Dear Sub Pop, Happy Birthday! I almost sh*t my pants climbing to the top of the Space Needle with you, but now I love you even more. Yours, Kelly O

More photos after the jump…

Continue reading "Space Needle Captured: The Video" »

Sexy, sexy Mormon boys…

Grumpy, grumpy Mormon elders…

A Las Vegas man who devised a calendar that features shirtless Mormon missionaries is facing a disciplinary hearing and possible excommunication because of the project.

A lifetime member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Chad Hardy was summoned by letter to a Sunday meeting with a council of elders to discuss his “conduct unbecoming a member of the church.”

Thanks, PopTart!

Reading

Zach Plague at Richard Hugo House

• See what else is happening in Books on Saturday »

Nostalgia

Sub Pop Turns 20 at Marymoor Park

• See what else is happening in Music on Saturday »

^{Mike Bray’s installation Remake (2008), based on The Shining, mixed media}

At Crawl Space Gallery, opening tonight from 6-9 pm. (Gallery site here; artist site here.)

A book by a “Seattle plant and tree expert,” a book with the overpunctuated title Day Hike! Olympic Peninsula: The Best Trails You Can Hike in a Day, an open mic, and several other readings today.

Zach Plague is at the Hugo House reading from boring boring boring boring boring boring boring, which is billed as “a typo/graphic novel.” There’ll be a Stranger Suggests box for this one popping up soonish, so I won’t repeat myself here.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Rayo Casablanca reads from his debut novel, Six Sick Hipsters. It’s about someone who’s killing hipsters, and it’s a mystery.

And at Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Yasmine Galenorn reads from her book Dragon Wytch: Sisters of the Moon, Book 4, which is actually a book about vampires, even though you’d think it was about dragons or wytches (sic).

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

De-nuked: Negotiators agree on terms of North Korean disarmament.

Sanction this: Russia and China veto sanctions on Zimbabwe; Mugabe celebrates.

Bank shot: Failure at IndyMac Bancorp Inc. blamed on U.S. Sen. Charles Shumer.

Wonder twins: Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to be alright.

Tony Snow: Dead at 53.

All apologies: Pope Benedict XVI apologizes for sexual abuse by priests during visit to Australia.

The obstacle: How Bill Clinton complicates Hillary’s likelihood of becoming Obama’s running mate.

Heartache: Innovative heart surgeon Michael Debakey dead at 99.

iPwned: Customers grumble over software problems as Apple launches new iPhone.

Fire on the Eastside: Gregoire declares State of Emergency to battle wildfires in Eastern Washington.

Selfish shellfishers: Taylor Shellfish illegally farmed public waters.

Bad experience: The Hendrix family battles in court over how best to ruin Jimi Hendrix’s legacy.

Or… the advisability of leaning out a sliding glass door, holding onto a metal railing, and videotaping a thunderstorm. Ouch. Glad you’re alright, Slow Loris.

Thanks to Slog tipper Fnarf.

Just one judicial candidate out of 15 running for state supreme court and appeals court positions —supreme court candidate C.F. (Frank) Vulliet—has refused to sign a pledge proposed by the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns to run a clean, fair campaign.

The pledge, which states that the signer “will not take any action
during the campaign which will harm the public faith in the integrity of the judicial system in Washington,” was prompted by a surprisingly ugly state supreme court race in 2006, when the Building Industry Alliance of Washington (the same guys who bought billboards for Dino Rossi accusing Gov. Christine Gregoire and “Seattle” of stealing the 2004 election) ran smear ads attacking judge Gerry Alexander as too old for the job, raising questions about his character, and criticizing him for speaking sympathetically of a fellow justice who was arrested for drunk driving.

In a seven-page letter replete with references to the First Amendment and studded with legalese, Vulliet lays out his reasons for refusing to sign the pledge. “While the efforts of WCEJC may be well-intentioned, the pledge conflicts with both the right and duty to inform voters of vital matters affecting the courts, and their right to have as much information as available on which to make their choice. In the longer term, the restriction on discussing negative material conflicts with its purpose: to instill and maintain public confidence in those same courts,” the letter says.

I’m not saying Vulliet’s going to run a dirty campaign—hell, I know next to nothing about the guy. But I sure hope the BIAW’s smear tactics aren’t what he’s referring to when he talks about “vital matters affecting the courts.”

Seattle isn’t the only city with an anti-pot zealot named Carr (we have Tom Carr, the city attorney). Boston has its own anti-pot Carr, first name Howie. And he’s a dolt (our Carr is actually smart on non-pot issues). Here’s Boston-Carr’s op-ed in the Herald.

Marijuana makes you stupid. It’s as simple as that.

And now in Massachusetts, we are going to have a ballot question that asks the following: Do you really want to make it even easier than it already is to get stupid, and stay stupid?

Yes, the Bong Brigade is on the march again. They want to put the high back into high school, the truckin’ back in truck stops, the joint back in all those joint legislative committees. Stand by to see stoners at the Stone Zoo, potheads in Marblehead. The grass is always greener in Greenfield, dude.

This one’s, like, totally for Jerry Garcia!

The ganja-guys then cite the alleged “collateral damage” of this CORI indignity: “inability to find employment, obtain housing and receive a college loan.”

Please. The reason stoners can’t find employment is because they’re too wasted. They forgot to turn on the alarm clock. They went out for a smoke break and never returned. They missed the bus, man. They can’t “obtain housing” because they can’t get it together to ever leave mom’s rent-free basement….

The fact is, once you make something legal, even if it’s just de facto, it’s easier to get. Pot does fry your brain.

On cue for the marijuana-decriminalization initiative—which appears likely to pass—Howie Carr trots out every stale joke (dude!) and hackneyed stereotype (your brain’s an egg in a skillet!) to paint all pot smokers as a bunch of behind-the-times dolts. But the joke is on Carr. Most of the adults reading the Boston Herald have smoked pot (thousands of them still do), and they have jobs, and set their alarm clock, read the paper, and have every reason to disdain Carr’s simplistic, unscientific hackery. The proof is in the clicking. Pot-law reformers are using increasingly sophisticated media and messages to earn enormous followings online. Paul Armentano at Huffington Post, Scott Morgan at DRCNet, and Bruce Mirken at AlterNet deconstruct bad science and shred federal drug propaganda, with class and sophistication. They’ve been so effective that the White House has established its own shamelessly defensive blog, Pushing Back, in an attempt spar. But like Carr, all they’ve got are the half-baked arguments of yesteryear. So ironically, it’s the drug warriors who live up to stereotypes of yester-decade, while the time-warp hippies leave them in the dust.

Roll Another One: Medical-marijuana patients in Washington say 24 ounces isn’t enough.

Killer Weed? Guys busted growing dope in cemetery.

Killer Cop? Chokes marijuana suspect.

Earlier this week, the city announced that it is pursuing a joint venture with several Eastside cities to build a new jail for misdemeanor offenders.

In 2012, cities in King County will have to provide their own space for misdemeanents—because of expected population increases in the jail system—currently housed in the county’s jails.

Because of the impending deadline, in May, Seattle announced four potential locations in the city—in West Seattle, Haller Lake, and Interbay—to build a new, seven-acre jail. Neighbors flipped out about having a jail in their backyards, and city officials have been scrambling to find other options.

According to the preliminary results from a feasibility study, the city may end up building a jail with cities like Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, and Shoreline, rather than go it alone. Current population projections estimate that the cities would need 640 beds over the next 20 years, and the city has not said where the joint venture jail might be located.

While it’s possible the city will join in the construction of a regional facility, it is still holding meetings about the four previously announced in-city jail sites.

Tomorrow’s meeting—on the Aurora Avenue site—will go from 9:00 a.m. to noon at North Seattle Community College.

The city’s complete feasibility study should be released later this month.

I’ve been watching all this hubbub about Obama “lurching” to the center with some amusement. Sure, I was bummed about some recent developments (FISA, notably, though I would’ve been more vexed had the vote been even vaguely close), but overall this is much ado about nothing.

Remember, kids, according to Obama’s basketball-coach brother in law, Obama’s signature move is to “fake right and veer left.”

The supposed issues:

1) FISA. (Let’s get this one out of the way.) Yep, Obama voted for an expansion of the government’s spying powers, along with an immunity provision that he had once vowed to filibuster. Lame. That said, he voted to narrow the legislation on each of the three immunity-related amendments (Dodd’s to strike Title II [“Protections for Electronic Communication Service Providers”], Specter’s to “limit retroactive immunity for providing assistance to the United States to instances in which a Federal court determines the assistance was provided in connection with an intelligence activity that was constitutional,” and Bingaman’s to “stay pending cases against certain telecommunications companies and provide that such companies may not seek retroactive immunity until 90 days after the date the final report of the Inspectors General on the President’s Surveillance Program is submitted to Congress”), all of which failed decisively. On the telecom immunity portion of the bill, at least, Obama’s votes weren’t so much a flip-flop as a resigned capitulation. And the legislation itself passed 69-28, so let’s not pretend Obama’s vote would have made a difference either way.

2) Campaign finance. You know, I don’t much care that Obama opted out. It’s really our responsibility as voters (and as taxpayers—only 7.3% checked the box for the public campaign financing system in 2006) to demand a public financing system that’s attractive to candidates. The campaign finance system is meant to be a carrot (you spend less than X, and we’ll help you do it), not a stick. We can’t operate the system if it’s based on virtue and shaming—the decision to opt in can and should be based on rational self-interest.

3) Reproductive rights and abstinence education. I understand why people are freaking out about Obama’s recent comments (to an evangelical magazine) on this issue, but there’s just very little reason to worry. Obama is a cosponsor of a Senate bill with the key phrase “life or health of the mother,” which is understood to encompass mental health. And he’s taken plenty of shit throughout his career for supporting medically accurate sex education (with noncoercive information about the abstinence option) at all grade levels. The fact is, a president is not a legislator. A president does, however, appoint Supreme Court justices. And Obama should and will nominate people (like these contenders) who are litmus-ready on choice. McCain would do precisely the opposite.

4) Child rapists and Heller. OK, I’m fiercely pro-gun control and anti-death penalty. Particularly in the case of child rape, you don’t want to disincentivize reporting of the crime—and parents don’t necessarily want to be responsible for sending a family friend or relative to the gallows, even if this person raped their kid. But we really need to take everything Obama says about recent Supreme Court decisions with a gigantic spoonful of salt. Duh, Obama doesn’t want to get people riled up by saying child rapists should get off easy, but again, this is really a question about what sort of thinkers he would nominate to the Supreme Court. And he would almost certainly nominate liberals who will vote exactly as the liberal justices voted on these two cases.

5) Faith-based initiatives. Yes! This is exactly the sort of centrist move on a fringe issue that could help peel away some religious voters without causing any real harm. The Christian Science Monitor did a good job of explaining how Obama’s vision diverges from Bush’s.

6) Hedging on the Iraq Timetable. Thank goodness. I always thought Obama had a sensible approach to withdrawal, and I strongly appreciate that he has retained close ties to Samantha (“Monster Remark”) Power and her intense drive to prevent genocide in Iraq. And this doesn’t really qualify as a flip-flop. Obama has always given strong signals that the pace of withdrawal would take account of circumstances on the ground (“as careful getting out as we were careless getting in”). He should not be sworn in with the public believing he is obligated to get all troops out by 2009, and he’s making smart moves to avoid that now.

On all the serious issues in this campaign, Obama has not slipped an inch. He’s sticking with his tax proposals, he hasn’t futzed with his environmental platform, he’s still for repealing DOMA, he’s still for universal health care, he still mocks the notion of a gas tax holiday, he’s still for reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work. I like that he’s capable of generating “Obama Lurches to the Center” headlines by making minor tweaks on fringe issues and saying unexpected things about Supreme Court decisions. Obama is proving himself the ideal stealth liberal. The bloom has not faded.

And let us daily remind ourselves, the enemy is John McCain.

A great deal of heart and soul and a surprising amount of nerdiness will walk out of the Stranger’s offices in just a few minutes as Bradley Steinbacher is going on to do bigger and better things with his life. And I think it’s about time someone called bullshit.

Seriously, Brad. What the fuck?

Brad has always been the quiet, reasonable one in the office, and his departure will undoubtedly endanger many of our lives.

Brad has prevented publisher Tim Keck from following through on his many threats to “fucking gut [us] assholes” for consistently failing to meet deadlines—which is often since we’re all a bunch of fucking potheads—and has always been there to pass out vitamin D and orange slices when someone has a bad trip at a staff meeting. More likely than not, by Tuesday, we’ll all have gone feral and eaten an intern.

So, fuck you for leaving, Obi-Brad Kenobi. You [were] our only hope.

photo by Chieni, via Flickr.

Fuck all this work nostalgia—golf memories!

There’s the time Brad shanked the hell out of a little chip shot and the ball skipped across the pond and rolled up the bank and onto the green. Brad didn’t realize it had made it to the other side, though, because he had already dejectedly put his head down and started cursing the world. We laughed and hollered, and he thought we were all dicks for reveling in his misfortune.

Or when my 6-iron popped into another dimension, and Brad laughed at me for about 20 minutes, possibly more. Bring it up to him now, he’ll laugh at me again.

Mostly, though, I’ll remember looking across the fairway from the right rough (read: deep in the woods to the far right of the right rough) to Brad skulking through the left rough, our opposite-handedness and identical slice-y-ness keeping us on opposite sides of the golf course but in similar states of mind most of the day.

For those who are still mad at Roger Valdez, former head of King County’s tobacco prevention program, for pushing for (and rigorously enforcing) Seattle’s indoor-smoking ban, here’s something to put on the plus side of the ledger: An op/ed he wrote in today’s P-I, which makes the case that everybody just needs to calm down about the pace of change in Seattle. And he has some smart suggestions for keeping the things and places that make neighborhoods work, without opposing development as such.

Where will all the new people live? Where will they park? Are they going to be noisy? Are they going to make me late for work by slowing me down in traffic or in the latte line? Are we paving over all the great old places to accommodate condominiums? Are all the old crusty bars getting taken over by newcomers who don’t like smoke, noisy bands and want fancy beers?

We love our permeable society but are conflicted by change, especially when it comes to our neighborhood in the form of housing construction. And people with Obama’s “Change” bumper sticker on their car are just as likely these days to have one that says “Free Ballard.”

Response to the demolition of the Ballard Denny’s is a great example of this internal conflict.

One commenter on the P-I’s blog summed it up this way: “People building the condos couldn’t care less about the fact that current Ballard residents don’t want more of them built …. It’d be nice if for once people could stop thinking with their wallets and do something that could make the community happy.”

That is what many think in Greenwood, Belltown, Capitol Hill and all over Seattle’s neighborhoods. How do we provide services, housing, open space and bus service for all the new people without demolishing everything we love about Seattle? Are we turning Seattle into a soulless Everyplace with no character?

Unless we ban new development and put up walls around our city (what would that do to our character?), the growth is coming and with it change. What can we do?

We could expand the existing transfer of development rights program for landmark buildings beyond downtown into other neighborhoods. The program allows an owner of a historic property to sell her development rights to the city. If that owner’s property rights allow six stories of development, that capacity could then be sold by the city, later, to a different developer who wants to build higher somewhere else. In that way we can preserve low-rise historic buildings and their existing use while actually increasing the number of new housing units.

We could use our land-use code to create incentives for developers to preserve existing uses, such as community arts and cultural venues, in exchange for increasing the number of units they can build. Incentive zoning, which trades such public benefits as community use for more housing units, is an example of a way to create needed housing while preserving elements important to a neighborhood’s character and community.

Finally, we need to radically rethink zoning. Zoning exists to protect the health and safety of the public, not regulate developer profit. But it is our code, and we should experiment with it, creating rules that focus on project outcomes rather than just height. […] Too often our existing code forces developers to design and build conservatively and allows neighborhood involvement only in the form of protest and appeal.

Dig it.

From a press release for the upcoming production of Shrek: the Musical:

“Mayor Nickels Welcomes Everyone’s Favorite Large Green Ogre to the Emerald City.”

So the mayor is welcoming himself to the city? But he’s not green…

He just thinks he is.

Without Brad, I wouldn’t be writing. Mr. Steinbacher was my first editor, ever. I’m trained as a computer and biomedical engineer, not exactly professions known for their communication skills.

He was responsible for introducing me to the very basics: What in the hell is a byline? What do I do with a semicolon, other than terminate a statement in C? Do I get paid? Are all writers temperamental? Should I contribute to slog? All of this was right when he was attempting to pull together the massive SIFF guide. I’m forever indebted.

But yes. As a deeply shy person myself, Brad scares me. He always did and still does, despite his always being kind and welcoming to me. I’ve always felt like I’m sitting at the wrong table in middle school when in the room with him—a person as much as any who made the Stranger, a paper I truly and honestly respect.

Brad, take this as the ultimate victory: At the conclusion of my General Exam (for my PhD), my committee members turned to me and said, “your writing for the Stranger is vastly better than your science writing.” Ouch.

Thanks Brad.

It’s cocktail o’clock! Some recommended places to drink outside from the Bar Exam archives:

The Terrace Garden on the fifth floor of the downtown Red Lion (with weird free taco bar!)

Loretta’s in South Park

The War Room on Capitol Hill

The Pink Door in the Market

Eastlake Bar & Grill (sometimes with bikers)

Six Seven at the Edgewater (may cause seasickness)

Victory Lounge (with a nice view of balls)

Sully’s (née Q) on upper Queen Anne

King’s Hardware in Ballard

The Red Door in Fremont

Ivar’s Salmon House on Lake Union

In memoriam: The Jade Pagoda

The Door That Is Pink

Me, working for you!

After four weekends, the Louis Leterrier-directed “The Incredible Hulk” has earned $125 million, the same as what “Hulk” had pulled in at the same time in its run. “Hulk” finished with $132 million, and its successor is unlikely to do much better.

Maybe people just don’t like CGI Hulk.

Via Kung Fu Rodeo.

I’ve worked with Brad in the office for less than two months. So while I don’t know him very well, in this time we’ve been very close—our desks are separated by a thiiiiin wall. He’s always been polite enough to pretend like he didn’t see or hear the stupid things I write/say/do. And I do a lot of them. All the best, Mr. Stranger.

I know you don’t want any more of these posts, but too freakin’ Brad.

This one goes out to Brad.

The resemblance is eerie, ain’t it?

But I know Brad pretty well, seeing as we’ve shared an office for ten years or whatever now, and seeing as how, besides Terry, Brad is the probably the one man in Seattle that I’ve been naked behind the most. I know that Brad is hating these testimonials. He’s a modest man with much to be modest about. And we are going to miss him anyway.

(Hey, Brad: I’m on the road, no wifi. Could you toss this up on Slog for me? Clean up spelling and grammar, find a pic to post with it, etc. Thanks.)

Sent from my iPhone

There you go, Savage. Your last final fuck you to me up on Slog, along with the pic. Unlike the daily threat of your aging, distended sack on the back of my neck all these years, I hope you enjoy it.

As for the rest of you, I’m touched, really, but for the love of God let’s stop this. Aren’t there any pitbull maulings to report? Shouldn’t Charles be waxing incomprehensible about Star Wars or something? Quick, ECB! Put something up about Obama and abortion!

After I quit my job to join this little rag five years ago, Josh and Dan invited me for a little post-work celebration on Friday afternoon. I was a little ragged, having just given told my boss that I was going to work for the competition that morning. Anyway, I showed up at Bill’s off Broadway half an hour after Josh had told me people would be there, and found one guy with brooding away at a table big enough for twelve. I think we said nine words between us. It was an awkward million years. I thought, “Well, I guess THIS guy didn’t want to hire me.”

Two things I didn’t realize at the time: 1) Brad—like most writers, including me—is actually sort of shy. 2) Brad is a wonderful dose of sanity and calm—a gatekeeper to certain Stranger staffers’ more, um, dramatic impulses. I AM TALKING TO YOU, SAVAGE Case in point: That very same evening, before Savage had even said hello, the VERY FIRST THING HE DID was undo my bra (yes, through my shirt. It’s a skill he claims—CLAIMS—he learned doing drag.) Another time, as we were having an argument ABOUT THE DUKE RAPE CASE, Savage absentmindedly dropped trou (in fairness, to change into shorts for racquetball). On those and countless other occasions, Brad has been the guy who turns around and says, “Dude, what the fuck?”

Who will say “Dude, what the fuck?” for me now, Mr. Steinbacher? WHO?!

Brad, I don’t care what anybody says - the fact that you’re leaving us to train for THIS - hey, I think it’s cool.

Brad has suffered a lot at the hands of the homosexuals around this office. Knowing this, and knowing how gamely he’s taken all the waxing, Ben Gaying, and suggestions that he and I go to gay couple’s counseling together as a stunt (the joke of which neither he nor I ever quite understood), I’ve tried very hard not to add to the general gay-pression of this kind and lovely fella.

So you can imagine my mortification when, some while back, I found myself making repeated drunk-dial calls to Brad, weekend after weekend, only to realize, and then inform him, that I’d meant to call “the gay Brad in my phone” instead of, you know, my Managing Editor.

A typical conversation might begin sometime between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday:

Me: Hey Brad…

Brad: Hey Eli. It’s Steinbacher. I’m not the one you want, am I?

Me: Oh shit. Not again. Sorry! See you in the office on Monday.

It is a very special straight man who can let you know, all with a certain warmness and humor in his voice, that your doofus drunk-dialing has been noted, silently mocked, appreciated in a slapstick sort of way, and also unappreciated in a “Don’t haunt my nights with your gay drama too!” sort of way.

The best thing, though, was that I always felt like he was rooting for me to hang up, drunk dial someone else, and quickly end up engaged in certain activities that are far more exciting than drunk-dialing.

I eventually drunk-proofed my cell phone so that Brad and I stopped having our late night chats, but I’ve always kind of missed them. Maybe I’ll un-drunk-proof my phone now that I won’t be seeing him during the weekdays anymore.

For what it’s worth, the story of the Alabama Republican caught having sex with a man is also up on Wonkette and Pam’s House Blend.

Fun fact about Alabama AG Troy King: In law, he argued that his school’s Gay/Lesbian Alliance should be outlawed; and as AG, he tried to make Alabama’s law banning dildos and vibrators even more draconian.

…but according to Gaywired.com (citing PerezHilton.com):

Alabama Attorney General Troy King, a conservative Republican Christian who has called homosexuality the ‘downfall of society,’ has been caught with his pants down—literally—in a gay sex scandal. King was reportedly nabbed having sex with a male assistant by his wife, Paige King, in the couple’s own bed.

This could be a hoax. It’s been hours since this hit the web and none of the newspapers in Alabama have anything. Then again, King’s record, ethics-wise, isn’t spotless. And, you know, he’s a Republican.

Christopher Frizzelle on the sad disappearance of Nextbook:

Nextbook’s goal to promote Jewish literature was built around books, not beliefs; never had an exclusionary vibe to it; and was always marketed to the mainstream. In contrast to small bookstore readings or Seattle Arts & Lectures’ giant hall, Nextbook’s readings and onstage interviews (more than a dozen a year) often happened in bars—the Rendezvous, Tractor Tavern, places like that.

It’s a great look back at why Nextbook was so important, and a consideration of the big hole it’s going to leave in Seattle’s reading scene. You should read it.

Because he is a quitter, and quitters never win.

For you, my friend, I will attend the international stunt man school in Mukilteo, Washington.

And I will invite you to my graduation, when I will fall, screaming and on fire, from a 40-foot tower. Because I know it will give you joy.

When I started as a Stranger intern years and years ago in 2000, there were two kinds of people: there were the nice, supportive people who tried to teach me the ways of the paper, understanding that I’m working for free so the least they could do was buy me lunch once in a while and make sure I learned something, and then there were those who just ignored me. I wasn’t their intern, I didn’t exist.

Brad Steinbacher was the first person to break the mold. Taking a bratty big brother role, he’d prey on my naive insecurities and flip me shit about missing a deadline by one minute. When he was film editor, he was the man who started the tradition of sending me to all the shitty movies. He nicknamed me Scooby, one time he kicked a hole in my desk, one time he broke promo CD I intended on listening to (while in its case!) with his bare hands, and he also went through a phase of pulling the hood of my hooded sweatshirt over my head and shutting it in my desk drawer. I’d have to flail my arms about for a few seconds, before I could set myself free.

The worst of it: I also used to have a little, cute, fuzzy lamb doll at my desk—some cheesy movie promo thing. Now, thanks to Mr. Steinbacher, it rests not on my computer monitor, but feet above my head, out of reach, on the dirty, dusty ledge above a vent in the office.

RIP, Lamby.

But with all the crap he’s put me through (lovingly, I’m sure), Brad was also one of the first people are The Stranger to be nice to me, sincerely, without following it up with the question “Do you have time to transcribe this tape for me?”

So thank you, Bradley Steinbacher, for flipping me shit all these years which consequently brought me out of my shell and made me feel at home at The Stranger. We’ll miss you.

The first time I saw Brad, he was dressed like a lady. It was his 21st birthday, which he was celebrating as all former Catholic schoolboys in Seattle do: By allowing Dan Savage to put him in full drag then sign him up for a lip-synch competition at the dearly departed Brass Connection.

Brad is a handsome man. But he is an ugly woman. He looked glamorous, with a gorgeous wig and a full Zora-executed professional glamour face. But he also kinda looked like one of the wives in the “home beauty parlor” scene in GoodFellas.

I don’t remember exactly what kind of dress Lady Brad was wearing, but I know it involved extensive waist-up shaving, perhaps taking weeks. What’s burned in my brain is the song: “Back in Baby’s Arms,” the jaunty Patsy Cline number which Brad mouthed gamely before executing a truly stunning finale, in which he was swept up into the arms of a 250-pound man wearing a diaper.

He came in second in the night’s competition, but he won first place in my heart.

This one time, when I was drunk and ranting wildly at the Bus Stop on stultifying subjects no one else in the tiny bar cared a whit about but about which they were all getting quite the earful, Bradley Steinbacher kindly hoisted me out of my chair and removed me to the sidewalk outside. That was really nice of him. I don’t like to make a fool of myself in bars.

Really, sir?

Update, thanks to reverend dr dj riz, an infinitely more considerate and less passive-aggressive person than I:

i met this guy at cal anderson park a few weeks ago while i was with a quadraplegic friend who uses a wheelchair that untilizes the same technology as this man’s segway. i also thought this man a lazy fool until he explained that he has a condition that makes it difficult and painful for him to walk. he also has very brittle bones that break easily ( remember that otherwise stupid m. nught shaymalan movie unbreakable ?)which is why he wears a helmet and kneepads. he engages in conversation fairly easily and if you had asked he might have explained his condition to you. the man doesn’t reserve your judgement or ridicule. so cut this shit out

My sincere apologies to the brittle-boned everywhere. Segways for the regular-boned remain undeniably silly.

Brad, as you may have heard, has been at the Stranger for 14 years, ending today. I’ve been here something more like 14 months. So I don’t have as many Brad memories as some of my colleagues, and thanks to the pot, a lot of the Brad memories I do have are hazy at best. But there is one time I can semi-coherently recall hanging out with Brad outside of work.

Grand Archives were playing the Triple Door. I was going because that sort of thing is kind of my beat here (and because, hey, Grand Archives). Brad was going because he knows all those dudes form back in Jesuit school or whatever. So we combined forces to seek out somewhere to drink downtown before the show. After being rebuffed at a few overcrowded yuppie bars, we ended up down at the Alibi Room, drinking bourbon at the bar. We talked about the ladies. We talked about life. We were about go watch Grand Archives. You know, real guy stuff. And it was sweet. I get the feeling that, if I had come around a little earlier, or if Brad was sticking around a little longer, he might’ve imparted a lot of dudely wisdom upon me. Or at least more bourbon.

Now it’s gonna be all ladies and fags around here. Thanks, Brad.

FiveThirtyEight has a fairly comprehensive link-happy list of all the Obama comparisons that have been made in the last few months. Obama has been compared to both Bushes, Bob Dole, John Kerry, Richard Nixon, and just about every politician ever to be involved in presidential politics except Taft.

In other news, the Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle website has been transformed into an incredibly cheap-ass book.

First (and sorry, I know this is a couple of days old) check out what John McCain has to say about insurance companies that pay for wang-stiffeners but not for birth control:

McCain (laughing nervously): I certainly do not want to discuss that issue.

The LA Times’ Maeve Reston: But apparently you’ve voted against-

McCain: I don’t know what I voted.

Reston: Voted against coverage of birth control, forcing health insurance companies to cover birth control in the past. Is that still your position?

McCain: I’ll look at my voting record on it, but I have, uh, (5 second pause) , I don’t recall the vote right now. But I’ll be glad to look at it and get back to you as to why, I don’t -

Reston: I guess (McCain advisor Carly Fiorina’s) statement was that it was unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?

McCain: (8 second pause) I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote, I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate. I will respond to - it’s a, it’s a-

Reston: Delicate issue?

McCain: It’s something that I had not thought much about.

Yeah, why would a presidential candidate spend much time thinking about a silly little issue like equity between men’s and women’s health care? And anyway, McCain’s got the ladies’ vote sewn up—thanks to that women-only town hall meeting he and Cindy are holding about the challenges we girls face in business! I guess he’ll probably tell them the same thing he said before: They need more education and training, not fair pay.

Brad is leaving the paper today. The future looks bleak. Who will I turn to when I need a jolt of inspiration?
There was always one of these in your office. No more will this be the case. Kelly has a mountain of bionic beer; Megan has a bucket of sweets; and there once was a drawer that contained nuts, raisins, and other miniature things that mice like to masticate. But these foods and fluids have no effect on me. Where will I go for my jolt of inspiration?

Brad is a self-loather. He likes to say of himself, “You can’t kill what’s already dead.” He also likes to believe that as he has gotten older, he has lost his appeal. Perhaps it is impertinent to say so, but I would like to report that this is empirically untrue. Slowly, over the two-plus years I’ve worked here, I have discovered that every single person I’ve ever met who also knows Brad currently has or has at one point in recent history had some sort of crush on him. It’s almost weird. Nevertheless, it is a body of evidence impossible to argue with. (And quite harmless and innocent—with due respect, Brad is very taken.)

The alpha and omega of my own personal crush is Brad’s performance on an episode of the ridiculous Stranger-staffed game show Whatcha Talkin’ ‘Bout, Sherman?!, which aired in the mid-90s on public access. Brad was sort of the Vanna White of that show. Except that in at least one episode, viewed by me in a recent VHS-fueled nostalgia trip, Brad was also the Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Marx brothers.

The man can pratfall.

I mean, really, really well. Everyone knows he is a funny man. But he also seems to be a gifted physical comedian. Underneath all those torn-up baggy jeans and worn-out plaid shirts is a body just waiting to fall. Perfectly. Hysterically.

Swoon.

Eastside Democrat Darcy Burner is already on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue list, which means she’ll be getting an unspecified amount of financial and strategic support from D.C. Dems this year. (Last cycle the average Red to Blue candidate received about $400,000 from the DCCC.)

But here’s a list I’m told Burner didn’t make: The list of 31 Congressional races, complied by the Associated Press, in which the DCCC has already reserved air time for commercials set to go up in September and October.

Now, I’m also told that this list represents only an initial ad buy, so there may not be any meaning to glean from Burner being left out this time around. Or there may be.

Either way, it’s worth keeping an eye on the outside ad money because the race in the 8th Congressional District, like a lot of other races around the country, has historically been heavily influenced by ad buys made in the last few months of the campaign. And every time you ask Democrats in the 8th why it didn’t work for them the last time around, you always hear the same thing: Not enough help from D.C.

Will Burner and her allies be able to compete with the Republican commercials that are sure to air as the fall campaign draws to a close? Based on today’s list, that’s still unclear.

The 36th District Democrats issued no endorsement in the legislative race between Reuven Carlyle and John Burbank last night. After a vote for a dual endorsement went down in flames, a vote to give Burbank the sole endorsement fell just short of the required two-thirds majority. Earlier this year, state Democratic Party chair Dwight Pelz awarded Burbank the party’s official nomination, after the district itself declined to pick a nominee. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club and Washington Conservation voters both awarded their sole nominations to Carlyle.

The Stranger Election Control Board (SECB) will be endorsing in the 36th and all the other races later this month. We met with Carlyle and Burbank a few days ago. The interview was pretty tense, but well in hand, for a good hour—until I asked Burbank about a rumor I’d heard that he was telling people in the district that Carlyle only put his four kids in public schools because he’s running for office. That set them both off like a shot. Burbank denied ever saying anything of the sort. Carlyle, agitated, cut him off: “Stop lying! I’ve heard this from four people. I’m asking you to have the courage and integrity to stop lying about this!” To prove his point, Carlyle then pulled out a signed statement from a voter who said Burbank had come to his door and said just that. “I’ve got the signatures from the voters saying that you’re going around and lying!” Carlyle boomed.

Burbank pointed out that Carlyle’s claim that, if elected, he’ll be the only state rep with kids in Seattle public schools isn’t entirely accurate—Gerry Pollet, running in the 46th, is making the same claim. Then Burbank attempted a gotcha, calling Carlyle out for putting one of his kids in private school during kindergarten and first grade. (That would be two years out of what will be 52 years total, assuming Carlyle’s kids all go to kindergarten and graduate on time, for those following along). Carlyle responded: “I’m not saying Gerry’s not running. I’m saying you’re lying about my kids!”

Clearly, class is a huge point of tension between these two candidates. Earlier in the interview, Carlyle accused Burbank of “running on class warfare” by portraying Carlyle as a richie-rich yuppie with a fancy motorcycle and a big house on Queen Anne Hill. While all that is certainly true, Carlyle is also a former foster child who grew up with a single, working-class mom. More to the point, does any of this stuff matter? Personally, I think there are more important issues—like tax reform, the Democrats’ failure to flex their supermajority in the House, and the influence of the BIAW on the legislature—than whether our citizen legislators are well-off or merely middle-class.

UPDATE: This post has been edited to reflect the fact that Carlyle was not the beneficiary of an inheritance. That assertion was based on inaccurate information from another source; Carlyle wrote me over the weekend to correct the error.

In Toledo:

A man who was shot by police in a drug raid Thursday night around 11 p.m. in the 200 block of Wasaon near Western faces charges of drug trafficking.

Police Chief Mike Navarre says detectives from the vice unit and the SWAT team went to the duplex with a search warrant to look for drugs. The officers yelled “Police!” then went up to the second floor, finding the door open and a man inside holding a shotgun.

An officer fired on the suspect, Perry Buck, hitting him in the wrist. Buck was taken to an ambulance; we are told his injuries are not serious. He and a woman were both taken into custody.

Toledo police confiscated marijuana, a 20-gauge shotgun and shells and Vicodin from the residence.

Navarre says this is proof of the danger officers face every day.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … Tonight was just another example where the officers went in and looked down the barrel of a shot gun. We’re very fortunate that no officers were injured tonight,” Navarre said.

Indeed, police got the pot and the painkillers and no cops were hurt. Another success.

I’m pretty excited about The Dark Knight. Maybe not excited enough to take part in all the ‘viral’ shenanigans, but still pretty excited.

I rented and watched Batman: Gotham Knight a couple days ago. Like The Animatrix that came out between the Matrix movies, B:GK is comprised of animated short films made by anime studios.

Though they can be watched separately, the six short films are linked, both by story elements and by the fact that they are all incredibly boring. There was a very good Batman cartoon in the 1990s, and I dearly missed it while I was watching this terrible mess. If, like me, you’re so excited for the Batman movie that you’d consider renting this thing as a kind of placeholder, please don’t.

Avoid.

A. Birch Steen Comments on Brad Steinbacher’s Departure
“Bradley Steinbacher, managing editor of this publication, has tendered his resignation. Unsurprisingly, it was immediately accepted. Word has it Steinbacher has found a more lucrative line of work and is getting out of journalism entirely—the best thing to happen to journalism in years.”

Adrian Ryan Returns to His Hometown in Montana to Watch Barack Obama Watch an Independence Day Parade
“Barack Obama is black. Science has confirmed this. Butte, Montana, on the other hand, is white. Lawn-art-and-RVs white. Extraordinarily white, absurdly white, 96 percent white! I was born and grew up in Butte, so I should know. Before age 14, I had never laid eyes on a bona fide black person who wasn’t a Cosby. Why did Barack Obama—in the mad heat of a presidential campaign—drag his entire family to celebrate America’s most American of holidays in a conservative backwoods with only three sad little electoral votes and almost no appreciable sway in the course of presidential doings?”

Erica C. Barnett on a 9,000-Word, Three-Part Editorial in Crosscut Decrying Light Rail
“The pieces prompted a rather overwrought bit of damage control by Sound Transit, which mistakenly issued, then withdrew, a response replete with phrases like ‘That’s naive,’ and ‘Hello?’ The agency issued a calmed-down version on July 2. Not that there isn’t plenty in MacDonald’s argument to criticize, starting with the utterly unsupported claim that people will love riding the bus if we just make them nicer. As the Seattle streetcar has demonstrated, what you’re riding matters—not just whether, as some have derisively claimed, the train or bus or streetcar is ‘cute,’ but whether you know where it’s going, whether you’re sure it’ll get there on time, and whether you’ll be surrounded by people for whom transit is a rolling homeless shelter. Rail offers certainty—and certainty means people use it as transit, not a convenient place to sleep or shoot up.”

Paul Constant on Dash Shaw and His 720-Page Comic Book Bottomless Belly Button
“Even to look at the thing, one can tell that it’s the sort of dense brick of a book that causes book critics to become insensate and throw around words like tour de force and magnum opus in a drunk-on-criticism daze. The feverishness will only get worse once the besotted literati fly through the thing. It’s enough to make a grown-up reviewer swoon.”

Jen Graves on the Art of Doing What You’re Told
“For the first few cranks, you absorb how the machine works. You watch the exposed gears turning beneath the little stage, puppeteering the papier-mâché figures. You take in the actions that repeat as you turn the crank: An Iraqi woman is raped, a hooded Iraqi prisoner is strung up by his arms, a college student is pushed down and Tasered. On one level, you know these are news events that you had nothing to do with. On another level, you’re the one standing there, turning the crank.”

Bethany Jean Clement on Spring Hill, West Seattle’s First Destination Restaurant
“Mr. Fuller and his staff move silently and smoothly around each other in choreographed harmony in the kitchen. Nary a word is spoken; pots do not clang. One man’s job is to stand still with his brow furrowed and his chin sunk to his chest, concentrating deeply on endless prep tasks. It’s professionalism incarnate, of the opposite sort from red-faced, plate-throwing TV chefs. The precision and intensity are presided over by shining ladles and tongs hanging in order of size, and it’s all reflected in a stripe of mirror along the opposite wall. Watching the lining-up of each stalk of asparagus on a plate makes a certain kind of person feel a little choked up.”

Lindy West Tries to See a Movie about Beavers at the IMAX (Ends Up Seeing a Movie about Car Racing)
“I didn’t want to see the stupid race-car movie. I wanted to see the movie about the beavers. I’d really been hyping up Beavers in my brain: thinking about beavers, talking about beavers, performing an original one-woman preenactment of Mr. Beaver and Mrs. Beaver talking to each other in British accents. ”Ello, Mrs. Beaver!’ ‘Good morning, ‘usband! Would you loik to chew on sticks and wood for breakfast?’ ‘Capital! Cheerio! Oi’ll do the ‘ishes!’ ‘Oi love living underwater with you as mammals, Mr. Beaver.’ Kersploosh!”

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS ISSUE: How the Vaselines feel about reuniting for Sub Pop’s festival this weekend; Sub Pop’s reasons for having the festival in Redmond; No Age getting flipped off and called “faggot queer” by a passing car while giving an interview from their minivan; the last surviving (but perhaps not for long) street newsstand in Seattle; more details about the Russian clown impostors; the difference between flashing and exhibitionism; and (say it ain’t so!) the last installment of Sonics Death Watch.

^{*A note about this cover. Brad Steinbacher has worked at The Stranger for 14 brutal years and done just about every job here at one time or another. He’s also written for almost every section. For years we’ve had this running idea that one week we’d all take the week off, Brad would write the whole paper, and we we’d call it The Steinbacher. That never came to pass, so for his last issue on staff we decided to finally change the name of the paper for a week. But we didn’t tell him. As managing editor, Brad sees all the pages right before they’re sent to the printer, but we wanted The Steinbacher to be a surprise, so our art department had to create a fake “final” cover for Brad’s approval. We also ended up changing another item of cover text in between creating the fake final cover for Brad and the actual final cover for the printer, and when Brad first looked at this week’s issue, he noticed that cover text had changed and wanted to know why. Meanwhile, he completely failed to notice that it said The Steinbacher in huge letters across the top.}

BBC News and The Guardian confirm the U.S. air strike that killed 47 Afghan civilians that the Pentagon continues to deny.

From The Guardian:

A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead.

From the Pentagon, via VOA News:

The Pentagon says no civilians were killed in an air strike Sunday in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan, which local officials say killed 27 people who were walking to a wedding. U.S. military officials in Kabul say they believe the air strike hit its intended target, a group of militants. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that view. “I can only tell you I talked to Afghanistan this morning, and they are very clear with that particular strike that they believe they struck the intended target and that there were not innocent civilians involved in that particular strike,” said Whitman.

The reports of civilian casualties came from Afghan officials, who said they spoke to people in the remote area by telephone. The U.S. military says Taliban militants often pressure villagers into claiming civilian casualties after air strikes.

Alrighty then.

(A few times a week, I take a new book with me to lunch and give it a half an hour or so to grab my attention. Lunch Date is my judgment on that speed-dating experience.)

Who’s your date today? Muhajababes by Allegra Stratton.

Where’d you go? In the Bowl

What’d you eat? Fake-beef yakisoba ($7.95).

How was the food? It was really good. It’s super-spicy—they must’ve gotten quite a few complaints, because there are warnings posted everywhere about how spicy the food is—but it was a tasty, hot bowl of noodles. And I love the fake beef, which I believe is made from compressed mushroom stalks. I liked it better than Boom Noodle’s yakisoba.

What does your date say about itself? “Meet the new Middle East—young, sexy and devout.” The Times Literary Supplement says it “will disabuse you of your preconceptions of the Middle East forever.”

Is there a representative quote? Talking about Superstar, the Middle Eastern American Idol: “She explained that Musa liked to think, though he’d never say it, that Superstar is better than Jazeera. While al-Jazeera does get between 40 million and 50 million regular viewers, 15 million voted on the outcome of Superstar, ‘more Arabs than have ever cast ballots in a free election.’”

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes. The book feels a little slight so far, as though it would maybe be better off as a series of magazine articles, but writing about the youth in the Middle East is important, and something I haven’t read much about. A giant baby boom happened in the Middle East 20 or 30 years ago, and all those people are ultimately going to have a lot to do with what the world will look like. The writing is all right, and the title is really atrocious, but I think that I’ll stick with it.

After weeks of boiling and drilling at the B.C. feet, trying to extract a little usable DNA, Mounties have discovered that two of the feet belonged to the same person.

This lends (light) credence to the theory that the feet are coming from a similar source, like a boat, airplane, or ghoulish foot collection—oceanographers say the currents most likely to have washed the feet ashore either swept them up from the San Juans or down from southern Georgia Strait.

The oldest shoe in the Mounties’ collection was made in 1999, and the most recent shoe was made in 2004.

These are recent inductees to Davy Jones’s locker.

To all those people who bought up all the tickets to the SP20 Comedy Show tonight - damn you! It’s sold out. Here’s Patton Oswalt. Oh Patton Oswalt.

Richard Nicol’s name is attached to every artwork you’ve ever seen in a photograph in Seattle—or at least to almost all of them. He takes pictures of art. He’s the guy people call when they want their painting, sculpture, or installation photographed.

Finally, he’s having a show of his own.

It’s a tiny little show in a back room with just a handful of works, but it’s all his. This is his first time showing at Davidson Contemporary. He approached Sam Davidson about six months ago with his drawings; before that, Davidson had no idea he even made drawings.

At one point, Nicol was using gunpowder in his drawings, and there is one of those works in the show. But it’s a trio of grid drawings done in pastel and neon colored pencil that hooked me. They’re called Rational Drawings, and that name is also the title of the show. It brings to mind the late minimalist grid master Sol LeWitt’s dictum that “irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.”

LeWitt’s point was about art’s necessity regardless of its uselessness. But Nicol pulls the abstract idea down into the current events. His grids take the shape of Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, each country appearing neatly on its own piece of white paper, as clear and concrete as if it were something truly understood, truly apparent and transparent to the viewer, the average American. Instead of baffling, mediated images of warfare, religious conflict, nuclear weapons, dictatorships, ethnic infighting, foreign garb, and unrecognizable language, Nicol fills the map with a gentle web of plaid, as if these countries offered