capitolhillseattle.com

• After years of redevelopment-related doom staring it in the face, Capitol Hill’s beloved B&O Espresso and Bistro finally closed last week. B&O will live on, however, in a soon-to-open Ballard location, and might return within the new mixed use structure to be built on the old site. Word is another Hill coffee institution, the Bauhaus, might also resurface in Ballard.
• The pairing of Paul McCartney with the remnants of Nirvana turned out to be an original composition, which was not all that bad. Overall, though, that all-star (and mostly old-star) benefit for Hurricane Sandy victims could have had a little more variety on stage, such as even one woman.
• Some dude at Buzzfeed put up a supposedly shocking exposé of local web comix king Matthew (The Oatmeal) Inman. Once you take out the stuff that’s either exaggerated or based on a fake online profile made by somebody else, you’re left with the hardly reputation-killing facts that Inman is thinner and more athletic than the alter-ego character in his strip, and that he once had a day job in “search engine optimization” (the pseudo-science of gaming Google’s page rankings).
• A few select Seattle neighborhoods are getting ultra-speed home Internet service some time next year.
• Stupid Republican Tricks, WaState style: Another state Senate “coup” is in the works with two turncoat Democrats’ collusion.
• Are sales of e-book machines really falling victim to tablet-mania, or is this just another overhyped “trend”?
• You know you want to read every fake newspaper headline that appeared in the first 16 seasons of The Simpsons.
• Gawker lists 22 “terrible things that must end in 2013.” Among them: “twee framed sayings,” “fake Twitter accounts,” and “the word ‘swag.'”
• Feminist pranksters in Baltimore made a clever send-up of a Victoria’s Secret panty ad, complete with “No Means No” slogans.
• Urban Outfitters “buys yard sale clothes in bulk and resells them to hipsters as ‘vintage.'”
• Dan Mascai at Fast Company really hates silly media stereotypes about his own “millennial generation.”
• Another venerable mag leaving print behind for an online-only future: The Sporting News, the “bible of baseball.” While it expanded its coverage into the other big U.S. team sports, its prime asset is its record of every major and minor league baseball game ever played in the U.S. and Canada. That alone is an ongoing endeavor worth keeping alive somehow.

There was a spot on lower Fourth Avenue downtown on Sunday afternoon where the cheers from the gay marriage celebrants at City Hall and the cheers from the Seahawks fans in CenturyLink field were equally loud. And, with the Seahawks game a total rout, the cheers from both sources were about as frequent.

The City Hall scene was a big, one-time-only, spectacle of civic self-congratulation (the sort of thing Seattle does as often and as chest-thumpingly as possible).

But at the heart of this circus were the 137 couples who were legally wed, at five different chapels set up in the building, by a corps of judges working off the clock for free (including the aptly named Judge Mary Yu). Only the couples and their immediate guests were let inside the building.

Then the couples all got to descend the big exterior stairs and be congratulated with cheers, signs, and music.

Where there are mass weddings, there will be mass receptions. One was held at the Q bar on Broadway. Another was at the Paramount. The latter had its main floor all in flat seatless mode, with tables and tablecloths, and complimentary cupcakes and candies and wine and cider, all donated by local merchants.

Then the celebrity well wishers came on stage. Singer Mary Lambert, then Mayor McGinn, then State Sen. Ed Murray and fiancee (left).

A singer named Chocolate came on to sing a dutifully soulful rendition of “At Last,” leading the ceremonial “first dance” for all the couples.

At this time of year, when superficial wishes of love and joy are repeated to the point of meaninglessness, let us all heed the example of these couples, all all their gay and straight supporters who worked to make this happen, and to all before them who strove to have their love officially recognized in this way, and all who will marry (or simply know they can) in the days and years to come.

steven h. robinson, shorelineareanews.com

• After 82 years, Parker’s Ballroom on Aurora in Shoreline was demolished this month. Also known over the years as the Aquarius Tavern and Parker’s Casino, it originally opened as a naughty out-of-town “roadhouse” on the then-new highway from Seattle to Everett. The 20,000 square foot room (with no supporting posts inside) was a rollicking big-band venue during the swing years, then a major rock club hosting everyone from the Fabulous Wailers and the Sonics to Heart. It was a cardroom and sports bar most recently, closing earlier this year. If any attempt was made to save it, I haven’t heard of it. The site’s rumored next use: a car lot.
• KPTK-AM, aka “Seattle’s Progressive Talk AM 1090,” goes off the air the day after New Year’s. The station’s owned by the CBS Radio Stations Group. CBS has its own sports talk network in the works, and is “flipping” many of its AM outlets to make room for it. There’s already a “Save Progressive Talk” page on Facebook.
• SeattlePI.com Shrinkage Watch: Amy Rolph, most recent curator of the site’s “Big Blog,” is quitting to take an editorial post at MSN.com. PI.com still hasn’t replaced the last five people who left.
• The Lava Lounge, Belltown’s hip hangout bar since ’95, might or might not be sold within the next month or so, and might or might not be closing shortly after that.
• A homeless camp isn’t the place you want to be even when it’s not flooding.
• Hostess Update: Labor arbitration might save the venerable cake and bread maker as a going concern. Of course, that would leave the company’s “vulture capitalism” bosses in charge to keep increasing their own wages while cutting everyone else’s (and crippling the company’s ability to compete or even operate). However, a rival capital/buyout firm says it wants to take over Hostess, and keep its union workers.
• So let’s get this straight: Hope Solo, Olympic soccer star whose late dad often lived on the streets downtown, marries Jerramy Stevens, ex-UW and Seahawks football player with a history of sexual and other assault allegations—including a charge of domestic violence involving Solo herself. I’m not the only one hoping there’s no more drama in this story.
• The tiny town of Gold Bar, Snohomish County, may “disincorporate.”
• We now have the first vague idea what a new Sonics Arena might look like. It’ll look like a modern arena.
• Christy Wampole submitted an NY Times essay about “How to Live Without Irony.” Only she seems to completely misunderstand what irony even is. I could call that ironic but won’t.
• Sure enough, as soon as I plug one Kickstarter fundraiser on this site, I get folks asking me to plug their Kickstarter fundraisers also. This time, it’s a solo CD by venerable Red Dress singer Gary Minkler. He describes it as “contorted, gospel-rooted Americana (the broad definition), lyrically akin to American Modernist poetry sensibilities, shaped like cartoons but deadly serious.”
• Local web-comix legend The Oatmeal explains what “being a content creator” is like (well, other than the part where everyone wants you to do everything for free).

Onetime P-I cartoonist Ramon "Ray" Collins, to be featured in the documentary Bezango, WA

• I don’t often plug Kickstarter fundraising projects here. But there’s one I fully believe in. It’s Bezango, WA, a feature documentary by Ron Austin and Louise Amandes about Northwest cartoonists past and present. It’ll have everybody from David Horsey to Ellen Forney. It should be a blast.
• It’s been a few days since the last Random Links, I know. No, I haven’t been dancing the liberal’s victory dance all this time. I’ve been working on another National Novel Writing Month novel. This one should be great. I’ve got a scene in which an electronics nerd compares a sexy woman to a freshly soldered joint. (Really.) (That part might not make the eventual final cut, though.)
• Remember, Seattle parks users: the owls are not what they seem.
• A nice Wikipedia contributor explains Seattle’s street layout. (This will be on your exam.)
• Don’t send too many Tweets® from a Husky football game, or the UW will accuse you of being an unlicensed media outlet.
• Andy Warhol’s studio submitted a proposal to paint the Tacoma Dome’s roof all floral-y. Now, it might finally appear.
• RIP Tristan Devin, 32. The Capitol Hill cafe owner and comedian was also the director of the “People’s Republic of Komedy,” staging group bills all over town and promoting a standup revival. Among the topics of his own act were his long struggles with depression and experiences in therapy.
• Bryan Johnson has retired after 53 years at KOMO radio and TV. On the radio side, he’d announced both the death of JFK and the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Transferred to the TV side, he became a sort-of local Mike Wallace. In his booming baritone, he asked the tough questions, he made the snarky comments, he delivered the gloom-n’-doom “analysis.” His official last piece was an in-studio commentary on whether the feds would act to prevent pot legalization here.
• Some Occupy ____ activists have an idea that might just actually benefit people. It’s called “Rolling Jubilee.” Under this scheme, a donation-funded nonprofit would buy up unpayable consumer debt at pennies on the dollar, just like collection agencies do. But the nonprofit would then cancel, instead of try to collect, those debts.
• Google allegedly now makes more ad revenue than all U.S. magazines and newspapers combined.
• Is selling out to commercials now the only viable business model for indie rock bands?

amidst-the-everyday.com

“Amidst the Everyday,” a project by photographers-artists Aaron Asis and Dan Hawkins, aims to reveal “elements of the unseen urban environment.” You go to places around town, scan QR codes (etched in wood!) at various buildings, and receive images of their hidden treasures. (Above, one of the unoccupied-for-decades upper floors of the Eitel Building at Second and Pike.)

• I’m not disillusioned by the news of a potential sitcom that would carry the title Smells Like Teen Spirit. (The show concept sounds more like a ripoff of Family Ties, which is also something we don’t need.) However, I am at least a little disillusioned by the news of a potential Kurt and Courtney stage musical, which would be licensed by Courtney Love via Britney Spears’ estranged ex-manager.
• Lester Smith, 1919-2012: The Mariners’ original principal owner had, in partnership with Hollywood star Danny Kaye, a number of business endeavors. They ranged from rock-concert promotion to direct-mail marketing. But Smith (or Kaye-Smith) will always be legendary for stewarding KJR-AM during its 1955-80 golden age as Seattle’s Top 40 (or “Fab 50”) powerhouse.
• The Seattle Times‘ free ads for Rob McKenna caught the LA Times‘ attention; not to mention a less-than-kind portrayal in the SeaTimes‘ own “Truth Needle” department.
• The next step up from bicycle lanes: physically separated “bike tracks.”
• Knute Berger reiterates what I’ve been saying about the waterfront development scheme. Let’s not let it be “sanitized by good intentions.”
• Dominic Holden would like you to know the biggest reason for legalizing pot. It isn’t for the stoners (and it sure ain’t to shut up the stoner evangelists, which had been my reason).
• Joe Copeland takes up the continuing legacy of Floyd Schmoe, one of the greatest people I ever met, leader of Seattle’s Quakers and hands-on advocate for peace and reconciliation.
• The next hurdle toward getting the NBA back in Seattle has been overcome. That hurdle is Commissioner David Stern, whose butt will be out of that particular chair by the end of next season.
• A major casual-games convention may be leaving Seattle.
• UK film blogger Petra Davis looks back admiringly at the still-underrated Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, 20 years old this year…
• …and, with the winding down of the World’s Fair semi-centennial, our pal Jim Demetre has some kind words for the (mostly justifiably) forgotten It Happened at the World’s Fair.
• In other film news, the Columbia City Cinema is being reopened (yay!). The new owner has repaired all the previous owner’s not-up-to-code “renovations.”
• Note to Amazon Kindle users: Buy all your e-books while you’re physically in the same country, lest you be targeted as a Terms of Service violator.
• Today’s dire-threat-to-America’s-youth story comes to you from a California high school where boys and girls alike are invited to join a “fantasy slut league.”
• Penguin and Random House are in merger talks. This is bad news, since book publishing is one of those industries that’s too consolidated already.
• Today’s lesson in the folly of products marketed as “For Women” is brought to you by Fujitsu and its “Floral Kiss” brand laptop PC.
• Among all the slimy, sociopathic, and bigoted things Republicans are saying and doing these days, add this overt racism by Sarah Palin.
• Pseudonymous Daily Kos diarist “bayushisan” wishes gamer culture had fewer macho jerks in it. (The same, of course, can be said about athiests and “skeptics,” online comment threads, U.S. politics, and even atheists and “skeptics”.)
• Paul Karr loathes the dot-commers’ worship of “disruption” as a sacred concept, and the Ayn Randian me-first-ism behind it.
• The BBC notes that “creativity is often intertwined with mental illness“…
• …and Simon Reynolds disses the “modern dismissal of genius” in today’s “age of the remix.”
• Earthquakes can’t be predicted. That hasn’t stopped a court in Italy from convicting seven scientists who failed to do so.
• Community organizer “B Loewe” believes you should not get into lefty causes to feel good about yourself, and you shouldn’t try to be your own, or your only, emotional “caregiver.” Instead, you’re to practice prosocial interdependence as both ideology and a way of life.
• Someone says something nice about so-called “hipsters!” They’re credited with helping bring back Detroit (the place, not the car companies).

shewalkssoftly.com

• Is there anything more ritualistically ridiculous than the standard commercial “sexy” Halloween costume? Speaking of which….
• Nancy Cohen at Playboy.com warns all aficionados of porn, erotic books, birth control, and non-procreative sex in general that the extreme right wing wants to shut all that down.
• And the neo-Riot Grrrl graffiti gang has mega-tagged one of the Aurora Ave. motels that was shut down as an alleged hooking site. Their message: Respect sex work and sex workers.
• Seattle Times Shrinkage Watch: The paper’s management would really, really like you to continue (or resume) reading and even buying the paper, despite its owners’ giving away free ad space to GOP Gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna. (The Times has run “issue” advertising for gay marriage and against the estate tax, but this is the first time they’ve donated to a candidate.)
• The under-new-management (sorta) Seattle Weekly did something the Stranger might have done. It commented on the Times bosses’ McKenna ad by running their own “independent expenditure” ad praising Google as “the most totally fucking awesome company in the history of mankind.” Let’s see if that gets the Weekly listed any higher in the ol’ search rankings.
• Art Thiel believes the best chance of an NBA team in Seattle might not be moving an existing one, but getting a new expansion team.
• I know you can’t get enough of those extra-unique Mormon church doctrines.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic notes how only white people get to make “jokes” about wanting to “take a swing” at a dark skinned President.
• The BBC watches the supposedly alarming trend of “passive-aggressive Wi-Fi names.” Particularly network names aimed at other residents of the same apartment/condo complex, such as “Your Music Is Annoying” or “We Can Hear You Having Sex.”

via imdb

It’s 10/4, good buddy!

• T-Mobile merges with Metro PCS, avoids local layoffs, remains out of AT&T’s and Sprint’s clutches (for now).
• George Lakey explains how left-O-center folks have to get back on the offensive, and in the process get over “class tunnel vision.”
• The memoir of a former undercover teen booze buyer for the Liquor Board.
• The MTV website still discusses pop music, even though the MTV cable channels have abandoned it. And the site now proclaims that “Seattle Is the New Seattle.”
• The compact disc officially turns 30 this month. The first discs and players appeared in Japan in October 1982, but didn’t show up here until the next year. From that start, it took the CD only seven years to completely eradicate vinyl from mass-market music sales. Now the CD itself, and the whole industry of selling music recorded onto physical objects, is threatened with extinction. There’s a strong underground of vinyl-record advocates these days, but who will rise to defend the CD?
• We don’t have to cringe at the Mariners for another six months (not counting spring training games).

from the book 'mail order mysteries' via laughingsquid.com

• Oh we so wanted to believe the miracle products advertised in comic books really worked as advertised (or at least were as cool as the ads claimed).
• I might be in the minority even among local fans, but I believe the replacement refs made the right call in awarding Monday night’s final play (and hence the game) to the Seahawks.
• No, the Edmonton Oilers hockey team isn’t ever going to move to Seattle. The local visit by Oilers execs is only an exercise in “arena blackmail” toward Edmonton politicos.
• David Goldstein puts the blame for Washington’s regressive tax structure on a state Supreme Court ruling back in 1933.
• Pundits look at Washington state’s political “Cascade curtain.” Micah Cohen at the NYT‘s FiveThirtyEight sees the west/east divide in terms of women’s rights issues…
• …while Eli Sanders dissects how, in the last State Supreme Court race, an unqualified white candidate beat a highly qualified Hispanic candidate in Eastern Washington, even in 40-percent-Hispanic areas.
• Speaking of Eastern Washington, those bigass, electricity-hungry “server farm” computer installations there might not employ very many people once they’re built, but they still demand political clout.
• A judge refused to throw out a class-action suit by female Costco employees, alleging discrimination in promotions.
• TV ads for the gay marriage referendum don’t show any actual gay people. I’m reminded of the 1998 initiative to end affirmative action in the state. The anti-initiative ads showed, as their examples of affirmative action’s needy beneficiaries, only white little girls. The tactic didn’t work.
• The good folks at Seattle Indian Health Services claim the city, led by councilmember Nick Licata, is trying to take over their agency so it can sell the land on which their offices sit to a private developer.
• A national church mag calls Seattle’s own Mars Hill Church (home of “hip” misogyny/homophobia) America’s third fastest-growing church.
• The Northwest’s oil refining capital could also host the nation’s biggest bottled-water plant. What could possibly go wrong?
• The airline now calling itself United (a shotgun marriage of the original UAL with Continental) has posted a nice time lapse video of a Boeing 787 being put together. It’s enough to warm this Snohomish County guy’s heart.
• Andy Williams, 1928-2012: The seemingly ageless singer/TV host began as a child in a singing-brothers act, then jump-started the career of a similar act (the Osmonds). He was a quintessential icon of the square side of the 1960s, smooth and slick and pleasant and never ruffled. He was one of those personalities who seemed to inhabit a world of serenity that flowed all around him; which made his latter-day emergence as a right wingnut even stranger.
• Ben Adler at the Nation says the truly crazy wingnut conspiracy theories and insult “jokes” don’t start on radio or Fox “News”, but at obscure blogs and e-mail lists.
• Today’s Romney/Ryan bashings: Richard Eskow believes Ryan still believes his former Ayn Randian denunciations of Medicare and Social Security. Florida Republicans are up to their old voter-suppression tricks. Greg Palast claims Karl Rove’s ol’ election-stealing dirty tricks operations are still up and running. And Jonathan Chiat visits some extremely rich people who imagine themselves to be America’s most “persecuted” and overtaxed sector.
• Economic philosopher Angus Sibley has a highly lucid, step-by-step breakdown of what’s wrong with libertarian economics.
• If outsource manufacturers like Foxconn in China keep up their reputation for workplace horridness, western tech-hardware companies just might have to return production in-house just to avoid the bad PR.
• Victoria’s Secret has quietly discontinued its “Sexy Little Geisha” ensemble. Anti-racist bloggers claim credit.

chris lehman, npr via kplu

• In my onetime stompin’ grounds of Corvallis OR, an Asian American businessman sponsored a downtown mural depicting tranquil nature scenes in Taiwan contrasted with police brutalizing protesters in Tibet. China’s government would like the mural gone.
• On the 20th anniversary of the film Singles, Spin imagines the film with a modern-day soundtrack (available as a Spotify playlist). No current Seattle acts are on it (though ex-local Mark Lanegan is).
• Most of the hereby-linked article is behind a paywall, but the gist is this: ESPN blogger Craig Custance believes Seattle’s got a great shot at a National Hockey League team, but as an expansion rather than a moved franchise. Custance agrees with similar remarks earlier this year by CBC hockey commentator Elliotte Friedman. (Nobody might have NHL hockey for perhaps a whole year, if the league continues to lock out its players.)
• My ol’ pal James Winchell has a neat piece in the Jewish mag Tablet (no relation to the defunct local hipster rag of the same name), philosophizing on the Hebrew roots and symbolism in the works of Franz Kafka.
• How artificial intelligence is turning out: expect more stuff like Siri, but no human-esque robots any time soon.
• As big chain retailers abandon more and more sites around the country, some of those sites are being taken over by big chain restaurants.
• Danny Westneat asks if Romney’s so down on those who don’t pay taxes, when’s he gonna go after the likes of Boeing? (Or, for that matter, Microsoft?)
• Poll-analyst extraordinaire Nate Silver sees Obama doing better in polls that include real-live pollsters (instead of robocalls) and that include cell-phone-only households.
• Today’s scathinger-than-scathing Romney rants come to you courtesy of Nicholas Kristof and Lawrence O’Donnell…
• …while Jon Stewart tears yet another righteous hole in the blatantly hypocritical Faux News partisans.
• As for me, for now, I’ll just say Romney’s appearance on Univision should have been accompanied by one of that channel’s biggest personalities. I speak, of course, of “El Chacal de la Trompeta,” the masked trumpeter from the Gong Show-like talent segment of Sabado Gigante.

watch el chacal de la trompeta, via youtube

nfl via cbs news

The highly creative leader of NFL Films did as much as any single person to turn pro football into America’s most popular team sport.

His father Ed had founded the film production company, then sold it to the league’s team owners, in the early 1960s. But it was Steve who ran it, almost from the start.

He built a mythology on top of the league’s original hard, working-class image with grainy 16mm photography, Sam Spence’s bold-as-brass music cues, and John Facenda’s booming narration.

He put cameras down below players’ eye level and zoomed them in tight. He miked players, coaches, and refs. He constructed storylines that were often more thrilling than the games his crews documented.

As I wrote in 1997, Sabol turned what was essentially a game of coaching, of the execution and interruption of pre-planned plays, into a morality play, a spectacle of noble action heroes valiantly vanquishing their foes.

Along the way, he turned the lowly highlight reel, that early staple of TV-station filler moments, into a true art form.

seanmichaelhurley.blogspot.com

• My ol’ pal and fellow Stranger refugee, painter/illustrator Sean Michael Hurley, worked the “safety patrol” at the Downtown Emergency Service Center for the past two years, until earlier this month. Here are his poignant reminiscences of this tough job.
• Not since (or even including) Dukakis have I seen a Presidential campaign come apart at the rivets so thoroughly, so quickly. Having apparently abandoned even most of the remaining “swing states” (of which some polls say there are now only six), the Romneyites are retreating to their remaining hardcore base—their billionaire donors. That’s the reason for the masses-bashing speech Romney gave to some donors last week, which got leaked to Mother Jones.
• Next, the Romney cronies will try to double down on the “culture war” nonsense, to try to keep the wingnuts interested in propping up the GOP downticket races.
• Wall Street was re-occupied, with the expected police over-reaction.
• Timothy Harris at Real Change, meanwhile, insists there’s life yet in the Occupy shtick.
• Nanci Donnellan, KJR-AM’s former “Fabulous Sports Babe,” has had major health issues in recent years, but is still doing the brassy-mama act on the air in Tampa.
• Did a European magician try to copy one of Penn and Teller’s (well, Teller’s) signature bits? Or is it all just another of the team’s elaborate hoaxes?
• Today’s lesson in officially homophobic institutions covering up rampant child abuse comes from the Boy Scouts.
• So the organized anti-American attacks in the Mideast aren’t really due to an awful, no-budget American movie. But if they had been, so many more cringeworthy-bad films are out there. Where’s the rioting over Manos the Hands of Fate or The Wasp Woman?
• There are still vast places in America, nay in Wash. state, where there’s no cell phone service and previous little Internet service. Some people who don’t live in these places imagine them to be heaven. I do not.
• A Tacoma teacher says education reform has become like the unsolvable training exercise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I think it’s more like one of those Doctor Who season finales that require a millennium or two to resolve.
• Jen Doll at the Atlantic says the changing book biz means the end of the cloying back-cover blurb. (You’ll also enjoy the article’s stock photo of the old Elliott Bay Book Co. location.)
• Harvard researchers claim “a wandering mind is not a happy mind.” I’d tell you more about the story, but I had these 30 other browser tabs open at the time….

the impossible project via engadget.com

• Now you can turn images on your smartphone into real Polaroid®-like instant film photos! (Or you could, if the Kickstarter money gets raised.)
• KIRO-TV has now posted the entire J.P. Patches/Chris Wedes memorial celebration, including the parts cut for time from the telecast version. And here’s the band Aaiiee’s song “Boris S. Wort,” as heard during the event.
• Good news, sports fans: Looks like the Seattle City Council has reached a revised pact to get the Sonics arena going, with some developer-contributed cash toward transportation improvements. Now all we need is a team or two to come up for sale.
• Meanwhile at Crosscut, longshoremen’s union leader John Persak reiterates the line that we can only have either a new arena or a working seaport. I’ve already called this BS, so I won’t do so again.
• Rain! Eureka! The Crops Are Saaaaved! (Oops, maybe not.)
• The Wall St. Journal has a major piece about the Hanford cleanup megaproject. The Dept. of Energy is slowing down construction, while it and various other parties argue whether the current design will work at keeping highly toxic radioactive gunk out of any potential contact with the ecosystem.
• The Slut Walk might not be “redefining feminism” (as the hereby linked Linda Thomas story suggests), but it and similar protests are helping redefine the range of “acceptable” looks/attitudes among those trying to persuade.
• Some parents don’t like the fact that the Seattle Public Schools are accepting advertising again. Their means of protest: an ad.
• NIMBY-ism gone tricky: A Montlake neighborhood group doesn’t want walking/bike lanes on any new 520 bridge.
• Digital media advertising grew in the first half of this year. But print media advertising fell more than digital grew. A lot more.
• Toys “R” Us will sell its own branded Android tablet.
• “We all live in a narco submarine….”
• Third-world forced prostitution is just as tragic when it involves men.

johncage.tonspur.at

• It’s ex-Seattleite composer’s John Cage’s 100th birthday. Hope your pianos are all suitably “prepared.”
• Free downtown public transit is not only dying in Seattle but in Portland too.
• Pleasure-boaters have turned Andrews Bay, near Seward Park, into a party zone gone wild. It’s like the Seafair log boom every day.
• The sellout of Yesler Terrace to “market rate” development is official.
• Seattle’s budget situation: not nearly as dreadful as previously feared.
• The UW has been named one of the country’s “ten greenest colleges.”
• Catholic schools are neither as popular nor as affordable as they used to be, back when they were staffed by armies of low-paid nuns.
• Organic food: really better for you, or just costlier and uglier?
• American Airlines got what it wanted out of its trumped-up “bankruptcy” ploy, getting officially out of its union pilots’ contract.
• Here’s the Michele Obama speech so many are talking about, the Deval Patrick speech almost as many are talking about, and the Craig Robinson speech I had a personal reason to like (Go Beavers!).
• Nielsen ratings for the Republican convention are in. They’re down 23 percent from the GOP’s viewership in 2008 (which, in turn, had had more viewers than 2004). Of those who did watch, two-thirds were 55 or older.
• CNN’s pre-convention Romney documentary tried to portray the young Willard as having somehow been “courageous” as a ’60s pro-war draft dodger.
• Vanity Fair writer Kurt Eichenwald writes on his own blog that the rabid right’s lying demagogues must be stopped for the sake of all of us (conservatives included):

Lying has become so ingrained into the conservatives’ national dialogue that they are now dangerously demagogic or, worse, severely unhinged. Blind rage at the election of Barack Obama has wrecked a once great political party. Its leaders have made so many deals with the devil in their almost pathological obsession with unseating Obama that they have pushed the GOP into its own version of political hell – unable to speak truths to their now-rabid and conspiracy-addled base and unable to right the party back onto a path of responsibility. Only through the disinfectant of defeat can the Republicans, and the two party system, be preserved.

• The Hugo Awards, science fiction’s highest cross-medium honors, were to have been webcast live. But the streaming-video service company cut off the live feed. Automated software detected the presence of copyrighted film clips and pulled the plug, even though all the clips had been fully licensed for use.

Today’s historic-preservation outrage involves the Jefferson Park Golf Course clubhouse. It’s a magnificent structure, “homey” yet elegant, that’s served city residents for more than 75 years. The City wants to raze it to put up a new driving range. It’s rushing through a plan to deny landmark status to the building, in cahoots with the architects that are planning the redevelopment scheme.

• This week, the southeast corner of the United States has been hammered by a massive destructive force of nature, devastating the people and the land with its wind and fury. There’s also a tropical storm.
• A deaf woman in Tacoma was arrested for a crime she was really the victim of. She was tasered and held for 60 hours without access to an interpreter. She’s now got a global support network.
• The stretch road in front of the J.P. Patches statue in Fremont may get the honorary second name of “J.P. Patches Place.”
• Dan Froomkin doesn’t want more jobs. He wants more decent-paying jobs than today’s corporate sector seems willing to provide.
• As Seattle’s libraries and their patrons endure their fourth annual end-o’-summer closed week, the son of an ex-Seattle Public Library bigwig believes libraries need to reinvent themselves by ditching those dumb ol’ books, or at least stuffing them in some inaccessible-by-the-public storage facility. Uh, thanks but no thanks.
• Meanwhile, the volunteer-run “People’s Library” at 23rd and Yesler plans to remain open after the city libraries reopen, at least through the end of this month.
• Pierce Transit, already socked by over-dependence on local sales tax revenue, could face potential total shutdown (or something close to it) if a tax increase measure doesn’t pass.
• An extreme-right-wing militia cult wanted to bomb a Wash. state dam and poison the state’s apple crop.
• Higher prices, less selection. Isn’t liquor privatization wonderful?
• In the no-rules/new-rules world of self-e-publishing, you can get your book all the rave reviews it needs, and for a reasonable price.
• Bill Nye, who’s usually right about these things, proclaims that creationist fantasy is not healthy for children and other living things.

zoo atlanta via king-tv

• Ivan, 1962-2012: In the postwar years, the biggest public attractions in both Seattle and Tacoma were caged gorillas. Seattle’s gorilla, Bobo, was kept at the Woodland Park Zoo. Tacoma’s Ivan was in the indie B&I discount store, which later evolved into a low-rent mall. There, he was kept in a cage with a back concrete wall painted to resemble a jungle. After years of public pressure, the mall’s owners finally donated Ivan to Woodland Park, which in turn sent him to Zoo Atlanta.
• Just when folks are getting used to the Space Needle in its retro original “Galaxy Gold” color scheme, its owners want to change it again.
• Thanks to the state’s “top two” election law and a Stranger-fueled write in campaign, the speaker of the State House of Representatives will be challenged this November by a socialist.
• Former City Councilmember Cheryl Chow (daughter of powerful local restaurateur Ruby Chow) has proclaimed that she is a lesbian; and also, as an aside, that she’s dying of cancer.
• The best thing left at Seattle Weekly, longform-essay reporter Rick Anderson, was just laid off and placed on freelance status. Will someone local please buy the paper back from the Arizonans and make it something to be proud of again?
• A tech news site visits the Bellevue company (run by ex-Microsoft top execs) that’s become infamous for buying up patents by the thousands for the purpose of suing other companies that didn’t know these patents existed.
• PopCap Games, the Seattle-based darling of the “social gaming” realm, is firing 50 people.
• Bookstore sales rose 3.8 percent in June compared to the previous year. Sorry, book snobs—you’re still not nearly as solitary as you believe/wish you were.
• Big national corporations have turned the art of finagling sweetheart deals from local governments into a precise science. Today’s examples: sporting-goods superstores.
• ABC’s Nightline, in its 34th year, is the #1 network show in its time slot, regularly outdrawing both Leno and Letterman. Right after the elections, it’ll be pushed up to 12:35 a.m. so Jimmy Kimmel can get the 11:35 slot. And you ask why total TV viewership is down these days, what with these total geniuses running the joints.
• Charles Kenny at Bloomberg Businessweek claims to know “the real reason America’s schools stink.” According to Kenny, it’s know-nothing, do-nothing parents.
• Let’s all “Do the Felix!“

seattle mariners via mynorthwest.com