Walken in 2008? Huzzah!

If Chile can elect a woman (and socialist, doctor, and former political prisoner who beat the pants off her billionaire opponent), we can certainly elect an actor who kicks seventy times more ass than either of these guys:

I’m really excited about the upcoming New Pantheon awards (formerly the Shortlist Music Prize). Large scale music awards rarely support/inspire independent artists, and it’s always the same names over and over. So I feel really flattered to be part of the nominating committee narrowing down last year’s talent into a worthy set of finalists (which were just announced last week). I think prizes like this one, festivals like Arthurball, radio stations like KEXP, KUSF, and WFMU and independent publications and record stores are helping keep the national music landscape interesting by promoting underpromoted artists…for every American Idol-winner-turned-cover-girl, there’s a growing force recognizing, supporting, and furthering experimentation with the old pop and rock structures. It’s already feeling like 2006 is going to be another inspiring year in music.

Mark Kozelek definitely isn’t my thing—that whole mopey, valium balladry puts me to sleep—and it seems to me that anyone who agrees with that assessment shouldn’t be spending $15 to see him live. And yet a couple friends who are fans and went to Kozelek’s Friday show said the venue had more than a few people obviously not into the former Red House Painters front man’s set. In fact, there were so many frat types telling the singer to fuck off, drunk patrons talking loudly through the show, and one girl who apparently passed out standing up that Kozelek cursed the Seattle audience, calling this city “middle of the roadâ€� and stopping his set to tell people to shut the fuck up. Which brings up two things I don’t understand about the live music scene here—why do people go to mellow shows only to bitch and pester the performer, when if they hate it so much they can leave and be loud at a bar? And why doesn’t the Triple Door have more indie shows? I love the TD space, and they’ve had a handful of mellow indie/pop acts, but it would cut out a lot of the rude crew (and cut down on the boredom of standing for three hours to hear a sloooow set of music) to have Kozelek types in that swank supper club.

Today’s David Horsey cartoon shows Seattle City Council Member Richard Conlin chairing last Thursday’s Position #9 vacancy hearing.

Horsey draws a line of crackpots queing up to the microphone (a guy in a clown suit, a naked guy, a prostitute, and a guy in a rain coat w/ a fish in his pocket and tennis racket in his hand) and Conlin is asking “So, what are your qualifications?”

The problem is… Conlin wasn’t even at Thursday’s hearing.

It was announced, vaguely, that Conlin had a prior commitment.

Just sayin’.

I almost want to see this conference happen in Tehran. A conference to discredit the Holocaust as a myth. Imagine who would attend: Neo-Nazis, Neo-Black Panthers, representatives from the Klu Klux Clan, Islamic fundamentalists—all under one roof in Tehran. Iran is to the first decade of the present millennium what Afghanistan was to the last decade of the 20th century.

Seattle City Council Member Nick Licata followed Steinbrueck’s example, making his list of Postion #9 contenders public here on the Slog.

Stranger friends: picking up on Peter Steinbrueck’s good idea of sharing his list with the public, I’m providing my total 18 names below. Each Council Member will submit a list of 18 names on Tuesday morning.

There are still worthy and capable candidates that are not in my list, so the choices were difficult to make. I took into consideration their resume, their 3 minute presentation, the support they received, any personal contact that I have had with them, and finally I just took into account my impression of how they could contribute to the overall welfare of the city.

I believe that the City would best be served by someone who could concentrate during this year on the work of the Council and not on campaigning for this coming fall. Also, I believe it is more democratic to have the citizens of Seattle choose the future Council Member rather than just the 8 sitting Council Members.

Consequently I will be leaning to those candidates in the second round who would consider being a caretaker for one year. They would of course be free to run in the following year when that same position most be voted on again.

#2 Juan Bocanegra
#3 Peter Holmes
#6 Dolores Sibonga
#16 Robert Zappone
#20 Gail Chiarello
#21 Harriet Walden
#27 Sally Clark
#28 Sharon Maeda
#34 Stella Chao
#38 Jack Whisner
#46 Bruce Bentley
#47 David Bloom
#49 Jan Brucker
#50 Thomas Whittemore
#55 Verlene Jones
#75 Bruce Herbert
#79 Ross Baker
#87 Alice Woldt

Posted by Nick Licata - January 15, 2006 09:09 AM

Via Wonkette:
This is the most entertaining website I’ve seen in forever. The writing is brilliant, the pathos are real (you simply must read about Jonathon’s Dark Side.) Study it, and then spend the rest of your Sunday feeling bad that Washington gets governors who can’t even decisively win against men named Dino. I bet Gregoire’s never impaled anything in her life.

Smobriety Charticle Six

Weight: 173 pounds

Pulse: 68 beats per minute

Song Stuck In Head: “Love, Thy Will Be Done,” Martika

Risk of Smoking Resumption: Eggshell White (virtually unimaginable)

Symptoms: Tiredness, and, er…tiredness.

An apology: could not post yesterday, as the closest I got to the internet was a digital watch that had a calculator function. Also yesterday, I forgot to take any Happy Pills at all until four in the afternoon, whereupon I decided to just quit it altogether, and I have not really suffered any kind of side effects since.
I wrote, exactly one week ago, that I quit smoking with three people. One was “Dick,” who is using The Patch intermittently, but is, for the most part, as they say, clean and smober. On Friday night, I finally met back up with the third member of the, um, Smoking Cessation Posse, who we’ll call “Tim.” Tim was going to use The Gum. Many people fear The Gum; when I told people our methods of quitting, they would nod as I said that Dick was going to use The Patch, they would grimace a bit when I said I was going to use The Happy Pills, but when I’d say that Tim was going to use The Gum, they would rear back and blurt, “The Gum doesn’t work!”
It was for this reason that I figured that Tim would be the one to fail.
Results after the jump.

Continue reading "My Smobriety, Week One: No News Is Dull News" »

What he said.