The National Center for Atmospheric Research's Mesa Lab sits high in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado, but it feels as though it sits atop the world. The building itself, designed by the Chinese-born archite... [...]
Former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske appears to be ever more out of sync with progressive thinking on drug policy, after the American Medical Association's recent announcement that it is asking the federal government to consider legalizing medical marijuana. Over the past few months, Kerli... [...]
King County likes to think of itself as more urbane and better-run than Pierce County, but our neighbors to the south sure seem to be doing a superior job administering the H1N1 (commonly referred to as swine flu) vaccine.
Locally, it's been madness with little method. Public Health&ndash... [...]
When The Daily Weekly found out last week that Starbucks was the latest company to buy ad space on a NASCAR vehicle, we reacted with stupefied disbelief. Not being NASCAR fans, the partnership didn't seem to make sense. What did $4-a-cup coffee have in common with a sport that started' [...]
Dear Dategirl,
I have an awesome friend whom I sometimes hook up with. He is the best friend I ever had and I can talk to him about anything. I just don't feel "that way" about him because he is about the same size as me, if not smaller, and I' [...]
Scorpio (Oct. 23–Nov. 21)
How easily you Scorps seem to forget the campground rule of relationships: Leave things better off than you found them. Unfortunately, people frequently need extended recuperation periods after emerging from relationships with Scorpios, and s... [...]
Dear Mexican,
Why oh why do most Mexican women cut their long black hair after reaching the pivotal age of 40? Not only do they cut it, but they then cut it short and dye it all shades of the most unnatural hair color for Mexicans: red. My own m... [...]
Dear Uptight Seattleite,
Speaking of bus signs, Chase Bank has a series that is telling us how happy we should be that they have landed in Seattle. One in particular says something about good banking finally arriving here, and the weather getting better, too. Do you... [...]
Sam Meister was into Portishead and Björk when he started writing music with Nicole Barille, a fan of heavier acts like Tool. She soon introduced her new collaborator—the duo took the name mr. Gnome—to the more abrasive, harder end of the sonic spectrum.
"W..." [...]
When I first heard that John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl, and Josh Homme were forming a band last spring, I must say that I was jealous. Are you kidding me?! These three mega-talented and unique figures playing hard rock in a unified and focused group? I was excited, to say [...]
Over the past several years, fans of KBCS-FM had become accustomed to a 10-hour-per-weekday diet of jazz, leading off with Drive Time Jazz at 7 a.m. and followed by The Bud and Don Show, Bebop Spoken Here, 20th ... [...]
Julian Casablancas wasn't planning to make a solo album when The Strokes went on hiatus at the end of 2006. In fact, the primary singer and songwriter from the New York–based band that helped put the stomp on rap-rock in the early 2000s didn't expect his bandmates to make t... [...]
The Fiery Furnaces ~ Wednesday, November 18
The Fiery Furnaces can't seem to decide what kind of band it wants to be. From the beginning, its sound has been informed by the simple and evocative melodies of finely crafted pop songs, but the band also has a penchant for playi...' [...]
Accompanied by his 19-year-old daughter, Sky, Android Hero frontman Jeff McNulty sits in a booth at the Mecca Cafe, discussing the long road leading to the band's debut, Broken Hearted Love Songs for Sensitive Tough Guys (jointly released this week by Al... [...]
A forest of good intentions surrounds the realm of sustainable, local, pasture-raised meat. Readers steeped in the canon of sustainable-food lit are looking for it. Farmers, seeing the price per pound that it commands, want to sell it. Chefs want to a... [...]
We eat out late quite a bit, and the last few times we've seen a couple who spend the entire meal making out and pawing each other. When we complained to the waiter we know, he told us stories of far more blatant behavior. He also expressed disdain for the' [...]
In her broad outlines, Claireece Precious Jones risks sounding like the epitome of ghetto cliché: an obese, illiterate 16-year-old; mother of a four-year-old Down Syndrome daughter and now pregnant again; physically and psychologically abused by her mother; repeatedly rape... [...]
Another poor, massive, uneducated African-American teenager lumbers onto screens this month, soon after Precious and obviously timed as a pre-Thanksgiving dinner lesson in the Golden Rule. But unlike Claireece Precious Jones and her howling rage, The Blind Side's Michael "Big Mi..." [...]
Like E.T. in reverse, this pleasantly mediocre CG animation tale lands an astronaut on a distant planet whose green, four-fingered, newt-ish inhabitants are living in an innocent, 1950s-style state of development. Fearing the brain-eating "humaniacs" they see at the movies, the Planet 51... [...]
Other than a few tasty tidbits, like the fact that he wrote Joseph McCarthy's will while still a young family attorney, there's not much fresh news about William Kunstler in this documentary. Plodding diligently through the irascible lefty lawyer's career, Disturbing the Universe travels... [...]
After 53 years of leading the Sunday-night services that have become a local cult phenomenon, Peter Hallock's stepping down from directing St. Mark's Cathedral's Compline Choir is less a retirement than a shift from one of his guiding interests to another. Hallock's lifelong infa... [...]
It would be a mistake to think the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland only performs plays by Shakespeare. Sometimes it also puts on shows about Shakespeare.
At this year's festival, the most critically and popularly raved-about production was the premiere of a ... [...]
WEDNESDAY 11/18
Stage/Film: The Birds and the Bees
Isabella Rossellini needs no introduction. Yet the star of Blue Velvet and daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini wears her glamo... [...]
It's a sad fact of Northwest history, related in Snow Falling on Cedars and elsewhere, that most of our Japanese-American population was illegally removed during World War II and incarcerated in detention camps. In Bellevue, as on Bainbridge Island, the old farm plots and strawberry fiel... [...]
As many people have observed, there are indeed second acts in American life. Ruthless capitalists become philanthropists. Congress members leave office and return to the Capitol as lobbyists. Television broadcasters turn into Republican politicians in nonpartisan garb. But here's something you do... [...]
Terry Lee Alexander sounds like the last person in the world you'd want working around old people. The 22-time felon spent 14 years of his life in a jail cell, mostly because his chosen profession was taking other people's stuff.
Alexander was nicknamed the "obituary burglar" after police...' [...]
You may remember our cover story this past spring about unexpected acceleration—and other strange automotive behavior—bedeviling owners of the Toyota Prius ("Wheelzebub," April 22). Back then, the amusingly patronizing response from a Toyota spokesperson was: "People are so under stre..." [...]
In this year's City Council Position 6 race, King County Parks employee Jessie Israel took on a huge challenge: unseating beloved lefty Nick Licata, a councilmember since 1998. But armed with a working knowledge of city government and a promise to be more open to big business than the incumbent, [...]
Last July, in the heat of the crowded race for King County Executive, the King County Ferry District seemed all but doomed. Of the candidates running, only Dow Constantine was committed to staying the course with the fledgling transportation agency.
Luckily for that agency, Constantine em... [...]
From his office in the James Madison Building at tree-shrouded Liberty Park, a citadel of gunfire and tax exemption in Bellevue, the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb surveys an America under siege, not by the 90 million gun owners who possess 300 million firearms... [...]
Dear Dategirl,
I am a divorced, unemployed truck driver with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, severe psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis, and I am also obese. However, I have also been told that I am a loving, caring individual.
... [...]
Scorpio (Oct. 23–Nov. 21)
Eliminate distractions. I don't expect you to stop being obsessed with the things that fascinate you, but admit that right now they're keeping you from getting to the other stuff you ought to be doing. Instead of trying to deny your own impul... [...]
Dear Mexican,
Whenever I see an ad for a Mexican ramera, they always describe themselves as "spicy." Are Mexican women hiding habaneros in their panochas?
C... [...]Dear Uptight Seattleite,
One of the moms in my moms group invited me and Aiden to Japanese storytelling hour at Third Place Books in Ravenna. We don't understand Japanese, so I'm a little bit confused as to why she thought we would enjoy this. What do you think? [...]
Before Kenneth Gorelick started selling records by the millions, he was just another kid at Franklin High School, playing his first professional gig alongside Barry White at the Paramount. He returns Tuesday for a homecoming gig at that theater. The man who has moved more than 48... [...]
A month ago, Friday Mile stopped moving. Almost for good. Recording their new album, Good Luck Studio, had eaten up the better part of a year. It got expensive. Record labels weren't returning calls. Jace Krause, the lead singer and primary songwriter, was too distracted...' [...]
When you've spent the better part of a decade writing about hard rock and heavy-metal music, people start to make certain assumptions about you. One of the most prevalent, misguided notions strangers seem to have about me is that I must love KISS, the rock band that has cultivate...' [...]
Listening to the first track from Seattle trio Blood Red Dancers' 2008 debut EP, Let Them Fight, I'll Be in the Breadline, feels like watching the scene in Night of the Living Dead when Barbara gets attacked in the cemetery. In "Swee..." [...]
Black Heart Procession ~ Wednesday, November 11
It's funny, but not too long ago indie-rock scribes were debating Black Heart Procession's "gothness." Of course, that was the late '90s, the height of pre-commodity indie rock (remember how mind-blowing it was to see the Flam...' [...]
When it comes to metal, vocal presence is a particularly tricky piece of the puzzle. Metal is dramatic by nature, so it follows that whoever's fronting the show needs to have big balls and a knack for theatrics—requirements that can go to horribly hilarious or unlistenable ... [...]
America may own the hamburger, the muffuletta, and the Monte Cristo, but it does not own the entire sandwich genre. For some reason, the drive to press meats and condiments between pieces of bread is as universal as the drive to procreate or keep tabs... [...]
Chicken and waffles is a ridiculously decadent pairing that's hard to come by in Seattle. There's a simple explanation for this. Chicken and waffles is a dish born with its iron firmly plugged into the South, with African-Americans in the South in particular. Seattle is neither i... [...]
During my first summer as the wine buyer at DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market, I got suckered into the big Beaujolais Nouveau pre-sell. Multiple distributors wanted me to buy their version of this first-of-the-season wine, released in November. I was essentially committing to cases... [...]
Completing his multi-film vendetta against the world's tourist trade, German-born director Roland Emmerich sends the mother of all storms to level the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, and a priest-filled Vatican City, among other locales, in his newest end-times thriller, [...]
Filmmaker Troy Duffy certainly makes an easy target—at least his former friends thought so when they made the 2003 doc Overnight, a rise-fall-and-turnaround portrait of Duffy's hubris and recklessness during the making of The Boondock Saints. To his credit, not only did Du... [...]
Nothing if not consistent, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director Jared Hess once again presents adolescence as a depressive, outsider experience; makes light of the working class for being, well, poor; and nearly bests the Coen brothers when it comes to drawing all his char... [...]
The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is lured for overnight housesitting by an elegant, forbidding couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, both queerly over-intimate). Though its poster and... [...]
As with his previous films, Argentine director Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool is defined by its trajectory. A taciturn merchant sailor named Farrel (Juan Fernández) travels to his desolate Tierra del Fuego hometown after explaining, in the movie's talkiest scene, that he wants to fin... [...]
Seven months after its theatrical release in the UK, and two months after its DVD debut there, Pirate Radio washes ashore with most of its better bits excised. Writer-director Richard Curtis, paying homage to the renegade '60s DJs spinning rock 'n' roll from ships anchored in the North S...' [...]
Aiming wide and missing, this satire of the contemporary-art scene was seemingly lifted from the transcripts of late-'80s Senate debates about the NEA. Two highly competitive brothers—Josh (Eion Bailey), a successful painter of dull hotel art, and Adrian (Adam Goldberg, who also serves as e...' [...]
Documentarian Ondi Timoner lends her credulity and camera to swollen, damaged egos who believe themselves visionaries. We Live in Public documents 10 years in the life of dot-com multimillionaire-cum-installation artist Josh Harris, a clammy-looking loaf with none of the schizo firing-sy... [...]
Satori Group's sharp new production of Ashlin Halfnight's Artifacts of Consequence is like the Coen brothers meets Woody Allen's Sleeper. It's also a sweet, bizarre mash-up of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Thornton Wilder, and Huey Lewis and the News.
With litt... [...]
The Zoo Story, written in 1958 as Peter and Jerry and considered Edward Albee's first play, is short, weird, brutal, and mysterious. The single-scene piece about a chance meeting between two men in Central Park can leave audiences cold and empty. In 2004 the Har... [...]
Time and again, Pacific Northwest Ballet's artistic director Peter Boal has said he wants audiences to see the variety of dance his company can accomplish—more than just ballet. So it's ironic that one of the most exciting works in the company's current "Director's Choice" program is based ... [...]
When Julie Tobiason and Timothy Lynch of the Seattle Dance Project first discussed their newest program, the pieces were only starting to come into place—a collaboration between the company and Simple Measures, a chamber-music concert series with a reputation for intimate v... [...]
If The Full Monty is all about expectations—who you'll get to see do what, and when—here is one production that defies convention.
This is Balagan Theatre's decidedly low-tech interpretation of the musical by Terrence McNally (book) and David Yazbek (tu...' [...]
Variously likened to "lovemaking," "a marriage, but with more fidelity," and "swallowing Drano," being a member of a professional string quartet has its heady thrills, bitter ego-bashings, and workaday tedium—at least according to Michael Hollinger's highly entertaining 200... [...]
THURSDAY 11/12
Classical: Chorally Ambiguous
Carl Orff: a hapless German Shostakovich, muddling through as best he could under a psychotic tyranny? Or a musical Riefenstahl, lending his labor and reputation to the Nazi cause, then den... [...]
Empty and unfinished buildings often look more interesting before they achieve their final form. Without signage or tenants, you're left to guess their purpose. It's the architecture of unrealized possibility and hope, a grace period that ends with occupancy. The strange undulating façade ...' [...]
