sotnight.blogspot.com

I know some of these are a few days old. My present life is just that hectic, yes.

• The CBS Radio Stations Group, in its infinite wisdom, is transferring ex-child actor Danny Bonaduce’s morning talk gig from Philadelphia to Seattle’s KZOK-FM. In the recent past, celebrity offspring Ron Reagan Jr. and Scott (son of Bob) Crane fared well as Seattle radio personalities. Can Shirley Jones’s pretend-spawn do likewise?
• Seattle Weekly shrinkage watch: Perhaps in a pathetic attempt to get back at Mayor McGinn, over the latter’s allegiance to the crusade against SW sister company Backpage.com, the paper filed a public disclosure request seeking any instances of McGinn’s office using swear words in emails.
• Farm worker shortages aren’t just for Alabama anymore.
• Even Ken Schram agrees: The state can’t get out of its fiscal mess by cuts alone.
• Living costs (led by rent) have risen faster in Seattle than in the state as a whole.
• Separated at Birth: Microsoft’s new “video of the future” and AT&T’s 1993 “You Will” commercials?
• Much of what “they” say about the Internet today, was said at its infancy 15 years ago.
• Could hydroponic farming, that old pot-inspired technology, actually become a viable way to grow veggies in cities and suburbs?
• A blogger at the site Zen Peacemakers says the economic reform movement shouldn’t be about “the 99 percent,” but about uniting everybody toward a common, better future.
• Right wing outrages of recent days include a Halloween-themed Virginia Republican email depicting a zombie Obama shot in the head.
• And in corporate outrages of recent days, Citigroup settled (without admitting guilt) a case in which the big bank allegedly, knowingly, sold worthless mortgage-burger securities, while simultaneously “selling them short” (essentially betting they would fail). And the big banks still insist that all they have is an “image problem.”
• Kemper Freeman outrages of recent days include the Bellevue Square mogul and anti-transit obstructionist spearheading a trumped up “crusade” against a pro-transit Bellevue politician.
• And in deference to what has become America’s favorite adult holiday, here are the Occupy Seattle pumpkins at Westlake.

king-tv

• Jezebel and Gawker each snark away at the absurdist extremes of commercial “sexy” Halloween garb.
• The Olympian has some cogent reasons (as opposed to the TV ads’ scare-tactic reasons) why Washington state’s liquor business shouldn’t be turned over to Costco.
• Jerry Large is the first local mainstream reporter to note the connection between Occupy _______ and the Vancouver mag Adbusters.
• Buried within a statement of support for Occupy Seattle, city councilmember Nick Licata floats the idea of a municipal income tax.
• There’s a whole site of writers expressing support for Occupy ______. One of its best entries, as you might expect, is from Lemony Snicket.
• Matt Honan claims to speak on behalf of millions of grownup children of prior recessions when he proclaims, “Generation X is sick of your bullshit.”
• Is Target really better than Walmart? Allegedly, not when it comes to working conditions.
• Microsoft’s opened a retail outlet in U Village, right across a parking lot from the Apple Store.

• Get an early start on your holiday shopping needs with the Seattle Catalog. It’s a a select listing (in print and online) of handmade art and decor items, ranging from the decorative to the whimsical.
• On Saturday, Occupy Seattle was the fifth biggest “occupy” gathering in the country. On Monday, the city authorities cleared the site out again, with more protesters arrested.
• As Eric Scigliano notes, the Westlake site of Occupy Seattle has been a place of contention and dispute for five decades, ever since it was first christened as the world’s fair monorail’s end point.
• If GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna’s supposed to be such a “moderate,” how come he’s got far-right dungeon master Karl Rove speaking on his behalf at a Bellevue fundraiser?
• A Bellevue cemetery now has a special golfers-only section.
• Legalizing pot, now more popular than ever.
• You might have expected this: The right-wing site “We Are the 53 Percent,” purporting to speak on behalf of “real” taxpayers, is a total fraud.
• Wacky headline atop a tragic story: “Teen girl forced to wear armor, fight stepfather with wooden sword.” Within the story, you learn the Yelm medieval re-enactor’s stepdaughter was also beaten and punched, as punishment for going to a party without his or her mom’s permission.

seattle sounders fc, via seattleweekly.com

• ‘Twas a lovely low key event in glorious Greenwood Thursday evening, debuting our latest book Then & Now: Seattle. Thanks to all who attended and to the staff of Couth Buzzard Books.
• The greatest American-born soccer player in perhaps-ever has retired. There’s a monument to him in his hometown, Olympia.
• Besides the expected police over-reactions in various cities, right wing sleaze artists are trying to discredit the Occupy ______ movement by committing acts of vandalism and blaming it on the movement. There’s also a falsely credited photo circulating around right-wing blogs. It depicts a protest march with banners reading “Fuck the Troops” and “No Gods No Masters.” The right-wing blogs claim it to be a recent Occupy Wall Street scene. It’s really from Portland, and it’s from a 2007 antiwar protest.
• Danny Westneat is wrong. The Occupy ______ people don’t want to get “government handouts.” They want the people and companies who don’t need government handouts, but get them anyway, to get at least fewer of them.
• I guess there’s never an off-season for jokes based on “Seattle” stereotypes.
• Seattle Public Schools are way popular. This bodes well for the city’s survival as a place where ordinary, non-affluent folk can continue to reside.
• The guy being blamed around Facebook and Twitter for stiffing a Capitol Hill waitress and calling her fat? He’s not the guy that did it.
• With fewer undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. these days (despite what the lying right-wing media claims), there’s a shortage of farm workers. That shortage has hit the Washington apple orchards.
• One side effect of the proposed Swedish-Providence medical merger: The nuns who run Providence want nothing to do with abortion services, and will veto any continuation of elective abortions at Swedish. Swedish management’s trying to get out of the resulting PR brouhaha by helping to fund a new Planned Parenthood clinic.
• Dear animal activists: “Liberating” critters bred to be homebodies doesn’t always work. Especially if the critters aren’t native to the particular wilds you’re sending them into.

classickidstv.co.uk

• Greenwood. It’s truly a lovely neighborhood. A great place to spend an autumnal evening in the company of fellow Seattle social history fans. Specifically, fans of our latest product, Then & Now: Seattle. It all transpires starting at 7:30 p.m. today (Thursday) at the Couth Buzzard Books and Cafe, 8310 Greenwood Ave. N. Be there.
• The media’s parental scare story of the week: Teens are supposedly soaking gummy candies in alcohol and scarfin’ them down for a quick buzz.
• The state’s moved one step closer to allowing Seattle bars to stay open later.
• Gay marriage, now less unpopular than before.
• Occupy Seattle’s still going strong; but is it being taken over by folks protesting for protesting’s sake?
• Community colleges in Washington can now declare themselves in states of “financial emergency.” Unions representing the college’s (mostly already underpaid) teachers are worried it could lead to further and faster layoffs.
• After the construction slump and the shrinkage of print newspapers, what more could go wrong for the wood products industry? Well, China used to buy Northwest-made finished lumber, but now it just wants raw logs.
• The vast majority of non-governmental arts funding in this country goes to big establishment institutions with decidedly white, upscale audiences. This will come at no surprise to friends of mine who’ve tried to drum up corporate and foundation support for smaller but established performing-arts outfits, only to learn said corporations and foundations only give to the “SOB” (symphony, opera, ballet).

ap photo via seattlepi.com

• Get your lovely self on down to our glorious Then & Now Seattle book release, Thursday evening at the Couth Buzzard in glorious Greenwood. (You know you want to.)
• Oh those City Market cartoon sandwich signs, just as tasteless as ever.
• Occupy Seattle, or at least the overnight sitting-in aspect of it, might move to City Hall after all. Josh Feit, meanwhile, says the protesters should focus on their cause(s), not on “tents and umbrellas.”
• Seattle Times shrinkage watch: The paper’s inviting bids from developers to take over its landmark headquarters building. Under the scheme, the paper would move its remaining employees to a nearby former furniture warehouse.
• HorsesAss.org explains what a “majority minority” legislative district could look like, and what it could mean.
• NYC police can’t evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters because the “park” they’re camped out in is privately owned by a corporate real-estate developer.

geeknuz.com

• Another nifty book, another nifty book event. This one’s on Thursday, in gallant Greenwood.
• While the “SLUT”-branding skeptics weren’t looking, the south Lake Union trolley has become quite popular, even standing-room-only at commute hours. That’s one reason why the McGinn administration has a desire named streetcar.
• Occupy Seattle’s getting really popular. Except with the cops, natch. But Mike McGinn, who’d previously asked the demonstrators to quietly move to some less conspicuous place, came out and spoke in support of their cause.
• Three hundred more people may be living on the streets as of Tuesday, as the SHARE/WHEEL homeless shelters run out of funding.
• Will the long-stalled development project informally known as the West Seattle Hole finally be built?
• The AP asks whether iTunes saved the music business. Not asked: did the music business deserve to be saved?
• Koch Industries’ record is full of bribery, dirty dealing, and the regular flouting of environmental rules. Yet these guys expect us to let them take over the entire U.S. political process.
• You’d expect Bill McKibben to endorse Occupy _____. You might not have expected the NY Times to like it.
• Some guy named David Leonhardt says America actually had more reasons to be hopeful during the Great Depression than it’s got today.
• As a nearly lifelong Led Zeppelin disliker, I found enjoyment in a video short chronicling the band’s many uncredited ripoffs of R&B pioneers.
• It couldn’t happen to a not-nicer guy: Commissioner David Stern has canceled the first two weeks of the NBA season.

from geekgirlworld.com

• The first ever Seattle GeekGirlCon happens this weekend at Seattle Center. Why are geek girls so cool? Because they ask questions. They investigate. They seek solutions. They get things done. (Though personally, I like real-life geek girls more than the fictional action-fantasy ones.)
• Mayor McGinn now says the city will “work with” the Occupy Seattle protesters, whatever that means. (It might not mean much.)
• Environmental advocates want the Duwamish River cleanup to be cleaner than what the feds have claimed would be good enough. How clean? Clean enough that fish caught in the Duwamish would be safely edible.
• Why would anybody lobby against a Tibetan-themed retail development in Kirkland? It’s not like it would be worse than what used to be on the site—a burger joint and a dry cleaners.
• The Tri-Cities’ regional history museum might close, after the feds withdrew funding for its Hanford nuke exhibits.
• Ex-Seattleite and professional gadfly Mike Daisey has some less-than-reverent words about Steve Jobs, in advance of the NY debut of his Jobs-themed performance piece (which already played Seattle in shakedown-cruise form).
• It’s the end of the road for Mazda rotary engine cars.
• In a sane world, the folks who bleat about “supporting the troops” would do more for the 1 million jobless Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. Then again, in a sane world those wars wouldn’t have been started.
• Paul Krugman sees signs of hope from the Occupy ____ movement, and sees nothing but growth in its immediate future.
• Annie Lowrey crunches the numbers behind the Occupiers’ claims, and finds that, indeed, the top 1 percent have gotten immensely richer while most everyone else has struggled to stay even or worse.
• Atrios suggests an alternative to big bank bailouts:

…you could give free money to everyone else assuming some of that money would be deposited in banks and/or used to pay down debt owed to those banks.

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.

denny hall, the uw campus's oldest building

• We’ve always known the Univ. of Washington has one of America’s most beautiful campuses. Now it’s finally getting national recognition in that regard.
• Meanwhile, the UW is participating in a research study into drunk Facebook photos.
• Mayor McGinn says he admires the spirit behind the Occupy Seattle folks, but still orders them to remove their tents from Westlake Plaza or risk getting arrested. Protesters say they’ll take the risk.
• The American Planning Association calls Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park one of America’s “great public spaces.” As the old bumper sticker says, “Admit It, Tacoma. You’re Beautiful.”
• NYTimes.com’s automated ad placement bots placed an ad for Starbucks’ Italian Roast above an article about you-know-who.
• Starbucks boss Howard Schultz’s next idea to save the economy: donation boxes in the stores, where customers can contribute to community development groups. They’d use the cash to help small businesses create jobs. Of course, if Schultz really wanted to help jump-start the economy at the personal level, he could pay his own baristas a living wage….
• The message from the Gates Foundation, the City of Seattle, and others: Don’t be no fool, stay in school.
• The Zune, Microsoft’s would-be iPod killer, is dead.
• Layoffs hit another supposedly recession-proof industry, nuclear-waste cleanup.
• A cause of death I, for one, hadn’t heard of—”detergent suicide.”
• Lee Fang believes the Occupy Wall Street protests “embody the values of the real Boston Tea Party.”
• Paul Krugman analyzes big bankers’ testimony in a Congressional hearing about the financial crisis. He sees the bankers claiming to be clueless, as an alternative to admitting to be evil.
• Obama’s finally speaking out against GOP state legislatures’ spate of anti-voting laws.
• The Fox broadcast network is threatening to cancel The Simpsons unless its voice actors accept a 45 percent pay cut.
• And now for fun, here are some fun Mexican movie-theater lobby cards.

satirical ad by leah l. burton, godsownparty.com

• To CNN, it’s apparently news that conservative preachers denounce gay marriage and birth control, but can’t get themselves to preach against greed.
• Filmmakers are getting ideas from the oddest sources these days. A feature’s being shot in Seattle, based on a classified ad. (A joke classified ad, to be more precise.)
• A bigger North Cascades National Park: why not?
• Highway 520 construction crews have taken down the trees that let wealthy Eastside households imagine they were in “the country,” not next to the freeway they were actually next to.
• Whatever happened to Seattle’s neighborhood activists?
• Seattle, now with one-third more transit users per capita than Portland.
• Local scifi author Neal Stephenson asks whatever happened to America’s (and Seattle’s) hope for the future. His answer: an obsession with “certainty” at the expense of daring.
• In the online music world, Seattle-based Rhapsody has bought the subscription rosters and other assets of Napster. In other news, Napster still existed as of last week.
• It’s official. The Kress Building on Third Avenue will hold a J.C. Penney store. But they’d better let the Kress IGA supermarket stay on the lower level.
• Our ol’ pal Ronald Holden sings the praises of a better industrial food thickener.
• The head of the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization predicts print newspapers will disappear in the U.S. by 2017. In other lands, they could last as long as 2040. Believe it or don’t.
• One mainstream media outlet has finally found a way to cover Occupy Wall Street—as “New York’s newest tourist attraction.”
• The Koch Brothers are secretive, wealthy backers of all sorts of anti-democracy and anti-middle class projects on the federal and state levels. Now we learn they’ve made part of their fortune through illegal, secret chemical sales to Iran. Whooda thunkit?
• And, though I’ve not been following this at all, there apparently was a verdict in a legal appeal out in Europe somewhere.

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.

lpcoverlover.com

• MISCmedia is dedicated today to the memory of Sylvia Robinson, the singer-producer-entrepreneur whose journey went from ’50s pop R&B to disco to (literally) the invention of hiphop.
• A little-noticed legislative loophole gives Safeco Field a parking-tax deal that could cost the city $300,000 a year. If the Mariners’ management only been that clever in running its baseball team…
• In honor of National Dwarfism Awareness Month. Caffe Ladro made its “tall man” logo shorter.
• A long-stalled Paul Allen Belltown condo tower project will now be built as apartments.
• More dirty business by the big banks: fees for debit card use.
• The allegedly latest thing among the ultra ultra rich: luxury camping, or “glamping.”
• Glenn Greenwald believes corporate-owned media have an agenda in ignoring or scorning anti-corporate activism.
• Toure waxes nostalgic for the good old days of centralized mass-media culture.
• Clean up your dog poop and keep it out of Puget Sound.

wash. state dept. of transportation

• More digging at the south end of the Viaduct, more cool archeological finds. Mostly different kinds of bottles.
• Here’s exactly why yet another all-cuts state budget would be a horrible, horrible thing.
• Seattle Weekly shrinkage watch: Two more fired writers. More layoffs across the Village Voice Media chain.
• Under pending City legislation, homeless camps would no longer have to pack up and move every few months.
• For years, Seattle-based Trident Seafoods dumped fish guts into the waters outside its Alaska plant. The result was a “dead zone” at the ocean floor, which the company now vows to clean up.
• The Mariners will open next year’s regular season in Tokyo.
• The all-new DC Comics, now with more formulaic quasi-porn.
• Frank Rich gives one cheer to Rick Perry. The reason: Perry represents the complete and utter death of namby pamby near-right “bipartisanship.”
• And, oh yeah, Amazon announced some new hardware products.

• Seattle drivers spent two days stuck in traffic in 2010. If they had to listen to talk radio, it felt more like six days.
• Bad times in commercial real estate continue. The owner of the ex-Amazon HQ on Beacon Hill (formerly an ex-hospital) can’t find new tenants, and is close to defaulting on a big loan.
• The Census Bureau now says there are fewer LGBT cohabiting couples, here and across the country, than it had previously estimated. In this state, only 19,000.
• There won’t be a jail in between the Interbay golf course and the Whole Foods after all.
• Big Brother is watching you, cold and flu sufferers.
• The inventor of Doritos died, and Andy Rooney’s retiring.