Dear AAAAA,

Let me back up, and complicate, Dan when he writes...

remember that TVC and NOM and FRC and AFA are all shooting themselves in the foot. So are all the freelance haters lurking in comments threads on blogs and on news websites spouting off about buttsecks and feces and pedophilia.

You see, today most people know someone who's LGBT. The homophobic nonsense that straight people used to find so persuasive—gay people are all icky perverts! they're coming for your children! they hate the family!—doesn't work on straight people who actually know someone who's LGBT.

Because it's not just that hate fades when haters know someone who's LBGT: hate fades, or gets complicated, when people know someone whom they know is related to someone who's LGBT. One degree of separation can suffice.

To wit: I am a regular patron at a bar where I've literally known the bar owners, and one of the bartenders, and many of the patrons, my entire life (I've lived in the same zip code for all of my 50 years). It's the kind of low-key neighborhood joint where everyone talks sports, local news, whatever. Some of the regulars are old-fashioned prejudiced Never Really Thought About It regarding various things; some are actual bigots. Either way, years ago, if someone would spout some homophobic bullshit, I'd clear my throat (I'm usually at a table in the window, reading the paper, not right at the bar engaged in the chitchat). Then one or the other of the regulars or the bartender would remind the rest of who my brother was, or the bigot would just remember that when you make a disparaging remark about fags, you're talking about Bill's brother Dan. You know, Dan, went to school with your little sister? You know, Bill, who can talk Cubs and Bears and why Loyola is fucking up the 'hood, Bill, he's one of us. So shut the fuck up about his brother.

This didn't necessarily change their minds about Queers Being Icky, but they kept their bullshit quieter in deference to me. Because they knew me, and my whole family, including the queer one. And I have to think that over the many years this has gone on, where Dan's appearances on Maher or CNN, or in the Reader or the Tribune, have been the subject of conversation, they've come to realize that maybe they're full of it a bit, on the wrong side of history.

And when our mother died five years ago, everyone in that bar was right there for us. Not just for me, for us all.

Continue reading »

Okay, I'll warn you now that there's a big nepotism tag on this post. My brother Michael has been taking super high-resolution panoramas of the city, such as this one that I posted recently, but he's getting better at them. His latest panaorama has about three times the detail, it's shot at sunrise over Sodo, and you can go full screen and ZOOM WAY IN. It's right over HERE.

Yes, yes, I'm biased and all that—but... it's so neat. I love you, Slog, and I had to share.

UPDATE: Holy crap. This one taken from Gasworks Park, of the skyline and everything else in town, might be even better.

My brother Michael took a super high-resolution panorama of the Seattle skyline at sunset. You can go full screen, zoom way in, and peer inside windows...

So, one of the side arguments (apart from, you know, basic rights and justice) for Same Sex Marriage is the economic impact it can have. And since the political is the personal, here's my personal economic impact statement from Dan and Terry's recent Big Gay Wedding:

My sweetheart and I came to Seattle via Portland. Below, I list just the money she and I spent in Seattle, on a weekend we otherwise would not have been in Seattle at all.

Transportation: $30.00 for 2 cab rides, $29.40 for parking, $8.00 on Sound Transit, for a total of $67.40.
Lodging at a very nice B and B on Capitol Hill: $348.21.
Food: $197.34 at Bastille in Fremont, $133.88 at Smith, for a total of $331.22.
Food at the airport: $64, including nice stuff from Dish Delish to bring on the plane.
Booze: $37.95 at Hopvine, $9.00 at the Comet (happy hour rocks), $30.00 at the party at Q for a total of $76.95.
Christmas shopping: $209.45 at the Ebbets Field Flannels outlet store in Pioneer Square.
Miscellaneous: $29.20 at Walgreen's on 15th, $7.00 for newspapers, $12.00 for coffee.

Grand total direct economic impact on Seattle: $1,147.43.

Imagine if the brother had had more time to plan a really big gay wedding! And, hey, everyone be sure to get cupcakes from Cupcake Royale, who donated all of those cupcakes for the City Hall ceremonies and the party at Q!

Its true!

When the TV money flowing into college football changed from a steady stream to a tsunami, Notre Dame surfed the front wave. Their 1991 deal with NBC for exclusive broadcast rights of home games helped ensure the slow death of traditional college football. You know: crisp fall Saturday afternoons on campus, tweedy professors, wholesome cheerleaders, projectile-vomiting frat boys. Back in the day, for far-away alums or fans, maybe the game would’ve been on TV, but probably not. Now, any time slot that doesn’t go up against the NFL has a college game scheduled, to feed the bottomless maw of ESPN and other sports cable outfits.

Yet the fact that Notre Dame is just another a football factory isn’t the issue: it’s the fact that Notre Dame acts as though it isn’t just another football factory.

Even beyond the money, Notre Dame’s claims of moral superiority are belied by events on the ground. When student videographers are killed in windstorms or a young woman commits suicide after allegedly being sexually assaulted by a football player, and Notre Dame’s administration circles the wagons around “the program,” well, they remind us there is no moral high ground in big-time college sports.

That all flowed right over my head! But good righting, Bill!

That nepotism tag doesn't come in handy much. But when it does, man, it's just the thing.

Seattle Community Colleges, a conglomerate of post-secondary schools and vocational institutes funded by the state, announced today two new members of its board of trustees. Appointed by Governor Chris Gregoire, the new members are Carmen Gayton, a Windermere Real Estate broker who also worked for the Weyerhaeuser Company, and—uh—Courtney Gregoire.

Hmmm... that unusual last name sure sounds like the last name of the woman who appointed her. But the bio in the press release makes no mention that she's the governor's daughter:

Courtney Gregoire is an attorney with Microsoft Corp., whose wide-ranging career in public service includes work as a legislative director in the U. S. Senate and as Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Commerce. While working in Washington, D.C, she also served with the National Democratic Institute and maintained her ties to Seattle, serving with the University of Washington Center for Women & Democracy. Trustee Gregoire is a graduate of Willamette University and Harvard Law School, and began her law career at K&L Gates.

Courtney Gregoire surely has the qualifications to serve on the board. But, you know, lacking full disclosure—Seattle Community Colleges didn't immediately respond to questions about the accidental omission—we'll do it for them.

So, for y'all who don't get enough Dan Savage idolatry (which, by the way, is bullshit according to the Bible) around here:

Read this and this and this from the Chicago Tribune.

Now, the part that makes this funny: I'm teaching my Chicago lit class, and we've been doing Chicago journalism and new media (Dan Sinker's Twitter-novella "The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @mayoremanuel"). I routinely mock. . . er, engage with. . . my students about the habit of Young People Nowadays not reading newspapers. Tuesday, Sinker spoke to my class and Dan tweeted something about it (that I showed to the class to engage with the New Media Paradigm). Today, I was discussing the various implications of this particular brand of post-modern discursive practices, blahblahblah, and a few students made comments about Dan's media presence that I now realize were about this freakin' story. That they'd read (online) but I hadn't, because I read the damn Trib on dead trees in the afternoon. Like after class.

Here endeth the lesson.

Also, these stories do NOT show up on the Tribune's front page online. The Arts and Entertainment section they're in don't list these stories, even though that's where they appear in the print edition. This might be driven by search algorithms: so click these links to get this cool stuff up on their site!

Posted by former news intern Paul Holmes

Well, that was quick. I'm done, Slog. I feel like I barely had a transition from nervous-yet-overconfident fresh news intern to jaded-yet-wise-and-still-overconfident former news intern. It's been good and satisfying, by way of not being exactly what I expected. Rather than try to force out more platitudes, I'd like to share non-sequitur things I'm taking with me from The Stranger.

1. A profound love for grammar and formatting. It's just a free, uncomplicated extra step to make any piece more effective. And I appreciate getting called out on errors by commenters.

2. Tolerance and generally warm feelings toward trolls. Even the most inane, bitchy, trolling comments and commenters flatter us by proving that what we write is worth responding to. And it's the sort of incredibly cruel, honest feedback you can't get anywhere else, which is useful, provided that you actually give a shit about what you're writing and have opinions and stuff. It's also fun to predict who will comment and what you all will say.

3. A tattoo. Mom and dad, it's a bass clef on my left shoulder blade. I got it on the night of October 28 after a few drinks. Hat tip for the idea to care bear.

Bye, Slog! I had an absolutely great time here. If you're at all curious, here's what I've been up to for the past couple weeks, and will continue working on for the next few months. (Go Sex Week!)

P.S. My dad is running for mayor in 2013.

By Seattle Mag. He's still a foul-mouthed fucker and never sends us donuts. Also he's impulsive, irrational, and totally brilliant.

And the Youtube video was posted yesterday and already has more than 2.6 million hits. Discuss.

Apparently Daniel Burnham never said, "Make no small plans, for they have no magic to stir men's blood." My brother, AKA "Chicago Fan," busts Chicago-area Burnham fetishists in this piece in the Chicago Reader. As much as I hate disagreeing with my brother about, well, anything, I have to say that I'm kinda into "The Last Four Miles."

I apologize in advance for using the up the Internet on this post about Chicago, which isn't even in Seattle, and Slog's a Seattle blog, and why don't I know that, and I know, right? I'm a moron.