Tonight I’ll be the 7pm guest for the “The David Goldstein Show” on 710 AM (live streamed)

The topic? My news article on the failed HIV vaccine. Prepared to call me a mastermind of the global AIDS conspiracy? Do it on live radio.

Music

Feral Children, Das Llamas, Fleet Foxes, the Pharmacy at Neumo’s

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Said he:

“The time we spent together flew by. I thought she was out of this world. She lived life like a dream, reality didn’t enter, and she could not distinguish dreams from reality. Her life seemed pure pleasure, and she had an almost inexistent contact with reality. Her only goal was the search for pleasure at all times.”

posted by news intern Brian Slodysko

The Emperor’s new clothes: With little political capital left, Bush sets sights on “small bat” goals.

Black Friday: Impending recession, gas prices lead to underwhelming sales numbers

Blame game: Romney calls for judge to resign after released convict kills a Puyallup area couple.

Unrest: Twin Suicide bombings kill 16 in Pakistan.

Reactions to oil prices around the world: Russian oil barons don’t know how to spend new wealth while French fishermen riot.

Police brutality: lawsuit to cost city of Seattle six figure sum.

A gunman shot and killed his ex-wife, their three children and himself in a small-town park as the woman prepared to hand over custody, police said Friday.

Their bodies were found Thursday evening in the tiny community of Unity, Maryland… The bodies of Gail Louise Pumphrey, 43, of Woodbine, and the three children—ages 6 to 12—were found in the cars, Jerman said. David Peter Brockdorff, 40, of Frederick, was found nearby with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police said they recovered a .22-caliber rifle near his body….

There have been several domestic killings involving children in Maryland this year.

In April, a father hanged his two young children before committing suicide in rural Boyds, in Montgomery County. In March, the remains of four young children were found in a town house in neighboring Frederick. The father’s body was found hanging from a bannister, and the mother remains missing.

First, a couple of articles of note:

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution—which has done much better business in Taiwan and mainland China than it did here—has inspired the Chinese government to warn against attempting its acrobatic sex acts at home. (Via Thompson on Hollywood.)

The Guardian has a worthwhile piece on the treatment of abortion in recent Hollywood films.

Opening this week:

Wednesday’s wide releases I covered then: They include I’m Not There, Margot at the Wedding, and the surprisingly delectable Enchanted.

A respectable limited-run lineup starts off with The Landlord at Northwest Film Forum (reviewed in On Screen this week).

Grand Illusion is kicking off its A Date with Kate series with Hepburn’s glorious comeback in The Philadelphia Story and her lesser-known noir turn in Undercurrent. (Up next week: Adam’s Rib and Summertime. I’m reading Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn right now, by the way; it’s newly out in paperback. I recommend it, even if the writing can be pedestrian.)

SIFF Cinema is into its second week of 30 Years of Kino, and it’s just as good as the first. Chaplin’s subtexty City Lights plays through Monday, followed by a kinky pairing of The Piano Teacher and A Winter Tan, Raul Ruiz’s Proust adaptation Time Regained, and the enigmatic Russian film The Return.

Plus: The Red Balloon w/ White Mane at the Varsity, megadetailed 70mm Titanic at Cinerama, and more.

For all your movie times needs, Get Out.

Did you know that the average American consumes 4,500 calories and 229 grams of fat on Thanksgiving Day alone? It’s true! That’s like eating six sticks of butter! Mmmm… Butter.

Hey, whaddya know… Another day, another perverted religious asshole. (Via Pam’s House Blend).

Not Buying It: Washington Post cuts on Drug Czar’s “cocaine shortage” line.

Hard Time: Bush procrastinates on prisoner clemency bids.

Less Cocky: Post-exposure HIV drugs don’t boost risky behavior.

One hundred people, 95 of them men, participated. They received the drug treatment, HIV testing, and counseling for up to 26 weeks after enrolling in the study. Fifty-eight participants reported having unprotected anal sex, while 18 percent reported condom breakage.

Among the 84 people given the full course of medication, 75 percent actually took all the drugs. No one became HIV-positive during the course of the study.

Some health authorities have been reluctant to offer PEP after risky sex or drug use for fear that people wouldn’t change their behavior if they knew “there’s a parachute somewhere they can take to stay negative,” Shoptaw noted. However, he and his colleagues found people reduced their risk behavior after using PEP, rather than increasing it.

What’s Cooking: More meth in Europe.

Stiff Drinks: Washington Supremes uphold liquor tax hike.

The House Always Wins: Nabs counterfeit tweaker.

Body High: Drug hit men retrieve friend from morgue.

Mass Signatures: Petitions submitted for pot decriminalization.

Showing Initiative: Michigan accepts signatures for medical marijuana.

Meds for Rugrats: Untested.

Edwards: Just not that into the drug war.

Atlanta Braves: Family sues city for killing 92-year-old woman in police raid.

It Wasn’t the Tryptophan: We’re just a nation of drunken gluttons.

Where’s the Tumble Bus when you need it? I’m not sure what this thing is, but I think it needs to stop by the office today. Then again, maybe even the Tumble Bus driver gets the day after Thanksgiving off…

Thanks to photo pool contributor ascheele100.

CENTERTON, Ark. — The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago…

Centerton Mayor Ken Williams said he has been living under an assumed name for nearly 30 years. He had been mayor since 2001.

It was a double-life he had never acknowledged, Williams said, because he didn’t even realize it existed until he had recently taken a truth-serum injection…

Wow.

(Thanks, Sarah.)

Sources so sourcey I forgot to laugh have reported recently seeing King 5 news monster Jean Enersen possibly (ahem) illegally parked in a reserved handicap space (she does have legs, yes? Has anyone around here seen Jean Enersen’s legs? Anybody?), yammering, yammering, yammering on her cell phone. (Or so those sourcey, sourcey sources say.) Frankly, I have no opinion on the matter, but I can assure you that nothing like this has ever happened before.

Since Jonah did the Morning News for me this morning, I didn’t get a chance to tell y’all my recipe of the day. Haters like Jill Pellettieri (whose Slate piece “The case against Thanksgiving leftover recipes” runs nearly 1,000 words), may disagree, but I’ve always loved all the rich, semi-gross things you can do with Thanksgiving leftovers, most of them involving cream of mushroom soup. Here’s one my mom made every year.

Turkey A La King

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
4 ounces sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cups half-and-half or milk
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 jar (2 ounces) pimiento, strips or chopped
2 1/2 cups cooked cubed turkey
dash onion powder
dash pepper

Melt butter; add green pepper and mushrooms. Cover and simmer 5 minutes. Remove vegetables with slotted spoon. Add flour to butter, cooking and stirring until smooth. Add half-and-half and cream of mushroom soup, stirring until smooth and thickened. Serve over rice or toast.

What does this piece of NYT news make obvious?

The daily, Jomhouri Eslami, criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for calling a former nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, a nuclear spy and saying that influential politicians were using their power to have him cleared of those charges. Mr. Mousavian was a close aide to a former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

“Lately, defaming political rivals has become common in the country and has replaced lawful behavior,” the newspaper wrote in a front-page editorial on Wednesday. “We want to reject this kind of behavior as immoral, illegal, illogical and un-Islamic, and remind wise figures that such a trend is dangerous for the country,” it added.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has proven a divisive leader, with both hard-line conservative and reformist opponents finding fault with his economic programs and his harsh anti-Western rhetoric. But the criticism is often indirect, to avoid political repercussions. Jomhouri Eslami, however, is so established — the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was once the managing editor — that it is unlikely to be closed down or censored.

Dear Editor,

I hereby challenge you to an ad-hoc category for the Strangercrombie auction - we name the story we want written up by year team, for a sum of money, and you accept. Here is my story I want researched:

Go buy some fresh carp somewhere. Take said carp, minimally cleaned/ processed, to some of the best fish places in town, and ask them to prepare your carp - you pay full price for prep, of course. Find 3 upscale fish places that will prepare the carp for you, and judge the quality, and report it to us in your dining section.

I mean, you have one food/bar reviewer now that advocates exploding the tacky ornamental pigs around town, while another advocating eating their private parts with her father - I’m sure you can get such talent to get some nice places to cook up a carp. And if they can make a carp taste somehow palatable, then they can make anything taste good, so they deserve such mention.

What do you think ? I’ll donate $999.99 to the cause, for 3 reviews on preparing fresh carp in upscale restaurants?

Thanks,

BB

You’re in luck, BB. Like every year, we’re auctioning off chunks of the paper for Strangercrombie, so readers like you can tell us what to write.

For the first time this year, you can do the writing.

We’ll still write the stories if you want, but why would you? Why worry we’ll fuck up your good idea? Why not write it yourself, get your name in the paper, and show everyone that anyone—even you—can write a superior story for The Stranger.

So if you want a chow story on carp, a chow story you shall have. And, for all our sakes, I hope you this is one you want to research and write yourself, you big sadist.

The samples below show that the investigation of Meredith Kercher’s murder has three domains. Domain number one is microscopic—the space for events that are extremely small, tiny, invisible to the naked eye. This is the DNA domain.

The next domain is that of discourse. This is the narrative area, the human space of words, testimonies, accusations, and confessions. For the cops, the DNA domain is the light of truth that penetrates and clears the chaotic darkness of the discourse (human) domain.

But there is another domain of truth and light: the third domain of digital technology. Here we have blogs, email, text messages, cell phone calls, web chats, and web communities. It is this domain that makes Meredith’s murder exceptional. The digital domain, which has been with us in a significant way since the late 90s, has a larger than usual presence in this investigation. It is the large size of the third domain that broke the crime and its investigation from the past. We are witnessing something that is fully new. Full in the sense that it fully engages three domains. This new monster walks on three legs: one is shaky; two are sturdy.

The 90s saw the expansion the DNA domain. The 00s are witnessing the expansion of the digital domain. We may eventually see the death of the discourse (human) domain.

I asked her about the rather decisive evidence of the DNA on the knife, and she said, ‘Fine, but I’m innocent. Let’s see what the police do with that’.

One of the suspect’s lawyers, Vittorio Lombardo, said the test results did not mean his client was guilty. “Rudy has not denied being in Meredith’s house, and the tests do not say that the sex was not consensual,” he said. Rudy maintains he was in the bathroom when Meredith was killed, and these tests do not show anything which contradicts that.”

One of the earliest clues in the probe was a text message from Kercher’s American flatmate Amanda Knox, 20, to Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba Diya on the night of the murder, reading “See you later.”

A British newspaper said a Web chat involving a recently-arrested suspect in Meredith Kercher’s slaying may reveal new insight into the case and possible exonerate Amanda Knox, the Seattle woman who is a suspect in the Perugia, Italy, killing of her British roommate.

Seasonal Treat

‘The Dina Martina Christmas Extravaganza’ at Re-bar

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The Clinton campaign, seeing her rivals still even with her (or ahead) in Iowa, starts to lower expectations:

Our definition of success doesn’t necessarily mean coming in first.

Via The Page.

Payday: In case you missed it, the Seattle Police Department has settled out of court in the Maikoyo Alley-Barnes case.

Fudging the Numbers: Pentagon doesn’t include 20,000 brain injuries in tally of combat wounds.

Doritos Bags & Rubber Bands: New federal regulations are making birth control really expensive for college students.

First Desperate Housewives, Now This: Writers Guild strike may derail democratic debate.

Fired For Blogging, Sort of: Yakima Councilmember asked to resign over wife’s blog.

Prison Guards Gone Wild: Girls Gone Wild producer claims abuse while in jail.

Dark Days: It’s Black Friday. Someone buy me this.

Now, here’s a list of every imaginable use for your turkey leftovers.

Seattle Art Museum modern/contemporary curator Michael Darling has flashed his well-concealed muscle again.

When Art Basel Miami Beach (coming up December 5-9) invited him to curate the fair’s Video Lounge—a video-art center set up in a building adjacent to the convention center hosting the massive fair—he agreed.

Video Lounge curators typically sift through material submitted by the various galleries in the fair, try to suss out some general themes, and then put together a program for the video lounge.

Darling threw out that model.

He decided this would be a Pacific Northwest show. And it is.

The 19 artists in the 90-minute loop that will play all day during the fair include Anne Mathern, Jack Daws, Mary Simpson, Hadley + Maxwell, Rodney Graham, Vanessa Renwick, and Euan McDonald. (Some of the artists don’t live in the Northwest anymore, but all have connections to this region.)

In addition, Darling put together three evening programs, by theme. One is “Return of the Wild West,” with work by Damian Moppett, Simpson and Fionn Meade, Matt McCormick, and Renwick. Another is devoted to Miranda July. And a third, called “Storytelling,” features Gary Hill, Judy Radul, Renwick, and Harrell Fletcher.

The show is a quick-chute escape from one corner of the country to its opposite, both geographically and culturally.

What sort of work is in the show?

“There’s definitely a nature theme: people filming in forests and addressing the beauty of this location, but also in an ironic way and poking holes in that, so it’s not just rhapsodic,” Darling said in a phone conversation. “There’s definitely a rock-and-roll and music-related interest that bubbles up in different ways. As a counterpoint to the natural beauty thing, there’s also a sense of simmering violence, maybe, that comes out in pieces from Vancouver and also here.”

Darling says he hadn’t planned on bringing the loop to show in Seattle, but I desperately hope he’ll be able to. When was the last time anyone did a video survey of the Northwest?

^{A still from Rodney Graham’s A Little Thought (2000)}

Check out this CNN report about the 10-pound hairball removed from the stomach of an 18-year-old woman. (Complete with post-op hairball photo.)

You’re welcome.

“When should I expose my bare nether-parts for the camera?”

Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs waited until after their design careers were well-established but before time robbed them of their nude photogenicity. (Links safe for work.)

But for Project Runway Season 4 contestant Jack, there’s no time like the present (or whenever exactly these NSFW-but-otherwise-artsy-and-tasteful shots were taken—he looks a bit younger than he does on TV, but the pics are copyright 2007, so who knows? Also, for the record, Jack’s official Project Runway bio reveals him to be way more interesting than he’s been so far on the show.)

Thanks to Nick for the heads-up.

And Jerry. And you too Dad & Jo, and same to Billy, Eddie & fam, and Laura & Bil & Cody. And a happy thanksgiving to the Allers, Colleen, Donna & Eleanor & Oliver, et al. And happy thanksgiving to everyone at the Keck family estate.

We’re not at the big family gathering as I just can’t face getting on an airplane this week, of all weeks. So we’re up at Mt. Hood, at Timberline Lodge, snowboarding on a glacier… which feels a bit like having BBQ dodo bird for lunch. A lot like, actually. And guess what? There’s no phone reception up here. There is wifi, though, but my email is down. So… we thought we’d send best wishes via Slog. So from Dan, Terry & D.J., happy thanksgiving, everybody!

And, of course, a very happy thanksgiving to Slog readers. And before anyone asks in comments: Why, yes, it is a slow news day. It’s Thanksgiving, you see. Zzzzzz to you too.

In honor of this week’s interview with Dr. Adolf Von Hasselhoffen, Professor Emeritus at the Sigmund Freud School of Child Psychiatry in Klagenfurt, Austria—regarding Fantagraphic’s Unseen Peanuts exhibit—I bring you:

Why are Google’s holiday logos always so terrible? Where’d they disinter the third-rate children’s book illustrator who draws them, and why? (All of these are an improvement, especially the Mondrian one.)

Today’s iteration is only redeemed by the fact that the turkeys are clearly cannibals: suicide food–plus. Time to eat! Cheers to the self-devouring turkey.

The endless president:

Recall MC Rove:

Film

‘King Corn’ at Grand Illusion

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Proceed to after the jump.

Continue reading "For a Results-Spoiling Discussion of Last Night's Project Runway..." »

Well well well. The things you learn from reading the Village Voice’s gay star-watcher Michael Musto:

Dan Savage’s The Kid, his book about how he and his boyfriend became parents, is being turned into a musical, and I hear Scott Elliott (The Women, The Threepenny Opera) has inked to direct. That’s one more reason to hope the stagehand strike ends.

Oh. My. God. I’d start out by expressing surprise at learning about such a thing from a gossip columnist on the other side of the country, but I’m used to it. Dan’s a deeply superstitious freak (the time’s we’ve flown together, he’s not only compulsively crossed himself—the four-point Catholic way—but me, too) and given the potential for kaboom that comes with any idea “in development,” he typically plays it safe with reporting anything. Part of this seems to be a semi-legitimate fear of a “jinx” or falling piano or rogue wave or whatever, but another part is the fact that he could probably spend the majority of his day discussing potential projects, and restricting himself to the ones that make it to the finish line is a sensible move.

I still recall fondly the half-decade I spent awaiting the arrival of The Kid movie. It was bring adapted by Showtime or HBO and I couldn’t wait to take six of the world’s biggest bong hits then spend two hours watching professional actors pretend to be my friends. Alas, that project never came to fruition, but Hollywood’s loss is musical theater’s gain, and now I can’t wait to take those aforementioned bong hits (with perhaps a whisper of PCP) and go watch the singing, dancing freaks.

If you’re sitting there having a depressing holiday and you don’t know what to do, you should read Megan Seling’s essay about wintertime depression.

I don’t know why I find comfort in grocery stores at times like this, but I do and I always have. I’ve spent hours under the fluorescent lights at QFC, Haggen, sometimes even Target. Safeway is my favorite because it’s open 24 hours and by 1:00 a.m., no one is really around to ask me if I need help finding anything because, let’s face it, I don’t want to find anything.

She ends up by the magazines and picks up Martha Stewart’s Holiday Cookies, which has 106 recipes in it—suddenly she has 106 things she could do.

By the time I got home, I’d decided I was going to make every single cookie in that fucking magazine.

From there, the piece goes in a bunch of weird, dark directions.

While I sliced rings of Granny Smith apples to set on top of the unbaked globs of sticky dough, I heard whispers in the hallway about “the body” and not letting the wheel of the gurney get caught on a step.

It’s a fantastic piece of writing, and the longest thing Megan’s ever published. And, just to make the rest of us look bad, she also has an article about rock stars’ Thanksgiving memories (“Rock stars live more exciting lives than you”), her Underage column (it begins: “Ska has died how many times now?”) and two Up & Comings (including one that begins: “How so un–punk rock of me to suggest you buy something the day after Thanksgiving”).

Total number of words by Megan in the current issue: 6,428.

Well, that explains why the NYT and the Post didn’t focus on cloning. (I was wrong, they did mention cloning.)

However, I was hopped up on the encouraging break through in Oregon last week where scientists successfully cloned embryos using monkey cells. That research indicated cloning could still be done with humans. Excellent.

I was sad that yesterday’s big news (about side-stepping the embryo route) could discourage scientists from pursuing the monkey cloning process with humans—the technique I described in my pro-cloning message below.

P.s.
I’m not interested in a human-animal hybrid. Yikes. The Island of Dr. Moreau!

And yep, I know the S. Korean human cloning project turned out to be a fraud. I was bummed for months.

Former Bush spokesman McClellan: Bush made me lie.

Out of Control: Contraceptive prices spike on college campuses.

Democratic frontrunners: We won’t cross picket line for CBS debate.

Shameless: Bush refuses to condemn Saudi lashing of gang-rape victim.

Yeah, Right: Japanese to kill, “study” 950 whales.

Not Budging: Iranian president refuses to make concessions on nuclear program.

Coming Soon: $100-a-barrel oil prices.

On the Job: Senate Democrats, who will hold pro forma sessions during the holiday to prevent Bush from making recess appointments.

Recipe of the Day: Caramel Pumpkin Custard (Recipe from San Francisco Chronicle; photo from Creative Commons)

Continue reading "The Morning News" »

Josh writes:

But the articles don’t even mention how the scientists actually made those controversial embryos. They made them by cloning.

The process for creating embryos to create stem cells worked like this: Cells were taken from a patient and injected into the emptied out nucleus of a donated egg cell. That egg cell then grew into a blastocyst-stage embryo that produced genetically identical stem cells to the original patient. Those stem cells could be used for therapeutic purposes.

That embryo could have also been used to make a clone. Exciting!

Wrong. 100% wrong.

Cloning human being by the process described above—hollowing out and egg, sticking in an adult cell nuclei—proved so impossibly difficult that the South Koreans resorted to fraud after failing hundreds of times at the task.

Every single human embryonic stem cell in existence today was created from a leftover embryo from an in vitro fertilization clinic. How were these embryos made? An egg and sperm met, fell in love and fused to form a zygote. In a dish or in a fallopian tube it’s the same basic idea—no cloning involved.

But, Josh, here’s the silver lining. This new technique, that can reprogram adult cells to become like embyronic stem cells, that is adored by conservative Christians everywhere,could be used for cloning.

In fact, I’d say it’s likely to work if you wanted to create a chimeric human being and has a decent chance of working if you wanted to create man-animal hybrid. So, look up Josh. Your dream has actually just became a bit closer.

And I haven’t even talked about using the four magic genes to make a cancer bomb. What an excellent supervillain weapon!

Given the starring role that cloning technology has played in the whole stem cell debate, it’s weird that cloning isn’t even mentioned in yesterday’s accounts of the big news that embryos may no longer be needed to produce stem cells.

Check it out. Here’s yesterday’s NYT:

Two teams of scientists reported yesterday that they had turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo — a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field.

All they had to do, the scientists said, was add four genes. The genes reprogrammed the chromosomes of the skin cells, making the cells into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body, be it heart, brain, blood or bone. Until now, the only way to get such human universal cells was to pluck them from a human embryo several days after fertilization, destroying the embryo in the process.

Similarly, from yesterday’s Washington Post:

Until now, only human egg cells and embryos, both difficult to obtain and laden with legal and ethical issues, had the mysterious power to turn ordinary cells into stem cells. And until this summer, the challenge of mimicking that process in the lab seemed almost insurmountable, leading many to wonder whether stem cell research would ever unload its political baggage.

The reports are right to talk about embryos. The act of destroying embryos is definitely one thing that made stem cell research controversial.

But the articles don’t even mention how the scientists actually made those controversial embryos. They made them by cloning.

The process for creating embryos to create stem cells worked like this: Cells were taken from a patient and injected into the emptied out nucleus of a donated egg cell. That egg cell then grew into a blastocyst-stage embryo that produced genetically identical stem cells to the original patient. Those stem cells could be used for therapeutic purposes.

That embryo could have also been used to make a clone. Exciting!

I’m kind of bummed that the excuse to pursue cloning technology has become irrelevant. And just one week after cloning technology scored such a p.r. coup with the monkey cloning story

Now that scientists can create stem cells out of cells without having to go through the cloning step, cloning doesn’t have much going for it.

That sucks. I wanted to see what was going to happen.

I hope yesterday’s big breakthrough in stem cell research doesn’t cause scientists to abandon research into cloning technology or cause a renewed push to outlaw cloning technology.

According to documents obtained from the Washington State District Court, the Seattle Police Department has settled charges of excessive force and malicious prosecution in the the case of Maikoyo Alley-Barnes, for an undisclosed sum.

Alley-Barnes was arrested in front of the Capitol Hill club the War Room in 2005, after a littering incident escalated into an all-out melee. Alley-Barnes filed a civil case against the officers in 2006, which appears to have finally come to a close earlier today.

More info coming, but likely not until after the holiday.

Nightstand—the column that’s run down the side of The Stranger’s books page for the last four years, written by yours truly—was taken out behind the barn and shot by yours truly last week. Dispatched to that newspaper-column graveyard in the sky. Did it with zero fanfare. Taking its place is something we’re calling (apologies to Dorothy Parker) Constant Reader, written by Paul Constant, who’s long since proven himself a better book critic than me, since he actually reads books, new ones, lots of them, rather than just, like, you know, “reporting” on the contents of old Mary McCarthy novels or the latest New Yorker or whatever.

I decided not to write a goodbye column, because if I were going to write a goodbye column, what would I say? That the only reason Nighstand ever existed is because of Bethany Jean Clement? That she was the editor at Seattle Weekly who let me—editorial intern turned part-time editorial assistant—write a sample column, and then published it, and then said, “Write another one next week—this could be a regular thing”? That she (and also partly the New York Observer) was responsible for its tone, since she had to rewrite lots of those early columns and since everything I wrote was an homage to her writing anyway? That lots of other editors contributed to its five-year run (shout out to Mark D. Fefer!)? That after a while I just ran out of things to say about local lit journals and moribund bookstores and out-of-business book festivals and poets who wear flip-flops to house parties?

Or would I list the Seattle writers I’ve most enjoyed writing about (like Rebecca Brown and Ellen Forney and Stacey Levine and Charles D’Ambrosio and Jonathan Crimmins and Anna Maria Hong and Rebecca Hoogs and Rick Steves)? Or the out-of-town writers I’ve most enjoyed writing about (Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and Greil Marcus and Mark Bowden and Jonathan Franzen)? Or the politicians, like the one about Barack Obama and Al Gore visiting Seattle in the same week?

Or what about that one about Goldie Hawn? Or the time I interviewed Proust? Or the time I went to Elliott Bay Book Company at midnight to find out who was lining up to buy Bill Clinton’s memoir? Or the one a week after that about Clinton’s appearance at a Costco? Or the inside reporting from the Elliott Bay Book Company staff party? Or the boozy Grove/Atlantic dinner? Or the Camus book group in the south end? Or the random postcard from Portland? Or the odd column about a New York book party, The Great Gatsby, and cocaine?

OK, enough with the archives. The first Constant Reader appeared last week and it was about Norman Mailer (“The publishing industry excels at necrophilia…”). This week, it’s about hack novelists. Next week, it will be about airport bookstores, where 30% of all books are purchased. Constant goes into an airport bookstore and asks for a recommendation and the bookstore employee replies, “I’m not much of a reader.”

It’s the news everyone in the political world has been expecting for some time: New Hampshire will hold its primary on January 8, just five days after the Iowa Caucuses on January 3.

Among other things, this means that the candidate who wins Iowa (where Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are currently in a statistical dead heat) will head straight into New Hampshire with that winning momentum. It also means his or her opponents won’t have much time to try to change the subject and rise above the post-Iowa noise.

First, some news:

Fifteen docs have been chosen for the 2008 Oscar shortlist. Nice to see Rape of Europa on there—maybe we’ll finally get a Seattle theatrical run?—but local favorite King of Kong has been eliminated.

The roof of Grand Illusion Cinema needs some repairs and I have been warned that the theater “may abruptly close for the installation and repairs ANYTIME in the next month.” The proprietors also tell me that they’ll let me know as soon as they know what dates will be affected, so check the Slog for updates. (Hopefully not during the Katharine Hepburn series that starts Friday, hmm, Guerren?)

And finally, enjoy Brian De Palma giving props to Flanders and Iraq in Fragments. Via The Chicago Reader’s On Film blog.

All the big releases this week are coming out today to catch Thanksgiving moviegoers.

In On Screen, these include Margot at the Wedding (Andrew Wright: “To watch it is to see a filmmaker at the absolute top of his game, even if this particular game probably shouldn’t be topped”), Enchanted (Lindy West: “A smart, sparkly, self-aware lampoon of every silly Disney cliché, Enchanted manages to make fun of princesses without being a total dick about it”),
I’m Not There (Chas Bowie: It’s “suggestive, not instructive; poetic, not prosaic. It is also, I strongly feel after only one viewing, one of the smartest, most innovative, and most beautiful films of this era”).

Plus (keep scrolling), August Rush (Megan Seling: “actually a charming little film about a musical prodigy”), This Christmas (Eric Grandy: “Happy birthday, Jesus! Do you like ‘dramadies’?”), Hitman (Andrew Wright: “Featuring a multitude of squib hits and a far better than necessary performance by Timothy Olyphant in a prime Deadwood smolder, it’s rooted firmly on the positive side of good and dumb”), and The Mist (Bradley Steinbacher: “Frank Darabont can’t help but fumble the big scares”).

For the Limited Run breakdown, you’re gonna have to wait till Friday. If you want to plan ahead, Get Out.

I like meat as much as the next guy, but holy shit… Even I would draw the line at this:

Maybe.

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving! Thanks to Stranger photo pool contributor dan10things.

How is it fucking possible that a company* can have an online “renew my account”—my PAID account—feature that they clearly have never actually tried. Seriously. How is it possible?

Witness:

Let’s see what’s wrong here:
1! - “Renewing your online membership has never been easier!” - This is total bullshit, and I’ll prove it.
2! - “… click “enter” below!” - First, too enthusiastic. Second, raise your hand if you see an “enter” button. Right.
3! - See all those “Please enter…” lines? Those are errors, because I’ve already submitted the form as instructed. Couple funny things about those errors: One, they don’t look like errors. It took me a little while to realize they were there, and that they were responsible for my getting the same form back after clicking entersubmit. Two, they refer to fields that DON’T FUCKING EXIST IN THIS FORM, making it quite difficult to do as requested.
4! - I and most sane people tend to reflexively say no to any sentence that begins, “I’d like to receive e-mails regarding…” In this case, though, I’m confused. E-mails regarding my account? Well, it seems like I’d want those, right? “Your account information has recently been sold to terrorists,” for example, or, “Your account is now piping all data through your Facebook profile,” or more realistically, “Your account is about to auto-renew.” If that’s what they mean, this option shouldn’t even be available. They probably mean spam.

It’s really #3 that makes this the worst form in history. I’m trying to give them money and it’s impossible. Have they seriously not tried this feature before? Obviously they have not, and for this they should be slapped about the face and neck continuously for 6 days with a sock filled with duck fat.

Happy Thanksgiving!

</rant>

* I’m not naming the company/service, not because I want to spare them the extreme humiliation of getting what-for on Slog, but because I want to spare myself from similar feelings should I reveal what it is that I was trying to renew. Feel free to speculate.

62-year-old Don Erickson stands to make a tidy profit by selling his small house on Crown Hill. Developers to the north and south have made offers to buy the property, zoned for commercial development, but he’s holding out for a higher bid. However, owners of Seattle’s iconic U-Save Oil, now under the 76 Station franchise, seem to have made other plans for the land on Holman Rd NW, between 13th Ave NW and 14th Ave NW.

Mark Wolf, who inherited the U-Save and three surrounding buildings when his father passed away earlier this year, announced intentions last week to raze all the buildings in the parcel. Neighbors and employees on the block were blindsided by the news, which came in yellow Land Use Action signs, stuck in the parking strip. The signs indicate plans to replace the existing structures with a four-story mixed-use development, comprising 100 residential units, six “live-work” units, and 110 underground parking spaces.

The shaded stuff is headed for the heavens. Erickson’s house is the top unshaded property on the right side

This is a how it looks to a satellite:

“I had to call after they put the signs up. It’s kind of a bummer,” says one of the employees on the block who asked not to be named. “My livelihood rests on this place as long as I can stay here.”

Erickson, a retired diesel mechanic, says he’d heard rumors that the existing building may be demolished months ago, but he thought, “I’ve known these people all my life—I don’t think they’d do that. Then the father passes away and the kid just sells it.”

Erickson said he plans to attend an early design guidance meeting at 6:30 p.m. on December 10th in Ballard High School. There, Wolf and the designers, Driscoll Architects, may confirm rumors that development could begin by next year.

In fact, that meeting may be the only way to hear any detail of Wolf’s plan. When I called to him this morning to inquire about his goals for the project, he was irritated I was asking—refusing to discuss the development and protesting his name being printed. Well, this isn’t exactly in print, Mark. And you are listed as the official contact. More after the jump.

Continue reading "U-Save Oil, Not the Neighborhood" »

Testing my Clearwire modem on the train from Seattle to Portland. It’s spotty but it’s better than nothing.
That’s Eric Grandy’s hand and paper.

Because what says “thanks” like turning your turkey into a headless woman before cutting it up?

Via Shakes.

Remember this?

Minnesota Woman Shoots Rare Albino Deer on Opening Day of Hunting Season.

According to an email from Slog tipper Mark, Its Royal Chalkiness has apparently been reincarnated in Rhinelander, Wisconsin:

A once in many lifetimes experience! I saw this lil’ feller run out in front of a car— thought it was a lost baby goat. Stopped to get it, and WOW!! A real Albino Whitetail Deer. Just hours old, but doing fine. No Momma deer around. Another car nearly hit it in front of me …

Guess they’re not so rare after all. Or maybe this one has been reincarnated and will grow up to hunt that woman down in her nursing home and gnaw her neck off.

Earlier this week, very old little people everywhere rejoiced possibly as all of the, like, four surviving Munchkins from the original “Wizard of Oz” cast finally got what they had coming to them. And it sure as hell wasn’t this.

Who comes up with this shit? I ask you.

If you are fond of dogs, decency, sanity, and/or you are easily flustered by unmitigated human evil, I warn you: do not, not, NOT watch THIS. EVER.

Thank you, Poe. I think. Jesus fucking Christ.

What’s missing in this image?

The chain:

Let’s give the Princess Leia/Jabba the Hutt dynamic some thought. What is the meaning of this situation? To grasp the meaning, we must isolate the slave, Leia. We must remove her from the story. What is she in actuality? Her blood is royal. She holds a high position in the galactic society. So, her being a slave amounts to the ultimate shame. She has fallen from the very top to the very bottom of things. But could it happen any other way? A great person must have a great fall. How can you be great if your fall is not so great? To fall just part of the way down the social hierarchy is poor for a person of high standing. Even The Bible is aware of this fact: The fall, like the rise (or the return), must be total—the king/queen must become a slave, must become all that he/she is not.

Imagine if Princess Leia had fallen to the middle of the galactic society. Picture her selling robot parts in a small shop, haggling over prices, shaking hands when deals are struck. This fate is too shameful for her or any noble. No, all the way down she must go. The best for her is to be a slave, a zero, a chained body. An absolute power deserves nothing less than the absolute shame of being a powerless slave.

Two postcards from the world of tough guys:

One.

Two people stopped to try to help 26-year-old Ardonas Gilbert, who was running naked along the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 on Monday night, but he allegedly cursed at them and punched them, Delaware State Police said.

Gilbert then ran into traffic, causing three separate accidents as motorists tried to avoid him, police said. No one was seriously injured.

His MySpace page says he’s a straight Muslim barber and “proud parent.” He had a song on the page, but it was “deleted by the [presumably embarrassed] artist.”

Two:

Norman Mailer had a straightforward recipe for cooking a steak, the novelist Geoff Nicholson once told me.

Mailer would throw the steak in a pan with some butter, and turn the heat up to high. When the smoke detector in the house went off, it was time to flip the thing over.

I have tried this. It scares the hell out of pets and children, but it works quite well.

His MySpace page says he’s a single Aquarius. He also had a song on the page, and it was also “deleted by the artist.”

But if you follow the “view band profile” link, you will see that the artist is the [presumably embarrassed] Lou Reed.

It’s called Duel Love—and, uh, there’s not much to it. Basically you get to wipe beads of sweat off of hot Anime girly-boys lounging in a hot Anime sauna. With your finger. BlogBlog has the pedo details. YouTube has the demo video…

It’s a victory for free speech and American values.

The United States Bridge Federation has dropped its effort to punish six members of the women’s championship bridge team for holding up a sign that said “We did not vote for Bush” during an awards ceremony last month in Shanghai.

In exchange, the women have agreed to a statement recognizing the federation’s right to request that bridge teams representing the country refrain from using awards ceremonies for anything other than accepting medals. “I feel vindicated,” said Jill Levin, one of the players.

Jan Martel, the president of the federation, said the agreement ended an affair that had become “divisive” and “polarizing.”

What was divisive and polarizing, of course, was the federations attempts to punish the women—banning them from all bridge competitions for a year, followed by a one-year probationary period, followed by 200 hours of “community service.” Oh, and the federation also demand that the women reveal “which member had come up with the idea for the sign.” All that’s off the table—but at least one of the women doesn’t trust the federation.

Ms. Greenberg, winner of six world championships, said she wanted to talk to her lawyer, Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, before accepting the agreement.

“A stipulation of this agreement is that both the U.S.B.F. and the team will not take legal action against each other,” she said.

“Although I’m not vindictive and have no intention at this moment of suing,” she continued, “I don’t want to lose my right to sue in the future if, one, they do some harm to me that I’m not currently aware of or, two, that they feel free to write in their bulletin anything they want about me.”

Meanwhile, The Philadelphia Inquirer wonders if the video is the stupidest use of taxpayers’ money—$4,157, to be exact—in the history of the world.

Go, G-Hog. (And thank you, MetaFilter.)