no, not *those* sonics either.

No.

But KIRO-FM, NBA.com, and other sources continue to spread the unattributed rumors of a “clear path” to bring the Sacramento Kings here. These stories also claim the Kings-owning Maloof brothers are “resigned” to not having a management role in the moved team; even though another rumor said Chris Hansen and co. would only buy 65 percent of the team’s stock.

Yet another unattributed story claims details of the proposed sale/move have been forwarded to the NBA’s relocation committee.

via archive.org

• The collected entries of a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest entrant who always enters the same caption: “Christ, what an asshole.”
• Seahawks fans still love their team after that last-minute win that turned into a last-half-minute loss, and rightfully so.
• First United Methodist Church, which sold its landmark downtown building to speculators, was and is a “welcoming congregation” (i.e. they like the gays). City Church, which just moved into the Methodists’ ex-building: not so much.
• Can any old buildings in South Lake Union be saved from high-rises?
• What would/will rising sea levels due to Seattle? Let’s just say you can make that down payment on waterfront property in High Point.
• Booze at the movies: because theater audiences just aren’t noisy enough.
• The American software mogul who was (and still is) wanted by police in connection to a Belize murder investigation has surfaced in Portland.
• It turns out Lance Armstrong’s cancer charity was less about research and more about raising money to raise money, and to promote Armstrong’s own celebrity. (I.e., just like “Komen for the Cure.”)
• Speaking of which, Texas Monthly magazine gave Armstrong a “Bum Steer Award.” This is an annual “honor” bestowed by the mag since 2001, and is not a snarky comment on Armstrong’s anatomical condition.
• More U.S. troops kill themselves than are being killed in combat.
• A top legislative priority in states with Republican-monopoly governments: making those states’ tax systems as unfair as they can.
• And in case you missed (trucked-in) “Snow Day” at Seattle Center, here come the pix.

seattlerex.com

no, not *those* sonics. (via broadway center for the performing arts, tacoma)

No.

But the unconfirmed rumors continue to swirl. I’m even hearing from people who supposedly know people who work for NBA corporate sponsors/vendors, who’ve supposedly said all systems are go for a Seattle team this fall.

One of the first rumors last week said that no announcement would be made about a new Sonics team until after the Seahawks’ postseason was done. Now that that, sadly, is the case, will we get any real news about this?

no, not *these* sonics; via fanpop.com

No.

And still no official announcements by anybody.

But unsourced rumors keep a-swirlin’.

One says some local Sacramento CEOs are putting together an emergency last-minute bid for the Kings. Other Sacramento-area buyer groups have emerged, and been rebuffed, umpteen times in the past three to five years. Another rumor says the Kings’ owners, the Maloof brothers, would rather sue than give up at least some say in the team’s management.

Meanwhile, the Puget Sound Business Journal has unearthed an October interview with would-be Seattle buyer Chris Hansen. In it, Hansen says he wants to ultimately have between four and nine co-owning partners in the Sonics organization. This would, presumably, not include any Maloofs.

comics buyer's guide in 1983; via bleedingcool.com

When I worked at The Comics Journal (foundation of the entire Fantagraphics graphic-novel empire), publisher Gary Groth’s official line was that we were the smart, progressive alternative to the comic-book industry’s”mainstream” trade mag, Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Now, CBG is being shut down after 42 years, without even an ongoing website to remain.

CBG‘s parent company is transferring all CBG subscriptions to an antiques-collecting mag (really). Fantagraphics, however, is offering book discounts to ex-CBG subscribers.

(CBG’s publishers are also firing the editorial staff of another of their mags, Print; that title will continue with HOW magazine’s editors pulling double duty.)

Elsewhere in randomosity:

• In other collectibles news, there won’t be a trillion-dollar coin after all.
• Patrick Dempsey can buy the remaining Tully’s Coffee locations after all.
• Real “bus rapid transit” services have their own lanes. Seattle’s proposing giving such a lane to Metro’s “RapidRide.” The lane would run for two blocks on Broad Street.
• “Reality” TV may be less than completely unscripted, but the dangers crew members face are all too real.
• Andy Warhol, as you might imagine, was a wrestling fan.
• Yes, I’m still looking for actual paid employment. (No, not “writing work;” just PAYING work. I’ve learned I have to say that.) Joining me in scrounging for dishwashing and warehouse gigs: all the PhDs on Food Stamps.

No.

But the wannabe team buyers released another set of sketches of their proposed arena. It would be complete with a grand entrance slope that could be also used for arts events and even snowboarding on trucked-in snow.

As the hype continues, here is a gallery of classic Sonics action shots. (Warning: this is on a site that also has naked-celebrity photo pages.)

And local freelancer Harry Cheadle writes at Vice.com that “the Sonics’ fate is now in the hands of the oligarchs.”

chris hansen and mayor mcginn; mayor's office via crosscut.com

No.

Just another promising but unconfirmed rumor thus far today.

And while there are still no official announcements, a newly-surfaced rumor claims the Sacramento Kings’ bumbling, serial-deal-breaking owners want to keep having a say in how the team is run, even after it’s sold. (Some folk just don’t know when to bow out gracefully.)

Meanwhile, Art Thiel commends Chris Hansen’s team for keeping the politicians largely out of the process, at least publicly.

• First the B&O Espresso shutters. Now, another outfit you’d think would thrive with legal gay marriages instead goes away. It’s Brocklind’s Formal Wear and Costume Supply. It’s closing up shop after 106 years (the last 20 or so years residing on E. Pike).
• In related news, gay mag The Advocate claims Tacoma is “America’s Gayest City.” I can actually imagine this being true. Lots of military and truck drivers, and a “tuff’ civic culture that extends to women as well as men.
• The faculty at Garfield High has chosen, collectively, not to administer the “Measure of Academic Progress” (MAP), the Seattle School District’s standardized tests in reading and math, to ninth-grade students this month. The teachers’ statement claims the test “wastes time, money, and precious school resources… It produces specious results, and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”
• Nate Silver, who wowed ’em by accurately predicting November’s election results, now says the Seahawks will meet the Patriots in the Super Bowl (but lose).
• State Sen. Rodney Tom, the pseudo-Democrat who wants to turn control of the Legislature to Republicans, got a stinging rebuke by his own party in his own district.
• Pundit Tom Esdall believes an “Obama coalition” of women, minorities, working-class folk, and “99 percenters” stands a chance of really challenging “corporate America’s” control of the federal political process.
• Young-adult evangelicals these days love Jesus but don’t love gay-and-woman-bashing.
• There’s a new industry that actually pays people to write online! Unfortunately, they’re being paid to be right-wing “comment trolls” on opinion blogs.
• Print book sales may be down, but no further down than last year. (And they’re still holding their own better than CDs and DVDs.)
• I usually like to watch the Australian Open, even though I’m not a hardcore tennis fan, just to be reassured that, somewhere in the world, it’s warm now. But this year, it’s too warm there. By a lot.

jeremy repanich via vice.com

No.

Not even any real announcements about a pending sale.

What we’d need to see, in approximate order:

• An official announcement of a pending sale, made by both the buyers and the sellers.
• Approval of the team sale by NBA Commissioner David Stern, then by the league’s Board of Governors, then by a majority of the other 29 team owners.
• Separate league approval of a request to move the team to Seattle, by all the above parties. That has to be formally requested by March 1 to take effect this next season.
• An agreement to use KeyArena for home games for at least two seasons.
• And, possibly, the league’s dismissal of any challenges by Sacramento city fathers.

(Environmental and legal approval of a new arena does not have to happen for the team to move; but the league would like to be assured that those are likely.)

first 'weekly' cover, 1976; via historylink.org

In today’s second most important local business story, Seattle Weekly isn’t being sold to the Seattle Times.

It’s being sold to Sound Publishing.

That’s the outfit that bought the weekly Eastside papers founded in the wake of the daily King County Journal’s collapse almost a decade ago. It also owns a bunch of small-town papers around the area, plus the Little Nickel classifieds (yes, that’s still being published in print!).

It’s owned by Canadian newspaper baron David Black (who’s not related to disgraced former Canadian newspaper baron Conrad Black). David Black is also buying another Village Voice Media property, SF Weekly, adding that to a cluster of papers he’s got there.

The Weekly‘s content has withered, in quantity and quality, even more than most newsprint products these days. Village Voice Media (the renamed New Times Publishing from Arizona) has been an incompetent owner.

At the very least, the Black regime could stem the Weekly‘s slide toward irrelevance. But could it really bring the paper back to the civic-kingmaker role to which it once aspired?

vintage sonics pocket schedule, available at gasoline alley antiques

The rumored sale of the Sacramento Kings to the Chris Hansen/Steve Ballmer group is still just a rumor right now, albeit a rumor with several original sources.

(Trivia note: The pocket schedule shown above carries the Richfield gasoline brand with the logo of Richfield’s successor brand, Arco. The Kings would be moving out of the old Arco Arena in Sacramento CA, more recently renamed Sleep Train Arena.)

via jim linderman on tumblr

• Dear Bellevue Police: People have sex. Sometimes the people who have sex are co-workers. Deal with it.
• You missed the suddenly announced closing night at Cafe Venus and the Mars Bar. It’s been around at least 16 years (the space, in a lovely old Eastlake Ave. apartment building, was the Storeroom Tavern previously). It hosted countless bands. It was cooler than all get out. Its status has been in doubt, like the statuses of so many cool spaces, for several years now.
• C.B. Hall at Crosscut reminds us that real “bus rapid transit” isn’t like Metro’s “RapidRide.” The real thing has its own lanes, for one thing.
• The Seattle Times couldn’t possibly be buying Seattle Weekly. That makes about as much sense as HP buying Compaq (oh wait, that actually happened).
• Shelby Scates, 1932-2013: It’s not just that we’re losing some of the great local journalists of our time, but that there’s no means to develop worthy successors.
• A 2007 anti-Iraq-war protest at the Port of Tacoma led to six arrests. Now the case is finally going to court.
• As the Legislative session nears, Brendan Williams at Publicola pleads for state Democrats to stop talking like diluted Republicans.
• We’re Number Five! (In terms of lousy traffic.)
• How did Vancouver’s economy do during the soon-to-end Hockey Lockout II? Not that badly.
• Newsweek refugee Andrew Sullivan’s new site won’t have ads. P-I refugee Monika Guzman agrees with the strategy. Guzman claims online ads earn too little money these days, and many sites that try too hard to attract ad revenue turn into useless “click whores.” But the problem then becomes attracting enough readers who like you enough to support your site by other means (pledge drives, merch/book sales, etc.).
• Hamilton Nolan at Gawker insists that real journalism means writing about someone(s) other than your own narcissistic self.
• “Intercity bus and rail ridership up, as car and air travel remain flat.”
• Folks luuuvvv those big online college courses. As long as they don’t have to pay for ’em.
• Frank Schaeffer isn’t the first pundit to note the geographical coincidence between today’s “red states” and yesteryear’s “slave states.” Nor will be be the last.
• In Iceland, like in France at one time, kids can only be named from names on an approved list. One 15-year-old girl is trying to fight that.
• The college football post-season was mostly a dud. But here’s one “highlight.” It’s the weird one-point safety Kansas State committed after blocking an Oregon point-after-touchdown.

I’m currently watching, via DVR, the last 11:30 edition of Nightline.

After 33 years, some of them at #1 in the time slot, it’s being moved to 12:30 so Jimmy Kimmel Live can take the earlier slot. That’s happening on a Tuesday, so Kimmel’s “debut” wouldn’t clash with Monday night’s college football championship on ABC’s sister channel ESPN.

The last 11:30 Nightline’s big piece: Barbara Walters with Mariah Carey. The other segments: Making money selling unwanted Xmas presents, and a theater troupe’s one-hour condensed parody of all six Star Wars movies. At the end, cohost Cynthia McFadden simply asked viewers to join her and the gang at the new time slot, as if that new time slot were not in the post-midnight wee hours.

Not exactly a rousing sendoff to a series that began as a temporary series of bulletins about the Iran hostage crisis, and morphed into the Big Three networks’ second big documentary showcase after 60 Minutes. Nightline is being buried without a wake.

king5.com

This past weekend saw, at last, the moment for which TV viewers in the entire region had waited, patiently and otherwise, for a long long time.

But enough about the season premiere of Downton Abbey.

Instead let’s welcome the return to local screens of my ol’ UW Daily buddy John Keister and his longtime cohort Pat Cashman, plus the debut of Cashman’s son Chris, on their new sketch comedy show The [206].

It airs after Saturday Night Live at 1 a.m. Sundays, when reruns of Keister and Cashman on Almost Live! had aired since that show’s 1999 demise. It also airs Sundays at 7:30 and 11:30 p.m. on KONG-TV.

At the time Almost Live! was canceled, KING said the video landscape had become too fragmented to support a local comedy/entertainment show. That scene is even more fragmented now; and there are so many other electronically based home entertainment options (including the one you’re looking at now).

So what makes this show feasible now, when AL! was no longer feasible then?

In three words: Outsourcing, Downsizing, and Tech.

• Keister, the Cashmans, and their business partners own and package the show themselves. They even sell some of the commercial slots. KING/KONG picks up the show on a “barter” basis.
• The new show has only three regular writer-performers (all male, for what it’s worth), instead of the old show’s eight or nine.
• It’s shot and edited by a small crew using compact digital equipment. The studio parts are taped, in two-episode batches (no breaking-news references), at a small rental space—in Bellevue. (Fret not; Bellevue jokes are still part of the repertoire, as are Tacoma, Renton, and Kent jokes.)

via nutshell movies

For the 27th consecutive year (really!), we proudly present the MISCmedia In/Out List, the most venerable and only accurate list of its kind in the known English-speaking world.

As always, this is a prediction of what will become hot and not-so-hot in the coming year, not necessarily what’s hot and not-so-hot now. If you believe everything hot now will just keep getting hotter, I’ve got some Hostess Brands stock to sell you.