Who knew?
You can buy coffins and urns at costco.com.
Last night I had a date and we decided we wanted to go sit in the park. Cal Anderson Park. The park I’ve spent time in every day since they took down the gates (including one night when I brought my laptop there to do some work). The park that, as I’ve written, has restored my faith in all things civic. The park that is my current favorite place to be. I live on one side of the park and work on the other (literally).
It was 9 at night, and it was a date, so we brought PBRs. We sat in the middle of the fake-grass field. The sky was incredibly gorgeous. I was babbling about how much I love the park, and even the fake grass, which I had been skeptical about.
Until, two minutes in, cops seized us — illegal! illegal! this is illegal! you’re being illegal! what on earth are you doing? this is illegal! sit down! don’t stand up! this is illegal! give me your ID! you live there? you live over there? where? who are you? where do you live? this is illegal! oh, you didn’t realize this is illegal! well it is! ooh baby it’s illegal! etc, for, like, 20 minutes.
I am a person who’s never been in trouble with the law for anything. Matter of fact, I had my first sip of alcohol when I was 20. And — this is stupid, apparently, according to everyone I know — I actually didn’t know it was illegal (illegal! illegal! you’re breaking the law, you law-breaker!) to sit somewhere (in the dark, mind you, on a date, in the middle of a beautiful night) and drink a can of beer.
Long story short: I have been kicked out of the park — this park I’ve done more positive PR for than anyone else — for 7 days. I have to walk around the thing, between work and home, for 7 days. If I step foot into the park at all in the next 7 days, these goofy-looking but highly serious cops insisted, I will go to jail.
People around the office can’t stop talking about this amazing image, which ran on the front page of The New York Times and The Seattle Times today.
The brilliance of the photo, I think, is in the cropping. It turns the microphones into snakes, which makes DeLay look like the most prominent head of a creepy Hyrda. It’s the perfect image for this political moment, in which the larger Hydra — the three Republican-controlled branches of government — faces damaging investigations and potential indictments on three fronts: In the House it’s Delay being indicted for allegedly illegal campaign financing, in the Senate it’s Frist being investigated for fishy stock deals, and at the White House it’s Karl Rove and others being investigated for leaking the name of a covert CIA agent.
But don’t get too excited, Democrats. As the dictionary reminds us, when you cut off one head of a Hydra, two more grow back in its place.
We’ve used this space before to note P-I columnist Robert Jamieson’s evolving positions on certain matters.
Today brings another interesting example. Earlier this summer Jamieson attacked Cindy Sheehan as an insincere opportunist who was doing something “unfathomable” by making her private grief public. Then last weekend Jamieson decided to attend the anti-war march in Seattle, and today he’s crediting Sheehan in print with having ignited a “wildfire” that has energized the anti-war movement (he’s also now quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “A Time To Break The Silence” speech from 1967).
Trouble is Sheehan is not sincerely interested in meeting Bush for a private, heartfelt chat about her understandable anguish and lingering questions.She wants to make a public splash by allowing critics of the unjustified war in Iraq to use her as a human bazooka against Bush, who got us into this war mess.
That Sheehan would allow her private grief to be plied for a public stunt seems unfathomable… Sheehan’s Texas tantrum wittingly or unwittingly abets left-leaning forces that are happy to use her to get at the president. If the anemic antiwar movement needs a mourning mom to lead the charge against this unjust war, then the movement is in dire straits.
A war is going on, though you wouldn’t know it watching people dash to sports events, happy hours and outdoor decks to soak up fleeting remnants of the summer sun.An anti-war movement also is going on, though again you might not notice it by reading local news. Several thousand people crowded into Westlake Center on Saturday to protest the war, but the gathering got only a few blurbs deep in the news pages the next day.
I felt compelled to go to the public event — as a reminder.
In a country preoccupied by “Desperate Housewives,” baseball pennant fever and the political fallout of killer hurricanes, American men and women are still risking and losing their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Walking through the Seattle crowd also offered a rebuke to what I wrote this summer — about the anti-war movement being misguided as a result of Cindy Sheehan, the mom who tried to shame the president over the death of her soldier son in Iraq.
It took time, but if the vocal yet peaceful Seattle demonstration was any indication, the anti-war movement is starting to harness the wildfires ignited by Sheehan.
With the title of Hot Figurehead Convict ready for transfer to Tom DeLay, the freshly unshackled Martha Stewart is busy splashing herself all over television. Although I am genereally pro=Martha—especially after the bad-assery displayed throughout her incarceration—I can’t be bothered with Martha’s daytime show, where she regularly embarrasses herself with the help of celebrity guests—learning to rap with P. Diddy (dear God), folding t-shirts with the Desperate Housewives.
However, Martha’s nighttime show—NBC’s The Apprentice: Martha Stewart—focuses on embarrassing others, and it’s brilliant. After three seasons of Trump’s Apprentice, producers know exactly how to skew the competition for maximum drama and hilarity, with a key component being potentially humiliating competetive challenges. (Forcing a bunch of rabidly ambitious young professionals to promote and open a gym=kinda interesting; forcing a bunch of rabidly ambitious young professionals forced to write and create a children’s book, then read the book to a group of children=heee-larious.)
Further delight is provided by the addition of classic Martha Stewart-isms: To honor Martha’s eternal hatred of unnecessary plastic, the only water bottles allowed on the show are these gorgeous glass Evian bottles I’ve never seen anywhere else, and Martha follows up each and every firing with a personal thank-you note: “Dear So-and-So, thank you for being on my show, good luck focusing on your strengths, etc etc etc..”
Pretty classy, for a media-whoring ex-con…
Azura, the brand-new pan-Asian place that’s replaced the awful Tofoo, kitty-corner from Bauhaus on Pine, is really good. Last night I had superlative lemon shrimp: The veggies (sugar-snap peas, bell peppers, etc.) were crisp and plentiful, the shrimp tender and plump, and my entree came with the option of brown rice.
The dining room is lotus-flower pretty and bordered by a sexy blue translucent bar (thus far no hard licks available, but I bet that license is on its way). Something tells me this cuisine is too healthy to pique the interest of either Ms. Dickerman or Ms. Clement, hence my foray into their territory.
Stranger crew: It’s a bit of a walk for a dark day like today, but Azura has a handsome lunch menu (including dim sum).
Amid all the questions about whether last weekend’s big anti-war march in D.C. accomplished anything, here’s a sign that some politicians are in fact responding to the anti-war movement:
With Bush’s approval ratings already the lowest of his presidency, the administration is also facing an increasingly visible antiwar movement at home, from a weekend demonstration of about 100,000 people in Washington to a new “Out of Iraq” congressional caucus. The caucus, which has 68 members, all Democrats, is mounting a campaign to withdraw U.S. troops.“We’re building a growing movement against the war in Iraq that will give people who feel uncomfortable about the war a place to share their concerns and discuss and work through a solution — should it be immediate withdrawal or an exit strategy. We want to build a consensus that we want to get out,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).
Remember how just a week-and-a-half ago Mayor Nickels said: “The people of Seattle will have the final say in the Monorail project.”
If Nickels meant that, if Nickels was honestly interested in the voters’ opinion, than you have to wonder about this bit of news that came my way: Nickels’s Deputy Mayor, Tim Ceis, and Nickels’s Director of Community Outreach, Marco Lowe, showed up to lobby against the monorail initiative at Monday night’s 36th District Democrats executive board endorsement meeting. (The 36th District represents Ballard, Queen Anne, Regrade, and Magnolia.)
Evidently, Ceis and Lowe weren’t very persuasive. The 36th Executive Board decided (by the necessary two-thirds majority) to recommend that its membership endorse the monorail line.
I’m going to see the Mayor tonight. In a pretty crazy turn of events, I’ve been asked to co-host a Katrina fund raiser with Gov. Gregoire, Sen. Cantwell, K.C. Exec Sims….and Mayor Nickels. I plan to ask the Mayor why he’s been so disingenuous about the monorail.
Naysayers surmise that Sigur RĂłs get too much hyperbolic praise, that the music in no way matches the effusive praise constantly lobbed the Icelandic band’s way. After finally seeing the band live last night at a sold-out show at the Paramount, though, I have to say the band deserves every sugary sweet compliment they get. They played an incredibly moving show, beginning and ending behind a scrim that showed only their shadows and filling the middle with gooey, melancholy post rock bliss. While many of the band members switched instruments (between drums, xylophones, pianos, keyboards, bass, guitar) singer Jon Thor Birgisson was the most intriguing talent to watch. Throwing his voice into its upper registers and playing his guitar with a violin bow, he was dedicated to transmitting the beautiful energy of the band through unconventional mediums. The three best moments of the show: when Birgisson sang into his guitar instead of the mic; when the song before the finale included a simple background of white bird silhouettes leaving and returning to a wire; and the fact that instead of doing a second and third encore, Sigur RĂłs held hands and took a bow, pushing their aesthetic further from a rock show and more towards a classical music concert.
In today’s paper you’ll see that we got the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s name wrong. We inserted a stray “and” (though two of us in the copy department feel strongly that there should be an “and” in there).