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Listen to Sean Nelson's great new solo album!
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A prosecutor is accusing a rapper of faking his own death
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Fuck being hard; Thundercat is complicated
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A robot plays the James Bond theme song
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Crime / Life Instant Karma Gonna Getchoo
Posted by David Schmader on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 11:38 AM
Do not watch this video unless you want to see a man attempt to steal a woman's phone and then immediately get hit by a bus. (No gore, SFW, but still, BAM.)
Friday, May 17, 2013
Life Wedding Crasher: Two Peas on the High Seas
Posted by Sarah Galvin on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:53 AM
- THE STRANGER
- Modern enough for the times, but old-fashioned enough to last forever.
Two little girls marched solemnly down the aisle with the grooms' rings (Gary's was set with the diamond from Joseph's mother's engagement ring), followed by a crowd of kids who ran all over the deck of the boat waving streamers to Brian Eno's "Needle in the Camel's Eye." Joseph told me the parade of children was inspired by the opening scene of Velvet Goldmine.
The grooms appeared, accompanied by two mysterious figures in black spandex bodysuits and multicolored cummerbunds, who were twirling paper parasols. Under an arbor of white paper flowers, Joseph and Gary unwrapped one of the spandex-wearers to reveal Ed Haymaker, who was ordained just to officiate their wedding.
Invite us to your wedding at weddingcrasher@thestranger.com!
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
Life Regarding the Singles House
Posted by Emily Nokes on Thu, May 16, 2013 at 5:37 PM
Monday, May 13, 2013
Occupy / Politics / Life Black Bloc Community Service
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:00 PM
This weekend I spent some time with Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (whose Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, which I read as a student in Chicago, was a seismic event for my young brain).
This passage is in a chapter about how rules can be exercises in futility—improvisation, experimentation, stumbling, and mistakes are how people actually behave, from the time they learn to walk and talk to the time they're in the bloom of their lives. We get stuff done, he argues, precisely because we break the rules on a regular basis.
Workers have seized on the inadequacy of the rules to explain how things actually run and have exploited it to their advantage. Thus, the taxi drivers of Paris have, when they were frustrated with the municipal authorities over fees or new regulations, resorted to what is known as a greve de zele. They would all, by agreement and on cue, suddenly begin to follow all the regulations in the code routier, and, as intended, this would bring traffic in Paris to a grinding halt. Knowing that traffic circulated in Paris only by a practiced and judicious disregard of many regulations, they could, merely by following the rules meticulously, bring it to a standstill.
I love the idea of a protest based on the principle of scrupulously following rules to show how unnecessary and counterproductive they can be. Since May Day, I've also been talking with people about the idea of "Black Bloc community service."
For example: a pack of masked demonstrators amassing at Westlake, attracting a thicket of police in SWAT gear and nervous TV anchors, then calmly and efficiently conducting a free medical clinic. (Perhaps they could pull some support from the folks at Country Doctor.) Or leading a march that splits—one to a smashup downtown, the other to an underserved neighborhood, where the demonstrators do the heavy lifting to help built a community garden. Balaclavas, bandanas, furious weeding and tilling, wheelbarrows full of manure. (It would be hot as hell, but it would look good on the evening news.) Or a Black Bloc protest in which the windows of malfeasant banks were smashed while residential windows are lovingly washed.
Those might be impractical ideas. But something along those lines could be attractive to people who equate anarchism with nothing more than petulance and the kicking over of trash cans, and would merrily upend the usual public narrative about what anarchist demonstrators—particularly those in Black Bloc clothes—really stand for.
Music / Life Passenger Ejected from Plane for Singing "I Will Always Love You"
Posted by Bree McKenna on Mon, May 13, 2013 at 11:10 AM
I just read about the passenger who refused to stop loudly singing an off-key rendition of "I Will Always Love You" during an American Airlines flight. She apparently worried the flight staff enough that they hand-cuffed her and had to make an emergency landing. Another passenger caught a secret cellphone video of her continuing to belt the song out as she was lead to the front of the aircraft in cuffs. The woman was not charged, and she claims that the incident was a caused by a bizarre diabetic episode, but American refused to fly the woman on to her destination and she had to make other arrangements.
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Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Crime / City / Life To Catch a Thief (and Do Nothing About It)
Posted by David Schmader on Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:51 PM
From this week's I, Anonymous:
I saw you steal money out of that wallet. I did. I should have punched you right in the mouth and returned the money to the rightful owner as soon as I saw it happen, but I did not. I saw a lone wallet on the ground when I walked by the heavily grinding couple in the hallway on my way to a good piss, and while I was washing my hands, I saw you, girl, pick up that wallet. I thought you were looking for an ID, but you really just jacked all of the big bills in that other girl's wallet. You left the ones but took the big bills. I approached you and asked how much you scored from the wallet....
Read the whole thing (and berate/defend various parties) here.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Life A Metal Wedding: Jason Sachs and Erika Kriegsheim
Posted by Sarah Galvin on Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:37 PM
"Originally, we were going to do some ritual bloodletting," joked the groom, who seemed charmingly overwhelmed with excitement. "I hope this ceremony doesn't bore you." It was actually adorable, officiated by the couple's friend Scarlett, who told the assembly how she'd known Jason and Erika for a long time and that it was obvious when they started dating that they were perfect for each other.
Would you like The Stranger to crash your wedding? Send your wedding invitation to weddingcrasher@thestranger.com!
Monday, May 6, 2013
Etiquette / Cats / POT / Comedy / Horrors / Booze / Dinosaurs / Life / Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz / Teh Internets I Shouldn't Do This...
Posted by Dan Savage on Mon, May 6, 2013 at 1:32 PM
...but sometimes I can't help myself. An ongoing email exchange:
Hope you get AIDS Fagget
It's "faggot."—Dan
LOL commie
LOL illiteratie.—Dan
Best illiterate than a cock sucker with AID. Hope you get AID fag.
Let me help you with that: "Better illiterate than a cocksucker [one word!] with AIDS. Hope you get AIDS, fag."—Dan
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Life Ed McClain, "the Real Change Guy"
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, May 6, 2013 at 8:17 AM
- PHOTO BY BOB PETERSON. Courtesy Real Change
- "Real Change? Thank you, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Have a nice day."
Edward McClain, commonly referred to as “the Real Change guy” for his work selling the weekly street newspaper outside the Brooklyn Avenue Safeway, died Friday. He was 69.
McClain’s passing was announced on Real Change’s Facebook page Sunday afternoon. He had been a vendor for Real Change since 1995, working the same spot outside Safeway ever since.
UPDATE: A service for McClain will be held on Saturday, May 11 at 1 p.m. at University Temple United Methodist (1415 NE 43rd St, Seattle, WA 98105).
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Life / Sports / LGBTQITSLFA Jason Collins Is the Envy of Straight Men Everywhere
Posted by Sherman Alexie on Wed, May 1, 2013 at 11:27 AM
In other words, I, Sherman, a heterosexual lifelong basketball player, have seen a lot more cock and man-ass than many gay men.
As I age, my cock is essentially the same one I owned in 1983. But my balls and ass are loosening and threatening to avalanche down my body. I think I'm an attractive man wearing clothes, but when I'm naked... well, let's just say that I'm grateful I have a pleasant face. And, grading on a curve, I'm actually a relatively fit middle-aged man. All around me in the health clubs, I encounter mountainous guts that make my chubby belly look like a foothill. I see butt cheeks that look like two Sasquatches playing tennis. I recoil from feet so gnarled, hirsute, and abused that a hobbit would suggest a pedicure.
So why do certain homely straight men worry that gay men are even remotely interested in sexually harassing their concave asses? If strange women don't amass in large numbers to jump your bones, then why would packs of gay men hunger for you?
And, hey, I don't mean to punish those folks who are not hot, hot, hot. The plain and the lovely deserve equal amounts of love. I am only talking about sexual objectification.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Life Sleeping with Strangers: The Overnight Shift at a Homeless Shelter
Posted by Rebecca Brown on Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 4:47 PM
- MIKE FORCE
Fourteen or 15 usually. We sleep on mats, the men on the floor of the gym and me on the floor of the storage room off the little kitchen by the gym. Before the men arrive, the other winter shelter host and I put the mattresses out on the gym floor and a chair beside each one so the men can put whatever they have somewhere. We get out juice and cheese and crackers and instant soup and peanut butter and jelly so they can make themselves a snack. Some of the men, as soon as they arrive, go straight to sleep, but some of them want to stay up and read the paper, if one of us remembers to bring it, or watch a video on the TV in the kitchen, though mostly we just hang around together.
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Life / Economy Overheard on the Sidewalk
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:58 PM
Woman, talking to man: "See, that's the good thing about being married—you two can share a one-bedroom apartment."
If that's "the good thing" about marriage, our bank accounts are collectively busted.
Life Yesterday, on Boston's Boylston Street...
Posted by Anna Minard on Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 9:24 AM
For a few minutes at least, $2 bills fell from the sky. It happened right where one of the bombs went off last week. The mystery money-flinger is still a mystery.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Booze / Life This Week in I, Anonymous: Father Knows Best
Posted by David Schmader on Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 10:22 AM
From this week's I, Anonymous:
Over the first 16 years of your life, I had four jobs and was fired from all of them. My evaluations would say things like "The poorest work habits I've ever seen." I felt entitled to cheat, lie, use people, and hurt people (ask your mom) out of what I called anger. But it wasn't anger. It was self-pity. And its fuel was alcohol. Sound familiar? Dude, it runs in families. Your mother and your sister and I all wish we could force you to get sober, but all of us know it doesn't work that way. All I can say is that when I finally dumped alcohol, everything fell into place for me. And you're like me. I only hope it doesn't take until you're fifty-fucking-five years old to snap to the fact, because this show is getting hard to watch.
And from this week's I, Anonymous comments:
How nice for you that you got sober AFTER your children were grown. Ruin their lives with your alcohol-fueled abusiveness, then find sobriety in time for you to be able to enjoy the rest of your life. You deserve the pain of watching your son be the train wreck you created. Choke on it.
Get in on the context-free judgment of anonymous people's lives here.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Life What a Week
Posted by Eli Sanders on Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 6:00 AM
To start your Friday, a story about comfort dogs.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Death / City / Life This Week in Last Days: The Tragic Story of Mauricio Bell
Posted by David Schmader on Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 10:08 AM
Strewn among the week's tales of gun-wielding toddlers and ambitious heroin scams is this local horror:
FRIDAY, APRIL 12 In worse news, the week continues in Seattle, where today KING 5 News obtained surveillance video capturing the final moments of Mauriceo Bell, the 42-year-old Seattle man who died last Sunday morning in the downtown Metro bus tunnel, where he'd fallen on a moving escalator and was strangled by his clothes. "Surveillance shows him staggering, leaning on the rail for support, and towards the bottom, falling backwards," reports KING 5. "Bell died at the bottom of the escalator, strangled by his own clothing." Important fact #1: "KING 5 has found that particular escalator was not up-to-date on repairs and maintenance... Checking inspection reports on the state Labor & Industries website, it appears Metro owns and operates 78 escalators and elevators. In almost every case, the reports show required repairs not completed and boxes that would signify the work has been done not checked off. Some are weeks overdue, some months overdue. Some go back to 2011. KING 5 found only four out of 78 appeared to be up to date." Important fact #2: "Bell was a father of four and 'a good standup father,' his younger brother says, despite having a long record of run-ins with the law, mostly drug related," reports KING 5, acknowledging that police found a half-empty brandy bottle in Bell's back pocket. "But [Bell's brother] has a message to anybody jumping to conclusions about Bell's character or the circumstances of his death. 'No matter what you say about him, he paid taxes, too. He should have been able to trust his transit system,' he said. 'And isn't that what we're supposed to do if we're inebriated? Take the bus home? Take transit?'"
Condolences to the family of Mauriceo Bell, who will likely end up very sad gazillionaires.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Chow / Life Eating From the Garden
Posted by Goldy on Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 7:41 AM
- Goldy | The Stranger
- Thinnings from my second sowing of radishes alongside an early harvest from my first.
I like radishes just fine and all that, but their real attraction is how fast they grow. While it's not exactly instant gratification, few vegetables go from seed to table quite as fast as radishes. Even faster if you eat the thinnings.
And that's what I had with my dinner last night: A spicy salad of radish starts and baby arugula (also a fast grower—that's why the French call it "roquette").
What are you eating from your garden?
Life / Tech Did I Violate Paul Constant's Civil Rights With This Drone?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 6:00 AM
- PBC
The other day, I used the Slog drone to spy on Paul Constant while he was reading in Volunteer Park.
Afterward, Mr. Constant took the matter to the high court of Twitter and declared:
My civil rights have been violated. RT"@elijsanders Slog drone vs. @paulconstant: slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/… "
— Paul Constant (@paulconstant) April 8, 2013
Mr. Constant said later that he meant his "civil liberties." Either way, a ruling seemed necessary.
So, I took the case of Slog drone vs. Paul Constant to an expert on robotics and the law, the Seattle City Attorney's Office, and the local ACLU. None of them could come up with a specific law that I'd broken by using this off-the-shelf Parrot AR.Drone to read over Mr. Constant's shoulder in a public park.
If you're concerned about where personal drone technology is going, you should take a moment to hear why.
I began with the expert on robotics and the law, Ryan Calo, who used to be with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and is now at the University of Washington.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Music / Life / Drugs Wisdom Tooth Weekend: Songs For Percocet and Pain
Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:48 AM
UUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH. On Wednesday I have to get my wisdom teeth pulled and I am NOT excited about it. I've never had a tooth pulled before. I hate going to the dentist. I'm terrified.
Thankfully I have a very radical husband who'll help take care of me by making sure the house is stocked with frozen yogurt and pain meds, and I suppose I could look at the bright side and be stoked about the fact that I can catch up on my Netflix queue (it's excusable, ney, preferable to watch shit like Bridalplasty when high on percocet, right?), but until it's time for naps and drugs, I'm filled with anxiety. What if my teeth don't come out? What if ALL my teeth come out?* What if my whole jaw comes off? What if I wake up during the surgery? WHAT IF I DON'T WAKE UP AT ALL!?
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Life Wedding Crasher: I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
Posted by Sarah Galvin on Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:40 AM
The ceremony was officiated by the elegant David Schraer, a local architect. Friends read from the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on Goodridge v. Department of Public Health and The Mirror of Clarity by Saint Aelred of Rievaulx. After the ring exchange, Abba's "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" was drowned out by applause.
I tried Ben's "Cali Cooler" and Jeff's "Fruti Fizz" at the bar, and ate delicious beans from Madres Kitchen catering, which I was disappointed to learn were unusually large, well-seasoned limas, not some rare miracle bean. I met a mycologist who had been in a marching band with Ben and who told me about a fungus that causes people to hoard cats.
Would you like The Stranger to crash your wedding? Send your wedding invitation to weddingcrasher@thestranger.com!
Life / Religion “If the Bible really says this about gay people, I’m not too keen on trusting what it says about God.”
Posted by David Schmader on Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 9:54 AM
A formerly church-loving college kid writes "an open letter to the Church," invoking Macklemore, marriage equality, and the need to embrace change.
My point in writing this isn’t to protect gay people. Things are changing—the world is becoming a safer place for my gay friends. They’re going to get equal rights. I’m writing this because I’m worried about the safety of the Church. The Church keeps scratching its head, wondering why 70% of 23-30 year-olds who were brought up in church leave.......[M]y generation, the generation that can smell bullshit, especially holy bullshit, from a mile away, will not stick around to see the church fight gay marriage against our better judgment.
Whole thing here. Thank you, Metafilter.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Life Co-Workers Clipping Fingernails: CONDEMN OR ALLOW?!?
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 3:16 PM
CLIK. CLIK. CLIK.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Life / Tech Slog Drone vs. Paul Constant
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:00 AM
As mentioned, the Slog drone recently spotted Stranger books editor Paul Constant as he was reading in the park.
Some have been wondering what recreational uses this drone might be put to aside from going up and coming back down, and here is one: It can hover on over to Paul, flip from its nose camera to its bottom-mounted camera, and then peer down at Paul's filthy, filthy reading material.
What should the Slog drone do next?
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Life Light Slogging From Me Today
Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 2:48 PM
I'm writing a column, finishing a review, and doing a podcast today—so not on Slog. Sorry about that, Slog. But I didn't think Sloggers should have to wait until tomorrow to see this. Why do crunches when you get get a hot shirtless Russian dude to punch you in the stomach over and over and over?
Life / Tech A Few Good Reasons Not to Fear Personal Drones (For Now)
Posted by Eli Sanders on Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 6:00 AM
The Slog drone may have stared down a Seattle Police Department waterfront spy camera last Friday, but commenter Greycat is unimpressed with video of the encounter:
It's a very good point. (And one that I tried to make here.) The abilities of today's personal drones are actually quite calming when you see them displayed, in the sense that they're so far from our worst fears.
The Parrot AR.Drone, for example, is easily pushed around by light breezes. That's one reason I kept the Slog drone—a Parrot—well away from the SPD waterfront camera and nearby power lines, and instead just sent the thing up above an empty patch of grass, turned it to look at the SPD camera from a distance, and then set it back down. (It's also a reason that the promise of newspaper delivery via Parrot is a joke, for now.)
- Specs from the SPD's cancelled drone program. (Click to enlarge.)
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Life Different Kinds of Silence on Top of Queen Anne Hill
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:07 AM
This never saw the light of Slog last week, but it's wonderful and you should read it—Kary Wayson's autobiographical prose/poetry hybrid "City of Secrets." It's especially wonderful if you have any interest in solitude, demolished buildings, grocery store encounters, and family secrets.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Booze / Life / Money Where and How Do You Buy Your Liquor?
Posted by Anna Minard on Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 2:21 PM
Ever since we privatized liquor sales in Washington State, people have been slowly figuring out new liquor-buying routines. And I haven't figured it out yet at all. I don't tend to go to the former state stores that have now become liquor marts because the now-higher prices are still so jarring and I rarely see sales like I can find at a grocery store. But the selection at most grocery stores is totally abysmal and frustrating. Surely I am not alone in this? (I am admittedly kind of a doofus, but still.) This weekend, a reader wrote in to ask if we'd considered reviewing liquor stores, and it's a fucking great idea. But where to start? I, for one, would appreciate a little crowdsourced knowledge of the new boozescape. Where do you buy your liquor? Who has the best selection? Who has the best prices? Are there any tricks? (Other than setting up your own still, please.) Or is everyone just going on massive liquor runs to California every few months?
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Life The First-Ever Wedding Crasher!
Posted by Sarah Galvin on Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 3:15 PM
Introducing Wedding Crasher: in which a writer from The Stranger comes to your wedding, drinks (only their fair share) of your booze, dances to your music (whatever it may be), and celebrates your love (ditto)! Would you like us to crash your wedding? Send your wedding invitation to weddingcrasher@thestranger.com!
Upon my arrival at Adam Swan and Karam Yousef's wedding, I handed the groom—who happens to be the keyboardist of Truckasauras—a wicker basket of wedding gifts, including a bottle of lavender liqueur and a book of Dale Chihuly postcards. He was so excited to show me the majestic three-foot-high wedding cake that he didn't even look in the basket. The cake was covered in purple and gold swirls of frosting and topped with plastic bobbleheads of Adam and Karam...
- JENNY JIMENEZ
- NEWLYWEDS Cutting the cake with a sword.
What Should I Do With This Drone Someone Bought Me?
Posted by Eli Sanders at 6:00 AM in Life
Thursday, March 28, 2013
This Week in I, Anonymous: Nannies Bash Back
Posted by David Schmader at 12:14 PM in Etiquette / Life
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Onion Makes the Internet Laugh-Cry
Posted by Anna Minard at 5:00 PM in Comedy / Life
These Are the Words the City Says to Me (Part XV)
Posted by Megan Seling at 11:59 AM in City / Life
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Today Is the First Day of Spring!
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement at 11:50 AM in Life / The Weather
Monday, March 18, 2013
"He Will Become One Of The First Men In The World To Have A Penis Built From His Own Arm"
Posted by Kelly O at 1:45 PM in Life
Thursday, March 14, 2013
A Mother's Final, Inadvertent Act of Love for Her Child
Posted by David Schmader at 8:42 AM in Life
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Today in I, Anonymous: Praise Where Praise Is Due
Posted by David Schmader at 3:30 PM in Life
Monday, March 11, 2013
Guerrilla Gardening in South Central
Posted by Gillian Anderson at 9:15 AM in Life
Friday, March 8, 2013
Here's One of My Punk Stories, Now Share Yours
Posted by Megan Seling at 4:40 PM in Music / Life
"At some point in life, everyone has gambled on a fart and lost."
Posted by David Schmader at 10:10 AM in City / Life / Teh Internets
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Hello, Slog Hive-Mind!
Posted by David Schmader at 10:43 AM in Life / Teh Internets
I've Seen This Happen in Other People's Lives—Morrissey at the Moore Theatre
Posted by Jackson Hathorn at 10:07 AM in Music / Life
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