Is this why the sky is glowing yellow in Lower Queen Anne?

UPDATE: Seattle Sightings has some amazing video, which they’ve tossed up on YouTube…

Damn, it’s the video I wanted to make.

How long will these jokes keep coming? Well, Larry Craig is going to be in the U.S. Senate until January of 2009…

Now I know what my dearly departed appendix was perhaps good for. May I never live in an isolated, cholera-prone community.

The dailies have different takes on a shooting that took place near EMP last night.

From the PI:

Four men were shot, including the bouncer at Level 5 nightclub on Fifth Avenue, near the Seattle Center, just before midnight Friday.

After an argument started inside the club, one of the men went out to his car, pulled a handgun from the trunk, and began firing in the parking lot at the other men as they left the club, according to Seattle Police Department reports.

From the Times:

Three men in their 20s were shot late Friday night outside of a club near the Experience Music Project at Seattle Center.

The shooting took place shortly before midnight in the parking lot of the Level 5 nightclub, although Seattle police spokeswoman Renee Witt said investigators are not connecting the shooting to the club, in the 300 block of Fifth Avenue North.

I blame EMP.

From the front page of today’s NYT:

Julia Kim rapped her spiked Gucci heels along the floor of a Midtown furniture showroom earlier this year as she approached a $30,000 custom wraparound couch that will be the centerpiece of the Manhattan co-op apartment she plans to share with her fiancé, Stephen Rushmore.

With advice from Mr. Rushmore and their decorator, John Barman, Ms. Kim deliberated for more than half an hour over details like the density of the cushions, the number of pillows and the height of the seating.

This purchase was just one of many steps in the journey that began more than a year ago when Mr. Rushmore, a consultant, and Ms. Kim, a former banker who left her job to concentrate full time on renovating the new apartment, decided to buy a duplex just off Park Avenue for $6 million.

Sort of makes all those folks buying up $500,000 condos on Capitol Hill seem kinda benign, huh?

Music

Built to Spill at Showbox

• See what else is happening in Music on Saturday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

His name is Michael Dory and he’s filling New York City with the sounds of digital crickets.

Graffiti is… nearly always visual in nature, making this experience one-dimensional. Furthermore, rarely does the work have a brain of its own, and is usually incapable of reacting to anybody observing it.

The crickets are…

… small devices that will be aware of passers-by as well as other units of their kind. Each unit consists of a sound generator, amp, speaker and sensory system, and is housed in camouflage appropriate to the streets of the city — soda cans, cigarette packs, and the like.

When approached, the crickets fall silent (as would crickets and cicadas in nature). Each are sensitive to what happens to the others, and the end result will be waves of songs, changing and adapting to their surroundings.

This idea sounds great, for now. But imagine what it’ll be like once the taggers start their turf wars…

I spent some time at the Transportation Choices Coalition’s Friday Forum on the roads and transit package this afternoon at the downtown YMCA. Although I’m not a fan of the proposal (too many roads, and the transit will take 50 years to build finance), I wanted to hear what the pro side had to say about the roads component of the package, which includes 152 new miles of general-purpose highway miles (and 30 miles of HOV lanes). Here are some of the questions people asked, the roads and transit supporters’ answers, and my analysis.

How can environmentalists support a package that includes so many new miles of road?

Bill LaBorde, Environment Washington: “Nothing is set in stone in this package except the taxes. Our attitudes about climate change are going to change on this. State elected officials are going to change. There’s going to be cost overruns associated with this package.”

Megan Blanck-Weiss from Futurewise: “[The package] invests in failing infrastructure and focuses on safety and maintenance.”

Of course it’s possible that the various components of the package will change, but it is this package we’re voting on. And this package has accountability measures built in to guarantee that every road in it gets built. Nobody on the pro side is going around saying that Sound Transit will go over budget and not actually go to Redmond, so why are they banking on the eventual failure of the roads half of the package? As for the “safety and maintenance” claims: Of all the safety projects in the package, only one—the South Park Bridge—is fully funded through roads and transit. The rest will have to get the remainder of their funding elsewhere.

What parts of the package do you not support, and why?

Rob Johnson, Transportation Choices Coalition: “Certainly there are investments we are concerned about on I-405… [SR-] 167… [and] US-2 –- that does include some safety money but other money, that’s not about safety. And we’re concerned about making sure the $1.1 billion for the [SR-] 520 bridge gets spent in a way that’s environmentally friendly and doesn’t harm wetlands. We feel like 85 percent of the ballot measure is good.”

Jessyn Farrell, Transportation Choices Coalition: “There’s $2 billion for the north end of 405 in there, so in a lot of ways we lost that fight. … The radical opportunity here is to say, ‘fine, we’re not going to fight anymore, because we fought and we lost.’ The ‘just say no’ philosophy, frankly, didn’t work …One of the things that made it possible for us to say, OK, we’re going to swallow hard and accept [405 funding] is that… I don’t think it’ll ever open as general purpose lanes.”

The Sierra Club actually puts the percentage of “bad” projects in the package much higher—about 75 percent of the roads portion of the package, compared to TCC estimates of 37 percent. And again, there are accountability measures that stipulate what must be built, and what the roads and transit package calls for is two new general-purpose lanes in each direction for 405. Conceivably, that could change, but it’s still this package Farrell and others support—and this package includes $2 billion to expand I-405.

You talk a lot about how this is the starting point and we’ll get rid of the roads. Aren’t there probably people sitting in another room across town right now saying exactly the opposite – this is the starting point and we’ll get rid of transit?

LaBorde: “That’s absolutely happening, but they are not going to win… [Light] rail will open. People are going to like it. And on the Eastside, they already want it in their communities. [The opposition is] really driven by a bunch of crotchety antisocial white men and most people want it.”

That, of course, may be wishful thinking—as one Eastside resident who attended the forum pointed out. But then again, he was a crotchety old white man—and a Sierra Club member.

The Sound Transit plan includes 12,000 new parking stalls. Is that a good use of taxpayer dollars?

Blanck-Weiss: “Parking at a transit station is better than driving the whole way in.”

Gordon Black, Bicycle Alliance of Washington: “Personally, I’m disturbed by the number of large parking structures Sound Transit is planning. It’s incumbent on all of us to change the mindset of sound Transit.”

It may be true that it’s better to drive and take transit into town and get on a bus—but does that mitigate the fact that building a massive parking garage at a transit hub is a lousy land use decision?

What does the polling say? Will it pass?

Johnson: “The other parts of the region support an integrated approach. On a region-wide ballot measure, it’s more likely for both to pass together than either alone.”

Right now, the whole measure is polling at around 54 percent, a number that appears to be dropping, not rising.

Why can’t it just come back next year, given that transit is popular?

LaBorde: “Everyone assumes it would bad to have this on the ballot next year.
There’ll be a real temptation to scale back the transit side of the package.”

Farrell: “Sound Transit, maybe more than any other time besides 2000-2001, doesn’t have friends in the legislature. … The governor doesn’t want to run on a tax measure, [House Speaker] Frank Chopp doesn’t want a bunch of Democrats running on a tax measure, and there are a lot of legislators who just don’t like Sound Transit.”

Prognostications about the future are just that—predictions that may or may not come true. It’s interesting to me that TCC and other environmental groups that support roads and transit assume nothing is set in stone about the roads side of the package (“Sure, we’re voting for roads, but only because we’ll take them out later!”) but are absolutely 100% rock-solid certain that Sound Transit will never be back on the ballot if this fails. Seems like serious cognitive dissonance to me.

Dead.

A federal prosecutor who was arrested in an Internet sex sting after he allegedly traveled to Michigan from Florida to have sex with a 5-year-old girl hanged himself in a Michigan federal prison Friday morning, Detroit television station WDIV-TV reported.

John D.R. Atchison, 53, was put on suicide watch after he used a bed sheet in an attempted suicide in September.

Atchison, “a respected member of the community,” was looking at three million or so years in prison. Anyone who doesn’t feel absolutely awful for his wife and three children has no heart.

HOW WAS IT? is back, and if you’re one of the seemingly hundreds of people I harassed when THESE guys played a concert at the Puyallup Fair, here’s the video:

The band, though they’re a bit older and wider, I mean WISER, sounded amazing. It was a perfect and excellent show. My favorite part of the night, however, was when I tried to convince a lady from the Seattle Chapter of the Red Hat Society that Devo (and men in general) should be allowed to join their 600,000 members-strong cult. I mean CLUB.

She didn’t think I was very funny.

Fnarf writes:

Have you seen this? Larry Craig’s recipe submitted to “Congress Cooks!” is a hot dog jammed into a cored-out potato and baked. Yes, really.

It’s on Wonkette, too. Here’s a picture of the tasty food item.

Oh man.

First, a bit of news. Paramount Vantage (purveyor of such global consciousness-raising fare as Babel and A Mighty Heart) has gotten into a sticky spot with director Marc Forster’s adaptation of the Afghanistan-set novel The Kite Runner. A child rape scene is stirring up so much advance hysteria in the country that the distributor is considering spiriting the child stars to the United Arab Emirates. More at the New York Times.

Opening this week:

A ton of new movies and festivals are packing this weekend, but the real prize lands this Wednesday. My review of Brand Upon the Brain, part of Northwest Film Forum’s curiously strong Local Sightings lineup (no longer sponsored by Altoids, regrettably), kicks off On Screen this week. Get your tickets for the live show (including live narration, an orchestra, on-stage foley magic, and a “castrato”) here.

Also in the On Screen lineup: Ang Lee’s followup to Brokeback Mountain, the erotic spy thriller Lust, Caution. Don’t believe other critics. It isn’t dull or boring in the least, though I found other flaws.

I also got the chance to talk to Lee on Monday—you can read our exchange here. He’s a sweetheart, and his propensity to brag about Brokeback Mountain made me love him even more. (I had to cut the last part of the interview, when he launched into an assessment of every award he’d won, concluding that the Golden Lion for Brokeback Mountain was the only award that didn’t leave him filled with mixed feelings.)

The remaining reviews in On Screen: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (includes “sustained passages of eerie, Malickian beauty [an early sequence involving a train robbery feels like one of the reasons that film was invented], mixed with increasing stretches of self-conscious artiness,” says Andrew Wright), Sweet Smell of Success (“The struggle between the old and the new, the sleek modernism of the interiors and exteriors, the experimental cinematography—all of this places Success in the higher regions of post-WWII American cinema,” concludes Charles Mudede), Michael Clayton (“It isn’t a movie that the world will remember, nor one that will prove that [director Tony] Gilroy is much more than a Hollywood screenwriter,” Charles claims), Ira & Abby (“funnier and smarter” than Dharma & Greg, insists Megan Seling), Great World of Sound (“an unbearably plodding odd-couple comedy” in the guise of a satire of the record industry, says Eric Grandy), Delirious (Sean Nelson calls it “a warm, smart, affecting movie” about the vampire world of paparazzi), and the Jew-meets-Muslim romantic comedy David & Layla (“just another movie,” says Christopher Frizzelle).

And in Film Shorts this week, check out the “magnificent” 5 Centimeters Per Second at Grand Illusion, the “greatest bad sci-fi disco musical biblical parable ever told” (The Apple) at Central Cinema, the “moldily Freudian” but intermittently enjoyable tween fantasy The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, a buttload of Local Sightings screenings, a smattering of Independent South Asian Film Festival screenings, and tons more. (We’re sponsoring Spice World this weekend.) Oh, and there’s that little sold out thing called HUMP! 3. Refer to our exhaustive Movie Times search at Get Out for all your scheduling needs.

I just did a long interview with Ron Sims about the big question I’ve posted here on Slog a couple of times now: Is he willing to lead the fight and come back next year with a revised light rail package?

The answer was an unequivocal yes. “I’m into that. I’m back. I’m fully engaged. No question,” he said. “I don’t believe in letting waters stagnate. I want to come back with a package that reduces our impact on global warming that is less expensive. Yes. Light rail is a big part of that package. I will spend a lot of time and political capital on that.”

I’ll write a much longer post on my full interview with Sims on Monday, but here’s one tidbit.

Sims said Seattle was playing into George Bush’s hands. “We’ve been yelling that George Bush won’t accept reality. The ice cap is melting. Why doesn’t he see it? Species are dying. Why doesn’t he see it. We go on and on, and now we want to build this big emitter package. Bush has relied on the fact that people don’t want to do anything. Well I guess he’s right.”

He says he got a note from the elusive Joel Horn! (More on that on Monday.)

Also, Sims signed off the phone call this way: “Peace.”

This Week’s Setlist: Featuring a live performance by Devoirs!

Dear KISS 106.1: Eric Grandy unrequests Nelly.

Tonight in Music: The Weakerthans. And a lot of bands with names that start with B.

So You Don’t Have To: Erica C. Barnett watches the new Britney video.

Hump 3: The porn-o-rific after-party!

Ja, Ja!: Brent Amaker & the Rodeo tonight at the Tractor.

The Best Song Ever (This Week): Dragonforce’s “My Spirit Will Go On.”

Perfect From… Well, Always: Jeff Kirby’s Built to Spill review.

Jacob Aranza: Terry Miller tells us about the crazy man behind Backwards Masking Unmasked.

Where Is He Now?: Terry Miller tells us where Jacob Aranza is.

Overheard on the Bus: The Red Hot Chili Peppers ruin everything.

Finally: A tribute record that doesn’t make Sam Machkovech want to barf.

Music Will Be Just Like Punditry: Josh Feit weighs in on yesterday’s RIAA verdict.

Control: Eric Grandy gets stoked for the new Ian Curtis biopic.

I Don’t Like the Blakes: And here’s why.

The RIAA Wins: Grand total: $222,000.

Is it ever too cold for ice cream? The local ice-cream-makers known as Epicurean Empire say nay. They may be found exclusively at the Ballard Sunday Farmers Market.

People have been crying out for pumpkin ice cream, and we’ve made it for the people. We got some nice pumpkins at the market, roasted them, put them in our awesome brown sugar batter with toasted Holmquist hazelnuts, and added a pinch of true cinnamon. Fall’s here. And it’s pretty delicious.

This week’s flavors:

Ice Creams:
• Roast Pumpkin with Hazelnuts
• Brown Sugar Peach
• Brown Sugar
• Cacao Nib with Choco Swirl

Sorbets:
• Carrot Habanero
• Concord Grape
• Peach

Washington and Oregon are the largest producers of hazelnuts (also known as filberts) in North America. Click here for nuttrends, the official publication of The Hazelnut Council. It’s the summer issue. nuttrends: Fall’s here—Epicurean Empire says so.

It accompanies my new favorite story about Rudy Giuliani.

I know Giuliani’s radio days are actually a somewhat old story, what with his ferret tirade now having been thoroughly explored and all, but this story goes deeper than the ferret tirade and may, I think, be the definitive look at Giuliani’s amazingly entertaining weekly call-in show on WABC in NY.

Plus, check out that picture. Rules & Regs prohibit me from copying and pasting the image, but go ahead, click through. It’s great.

I spent a while last night listening to the archival clips of Giuliani on WABC. He holds forth on such topics as dog poop, toy guns that look like machine guns, and the need for various New Yorkers to consider therapy immediately. It was awesome. It made me miss that city.

Yesterday I posted the new Clinton ad, and today an Obama fan asks if I’m going to be fair and post Obama’s new ad. Certainly.

While Clinton’s new ad flashes a black-and-white picture of her at Ground Zero, Obama’s new ad flashes a black-and-white picture of him standing in front of the White House, looking humble. Anyone want to parse the subliminal message of Obama’s black-and-white visual vs. the subliminal message of Clinton’s black-and-white visual?

…the public relations firm run by Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist.

how much piss can one consume without getting sick? and does it make a difference if the piss is yours or someone elses?

sincerely,

curious

A sighting. A very fancy fag. An email. These are the elements which confront us today as one certain Miss Mary wonders, and leads us to wonder, whether it was, or was not. (But she’s pretty sure it probably was.) Observe:

Dear Adrian, I swear I saw Carson from Queer Eye enjoying coffee with a good-looking young man at Presse this morning. I did a triple-take, and it wasn’t just a passing similarity. If it wasn’t Carson, then it’s his gay Seattle doppelganger. Just thought I’d share! —Mary

Dear Mary,
Don’t swear. It’s unattractive in a woman. —Adrian

Then: Britney Spears and Michael Jackson: two twirley white women with a penchant for endangering children? Yes. I bring this up for no particular reason, except perhaps to wonder why, precisely, Britney has had her children ripped screaming from her allegedly unfit arms, while Michael Jackson was allowed to abscond elsewhere with his own with comparatively little fuss, and is dangling them from exotic balconies around the world and presumably not molesting them as we speak. And I’m fairly certain that Michael Jackson has never had a valid driver’s license in any state at all, ever, and as far as I am aware, Britney has never seduced a twelve-year-old. It hardly seems quite fair then, does it? All of this child-taking-away? Of course it doesn’t. Furthermore, as I understand the situation, PETA never tried to strong-arm Michael Jackson into relinquishing a single beast from his huge, infamous and totally insane menagerie of circus creatures—-not even that damn monkey—not ever, not once, no matter what the hell he did to his own or somebody else’s children. Not so much luck for poor Britney. Even her poodles are in peril!

A spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says the group’s president has written an open letter to Kevin Federline encouraging him to pursue custody of Spears’ animals. “PETA fears that the dogs may be in danger.” He says PETA is particularly concerned about the welfare of her Yorkshire terrier puppy London, which she takes to nightclubs and shopping malls.

What else should be taken from Britney immediately: Sharp objects, household cleaners, matches, prescription drugs and anything that can be tied into a noose.

And did I forget to mention that Nicholas Cage woke earlier this week to find a totally naked and rather nude man wandering around his home? Lucky son of a bitch.

That is all.

Like, uh, literally.

When the Larry Craig scandal first unfolded, Mike Jones told me that Sen. Larry Craig had been an escorting client of his. I asked Mike if he could prove his claim, but he said that while he didn’t have voice mail messages to backup his claim, as he did with Ted Haggard, he would nevertheless come forward IF Craig did not follow through on his resignation.

Today Jones told a Las Vegas radio station, “Larry Craig visited me.” Like Haggard did, in the beginning, a spokesman for Larry Craig told the radio station that Jones’ allegations are “completely false.”

JoeMyGod says the proof isn’t conclusive—so it looks like Craig finally has a scandal on his hands that can be described as a “he said, he said”. But Mike Jones has a credible track record, says JoeMyGod, “I believe him.”

Beginning tomorrow, Smith will be serving brunch on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. From the menu (the chef is from Licorous):

• Baked eggs with Dijon cream, gruyère, herbed baguette, $8
• Braised pork belly with sunny-side up egg, $9
• Cinnamon-sugar baguette with apples and gruyère, broiled, $6
• The elusive Scotch egg, $5 (surely better than the one at the Athenian)

Also now on the dinner menu: chicken pot pie and roasted marrow.

Someone recently likened the decor at Smith to the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. True. Also, Smith is the seventh business in its accursed location. Creepy! One hopes for a Halloween party.

…corporate jets, red Mercedes convertibles, stables of horses, Lexus SUVs, illegal involvement in political campaigns. It looks like scandal is about to engulf Oral Roberts University:

Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”

A bit more on those underage males and the text message they received:

[Among the alleged instances of misconduct:]

—A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

—Mrs. Roberts frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to “underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.”

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Slog tipper Paul writes:

Today at 10:30 am I was driving over the I-5 bridge and I saw a duck stopped in Lake Union with a police boat next to it with its lights flashing as if it had just pulled over the duck.

I thought maybe given your recent duck article, you’d be interested in this.

Paul

We can all agree that the song that accompanies this famous scene in Lady and the Tramp…

…is simply wonderful.

To get to the core of the song’s magic we must separate into it two parts: the part that is performed by the Italian chef; and the part that is performed by the professional singers.

Oh this is the night
it’s a beautiful night
and we call it bella notte
look at the skies
they have stars in their eyes
on this lovely bella notte
side by side with your loved one
you will find the enchantment here
the night will weave its magic spell
when the one you love is near, oh
this is the night
and the heavens all rise
on this lovely bella notte

The first part of “Belle Notte” is utterly ridiculous. The lyrics are sung in a fake, vulgar, guttural, throat-thick, tongue-gross Italian accent. The chef who sings to the romantic dogs has clearly never been to Italy; and the food he serves is only fit for dogs. What else can we do but laugh when the chef’s big guts push out: “the night will weave its magic spell…” And the meaninglessness of the line, “look at the skies/they have stars in their eyes,” is terribly exposed by the ridiculousness of the chef’s over-swollen “OOOOO” and over-round “ARRRRRSSSS.”

But once he is done, once the mad man has returned to his malodorous restaurant, the second part of “Belle Notte” is swiftly picked up by a swoon of professional singers, and in a matter of moments we are high in the music’s clouds, flying through melodious moonlight. The soft harmonies rise; the sweet voices sing: “side by side with your loved one/you will find the enchantment here.”

From the center of this strange transition—from the gutter to the stars, from the belly to the heart, from the vulgar to the heavenly, from laughter to love, from the body to the spirit—radiates the madness/magic of “Belle Notte.”

The Seattle housing market is tough right now. Across the region, rents have spiked nearly 10 percent, so If your apartment hasn’t gone condo, you’ve probably been priced out.

If you’re one of those folks who’s unable to spend 50+ percent of their paycheck on rent, I’d love to hear from you.

jonah@thestranger.com

Blogger’s Privilege - Senate committee approves law that could extend confidential source protection to bloggers.

The British are Coming - For your encryption keys. New law makes it a crime to refuse to give up encryption keys to authorities. Like all such laws, it’s ridiculously broad and easily circumventable.

Leopard is Coming - Apple’s once-delayed, stupid-new-dock-having OS X 10.5 is due this month. It will feature… oh, who cares.

No - I still haven’t bought Halo 3.

No - They still haven’t release Pilot Wings on the Wii Virtual Console.

License to Jam - Tired of getting run over on your bike by people yakking on their goddamned cell phones? Filled with Super Seattle Righteous Rage? For only $950, you can get this cell phone jammer disguised, for some reason, as a pack of cigarettes. The product description is worth quoting:

Open this cigarette box and push the black button seen in the picture and the jammer jams all cell phones signal within range of 60 feet (no one can make or receive any phone calls within range of 60 ft. from the jammer).

In other words, no one can use a cell phone in range of 60 feet from the jammer.

Is there anything better than using the phrase, “In other words” and then using the same words? I submit that there is not.

Not Safe - Most U.S. Americans think their computers are safe, they’re not.

Why Knot - Science gets to the bottom of how cords and cables manage to tie themselves in knots, but offers no particularly useful advice on how to stop it from happening. Me, I coat all my cables and headphone cords with pork fat.

Matt Dillon is so high:

Time for a caffeine nap.

Seattle amateur-and-locally-produced porn festival is officially the hottest ticket in town. All eight HUMP! screenings at On the Boards are sold out, so if you’re not one of the 2400 ticket holders, well, you’re shit out of luck, right?

Not necessarily. Rush seats will be available before each screening, and each year we manage to squeeze a few people in. The best bet for rush tickets are the not-quite-prime-time screenings. There probably won’t be many (or any) rush tickets for tonight’s or Saturday’s 8 PM screenings, but there should be some for tonight’s 6 PM screening or tomorrow’s noon, 2, and 4 PM screenings.

There’s no opening night party for HUMP! but there are plenty of bars in the area. And, hey, you’re going to need a drink and some time to process Lauren Likes Candy, Queer Safari, AFP, Thank God the Audio Works, and the other great films submitted for this year’s HUMP! May I suggest a drink at Solo Bar after your screening? It’s is just 4 short blocks from On the Boards and tonight they’re featuring DJs spinning sleazy disco—a perfect match for HUMP!

Here’s the Flickr Photo of the Week, pulled from The Stranger’s neat new reader-powered Flickr account.

High fives to ERIK98122!

Thanks to everyone’s who’s contributed (74 members!) and here’s HOW TO JOIN. I’ve also just been told that we’re going to consider photos from this pool to appear on Stranger covers. Get in there!

Britney Spears: Skipping her drug tests and losing her children.

Samuel Caldwell: 70 years since he became the first American busted for pot.

Hawaiian Supreme: Not a pizza. Court rejects “religious marijuana” defense.

What Are the Police Talking Points on Washington’s Marijuana Busts? Seattle Weekly has the scoop.

Bucking: Denver pot group wants Ricky Williams to join the Broncos because he smokes pot, or something.

Busting: NYPD arresting African Americans for pot at eight times the rate of whites.

Lusting: UK organization launches meth-counseling campaign called “Drugfucked.”

Lasting: Vancouver safe-injection facility not dead yet.

Take It with a Gram of Salt: Drug Czar says cocaine is now less available in 37 U.S. cities. Seattle must not be one of those cities.

From AP:

“This government does not torture people,” the president said.

He’s technically right, I guess. Governments don’t torture people. People torture people—on the orders of this or that government, but still.

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In this week’s Dear Science podcast.

Those World Cyber Games I wrote about yesterday? They didn’t get off to a great start:

This was the scene at the 5:45 p.m. opening ceremony, and though the chairs in the back of the room were full of international gaming competitors, the general seating looked like the above photo. Barren. That’s how the Qwest Field Event Center felt through much of Thursday (an odd day to invite the public out, certainly). People didn’t show up, and even if they did, they would’ve gotten a very mixed message as to what the hell this gaming competition was all about.

Strangely, the competition part wasn’t the priority, as most entrants were pushed into a thin, second-floor stretch of PCs with little room for the public to come up and watch. The first floor, meanwhile, was dominated by Microsoft’s gaming PR blitz, as dozens of Xbox 360 and computer kiosks lined the general floor.

In addition, a few giant projector screens were posted on the first floor above beanbag chairs, where the WCG’s live Internet feed of the competition was beamed for all to watch. This is the equivalent of watching a Mariners game on a concession stand TV at Safeco Field.

I would’ve loved to hear a showgoer’s take on the show in my few hours at Qwest Field, but I didn’t run into any on Thursday. Every person I saw had a badge labeled competitor, press or sponsor. So I made up for it by chatting with Valve Software’s Eric Twelker, who was there to show off the company’s new “Left 4 Dead” zombie-killing game (not bad, by the way).

“I know that previous WCGs worked out in places like Europe, where the diehard fans could take a train and be in, say, Italy in two hours,” Twelker said, implying the better reputation of professional gaming throughout Europe. “I don’t think people are jetting here from Los Angeles or New York the same way.”

This weekend could be better as word spreads about easy access to free online ticket vouchers and the WCG begins its more heated competitions (Thursday and Friday lack the big elimination/championship rounds). Hopefully by then, the event will have worked out its absolutely awful kinks. The entry gate situation was a disaster, as a poor, 70-year-old man stood at the main gate all by himself, shaking his head in bewilderment for a good four minutes when I asked him where I could pick up a pass. Some of the gaming kiosks were busted, particularly the Rock Band station, whose drum kit was broken only three hours into the event. And the opening ceremony was a joke, kicked off by a B-Boy dance/beatbox routine that seemed straight out of Saved By The Bell.

But the prognosis is bleak. The WCG has blown its chance at spotlighting most of its pro gamers by shuffling them into a small, upstairs wing, which means even if people show up, they’ll just think the event is a junior arcade. They won’t see the moments I saw, like a gang of Singaporean players, all in matching jackets, staring down and studying the Swedish team during a PC game practice session. Shit’s surprisingly intense…if you know where to look.

One of the men arrested for soliciting gay sex in Johnson City, Tennessee—one of the men whose name, photo, and address was publicized by Johnson City Press—has already committed suicide.

Andrew Sullivan isn’t the only one worried about what another Clinton presidency is going to mean for the United States, but he sums it up best…

The idea of America being run by two families for two decades is anathema to [conservatives like Peggy Noonan], as it is to many liberals. There is something inherently corrupting about it—not just corrupting of them, but corrupting of us. The experience of such power—presiding over the most powerful nation in modern history—cannot but corrupt; and our decision to delegate real decisions to various royal families while boning up on the latest news from Britney Spears is a sign of real decadence.

Eh, I’m not so worried about Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton. As I told Eli last week as he was getting ready to go hear a certain former governor of Florida speak in Bellevue, I’ve moved on. Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton doesn’t concern me so much anymore. It’s the prospect of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton/Bush that’s freaking me out.

Let’s say Hillary Clinton wins in ‘08. What do you think the odds are that Jeb Bush, the Bush son that was supposed to be president, will challenge her in ‘12? High, I’d say. The famously vindictive and petty Bush clan won’t be able to resist a Bush v. Clinton rematch. Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in 1992, denying the “victor” of the Gulf War a second term. And, boy, was the Bush family bitter about that. Bill and George H.W. seem to have buried the hatchet, there’s bound to be some lingering desire on the part of the Bush siblings to avenge their father’s defeat. And what better way to do that than for Jeb Bush to jump in the race and deny Hillary Clinton a second term?

If Jeb wins in 2012, he’ll be up for reelection in 2016—the year after Chelsea Clinton turns 35, the constitutionally required minimum age for a person to serve as president.

I have to move because they raised my rent in my building and it sucks. But you know what sucks even more? Housing prices have gotten so high I can’t live in dense Central Seattle. And I have a good job, making a reasonable amount of money. I want to live in an area where I don’t need to commute—it’s impossible. Every single studio, one, and two bedroom apartment I’ve seen listed in Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the Central District would cost more than 1/2 of my monthly wages to live in.

I’m not looking forward to being homeless, so I guess I’m going to have to look forward to being poor. I thought I finished doing that when I got a full-time job. Fuck the Seattle housing market.

That last post was so gay. Here’s something for the straight guys.

NSFW.

(Thanks, Fnarf.)

This was buried in the comments thread to a Larry Craig post yesterday. “These guys” refers to 40 men between the ages of 26 and 85 who were arrested for indecent behavior in a two-week-long sting on city parks in Tennessee.

That commenter wrote in this morning to say:

Not only is it fucking scary as hell that the newspaper serving the “Deliverance” area of Tennessee would print all these gory details, but take a look at the fucking photo spread!

I followed the link and—oh my god—the newspaper has published pictures of all the men who were arrested in the sting. The pictures are behind a link deceptively titled “Click Here for a Special Photo Gallery.” It should be titled “Click Here for a Photo Gallery of All the Locals You Should Impale with Burning Stakes.” I mean, sure, whatever, Johnson City, Tennessee—spend all your money arresting guys having sex in bushes because the chances of a family walking by and being horrified are, you know, pretty good, and that ain’t cool.

Publishing the names and ages of all the guys who’ve been arrested in the sting seems a little over-the-top, Johnson City Press, but, yeah, it’s public information so anyone who really wanted it could easily find it anyway, etc. But to then publish a “special photo gallery” of all these guys, along with captions with their first and last names? Is there any point in that? Other than trying to ruin these people?

According to the article, the worst of it was happened off the paved trail—but whatever, I think we can all agree it should be illegal to fuck anywhere families out for their Sunday afternoon after-church stroll might stumble across you. But the thing is, having sex illegally is what a lot of guys of a certain age have been forced to do for most of their lives. Lawrence v. Texas wasn’t that long ago. You consider the kinds of lives these guys have had to lead, and how legally sanctioned oppression might make a person feel about the law in general, and the fact they live in the middle of nowhere, and then you look at their mugs in the “special photo gallery,” and then you scroll up to the top of the page and you see Johnson City Press’s tagline, in big letters underneath the name of the paper: “Empowering People Through the Press.”

I dunno. It seems cruel and unnecessary and weird. (Though it is pretty great that one of them is a pastor and another of them is a teacher.)

From the commenter who found this link:

Pity that some of these men will probably end up dead (self inflicted or mob inflicted) soon, as a result of the article.

“I like polar bears as much as anyone, but…”

No, Chris Vance (for Crosscut). No, you don’t.

And now, I’m off to hear some enviros (Transportation Choices, Washington Conservation Voters) present their case for passing a massive new freeway package. Want to join me? It’s at the downtown YMCA, 909 4th Ave., from noon to 1:30 p.m.

Dance Night

Sing Sing with Sinden at War Room

• See what else is happening in Music on Friday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

Have you heard of ParentsBehavingBadly.com? I hadn’t—until Slog tipper Tiffany sent me a link to this tragic and depressing item:

Parents kick out 14-year-old girl for being bisexual. Girl shoots herself in the head.

ParentsBehavingBadly.com is basically an blog dedicated to the stuff I regularly file under “Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father”—but free of my gay agenda! It’s just one depressing story after another. A mother splashes her three daughters with gasoline and sets them on fire. A dad leaves two year-old in a locked car in the sun in 95 degree heat in the parking lot of Nevada brothel. A prosti-mom snorting coke off her infant son while turning a trick.

Sensitive folks depressed by my very occasional “Every Child…” posts should not, under any circumstances, click this link.

Hopefully, yesterday’s music downloading verdict will spark the long-overdue conversation that’s less about reactionary posturing and the digging in of ideological heels (which is definitely happening) —and more about defining the music marketplace of the future in a way that acknowledges the facts on the ground. (Those facts are these: CD sales are tanking; fans are growing up to expect music on-line; and musicians are putting it there.)

Over at Technology Liberation Front they’re saying this:

But the far more important factor is the sheer number of people who want to be rock stars. Now that the bottleneck of CD production and distribution has been removed, any musician can reach an infinite number of fans at zero cost. As a result, more and more musicians will find it in their self-interest to voluntarily give music away for free as a means of building up their fan base. Over time, consumers will get used to music being free, and at some point music will be just like news and punditry are today: the vast majority will be free and ad-supported, with a small minority continuing to try to charge money.

cross posted on Line Out.

A woman that can’t care for her four children—she’s got a drug problem, the father is not on the scene—begged her uncle to take in her children. He’s already raising two children but he did the right thing and took in his niece’s four children—kids that range in age from 10 months to 11 years old. Enter the state of Utah. The man that took in his niece’s four kids is gay and lives with a male partner. The state of Utah wants to remove the four children from the home of Michael Gregg Valdez—he’s the uncle—and Michael Oberg and put them in foster care.

To the state, it’s a simple matter of the law, which says that to adopt or be a foster parent, you must be legally married or single and not cohabitating. Officials asked for clarification of a judge’s directive that Valdez have custody of the children, requesting that the court take custody or grant custody to the state’s Division of Child and Family Services….

The two men, both natives of Utah County, said they would love to get married, but voters passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

The men have been together for five years, both are natives of Utah, both are employed, and neither has a criminal history. The state will have to split the four siblings up if it succeeds in removing from their uncles’ home; it’s almost impossible to find a foster home that will take four children. A brave judge in Utah has so far bucked the state:

Officials [requested] that the court take custody or grant custody to the state’s Division of Child and Family Services. On Friday, the courts took custody, then turned around and granted Valez temporary custody of the children.

“The judge said, ‘I see absolutely no reason why the kids can’t stay where they’re at,’” Valdez said.

Under Utah law the men not only can’t serve as foster parents, they also can’t adopt. Finding foster parents for four siblings ranging in age from 10 months to 11 years is nearly impossible. Finding adoptive parents for a sibling group that large is utterly impossible. But the law in Utah is clear: These four children should be tossed into the foster care system, potentially separated from each other for the rest of their lives, and if their mother loses custody permanently, denied any chance of a stable home. Because it would be illegal to place these children in the care of a loving, stable same-sex couple that they’re related to.

My head is going to explode. I don’t even know what to say. So let’s give the last word to the 11 year-old boy whose life the state of Utah wants to destroy:

An 11-year-old boy who is in the temporary custody of his great-uncle says he wants to stay where he is. But his great-uncle is gay, and the state of Utah doesn’t license foster couples who aren’t legally married.

That means this boy and his three brothers and sisters could be taken away from relatives and split up until their mother regains custody.

The boy said, “I would rather live with my mom. But if I can’t, I’d rather live here.”

It seemed like a smart idea at the time…

Customs officers discovered nearly 10.5 ounces of ecstasy tablets hidden inside a Mr. Potato Head toy sent to Australia from Ireland, the agency said Thursday.

Upon opening the parcel, the officers were greeted with the smiling face of the popular children’s toy, which features a potato-like head and removable facial features. But when they removed a panel from the back of the toy, the officers found 10.34 ounces of ecstasy in a plastic bag.

Burger King is pushing their “Angry Burger,” with comes with “angry onions,” to Germans with this HUMP-worthy spot…

According to this story (sorry, it’s in German), the spot was created by an ad agency in New York City. Somehow I doubt that we’ll be seeing an English-language version on American television anytime soon.

That’s one of 100 9-by-6-inch intaglio prints in the series What Might Go Wrong by Jennifer Zwick. Her first solo show, at Soil through Oct. 28, is called I’m So Scared/It’s All So Hard, and it’s “about anxiety, awkwardness, and the accidental comedy of bodies, yours and mine.”

Here’s her comical tribute to the continuous strangeness of breasts. It’s called Hello.

At Howard House, Matthew Offenbacher, Robert Yoder, and Sean M. Johnson are showing. Yoder seems to be beginning to admit photographic imagery into his abstractions (his tiny bits of photographs look more and more legible with each time I’ve seen his work recently).

And this piece by Johnson has a certain lightness I didn’t see in any of his previous works at HH. It’s called Brothers, and the top nightstand rests on the bottom one by virtue of the weight of books and CDs in the open drawer.

Katrina Moorhead is at James Harris Gallery. The Northern Irish artist works with an almost unbearable delicacy. She shows three paintings and a pair of finely crafted wooden DeLorean car doors. The car was manufactured in Belfast, where the factory had two entrances, one for Protestants, one for Catholics. Her memorial to the fallen company echoes her country’s divisions.

I only wish there were more than just three of her paintings on display. Here’s one, titled You Sat Alone, Reykjavik (2007):

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Greg Kucera Gallery, where the front rooms are flooded with a knockout display of prints and tapestries by Chuck Close. Here’s an installation view, with his tapestry portraits of Philip Glass and Kiki Smith on the right:

In the back room and upstairs are the furniture sculptures and photographic collages by Drew Daly (who’s talking at the gallery at noon on Saturday). A few in particular drew me in:

^Fourlean

^{Mirror Merge (there’s also a virtual version of this made with two chairs and a mirrored corner)}

UPDATE: Originally I posted that there were Close paintings at Kucera, but there aren’t (some of those prints are thick!). And the tapestry portrait is of Kiki Smith, not Cindy Sherman. Please forgive. It was late, I swear.

Another conservative Republican—this time a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana—gets busted cruising toilets. Twice. Naturally he’s straight-identified, married with children, and a strong defender of “conservative values.” You know, like the closet.

More at Towleroad.

Interested? Click here.

Originally posted yesterday.

In a short editorial posted yesterday afternoon online:

The twists and turns of the court-martial proceedings against Fort Lewis 1st Lt. Ehren Watada continue to cause pain and division.

Watada came to an easily debated but apparently sincere decision that the Iraq war was wrong, even illegal. He had one mistrial, and his attorneys are trying to block a second proceeding as violating rules against double jeopardy. But the court-martial is scheduled to begin Tuesday.

However the defense appeals turn out, we think there is a case for letting Watada leave the Army without further ado. That could be taken as a statement of higher-level confidence, a choice to focus on the larger military mission that President Bush and Gen. David Petraeus insist is making new progress. At a minimum, many of those who oppose the Iraq war would welcome the leniency for someone they view as a person of conscience.

I’ll be on KUOW’s Weekday this morning, talking about the news of the week with Slog favorites D. Parvaz and Danny Westneat.

The show starts at 10 a.m., and although I don’t control the discussion topics, I do