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Archives for 04/30/2007 - 04/30/2007

Monday, April 30, 2007

The Road Less Traveled

Posted by on April 30 at 5:53 PM

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So.

On Sunday a gas tanker crashed in Oakland—under an elevated highway interchange, melting supports and rivets, ultimately causing the interchange to collapse. (Cool video here.) Chaos was predicted for today’s commute in SF; the governor of California declared the Bay Area a motherfucking disaster area.

Gee, how did that commute go today anyway?

A day after a fiery tanker crash melted and collapsed a critical highway interchange near the Bay Bridge, rush hour commuters in the Bay Area enjoyed a relatively painless morning, as drivers avoided the roads and the expected nightmare largely failed to materialize.

How was the disaster averted? Mass transit got a boost—more trains were running, more ferries crisscrossed San Francisco Bay, and some folks opted to telecommute. Now the same people that predicted disaster today are warning us that the disaster—the chaos! oh, the humanity!—will surely come tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. It’s likelier, however, that disaster won’t come because drivers will do what drivers do only when they must: adjust. Find other ways around, switch to mass transit, telecommute, ride a ferry.

But once again freeway addicts deprived of a freeway predicted disaster and disaster failed to materialize.

Tear down the viaduct now.

So You Wanna Open a Strip Club?

Posted by on April 30 at 5:26 PM

There’s a meeting at City Hall in, oh, about four minutes to discuss new zoning proposals for Seattle strip clubs. Wherever you see yellow on this map…

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…you can locate a new strip club. I spot a dab of yellow near the former location of Deano’s/Chocolate City, I think, and there seems to be a little smudge of yellow at what looks like Pike and I-5, which might be a nice spot for a gay strip club. But the yellowest parts of town are practically in Elliott Bay or the ship canal. Which makes me wonder… why not just legalize strip clubs on barges, a la “floating” casinos in Iowa, Alabama, Louisiana, etc.? It would make for a livelier waterfront, that’s for sure, and politicians wouldn’t have to take responsibility for okaying strip clubs in any existing neighborhoods.

Port Watch

Posted by on April 30 at 5:19 PM

For those of you who are following the Port scandal, The Seattle Times had a meaty scoop this weekend: They confirmed that a big “severance” package was authorized and in play for retired Port CEO Mic Dinsmore despite the fact that the Commission never voted on it; they implicated one Commissioner, Bob Edwards (who’s up for reelection this year) as having been privy to what was initially seen as solely Pat Davis’s screw up; and they had some evidence that the “severance” package was approved in executive session—a major no no.

The idea that the money was discussed in the Exec session comes from Edwards’s comments in the Sea Times (“there was some discussion”) and from notes that Mic Dinsmore took about the Executive session.

Of course, Dinsmore’s notes are a bit suspect: they were taken after the fact (last week maybe?), written in clear longhand, and written in complete sentences. Dinsmore, obviously, has an interest in showing that the Commission approved this whole thing, and it wasn’t just some secret scheme cooked up by him and ally Davis.

However, according to Port Commissioners like Alec Fisken and John Creighton—who maintain that the “severance” package was never discussed in Executive session (“I’ll swear that on a stack of bibles,” Creighton told me)—the whole debate is moot because the real issue, either way, is that Davis signed a memo authorizing the payout without a public vote by the Commission.

Here, Commissioner Edwards wants it both ways. While, as mentioned above, he told the Seattle Times “there was some discussion” … he adds, “the issue was not resolved.”

I disagree with Fisken and Creighton that the Exec session discussion is irrelevant. If the issue was discussed there and that led to Davis’s signature (which is how it appears), it means a “final action” was taken in Executive session. That’s against state law.

As to Dinsmore’s notes, Commissioner Creighton tells me: “That’s really rich coming from Mic Dinsmore. Mic had general counsel tell us to stop taking notes at Executive session.”

Meanwhile, open government activist Chris Clifford is getting set to argue in KC Court that he has just cause to circulate a Davis recall petition.

Here is a pretty good lasso of my coverage on the Port scandal to date.

Shaving Grace

Posted by on April 30 at 3:35 PM

And there’s this headline up at the PI

Flasher at large in West Seattle

Seattle Police are looking for a white man in his 20s, suspected of exposing himself to a West Seattle woman early Sunday morning…. The woman called police, concerned at how the man entered her gated community. Police suggested she report the incident, which occurred at about 2:30 a.m., to neighbors to remind them not to let in unknown people—even if they are clean-shaven, as the suspected flasher.

So Much More to Love

Posted by on April 30 at 3:19 PM

There’s a headline up at Drudge

Lesbians twice as likely to be obese

LESBIANS are twice as likely as heterosexual women to be overweight or obese, which puts them at greater risk for obesity-related health problems and death, US researchers said. The report, published in the American Journal of Public Health, is one of the first large studies to look at obesity among lesbians.

Keep reading and you discover this…

“The results of these studies indicate that lesbian women have a better body image than do heterosexual women,” [researchers] wrote.

Today On Line Out.

Posted by on April 30 at 3:15 PM

Love Pre-Fab Pop In a Uniform?: The Pipettes are Coming to Seattle.

Mythical Beasts: Björk and Sasquatch.

Yes Yes Yes: Kurt B Reighley and Donte Parks on Konono Nº1.

Hung Up Shirts: The Gender Politics of Band Merch.

Yacht Rock: YACHT To Tour With LCD Soundsystem.

Assholes and the Explosion: Opinions are Like Megan Seling, but the Explosion Broke Up.

And now, some adorable vermin (thanks to Kim Hayden):

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Freak Flag

Posted by on April 30 at 2:37 PM

There was a giant orange flag atop the Space Needle over the weekend; it had been there at least since Friday. Now it’s gone. What gives?

Police Investigate UW Party House

Posted by on April 30 at 1:16 PM

As you walk east on Northeast 50th Street, the houses get noticeably shittier the closer you get to UW. Well-manicured lawns and flourishing gardens give way to properties marked by worn, torn pleather recliners in the front yards of the obvious student houses on the east end of the street. The Happy Lucky Place, a house famous for its parties and infamous with police and ave rats, sits near the east corner of 50th that looks out onto the interstate.

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Several weeks ago, I was forwarded an e-mail titled: “Police Harassment at Happy Lucky Place.”

“Can’t we all just get along?

The Happy Lucky Place has been harassed by Seattle police for almost a year and a half. Is there no one who will speak out for us?

It all started on New Year’s Day 2006. We found a crackhead camped out in our basement. We asked him to leave. He refused. The police became involved.

The e-mail claims that police “warned’ residents “that if they ever had to come back to the house, they would make [their] lives miserable” and that officers make a habit of “scanning [the house] with searchlights” and routinely “poke through our garbage, look into our cars” and “walk around our yard whenever they have some free time.”

Squatting crackheads weren’t the only problems faced by residents of the Happy Lucky Place. According to a police report, officers were dispatched at 10:30 a.m. on April 11 after they received calls that someone was firing paintballs from one of Happy Lucky’s windows at cars across the street from the house.

A resident let police into the house where, according to the SPD report, they found “the house was in a condition of disrepair.” The report describes such horrors as missing portion of the oven door, exposed wiring, missing dishwasher panels, a “heavily stained carpet with duct tape, a large amount of dirty dishes piled in and around the sink,” and floors and walls… best described as grimy.”

Officers Bright and Schubeck proceeded to the upper floor of the Happy Lucky Place and woke a male resident who informed them that there were two “unidentified males ‘crashing’ in the house.” The report notes that police found “several items that appeared to be marijuana-smoking devices, such as glass pipes and bongs.” According to HLP residents, the officers told residents that “there’s some stuff we should take, but there’s probably slobber all over it,” and left the paraphernalia in the house.

Police then proceeded down the hall and entered the room where the alleged paintball incident occurred, resident Ken Poirier’s room. Poirier is the lone leaseholder at HLP. The report describes his room as being “in drastic disarray, with clothing and various property strewn about. The report continues, “there was a plastic bag containing a large quantity of orange paintballs” that “matched the paintball marks on the vehicles.” Officers found “multiple knives and swords” in Poirier’s room.

An officer called Poirier and informed him that they “would be notifying the Community Policing Team of the incident…[at] the K house,” referencing a large letter K which used to hang off of the roof of the house. The Community Policing Team, which handles neighborhood issues with rental properties along with narcotics and graffiti, informed the landlord and residents of the Happy Lucky Place of their upcoming visit.

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A sign on the back door of HLP

I got a tour of the house from Lauren Kozlow, a “friend of the house” named Ben, and a resident who asked remain anonymous but was okay with appearing in photos.

The Happy Lucky Place (HLP) is not your average U-District party house. Every one of its tenants has left a mark on its bizarrely decorated interior and the house is bursting with a kind of genuine eclecticism that would give Fremont residents wet dreams. Poirier, for example, is one half of the sideshow act “The King and the Beast.” The first time I went to the house, the front porch was practically an obstacle course of construction zone signs, a pinball machine, and a real-life bed of nails.

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We started the tour upstairs in “The Shire”—a common room filled with aging TVs and electronic equipment—named for its incredibly low ceiling, and cramped quarters. Ben, Lauren and her roommate told me about their frustration with police. “They don’t really respect this place. People live here. They think we’re all criminals or something,” says Kozlow. The incident with the crackhead clearly touches a nerve: “when we found a crack pipe in his stuff [we] kicked him out. Nobody wants to live around that shit.”

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I was told that “the house doesn’t put a lot of pressure on the people that live here.” That it’s “laid-back.” “It’s not, like, a party house really” Kozlow says. Volunteer security guards check IDs because everyone in the house wants “to be able to have an event… and let it be safe,” but they all agree that “we’re not gonna have [parties] anymore” because of all of the attention their house has gotten from police. “There’s no reason to specifically target this house. We had no control over the paintball incident” says the anonymous roommate.

Residents say an “ave rat” entered the house and found the paintball gun in Poirier’s room—who was on tour and out of state at the time—and began shooting at cars, before taking off when police arrived.

Poirier—who looks a bit like a younger, happier Glenn Danzig—said in a phone interview that his original philosophy behind HLP was to create an environment where he could “invite people over to listen to music, have fun, get out of the rain, [and] stuff like that.” He admits that things can get wild at the house: “when you have 60 people in a house on a winter day, listening to punk rock, occasionally a book goes through a piece of drywall.”

Along with chunks of missing drywall, there are several small, round, white metal plates embedded in walls and doors on the ground floor which, residents claim, cover bullet holes left from a police shootout that happened with the house’s previous tenants, long ago.

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Ben tells me that the Happy Lucky Place—which accurately describes the mellow and, as Josh Feit would say, “groovy” atmosphere of the house— was named by a former tenant named Kaelin. “We might have been tripping on mushrooms,” Ben adds.

I left the house, planning to return for their inspection, and asked a neighbor if he knew anything about the Happy Lucky Place. He’d mostly heard rumors about the place, but said that the tenants he met seemed “nice.” When asked about the problems the Happy Lucky Place were facing with police, the neighbor responded that “it sounds like they’re a little unlucky these days.”

Just over two weeks after the initial paintball incident, I arrived at the Happy Lucky Place just before 1:00 p.m. The door was open but when I knocked, no one answered. I waited around for a while before the landlord came to the door. Moments later, Officer Testerman arrived. The Happy Lucky Place’s landlord, who asked not to be named, pointed out the work he had done to fix the wiring and dishwasher problems. Testerman, who noted that his “concern [wasn’t] with every little nut and bolt,” explained that “if this was a one time incident, then there’s no problem,” alluding to the alleged paintball incident. “Part of my concern [is that they] don’t know who’s coming into the house. I’d be concerned if I didn’t know who was coming into my home.

Poirier, Kozlow and another resident stood in the middle of the cleaned-up living room, nodding as Testerman continued. “Have a party, have a good time. It’s your guys’ house [but] it’s not good when I get a report from officers that someone’s shooting paintballs from inside the house.”

Poirier asked Testerman about the officers he claimed had threatened to “make [their] lives miserable.” “I’m not going to comment on anything I wasn’t there for,” Testerman said. “You guys are the ones living here. You’ve gotta be able to [have] control.”

Testerman told me that he would be removing the Happy Lucky Place from his list of problem houses.

By a 10-Point Margin, Slog Readers Prefer Having the Gay Pride Parade Downtown

Posted by on April 30 at 12:37 PM

Last week we ran a poll asking whether you thought Seattle’s Gay Pride Parade should be held on Capitol Hill or in the streets of downtown. Over 1,000 people voted before the poll closed on Sunday. Here are the results:

Even More More More! Morning News

Posted by on April 30 at 12:15 PM

The horror! Lesbian kiss results in transfer from Gig Harbor school.

Expensive
: Seattle’s average water bill ranks highest in the nation.

Fucked: Muslim women, not wanting to “disappoint ” fiances by failing to bleed sufficiently on their wedding nights, are having their hymens resewn in record numbers.

Re: The Verdict on Pedersen

Posted by on April 30 at 11:55 AM

Defensive much, Eli?*

“Erica and Josh in particular” didn’t oppose endorsing Jamie Pedersen. Erica, Josh, Sarah Mirk, Annie Wagner, Dan Savage, and David Schmader opposed Pedersen. Everybody, that is, except Eli.

And while we did predict that Pedersen would be disappointing (particularly on issues of interest to renters, which turned out to be true), we didn’t say it would be “corrupt.” What we pointed out was that Pedersen would continue to work for Preston Gates & Ellis, a corporate law firm that lobbies the Legislature, while serving as a legislator, which struck us as a conflict of interest. (The actual endorsement expressed concern that Pedersen would be “too compromised and middle-of-the-road to be truly effective.”) As for “annoying”—well, I don’t know what that means, but I guess I was annoyed by Pedersen’s contention that money has no influence on politics. I certainly stand by my vote for Stephanie Pure. As I imagine the entire rest of the editorial board, all of whom voted against Eli, does.

* Generally, we don’t like to talk about our editorial endorsement process. However, since Eli brought this up, I feel compelled to respond. Having served on the Stranger’s edit board, unlike Eli, for the last four years (and on the Weekly’s edit board for two years before that) I can say that the process is always very contentious, and that heated arguments are extremely common.

The Last Emperor

Posted by on April 30 at 11:52 AM

i
The last pagan emperor of Rome is Julian II. The result of a series of unexpected events was his enthronement in 380 AD, at the age of 30. At 32, however, both life and throne left Julian on a battlefield. To this day it’s not known if an enemy or one of his own killed him with a spear. Much of the reason for the confusion about his death can be attributed to the disastrous war he instigated with the aim of popularizing his flailing program to reestablish paganism as Rome’s official religion. A victorious war would have shown the people that the gods were on his side, and not the side of Christianity, which became the state religion with Constantine’s conversion near the opening of the 3rd century. Using the maximum of his political might, Julian tried to reverse the march of two generations. But the harder he pushed—persecuting Christians, reserving Greek literature for pagan teachers, returning the Altar of Victory to the Senate House—the harder nothing happened because a considerable portion of the population had nothing to gain by going back to the pagan world of Penates, door deities, and augurs. Christianity was a much better deal for them. With paganism, then a religion that had retreated to the elite, all the poor got were monuments and bloody spectacles; with Christianity, there was at least the democratic ideal of real charity—feeding and clothing the less fortunate. Julian was aware of this and tried to reform paganism, making its type of charity more like Christian charity. But before any of these changes became stable and had any effect on Roman society, Julian’s life met its terrible (and inevitable) end in a war he foolishly started.

In the way that the last pagan emperor tried to reestablish an old order on a radically new Rome (transformed by Constantine and his Bishops), George Bush tried to reestablished an older order—oil and church power—on a radically new America (transformed between the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989, and the WTO protests, 1999). In fact, it’s not hard to imagine a future that will look at Bush and see him as the last Christian president. And the future might also see the connection between Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq and Julian’s disastrous war in Persia.


ii
The lovely lips of Joan Chen:
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The scene that first exposed me to the ultimate power of cinema: Joan Chen eating a white flower. The scene is in Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Chen’s character, the wife of the emperor, goes mad when she sees in the future the disaster that will become of her husband’s decision to cooperate with Japanese militarism. The weak emperor, who turned to the Japanese for support, is now nothing more than a puppet. Chen sees this fact, sees the emptiness of his power, and as the music plays in a hall celebrating the agreement between the emperor and the enemy of his countrymen, Chen begins to eat a flower, chewing its petals—her red lips, the green stem, the slow and bitter swallowing. The perfect image: beauty eating beauty.

iii
After Burton Watson’s translation of Xiang’s “Cook Ding” story, the peak of literary greatness, follows this short piece of writing by Walter Benjamin:

Again and again, in Shakespeare, in Calderon, battles fill the last act, and kings, princes, attendants and followers, “enter, fleeing.” The moment in which they become visible to spectators brings them to a standstill. The flight of the dramatis personae is arrested by the stage. Their entry into the visual field of non-participating and truly impartial persons allows the harassed to draw breath, bathes them in new air. The appearance on stage of those who enter “fleeing” takes from this its hidden meaning. Our reading of this formula is imbued with the expectation of a place, a light, a footlight glare, in which our flight through life may be likewise sheltered in the presence of on-looking strangers.

The Yellow Tent

Posted by on April 30 at 11:52 AM

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Just in case the person sitting in the Scientology tent at the Fremont Market yesterday with the e-meter in his hands was an actual innocent passerby and not ringer, here’s a little info about that e-meter, fool.

Re: Virtual Dystopia

Posted by on April 30 at 11:37 AM

The Washington Post finally stumbled into the Kathy Sierra story today, months after bloggers were all over the story. Unfortunately, the Post’s story adopts a typical “on the one hand, on the other hand” style, suggesting that while “some female bloggers” are feeling “stifled” by violent threats, others are managing to suck it up and deal. I mean, everybody knows that if you can’t handle threats of strangulation, throat-slashing, and rape—along with the publication of your address and social security number—you’re better off being silent. Rape and death threats: the price of entry for blogging while female.

As evidence that not all women bloggers are “being stifled” (again with the passive voice!) the writer quotes Michelle Malkin—an extremely prominent right-wing blogger—telling other women bloggers they ought to get thicker skin. “‘First, where have y’all been? For several years, the unhinged Internet underworld has been documented here,’ she wrote, reposting a comment on her site that called for the ‘torture, rape, murder’ of her family.” She urged women bloggers to “keep blogging” no matter how ugly the threats may get.

But come on. Kathy Sierra (who blogged about the incredibly contentious world of software development) is not Michelle Malkin. I’m not Michelle Malkin. Very few bloggers in the world come close to Michelle Malkin’s prominence. That doesn’t justify threats against her, of course, but it is a bit unfair of the Post to cite Malkin’s experience as in any way typical of all women bloggers—as if “some women” just can’t take the heat, while “other women” can.

Even worse, the passive voice used throughout the story (bloggers “are threatened” and “made targets”) moves the spotlight onto the victims, and off the violent predators who are driving them offline. The culprits, as Shakes notes, are “painstakingly not mentioned to the point of utter silliness,” resulting in paragraphs like these:

A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape. A single mother who blogged about “the daily ins and outs of being a mom” was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth.

As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms — a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.

Does it matter who’s doing the targeting, the threatening, the harassing? Of course it does. By failing to talk about the perpetrators of these online crimes, the Post implicitly says it’s OK for men to threaten women, publish their personal information, and bully them into silence. The only solution the offer: Get thicker skin. The obvious alternative—prosecuting the men who are doing the threatening, the publishing, the bullying—goes unmentioned.

Sero-Sorting Works

Posted by on April 30 at 11:15 AM

News from San Francisco

A homegrown version of HIV prevention known as “serosorting” has increased dramatically among gay men in San Francisco, according to a newly published survey providing a snapshot of the evolving epidemic a quarter-century after it appeared. Serosorting is choosing to have unprotected anal intercourse only with partners of the same HIV status — uninfected men having sex only with HIV-negatives, while infected men seek out only HIV-positive partners.

The practice evolved in the gay community without the kind of institutional support given to programs encouraging condom use and reducing the number of sexual partners…. Just how protective against HIV transmission the practice may be is unknown.

Or is it? At the same time that sero-sorting has been widely adopted in SF, HIV-infection rates are dropping.

While there was a ten percent decrease in total estimated new [HIV] cases, this seemingly modest decrease is actually a much greater prevention success than it appears.

From 2001 to 2006, the estimated number of gay men living in San Francisco increased from 46,800 to 58,343. The increase was likely due to real growth in the gay community and, potentially, in part the result of an underestimation of the population size in 2001.

When the effect of the increase in the population size of MSM is taken into account, new infections have decreased by an estimated 33 percent.

And who deserves credit for this “prevention success”? Average, rank-and-file, commonsensical gay men that adopted the practice without any “institutional support.” Credit shouldn’t go to AIDS prevention orgs—at least not until they adopt sero-sorting.

Via Petrelis.

Blue Angels: “Comedy” Vs. “Tragedy”

Posted by on April 30 at 11:09 AM

This weekend brought the following email to my Stranger inbox:

Sir:

I read it once, twice, three times before I came to the sad realization that you were actually trying to make a joke of the fatal crash of a Blue Angel’s pilot last week. Yeah, yeah, we all know that you’re an edgy, cooler-than-thou and unabashedly pretentious free paper. And I love you guys. Until this! Just because the guy was in the military, he’s suddenly fair game for your stupid “it’s okay to consider this item good news” comment? Grow a pair and try making a crack about all the people killed at Virginia Tech. Nothing’s sadder than a magazine that takes a horrific tragedy and tries to make it into witty fodder for your often unreadable weekly.

Regards, Ann E. Koepke

The “joke” Ms. Koepke was referring to appeared in last week’s Last Days (scroll down to Saturday), and consisted of two short sentences: Today in South Carolina, the audience at an air show experienced what countless air-show attendees only dream about: the fatal crash of a Navy Blue Angel jet, which plunged into a neighborhood of small homes and trailers in Beaufort, killing the pilot. (If your anti–Blue Angels sentiment runs so deep you consider this item good news, you’re forgiven.)

My response:

Dear Ms. Koepke: Thanks for writing. I wrote the item you take exception to.

Are you really trying to equate the victims of the VA Tech shooting—innocent citizens who made the mistake of going to the wrong college—with a stunt pilot who died doing a death-defying stunt?

I don’t consider the dead Blue Angel pilot worthy of potential mockery because he was in the military—I have great respect for the military. But I think it’s in terribly poor taste for military spokesmodels to be indulging in such expensive showboating as the Blue Angels when there’s a fricking war going on. And when this stupid death-defying military showboating results in a death, I can’t get too worked up over it. (I’m just relieved the fatally-crashing Blue Angel pilot didn’t take anyone else with him into the afterlife.)

College kids getting massacred is a tragedy.
U.S. soldiers losing their lives in Iraq is a tragedy.
Innocent citizens being killed by an out-of-control stunt pilot is a tragedy.
But a stunt pilot dying while attempting to execute a stunt is just an unfortunate accident.

Koepke’s reply:

Yes, it is an unfortunate, tragic accident. So why make a joke about it? You say that people in Iraq dying is a tragedy: I agree, and not just for the US soldiers who lose their lives but also for the Iraqi civilians who die in far greater numbers. You are apparently opposed to the war in Iraq, as you are opposed to the stunt flying of the Blue Angels, so why not take pot shots at the helicopter pilots who lose their lives when colliding with each other?

Also, I do not understand why you consider stunt flying to be in poor taste. Come on, you cannot tell me you don’t “ooh and ahh” with the rest of us when you see them fly over Lake Washington.

Thanks very much for the response.

I don’t normally get into extended conversations with letter-writers, but that next-to-last line is irresistible.

Dear Ann: Actually, I do not “ooh and ahh” during the Blue Angels’s annual Seafair sky-rape. I’m one of those citizens who responded to news of the South Carolina crash with the hope that this stupid accident might finally inspire Seafair to ditch the Blue Angels. Maybe once upon a time the sound of fighter jets tearing through the sky registered as a celebration of military skill/American accomplishment, but since 9/11, the horrifying racket of the Blue Angels registers primarily as the sound of capital-T Terror. And once the U.S. got involved in actual wars, the whole notion of watching fighter pilots for fun became even more grotesque. Add in the wasted money, needless ravaging of the environment, and threat to innocent civilians on the ground, and it becomes clear to me that fatally crashing is about the only thing an off-duty fighter jet can do to make me happy.

That’s where we are now. I’ll keep you posted if it gets better…

Today the Stranger Suggests

Posted by on April 30 at 11:00 AM

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Rords of the Froor IV (BLOTTO BREAKDANCING) Getting drunk and breakdancing at the same time? Hell-to-the-yes! The fourth installment of Rords has a pro-am spin—amateurs compete for four slots, then get paired with pros and battle two-on-two, all the while being force-fed shots of booze. Who’ll hold it all down for the $1,001 cash prize? Costumes are required for participants. Oh, yes. You know you want to. (The War Room, 722 E Pike St, 328-7666. Registration and doors at 9 pm, $10, 21+.) KELLY O

Rep. Pedersen. Good Record Tainted by Condo Bill

Posted by on April 30 at 10:56 AM

Note: I hadn’t seen that Eli posted on this earlier. Eli’s coverage of Pedersen, which Pedersen used as a campaign hand out, is here. I’m happy to have voted, along with Dan, Annie, Erica, Sarah Mirk, and David Schmader for Stephanie Pure, who, I believe would have been a solid legislator, particularly on renters’ rights, where Pedersen flopped. Having said that, as my post below shows, Pedersen got due credit from me during the session.

Following up on their cheer leader coverage of the Democratic majority, this morning’s PI gives freshman state Rep. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Capitol Hill) the kind of fawning press you’d expect from his local Capitol Hill Times or the SGN.

Most of the ink in the article— “Rep. Pedersen ‘hits the ground running’: First-year lawmaker gets 6 bills passed”—focuses on Pedersen’s role in getting domestic partnerships OS 1 passed.

I also gave Pedersen props for his role in getting that done. However, if you ask me, the giant Democratic majority in Oly could have passed a full civil unions bill this year like Oregon et al. Furthermore, there were about 400 partnership rights left off the table. And, annoyingly, the bill bars young het couples from getting domestic partnerships.

Having said that, the DP bill is a strong start—I get the incrementalism strategy— and Pedersen was the work horse legislator on the bill. (Peeved e-mail from Sen. Ed Murray landing in my in-box in 1…2…3….)

Additionally, Pedersen brought some helpful legal brain power down to Oly this session. Reports from his colleagues say he was a master at “actually reading the bills” and doing immaculate dentistry to make sure the laws actually lined up legally.

Indeed, Pedersen’s protest vote against an anti-funeral protests bill took courage and legal smarts. I wrote a column early in the session giving Pedersen props for his stand..

Meanwhile, it’s true that he sponsored 6 bills that passed. Some of them good: money for youth housing; providing more health care grants; strengthening no-contact orders; and democratizing corporate boards. And most important for his district—Pedersen was the point person for protecting night life by reforming a costly sprinkler requirement bill for clubs. (He extended the deadline.) Another bill was cool, but mostly symbolic: recognizing Juneteenth as a day of remembrance.

He also had a couple of cool bills die: a civil unions bill and limiting hazardous pesticides in schools.

Here’s one annoying thing though. On one major issue that is a keen concern to his district—renters rights—Pedersen was on the wrong side of the issue. Pedersen did not support giving Seattle the authority to cap condo conversions. He believed that progressive provision would have jeopardized the success of the larger bill which mandated assistance to displaced renters. Pedersen’s timid approach didn’t pay off. The basic bill got killed anyway.

Props to Rep. Pedersen for a diligent and successful session, but he needs to have more awareness of renters. There were 2,352 condo conversions in Seattle in 2006, which is particularly alarming for renters given that 3,900 lower-priced rentals have been either converted to condos or filed for conversion in the last two years. The average price of new condos is $250,000.

The Winnebago Man

Posted by on April 30 at 10:29 AM

It’s Monday morning. Welcome back to work! Look around, it’s not so bad is it? Hey, at least you’re not a Winnenbago salesman….

(Headphones, headphones. Absolutely NSFW.)

Ceci n’est pas une swing set

Posted by on April 30 at 10:28 AM

The first sentence of Wikipedia’s entry on swing set: “A swing is a hanging seat, usually found in a playground for children, a circus for acrobats, or on a porch for relaxing.”

Yesterday a swing set was found in the Olympic Sculpture Park. From an email:

And then, right around 1:00 pm, the most extraordinary thing happened. A team of five walked into the park from the south entrance wearing white coveralls, white gloves, and hard hats. In their hands were an assortment of metal objects and signs. Everything was white. Without a word, they marched single file through the park and defined a work area in the grass. Within minutes they had assembled a perfectly white swing set—well, that was until the title sign went in the ground. The title was in French… The sign read, “This is not a swing set.”

Evidence:

pdlswing1.jpg

pdlswing2.jpg

pdlswing3.jpg

The email continues:

Well it sure looked like a swing set. But then again, they did set up a-frame signs around the piece, that bore an uncanny resemblance to those employed by the park. The signs asked the audience not to touch the “art.” My four year old nephew wanted to swing. It was a very confusing moment. Was this swing set sculpture or did this sculpture just look a heck of a lot like a swing? And who is this PDL anyways?

What happened:

I thought you might enjoy these pictures I took of the event, as the “art/swing set/thing” is no longer there. The park staff came and said that it had to leave because it was a liability. I didn’t understand why it would have been a liability any more that Anthony Caro’s “Riviera,” but it was a beautiful day and my mind quickly returned to leisure.

The email, by the way, came from PDL. (According to that link: “This new artist trio, known as PDL, will spend the next twelve months aggressively creating new works, challenging perceptions of contemporary art, and causing general mayhem in the great Pacific Northwest.”)

It was a beautiful weekend. In France, too.

The Verdict on Pedersen

Posted by on April 30 at 10:11 AM

I may post more about this on a less busy day, but for now I can’t help noting this recent article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that looked at Seattle Rep. Jamie Pedersen’s first term in the state legislature.

I’m not sure I can describe the amount of pushback I got from coworkers here at The Stranger for suggesting, during our endorsement debates last fall, that Pedersen would probably make a good legislator, and would certainly get more done more quickly than Stephanie Pure, who ended up being The Stranger’s pick.

In particular, Josh Feit and Erica Barnett predicted that a Pedersen regime would be disappointing, annoying, and even corrupt. Did this doomsday scenario materialize?

Doesn’t look like it.

The Greatest Fat Joke of All Time

Posted by on April 30 at 9:57 AM

In the comments Leeerker asks

If someone lit Rush Limbaugh on fire, how long would his bloated corpse burn?

William Shakespeare gives us the best estimate, I think. In Comedy of Errors, Dromio of Syracuse has to fight off the advances of Dromio of Ephesus’ BBW girlfriend.

Marry, sir, she’s the kitchen wench and all grease…. if she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world.

I Loved L.A.

Posted by on April 30 at 9:55 AM

CoriLA.jpg

I’d never been to Los Angeles until last week, and when I first found out I would be going down there I didn’t expect to like it much.

Growing up in Seattle, almost everything I’d heard about L.A. was negative—especially during the 90s, when this city was gripped by nativist resentment and something close to cultural hysteria about all the L.A. people who were moving up here.

The complaint, at the time, was that L.A. people didn’t drive like Seattleites, didn’t talk like Seattleites, didn’t expect housing to be as cheap as Seattleites, and didn’t have the crunchy-earthy-earnest Seattle ethos. Back then, people in Seattle talked about L.A. transplants the way some locals now talk about the condo boom—a sign that Seattle is being transformed, and not for the better, into a place the old-timers and professional gripers don’t recognize.

Anyway, I landed in L.A. on Wednesday, ready to hate it, ready to look down, like a good Seattleite, on it’s car culture, its fakery, and its self-satisfied sprawl.

It was hot, the light was squint-making, and all that I’d been warned about was there: the cars crawling along the 405, the people always talking like pitchmen, the endless streets, the unapologetic strip malls, the skyline-obscuring haze.

Who knows exactly why one falls in love with a city, but I have a theory about why I proceeded to fall in love with L.A. last week, against all advice and all the long odds of a Seattle native feeling such affection for such a place.

My theory is that L.A. was a huge relief. Maybe I’m more vulnerable to this than most people, because of the nature of my job, but when I landed in L.A. I was completely full up on the hectoring tone of Seattle’s gripers, finger-waggers, and utopia-demanders. It’s unbelievably grating to live in a city where the dominant civic discourse is one of lament about the absence of the perfect (twined with perpetual disagreement about how to get to the perfect, and achingly slow steps toward that end).

L.A., by contrast, is completely fucked up, completely beyond environmental repair, completely imperfect, and completely designed to give tight-assed Seattle people an aneurysm. Granted, I was only there for three days, but it seemed to me that people in L.A. have a sort of wry satisfaction with their state of affairs. I loved that. I drove 20 minutes to get everywhere. I ate in a strip mall. I had superficial conversations. I drove some more. I stopped worrying about sprawl and sprawled out at the beach. (That’s not me below, by the way.)

CoriBeach.jpg

To ask the hot Seattle question of the moment: Is it sustainable? Would it last, my thrill at life in a city that does everything my home city tells me not to?

I don’t know. Probably not.

But man, it was nice for a while. On my last day I went up to the Getty, wandered its other-worldly gardens…

CoriGetty.jpg

…and looked down on the huge, flat metropolis. The sun was warm, as always. The air was striving for opaque, as always. I couldn’t quite see downtown Los Angeles to the east and, looking west, I couldn’t quite see where the ocean ended and the land began. It was all blurry, messy, resistant to resolution. Everyone I saw seemed happy with this. I didn’t want to leave.

(Photos by Corianton Hale, who was also in L.A. recently. And cross-posted.)

The Sad Note

Posted by on April 30 at 9:49 AM

A fragment of a torn-up letter found in the Denny triangle on Friday afternoon (which I stuck in my coat pocket and forgot about until this morning):

Side One

because I am to close to my
I must keep my focuse and
this storm that I am trapped
out, you can be my umbrella
ght? We got each other and with
er it’s a beautiful thing. So just
hope. I with you and I ain’t going
ght as well as get use to it cause
n you will be able to rest on top of
head on my chest. Any way, I love
share and have I am telling you
and care for you. I found the
I was seeking in you baby. But
other woman come your way that
t, what happens to me? Well, my
this so you can get it soon, but
u I love you always keep it
it’s 100% real.

The writer is a woman. A 100% real woman. Who is afraid of “[an] other woman.” Who thinks about umbrellas and surviving storms and her lover resting his/her/its head on her chest.

Side Two

actually discovered a part of my
I understand my struggle for freedom,
you are my strenght, I thank you and
you’ve been a part of my life and passed
! You have been a wonderful source
ndship, I owe so much to you baby.
for you baby I love you. I want
baby, could you ever feel the way I
finally home with your family for
going for my baby? OK, I do
me tell you this I love you
eep it close to heart OK! Now back
w, I can’t be right there in your
heart in million pieces. Oh well.
days left, it won’t be long to be
lease date is September 29, 2008
ouse, I will be going back to
for the half way house for 6

Uh oh. “[Re]lease date”? Back home with “your family”? And this note torn up in the middle of the road?

Somebody’s not gonna be happy when she gets out of the pen.

Rump Presentation

Posted by on April 30 at 9:37 AM

Scientists are work on a new pill—according to a British tab—one that ups women’s libidos while decreasing their appetites.

A wonder pill has been developed which not only boosts a female’s sex drive, but helps her lose weight at the same time. So far it has been tested only on shrews and monkeys, scientists believe humans could be taking it within a decade.

Female musk shrews and marmosets were injected with the Type 2 Gonadotropin-releasing hormone, and displayed classic mating behaviour towards their male counterparts. In the shrews, this was shown by “rump presentation and tail wagging,” while the monkeys began “tongue flicking and eyebrow raising”, said the professor.

Even More Morning News

Posted by on April 30 at 9:01 AM

US Supreme Court to leave Vermont Civil Union Law alone.

DC Madam set to provide more names.

More Morning News

Posted by on April 30 at 8:58 AM

War Czar: Bush seeks “someone with a lot of stature within the government who can make things happen,” says the man Bush has charged with filling this position. So is this an admission that the president has no stature and can’t get anything done?

Our Man in Baghdad: Iraq’s prime minister is purging Iraq security forces of leaders that have moved against Shiite militias and death squads.

Dim Bulbs: Americans don’t like those energy-saving light bulbs.

Poor Circulation: Daily papers continue to lose readers.

Gun Nuts: Four people dead in Kansas City mall shooting. After the Virginia Tech shooting we were warned that the body count was too high to bring up the subject of gun control. It would seem like we were exploiting a tragedy for political ends. With just four dead in Kansas City… can we talk about gun control now?

Gun Nuts 2: A young woman was the first to die in Virginia, and at first authorities in Virginia thought the shooting was “just a domestic dispute.” You know—no biggie. The children of the woman who was shot to death here Friday night in a “domestic dispute” probably don’t see it that way.

Song of the South: Check out the lyrics for Rush Limbaugh’s “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Today in General American Idol Trash…Are They All on Crack? Yes!

Posted by on April 30 at 8:49 AM

Paula Abdul!
Ladies and gentlemen, behold…Paula is possessed by spirits. Gin maybe.

Where’s Sanjaya?
Seen Sanjaya lately? You are, are, ARE not alone! Millions of sources report absolutely nothing on Sanjaya since his mad round of TV appearances last week, and his official status is MIA. But you heard that, like, his folks were weed farmers once, right?

God, I love him.

Blake Lewis!
Poor Sanjaya. He and his come-hither (on me) smile are now but a hairy masturbation fantasy, so we are forced to turn our attention to the next hottest American Idol ‘mo from Seattle-ish: The very blonde and beat-boxy Blake Lewis, who seems to wax more compulsively fuckable by the nanosecond. Bold Blake risked breaking A.I. curfew to follow Chris Richardson’s ever-tappable tail to a Hollywood club over the weekend, where they looked very pretty and danced with no women whatsoever. Glean from this information what you will.

Fags.

Jessica…Who?

Elsewhile, from the misty land of yesterday’s almost-Idols…Jessica Sierra. No bells? Of course not. Let me refresh you: Former top ten finalist, Season Four, also quite blonde, you’ve never heard of her, got totally arrested yesterday morning for being a coked-up-freak and smashing some poor guy’s face up with a big thick scary drinking glass in a moment of very post-Idol pique. Remember?

Oh, forget it.

Angelina Jolie!
And lastly, in completely other stuff: Exhausted by the complicated and emotional adoption process, Angelina Jolie used the supernatural strength of her amazing lips to bypass it entirely and draw all of the world’s remaining orphans directly to her with one tremendous sucking inhalation…

ga_dish_jolie2240x232.jpg

That is all.

The Morning News

Posted by on April 30 at 8:38 AM

War on Terror: Five British men found guilty of “conspiracy to use fertilizer bombs to blow up targets.”

The Surge: More than 100 Americans were killed in Iraq in April.

Selling Books: Former CIA director George Tenet is lambasting the Bush administration over pre-war intelligence.

Patent Disputes: The Supreme Court sides with Microsoft, tells AT&T to suck it.

Under Fire: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused of “severe failure” during last summer’s conflict with Lebanon.

Parenting: Tooth decay on the rise in baby teeth. Juice, fruit snacks to blame.

Poisoned Pets: Tainted feed all the rage in China.

Tolls: Ambulances and police cars may have to pay up to cross the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Burning Bridges: If it can happen in San Francisco, it can happen here.

Virtual Dystopia

Posted by on April 30 at 8:23 AM

According to the Washington Post, “Sexual Threats Stifle Some Female Bloggers”. Who’da thunk it?