review has a summary.

Michael Wolff deals with the Rove/Plame/Miller fracas in this month’s Vanity Fair (the article isn’t available online). Wolff manages to find a unique approach to the issue, positing the thesis that the New York Times and Time magazine are complicit in the cover-up of the fudging of intelligence in the prelude to war in Iraq — in that they knew Rove was the source of the Plame leak intended to discredit Joe Wilson after he called the administration to account. “Not only did highly placed members of the media and the vaunted news organizations they worked for know it, not only did they sit on what will not improbably be among the biggest stories of the Bush years, they helped cover it up. You could even plausibly say that these organizations became part of a conspiracy — they entered into an understanding that, as a quid pro quo for certain information, they would refuse to provide evidence about a crime possibly having been committed by the president’s closest confidant.”

Here again is the weekly round-up of those items disqualified from the print version of Last Days due to space restrictions, time limits, or thematic concerns.

First nearly all news outlets made big stinks about Korea producing the world’s first cloned dog. It’s an Afghan pup named Snuppy, who was made from a cell taken from the ear of a male Afghan hound, transferred to a yellow Labrador, then delivered by caesarean section after 60 days of pregnancy. All of which is fascinating. But did you know a regular old dog could be killed by raisins? It’s true: As King 5 reports, raisins are poison for dogs, just like their juicy originator the grape, with 50 raisins or 30 grapes enough to kill a 25-lb pooch. (“Veterinarians still don’t know why dogs can’t stomach raisins and grapes,” said Dr. Mike Van Horn to K5’s Eric Wilkinson.)

Continue reading "Last Days: The Remainder" »

Report from last night’s 43 District Democrats endorsment meeting: No endorsement was given in the mayors race. This means Nickels failed to best the pack of no-name challengers. It also means Nickels is 1 out of 3 so far when it comes to Dem. neighborhood district endorsements. Is this just a knee-jerk reaction against the incumbent? Hard to tell. It is worth noting, though, that the strong pro-Nickels vote in the 43rd (Capitol Hill, Wallingford, the U. District) during the November 2001 election helped Nickels squeak by Sidran citywide.

Council Prez. Jan Drago scored a sole endorsement in the 43rd last night.

What’s always bugged me about the Christian Right’s contention that liberals are “intolerant” of Christians is this: The Christian Right’s sense of persecution is based on the Democrats push to grant Constitutional rights to gays. So, it’s not that the State is trying to take away the rights of Christians (that would be something worth complaining about). No, Christians feel persecuted because the State is trying to treat a class of people (whose private lives Christians disapprove of) the same way the State treats Christians. So, Christians feel opressed cuz people they don’t like will be treated equally?!? That sure seems like a pompous POV for someone who considers themself a humble Christian. It’s something like a 5-Star restaurant feeling persecuted by a newspaper because the newspaper gave equal ad space to an auto-repair shop.

Now, I’m not saying gays are an auto repair shop, but I think you see what I mean.

Meanwhile, yes, Irshad Manji’s op-ed in yesterday’s NYT is super smart. Here’s my favorite jag:

Continue reading "Re: Intolerable..." »

First read Raban’s article in this week’s paper and then read this.

i just heard the new crap single “my humps” from the wack eyed peas and i can honestly say i’m off solid food for the rest of the day. hearing fergie rhapsodize about her “ladylumps” makes my intestines vibrate at a frequency audible to bats. the jazzy piano outro to this apparently 6 minute opus is of no consolation whatsoever.

I already had enough fun with NARAL’s ill-advised “Screw Abstinence” fund raiser.
Now gun-control liberals have gone and outdone them. Check this out:

Please join Washington CeaseFire and our Sponsor Temple Billiards for:

Shoot POOL, Not People
A benefit to reduce gun violence.

Thursday August 25th, 2005 6pm - 9pm
Temple Billiards
126 South Jackson St

Tickets are only $25.00 and include free pool all night, music, complimentary food and one complimentary drink.

Shoot Pool Not People???? Nobody’s for shooting people. The implication here is that gun owners are for shooting people.

Since it looks like Chappelle’s Show is officially over, looks like we’ll have to amuse ourselves with samples of Chappelle as Lil’ John at the Lil’ John Soundboard.

This British construction worker took the name Wham! a bit too literally.

A Canadian company called Folio Industries makes photo-realistic laminate flooring surfaces and I am obsessed with swapping my ugly beige carpet for stones. They also have grass, water, and tons of other swoon-inducing patterns.

It’s happened: A conservative organizationVirginia’s catchily-named Public Advocate of the United Stateshas withdrawn its support of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to retaliate for Roberts once being helpful to the gays.

Full story here.

So far PAUS is the only conservative group to yank their support of Robertsboth the Traditional Values Coalition and Focus on the Family continue to support Roberts despite his lack of queasiness around gay-friendly campaigns for social justice. Which is somehow almost scarier…what kind of future compensatory pay-off are they dreaming of?

Former candidate Paul Hackett had some unkind words for Rush Limbaugh on the “Ed Shultz Show.”

There’s a brilliant op-ed by Irshad Manji in today’s NYT responding to Tony Blair’s moves to deport Islamo-fascist clerics. She confronts what so many people seem to view as a contradiction at the heart of Western liberalism: Our society, dependent as it is on tolerance (of different religions, political points of view, ethnicities, and, yes, sexualities), doesn’t know how to respond to people whose world views are fundamentally intolerant. The money quote, as Andrew would put it, is this:

[The] ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we’ll need to be less tolerant. Or, at the very least, more vigilant. And this vigilance demands more than new anti-terror laws. It requires asking: What guiding values can most of us live with? Given the panoply of ideologies and faiths out there, what filter will distill almost everybody’s right to free expression? Neither the watery word `tolerance’ nor the slippery phrase “mutual respect” will cut it as a guiding value. Why tolerate violent bigotry?

Manji’s op-ed is being praised by the right, as well it should be. It deserves praise from everyone with a brain in her head. But Manji’s call for intolerance to be met with intolerance applies not only to Islamic preachers who preach hate and would compel others to live by the strictures of their faith. It also applies to American preachers who do the same.

When gays and lesbians express disgust or contempt for, say, the Pat Robertsons of this world, we’re accused of being intolerantand isn’t that hypocritical of us? After all, isn’t tolerance what we’ve been asking for? How can we refuse to tolerate Pat Robertson?

But as Manji points out, being intolerant of intolerance is not the moral equivalent of being intolerant. Violence is always wrong, everyone agrees. But there are times when violence is justified. For instance, violence is justified in self-defense. Well, being intolerant of the intolerant is simply tolerance acting in its own self-defense. It is justifiable intolerance.

[This post first appeared at AndrewSullivan.com, where I’m guest blogging all week.]

I wish I was more of a book reader these days (which goes along with wishing I had more time to read) but I have to say I loved Macbeth and really loved Hamlet—which, along with Lord of the Flies and The Chocolate War were probably my favorite high school texts. With Hamlet I even loved the movie versions…and “Hamlet’s castle,” Kronberg in Denmark.

I had no idea some high school lit classes are taught out of a textbook. That’s ridiculous.

I always considered myself fortunate to have had Mr. Powers as my high school AP English teacher. He tossed out the AP test’s suggested readings list (lots of Shakespeare, etc) and instead turned us on to things like Raymond Carver’s short stories and Flannery O’Connor’s novels. He also reserved half the chalkboard for a new poem each week, which he meticulously copied down. We didn’t discuss the poemit was just there to tempt us. And his method worked. That class turned us all into a bunch of readers.

The class was a lucky break simply because it was far cry from earlier h.s. lit classes, where we stuck to the syllabus and dissected Shakespeare (or napped). But at least we read entire plays from paperbacks, not textbooks. Now I realize just how lucky I was.

Christopher, the textbooks in that article are bad not because they contain Shakespeare, but because they make Shakespeare into a dull loser who benevolently passes his hand of genius over human nature—human nature minus sex or drunkenness or slavery, etc. The relevant quotation: “Notice the insight about human life that the following lines from The Tempest convey: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’ Shakespeare’s plays are treasures of the English language.” Boooorrring—and from a speech by an ailing old dude, looking back on his long and storied life. It also pushes Shakespeare’s worth on students without bothering to talk about his meaning. Clearly, the quote they should have taken from The Tempest is: “I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster. / A most scurvy monster! / I could find in my heart to beat him…” Or better yet, dropped the play about the old guy and gone for something a little more randy: Twelfth Night or Othello, perhaps.

Anthologies are stupid. The texts they’re excerpting usually aren’t.

No kid anywhere (except maybe a kid with no friends) is excited about reading Shakespeare. I sure as hell wasn’t. Here’s a short USA Today article (I found the link on Arts Journal) about how terrible high school literature textbooks are. Nothing you didn’t already know, probably.

Wheedle’s Groove, a record documenting Seattle’s old school (and under-recognized) funk and soul scene from the late ’60s through the mid-’70s, shed some much needed light on that rich scene. The record came out on the always eclectic local label Light in the Attic Records, and LITA owner Matt Sullivan just emailed me some great news. Not only is there a new Wheedle’s Groove record in the works, but there’s a documentary being made about the scene and its players (who played a sold out Chop Suey show last year). Check out the trailer here. There will also be a Wheedle Bumbershoot gig.

Continue reading "Seattle's Still Got Soul" »

…but some countries are far more daring about how they fill it.

Take for instance this BBC report about Calcutta:

A month after four explosions killed more than 50 people in London, a folk theatre group in [Calcutta] is putting finishing touches to a production based on the attacks. The play, London Burning, is a reinvention of jatra, a centuries-old travelling theatre tradition hugely popular in villages in the region….The group has hired technicians from all over India to build motorised plywood trains and buses and props of prominent London landmarks to recreate the incident.

Apparently, where there’s no Law & Order, people must rip their own stories from the headlines…

Fascinating full story here.

(Thanks to Mike Daisey for the link.)

Well despite my theory (after the North Seattle 46th District Dems thumped Nickels last week) that the anti-Nickels vibe in the neighborhoods was going to play out at the local endorsement level, Nickels actually got the endorsement of the (South Seattle) 37th District Democrats last night. Tonight: The 43rd District Dems make their endorsements. That’s Cap. Hill, U. District, Wallingford. This is the district that put Nickels over the top in 2001. Let’s see where they are now.

Ever wonder how I fact-check Adrian Ryan’s celebrity-insanity columns? The Superficial is my secret weapon.

According to a new USA TODAY/CNN/GALLUP poll, 57% of American’s now think the war in Iraq has made America more vulnerable to terrorism.

Also: 56% now believe the war is going badly.

Also also: 54% believe the war was a mistake.

Also also also: Bush’s approval rating is at 45%.

That quacking you hear is coming from the White House. Unfortunately, we’re all worse off for it.

I love that the mother of an American soldier who died in Iraq now has “the White house boys in a tizzy,” as HuffintonPost puts it.

Meet Cindy Sheehan, who is camping out at Bush’s summer home in Texas until the vacationing president meets with her to explain why he sent her son to die.

A researcher at Cornell University discovered that men made to feel insecure about their masculinity expressed more support for the war in Iraq, were more willing to purchase an SUV, and expressed more hate for homos. You can read the press release here. (Hat tip, as the bloggers say, to Americablog.)

Once again, I’m blogging all week at AndrewSullivan.com.

“It’s the latest popular song,” declared the phonograph, speaking in a sulky tone of voice.

“A popular song?”

“Yes. One that the feeble-minded can remember the words of and those ignorant of music can whistle or sing. That makes a popular song popular, and the time is coming when it will take the place of all other songs.” - The Patchwork Girl of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

Fortunately, this pithy observation (from one of the most criminally underrated authors in children’s literature) does not apply to the selections featured on Pixel Revolt, the fifth studio album from San Francisco troubador John Vanderslice, out on August 23rd via Seattle’s own Barsuk Records.

Continue reading "Pixel Revolt" »

Although I’ve found it impossible to tear myself away from the War Room’s weekly Circle of Fire event on Mondays, I now find myself making the trek to El Chupacabra (6711 Greenwood Ave N, 706-4889) quite often—particularly on Monday nights when bartender/DJ JJ Wandler divides his time between making stellar margaritas and playing a rowdy mix of noisy garage punk and cry-in-your-beer, old-school country. Every 45 minutes JJ asks his appreciative crowd to vote for either country or punk, and then continues his set in accordance with the majority’s wishes. And it’s free! In fact, I’m going there right now!

For those of you who failed to heed my evangelical ramblings about the cerebral beauty and bar room bombast of Brooklyn’s Hold Steady, you now have a chance to redeem yourselves. They’ll be returning to Seattle on October 15th at Neumo’s as part of a package tour with the Constantines. Praise be!

It’s been announced that Mudhoney will be opening for the Stooges at Bumbershoot this year. Now that’s a powerful pairing.

Check out these outrageous accounts of (alleged) police powermadness run amok on The Stranger Forums. As usual, club owner/music-scene activist Dave Meinert is on the case.

An idea whose time has come: Veg Powered Systems. Unfortunately, it’s too sensible ever to be adopted on a mass scale.

Colin Farrell’s ass, nuts, and stump. Enjoy.

But, really, aren’t his shoulders his best feature?

I’ve recently whined about the shortage of fully captivating theater in Seattle. But that was before I got an email hyping tomorrow’s Goat Show in Bothell.

Goats are coming to Bothell to help control a thick mat of invasive weeds, such as morning glory and blackberry. A herd of goats from Healing Hooves in Edwall, Washington, will be chomping weeds under the control of Craig Madsen, co-owner of Healing Hooves, and his dogs. Come see the herd in action!

The show starts tomorrow morning at 11:00 am, at In Harmony Organic-Based Landscape Services, 23622 Bothell/Everett Hwy. I can’t promise a full-on crowdpleaser, but watching a herd of goats eat weeds is bound to be at least as interesting as, say, Defending the Caveman.

Das Rheingold was indeed fun, and I was struck by how much Tolkien ripped off Wagner’s Ring Cycle for The Lord of the Rings. Apparently I didn’t read Alex Ross’s article for the New Yorker two years ago, which addresses the (anxiety of) influence in some detail.

Apart from the garish rainbow, the sets were awesome. I wish the Rhein daughters could have mimicked the real motions of swimming a little more closely (and stopped doing those little backflips that were obviously machine-greased rather than water-lubricated), and that the giants could have demonstrated their oafishness through slightly subtler blocking, but theater aesthetics are not always opera aesthetics, after all.

And as for my affection for the Nibelungen—lest anyone think me a philistine for picking the one subgroup of characters who do absolutely no singing and never show their faces—well, their raggedy gray costumes were so cute! And also, I have to stick up for the little guys, who didn’t even get to make an appearance at curtain call. They deserved some clapping.

Want more on Wagner? See our intern’s blog post, from forever ago.

There’s a group in Manhattan that does memorialize pedestrians.

The group is not formally organized. “We’ve gone into different neighborhoods in the city and stenciled on the pavement and sidewalks,” he said. “It’s one standard image cut in the shape of a human body struck down and killed. Below it is the name of the person who was killed and the date when they were struck down and the words ‘Killed by an automobile.’ We’ve gone out about a dozen times for about 100 victims or sites.” the Daily News, via Transportation Alternatives

Sorry Sean, you’d have to be killed first. Standards are much higher in NYC.

(Incidentally, a bike-riding friend of mine recently ran into a pedestrian who’d stepped off the curb, right into her path. The pedestrian walked away unscathed before the cops arrivedhe’d been jaywalkingwhile my friend hit a telephone pole so hard she puked. And her back’s messed up. Apparently, pedestrians can be just as dangerous to bikers as autos.)

as I love all things natural. But I am in New York, and i just stepped off the curb (as a pedestrian) and got hit by a bicyclist. where’s my guerilla art/activism memorial?

Also, i have a hybrid car.

Also, my last day at the Stranger was last Tuesday, but i’ll still be writing, and sneaking on my beloved Slog now and again; I’ve been working on a big goodbye post, but I just can’t get the tone right. Perhaps a few days of smelling the urinary air of lower Manhattan will inspire me.

Until then, I shall miss you, Withnail.

Car company Scion is sponsoring a couple free cinematic events for the next three Tuesday nights at the Big Picture (2505 1st Ave). This week you can check out Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme, a doc about underground MCs over the last two decades (including Mos Def, Boots of the Coup, Planet Asia and more). Before the screening, there’s a slide show from world famous photographer Ricky Powell, and after there’s a Q&A session with director Kevin Fitzgerald that includes free beer and DJ DV One on the decks. The catch? You’ve gotta RSVP, and space is limited. Doors at 6pm, screening at 6:30pm.

Berkeley pop-punk label Lookout Records laid off its staff this week after Green Day “reclaimed ownership of its pre-1994 word from the label” according to an article in SF Gate by Aidin Vaziri. The label was the former and current home to a number of national acts, from Green Day to the Donnas, Rancid, Ted Leo, and Operation Ivy. Our own Lashes were even on Lookout before jumping ship to Columbia Records.

She’s falling through space-time.

courtesy of my amazing pal Aster Max

I’m guest-blogging on Andrew Sullivan’s website this week, so I may be posting a bit less on SLOG. But check in on Sullivan’s site if you wanna see what I’m going off about.

Ibrahim Ferrer, crooner of Cuban love songs, died Saturday. I heard him sing with the Buena Vista Social Club, and even though the spotlight found him late in life, he was a wonderful performer who transported me with his music.

It looks like I-912 (the gas tax repeal) is forcing the issue on the Urban Archipelago strategy we laid out in November:

“If, as every poll and instinct predict, voters will not hesitate to pass the initiative repealing the added tax on gasoline, the next logical step would be an effort for counties to keep all the tax revenue they raise within the county and not spread it around the state…” James Vesely, Seattle Times Editorial Page Editor, August 7, 2005

Vesely is referring to an idea that’s been floated by State Rep. Ed Murray (D-43, Capitol Hill, U. District, First Hill).

I took Annie Wagner with me last night to the opening of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Seattle Opera. We both enjoyed the wine and “peppered nuts” in the press room. We both loved the sets, one of which put the entire stage (floor to ceiling) under water, and another of which had a forest of trees covered in what seemed to be real lichen and moss. I, perhaps revealingly, loved the divas; Annie, perhaps equally revealingly, loved the Nibelheim midgets. And we both agreed that the climactic rainbow staircase to Valhalla, if it had to be a rainbow, could at least have been a little less technicolor.

Wagner’s Ring Cycle, an epic of epic proportions, will take four days to perform; last night was just part one. Tonight it’s part two, “Die Walkure,” which, as Annie informed me by reading the program in the car on the way home, features lots of incest. It’s four and a half hours long with two intermissions, and my date, arranged long ago, is my mother.

I’m waiting for people to start painting random bikes white. You leave your bike locked to a rack or a pole, and come back two hours later and it’s a Ghost Bike too…