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Archives for 09/12/2005 - 09/12/2005

Monday, September 12, 2005

The Sound of Domes Cracking

Posted by on September 12 at 5:11 PM

I attended two nights of >Wooden Octopus Skull Experimental Musick Pfest, and from my perspective and based on reports from those who caught more of it, the event was an eardrum-smashing success.

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All You Can Eat

Posted by on September 12 at 4:17 PM

Media Matters offers up both a transcript and an audio clip of putrid conservative radio blowhard Glenn Beck telling his listeners (3 million of them, apparentlyand of course Clear Channel owns the syndication company) just what he thinks of the New Orleans survivors. Choice quote:

Yesterday, when I saw the ATM cards being handed out, the $2,000 ATM cards, and they were being handed out at the Astrodome. And they actually had to close the Astrodome and seal it off for a while because there was a near-riot trying to get to these ATM cards. My first thought was, it’s not like they’re going to run out of the $2,000 ATM cards. You can wait! You know, stand in line. Maybe it’s because I’m the kind of guy, when I go to a buffet, I either have to be first in line, or I’m the very last. Because I know there’s going to be extra food, and I just won’t stand in the line. I’ll wait until all the suckers go get their food, and then I’ll go get mine. Or if I’m really hungry, I hate to admit thisand really, I don’t even have to be really hungry. If I’m really being a pig, I will kind of, like, hang out around the buffet table before the line isyou know, chat with people right around the table: “Oh, they just opened the line! Let’s go!” And then you’re first in line.

Why can’t the survivors of America’s worst natural disaster in history, survivors who’ve had to endure extremely tardy rescue efforts and hellish days/nights in a pitch black Superdome while rape and murder were occurring around themwhy oh why can’t they act as civilized as Beck does in the buffet line?

Beck also has unkind words for 9/11 families, just to make sure we know he’s a complete asswipe.

Christal Wood Gets the Lowdown on Mystery Mayoral Candidate Jeanne Dixon

Posted by on September 12 at 3:53 PM

The Stranger just received a fascinating email from mayoral candidate Christal Wood, all about ANOTHER mayoral candidate, Jeanne Dixon. For weeks, people have been musing about Ms. Dixon, who has no phone, has turned in no official campaign literature, and is still polling at 8 percent in the Mayor’s race. Well, Christal Wood gamely decided to get to the bottom of the mystery, and her firsthand report is posted below. Enjoy!

Jeanne Dixon, Mystery Woman by Christal Wood

Jeanne Dixon is polling at 8% in the Mayor’s race, and has so far all but avoided the press and any inquiries into her campaign. She has no phone, no e-mail address, no website, no financial reports, no picture, no statements, no nothing.

Dammit, no one’s gonna’ whup me based on name-recognition alone without accounting for it somehow. I had no choice. I had to seek this woman out. What would I find? Was it even her true address, or some convenience store, or um, “facility?” Would she run me off with her shotgun? Should I tell her who I am, or should I pretend to be a Jehovah’s Witness?

King County Elections lists Jeanne’s address as 2416 S.W. Cloverdale Street, in West Seattle, barely north of Seattle’s southern border. It’s a one-story, pale blue house with an intricately manicured lawn, with this year’s gardening perfectly aligned alongside their holes, waiting to be planted. I stepped through the opened chained link fence, walked up the stone path and knocked on her door.

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Moratorium No More

Posted by on September 12 at 3:28 PM

The city of Seattle’s 17-year-old “temporary” moratorium on new strip-club licenses was ruled unconstitutional by US District Judge James L. Robart today, ending a de facto ban on new strip clubs that has lasted for nearly two decades.

In his ruling, Robart agrees with plaintiff (and aspiring strip-club owner) Bob Davis that the indefinite moratorium constitutes “an unconstitutional prior restraint on free expression because it fails to provide adequate procedural safeguards,” such as a reasonable time frame to issue or deny strip-club licenses and the ability to appeal if a license is mistakenly denied. “The City not only fails to provide a specified time for rendering a licensing decision in its adult entertainment regulations, but it goes a step further in suppressing protected speech and prohibiting any new adult cabarets from opening.”

“Although the Mayor’s office recently committed to new legislative proposals regulating the location of adult cabarets, this promise rings hollow in light of the [city’s] continued failure to draft such proposals.”

An appeal from the city is sure to follow. So, undoubtedly, will speedy adoption of the mayor’s onerous new regulations on strip clubs, which include a “four-foot rule” prohibiting lap dances and a requirement that all strip clubs be brightly lit. Every member of the current city council supports the rules, which will come to a council vote one day after the September primary election.

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Can I Get a Goddamn Caption Contest?

Posted by on September 12 at 3:23 PM

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Bush and Mayor Nagin.

This event is officially unofficial

Posted by on September 12 at 3:16 PM

From a utility pole at Broadway and Denny:

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(Click here for a bigger, more readable version.)

I think it speaks for itself.

Pine Street blood and guts

Posted by on September 12 at 3:07 PM

There was a stabbing last night near Kincora, according to a scary eye-witness account in our forums. Don’t read it while eating.

Nudity News

Posted by on September 12 at 2:40 PM

Great news on the strip club front - more soon from Erica C. Barnett, who’s all over it. Hopefully we’ll have a male strip club in Seattle by the weekend.

Madagascar

Posted by on September 12 at 12:32 PM

Nabakov somewhere claims that his novel Lotita was inspired by the story of a caged chimpanzee that, when given a pen (or chalk) and piece of paper (or canvas), drew three very rough lines—the bars of its prison. This news report, which is mostly sad but has a hilarious penultimate paragraph, also echoes the doomed story of Lolita.

The Boot

Posted by on September 12 at 12:10 PM

Brown is down and out!

Ouch.

Posted by on September 12 at 11:46 AM

Sue Rahr, a candidate for King County Sheriff, should have hired an editor for her voter’s pamphlet statement. Specifically, someone should have flagged this line:

I am a former domestic violence advocate…

Yowsa. I hope she means she was a victim’s advocate.

Now Who’s the Closer?

Posted by on September 12 at 10:30 AM

Remember when John Kerry was the guy with a rep for only taking things seriously when it was the fourth quarter and he was down? This “closer” image of Kerry was hyped during the presidential race by Kerry’s supporters, but it mainly served to make him seem like a lazy son of privilege who would only come back from windsurfing off Nantucket if it really, really, really seemed like he had to. Bush, in contrast, had a rep as a hands-on manager always ready for a fight, and he rode it to victory. How times have changed.

These two articles on Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina, one in Time and one in Newsweek, are getting a lot of buzz today in the blogosphere because they show a Bush that his advisers have long tried to hide, a Bush who is much like the caricature of Kerry: A man more concerned with maintaining his sense of comfort than with leading, and so aloof he doesn’t sense political danger until it’s almost too late.

Longtime Bush watchers say they are not shocked that he missed his momentone of his most trusted confidants calls him “a better third- and fourth-quarter player,” who focuses and delivers when he sees the stakes.

One doubts Bush underwent a radical change in personality and management style in the ten months since the election. What’s changing, finally, is the media’s willingness to participate in the Bush myth-making machine.

Salon offers an enjoyable roundup of highlights from the television side of this change here, in a feature it calls “Reporters Gone Wild.”

Congratulations to Kanye West

Posted by on September 12 at 9:45 AM

Billboard breaks the news: Kanye West wraps up his post-Bush-bashing week of praise/scrutiny/hype/derision with his first #1 album and, simultaneously, his first #1 song, with both Late Registration and its second single “Gold Digger” claiming the respective top spots on the pop album and pop singles charts.

The #1 album is a given: West’s first album entered the charts at #2, he made the cover of Time and a number of splashy TV performances the week before his new record’s release, and then there was all that “Grammy-winning savior of hip-hop!” hype. But the single is something else: After hanging around the middle of the charts for eight weeks, this week “Gold Digger” jumped from #19 straight to #1a leap I can’t help attributing in part to West’s Bush-bashing. Everyone horrified by the Katrina fiasco could appreciate what West said, and wanting to hear what he does when he’s not calling bullshit on the president on live television is a natural next step. (It takes a lot of radio play to make a song move from 19 to 1.)

Plus, “Gold Digger” is awesome. I saw West perform it this summer at the Sasqautch Festival and didn’t care for it at all. It seemed dumb and repetitive and one of the least interesting lyrics he’d ever written. Then I heard the version on Late Registration and fell in love. Like every other track on the obsessively brilliant Late Registration, “Gold Digger“‘s music is amazingpacked with intricate little twists (thanks, Jon Brion!) and grand pop ambition. Plus, with its sample of Ray Charleswhich is actually Jamie Foxx pretending to be Ray Charles”Gold Digger” is some new peak in post-postmodernism.

Hurrah for Kanye, and while I’m assessing Billboard victories, congrats as well to Death Cab for Cutie, whose new album Plans debuted on this week’s Pop Album chart at a freakish #4.

No Katrina Media Ban

Posted by on September 12 at 9:37 AM

The U.S. government decided not to ban the media from showing images of the dead after CNN threatened a lawsuit.

“All the President’s Friends”

Posted by on September 12 at 9:35 AM

Be sure to read Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times. He shows that FEMA head TK Brownor “Brownie,” if you prefer to use Bush’s nickname for the incompeent ; “Drownie” if you prefer to use John Aravosis’ nicknameis just the tip of the corrupt, crony iceberg.