This thing:

Dear god! It smells like Schmader's been smoking sherm up in here. Why, unless you have to write "Spring Break! (boobies/penis)" on something that doesn't belong to you, why would you use anything but these:

As you may remember, I brought a bunch of advance reader copies with me to Slog Happy. Everybody got books, and I promised to run the book reviews on Slog. Mr. Poe went first. Now it's PopTart's turn, which is appropriate since this Slog Commenter Book Report thing is her idea:

Here is my book report on Northline by Willy Vlautin, a gritty realistic American novel that…blah, blah, blah. If you want the adjective-laced drivel about what a great American novel this is, check out Vlautin’s website, but this is a book report for Slog so I’m just going to skip right to the good stuff. Northline has drugs, heavy drinking, a skinhead party in the desert, a gay bashing of a not gay, awful sexual encounters, and Paul Newman.

Well, Paul Newman isn’t in the novel, per se. The main character, Allison Johnson, carries on imaginary conversations with him. It’s a plot device, get it? See she’s fleeing Las Vegas because of some shit like being pregnant and having a crazy boyfriend, and Paul Newman is her hero so she has imaginary conversations with him. I’m not sure he’d be my choice in the imaginary conversation department. But, whatever, it sort of works in the story.

The book is short; there are even a couple chapters that are only about half a page. The shortness works for me on account of my short attention span*.

Allison flees to Reno where she attempts to rebuild her life and meets some characters along the way and gets a couple of jobs and meets a guy and instead of riding off into the sunset they stand around and hold hands and watch an old casino implode.

My only complaint about Northline is that it just sort of ends with parts of the plot hanging out there, but gee, I guess that’s JUST LIKE gritty America, where you never do know what happens with your sister stranded in Mexico and if your crazy stalker boyfriend is about to appear and rain down some bad shit on your head.

The best part of the book is that with the first edition you get a soundtrack for the novel, composed by the author who is a member of an alternative country band, Richmond Fontaine, based in Portland Oregon. Maybe all authors should think about including a soundtrack for their novels. But, not all authors are accomplished musicians like Mr. Vlautin. So, maybe authors and bands could team up and create something the suits like to call “synergy.”

For example, Death Cab for Cutie’s song “I will Possess your Heart” would be the perfect accompaniment to Kate Brennan’s new book about being stalked, In His Sights.

But, I digress.

If you are looking for a short read where the main characters will make you feel vastly superior about your own life then Northline is for you.

Many thanks to PopTart and any errors in this book report should be blamed on the editor of the piece, which would be me.

Continue reading "Slog Commenter Book Report: PopTart Does Northline" »

This monstrous thing just terrorized our offices for the last half hour.

I know it doesn't look like it from the picture, but it was as big as a goddamned bat.

Continue reading "Stranger Writers Are a Superstitious and Cowardly Lot" »

Sad news: Due to stupid space restrictions, this week brings the final installment of Angela Garbes' beloved column Eat & Tell. Due to even stupider space restrictions, the final installment of Eat & Tell was bumped from this week's print edition. As usual, it's a goodie, and here it is:

Pork & Grief

Two weeks ago, a beloved family friend passed away. Feeling a little sad all the time is, well, sad. And, in moments, crippling and overwhelming. At the funeral last week, easels holding photos collages celebrating our friend Rudy’s life were set up in the church lobby. I looked at the collages—“Friends,” “Church Activities,” “Family,” “Travels,” “Knights of Columbus”—and had to laugh when I noticed that, in every single display, there was at least one photo of Rudy hovering over a lechon, a Filipino whole roasted pig. “Oh yeah,” my dad smiled when I pointed this out to him, “Rudy loved lechon. There’s going to be one at the reception afterwards.”

Indeed, after the funeral, a whole pig served in the church social hall fed the hundreds of people who came to say goodbye. “It’s perfect,” Rudy’s daughter said to me, “that guy just loved to eat.” Last week, on the ninth night of mourning his death, before and after saying the rosary, friends and family devoured yet another whole pig, chopped impressively (with a cleaver and rubber mallet) by his daughter. I like to think that Rudy is quite pleased by all of this.

Of course, roasted pig is appropriate for all celebrations. It can even be the cause of one, as it will be this Saturday at Ballard’s Old Pequliar, when they roast two 120-pound pigs. Go and eat in honor of someone you love.

Pig and Pipes, with music by the Seattle Firefighters Pipes and Drums Corps, Saturday, August 23, 12:00 pm, the Old Pequliar, 1722 NW Market Street. Tickets $15; 782-8886.

If it's any consolation, and it is, the divine Ms. Garbes will continue to share her eloquent, one-of-a-kind food lust with Stranger readers in reviews and profiles and what-have-you for The Stranger's Chow section.

But for now, a moment's silence for Eat & Tell.

It’s thanks to attitudes like developer Martin Tobias’s that photographs are all that remain of most of Ballard’s beloved parking lots and Belltown’s historic parking lots; they may be all that remain of the parking lots in your neighborhood one day, too. Unless we take action now, your future grandchildren may point to a photograph in a book and ask, 'Grandma, what’s that a picture of?' And you will have to answer, 'That’s a parking lot, sweetheart. The city used to be covered with them. But they’re all gone now.'

SAM is the only stop on the Inspiring Impressionism exhibition's national tour, which also stops in Denver and Atlanta, that universally forbids painting in its galleries. The Stranger sent an intern, John Borges, to the museum posing as a great-artist-in-training, with paints, a palette, a drop cloth, and a traditional French easel, and he was escorted straight up to the administration offices and told what he wanted to do was impossible. 'It seemed like the guard was rooting for me,' Borges said afterward. But no dice.

NEWS: Erica C. Barnett on the campaign against this November's light-rail expansion measure; Dominic Holden on an ex-criminal success story; Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on the SPD and hate crimes; an accusation of election-related dirty tricks; our comprehensive, party-crashing primary election night coverage; and more.

MUSIC: Sam Mickens interrogates GZA; Ryan Adams and Oasis, the charticle; Charles Mudede on Library Science; plus all the usual show previews and columns.

FILM: Lindy West goes to Mock Up on Mu at Northwest Film Forum with a friend who gets up and leaves 15 minutes into it. Plus, lots of new reviews and our searchable and lovingly updated Movie Times.

BOOKS: Eli Sanders on McCain, Obama, and the men who made them. Plus, the readings calendar.

THEATER: Brendan Kiley on a mini fringe festival at Hugo House and a review of last weekend at Smoke Farm. Plus, the theater calendar.

CHOW: Joan Hiller eats a ton of chicken-fried steak and Bethany Jean Clement pays a visit to the Elite.

AND THAT'S NOT EVEN MENTIONING Last Days; I Love Television; Savage Love; Drunk of the Week; Control Tower; and A. Birch Steen's critical overview of this issue. Anything I've forgotten? If so, it'd be here.

Tuesday is the busiest day in The Stranger's production cycle--the day the paper goes to the printer. Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the usual stress, our phones went blank and some of the lights in our offices went out. A second later, Dan Savage looked up from his computer and said, "Why can't I get on Slog?"

A transformer across the street had just blown. In addition to the power we'd lost--some departments had it, some didn't (the phone system had lost power)--we'd lost internet and email access. This posed a special problem: Without the internet, we couldn't get pages to the printer. Our solution? Senior ad designer Mary Traverse took a computer to Grey Gallery & Lounge across the street from our offices, because they have free wi-fi, and uploaded one page (the one that was ready at that moment) to the printer's FTP site from there. Meanwhile, we were still finishing up and proofreading pages on the few computers in the production department that still had power.

Eventually, big orange trucks from Seattle City Light showed up.

There was a white truck too--according to our tech support guy Brian Geoghagan, the white truck is always the supervisor's truck--and Geoghagan took it upon himself to march up to the white truck and ask the man inside when the power was going to come back. The man in the white truck informed him that, actually, the power was about to go out. All of it. The whole block. More than the whole block. The City Light guys needed all the power out in the area to solve whatever the problem was.

Continue reading "How We Got This Week's Issue to the Printer" »

A transformer blew up outside our office a moment or two ago. Our phones are down, our internet is down, our email is down. If you've been trying to reach someone at our office via phone or email without luck, now you know what's up.

This post was filed from the Stranger's command and control bunker.

Attention iPhone-enabled Slog & Line Out readers!

Your slow-page-loading days are over. Some time ago, because I have an iPhone and very little patience, I created an iPhone-optimized interface for Slog. Some time later, Nick improved it and then the other day New Nick made one for Line Out. Now, in a fit of selflessness and doing-my-job, I'm sharing it with the world. I hope that it makes you as happy as it has me.

I'm very happy, ask anyone.

Don't have an iPhone? Well, this might work just fine in your mobile "browser," but I can't promise anything. Please let us know how it goes if you try it. I attempted to test it in Windows Mobile, but I don't associate with Windows Mobile users, and attempts to get Microsoft's emulators working proved predictably annoying, and then I got hungry. YMMV!

Genuinely. The Hideout was hot and sticky with everyone crammed in there, but it was a great place to have the party, I'd say.

As promised, Chicago Fan was there along with Savage, Annie, Christopher, Bethany, Paul, Dominic... am I forgetting anyone? Books were flying everywhere, there were bags of tea and veggies, and lucky Abby won the Bumbershoot tickets!

I had a blast. I hope you did too. And now that it's over, if you have any suggestions for next month's Slog Happy, let's hear 'em. Location ideas? Up north, maybe? Ballard or Fremont? Want trivia? Bingo? Karaoke?

Slog Happy is your party, you tell us what you want.

The day has finally come; August's Slog Happy is tonight at the Hideout.

Paul Constant is bringing free books, I'm bringing Bumbershoot tickets to win (well, I'm not really bringing the actual tickets, I'm just bringing the opportunity to win them, which means I'm bringing a hat in which to draw names from) and the Hideout's supplying some drink specials ($1.50 Rainiers and $2.50 wells), good art, pretzles, and a neat-o vending machine filled with presents to buy.

It starts at 6 pm--get there early to get the first crack at Paul's books. That sounds weirdly dirty...

As several blogs have already noted, Ellen Forney's long-beloved Lustlab Ad of the Week—in which kinky personal ads were brought to inky life—will no longer be gracing the pages of The Stranger.

Better news: Babeland will be hosting a show of Forney's Lustlab originals on Sept. 9, as part of the Capitol Hill Art Walk, and we'll always have Lust...

You haven't forgotten about this, have you?

The Hideout, by the way, has a four out of five star rating in The Stranger's online bar/restaurant reviews. Not too shabby at all.

See you tomorrow night!

Hey, remember when State School Superintendent Terry Bergeson bombed her WASL test in front of the Stranger Election Control Board?

Well, KIRO picked up the story and got the official line on Bergeson's failing score:

Bergeson's campaign manager told KIRO 7 that The Stranger surprised Bergeson with the questions, which she had trouble seeing, because she didn't have her glasses with her.

Now with free books! And a chance to win Bumbershoot tickets!

The Hideout is on Boren at Madison. Hope to see you there!

(Is that enough exclamation points for you?)

It's official: only three people have read The Stranger Election Control Board's 2008 endorsements.

Halfway through the endorsements, buried in the text for the oh-so-exciting Attorney General race, we wrote:

McKenna's Democratic opponent, Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, is a funny, smart, savvy politician with a strong environmental record. As a county executive, he worked hard to clean up illegal dumps and junk cars, earning the endorsement of the überliberal Sierra Club despite his support for the controversial Cross-Base Highway across Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base. (To see if anyone actually read this far, The Stranger is proud to offer a $50 check and a minibottle of Jack Daniels to the first person that e-mails us at ireadatleastasfarastheladenburgendorsement@thestranger.com.)

So far, we've only received three emails. The first one came from 33-year-old William Lee, who read through the SECB's endorsements on his lunch break, mostly because he didn't have anything better to do. "I [was] out of new reading material," Lee says. "Usually if I’m reading at lunch time it’s novels."

Did Lee gain anything by reading the SECB's endorsements? "I already knew I wasn’t going to be voting for Rossi," he says. "That’s a given."

As announced earlier, the next Slog Happy is August 14 at the fantastic Hideout. Paul Constant sweetened the pot by promising free books for those in attendance who craved some new summer reading material.

It gets even better! We don't have trivia this time, but we will also be giving away one pair of Bumbershoot tickets for any one day of the festival (winner chooses which day). Visit www.thestranger.com/bumbershoot to see the complete schedule where you can also pick only the acts your interested in and print our your own customized version.

See you Thursday!

I'm excited for Slog Happy. I also love the Hideout, and I don't go there nearly enough.

But I know that some of you have been complaining about the lack of sit-down meals, and I'd like to suggest that, before, during, or after Slog Happy, you stop by Thai Star, just next door to the Hideout. It's really great, cheap Thai food, although the ambiance leaves something to be desired. I recommend all the soups and the curries. You won't regret it.

Also of note for some of you: In an effort to class up Slog happy with some old-fashioned book-learnin', I'll be bringing some advance reader's copies for anyone who's interested. They're not for resale, but they're perfectly good for reading. I'll try to bring a mixture of genres and interests.

Actually, now that I've written this, I can't tell if the free books will bring new people out or inspire more people to stay home. I guess we'll find out.

Have you been to the Hideout yet? It's a great bar. There's tons of pretty art on the walls and vending machines with little treasures and affordable art instead of snacks. And while the lack of candy would usually get me in a tizzy (I like candy), instead you can order yummy treats from the bar including cheese and spreads platters, chocolate, and nuts. And they also have free pretzels for you cheapskates.

Join us, won't you?

Oh, we get letters. This is going to be a long one, so get your scrolling fingers ready and prepare your bitchy comments about why I didn't put this after the jump. Everything below is (sic), but emphasis is mine:

Thursday, August 7, 2008 Dear Ms Wagner/Mr. Savage:

We read with great interest this recent film nutice in your aptly named publication The Stranger, insofar as The Stranger is a greater degree of The Strange. We define "nutice" as a message alerting us to any nuts possibly being involved in a given event, either by its content or its drafting:

THE REFLECTING POOL A group of 9/11 conspiracy nuts presents this "investigative drama" about a reporter. It' s heartening to see 9/11 "Truth" movement (sic) is finally giving up on the inconveniently truth-oriented documentary format. Screened with A Tribute to Fresh Kills, a seven-minute "poetry video" about 9/11. Trinity United Methodist Church Gymnasium, Fri. August 8 at 7 PM.

Although we are not amused that you even posted this nutice, we are presently acting as hiring consultants for the Bush White House and Hannity & Combs, as well as The O'Reilly Report on Faux News.

We are looking for hotshot twenty- and thirty-somethings with advanced degrees and/or experience in the new field of jeernalism, which reflects the new unprofessional standards which we in thecorporate community heartily applaud, and from which we manifestoly benefit. We define jeernalism as the current corporate media practice of substituting the reporting of boring information with ill-informed opinion repeatedly, crudely and incivilly expressed without proper investigation or proofreading, of which the above-cited nutice is a nutable example.

We would therefore appreciate your providing us with contact information of the above-cited author and editor, so that we might cite them as well. We would like to thank you in advance for this unprofessional courtesy.

We would also like to point out in a hopefully helpful way that, with the above-cited nutice, you have left yourself open not only to lawsuits for slander, but worse, to someone pointing out the obvious: that just as you have urged the 9/11 Truth movement to revert to just portraying fiction, you as an alleged alternative newspaper might be urged to revert to just reporting fact.

Yours all too truly,

Prisis Wright-CEO

I don't have much to offer by way of analysis except to say that I gave 9/11 Truth groups more of a chance to impress me than just about anybody in the mainstream media. After the piece came out (and was reprinted in the UTNE Reader), people bashed me left and right for being too easy on Truth groups, but I felt that the point in my article—that they developed a huge political organization out of virtually nothing in just a few years—was pertinent. They could have been a major force in the 2008 election, and instead they put all their money toward buying a fucking blimp for Ron Paul.

I'm fucking done with 9/11 Truth groups and their stupid misspelled e-mails and their dumb "confrontation" videos. I've read your books and seen your movies and you have fuck-all. Hundreds of people have written rational, compassionate arguments against your stupid theories (hell, get Jonathan Golob drunk and ask him about Building 7 and he'll go on a tear that's alternately hilarious and enlightening) and you don't buy any of it because you're not about reason, you're about being the heroes of the stupid fucking conspiracy movies in your fucking heads. Talk to me when you come back to reality and we can get some shit done. I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

_{(Personal note: One day I'm going to leave my apartment, look to the horizon at the east, and see the Sonics Deathwatch logo rising where the sun should be. It's just something that I feel in my bones to be true.)}

Brand-New Stranger Genius Sherman Alexie Shares 61 Things He Learned During the Sonics Trial
"23. "Motherfucker" is, of course, the purest distillation of mama insults. Since single mothers are sadly common and sweetly revered in black culture, mama jokes are ironically hilarious. However, I've always wondered why the term "fatherfucker" is so rarely used as an insult. I think it's far more original, powerful, and disturbing than "motherfucker." I assume that "motherfucker" is an insult borne of misogyny, so wouldn't "fatherfucker" be a more egalitarian, homoerotic, and therefore more disturbing obscenity? Wouldn't we all be challenging the patriarchy if we adopted its use?"

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, Erica C. Barnett, Jonathan Golob, and A. Birch Steen on the Critical Mass Whumpin'
[From Jonah's Critical Mess:] "Tom Braun, a 35-year-old insurance attorney who was injured in the clash, says he had nothing to do with the attack on the driver. Still, he ended up in the hospital with bruises and possible internal injuries: Doctors found blood in his urine. The next morning, Braun checked for news on the clash. He wasn't pleased with what he found."

Some Jackass On the Pleasures of Attending Readings Wherein the Author (In This Case, Ethan Canin) is Drinking a Large, Very Alcoholic Pink Beverage
"When asked a question, Canin would ramble pleasurably for 10 minutes before moving on, sometimes never actually answering the original question, although no one minded. Canin is a graduate of Harvard Medical School who decided to become a novelist after reading Saul Bellow. He talked at length about his career as a doctor, mentioning, for example, that "the only time I ever got sued" was a result of attempting to treat a gunshot victim, adding cryptically that 'finding an entry wound is much harder than finding the exit wound.'"

Jeff Kirby Talks to Mike Kinsella of Owen About Being Kind of a Fuckup
"Every other day I wake up and think, "Ugh, I should really get some sort of job," but then an hour and a half later I'm playing video games saying, 'God, I am so glad I don't have a job.'"

Charles Mudede on the Death of Buildings
"We all know the end of, say, Northgate Mall is not going to be pretty. It has in it no proper way to die. It wants to look perpetually new, so if it is not destroyed, it is destined to leave a horrifying corpse. But Kundig's Delta Shelter, a cabin in Eastern Washington, has an infusion of time in the core of its being. It is very much alive, but it does not conceal its fate, its future, its rust, its temporality."

Bethany Jean Clement Thinks About Boom Noodle"Boom Noodle would make an excellent cafeteria for an upscale space station. Lightbulbs hang in marshaled rows, not too glaring, like just-pretty-good ideas; diners sit at long tables in curved, ergonomic Eames-alike chairs. The supersleek aesthetic, while nothing new, is nicely accented with green walls and panels of wood—a reminder of the existence, somewhere distant, of trees."

Also discussed: John McCain as Mr. Magoo, Margarita Prentice suggests that her constituents are poor, Erica C. Barnett on why the city doesn't classify car violence as assault, bitchery over kitschery in Georgetown, a King Cobra employee on cleaning up Sugar's violent mess, liking a band despite their promotional videos, whether there's a worse word for penis than "penis", and more.

Do you enjoy trolling through mind-numbing court filings? Do you like taking long walks down to city hall to pick up always-exciting legislative action agendas? Do you wish you spent more time interviewing crazy people about everything from the fascinating world of mass transit to gay robot conspiracies?

Then have we got a job for you!

The Stranger's news department is looking for a few good interns.

If you have any aspirations to be a journalist, can string together a sentence, and don't mind acting as a drug mule every once in awhile, then send a resume and clips (if you have them) to Barnett@thestranger.com.

Stranger internships: You can't say you hate it if you haven't tried it.

Four score and seven years ago, Erica C. Barnett became the news editor of The Stranger. (It happened in April.) Someone (ahem) was on vacation the week it happened and completely forgot to give the news the treatment that other similar promotions get these days. Barnett, as you undoubtedly know, is one of The Stranger's sharpest political thinkers and writers. But she's written on subjects outside of politics, too--like books and movies and veggie BLTS. Here, belatedly, are five of her most memorable essays.

"Hell for the Holidays: A Red State Refugee Heads Back to Texas for Thanksgiving"
"Among people I know with red-state relatives, one spent the holiday with friends in Oregon; one left the country entirely; and another headed, girlfriend in tow, to the bluest place she could find: New York City. Me? I decided to confront my fears head-on. I traveled straight to the heart of red America--to hell for the holidays--on the condition that my family agree to avoid the only topic that was on my mind."

Viaduct I: "Nothing Goes Here"
"As the state transportation department was releasing its initial look at the impacts of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a new group was rolling out a farsighted--and potentially contentious--viaduct proposal of its own. Instead of replacing the viaduct, the new plan proposes tearing it down and replacing it with... absolutely nothing."

Viaduct II: "No and Hell No"
"Seattle voters are being asked to vote 'yes' or 'no' on two new freeways on the city's waterfront--a larger elevated viaduct (the option preferred by Governor Christine Gregoire, key members of the state legislature, and the Seattle public, if opinion polls can be believed) and a scaled-down, four-lane, cut-and-cover tunnel (the option that's still preferred by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, despite being declared dead by the governor earlier this month). A third option, tearing down the Alaskan Way Viaduct and investing in transit and improvements to surface streets instead of a new waterfront freeway, isn't on the ballot despite being (a) cheaper, (b) less disruptive, and (c) the most environmentally responsible option."

"Frito Pie 101: From the Land of Dubya, the Food of Kings"
"The first Frito pie, according to legend, was assembled in Dallas, Texas, by one Daisy Dean Doolin, the mother of Fritos inventor C. E. Doolin. Asked to come up with recipes requiring her son's corn-chip snack, the story goes, Daisy Dean got the idea of pouring a ladleful of Texas red (a fiery chili made without tomatoes or beans) into a bag of Fritos. And from these humble ingredients, Frito pie was born. Traditionally, Frito pie was consumed straight out of the bag; however, as the bags got thinner, this preparation became too hot to handle, and today most Frito pie is served school-cafeteria style, in a cardboard nacho boat. As a native Texan, I grew up eating buckets of the stuff. It's standard fare in school lunchrooms, at Friday-night high-school football games, and in Junior League cookbooks across the Lone Star State."

"On the Rocks: Richard McIver's Arrest for Domestic Violence Highlights a Taboo Issue--His Drinking"
"The Four Seas, McIver's favorite watering hole, is a dingy, black-painted cavern of a bar in the back of a massive Chinese restaurant. Men sit alone drinking shots and manhattans under a soundtrack of R&B and soul; a sign on the wall reads, 'Herradura Blast Off! 20 Dollars.' A young waitress named Rachel (who politely declined to comment for this story) flirts good-naturedly with the mostly middle-aged, exclusively male, clientele; a plate of chicken, cooked to a rubbery texture, is hard to distinguish in the gloom."

This doesn't even include her staggering Slog output or her widely read city hall column--still excellent after all these years. Many more of her pieces--461 since 2003--can be found here.

Annie Wagner and Brendan Kiley--editing a piece together--are looking for one word that means the opposite of "unison."

GO!

Dear Slog,

Since Amy Kate is leaving the paper for the fancy, high-stakes world of cattle auctioneering, this means that Megan Seling and I are splitting the duties of overseeing Slog Happy. However, Megan Seling doesn't drink and I can drink nail polish remover on a street corner and be perfectly happy, so we'd like your opinions in the comments about where the next Slog Happy should be held.

Also, I'd be interested to hear from anyone who hasn't attended Slog Happy about what it would take for them to actually attend Slog Happy. And if you have attended Slog Happy, what would you like more of? Food? Trivia? A mud-wrestling match between a Critical Mass bike rider and a 20-cent plastic bag?

I appreciate your comments in advance.

(heart,)
Paul Bobby

In a post about the KC Municipal League's candidate ratings two days ago, I wrote a snarky bit about "Republican 36th District state Rep candidate Leslie Bloss." Actually, the information in the post referred to Republican Leslie Klein, who is also running in the 36th District, but for the other legislative position. Republican Leslie Bloss received a "good" rating from the Muni League. My apologies for the error; please consider my snark redirected toward Leslie Klein, who listed as his proudest accomplishment, again, as “my ability to help a friend unlock her psychic abilities that had become blocked.”

Jen Graves Profiles the Free Sheep Foundation--the Artists Behind Bridge and the Belmont--As They Move from One Dying Building to Another
"So far, the artists behind Free Sheep have delivered ephemeral monuments to the ephemeral monument we all live in, the city. They've been mythic and short-lived; the challenge now will be to preserve that spirit over the length of a three- or six-month lease. The idea is that once one lease expires, the artists will move to another disused space, or maybe even take over more than one at a time. It's a moveable feast of artists in real-estate purgatory."

Your Heatstroke-Preventing Guide to the Capitol Hill Block Party
Michaelangelo Matos interviews Craig Finn of the Hold Steady. Kelly O "interviews" Jay Reatard. Tim Harrington on the hottest show his band Les Savy Fav has ever played (illustrated!). Eric Grandy on Girl Talk. Megan Seling introduces New Faces. Plus: write-ups of every act this weekend, including Vampire Weekend, U.S.E., Kimya Dawson, Fleet Foxes, and Throw Me the Statue. Details, tickets, grid, etc., are here.

Sean Nelson on the Complex Morality of Loving Roman Polanski
"For this antisentimentalist, in film as in life, 'acceptable behavior' is something for other people to worry about. Which is, of course, the whole dilemma of being an ardent fan of Polanski's movies. Because of what we know and think we know, it's never easy to find the line between the artist and his work. Because there is no such line. Because the Polanski who made so many titanic works of cinema is the same Polanski who escaped from the Nazis is the same Polanski who not only lost his wife and unborn child to the Mansons but was initially accused of the murders in the press is the same Polanski who gave a 13-year-old girl champagne and a quaalude fragment then had sex with her on the floor of Jack Nicholson's living room. If the 20th century happened to anyone, it happened to Roman Polanski. And as a new documentary shows, it's still happening to him."

David Schmader on an Alleged Nazi Living... Like, Right Over There
"Details come from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, which alleges Herr Egner joined the Nazis in German-occupied Serbia in April 1941, after which he allegedly became part of a 'mobile killing unit' that claimed more than 17,000 victims. Most of the victims were Jewish men, women, and children, who Egner's unit allegedly took from a Belgrade concentration camp, asphyxiated with carbon monoxide, and then dumped in a mass grave. Today, Peter Egner will spend a final day puttering around the Bellevue retirement community where he's lived for the past two years in relative anonymity."

Annie Wagner on the New Brideshead Revisited Adaptation
"It isn't at all a bad time for a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's exquisite Brideshead Revisited. The BBC miniseries is over a quarter-century old, and there's never been a proper feature. The homosexual content--never exactly disguised--can be overt now, but we're not so advanced that the crushing guilt that accompanies it seems foreign. Meanwhile, Waugh's simultaneous envy of and nostalgia for the perfumed decadence of the English-Catholic aristocracy between the wars seems especially poignant, poised as we are on the lip of another recession."

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on the CIA's New Presence at UW
"When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central Intelligence Agency spook. In fact, some of them will even be learning from him."

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS ISSUE: Pink Skull; what the Zombies think of Odessey and Oracle; Implied Violence's new show in a disused City Light warehouse; rural King County; sexual harrassment at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources; the PONCHO shakeup; being ugly; Montreal; taco trucks; Taco Time; Nabokov; French detective novels; shamanism; the Double Beer Helmet™ (see below); and more.

Exciting news over at Line Out: the Stranger is hiring another writer for the music section. Read all about it here.

Bethany Jean Clement, who has contributed to The Stranger since 2003 and before that was managing editor of another alleged publication in Seattle, is The Stranger's new managing editor. She's also the sort of writer who gets letters from school teachers who use her column to teach writing. Here, for your lunchtime reading pleasure, are five of her best pieces to date.

On Digging for Razor Clams
"Copalis Beach, Washington (25 miles north of Aberdeen, population: 489), is known for two things: shipwrecks and razor clams. The most recent shipwreck, thought to be a steamer that had foundered in 1852, was discovered in 1987 where the Copalis River meets the ocean. The wreck has since disappeared and reappeared again several times, swallowed back up and regurgitated by the waters. The most recent razor-clam dig was about a week ago, in late April. The dig began before low tide in the dark around 5:30 a.m., with dawn bringing a highly unseasonable brief snowfall. Those out digging in the cold sand--mothers with toddlers in small-scale galoshes, old men of the sea with crabby expressions, out-of-towners carrying oversize buckets, one tweaker whose feet were bare but whose mind wore a protective coating of meth--took little notice of the snow."

On the Pink Door's 25th Anniversary Party
"A man in a tiny clown hat sliced prosciutto ceaselessly. One partygoer camped out in front of the king crab legs, eating away, prompting a certain city council member's wife to observe, 'It's a buffet, not a trough.'"

On the Fireside Room at the Sorrento Hotel
"It takes concentration to discern that one side of the octagon isn't a mirror, but a portal to the reception desk. Upholstered chairs wear stripes of varying widths and colors, while already puffy couches bear embarrassments of bonus cushions. Add some amber and white lights and a flock of poinsettias, and it's as if you're somehow wallowing comfortably at the bottom of your great aunt's dish of hard candies on a low dose of a strong hallucinogen."

On Cooking for the Holidays
"I'm not the kind of person who'd serve a pre-made holiday meal--too picky, too poor, and too morbidly curious about what'll happen in the cooking. I first made a Thanksgiving dinner in college with my beautifully named friend Kellie Diamond; we listened to old records, called our mothers for instructions repeatedly, and drank wine from a jug all day, with far better results than anyone expected. I went to lie down postprandially--just for a minute--and woke up the next morning atop the bedclothes, still wearing my shoes."

On the Changing Nature of Georgetown
"Georgetown is now home to both a waxing salon and an art walk, meaning the area has officially crawled out of its incubating murk, grown little flipper-feet, and is locomoting across the shore toward some terrible light. (Evidence directly outside the 9 Lb. Hammer's door: the beautiful brick Rainier Cold Storage building, half-demolished and gaping like a wartime nightmare.) The first-ever art walk--called the Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack ("I'm wearing a bulletproof vest," someone joked)--was mobbed. It looked like latter-day Brooklyn."

That's not even counting the one that was just accepted for inclusion in Best Food Writing 2008. Many more examples of her work can be found here.

Do you enjoy trolling through mind-numbing court filings? Do you like taking long walks down to city hall to pick up always-exciting legislative action agendas? Do you wish you spent more time interviewing crazy people about everything from the fascinating world of mass transit to gay robot conspiracies?

Then have we got a job for you!

The Stranger's news department is looking for a few good interns.

If you have any aspirations to be a journalist, can string together a sentence, and don't mind acting as a drug mule every once in awhile, then send a resume and clips (if you have them) to Barnett@thestranger.com.

Stranger internships: You can't say you hate it if you haven't tried it.

Oh Anderson, with you to juggle the talking heads through November, I know we're in good hands. And that little rat smile you have, like when you told Donna Brazile you wanted to be her 'boo', well it melts my heart and helps me forgive you for having complete ass-chancres like Tony Perkins on your show. Je t'aime, my sly little friend.

Here's my imaginary mother-in-law, glamorous descendant of the original 19th-century robber baron, whose book on collage is in a word, riveting. I picked it up at the Goodwill earlier today, and the photographs of her Southhampton house aswirl in pink gingham were worth the $2.99! I picture Andy and I lolling on the veranda, sipping lemonade from the family crystal and molesting each other through our clothes.

^{Photo by Kelly O}

It's my last day as a guest Slogger. I found I had much less to say than I thought I would. I've also been unusually busy, so that's kept my postings to a minimum. But it has been grand to post my little things for your amusement. I'll see you in comments.

See if you can stay in your seat while you enjoy my final video offering!

Brendan Kiley on Greg Lundgren's Monumental Undertaking
"Lundgren Monuments will succeed or fail depending on how many people seek alternatives to the defaults and clichés of the death-care business. Lundgren's cast-glass monuments adorn cemeteries in five countries and 20 states, but he's had to fight, cemetery by cemetery, to get them in. Most cemeteries only allow monuments made of granite or bronze, which don't erode like marble and sandstone. Glass, Lundgren tells reluctant cemetery directors, is as durable as granite. Lundgren argues that because the technology required to cast thick glass is only 30 years old, people don't understand how tough it is. In his studio, he heats glass to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit--incidentally, the same temperature at which bodies are cremated--and cools it in computer-controlled ovens, over a period of weeks, so it congeals into a strong, flawless mass. 'Slice granite as thin as a piece of window glass and throw a rock at it,' he says. 'It'll shatter.'"

Dominic Holden on Qwest Field's Problem with Queers
"The staff at Qwest Field had every clue that gay couples would be attending the WaMu Theater on July 1. After all, that night's concert was the Seattle stop on the True Colors tour. It starred Rosie O'Donnell and Cyndi Lauper, the stage was decorated with a rainbow and a pink triangle, and the event was billed as a fundraiser for organizations to 'raise awareness about the discrimination the GLBT community still faces.' But while the B-52s played a slow song, two lesbians who were sitting in the third row say a security guard approached them, shined his flashlight in their faces, and then lowered the beam onto their joined hands. He then gestured with his finger across his throat to 'cut it out' and told them to 'stop it,' the women say."

Jen Graves on Adam Satushek's Photographs, Eric Elliott's Paintings, and the Most Influential Radical Idea of the 20th Century
"On the surface--in fact, especially on the surface--two young Seattle artists, Adam Satushek and Eric Elliott, have nothing in common. Satushek makes big, bright, smooth, ultraclear photographs. Elliott makes thick little gray oil paintings. But it's even truer in art than in life that looks aren't everything. These artworks think similarly, in sculptural terms, about the relationship between innards and skin."

Bethany Jean Clement on the Scene at Seattle's Longest-Running Speakeasy (Location Undisclosed)
"The bartender is hands-down the slowest in town. Protocol dictates that, after a near-eternal wait, when he asks you what you'd like, you ask him what he thinks you ought to have. The featured cocktails this evening are the bloody Caesar, the redoubtable Pimm's cup, and variations on Jim Beam (ginger ale is a favorite addition). After brief scrutiny--his solemn gaze through owlish glasses is an apparent assessment of the state of your soul--a prescription is issued, and your cocktail is undertaken. Subjects to raise: his recent trip to London, his sartorial splendor (top hat, bow tie, striped trousers, tails). He doesn't say much, and, as noted, he's not quick with the mixing, but at his bar, all the drinks are free."

Steven Blum Questions David Sedaris
"As he walks out of the elevator at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, David Sedaris looks up, over his shoulder, down at his shoes, and then sort of spins around. He's looking for me, but I'd rather watch him futz around than introduce myself."

Lindy West Watches Heathers Outdoors
"Hey! Young people! I just thought of the best idea for you. Why don't you move to South Lake Union? Seriously. Move to South Lake Union. Do it. Do it. Come on. Do it! Aren't you having fun? Don't you like it here? Look at all these condos we're building! Aren't they cool and tall? God, it's so great hanging out here in South Lake Union and doing stuff like watching totally cool cinema on a lawn with other young people. Hey, look—the Big Dipper! The stars really are brighter over South Lake Union. Except when the outdoor movie is playing (Paul Allen has the stars dimmed for the outdoor movies). Listen. I'll tell you what. If you move to South Lake Union, Paul Allen will personally guarantee you ONE free hug. Wait, what? Okay, if you'd prefer, Paul Allen will personally guarantee never to hug you. Ever. No hugs. Dooo it."

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS ISSUE: Heath Ledger's Joker; Lil Wayne's lil problem; Dan Savage's insomnia; what Mark Arm thinks of the music community ("Fuck the music community"); the Janus-faced marvel that is Strawberry Theatre Workshop's Leni; what Matt Dillon did to two goats over the weekend (sewed them together, stuffed the cavity with more meat, roasted it all over an open fire); why King Cobra's owners are selling after just six months; the ongoing looniness of the 46th District state legislature race; censorship on Craigslist; Michelle Obama; fireworks; anaphylactic shock; and more.

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.

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.

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.}

Slog friends and foes, I'm leaving The Stranger at the end of this month, so tonight's will be my last Slog Happy. (There's no drama behind the scenes; I'm just hungry for a new challenge.) Come down and tell me how much you'll miss me, why don't you? They're reserving space on the deck for us.

Slog tipper and superstar commenter PopTart writes:

Did you see the glossary on Gawker yesterday? When do we get one for Slog?

I'll get right on that, PopTart, as soon as I complete my flowchart of Slog commenter relationships and feuds. Here's a flow chart to keep everybody busy in the meantime.

We'll be at the charming Maximilien on Thursday. Note the new, earlier time. See you there!

Since June 1 we've had 1,118 posts on Slog. Of that number, 10 concerned pit bulls—or .89 percent. Please make a note of it, whiners.