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RANDOM LINKS FOR 10/6/11
Oct 5th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

fanpop.com

  • R.I.P. Charles Napier, 75. The square-jawed actor appeared in everything from Rambo to Silence of the Lambs and the first two Austin Powers films. But I’ll remember him for his over-the-top roles in four Russ Meyer sexploitation classics, especially as the maniacally villainous Harry Sledge in Supervixens.
  • They waited from last night until this afternoon, but city police and Parks Department crews took down Occupy Seattle’s tents at Westlake Plaza. Twenty-five protesters were arrested and released. Protesters say they’ll remain at Westlake, with or without camping gear.
  • Memo to Gov. Gregoire: The poor are not a budget line item to be x’ed out when it becomes incovenient.
  • Consolidation marches on, health care division: Swedish and Providence want to merge.
  • Could (or should) Microsoft buy Yahoo?
  • Say goodbye to another big chain bookstore, the University Village branch of Barnes & Noble. Trivia: Its space was originally a branch of the long forgotten department store Rhodes of Seattle. Rhodes’ main store was where the north wing of the Seattle Art Museum is now.
  • UW women’s soccer legend Hope Solo is one of four athletes to appear pseudo-nude on alternating covers of ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue.”
  • A registered sex offender, being transported from Florida back to eastern Washington to face molestation charges, snuck out of the van somewhere in North Dakota. His excuse for escaping, upon getting re-caught: He was hungry because he was a vegetarian.
  • Two NY Times bloggers claim domestic debt forgiveness would have drastic economic side effects. This means insiders are beginning to treat domestic debt forgiveness as a serious possibility.
  • SST Records honcho Greg Ginn really hates YouTube.
RANDOM LINKS FOR 10/3/11
Oct 2nd, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

linda thomas, kiro-fm

  • If only more real-world buildings could be more like the ones displayed at BrickCon, the gathering of Lego maniacs.
  • If you still measure companies by the Almighty Stock Price (and you really shouldn’t), the once mighty IBM is bigger than Microsoft for the first time in 15 years.
  • An Internet photo of a Sharpie-penned list of bookstore employee pet peeves, supposedly from a now-closed Borders branch, has been going around lately.
  • So, apparently, has whooping cough.
  • The next big idea for Seattle bike lanes—site them on side streets instead of major arterials.
  • Open Circle Theater has produced what it called “fantastical theater for a daring audience” since 1992. In recent years, it moved into the old Aha! Theater space on Second Avenue, bring live theater back to Belltown. Now, it’s apparently defunct. No word yet about the other troupes that have been sharing OCT’s Belltown space.
  • Danny Westneat claims that, despite the hype, Seattle Public Schools are actually pretty good these days.
  • State schools superintendent Randy Dorn is refusing to offer Gov. Gregoire a list of programs that could be sacrificed in the next round of budget cuts. Dorn claims to do so would violate the state constitution’s requirement for basic education support.
  • The “voter fraud epidemic” so loudly hyped by the right-wing media despite its complete nonexistence? KIRO-TV hyped it too. Even though the state gave the station the facts that negated the station’s claims.
  • The Occupy Wall Street protests continue. And they’ve now got a Seattle branch operation, which also continues.
  • Mark Sumner argues that the old Dutch tulip mania makes a better metaphor for the Wall Street speculation bubble than it did for the late-1990s dot-com bubble.
  • Despite what the religious right and its right-wing-media hucksters claim, America’s actually becoming a more secular nation.
  • Mike Dillon, who first got me doing the occasional essays I do for the Capitol Hill Times, has some nice things to say about my book Walking Seattle. Thanks.
NEW LIVE EVENT! (AND YET ANOTHER BOOK!)
Sep 26th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

Mark your calendars.

I’ve got another live book event on Thursday, Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m., at The Couth Buzzard Books and Espresso Buono Cafe, 8310 Greenwood Ave. N.

And there will be another new book by me debuting at this event.

More details shortly.

A SPLENDID TIME WAS HAD BY ALL
Sep 24th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

Some 50 people attended our fantabulous Walking Seattle event Saturday at the Elliott Bay Book Company.

At least half of those followed along as we took a short stroll through upper Pike/Pine during a lovely equinox early evening.

Thank you all.

RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/23/11
Sep 22nd, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

nordstrom photo, via shine.yahoo.com

  • Those $85 Starbucks designer tees? All net proceeds go to Starbucks. One more reason Howard Schultz is in the Forbes 400 richest-people list.
  • A Starbucks employee in Calif. posted a satirical song about his job onto YouTube. The song became popular; he became fired.
  • After 18 years, the homey and low-key Rosebud restaurant/bar on East Pike is calling it quits. The management (which just bought the place from its previous longtime owners) homes to reopen nearby.
  • Facebook’s got this big new feature that looks a lot like something already devised by a Seattle startup site.
  • The Real Networks spinoff Rhapsody, a subscription online music service, has some sort of free trial thing going on via Facebook.
  • Washington state: Now with even more poverty.
  • You want across-the-board cuts in all state spending? Fine. Welcome some new early-release inmates, who won’t get the supervision past parolees got.
  • Swedish Medical Center to lay off 150 staffers. So much for the aging-boomer-era medical boom.
  • The on-again, off-again scheme to drastically redevelop the parking lot north of Qwest CenturyLink Field is on again. For now.
  • An unfinished Kent parking garage will be razed and replaced by homes and stores.
  • Tacoma teachers’ strike: over.
  • Obama’s coming to town. You won’t get to see him.
  • The always-lucid Feliks Banel sees the retirement of J.P. Patches in the context of the institutional decline of local TV (particularly local non-news TV).
  • The “Occupy Wall Street” folk have finally proclaimed “our one demand”—11 of them, all big-big-picture stuff, essentially adding up to the complete re-orientation of the nation’s government, economy, and society.
  • ‘Tis a sad, sad day for all who care about tradition, long-form storytelling, and frequently-remarried drama queens. The final network episode of All My Children airs today.
  • On a much happier note, you can become part of a new tradition tomorrow, the tradition of the ped-powered urbanites.
RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/21/11
Sep 20th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

defunct connecticut strip mall, from backsideofamerica.com

  • Mark Hinshaw at Crosscut says Seattle’s wrong to demand street level retail in so many mixed-use developments. He says there just aren’t enough viable businesses to put in them. It’s actually a national situation. Even before the ’08 slump, analysts claimed the country had become “overstored,” with too many malls, strip malls, big box outlets, etc. for the available business.
  • One successful local retailer, kitchenware king Sur La Table, was bought by the same financiers who also own big chunks of Gucci and Tiffany.
  • The big Nevermind 20th anniversary concert opened with the reunited (for now) Fastbacks nailing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Perfect in so many ways.
  • “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is done for. There was a big coming out party for GLBT military personnel at Lewis-McChord.
  • For once, a local art work made for display at Burning Man will actually be shown here!
  • Tacoma’s life size Boy Scout statue is missing. Scouting officials fear the thieves could just melt it down.
  • Thankfully, there will be no Oklahoma or Texas teams in the Pac-12 (previously Pac-10, previously Pac-8) conference. Some sporting traditions should remain sacred.
  • U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Spokane) thinks schools spend too much time and resources on “nonessential curriculum” such as gay history and the environment.
  • The big Netflix shakeup is explained by that prime explainer of everything, The Oatmeal.
  • BBC Ulster commentator William Crawley explains how to be a Christian anarchist. Hint: It ain’t easy.
  • Is the “Occupy Wall Street” protest a bigger thing online than it is as a real-world event? And what are the protesters for, anyway?
  • Has Facebook really created 180,000 jobs, as the company claims? Or is this just a new version of dot-com hype?
  • Current TV’s next lib-talk franchise: The heretofore Internet-based gabfest The Young Turks, featuring ex-MSNBC dude Cenk Uygur. Still can’t get the channel on my cable system.
  • The feds claim the gaming site Full Tilt Poker has degenerated into “a global Ponzi scheme,” funding operations out of money owed to its winning players.
  • Soon you’ll be able to preserve the remains of your deceased loved ones in handy liquid form.
  • The annual Coffee Fest trade show is at the Convention Center this weekend. It’s intended for people in the business of importing, roasting, selling, and serving the stuff, though many parts of it are also open (for a fee) to those who simply love the java a lot. Of course, there’s also something else this weekend to pump up your pulse.
BORDERLESS PRINTS
Sep 17th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

The downtown Seattle Borders Books closed earlier this week after 17 years. (The Redmond store closes Sunday, among the busted chain’s final outlets to close.)

RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/17/11
Sep 17th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

  • At Friday’s Park(ing) Day display at the Seattle Art Museum, a videographer from a Chinese-language cable access show tapes an interview using a Flip-like digital video cam, a mini spotlight, and a small Steadicam-like camera stabilizer.
  • Former P-I book critic John Marshall is still unemployed, and writes for the Atlantic about receiving his final unemployment check.
  • The Jo-Ann Fabric store in Olympia has a Halloween crafts section. It recently had a bat in it. A real bat. With rabies.
  • A survey co-sponsored by Microsoft’s MSN.com named Seattle North America’s sixth worst-dressed city. Vancouver was #3; the top spot went to Orlando.
  • Seahawks fans this Sunday will not only face a formidable opponent on the field (the dreaded Steelers) but also extreme frisking.
  • Another gay/lesbian event, another would-be censorious program printer.
  • Pierce County: Now with 35 percent less transit.
  • Netflix: Now with higher prices and 1 million fewer customers.
  • The corruption investigation against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his inner circle turns out to have begun with comments to blog posts.
  • Why didn’t anyone tell me there’s a Barbie Video Girl doll with “a video camera embedded in her chest”? You could use it to reenact the cult film Double Agent 73!

(Remember, my big book shindig is one week from today (Sept. 24). See the top of this page for all pertinent details.)

POSING THE QUESTION
Sep 16th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

from inmagine.com

There seems to be a growing book genre, about Seattle white women telling their life stories via their yoga experiences.

First was Presidential sister Claire Dederer’s Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses.

Now we’ve got Suzanne Morrison’s Yoga Bitch: One Woman’s Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment.

In which, I presume, Morrison attempts to conquer skepticism, cynicism, and cigarettes, and achieve some form of enlightenment.

Is there room for more than one self-reflective yoga queen in this town?

And if not, how will they duke it out?

Perhaps they could stage a stand-off (or pose-off) on the stage at Hugo House. A series of increasingly difficult poses, to be maintained for at least two minutes each.

By the time they get to the upward-facing two-foot staff pose, we should have our winner.

RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/16/11
Sep 15th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

designsbuzz.com

  • The Seattlest gang’s putting out, in installments, a revised and updated “guide to Seattle stereotypes.”
  • Neighborhood activists are starting a tiny but intelligently stocked mini-grocery in the Lost Valley of Delridge, an area bereft of places selling anything more nutritious than Budweiser.
  • What’s the biggest fear of people buying into a 33-story condo tower? That somebody will block their view with a 40-story condo tower a block away.
  • Let’s try to get this straight. A candidate for King County Council has a brother who administers an arts program for at-risk youth. Said arts program puts out, for the first time in its history, a “student made” newspaper. Said paper includes several mentions praising the administrator’s sis and several other mentions disparaging her election opponent. Oh, and the thing was partly made with City funds.
  • Microsoft’s immensely profitable. Its stock price has essentially been “flat” for some time. One more reason for America’s socio-economic nabobs to stop believing in the Almighty Stock Price as the all-determining value of everything.
  • Progressive economist Remy Trupin looks at Wash. state’s no-end-in-sight budget hole and insists that from this point on, “further cuts are not an option.”
  • A hundred years ago, eight destitute young women were killed in an accident at a Chehalis explosives factory. Their joint grave has finally been rediscovered.
  • The Illinois company now calling itself Boeing has friends among the House Republicans. That body just approved, in a symbolic gesture certain to sink in the Senate, a bill to strip Federal protection for workers whose jobs were outsourced as punishment for union organizing.
  • If we must say goodbye to Cyndy’s House of Pancakes on Aurora (closed as of July after 53 years), at least we can be consoled that housing for the formerly-homeless will go up on the site.
  • There was a hearing about a plan for a homeless shelter in Lake City. The senior-housing developer SHAG bused in residents to speak against the plan. One of these speakers called the homeless “garbage.” Brutal insensitivity: It’s not just for Republican campaign events any more.
  • Couldn’t happen to an un-nicer guy: There’s an FBI corruption probe of figures surrounding Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and cronies.
  • The 3-D movie craze? Dead already. Again.
  • How will the record labels survive? Some are diversifying into other businesses. Such as, according to a Federal indictment, international cocaine smuggling. (I know what you’re thinking. Drugs in the music industry? Never!)
  • We go out on a snarky note with some books Borders can’t even give away.

RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/15/11
Sep 14th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

• Lake City’s legendary, recently-closed Rimrock Steak House is saved! Well, maybe.

• Starbucks gave away download codes for a “free” ebook. The document turned out to exclude the novel’s ending, telling readers they had to get the paid version to learn what happens.

• Get ready for Sleepless in Seattle, the Musical. In preparation for years, it’s set to open in L.A. next summer.

• The Longview longshoremen’s strike might be ending.

• J.P. Patches, who announced his retirement from public appearances earlier this summer, will make his last one this Saturday at Fishermen’s Terminal.

• Darn. Just when we were getting used to Dennis Kucinich, turns out he’s probably not coming to stay.

• The Republicans have a master plan for winning the White House. It has little to do with actually fielding a mass-appeal candidate (or even a sane candidate), and everything to do with voter suppression and making the Electoral College even more unfair.

• Earlier this week, we discussed an LA Times essay asking where today’s great recession documentarians were. Well, here are two more places to find them—Facing Change and In Our Own Backyard.

RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/13/11
Sep 12th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

1931 model bookmobile, from historylink.org

  • If you believe the rumor sites, Amazon’s working on a for-profit, by-mail lending library program. For a monthly or annual fee, you’d get all the (physical and/or “e”) books you can handle; but you’ll have to return ’em before you can get more. The company’s already announced “Kindle Library Lending,” a scheme for borrowing Kindle-format e-books from libraries (which can already offer book files in other ebook formats). (UPDATE: Some rumor sources say Amazon’s lending-library program would only involve e-books.)
  • Could, would, should ex-county exec Ron Sims run for Seattle mayor in ’13? And could he count on an endorsement from non-relative Dave Sims? Or the video game creatures The Sims?
  • Update: Capitol Hill’s B&O Espresso will stay in business at its current location for at least another year.
  • Another fiscal year in Washington state, another attempt to kill the Basic Health program.
  • Bank of America announced at least 30,000 layoffs. But the business media doesn’t want to talk about the firings, just the Almighty Stock Price.
  • Remember, freedom lovers: When SpongeBob is outlawed, only outlaws will eat Crabby Patties.
  • Procter & Gamble and other companies respond to the collapsing middle class by repositioning their product lines into distinct “luxury” and “bargain” tiers.
  • Daily Kos readers have submitted more than a hundred ideas for how Obama could boost U.S. jobs without the approval of congressional Republicans.
  • Is today’s Republican party a doctrinaire religion (as Andrew Sullivan claims), or “sadism, pure and simple” (as Alan Grayson alleges)?
  • There’s a big “Seattle Design Festival” coming next week. One of the guests is architect-writer August de los Reyes. His presentation is “A 21st Century Design Manifesto.” The festival’s site says, “Topics include vampires, werewolves, starfish, bamboo shoots, video games, and natural user interface.” Dunno ’bout you, but I’ve never heard vampires described as having a natural interface before.
RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/7/11
Sep 6th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

The summer doldrums in news-type postings seem to have ended. Enjoy.

  • The hugely hyped fiscal crisis at the U.S. Postal Service might simply be the result of a Bush-era manufactured scheme to bust the postal unions and sell off the whole operation to privateers; a scheme that can be reversed. We need a delivery system that literally works for us, not for hedge funds. And we need first class mail (you know, letters) and second class mail (magazines). Those services, traditionally, have been marginally profitable at best. FedEx can’t do these. It’s simply not built to do them.
  • CoCA commissioned a whole outdoor art group exhibit for Carkeek Park. A parks employee decided on his own that one of the pieces, hung up by wires, might hurt a tree. On his own volution, the parks employee cut down the wires. The delicate art piece fell and was “heavily damaged.”
  • If you weren’t sure about Howard Schultz’s political crusade, we now know he’s in league with NoLabels.org. That’s NY mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “bipartisan” (read: near-right) PR drive to sell a national political agenda. Said agenda is heavy on deficit slashing and “entitlement” abandoning and corporate tax cutting, and way-light on directly assisting the jobless and the non-zillionaires.
  • The “transit improvement” component in the Viaduct replacement tunnel plan? It’ll run out of money even before the tunnel opens.
  • The Brightwater sewage treatment plant near the King-Snohomish county line isn’t even running yet, but SnoCo residents are already complaining about the stink. Officials insist the plant’s not to blame.
  • The Seattle Public Library’s third annual budget-cutting closure week made the NY Times.
  • Today’s on-the-one-hand story: While the city’s trying to squeeze every potential nickel out of every metered street parking space, it continues to subsidize under-market-rate parking at Pacific Place.
  • What happens when a multimedia art program in NYC devoted to confronting “notions of individual and collective comfort and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility” is fully funded by a global automaker? You get some devout anti-corporate pontification against the whole concept, natch.
  • Amnesty International’s got a handy, if incomplete, checklist of lies in Dick Cheney’s memoir.…
  • …while here’s the oft-linked-to “Goodbye to All That,” ex-GOP operative Mike Lofgren’s indictment of today’s Republican party as an unholy alliance of corporatists, fundamentalists, and war-machinists.
  • Not specifically political, at least overtly, is business consultant Ron Ashkenas’s guidance on how to deal with irrational people:

Don’t try to fight irrationality with rationality. It will only make you more frustrated and the other person more defensive. No matter how many well-constructed arguments you offer, you won’t make headway until you understand the underlying motivation that is driving the other person.

RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/6/11
Sep 6th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

  • A victim of the war-on-terra hype some folks would like brought back: busking musicians on ferry boats.
  • Here’s CNN’s take on the scandal of Border Patrol agents unfairly harassing Latino locals on the Olympic Peninsula. The headline: “Border agent says there’s nothing to do, says money being wasted.” In other words, if it weren’t for the war-on-terra hype, none of this would be happening.
  • There’s a reason all the local media latched onto the aging Hall and Oates as this year’s big Bumbershoot stars. It’s because they were the only act this year both famous enough and old enough for media people to have heard of. (Apparently, the big name acts now want a cool half million per show. And you were wondering why you haven’t heard many recessionary protest songs by said big name acts.)
  • The Neptune Theater’s official re-opening, later this month, will include a one-night nod to the U District house’s roots. I speak, of course, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which played midnight shows at the Neptune for more than a decade.
  • Recession Sign #1: More parents are discovering public schools are just fine after all.
  • Recession Sign #2: Realistic novels and stories about the socio-economically struggling are back in vogue.
  • Adam Doree wants Steve Jobs to finally get around to donate a few buck to charity already.
  • Sady Doyle really, really hates the Game of Thrones books. And Alyssa Rosenberg doesn’t particularly care for Doyle’s putdowns of the books. The point-O-contention: The novels depict women enduring some of the violent brutalities one might find in a violent, brutal fictional setting.
  • Elsewhere in genderland, Hugo Schwyzer wants you to define the word “man” to mean not-boy, instead of not-woman.
  • The Guardian, ever on the prowl for American weirdness with which to addle and astound its Brit readers, has discovered the “muscular Christianity” in evangelical-fringe books such as No More Christian Mr. Nice Guy. The writer seems to have never heard of the Church of the SubGenius and its “real FIGHTIN’ JESUS.”
RANDOM LINKS FOR 9/5/11
Sep 5th, 2011 by Clark Humphrey

  • At Grist.org, Claire Thompson looks wistfully at south Seattle’s prized yet delicate ethnic/religious/class diversity, and wonders how it can survive.
  • There was a big political science convention in town this past week. (An odd phrase, considering the number of politicians these days who officially hate regular ol’ science.) Anyhoo, Peter Steinbrueck spoke to the gathering about how this country needs more regional decision-making bodies to plan metro-wide futures.
  • The head of Belltown’s Matt Talbot Center, a Christian alcohol/drug recovery center, was arrested and is on suicide watch, for “investigation of attempted rape” of a 10 year old boy. Let’s spare the snark and focus on the tragedy for now.
  • The head of the Seattle police union apparently believes diversity, tolerance, and common human decency are somehow anti-American. This is not going to turn out well. In fact, it already hasn’t.
  • Don’t look for a lot more living wage jobs any time soon. At least not from corporate America.
  • Eric L. Wattree believes the nation’s #1 problem isn’t the economy (as putrid as it is), but “the Republican sabotage of America.”
  • Finally, here’s a brief peek at Nicholson Baker’s novel House of Holes; specifically at the orgasm sound-effect words and phrases therein.
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