The Seattle International Film Festival has announced its new leadershipor at least half of it. With former director Helen Loveridge having departed back to her homeland of England, longtime SIFF man Carl Spence (who happens to be fluent in Japanese) has been promoted to the position of Artistic Director.

It’s a new position, essentially dividing the previous Executive Director post into two equal positions: Spence’s position and a Managing Director, who will oversee the day-to-day operations of the festival.

The fest is still on the hunt for a Managing Director.

Linda Averill is running as a Freedom Socialist for Seattle City Council Position 4 (Jan Drago is the incumbent). Darlene Madenwald is running for Seattle City Council Position 2 (Richard Conlin is the incumbent).

Averill and Madenwald are the only candidates, so far, who have responded to the audience questions from our Sept. 7 Candidate Forum, which we posted here a few days ago.

Linda and Darlene’s answers are below. Linda’s answers are first.

Continue reading "Thanks Linda & Darlene!" »

Tonight I will interview journalist Chris Mooney about his new and important book, The Republican War on Science. The event will take place at the Town Hall (1119 Eighth Ave) and start at 7:30 pm. I may or may not read this introduction, which I composed this morning to organize my waking thoughts:

“THE INTRODUCTION

The recent resignation of FEMA’s head Michael Brown, due to the full-blown exposure of his inexperience and gross incompetence, was a significant event for two immediately apparent reasons. One, for the first time in five years, Karl Rove could not save one of the president’s guilty men. No genius, now matter what size or how evil, could spin the human (or social) element out of this huge natural disaster. Second, it is (if the reports on Michael Brown’s replacement are correctBush is selecting a man with actual experience in emergency management) the turning point (the first reversal) of a seemingly relentless trend that began its career in the early ’70s and was accelerated by the present administration: the politicization of every part, every organ of America’s governing body.

Continue reading "The Republican War on Science" »

Pro basketball player Shaquille O’Neal chased down and helped catch a gay basher in Miami Beachbut that’s not the weird part of the story. Apparently Shaquille wants to be a policeman when he grows up. Who knew?

From the forums, Jizosh has this prediction:

Number of times using the word progress:12.

Surely there are more…

It’s too late to get this info in the paper, as the music section and calendar have already gone to print, but it was just announced that the Quiet Riot show on Friday, Sept 16th has been canceled. Refunds are available at point of purchase.

Just before the tight 2004 presidential election, FEMA, then run by Bush’s buddy (and horse judge) Michael Brown, inappropriately gave nearly $30 million dollars to thousands of people in Miami who were not affected by Hurricane Frances—”[it] made landfall more than 100 miles away.” Now that the election is a thing of the past, the government wants the money back. Is there a bottom to all of this corruption and deception?

Instead of plugging every local Hurricane Katrina relief show on the Slog, we’ve listed all the benefit shows from now through the end of September here.

# of times he’ll use his administration’s new catch phrases, “play the blame game” or “point fingers” (as in “now is not the time to…”): 3

President Bush will address the nation from Louisiana this Thursday at 6 pm (PT). Here are some predictions:

# of times he’ll claim to be “working hard” as our President: 3.

# of times he’ll bring up Iraq: 2.

# of times he’ll mention prayer and/or God: 5.

# of times he’ll admit he was a major fuckwad for rushing back from vacation to “save” Terri Schiavo, yet took his own sweet time leaving Crawford when one of America’s cities was being destroyed: 0.

Any more predictions?

Courtesy of Northwest Environment Watch: The city of San Francisco just opened a six-lane boulevard that replaces the Central Freeway, a double-decker viaduct that once cut through the Hayes Valley neighborhood. That freeway, like the waterfront Embarcadero (which was also torn down and replaced with a boulevard, revitalizing the city’s formerly blighted waterfront), was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the old elevated roadway “served as a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes and casting unwelcoming shadows over the area.” The new road will distribute traffic onto surface streets and includes a “linear park” with bike and pedestrian lanes, plus up to 900 units of new housing, half of it affordable.

San Francisco’s experience should be a valuable lesson for highway proponents who predict disaster if the Alaskan Way Viaduct is torn down - and a model for what to do instead. The People’s Waterfront Coalition has proposed tearing down the viaduct and replacing it with fixes to surface streets downtown - a smart solution that would save millions of dollars, revitalize the west end of downtown, and open up the waterfront for bikers, pedestrians, and new downtown residents.

Following the summer’s mass media blitz on the meth epidemicthe good folks at Gawker (who did the Lexis-Nexis work and the math) determined that July 2005 saw an average of 8.87 stories about meth published every day in America the new issue of the national gay & lesbian newsmagazine The Advocate devotes itself to the problem of meth and gays from the inside.

It’s not pretty. Of course there are the requisite user horror stories, which are beginning to form a literature all their own, drawing on experiences from across the social spectrum but following the same basic narrative arc: “It was fun at first, the sex was great, and then I came to realize everyone on earth was secretly using their brain waves to kill me.” For the record: I love drugs, but I hate meth. I’ve never even done itwhich I guess makes me a meth bigot, and I’m fine with that. If you don’t stand up for something, you’ll fall for anything, including sexy poisons that leave you friendless, toothless, and insane.

Continue reading "The Gay Meth Problem From The Inside" »

I don’t know how long this will last, but as an alert Stranger staffer just pointed out, if you Google the word “failure,” the official White House biography of George W. Bush appears at the top of the list.

Or, at least, it does as of 11:45 a.m. today.

Little Brother’s video for “Lovin’ It” (off the group’s forthcoming The Minstrel Show) has caused a stir in some hiphop circles for being denied air time on BET because it’s “too intelligent.” Read the description below from sohh.com and decide for yourself:

The video begins with a delivery truck dropping boxes labeled “gangsta,” “backpackers,” “earthy” and “icy” onto a street. The rest of the clip mostly sees LB and Joe Scudda, who is also featured on the song, performing in front of a capacity crowd. The clip also pokes fun at the Hip-Hop subgenres by depicting overly exaggerated backpacker and gangsta characters in the audience. “Lovin’ It” also jokingly features typical scenes with Big Pooh sitting next to champagne-sipping models in the venue’s VIP section while LB’s entourage pop bottles. The video concludes with a car running through the boxes dropped on the street earlier.

An alert reader sent me this story from Dateline Hollywood:

Robertson Blames Hurricane On Choice Of Ellen DeGeneres To Host Emmys

Lesbian is New Orleans native

HollywoodPat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing HIS anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year‚s Emmy Awards. “By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites
have clearly invited God‚s wrath,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club” on Sunday. “Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?” (Yeah, but he missed Ellen, didn’t he?)

Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony.

“This is the second time in a row that God has invoked a disaster shortly before lesbian Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards,” Robertson explained to his approximately one million viewers. “America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation.”

Robertson added that other tragedies of the past several years can be linked to Degeneres‚ growing national prominence. September, 2003, for example, is both the month that her talk show debuted and when insurgents first gained a foothold in Iraq following the successful March invasion. “Now we know why things took a turn for the worse,” he explained.

In order to avoid further tragedy, Robertson called not only for the Television Academy to find a new heterosexual host, but to bar all homosexuals and bisexuals from taking part in the ceremony.

He said employees at the Christian Broadcasting Network had put together a list of 283 nominees, presenters, and invited guests at the Emmys known to be of sexually deviant persuasions.

Sounds completely plausibleafter all, Robertson has warned people that God would sic hurricanes on cities that hosted gay pride events, and other right-wing Christians are running around blaming the gays for Katrina.

Now personally I think what God hates is gamblingall those barge casinos in Biloxi, Mississippi, took a direct hit, while God, in His wisdom, spared New Orlean’s French Quarter, site of the city’s gay bars, gay parades, Southern Decadence, flashed titties, and drunk middle-aged tourists of all sexual orientations. No one is going to be gambling in Mississippi for years, but Bourbon Street will be back in business by spring. The message from on high? God loves sluts, but hates slots.

Back to Robertson vs. Ellen…

Any sensible reader who makes it to the end of the piece before they forward it on to their friends will realize that it has to be a paradoy:

“God already allows one awards show to promote the homosexual agenda,” Robertson declared. “But clearly He will not tolerate such sinful behavior to spread beyond the Tonys.”

Robertson making jokes about the Tonys? That’ll happen the day after Rosie O’Donnell sits on his face. A quick visit to Dateline Hollywood’s homepage reveals it to be a parody site.

It took five years, but President Bush has finally sorta-kinda admitted a mistake. From the Associated Press (courtesy of the Boston Globe):

“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government,” Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.

“To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said.

The post-Katrina polls are starting to come in, and Bush’s approval rating is sinking to record lows. The man is drowning.

The bungled response to the hurricane has helped drag down Bush’s job-approval rating, which now stands at 42 percent — the lowest of his presidency — in the Post-ABC poll and down three points since the hurricane hit two weeks ago. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of Bush’s performance, a double-digit increase since January.