Smobriety Charticle Four

Weight: 173 pounds

Pulse Rate: 80 beats per minute

Song Stuck In Head: “Theme From Shaft,” Isaac Hayes

Horniness Increase Since Yesterday: 74.86%

Increase in Confidence of Wellbutrin’s Potency on Author’s Part: 100%

Smoking Resumption Risk: Minty Green
(Mid-to-high; today is Author’s first day back at work at the retail job he has held for the last six of his twelve smoking years…this is where the ‘habit’ concerns start to kick in.)

Symptoms: Pointless sweating, lack of concentration, a newfound inability to read Newsweek because of the length of the articles and difficulty understanding the intellectual content therein, night sweats, one screaming nightmare, lower back pain, interest in celebrity lifestyle seems to be focusing directly on Sienna Miller’s struggle to accept Jude Law’s infidelities.

Ooooohhhh-ho-ho-ho. Man, oh, man. Whoever you are, stop reading this right now and go out and get yourself some Wellbutrin. Whooooooo! Seriously. It’s some good motherfuckin’ shit. F’real. That is all.

The cost and casualties of the war on poetry can be monitored here and here. Jen Graves, it is not what you think it’s about. It’s all about poetry and merely poetry. What proved to be the last straw was a lady poet in Vancouver BC who killed the mood of an otherwise perfect evening with her poems about something or other. This sort of thing must come to a stop!

In the latest chapter of the hard-hitting investigation into how James Frey is a wussy drinker instead of a tough crackhead, Random House is offering refunds to anyone who bought the book directly from the publisher. Because a fake real book with a fake real root canal scene isn’t worth $14.95.

I saw I Am Cuba again last night and the beauty of several scenes almost choked some tears out of my eyes. I woke up this morning with the score in my head. That sad humming, that wild country, that ride in the taxi through Havana. This is the power of cinema.

Judge Alito’s wife Martha fled the confirmation hearing in tears.

ALSO: Since the media is going to have a field day with this, no doubt portraying democrats as bullies in the process, Atrios is right to say:

…I appreciate that Alito’s wife may geuinely find this stressful and bummer for her, but I just can’t stand the fact that our media which can’t seem to understand that people who support groups which try to reduce women an minorities on campus, who rule in favor of warrantless searches of 10 year old girls, who will likely declare the uterus state property, who shoot down almost any racial discrimination claim, and who support the practice of striking jurors based on their race might cause a few tears as well.

The media keeps declaring these hearings to be just political theater, and then they focus on the soap opera.

This. Shit. Matters. Pretend you care, or get new goddamn jobs.

Exactly.

Earlier this week, supporters of council presidential hopeful Jean Godden proposed forcing a vote on the presidency while Tom Rasmussen, part of a four-member council bloc supporting Richard Conlin, was out of the country, giving Godden the presidency by a 4-3 majority. (Ever since Conlin supporter Jim Compton resigned, the council’s remaining eight members have been split 4-4 between Conlin and Godden.) Today, Rasmussen’s staff confirmed that he is cutting his vacation short, coming back from Ecuador a week early to weigh in on the decision. Rasmussen’s return brings the council back to its previous 4-4 deadlock, solving nothing. Personally, I think Jean Godden should pay for his ticket.

Israel is now refusing to negotiate with Pat Robertson over his beloved Biblical Theme Park because of Robertson’s callous (yet unsurprising) criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon following Sharon’s stroke last week.

Blaming Sharon’s stroke on his decision to pull Israelites from the Gaza Strip, Robertson said:

“He was dividing God’s land, and I would say: ‘Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course’… God says: ‘This land belongs to me, and you’d better leave it alone’.”

Today on Robertson’s show, God added, “This land belongs to me, and also I demand a theme park. Where is my flock of miming Jesuses with their hilariously oversized, bobbing heads? I will bitch slap you, Israel.â€�

Fortunately, Avi Hartuv, who works in Israel’s tourism ministery, has clarified Israel’s position for God and man:

“We will not do business with [Robertson] - only with other evangelicals who don’t back these comments,” he said. “We will do business with other evangelical leaders, friends of Israel, but not with him.”

I’m for vocal debates, educated voters, boys in eyeliner, brown rice, lap dancers, art, Hong Kong, privacy, thank-you notes on nice stationery, belly buttons, abortion rights, urban landscapes, electro-pop, loyal friends, wetsuits, the right words at the right time, and love.

From my favorite book by my favorite Romanian philosopher: “History—irony on the move.”

And baby makes three, or, in the case of this new celebrity family, five.

Last month I posted about these Chuck Norris jokes bouncing around the internet.

Today this was pointed out to me.

Life is beautiful.

I’m for a piano in every home. I’m also for doing knife-hits of weed and beating on said piano for hours.

I’m for documentaries. I truly believe they can save the world. Recent faves include Overnight, Devil’s Playground and Grizzly Man. Looking forward to seeing Grey Gardens, Vernon, Florida and Born Into Brothels.

I’m for 30-minute showers and all-day naps.

I’m for calling bullshit on the whole divisive red state/blue state concept. If you look at a county by county continuous-spectrum map you realize we’re all varying shades of purple.

I’m for lingus in its variety of forms.

And I’m for hippies. There. I said it.

Seattle Art Museum may have vacated its downtown building, but its winter film series, curated by Greg Olson, is still happening at the Museum of History and Industry in beautiful lowland Montlake (psst: it’s a better theater anyway). While you’re in Montlake, you should definitely stop in at Mont’s Market on 24th, which is the fanciest and most delicious convenience store in the city.

The series starts tomorrow with The Lady Vanishes at 7:30 pm, not The Thirty-Nine Steps as was previously announced (and as appears in the Film Shorts section this week). Next week is Rebecca, and The Thirty-Nine Steps scoots back to the 26th. Also, rumor has it that Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia may stop in for the March 9 screening of Strangers on a Train.

Series tickets available through the SAM box office: 654-3121.

Barbie submits and converts to Islam.

Here’s an interesting political tidbit that I didn’t have room for in my article about Republican State Senator Bill Finkbeiner’s decision to endorse the gay civil rights bill this year:

As you might remember, there was a big shit storm when the gay civil rights bill went down last year. What set it off was The Stranger’s revelation that Microsoft had decided to withdraw its support for the bill, after being pressured by an eastisde evangelical pastor named Ken Hutcherson. The idea that one religious fundamentalist could convince one of the most powerful corporations in America to reverse its position on gay rights fed straight into the post-election fear that evangelicals were taking over the country, and the story became big national — even international — news. After a ton of embarrassing publicity and blogosphere pressure, Microsoft reversed its reversal and pledged it would support the gay rights bill this year.

What does this have to do with Finkbeiner? Well, Finkbeiner’s district includes Redmond, where Microsoft is headquartered, which makes him Microsoft’s man in the state senate. So did Microsoft’s about-face on gay rights have anything to do with Finkbeiner’s about-face on gay rights? Did Microsoft make good on its promise to lobby for the bill this year by pressuring Finkbeiner to change his vote?

“They did,” Finkbeiner told me on Monday. “As much as they talked to me about anything except transportation, this was it.”

However, Finkbeiner took pains not to appear too deep in Microsoft’s pocket and said that the decision, in the end, was his own: “I put a lot more weight on what my constituents would think about this issue than I did on what Microsoft would think about it.”

Still, for those wondering whether all the blogosphere pressure (scroll down to “Microsoft Abandons Gays, or Gates-Gate,” left hand column) worked, and whether Microsoft made good on its promise to push the bill this year, the answer seems to be a resounding yes.

Last night, some friends and I agreed to reread “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,â€� the story I usually dredge up to counter the fashionable dismissal of Hemingway as a drooling, half-literate boob.

I was surprised by how much I had forgotten about the very short story. I like to think I forgot so I could enjoy rediscovering its sweet, sad sentences, from “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name…” to “an old man is a nasty thing” to this exchange, which I intend to forget before the day is through:

“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.
“Why?”
“He was in despair.”
“What about?”
“Nothing.”
“How do you know it was nothing?”
“He has plenty of money.”

That kills me.

…and the phrase “writer’s writer” is dumb too, but I was happy to see that Charles D’Ambrosio’s new book, being published by Knopf in April, is at the “top of nearly every list” of books expected to be big this spring, at least according to this. The book is called The Dead Fish Museum and it will have eight stories in it, six of them first published in The New Yorker. I’m admittedly biased — D’Ambrosio has written for The Stranger, he came up from Portland to be in our huge Chop Suey literary event last April, I’ve been in his house — but it’s true, it can’t be denied: his stories are awesome.

Girl Gets Bird Flu After Kissing Chicken By BENJAMIN HARVEY, Associated Press Writer

VAN, Turkey Sumeyya Mamuk considered the chickens in her backyard to be beloved pets. The 8-year-old girl fed them, petted them and took care of them. When they started to get sick and die, she hugged them and tenderly kissed them goodbye. The next morning, her face and eyes were swollen and she had a high fever. Her father took her to a hospital, and five days later she was confirmed to have the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. “The chickens were sick. One had puffed up and she touched it. We told her not to. She loved chickens a lot,” her father, Abdulkerim Mamuk, said of the second youngest of his eight children. “She held them in her arms.” Her oldest brother, Sadun, said Sumeyya loved animals and took care of puppies and kittens in Van’s Yalim Erez neighborhood. When her mother saw Sumeyya holding one of the dying chickens, she yelled at her and hit the girl to get her away. Sumeyya began to cry. She wiped her tears with the hand she’d been using to comfort the dying chicken. “She wiped her face,” said her father, speaking in broken Turkish and wearing a leather jacket and a typical Kurdish headdress in their bright, clean home. “She started to swell. She had a really high fever.” Following a few tense days when her family worried if she would recover, Summeya’s condition has improved due to quick treatment with the antiviral drug Tamiflu, said Dr. Huseyin Avni Sahin, chief physician at the Van 100th Year Hospital. But at least two other children have died of the same virus in Turkey, and as of Tuesday, 15 people had tested positive for infection in preliminary tests.

Less than one week after her admission of battling bulimia hit newsstands, celebrity teen Lindsay Lohan has gone on the defensive, telling Teen People she’s never battled bulimia and that “[t]he words that I gave to the writer for Vanity Fair were misused and misconstrued.”

Vanity Fair stands by its reporting, citing its audio-taping of the entire Lohan interview. Full stupid story here.

Josh Friedman is a screenwriter whose blog �I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing� never fails to be entertaining.

Recently, a tumor was discovered on Friedman’s kidney, and he’s started blogging about his ordeal in an inspired, often hilarious, way. Do yourself a favor and give the entire blog a read. Here’s a taste:

Here’s the deal: I had a malignant tumor growing on my left kidney. I use the past tense because on December 27th I had what is known as a partial lower nephrectomy. Removed from my body were: a malignant tumor some two and a half inches around, approximately 10% of my kidney, and half of my eleventh rib. The rib was a surprise. I remained in the hospital five days, and have been home since New Year’s Day recovering. I have an eight inch incision in my side. I cannot drive, lift my son, sit up in bed, or sneeze without crying.

Biopsies performed during the surgery indicate the cancer had not spread. I will be scanned every 3-6 months for the next five years but will require no chemotherapy and no radiation for this particular cancer. Without being too dramatic about it, there is a very good chance my bout with food poisoning saved my life. Which goes to show, if you see a taco stand and it looks even the least bit sketchy, get in line.

With the exception of that time I made it plain about Queen, I don’t typically post about music.

However, I’ve got to make it plain about the circle of trust, the downright beloved community that will be bringing some freedom high to the Lo Fi Performance Gallery at 429 Eastlake Ave. E this Saturday night, January 14.

Six DJs billing themselves as the Emerald City Soul Club will be spinning ’60s soul records for the masses.

I’m only judging by the nice-looking brown and green poster that’s got a picture of an early-60s girl group—three beehive ladies who are definitely a few of God’s beautiful creatures— but this show looks promising.

As SNCC Chairman Stokely Carmichael once said: “Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum and force you to take a stand for Black Power.”

…It’s the fact that for once in my life my great love and a great job can both be in the same city that yes, I am leaving the Stranger. As I’ve told people at the paper many times in the past 24 hours, it was a heartbreaking decision to quit—one that made me perform the most dreaded of Maerz actions, getting all mushy and upset at work—as I truly believe the paper is the best place I’ve ever had the chance to work. The writers, the editors, the art production people, the artists, the sales people, the accountants, the management…it’s a highly qualified, fun, engaging group of people and I am very lucky to have worked here for almost four years. It’s the dysfunctional family I was promised and I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. That’s not even mentioning how much I love being involved with the Seattle music scene—a music scene that rivals any other city in the country for excellence, enthusiasm, invention of new ideas, and just a shitload of stellar people working their asses off to make it shine.

But at the end of the month, I’m off to San Francisco, the city I moved here from in the first place, to both live closer to my boyfriend and to be the music editor of the SF Weekly. There are a lot of really great people at that paper too, and I’m thrilled that they’ve hired me to join their staff. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m hoping to see a lot of Seattle bands tour through the Bay Area.

I’ll be here until the end of the month, after which Dave Segal will be the new music editor. Dave was my editor at AP magazine before I moved to Seattle, and he definitely knows his shit—as anyone who’s read his stuff already knows. He’s an excellent writer and editor, and has opened up the city to whole new genres of music that were never covered to any degree of depth before. I have utmost confidence in his abilities.

So before I write a book on the Slog, I’ll save the rest of my thoughts on all this for a farewell piece, and say thanks to the Stranger and Seattle in general for making my run here so difficult to give up (it took me a year of being engaged to realize maybe it’s time to live closer to my man). Oh, and I will not miss the 24 days straight of rain.

Rule #1: Always place the most upsetting words at the end of your headline.

Speaking of upsettingly misplaced meat, last night I saw a commercial for eBay, featuring the word it spelled in eBay’s chunky font, cut out of a four-inch-high chunks of steak sizzling on a grill. It’s really hard to explain, but it’s totally puke-inducing. (Did you know thick letters cut out of steak jiggle like Jello?)