They’re calling off the search—after a week. If they’re up there, “they’re under the snow,” as a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s office told the Seattle Times yesterday. So unless the three missing snowboarders hiked out on their own and didn’t bother to call anyone—which seems highly unlikely—or have somehow managed to survive more than a week out there without food and without leaving a trace—even less likely—Kevin Carter, 26, Devlin Williams, 29, and Phillip Hollins, 41, are all dead. Their bodies aren’t likely to be discovered until spring, when the snow melts.

Which means, unfortunately, other snowboarders are going to be riding over their bodies for the next four months.

And, please, no asshole comments about how they were asking for it. People take calculated risks all the time in pursuit of pleasures—people die skiing into trees on clear, safe days; people are murdered walking home from nightclubs; people on bikes get hit by cars; that proverbial bus could run your ass over tomorrow.

In fact, I think I’ll just shut off the comments on this post.

I’ll be logging the high points of his early show at The Paramount tonight.

5:37pm
Here we go!!

5:37.03
“Git ‘er done”

6:45pm
“I always did want to get a piece of that Florence Henderson.”

End.

Remember those plans I had to drive to a Hillary Clinton event in eastern Iowa in what turned out to be darkness and snow and freezing rain? Well, they didn’t work out so well. Details in my feature for The Stranger next week, but for now let’s just say I’m very happy to be back in my warm hotel room in Des Moines.

Which gives me chance to say: I was extremely impressed by the Oprah-Obama event earlier this afternoon in Des Moines. Again, more details in next week’s paper, but for now I’ll just tell you that I’d never seen anything quite like it—and it seems like a lot of Iowans hadn’t either, until today. (Also: All that chatter about Oprah being a good candidate for political office… If she ever runs, watch out. She gave a better speech than anyone I’ve seen on the campaign trail this year, and I’ve seen all of the top three Democrats in person—Edwards, Obama, and Clinton.)

I don’t think the speech will be quite as impressive when you listen to it as an audio file. The big thing about Oprah’s performance was her delivery and her presence. But I do want to share the audio I made of Oprah’s speech this afternoon, in case any of you are interested in hearing what I saw.

Problem is, I can’t upload it to the Slog from afar because the file is too big. So for now I’m putting it on my personal blog. Click here if you’re interested.

(And confidential to Stranger tech people: If you guys want to grab the audio off my site and push it around the Slog’s upload limit, feel free. This is just my temporary solution.)

[Eli: Audio grabbed, converted, and uploaded. xoxo,Stranger tech people.]

Listen to the Oprah speech here. You’ll hear Michelle Obama first, giving a brief introduction for Oprah. Then you’ll hear (very briefly) some reporters jockeying for the best view spot. And then you’ll hear Oprah’s speech. It’s about 20 minutes long.

BONUS: Want to get inside my head while I’m writing an Obama feature that will certainly contain a section about this Oprah speech? Give the speech a listen, and then tell me what it all means in the comments.

From photo pool contributor lorilovesyouu, and empty stage just before a show. Another thing I have a weakness for…

Can someone please direct me to the column or blog post where I wrote, “But wait, fat people? Suck!”

Perhaps this is the wrong image to use… but irrational fat activists are stuffing words in my mouth. But, hey, if imagining that I’ve persecuted you is enough to float your boats, ladies, feel free. I didn’t realize I was that buoyant.

I’m in Iowa this weekend working on a piece about Barack Obama, and at the moment I’m in a large convention center in Des Moines waiting for the first of Obama’s four appearances over the next two days with Oprah Winfrey.

The hall is packed and Obama’s supporters are, as they like to say, “Fired Up.” I’m a bit frantic, running around trying to do interviews here, fretting about whether snow will prevent me from getting to eastern Iowa later today for a Hillary Clinton event, and stressing about my deadline.

But! I have time to dump an interesting interview out of my notebook and onto Slog. I was in a bar in Des Moines this morning (eating, not drinking) and talking to the bartender, Joe Jacobson, 22. Of the Oprah event, he says:

I really could care less what Oprah thinks. I just think it’s a big deal about something that really shouldn’t be a big deal.

His opinion is obviously not shared by the thousands of people here at the convention center. Nor do they seem to share Jacobson’s skepticism about an Obama candidacy, which is as revealing as it is (in part) wrong. Jacobson told me:

To think that the rest of the country is going to elect someone who’s in the minority in religion and in race just doesn’t seem realistic to me.

The man’s entitled to his opinion, of course, but can you spot the erroneous information in that statement?

UPDATE: For you commenters with trust issues: Yes, of course, I followed up and asked the bartender why he believed that Obama is a member of a religious minority group. He told me he’d heard that Obama is Muslim. (I now await that very rarest of all things on this blog, a commenter apology.)

The great “Dan Savage is an asshole—but just how big an asshole?” debate on fat-acceptance blogs appears to be winding down. (I am an asshole, you see, for suggesting that weight has any relationship to diet or lifestyle.) And not a moment too soon—because the fat-acceptance crowd has a new arch enemy: New York Times television critic Ginia Bellafante.

Bellafante wrote up a BBC documentary about obesity in today’s NYT. It would appear that Ms. Bellafante is ignorant of “natural setpoint weight ranges,” and labors under the mistaken belief that a given person’s diet—that’s diet, not dieting—somehow correlates with the size of a given person’s ass.

The film to be shown this weekend, “476-Lb. Teenager,” illustrates life on the other extreme of the scale. A portrait of a young woman named Bethany, it depicts her fight to lose what is, in essence, her title as Britain’s fattest teenager. “Every day is a struggle,” she says. “Every day you wish you could just stay in bed and press the pause button.”

Bethany started her descent into obesity at about 8, when she began overeating to squelch psychological discomfort—discomfort the film does a subtle job of attributing to a mother who appears as removed and unfeeling as any imagined by the Brothers Grimm.

The documentary accords Bethany, who ultimately loses about 100 pounds with the help of stomach-reducing surgery, a dignity that is commendable but vaguely obstructionist. It rises above the one question the viewer most wants answered: How does anyone wind up at 476 pounds? Literally, how—in numbers of pizzas and Snickers bars and shell steaks and pints of pistachio ice cream. Deeply invested in the emotional repercussions of Bethany’s condition, the filmmakers show little interest in her complicity in developing it.

Oooooo… surgery and Snickers bars and complicity. Complicity! As if being fat is a crime! Those are fighting words! Go get her, fat activists.

Music

KEXP YuleBenefit at Showbox at the Market

• See what else is happening in Music on Saturday »

Kike Rock

The Eight at Crocodile

• See what else is happening in Music on Saturday »

Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.

UPDATE: A reader asks, “what’s the big deal?” After all, didn’t a lot of people advocate quarantine for AIDS patients early in the epidemic? Yeah, early in the epidemic some did advocate just that—and not just bigots salivating at the prospect of rounding up all gay people, diseased or not. But that was early in the epidemic, very early, 1984-86. By 1992 only raving bigots were still talking about quarantining people with AIDS or HIV. People like, you know, Mike Huckabee.

The actor Chris O’Donnell tells the Independent that he gets pegged as a choirboy—hey, whatever works for you, Chris. We just wanna see the video.

…the 14 year-old boys we put in diapers.

A skit at a local Christian youth group meeting had teenage boys taking off some of their clothes, wearing adult diapers, bibs and bonnets and being spoon-fed by girls as they sat in their laps.

Some say it’s just crazy, goofy teenage fun. But others, including one boy’s mother and the Mt. Lebanon School District, aren’t comfortable with it.

The skit took place during the Nov. 29 meeting of the Mt. Lebanon Young Life club, a nondenominational Christian youth group directed by youth minister O.J. Wandrisco.

Laurie Metz, whose 14-year-old son was one of the boys who took part in the skit, said she found it inappropriate, demeaning and sexually perverse.

Mr. Wandrisco and a national spokesman for Young Life say the skits are all in fun and meant to be used as “icebreakers” at the youth group meetings. “The skits are designed for one reason and one reason only—for kids to have fun. It’s not a dirty joke. The skits are to break down the walls and let them have fun,” Mr. Wandrisco said….

Ms. Metz said at the Nov. 29 Young Life meeting, after her son and two other boys were selected to take part in the skit, they were taken to a rest room by an older teen and given adult diapers, bibs and bonnets and directed to take their clothes off and put the diapers, bibs and bonnets on…. The boys returned to the group, where they were asked to sit in the laps of three girls. The girls spoon-fed baby food to the boys and then gave them baby bottles filled with soda pop. The first boy to finish was the winner.

“The whole premise of the skit is questionable,” Ms. Metz said. “I see no purpose that it would serve, especially not in a Christian youth group setting. It’s perverse.”

Putting horny 14 year-old boys in diapers and then plopping them on the laps of teenage girls for a little spoon- and bottle-feeding… thus are life-long fetishes born. Not that I have anything against fetishes or the kind of formative life experiences that create ‘em. Far from it. I live in the house that fetishes bought.

But still. Could you imagine the uproar from Christian groups if, say, a gay youth group did something similar? Or a gay-straight student alliance?

A spokesman for the Christian youth group says they’ve done this for years—they also do a “skit” where girls eat chocolate pudding out of adult diapers—and that Ms. Metz’ son “had fun” in that diaper. I’ll bet he did—and odds are good that he’ll be having fun in diapers for the rest of his life.

posted by news intern Brian Slodysko

Destroyed CIA Tapes: Even the White House says it was unwise to dispose of them.

The Great Flood: FEMA waiting for Bush to declare Washington a disaster area before opening the flood gates of federal funding. Gregoire says “I can’t tell you how long it will take.”

Every Child Needs A… Federal Way woman sentenced to 14 years for sticking hypodermic needles in her foster daughter’s eyes.

Nuclear Fallout: Secretary of Defense maintains Iranian threat, while Iran sees U.S. nuclear program acquiescence as a major victory.

Pork Barrel: With hovering veto threat, House Democrats drop Iraq War timelines, pack funding bill with domestic spending and earmarks.

In the Closet: Huckabee’s skeletons keep falling out, this time over comments made in 1992 about quarantining AIDS patients and the “public health risk” of homosexuality.

Coalition of the Willing: Foreign countries in Iraq reducing troop levels, dropping like flies.

Audit in Progress: Millions of dollars of U.S. purchased equipment for Iraqi security forces unaccounted for.

On With the Show: Talks between writers and studios meltdown, while impending re-runs force Americans to watch Project Runway.

Behold:

On the other hand: A resident I met last night told me that after one of the Metro lines broke down a few months ago, city transit officials shut down the whole system, causing total chaos. Half-hour train rides turned into three-hour trips by bus or car, and some commuters even stayed with friends in the city rather than go through the commute. This lasted two weeks. Yikes!

Do you always find yourself tongue-tied when rapists are around? Me too! Annoying. Luckily, while waiting for a friend to finish urinating at a scenic I-90 rest stop, I overheard a vanload of pre-teen girls chant the following ditty:

No! Don’t touch me there!
That is my no-no square!
I ain’t got no action there!
R - A - P - E
Rape!
Get away from me!

Because nothing deters a rapist like a darling mnemonic device. Keep this one handy, ladies! Your no-no square will thank you!

(Seriously. That really fucking happened to me.)

posted by news intern Brian Slodysko

Last night the Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability met for their roughly once-annual citizen input panel at the SPD’s west precinct. The purpose of the meeting? To take citizen complaints.

It was attended by four people.

The OPA is an independent wing of city government in charge of hearing citizen complaints about police misconduct. OPARB, the board that oversees OPA’s work, was also there.

Aside from three reporters and a community activist lawyer, the only other folks at last night’s meeting were Harry Gilchrest—a Seattleite who unsuccessfully pursued a complaint with the OPA recently—and his entourage: his wife and two friends. Unsatisfied with the results of the OPA complaint, Gilchrest and friends were there to bitch.

According to a written account distributed at the forum, Gilchrest was weeding his front yard in 2003, talking to one of his son’s friends, after which they shook hands. A police officer driving through the neighborhood saw the handshake and believed drugs were traded off. An ensuing verbal exchange between Gilchrest and the officer turned into a scuffle, back up was called, all of which culminated in Gilchrest getting punched in the testicles and arrested. Gilchrest was later convicted of felony assault.

One of the officers Gilchrest filed a complaint about was later named Officer of the Year.

“They could start by putting a black spot in place of a name for that year,” Gilchrest told the OPA.

One of Gilchrest’s friends at the meeting last night, Ronald Forrest, got ornery with the OPA and its board members. “His big fault was being in his front yard weeding his yard, when all this shit really blew up,” he said. “Why is the Police Officer’s Guild not involved in the oversight panel?” he asked, clearly unimpressed with a citizen-style panel that has no authority over the department. (Ironically, the very point of keeping cops off the OPA is to minimize the defensive power of the union.)

Gilchrest summed up his feeling about police accountability more succinctly: “If you hire a turd, you get a turd in uniform.”

The OPA board was mostly sympathetic to Gilchrest’s story, though they said Gilchrest might better spend his time appealing his conviction to the King County Prosecutor’s office which is under new leadership.

The OPA makes recommendations (discipline the officer, exonerate the officer) to Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske based on the results of its investigations

But Kerlikowske has the ultimate say in whether the recommendations are implemented and citizens are unable to appeal the findings of OPA investigations. The board can review findings—as it famously did earlier this year in the George Patterson case.

“The chief has the last word. He can choose to listen or ignore,” OPA Director Kathryn Olson said during the meeting. (Kerlikowske, for example, ignored the findings in Maikoiyo Alley- Barnes.)

Even when recommendations are implemented, board member Sheley Secrest said police are known to drag their feet because of the extra work load created.

At the end of the meeting I asked Gilchrest how he thought it went. “It was a waste of fucking time,” he said.

We’ve just added a bonus item to the Strangercrombie auction, especially for you Slog fiends. Place the winning bid and you will be granted Slogging privileges for seven days. All proceeds go to FareStart, of course. (Thanks for the idea, Big Sven.)

From comment #15 on this Strangercrombie post:

You wanna do this, Fnarf? You wanna try to outbid me? Try harder. That abortion is mine.

Posted by Mr. Poe | December 7, 2007 2:00 PM

Strangercrombie: Once a year we do something, uh, good.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an op-ed in today’s New York Times about the case of the Saudi rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes, the British school teacher prosecuted for blasphemy in Sudan after her students named a teddy bear “Muhammad,” and a feminist Bangladeshi writer being persecuted by Islamic extremists.

It is often said that Islam has been “hijacked” by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates.

But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted—and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done?

I wish Hirsi Ali had mentioned that the Saudi woman sentenced to 200 lashes for the crime of sitting in a car with a male non-relative wasn’t the only victim of Islamic justice in that case. She was abducted with her ex-boyfriend, and they were both raped—and both were sentenced to imprisonment and a public lashings.

But, yeah, once again—where are all the Muslim moderates we’re reminded to think no ill of when this kind of idiocy erupts? Perhaps the Seattle Times could go ask the moderate local Muslims that were upset about the Stranger printing those Danish Muhammad cartoons how they’re feeling about that Saudi rape victim.

And someone help me out: When we published the Danish cartoons a Muslim religious leader, one of the authors of the Seattle Times’ rotating religion column (which runs on, I think, Saturdays), wrote a column about how disappointed he was in the Stranger. I can’t find that column on the Seattle Times’ website—or any of the paper’s religion columnists. Don’t they put ‘em online?

Mitt Romney’s big “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” speech—but you’re only okay so long as you’re religious—doesn’t seem to be helping. Mike “Pardons for Rapists” Huckabee has opened a double digit lead in Iowa. From Newseek:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has vaulted over his major GOP challengers to take a commanding lead in the race to win the Iowa caucuses…. The most dramatic result to come out of the poll, which is based on telephone interviews with 1,408 registered Iowa voters on Dec. 5 and 6, is Huckabee’s emergence from the shadows of the GOP race into the front runner’s spot in just two months. The ordained Southern Baptist minister now leads Romney by a two-to-one margin, 39 percent to 17 percent, among likely GOP caucus-goers. In the last NEWSWEEK survey, conducted Sept. 26-27, Huckabee polled a mere 6 percent to Romney’s 25 percent, which then led the field.

Tonight in Music: Fishboy, Don Cab, Immaculate Machine

Musical Advent Calendar, Day 7: Fishboy - “A Surprise Return”

Strangercrombie Music Item(s) of the Day: : A Shitload of Jeff Kleinsmith Posters!

American Ninja 1: Ninja Burlar Strikes Shaolin Island

Shameless Disco Plug: TJ Gorton on Club Cabana, Studio

RIP: Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)

Poppin Them Bottles: Ari Spool Wants to Know About Your New Year’s Eve Party

“You Want it All, But You Can’t Have It”: Mike Patton vs Will Smith

Nerd Lords: Man Factory’s Street Fighter II Rock Opera

Today in Music News: Fall Out Boy, John Lennon, and more…

American Ninja 2: Ninja Burglars Strike Capitol Hill

Hello, Tiny Snake: Tiny Vipers Live on La Blogotheque

In this morning’s installment of Morning News, Eli posted an interview with Hillary Clinton. The interview focused on her formative years.

Hillary said when she was a teenager she was the president of the Fabian Fan Club.

Teenager=Super hero. Super hero=Human being. Human being=Teenager.

New Orleans: I’m drinking a Manhattan on Bourbon St at the international drug policy conference. One of the topics that repeatedly comes up at these things is whether it’s disingenuous to talk about the racial disparity in drug enforcement as the impetus for major overhaul—when the folks delivering that message are overwhelmingly white. But this year, maybe because we’re in NOLA, the event is more multi-racial than any I’ve attended before. After yesterday’s super-Jewish kick-off, I stopped in at a grassroots organizing networking meeting, where I ate sausage and beans and met about two-dozen people wearing these shirts.

Based in Alabama, the New Bottom Line Campaign works to replace punitive penalties for drugs with drug treatment programs and to restore voting rights to felons who have done their time. Black people make up 26 percent of Alabama’s general population but 60 percent of prison population, according to their handbill. The group is predominantly African American – one white woman who looks like a young Ellen Degeneres was among their ranks – and is lead by Pastor Kenny Glasgow. They wanted to talk a lot and they were really fired up, high on Jesus I suppose, making their group by far the most exciting thing going on here.

Some insight into why African-American communities are reluctant to embrace drug law reform was explained Doug McVay, of Common Sense for Drug Policy, who tried to drive through people’s thick heads that they aren’t listening enough: “For a lot of people in poor and African American communities, the drug war is the only way to get police into their neighborhoods.”

Seven Dogs Per Student: That’s what you need to make a pot bust in Connecticut schools. But all my money says the random searches will get tossed out in court.

Packing in Pakistan: 87,565 kilos of heroin.

Drug Users: Owe everyone an apology.

$10,000 Bribe: Still not enough to get the GOP talking pot.

Dangerous Paraphernalia: Starbucks mugs could kill you.

New World Order: Yes, I’ll have a Big Mac, Large Fries, and a Double-Tall, Split-Shot Americano, with extra room, please.

No Vacancy: Mexican prisons full of drug offenders.

Gimmee a Brake: National Institute on Drug Abuse wants you to park the car before you smoke dope.

News: Editor turns on writer in this fascinating case study of the tyranny of the pissy commenter: Read this entire thread at Boxoffice.com and behold the future of film criticism. (Via The House Next Door.) Meanwhile, nobler blogs busted the door open for the trades to review Sweeney Todd early—and the buzz remains ecstatic. (Via Thompson on Hollywood.)

Opening this week:

I review Atonement: “For the first hour, set in a prewar English country house, it’s faultless: a pungent stew of pleasure and dread, shrill suspicions and pouting revenge.” I love so many things about this imperfect movie—including the typewriter sound motif that certain critics dismiss as “literal-minded.” I couldn’t disagree more. The clanging sounds at first like the racket a typewriter makes, but soon enough it slides into the rhythms of fury, mania, obsession. Especially if you’ve read the novel and know its narrative tricks, being reminded throughout the film of the act of writing—an act that pretends to be generous but serves a passionately selfish purpose—is beautiful. Further, I have to say that I expected to love Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, and they’re pretty good, but Saoirse Ronan is sublime. If anyone from this film deserves an Oscar nomination, it is she.

Meanwhile—in movies intended for children’s eyes—Lindy West reviews The Golden Compass: “When some people look at a novel, they just see an obese screenplay. Cut a few characters, speed up the action, add some pat narration and rampaging CGI war bears, and there you go: The Golden Compass. Kindly direct the money truck to the back gate of my grand and imposing Hollywood manse!”

And in On Screen this week: the Guy Ritchie debacle Revolver (Charles Mudede: “Revolver attempts to resolve the ancient philosophical puzzle of the source and meaning of human consciousness. This is no joke”) and the surprisingly worthwhile Jimmy Carter Man from Plains (Eli Sanders: “What’s most fascinating is watching Carter’s combination of strength, smarts, religiosity, and deep humility as they work in concert to disarm some of his most antagonistic audiences”). Honey and Clover has been delayed because of roof repairs; it’s now opening January 11th at the Grand Illusion. I’m leaving the review up because we may not have room to run it in the print edition in January, but I’ll push it into the web edition that week for sure.

There are a couple of number of once-in-a-lifetime events in Limited Runs this week, so read closely. The seven-hour Soviet adaptation of War and Peace is screening at SIFF Cinema for two weeks. This is a gutsy and exciting move for SIFF—it’s exactly the sort of film other Seattle theaters can’t risk committing to for a solid two-week run—so make it worth their while, OK? Charles Mudede promises you won’t regret it: “In this film, more than any other film in history, the power of the state is translated into the power of cinema.” You have multiple options for both Part I and Part II; both parts continue through next week.

For Warhol fanatics and anyone who was affected by the story of his onetime lover, filmmaker and lighting designer Danny Williams, in the SIFF 2007 film A Walk into the Sea, Northwest Film Forum is screening it again alongside two showcases of Williams’s 16mm films—documents of Factory existence, but films in their own right as well.

Also from SIFF 2007: The Life of Reilly, playing at the Varsity. It’s an excellent doc about the recently deceased Charles Nelson Reilly (Jen Graves: “In an acclaimed one-man stage performance, he hits as many bittersweet notes as one-liners”).

And finally: Rawstock: Aural Fixation 2007 and the conclusion of NWFF’s Pedro Costa series, with In Vanda’s Room, Where Lies Your Hidden Smile?, and Colossal Youth.

King County Metro was negligent when a bus driver took no action while two teenage riders were attacked and beaten aboard a bus by a group of youths, a jury ruled Thursday.

The Superior Court jury voted to award plaintiffs Carmen Rollins and Will Hendershott $125,000 each in damages in a 10-2 verdict in the civil case brought against the transit company.

I’ll be on David Goldstein’s radio show tomorrow at 7pm.

We had a fatso news section this week: Sweetheart deals for Vulcan; North Seattle neighbors who hate everything; Dave Reichert meets with SEIU; and a progressive candidate steps up to challenge Democratic State Senate incumbent Margarita Prentice. So, I’ll want to yack about all that.

Plus I wanna get Goldy’s goat and talk about this story: The Democrats complaint against Dino Rossi gets tossed.

Judging from his blog, Goldy will want to talk about Tim Eyman getting tossed from the Yakima City Council meeting.

I do not want to talk about Tim Eyman.

From USA Today:

An Idaho weatherman says Japan’s Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack — and that this technology will soon be wielded again to hit another U.S. city.

Um…what?

Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, said he was struggling to forecast weather patterns starting in 1998 when he discovered the theory on the Internet. It’s now detailed on Stevens’ website, www.weatherwars.info, the Idaho Falls Post Register reported.

Stevens, who is among several people to offer alternative and generally discounted theories for the storm that flooded New Orleans, says a little-known oversight in physical laws makes it possible to create and control storms — especially if you’re armed with the Cold War-era weapon said to have been made by the Russians in 1976. Stevens became convinced of the existence of the Russian device when he observed an unusual Montana cold front in 2004.

Makes perfect sense to me.

(Note: Title changed because the story is actually from 2005, which pretty much makes this whole post pointless. But since it’s up and has comments already, I’ll just leave it.)

Little girls are crawling all over the film section this week—there’s Lyra in The Golden Compass and Briony in Atonement and Japanese teenagers in Honey and Clover (the last is, unfortunately, not opening this week after all; Grand Illusion is still closed for roof repairs). I’m working on This Weekend at the Movies now, but first I wanted to mention the entire population of little girls in my DVD column, about Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s beautiful Innocence.

Innocence, the astounding feature film debut from French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, feels as though it should begin as stories do—with “once upon a time,” like the click of a latch in the door to the imaginary. Instead, it starts with a menacing rumble. There’s the rush of a waterfall and then the subterranean roar of a train, the universal sign for a European boarding school.

But this school, surrounded by woods and a wide brick wall, is located in a parallel world. A little girl named Iris (Zoé Auclair) is delivered, in a coffin, to one of five houses. An older girl unlocks her and she is dressed and given colored velvet ribbons for her hair. The other girls, who are wearing different colors in their pigtails, from red for the youngest to violet for the oldest, all untie their ribbons and trade them up for the next color of the rainbow. Iris is introduced to the school (ballet classes, rhythmic gymnastics, natural history) and its baroque customs (every year, the most appealing of the blue ribbons is selected by the headmistress to leave the school early). Nothing is explained.

Critics have complained that Hadzihalilovic’s vision of a little sensualist convent will draw pedophiles like flies, but the film is clearly told from the point of view of the girls themselves: It’s suffused with an unmistakable dread. The most alert students make desperate escape attempts. Others retreat into familiar forms of little-girl psychological revolt: Selma (Alisson Lalieux) is sullen and staring, feeding off some unseen internal fury; pudgy Rose (Astrid Homme) undulates with her hula hoop, her eyes giving away a cunning awareness of her own budding appeal. Hadzihalilovic anticipates the pedophilia question in more complex ways as well: Her movie plays up the creepiness of quasi-legitimate cultural hang-ups, like the smoothness of little girl legs. (I’m reminded of Lewis Carroll’s inscription on one of his infamous photographs: “Pretty little legs/Paddling in the waters/Knees as smooth as eggs/Belonging to my daughters.”) The source material, a novella by Frank Wedekind, has been called prescriptive, a protofascist recipe for how girls should actually be taught. In Hadzihalilovic’s hands, it’s a horror story of the subtlest kind.

Here’s the Lewis Carroll picture in question. Talk about little-girl psychological revolt.

If you’re as intrigued by this movie as I am, you’ll want to read occasional Stranger contributor Michael Atkinson’s great review of the DVD over at IFC.com. Also noteworthy: One of the teachers in the film is played by Marion Cotillard, who’s an Oscar contender this year for La Vie en Rose (aka La Môme). She’s gorgeous, and it’s great to see her playing someone slightly sinister.

Open the December issue for ArtForum and will find these kind words by John Waters:

“Zoo is a jaw-dropping, sympathetic documentary of the so-called Enumclaw Horse Incident.” On his top ten films for the year, he gave Zoo the high position of number 4. Thank you, John.

I’m not sure what Woody Guthrie would think about this one…

Thanks to photo pool contributor pdgibson.

A court in Rhode Island is refusing to let a couple legally divorce, saving one precious American marriage from the culture of no-fault divorce. Praise the Lord.

A lesbian couple who married in Massachusetts cannot get divorced in their home state of Rhode Island, the state’s highest court ruled Friday in a setback to gay rights advocates who sought greater recognition for same-sex relationships.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court, in a 3-2 decision, said the family court lacks the authority to grant a divorce because state lawmakers have not defined marriage as anything other than between a man and a woman.

A suit of armor from the Pit Bull Armory!

Also available: Squirrel armor.

Thank you, MetaFilter.

The first paragraph of Adrian Ryan’s full-page obituary of Evel Knievel in this week’s issue:

Evel Knievel was a man few really knew, a man even fewer really wanted to know. He was an uncompromising man, a man of many contusions, a Jesus-y man. He was an alive man. Most of him. But not anymore.

If you’ve never read an obituary by Adrian Ryan before—well, lucky you. His obituary for Ronald Reagan in 2004 was a work of genius.

Is George from Black Diamond’s page – MySpace.com/marijuanakills – a joke? (Sic throughout.)

My main interest in life right now is saving America from the scourge known as marijuana…. Most mothers who smoke marijuana can’t even remeber when they last fed their baby or changed its daiper. These dopers should not have kids in a drug den. I also believe that the sentance for distributing marijuana should be life with no possibilty of parale, and 5 years minimum for first time possesion. Marijuana is a sick, degenerate plant and I will stop at nothing to rid the nations of its existance.

Because it’s pretty funny.

I especially enjoy shooting bears. They are evil animals who should be hunted to extinction. I have shot many deer, elk, game birds, and once when I was on safari in Africa I shot two lions. My favorite country to visit outside the U.S. is Thailand. They have the nicest young gals there, I highly recommend visiting there. I am also a memeber of the Washington State Metal Detectors Association.

If you want to blow a gasket, or you have a really fucked up sense of humor, read the blog entry Illegal aliens are stealing American jobs.

Kudos to Keegan for the tip.

Yes. The slut hurt me the worst. And I’ve been hit by cars.

It was September 2006. I was riding into work after tutoring—barreling down Harrison after being held at one of the painfully long lights on Fairview Avenue North. The hill is steep; I typically reach between twenty-five and thirty miles per hour. New grooves in the pavement, for the streetcar’s eminent birth, grabbed my front tire.

I hit the ground, left thigh first. The handlebars from my rapidly disintegrating bicycle jabbed powerfully into my ribcage, near to my heart. I heard a pop. I was only wearing a t-shirt, so my bare flesh met the pavement. I finally came to halt, having slid the length of a city block.

My rib was broken; my arms were shredded. My left thigh swelled to fill my normally baggy pants. You can bleed a fifth of your blood into the thigh—creating a trapped lake that slowly crushes into oblivion the nerves and eventually the muscles of the leg. It’s what almost happened to me; only aggressive icing and elevation saved me from needing emergency surgery.

I should have gone to the hospital. I knew I should go. I didn’t. My insurance, run by a for-profit company based in Texas, successfully weaseled out of paying for all of my cycling injuries in the past, treatments they are under contract to provide. A trip to the emergency room costs thousands; my total annual salary, as a graduate student, is about twenty-four thousand, before tax.

It took me months to heal. So, yeah, as a bicyclist in Lake Union I say fuck the Slut.

The red one is pretty, however.

I said on KUOW this morning that I don’t tend to have much sympathy for bike riders who haven’t figured out how to navigate railroad tracks, even if they’re the dreaded SLUT tracks. But looks like I may not have understood just how oddly configured the SLUT tracks are. I don’t know… should I change my SLUT tracks position?

Here’s the commenter debate:

Pretty smooth job of handling the bikes vs. SLUT debate. You’re right of course - it’s actually a very positive development to be debating the merits of alternative means of transportation. But the fact remains - the bike riders, in this case, sound like a bunch of solipsistic whiners.

Posted by Gurldoggie | December 7, 2007 11:25 AM

And…

Ridiculous comments, Eli, on the SLUT tracks. “Oh, isn’t it GREAT that we’re having an argument about bikes vs. streetcar?!” There’s nothing GREAT about the dangerous design of this toy choo-choo.

Oh, and when were you a bike messenger, Eli? Back when you were 22? The point is to make Seattle a bike-friendly city for ALL, not an obstacle course for 20-something bike couriers.

I’m glad Naomi Ishisaka was there to voice some sanity on this issue.

Posted by DOUG. | December 7, 2007 11:35 AM

Posted by Ryan S. Jackson

When last we left off on the exciting adventures of The Ron Paul Blimp, the anti-government airship was just a surprisingly well-funded twinkle in the eye of a group of people with a horribly designed website and a penchant for comically unhinged YouTube videos.

That was then. This is now (via The Politico):

The Ron Paul blimp is set to fly from North Carolina, over Washington, New York and Boston, before heading to New Hampshire, where the Jan. 8 primary offers the iconic libertarian perhaps his best chance of translating his zealous Internet support into votes.

And what would the exciting culmination of Ron Paul and the World of Tomorrow! be without this all ending in Paul’s supporters finding a new and innovative way to essentially gut campaign finance laws?

They shunned traditional mechanisms such as creating an independent non-profit group under section 527 of the IRS code — like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the other groups that spent millions on ads in 2004 — or a political action committee — like EMILY’s List. Instead, they went an almost unheard of route, establishing a for-profit company: Liberty Political Advertising.

The name is a nod to Paul’s ideology and the website boasts the “legal arrangement offers the best of both worlds: no limits and virtually no regulations.” In other words, very libertarian.

As The Politico goes on to note, the blimp project is retaining Mitt Romney adviser Ben Smith as their legal counsel. Smith is willing to lend a helping hand because, strangely enough, he’s rather fond of this new strategy for funneling huge amounts of unregulated money into the campaign. What’s hilarious now may be a little less funny when the Romney campaign rolls out a competing (and almost certainly blimp-less) advertising campaign using the same methods.

But until that dark day comes, look to the skies!

Posted by Ryan S. Jackson

One of the big commenter complaints about the system for choosing our presidential nominees is that the votes of the larger states often don’t matter.

The narrative of the race will be so established by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5, 2008) that a candidate can all but live in rural Iowa for months at a time, only rarely visit the massive urban areas that will actually carry him or her to the presidency (and then only for quick fundraisers), and still be on-track to win the nomination.

And while this may have a large degree of truth to it, it might be a good idea to really look at Iowa. For under the camouflage of picturesque farms and sprawling Vilsacks, we might have a lot more in common with Middle America than we thought. Maybe Iowa is more representative of America at large—or, at least, more similar to Washington State—than we generally think. A snapshot of some of the census data research I’m doing for Eli right now:

- Washington has just over 3 million more people than Iowa.

- The elderly population of our two states is nearly equal: 11% in Washington vs. 14% in Iowa.

-Iowa is only slightly whiter than Washington, at 94% for Iowa vs. 85% for this state.

-Washingtonians make only a bit more on median income than Iowans, 48k a year for us vs. 42k a year for them.

- More people in Washington have bachelors degrees, 27% for us vs. 21% for Iowans, but that’s only 6-percentage points more.

- People graduate high school at roughly the same percentage in both states.

-We have only slightly higher unemployment than Iowa, 4.8% for us vs. 3.9% for them.

None of this is to imply that a system that continues to let the same states choose the candidates over and over again is the right way to do things, or that somehow Iowa has become a representative sample of all Americans. I’d personally much rather see Mitt Romney attempting to hustle votes in Harlem, or have Bill Richardson proposing a sleep-over at 22nd and Union.

But I do find it surprising how many things Washington and Iowa have in common—our states are more similar than most people seem to think.

And tomorrow, Dec. 8, is RIP John Lennon day, which gives me the opportunity to Slog a pet peeve 24 hours in advance.

John Lennon was already dead on Dec. 8, 1980. Reagan had just been elected. The times they were a changin’ … back. I was a precocious kid on that day, and even I understood the grating irony of America’s fawning coverage of all those yuppies (a brand new word that year) who had voted for Reagan and were holding candles and shit for Lennon—as if a world leader had just died.

Lennon was not a world leader in 1980. He was nothing in 1980.

And the best song on that album he put out in 1980 was “Kiss Kiss Kiss” by Yoko.

66 years ago today, Japanese Navy pilots attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 3,000 Americans were killed or injured. Then a few other significant things happened. Pearl Harbor Day. Today. Carry on.

There’s a new coffee table book out, Transit Maps of the World. From Berlin to Tokyo to Madrid to Seoul to Bilboa to Nagoya to Prague to Philadelphia to Libson to Mexico City to Kharkiv, it’s got every rapid mass transit map in the world

Lovely book. My great pal Tom surprised me with the book as a Chanukah present last night. (Thanks Tom.)

There are no metaphors. Only results:

Seattle has a limp entry in this book of cities and their transit systems. On page 138 (the book is 144 pages), there’s a map of the Seattle Monorail Project’s failed green line—which was supposed to come on line this month. The little blurb says:

“An ambitious plan, with a promising diagram, to build a new monorail network has recently collapsed, and light rail is proposed.”

I give you trogs Lisbon:

Are you throwing a New Year’s party or event that’s open to the public? Wanna advertise it for free in our popular New Year’s listings?

All you need to do is send it in an email to music@thestranger.com. Make sure to write “New Year’s” in the subject line somewhere so I can pick it out of the crowd of “MegaDik” spams.

All events qualify, not just concerts or dance parties. Having a seance? Submit. Wine tasting? Submit. Bong-decorating gathering? Submit. (No NAMBLA gatherings, please.)

Your deadline is approaching fast—It’s TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18TH. Hurry hurry hurry!

So smooth, so delicious.

Three paintings of Jesus H. Christ.

A chow review—either you tell us what to write about or you write it yourself.

A Turbonegro poster by Jeff Kleinsmith.

A donated abortion.

And on the high end…

The cineaste’s dream package (42-inch plasma screen, region-free DVD player, lots of stuff from Scarecrow Video) is going for $750.

The Italian leather sofa is going for $405.

And my favorite item—the miniature football signed by Daryl Tapp, defensive end for the Seattle Seahawks, plus a gift certificate to the online lingerie shop www.yourprivates.com (we’re not implying anything)—is still at a measly $15.50.

It doesn’t look good…

Pierce County sheriff’s searchers continue this morning looking for three snowboarders who have been out a full week now in the back country near the Crystal Mountain ski area.

Searchers found a makeshift camp Thursday but no sign of the three Seattle men.

Film

‘A Walk into the Sea’ and Danny Williams’s Factory Films at Northwest Film Forum

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

There is this idea out there, commonly espoused by precocious high school students and other irritating people, that a movie can ruin a book. Ruin it! Suck the joy out of it! Forevermore block the successful transmission of text from the page to your mind.

I’m newly annoyed because I just read Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly using her review of Atonement as an opportunity to bash Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice all over again. (Here’s her review of Pride & Prejudice, in which she disses Jane Austen, of all people. By the way, Ms. Taylor, Austen’s greatest achievement was in narrative technique—flexible focalization freeing characters’ thoughts from the inconvenience of direct report—not genre. Anyway. Here’s my review for comparison.) Look. Pride and Prejudice is invincible. Its place in the literary canon is assured; its place in cultural history is undisputed. It’s been adapted into plenty of fine and terrible films, and for the theater many times over. A new film version cannot touch it. What a new film version can do is interpret—offer a new reading that sends you scurrying to see if its assertions are justified. It’s fun to see films struggle against their source material, not horrifying.

No matter how bad Joe Wright’s Atonement might have been (and it isn’t bad at all—here’s my review), Ian McEwan’s novel can take it. The book may not be as famous—or as good—as Pride and Prejudice, but its words still stick to the printed page. Who cares if a bad film is made of a good book?

Is Gabriel García Márquez forever tarnished by the new Love in the Time of Cholera?

I just don’t believe it. People who complain about movies ruining books have only their own weak imaginations to blame.

I’m getting torn up out there on the Fatosphere for my advice to HARD—or my readers’ advice to hard; it’s kind of hard to keep it all straight at this point—but one member-in-good-standing of the fat acceptance movement has my back:

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I sympathise with the FA movement (obviously, as evidenced by my list of links to the right), and I strongly believe in HAES—health at every size. You can’t help your body type, and if you take good care of your body, you shouldn’t be penalized by society for looking a certain way. Makes sense.

But here’s the thing: HARD’s wife is not healthy. She started out healthy (presumably), but has gained a bunch of weight, her skin is terrible, etc. His description makes it clear that she is no longer the picture of health. And he finds her repulsive. You know what? I would too…. Now, the minister says “through sickness and through health.” You’re supposed to stick with your partner even as they get old and saggy and beer-gutted and grey or bald. But if your partner suddenly turns into a total slob, you can’t force yourself to find them attractive…. So this is a pretty important tenant of Savage Love—you have a duty to your partner, and they have a duty to you. You both work together to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, and thus you keep your relationship happy and healthy. It doesn’t sound like a foreign concept to me…

So yes, this guy could be being a total douche and his poor wife has, in actuality, gained a measly twenty pounds and he’s exaggerating the rest. Or his wife could have a serious problem which is turning her into a gross slob, and in my opinion he’s well within his rights not to find her attractive anymore. So what was Dan’s actual advice to HARD?

Your wife—the weight gain, the hair growth, the moodiness, the drugs—may be clinically depressed or have some undiagnosed medical condition, both subjects you could broach without touching on the boner-killing fatso stuff. But, yeah, at 10 years together you have a right to expect that your partner will maintain some base level of attractiveness. That’s not about sexism—I expect the same from my boyfriend—it’s about respect.

Wow. How terrible.

So which is the gayer? Posting those fucking lions? Or posting the trailer for the Sex and the City movie?

Or is it a draw?

The hander was a twenty-something “burner”-styled female standing in front of American Apparel. She had a large stack of copies and handed one to each person that passed.

First, the list contains a few entries not visible on the above scan. Films 31-36 are Capturing the Friedman’s (sic), Shattered Glass, The New World, A Civil Action, Capote, and The Bourne Identity, respectively. Films 68-70 are The Last King of Scotland, Seraphim Falls, and High Heels and Low Lives, respectively.

Second, what the fuck? Every attempt to make sense of this list makes my brain hurt, and I’m beginning to think that’s the intended effect.

Is it an art project exposing the arbitrary nature of such year-ending lists? Or is it just the new project of the Broadway flyer-hander-outers who spent the ’90s trying to convince me all dentists were murderers?

Who knows, but I’m impressed.

Also, it’s true: The Holiday is the third best movie. Not fourth, not second. Third.