Search

Music Column »

Fucking in the Streets: War Room for Sale, Ben Hills RIP

Columns »

New Column!: Cougin' Out, with Gloria Trout

Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Books This Week in the Book Section

Posted by Paul Constant on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 4:17 PM

This week in the book section, I review Alison Bechdel's Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, and find that the comic strip has turned into something unexpected:

While by no means complete, this is a fairly comprehensive collection of 25 years' worth of Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For comics. Now that Bechdel's success as a memoirist, with Fun Home, has pushed the weekly series off to indefinite hiatus, it seems a particularly meaningful time to reassess the value of the strip. On the book's dust jacket, Bechdel refers to Dykes as "half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel." It's a statement that at once overstates and undersells the comics in this book...

I hope you'll read the whole review.

Permalink Share

Strangercrombie Re: The Music Bargains

Posted by Eric Grandy on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 2:34 PM

Just wanted to draw some attention to another big music bargain up for bid in this year's Strangercrombie charity auction: the 21st Century Music Fan Fun-Pack, which includes two all-acess passes to the 2009 Decibel Festival.

In previous years, this package would have been billed as "Duke of Decibel" and run alongside currently high-fetching auctions like Baron of Bumbershoot ($280.00) and Signor of Sasquatch ($255.00). This year, though, the name's been changed to reflect the fact that we've added to this item a shit-ton of electronic vinyl (local labels Orac Records' entire back-catalog and Peloton Musique's recently released inaugural compilation, Bicycles Are Your Friends) and CDs (selected by Dave Segal and local label Woodson Lateral).

The estimated value of the package? $628.00. The current bid? Only $89.00!

Bid here.

Superstar Seattle producer Scientific American will deploy his skills of mass.dstrction all over the track of your choice and even include the song on the next mass.dstrction mixtape! PRICELESS! OPENING BID: $1.99!

Currently going for just $20.50. Bid on that one here.

Permalink | Post Comments (4) Share

Strangercrombie The Music Bargains

Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 2:16 PM

I was just poking around in the Strangercrombie online catalog and noticed that the private party with Throw Me the Statue is only going for $101.99 at this moment.

Holy shit! Throw Me the Statue, the best young pop band in Seattle, with the handsomest frontman and catchiest tunes in Seattle, play a private show for you—the luckiest person in Seattle! They’ll play your house party, dinner party, wedding, picnic—or hell, just for you in your living room. Sitting on your couch. Next to a keg. That's right—we’re also throwing in a keg from Lazy Boy Brewing Company. Um, can this roof be raised at all? PRICELESS! OPENING BID: $1.99!

(You can big on that here. The private party with Truckasauras, described here, is currently going for a little more—$152.50.)

Meanwhile, the bidding for the Magistrate of Local Music package is at a bargain $76:

Broadcast your local-music knowledge/passion/attitude over the airwaves when you get to cohost the Locals Only show on 107.7 The End with Megan Seling on an upcoming Sunday night from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Package also includes a bunch of CDs from Barsuk Records (Ra Ra Riot, Jim Noir, Chris Walla, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter, David Bazan), a Barsuk hoodie, and five silk-screened show posters: the Sonics, Fleet Foxes, Dengue Fever, Cold War Kids, and Calexico. A $675 VALUE! OPENING BID: $1.99!

(You can bid on that here.)

Other steals in the music category at this moment? The cooking class with Tilson of the Saturday Knights (right here), a mixtape by Calvin Johnson (right here), the Chutes and Ladders board game signed by the Shins (right here)...

It's been pointed out before, but just to reiterate: these items have all been donated to us, and all the money we raise in these auctions goes to Treehouse, an organization that makes life better for foster kids. If you don't have the money to, say, get on the list at every awesome club in town for the year (yes, that's another item), you can always help out Treehouse by clicking the button below and giving $20. Anyone who donates $20 or more gets a lovely Stranger holiday tote bag (depicted on the tote bag: knife, bomb, pistol, cigarette, needle, leg of chicken...).

Permalink | Post Comments (2) Share

News This Doesn't Happen in Sane Countries

Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 1:06 PM

NYT:

Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.... Ms. Darling [is] among 275 people who worked at an Archway cookie factory here in north central Ohio. The company provided excellent health benefits. But the plant shut down abruptly this fall, leaving workers without coverage, like millions of people battered by the worst economic crisis since the Depression.

...

Ms. Darling, who was pregnant when her insurance ran out, worked at Archway for eight years, and her father, Franklin J. Phillips, worked there for 24 years.

“When I heard that I was losing my insurance,” she said, “I was scared. I remember that the bill for my son’s delivery in 2005 was about $9,000, and I knew I would never be able to pay that by myself.”

So Ms. Darling asked her midwife to induce labor two days before her health insurance expired.

“I was determined that we were getting this baby out, and it was going to be paid for,” said Ms. Darling, who was interviewed at her home here as she cradled the infant in her arms.

As it turned out, the insurance company denied her claim, leaving Ms. Darling with more than $17,000 in medical bills.

Faced with a financial crisis, we can quickly come up with $700 billion. But we've been told again and again over the decades that we don't have the money to provide health care for all.

Permalink | Post Comments (90) Share

Life Quote for the Day

Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 12:45 PM

"Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself... There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience."—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Permalink | Post Comments (84) Share

Books This Week in the Book Section

Posted by Paul Constant on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 11:16 AM

This week in the book section, I review that line of L. Ron Hubbard's pulp novels that are being advertised all over Seattle:

For the past few months, ads for these books have been on city buses everywhere, thanks to a plot by the Church of Scientology to bring all of L. Ron Hubbard's pulp fiction produced for young men's adventure magazines—150 short stories and novellas from the 1920s through the '40s—back into print. The first wave of these books includes pirate novels, science fiction, and westerns.

Many reviewers—myself included—have extolled the glories of pulp fiction, and this series provides a good opportunity to make something perfectly clear: Most pulp fiction is awful crap that was cranked out in order to make a fast buck. Hubbard's fiction is the worst of that dreck...

There's more, including a truly awful quote from a Hubbard book. Read the whole thing, won't you?

Permalink Share

Stranger Suggests Today The Stranger Suggests

Posted by The Stranger on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 11:00 AM

Music

Messiaen Organ Cycle

Subtitled "Nine Meditations," La Nativité du Seigneur, Olivier Messiaen's first big work for the organ, begins with a slurred cluster of notes. Loose tones stumble along and then pause before a looming chord undergirded by a chirruping note or two. It is one of the rare moments in music where we actually hear a composer pondering where to go next. A crazed clockwork melody follows, winding up only to settle into a serene, chantlike passage that stakes out a sonic world where time is vaporous and to tarry, divine. Don't miss this final installment in the cycle. (St. James Cathedral, 804 Ninth Ave, 382-4874. 7:30 pm, $15 suggested donation.) CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI

See what else is happening in Music on Sunday »

Permalink | Post Comments (0) Share

Homo Confidential to Caitlin Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz

Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 10:24 AM

Just finished reading your opinion piece in the NYT this morning. Just wanted to say...

For many of us—Obama supporters, just as concerned about the economy as anyone else—marriage equality is one of the "big issues." Sorry.

And, sorry, but we're going to keep pressing for our full civil rights. That many straight African Americans object to same-sex marriage not just for religion reasons, but also because "many blacks feel a significant aversion to homosexuality itself" is, um, a very interesting observation, but I don't see how you get from that assertion to your strongly implied, although never explicitly stated, advice for gay and lesbian Americans: STFU, give this marriage equality thing a rest, so that we can "regain... lost ground," and focus on the "big issues," the important stuff, the stuff that matters—like our 401Ks.

The exact same advice could be given to liberal and progressive homophobes—whatever their ages, races, or religious beliefs—who voted for Obama and against the rights of same-sex couples: Give your "significant aversion to homosexuality" a rest and focus on the "big issues."

Permalink | Post Comments (68) Share

Books Reading Today

Posted by Paul Constant on Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 10:03 AM

Two open mics and two readings today.

First off, William Cleveland reads from Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World's Frontlines. I received a copy of this book and gave it to Jen Graves to consider reviewing. Days later, the book was sitting, alone, on a couch in our offices. It became part of the scenery and I stopped noticing it. Earlier this week, while compiling the reading calendar, I saw the listing for this book reading and remembered this book existed. I asked Jen about it, and all she could really say was that it was not an interesting book. I can't even quote her because what everything she had to say about the book was so bland it can't really be remembered. Now the book is gone, and I don't know what happened to it. I think it just faded away, the way it completely faded from Ms. Graves' and my attention.

At the Hugo House, Judith Roche reads from Wisdom of the Body, a collection of poems about that magical, mysterious, disgusting thing known as "your body."

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

Permalink | Post Comments (1) Share