Friday, January 23, 2009
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Burning Question
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:12 PM
Where's Mr. Poe?
Inauguration Well, Shit
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 10:06 PM
Uhhhhh. I'm sorry. I confused some random guy for P. Diddy.
News This Story Sounds Familiar
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 7:43 PM
Ted Haggard had a boy toy...
Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard—a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.
Boyd said an "overwhelming pool of evidence" pointed to an "inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship" that "went on for a long period of time ... it wasn't a one-time act." Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.
Older man, younger man, and... um... a "pool of evidence" that pointed to an inappropriate sexual relationship. It's like déjà vu all over again...
At Large The Crowd at Portland's City Hall
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 6:58 PM
There were easily 1000+ people at the rally at Portland's city hall.
It was a mob scene. More photos after the jump.
Nightlife J&M Cafe Closed
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 6:22 PM
The J&M Cafe and Cardroom has apparently closed. A sign on the club's door says the owners have shut down and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The club, located at 1st Avenue South and South Washington Street in Pioneer Square, was one of 14 nightclubs targeted by City Attorney Tom Carr, The Seattle Police Department and Mayor Greg Nickels in a nightlife sting in September 2007.
City March For Schools This Weekend
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:30 PM
If you're the kind of person who gets all excited about petitions and marches then this will be the BEST WEEKEND EVER!
On Sunday, you can stop by the anti-school closure rally at TT Minor on Sunday at 2PM. Then, when you get home, you can sign an online petition to save Seattle schools here.
Yay!
Visual Art Exceedingly Arcane!
Posted by Jen Graves on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:29 PM
I think those are the words a friend of mine used when she heard about the Frye Art Museum's new show (opening tonight), The Munich Secession in America.
With this show, which I saw quickly this afternoon, the Frye intends to rewrite modernist art history to include the Germans. (Everything is so French: impressionists forward.)
There are some extremely weird paintings in the show (weird in a good way, for the most part), but weirdest of all is that it turns out the Munich Secession, unlike, say, the Vienna Secession, or the Barbizon School, or even the impressionists or fauvists, is not remotely coherent in style. The stuff is all over the place, and the show makes the case that there are good reasons for that. I'm still thinking it over.
But also the show declares itself a history-maker. The Frye says this is the first time there has been a major Munich Secession show in the United States in 100 years. To celebrate, here's a link to the New York Times review of the 1909 show of Munich Secessionists at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Enjoy!
Olympia Legislative Roundup
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:16 PM
Here are of few interesting, important, and/or silly bills that have been introduced in Olympia since the legislative session got underway earlier this month. In all cases where bills have companion versions in the opposite chamber, the senate bill is listed, because I'm lazy.
Legislation introduced by Sen. Chris Marr (D-6) and cosponsored by Seattle legislators Adam Kline (D-37) and Ken Jacobsen (D-46), along with 11 others, would end the dreaded (but necessary?) ritual of scoliosis screening in schools.
Jacobsen and Kline have also reintroduced a bill that failed last year to allow "well-behaved" dogs in bars; Jacobsen and Kohl-Welles, meanwhile, have a bill that would allow the animals in outdoor areas of bars and coffee shops. Not that anyone in Seattle pays any attention to the law on this anyway, but just what, exactly are well-behaved dogs? The legislation doesn't say.
Another dog-loving bill, this one by Sen. Dale Brandland (R-42), would repeal a requirement that the county sheriff's office kill any dog found running loose without tags—the so-called "marauding dogs" law.
State Reps. Mark Miloscia (D-30) and Al O'Brien (D-1) are sponsoring legislation that would require carbon monoxide detectors—which detect carbon monoxide even in the absence of smoke, but can run upward of 60 bucks—in all homes by the end of 2009.
A bunch of do-gooder Democrats have a bill that would prohibit smoking in a car when a minor is present.
A proposal whose cosponsors include several Democrats from the district (the 34th) that encompasses Maury Island, site of Glacier Northwest's gravel mine, have proposed legislation that would prohibit contributions to candidates for state land commissioner from individuals or companies that do business with the land commissioner's office. The former land commissioner, Doug Sutherland, took large campaign contributions from companies, including Glacier, with an interest in influence state lands policy.
Legislation sponsored by Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44) would repeal the requirement that half a percent of construction costs for public buildings be spent on public art. Hobbs has said slashing funding for public art would save $5 million a year.
A bill establishing a "transfer of development rights" program would encourage the preservation of rural farmland and the development of dense communities inside growth boundaries (AKA cities); the proposal is sponsored by Fred Jarrett (D-41).
A proposal by Sens. Dale Brandland (R-42) and Karen Keiser (D-33) would prohibit leaving a child younger than 12 alone in a car under any circumstances, whether or not the car is running.
A smart piece of legislation that's probably doomed would restrict annual interest rates on payday loans to 36 percent—the maximum rate on US military bases. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Craig Pridemore (D-49) and Seattle Sens. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36) and Adam Kline (D-37).
Three bills that would restrict access to public records or make accessing records more expensive—one that would allow an agency to deny a public records request if the person making the request owed the agency money; one that would increase the cost of copying public records to as much as 25 cents per page; and one that would allow an agency to charge someone for copies even if the person didn't pick them up. All are sponsored by Sen. Darlene Fairley (D-41).
In contrast, state Reps. bBrendan Williams (D-22) and Jim Moeller (D-49) have introduced a bill that would expand the scope of public-records law, by removing an exemption for records that are relevant to an ongoing legal controversy but were created before the lawsuit was filed.
Paralleling Rep. Dean Takko's (D-19) bill that would bar cities from charging a fee or tax on disposable grocery bags, Reps. Maralyn Chase (D-32) and Tom Campbell (R-2) are sponsoring legislation7 that would bar cities from passing regulations on disposable carryout bags, defined as pretty much everything besides grocery sacks.
A bill sponsored by 13 senators, including several from Seattle, would ban the toxic chemical bisphenol A—but only from baby bottles.
Legislation sponsored by a slate of Democrats and Republicans would explicitly bar candidates from making libelous or defamatory statements about their opponents—a response to a state supreme court ruling that said the First Amendment protects candidates' right to make statements about each other that are merely false.
Marr, along with Sens. Jerome Delvin (R-8) and Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10) wants to reduce the size of the state commute trip reduction program, which offers tax credits to encourage people to carpool, take transit, and other alternatives to driving alone.
A bit of paranoid-sounding legislation by Jacobsen would require food made from cloned animals to be labeled as such.
Finally, Pridemore and Joe McDermott (D-34) want to make it easier for people to kill moles, a bunch of other legislators have it in for rats, and Jacobsen wants to declare the Olympic marmot the "state endemic mammal" and allow people to be buried with their pets,
Teh Internets What Was I Smoking?
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:02 PM
This post is pure nostalgic toy porn for men of a certain age. There are contemplation on M.U.S.C.L.E. toys, which I loved because they didn't come with any back story at all, forcing me to come up with individual names and histories for every little figure. Oddly, I had no interest in Monster in My Pocket, which is the exact same thing. I think maybe I liked the fact that the M.U.S.C.L.E. figures were all the same bubblegum color.
And a few brief there are a few brief thoughts on Mad Balls, which I was pretty fond of, too. When I saw the picture of the Mad Ball, I suddenly remembered the toxic foam smell of the one that I owned when I got it brand-new at KB Toys in the Maine Mall. I'm totally showing my age. I don't really understand grown men who still collect Transformers, but seeing these pictures totally set me off.
Visual Art Pioneer Square Gallery Closing After 10 Years
Posted by Jen Graves on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:58 PM
It's the economy that killed Susan Woltz Gallery, which is closing March 31.
"2008 was just the year from hell, and everybody, including my clients, well, they're expecting it to get worse before it gets better," Woltz said in a phone conversation just now. "This year's supposed to be really hard, and I just couldn't go through that."
Just a year ago, Woltz changed the name from D'Adamo Woltz Gallery (D'Adamo was a holdover from the previous owners, from whom Woltz bought the gallery in 2002). She planned to renew her lease for five more years when it came up in March. But she found herself having to fold instead. She notified her artists—about a dozen—today.
Architecture The Tower
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:54 PM
The PI's architecture critic, Lawrence Cheek, recently wrote this:
The best decoration for a high-rise is built in, not tacked on. It grows out of a bold, intriguing and thoughtfully detailed sculptural form. The Columbia Center still may be Seattle's best skyscraper simply because it's so strong: No other building expresses attitude, ambition and power so nakedly.Let's remove The Columbia Tower out of the mud of Cheek's doubt by saying this with no hesitation: It is the best skyscraper in Seattle. And this is so not only because of what it expresses ("attitude, ambition and power") but also because it facilitates cognitive mapping over the widest area. The tower can be seen from my mother's grave in the hills above Renton, and from the east side of Vashon Island, and from the Ave in the University District, and from a considerable length of Aurora Avenue. Its orienting power helps make the city readable and your place in it understandable. It connects you to the center of things—a center that radiates from this one and sure point. When you see it from Magnolia Park or Rainier Avenue or on I-5 not long after passing the exit to the airport, you feel as if you are one of many beings and buildings orbiting this core. And that feeling of being a person in an urban system is the same great feeling of being a planet in a solar system.
Teh Internets The "Aretha Franklin's Hat Takes Over the World" Flickr Pool...
Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:53 PM
...is my most favorite thing right now. Click.
Money The Math on Puppy Mills
Posted by Dominic Holden on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:27 PM
Two homes in Skagit and Snohomish counties where authorities seized more than 300 dogs that were living in filth and squalor — some without food or water — in the past week belong to a woman and one of her daughters, authorities said. [...]According to Skagit County Chief Criminal Deputy Will Reichardt, approximately 400 Chihuahuas, shih tzus, poodles, Yorkshire terriers and other small breeds were found on the mother's property in the 16000 block of Mountain View Road. Many of the animals were heavily matted, standing in their own feces and left without food or water, he said in a news release Thursday.
The metric for profits over low quality of life for running a puppy mill—out of your house—would have to be fairly high to make this sort of business worthwhile. Like, seriously, how much income is required to make it tolerable to live in a home carpeted with hundreds of shit-crusted Chihuahuas?
News / Drugs I Can't Do Any Better Than "The Audacity of Dope."
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:24 PM
Police officers in New York have seized heroin that has been branded with Obama's name. The Smoking Gun has more.
The president's surname was stamped in red ink on small glassine wrappers that were peddled by street dealers. Investigators arrested five suspects for their alleged roles in the narcotics distribution activity.
Chow Madness in Bellevue
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:19 PM
[At right: Chef Dan, a man of conviction with an unbelievable umbrella.]
Recently opened restaurants in Bellevue: a big new El Gaucho, the also-large-and-also-posh Pearl, and the reportedly glamorous-and-great Monsoon East.
Coming soon, also in Bellevue: another big/posh incarnation of Capitol Hill's new Barrio (about which reader-reviewers disagree) AND—just announced—a 4,400-square-foot, 175-seat restaurant called Stir Martini & Raw Bar, from the people of O/8 Seafood Grill (a large-and-pricey place already extant in downtown Bellevue).
What the hell is going on over there? Is there no recession (um, Microsoft layoffs?) or is everyone just covering their ears, closing their eyes, and humming really loud? Of course, all these other places were in the works since before the economy went to hell in a handbasket, but this Stir thing sounds brand new; the press release says the deal's just been "penned" and that "With the introduction of this new concept, the partners have formed a new restaurant management group called Chef Dan Restaurants. The launch of the corporation is timed with the expansion of Stir, the second venture under the group’s umbrella." Um, can we get some other stuff under Chef Dan's obviously gale-force-proof umbrella?
Reading on: "Stir is slated to open end of July 2009 to coincide with the completion of the new tower at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue.... In addition to Stir, Chef Dan Restaurants will continue to develop future dining concepts. [Chef Dan] Thiessen and [co-owner/businessguy Matt] Bomberger hold the shared conviction that Bellevue and surrounding Eastside communities offer incredible opportunities for continued restaurant growth, even in uncertain economic times." Conviction! Incredible, indeed, in the sense of not to be believed.
News "I won."
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:13 PM
Obama lets the GOP in on a little secret.
Books Marked Commentary
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:05 PM
NamelessleTTer is a record of handmade bookmarks left in used/library/abandoned books. Sometimes the marks comment on the book. Other times they're messages for whoever next picks up the book. The one on the left was tucked into a copy of Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. I hope some kid doesn't find it.
At Large / Homo / News Just Off the Train
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 4:02 PM
First, if Sam Adams had anything to do with taking out four parking spaces on a downtown street and putting in rows of bike racks...
...then he should be mayor for freakin' life no matter how many lies he tells about his sex life. Tell us you like to eat pussy, Sam, tell us you've got an eight-foot-long dick, tell us you once had a threeway with Chase Crawford and Howard Cosell on a spaceship to Mars. Just keep doing shit like this.
And for the "it's the lies!" crowd: There was an anti-Sam-Adams demonstration at City Hall in Portland this morning. The assembled crowd of roughly twenty people was comprised, according to witnesses, almost entirely of Jesus freaks. I'm sure the only problem that Portland's Jesus freak community—or Portland's suburbs' Jesus freak community—has with Adams is that he told a lie. Until Adams was revealed to be a lair—until he confessed that, yes, he had cut down that cherry tree, bent that 18-year-old over it, and fucked the living God out of him—Portland's Jesus freak community was 100% behind the city's openly gay mayor. It was only when Adams' lies were revealed that the scales fell from their eyes and the local Jesus freaks decided they had no choice but to call on Sam Adams to resign.
Uh-huh.
Books / Film The Prospect of Push
Posted by David Schmader on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:28 PM
I was working at Bailey/Coy Books when Sapphire's novel Push was released in 1996. For those who don't know, Push is the first-person account of a morbidly obese, illiterate young black girl surviving a nightmare life of incest and abuse, and ultimately finding a reason to live in the act of writing. Landing in the thick of the "recovered memory" controversy/backlash and featuring astoundingly graphic depictions of the worst sexual abuse you've ever been forced to imagine, the book caused a mini shitstorm. (In the scene that's burned into my brain, our narrator Precious lives through her typical weeknight: frying up several meals' worth of food for her (also morbidly obese) mother, who force-feeds Precious the leftovers then—SPOILER ALERT—shoves her daughter's food-smeared face between her legs and forces the girl to perform cunnilingus on her. Also, Precious is pregnant for the second time after being raped by her father for more than the second time.)
I am not making this up, but Sapphire did, and what kept Push from being pornography or the literary sex-abuse equivalent of Faces of Death is the quality of the writing, which is highly stylized, hovering between the simple scrawlings of its illiterate narrator and the previous performance poetry of its celebrated author.
And now, Push is a movie, and judging from the reception it's gotten at Sundance, an amazing one.
Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe plays the lead role of Precious, but the rest of the cast is almost all stars, including Mariah Carey as a social worker, Lenny Kravitz as a nurse, and, as Precious' all-sorts-of-hungry mother, Mo'Nique. Like the book, the movie is said to be highly stylized—very fast, even funny—and the cast is being praised for its gritty going-there.
Gaining the lion's share of hype: Mo'Nique, who gives an illuminating interview about the film and her role here.
Dear Push: As with Humpday, I cannot wait to see you.
Housekeeping Sexy, Sexy, Who's Got the Sexy?
Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:18 PM
The Stranger is searching for the sexiest people in Seattle! Know a sexy bartender, sexy bus driver, sexy record store clerk, or sexy cop? Nominate them for Seattle's Sexiest by submitting a photo into our sexy Flickr Pool. (Be sure to tag it "seattlesexy"; more instructions can be found right here).
Here's just a small sample of some of the hotties currently up for consideration:
Housekeeping Overheard on Intraoffice Email
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:11 PM
From a Stranger writer to the Stranger copydesk:
would you please change the word "twat" to "netherloins"?thank you.
City Suspicious Package Found At The Cuff
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:10 PM
Seattle Police have been called to the Capitol Hill gay bar The Cuff after a staff member found a suspicious package inside the bar.
According to Seattle Police spokeswoman Renee Witt, the package was left at the Cuff sometime last night.
Earlier this month, The Cuff and 10 other Seattle bars received threatening letters from a person claiming to be in possession of a large quantity of Ricin poison.
Police have cordoned off 13th Avenue between Pike and Pine.
Update: SPD has cleared the scene and the Cuff has reopened. Staff at the bar declined to comment on the incident, but did refer to Stranger news intern Aaron Pickus as "honeycakes," which made his day.
According to a department source, the suspicious package "turned out to be nothing."
Nerd This Is Why People Make Fun of Twitter
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:03 PM
A few weeks ago, I stopped feeling self-conscious about having a Twitter account.
But this is almost enough to make me go back into the closet (Twoset?) People are Twittering as characters from Firefly. This isn't a PR stunt paid for by Fox; these are actual real people who one day thought "I'm going to Twitter in the persona of a character from a canceled TV show!" And then went through with it.
Don't get me wrong; I really liked Firefly. Better than Buffy, even. And fan art can often be a sweet, or occasionally impressive, thing. But the fact that two people (I will presume independently of each other) have taken on the persona of the captain from Firefly on Twitter is, to say the least, twoubling.
News Sam Adams: The Other Shoe? Or the Worst Lawyer in the Long, Sordid History of Lawyers?
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:54 PM
So... I'm sitting on a train heading to PDX because I wanna 1. write about a rally being held in support of Sam Adams, Portland's embattled mayor, and 2. attend that rally in support of Sam Adams, Portland's embattled mayor, and 3. spend the rest of the weekend hanging out with the boyfriend at the Ace Hotel. (The kid has a weekend-long sleepover.) I am con 40+ men having sex with 18-year-olds—gay or straight—but I'm also con people being hounded out of office for private, legal, adult consensual sexual conduct. (And it's the sex, not the lies about the sex, that are prompting the calls for Adams to resign.) There was a a press conference today at noon at Portland's city hall featuring "community leaders" speaking out in support of Adams that I missed. But check out this quote from "civil rights attorney" Charles Hinkle in the Oregonian's write-up of the presser:
Hinkle called Adams, "a good and decent man" dedicated to public service. "He has the potential to be a great mayor and I say to you, Sam, don't resign."Hinkle and others said the media focuses too much on the personal lives of leaders and downplayed the impact of Adams' actions.
"There are crimes and there are crimes," Hinkle said. "If this was a crime, if he committed a crime by having a sexual relationship with a young man who was a couple of months shy of his 18th birthday, that is not a crime that looms large in the history of mankind."
What? WHAT?!? Adams met Beau Breedlove when Breedlove was 17, but Adams insists that nothing happened until after Breedlove turned 18. The age of consent in Oregon is 18; if something happened before Breedlove turned 18, then Adams broke the law and it's over. If Adams and Breedlove waited, no laws were broken, and Adams should refuse to resign. (Fun fact: the age of consent in Washington is 16. So if Greg Nickels banged Beau's 16-year-old sister, Bovina Breedlove, Greg could continue to be Seattle's mayor-for-life.) Now Hinkle seems to be addressing a possible worst-case-scenario here—what if the mayor of Portland were guilty of statutory rape?—and saying even then it's not so bad in the, you know, grand scheme of things (or in Washington state). But if Hinkle thinks he's helping Adams with that line of argument... he's a fucking moron.
(And it really is the sex, not the lies, that people have an issue with here—please read this brilliant blog post by Alex Blaze at the Bilerico Project.)
News Class Action Lawsuit Against Microsoft
Posted by Grant Brissey on Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:37 PM
There's never really a good time to get sued, but this is especially bad timing for Microsoft.
This, according to tgdaily.com:
Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman released figures from the class-action lawsuit that claims Microsoft mislead its customers in the months before the January 2007 release of their Vista operating system.Microsoft has said that the estimate is inflated, and that if damages were granted it wouldn't fall anywhere close to this amount.
A University of Washington economist, and an expert witness for the plaintiffs has calculated that it would cost anywhere from $3.92 billion to $8.52 billion to upgrade all of the PCs that were sold as Vista Capable so that they would be able to run the premium versions of Windows Vista.
Here's the gist of the class action suit's claim:
The Vista Home Basic lawsuit alleges that Microsoft's Vista Capable program would inflate the prices of PCs that were only capable of running that edition, thus enticing users to purchase machines that would not be able to upgrade to a better version of Vista at a later date. Individuals and consumers involved in the lawsuit feel that they were cheated, and not given the "real Vista" because it doesn't have the Aero glass user interface.
But, and of course, "Microsoft denies false advertising and claims their campaign was fair and honest."
Via tgdaly.com
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