Recent Stories

"A Place To Bury Strangers @ Neumos.. March 12th,2010" by jandrew33, via The SunBreak Flickr pool

There was something I had forgotten about A Place to Bury Strangers since the last time I saw them, at Chop Suey two years ago: The Brooklyn noise-rock trio doesn't like people looking at them. Sure, they're standing onstage in front of a sold-out Neumo's crowd, but they play in heavy clouds of smoke machine fog. They either have the lights way down (see frontman Oliver Ackermann, right) or turned all the way up, with shards of white aurora borealis streaming over the band. APTBS waited till towards the end of Friday's set to turn on the strobes, and when they did, most of the crowd found themselves unable to look at the stage and stood wincing from both visual and auditory overload.

It's fitting though, as it's not as if this is a band that needs much interaction with the crowd. You don't sing along or dance to APTBS songs; you just stand there and let the noise wash over you. The band played songs from both of their full-length releases, not that you could really tell what was what.  It's all head-sploding distortion of one type or another.  I could pick out songs here or there, like first album reverb jam "To Fix the Gash in Your Head," but for the most part, just surrender and give yourself up to the noise....

Live from New York, it's another Saturday night with Pearl Jam. Tune into Saturday Night Live this evening to see Jude Law play funny and Seattle’s reigning rock band play two tunes from their latest album, Backspacer. Giddily retweeted clues suggest Pearl Jam will play the gorgeous "Just Breathe" and chunky-riffed "Force Of Nature." (Wouldn't it be cool, though, if they surprised everyone with a cut from the forthcoming—probably—Backspacer-session EP?) Cross your fingers for a skit that has the real Eddie Vedder trading verses with Bill Hader's EV....

A reminder: This Sunday morning marks the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, where we spring back an hour.  Sure, it's nice for the days to be longer, but those first few mornings HURT.  And what to do with those longer days?  Watch some movies, of course.  Here's this week's new DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

This week actually has a bunch of decent films--except for Old Dogs (and let us never speak of that again).  Catch up on your Oscars-mandated viewing with Precious and Up in the Air, truly two of last year's best, well worth your time.  There's Michael Moore's latest manifesto, Capitalism: A Love Story, which somehow didn't make the final cut for documentary nominees.  (And once again, if you haven't seen Oscar winner The Cove yet, please do.)

For the kids, there's computer-animated aliens in Planet 51, which did not get very good reviews.  There's also Lasse Hallstrom's Hachi: A Dog's Tale, the remake of the based-on-a-true-story Japanese tearjerker about the love that exists between a dog and his owner.  It's not not kid-friendly (it's rated G), but you might have to have a heart-to-heart discussion after the film about the fact that everyone and everything your child ever knows will die....

When A Place to Bury Strangers released their 2007 self-titled debut, the press promptly dubbed the Brooklyn trio "the loudest band in New York."  APTBS' appropriately-named follow-up Exploding Head is more of the same: skull-crushing shoegaze with nods to both My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain.  It's a wall of noise, a whiplash of volume, a sonic assault of customized effects pedals crafted by frontman Oliver Ackermann himself. Wear a pair of earplugs and then put in another set of earplugs, just to be safe.  Your ears will thank you.

They'll be playing Neumo's tonight with The Big Pink, who will assuredly have nearly as many effects pedals, but probably won't be quite as loud. The British producer duo put out one of the best albums of last year, A Brief History of Love, and will definitely have the crowd dancing through the noise.

• A Place To Bury Strangers, The Big Pink, Grave Babies, and io echo play a 21+ show at Neumo's tonight. Doors at 8 p.m., $15.  Tix are almost sold out!
  

Gun-free summer theatre at Volunteer Park.

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha J. Pechman ruled in favor of the City of Seattle against plaintiff Robert Warden, of Kent, and dismissed his case. Warden had brought suit against the city and Mayor Greg Nickels for banning guns in parks, arguing that the state constitution expressly prevented that limitation. The King Co. Superior Court agreed in February, calling the ban illegal.

But here's where it gets interesting: Warden's success in that case rendered his complaint moot in U.S. District Court. So he couldn't argue the more straightforward claim that the state constitution preempted local law. ("The court was presented only with the issue of state law preemption, and here Plaintiff expressly removed his preemption claim from his complaint," wrote Pecham in her decision. )

So Warden was left arguing Second and Fourteenth Amendment issues. Pechman countered that the Second Amendment does not (yet, there's a case coming before the Supreme Court) constrain the actions of municipalities like Seattle, only Congress. And she did not find Warden discriminated against. Warden was able to cite no inalienable right to carry a gun in a park.

Pechman moved on, though, to give her thoughts as to the legitimacy of the preemption argument anyway. In her view, there's precedent for a parks gun ban:...

"It's like how the Clientele are a ghost band because everything we do is through this pop-art lens. We won't play a folk song, we'll play a Peter Blake painting of a folk song," lead singer Alasdair MacLean told Pitchfork, adding that he felt the latest album, Bonfires on the Heath, might make a good going-away present.

That, in addition to The Fleet Foxes once calling The Clientele "Britain's best band," makes this evening's appearance at the Tractor Tavern special (tickets: $12). The weather is just right, too--some wind and rain and MacLean's surrealist poetry over jingle-jangle guitar will make it clear that the Foxes are on to something. Listen closely.

More Elston Turner, please

Coach Lorenzo Romar has struggled to determine the right mix of playing time for his team all season. Last night against Oregon State, the struggle continued. With the Huskies in danger of suffering a loss that would sink their NCAA tournament hopes, Romar made starting shooting guard Isaiah Thomas his primary point guard, sitting both members of his point guard rotation. Elston Turner slotted in at shooting guard and played 23 minutes, his most since January 8.

The bigger lineup helped the Huskies dominate the boards. Giving Thomas total control of the offense gave him freedom to find space in the Oregon State zone. And, generally, it let Romar have his best players on the floor longer. The result was a 37-point second half that gave UW the win.

Basketball coaches from the pros down to CYO ball are known to shorten their rotations--that is, give the bench players less playing time--when the playoffs come. Perhaps Romar is moving in that direction. It's time.

With every game do or die, Abdul Gaddy shouldn't see meaningful minutes again this year. The highly-touted freshman has had his chances to make an impact, and has had valuable playing time that will help him develop into the NBA prospect he's supposed to be. But right now, he hurts the team when he's on the floor.

Venoy Overton should keep his role as off-the-bench disrupter. But that only works if he's got the energy, so he can't see more than 20 minutes a night.

That leaves Thomas as the Dawgs' primary ballhandler, spelled when Overton comes on. This is a role that Cal's Jerome Randle rode to a Pac-10 Player of the Year award, with energy guard Jorge Gutierrez in the Overton role....

As of June 9, 2010, pending Governor Gregoire's signature, talking or texting on a cell phone while driving will be a primary offense. (A headset is okay, and there are multiple provisions for emergencies.) The House passed a stricter bill than they initially presented, making it align with the Senate version. Now police will be able to write a $124 ticket to anyone not using a headset on that basis alone. The HeraldNet quotes Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, the bill's sponsor, saying:

I've fought for this for 10 years, and sometimes I thought this day would never come. Maybe now people will pay attention to their driving instead of their conversations.

Parents who want to get a jump on helping their teens quit the texting-while-driving habit have an assortment of smart phone apps available to them. All cost less than that $124.

This shot--by Great Beyond over at our Flickr pool--really requires no further comment.

Looks like Conan O'Brien has found something to do with his free time, as today he announced a thirty-city live performance tour.  Dubbed "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour," his live show promises "a night of music, comedy, hugging, and the occasional awkward silence."  That sounds like the Conan we all know and love.

Kicking off in Eugene, Oregon on April 12th, the tour will take place over two months, making stops in twenty states and three Canadian provinces, as well as a special appearance at Bonnaroo.  Locally, Conan will perform at McCaw Hall on April 18th and April 19th--looks like this second show was just added!  Prices start at $39.50 (but this is Ticketmaster, so let's just say $50) all the way up to $695 for the drool-worthy special VIP meet-and-greet package. 

Full list of tour dates as of right now--ticket sales are strong, so second shows keep getting added--after the jump....

A brief timeout from the important business of war and teh Twitter and high school sports for this bulletin: This Grace Harbor Farms Golden Guernsey yogurt, which they just started selling at Ballard Market and I'm going to assume the other Town & Country markets, is freaking delicious.

Because it's non-homogenized, the cream rises to the top of the yogurt. "You can scoop the cream off and use it like butter, or stir it in," says the package. YES PLEASE!...

This Friday, March 12, from 6 to 9 p.m., Roq la Rue is having its opening night for the second annual Lush Life invitational group show. Featuring works by 18 separate artists "that contain an opulence or richness, either in subject matter or technique," Lush Life 2 serves as a sort of primer course in the pop surrealist work Roq la Rue specializes in. The show features everything from Brian Despain's steampunk paintings to Travis Louie's ephemeral old-fashioned photorealistic paintings of alternate realities. Michael Brown's animal paintings pervert Margaret Keane's famous "big eye" paintings by making them far too human and soulful, while Andrew Arconti and Madeline Von Foerster ape classical painting styles while adding in surreal twists. The show also goes beyond paintings to include sculptures by Kris Kuksi, Mandy Greer, and Boomer Torvik.

The promoters for the third Isle of Wight pop festival in 1970 thought they'd build a bit on their successful draw of 150,000 the previous year. They got 600,000 or more. Despite the three-pound entrance fee for a weekend concert with Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Miles Davis, Procol Harum, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell, hordes camped out on a bluff overlooking the festival, watched for free, and occasionally set things on fire.

35-year-old Leonard Cohen was one of the last acts, roused in the middle of the night, and wearing what look like pajamas under his trench coat. Murray Lerner's live footage is more in the way of a concert film than a documentary, though he cuts away briefly to get context from Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Kris Kristofferson. The best thing would be to see it in a crowded theater, savoring all the hits Cohen had come up with before 1970, enveloped in a darkness that is both the beginning and end of something. Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight, 1970: Friday, March 12, 9 p.m., Saturday March 13, 9 p.m.

Also opening Friday at the Forum is Bill and Ross Turner's mesmerizing 45365, named after the Zip code of a small Ohio town. Too improvisationally loose for "documentary" to sum up, the film has been called a "symphony," "tapestry," and "mosaic." The camera dogs its way around town, sniffing out what's interesting. Although it's frequently distracted from following this or that person (the judge running an election campaign, a police officer out on call, doings in the barber shop, an alcoholic with one foot on and off the wagon), the camera in its detours through town keeps stumbling upon community epiphanies that anyone who's fled to the big city will remember keenly. It's noteworthy that in a town where everyone knows everyone else's business, one of the most cutting things you can do is not refer to someone by their name. 45365: Friday, March 12-Thursday, March 18 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

First: Let us congratulate the Cleveland High girls' basketball team, which yesterday won their first-ever state tournament game. In the 83-year history of the school! "Eagles! Eagles" chants filled the Tacoma Dome parking lot as Cleveland fans filed out post-game. Pretty cool. Cleveland will play Shorecrest tonight at 8:30 p.m. for a spot in the state semifinals.

You know you'll be rooting for Cleveland in this game, as KIRO right-wing talker Dori Monson is one of Shorecrest's assistants. I'm surprised Monson is in favor of government-funded athletics. Shouldn't the kids pay their own way, like the orphaned children Monson pilloried on his show last week? I digress.

Other Seattle schools shared Cleveland's success. Five Metro league teams advanced to today's quarterfinals, with only one suffering a loss. Franklin was the only loser--but with their three top scorers being underclassmen, I suspect the Quakers will exact some non-violent revenge in next year's tourney.

Why the Metro League success? From watching O'Dea's a dominant win over Mt. Rainier, I will tell you: The speed of the game. Mt. Rainier seemed completely unprepared for the speed of O'Dea's passing, their quickness on defense, and the way they swarmed to rebounds. Irish guard Devante Williams, who may be the best shooter in the tournament, hit 4-7 from three, destroying the Rams' zone defense.

O'Dea will play Spokane's Shadle Park tonight at 8:30 p.m. I suspect the 509ers will give O'Dea a little more trouble; the Irish are susceptible to teams with a good inside game.

Other city teams who'll play in today's quarters......

So the latest hullabaloo is over the Wright family proposal to build a Chihuly glass house where the Fun Forest once misspent idle youth--the news made the USA Today, for heaven's sake. The lesson seems to be that if you say you'll pay for construction, you can build whatever you like at Seattle Center.

A glorified Chihuly gift shop/restaurant was on no one's top ten list for the Center--well, except for Dale Chihuly and the Wrights, apparently, where it was number one with a putti.

Mossback crawled out from beneath a seed log to make the point that the Center has never been all that high-toned--that was in defense of Chihuly, by the way. On the City Council, Sally Bagshaw said, What about our Central Park plan? Mayor McGinn said, It makes money? And Council President Richard Conlin plumped squarely for a Central-Parkesque open space with a glass house in it.

Here and there, Seattle Center is sporting more and more the handiwork of Owen Richards Architects. A principal with LMN on the McCaw Hall renovation, Owen Richards has since come back twice to make improvements on the Hall's cafe and to create SIFF Cinema. It's also the firm chosen for the SIFF Group Film Center on Center campus.

Now the firm has been tapped for the glass house project. I'd rather see someone tackle the real white elephant on Center grounds, the hulking ex-armory Center House, which has the effect of making any cultural celebration held there feel vaguely Stalinesque. It's the heart of the campus, and what everything else relates to. It seems odd simply to plunk things down around it, in the hope that when something is finally done with it, it will "work" with everything else.

Proletariat Pizza - Half Cinco, Half Margharita

They say the pizza in New York City is so good because of the quality of the municipal water used to make the pizza dough. Well, if that is true, then White Center must have some of the best water in the state. I say this because Proletariat Pizza is some of the best I have ever had in my life. Though to be fair, I should point out that I have never been to New York. But based on online reviews, I'm not alone in thinking this way. The pizzas are consistently delicious. I have been back five times now, and not once did I finish eating and think, "It was better last time."

The pizzas are all 18-inch thin crust pies. You can order a 1/2-size of any pizza if a full one is too much. As far as toppings go, you can build your own with most of the traditional fare along with some surprising extras, like Mama Lil's peppers and Spam. However, the signature pies are all pretty good too. Personally I have tried The Favorite (Italian sausage, fresh chopped garlic, Mama Lil's peppers), The Real Hawaiian (pineapple and Spam), Margherita (basil, fresh tomato and fresh mozzarella), and the Cinco. The Cinco is my hands-down favorite, consisting of fontina, provolone, asiago, gorgonzola, and mozzarella cheeses. The full menu can be found on their website....

From Flickr pool contributor SlightlyNorth.

Tomorrow night, the 15th annual Seattle Jewish Film Festival opens, with more than 20 films screening at several venues around town. But the big, big movie in the festival is this Friday at SIFF, where Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti's Ajami plays at 8 p.m.

One of this year's best foreign feature Oscar nominees, Ajami has attracted stunning reviews. Set in a neighborhood of the same name in the ancient port city of Jaffa (part of greater Tel Aviv today), the film tells a series of interwoven stories about Jews and Palestinians grappling with the complexities of crime, poverty, and gentrification against the backdrop of the continuing violence between their peoples. The film's achievement--and it's supposed to be a doozy--was pretty well summed up by The New York Times's Ethan Bronner, who wrote in January that:

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the movie, however, is what it does to viewers. In a conflict where each side lives and breathes its own victimhood, feeling the hurt of the other is a challenge. Ajami meets it. When a Palestinian youth turns to drug selling to help pay for his mother's surgery, Jewish filmgoers here have wept. When the family of a kidnapped Israeli soldier breaks down over his murder by Palestinians, Palestinians in the theater have had tears in their eyes.

Pre-sales for the Friday SIFF showing are closed, but more tickets should be available at the door, and Ajami is being screened again on March 25 at the Washington State History Museum (tickets $11).

Tamara Ober's charming "Pipa," from SPF 4

But before I get to the two solo works I saw last week, I have to call out some of the exciting shows on this week's docket. Tonight I'm going back for a pair of artists previously featured on The SunBreak: Paul Budraitis with Not. Stable. At all., and Norman Bell with Subprime!, along with recent Cornish grad Mike Harris' Traveling Panties. And tomorrow, one of the most exciting works at SPF 4 opens: Gin Hammond's Returning the Bones. Hammond, a graduate of Harvard and trained at the Moscow Art Theatre, has produced a powerful show about racial and national identity that's supposed to be amazing, and I'm still trying to find time to go see it. Point is, SPF 4 has a lot to offer, so be sure to check out the full schedule and go see some of this stuff.

Movement artist Tamara Ober, a long-time member of Minnesota's Zenon Dance, has created a charmingly odd little performance piece with Pipa. Using monologue and physical humor in addition to dance, Ober constructs a compellingly clumsy character in a way only a trained dancer could. At the opening, she's on the floor, and immediately sits up into a microphone, creating a big thump that reverberates through the sound system....

A rainforest tree at Lake Quinault Lodge. Photo care of Aramark Parks and Destinations.

If James Cameron wants to lick his wounds and soothe his bruised ego after losing a whole bunch of Oscars to his smoking hot ex-wife, apparently he'd feel right at home on the Washington Coast. 

Trying to take a bite of that sweet Avatar pie, two of Aramark Parks and Destinations' four Washington properties are advertising themselves as Pandora on Earth.  It makes sense that both Lake Quinault Lodge and Kalaloch Lodge are taking advantage of the film's success to promote the resorts' picturesque rainforest locales--Lord knows sci-fi fanboys will pony up the money (see New Zealand and LOTR tourism, or Forks' active courting of Twi-hards).

So head to the coast to get in touch with your Na'vi side.  Commune with nature, search for precious unobtanium, and/or try to plug your braid into anything that moves (TWSS).  Full press release after the jump....

Steve Broback of the Parnassus Group, at 140TC: Seattle. Photo by Brian Westbrook.

This was Monday early afternoon, and Sagolla and I were making up for not having been able to connect face-to-face earlier in the day, while I was down at the Bell Harbor Conference Center at Pier 66 for 140: The Twitter Conference, a commerce-meets-culture confab digging into nitty-gritty of how to maximize whatever benefit you're trying to get from your 140-characters-at-a-time online presence.

While the audience was decidedly business-y, and most of the presentations oriented towards marketing and branding opportunities via Twitter, the subjects of politics, pop culture, philanthropy, and privacy kept popping up. On the last subject in that list, Ben Parr of Mashable pretty much summed up the prevailing philosophy when he explained: "Privacy is dead." So there's that....

There's something about this photo--the charm of an urban neighborhood, the saturating orange glow of the sun--that reminds my of my childhood in Southeast Portland, living off Hawthorne in the 1980s. Much thanks to our Flickr group contributor :MPG: for the shot.

Don't get the wrong idea--the Navy Times Scoop Deck is "thrilled that Kathryn Bigelow broke the barrier and nabbed the first top prize for a female director." But they're also worried that The Hurt Locker's gritty, you-are-there perspective will "lead people to believe the film to be an authentic and accurate portrayal not only of military operations, but the military mindset."

Intrigued, I asked the author, Lance Bacon for more details, based on his eight years in the Marine Corps, where he served as a platoon sergeant in the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division. He worked with explosives experts, and was a combat correspondent his final four years. Continuing his journalism career, in 2000 he became managing editor of Air Force Times, where he provided combat coverage in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. Now he's a senior writer for the Navy Times.

I thought that the "military mindset" was supposed to be conveyed by Sgt. JT Sanborn, who never stopped trying to do things by the book.

There are characters in the movie who display the military mindset, as you rightly point out. Unfortunately, they have a secondary status in the movie....

Let's say someone was as pigheaded and risk-taking as Renner's character: What would his sergeant have most likely done?

There are some solid options for a sergeant in such a scenario. He could go to the team/squad leader's immediate supervisor. If that person was of the same nature (which is highly unlikely), the sergeant could "request mast." That means he can talk to anyone within his chain of command without having to divulge his concerns to others. For example, if he desires to talk to the battalion commander, he can do so without first explaining his concerns to the company first sergeant, sergeant major, commander, etc.

What does tend to happen to cowboys? In the movie, he gets complimented for being a "wild man."

No one in a real combat unit is complimented for being a "wild man." Discipline and integrated teamwork is the name of the game. Cowboys get you killed. The more specialized your unit, the more this holds true. There is a huge difference between heroic courage and reckless abandon. I had no time, use or respect for the latter, and most military leaders--from the squad level to top leadership--would say the same. A cowboy will end up in a job where he can't hurt others, the mission, or himself. And if he keeps acting in a undisciplined way, chances are good he will get a bad fitness report and soon be shown the door....

Flickr pool member abosco adds a sense of mystery to real estate.

February's MLS report shows Seattle residential real estate has got a little tiger back in its tank, with pending sales up 35 percent from February '09. (I direct you to the Seattle Bubble for a grain of pending sales salt.) More convincingly, closed sales are up 34 percent as well, with 459 closed compared to 342 same month last year.

The safe conclusion we can draw from this is that some people want to sell and some people want to buy (though total "activity" was actually down almost eight percent). But speculating about the health of the market seems premature. It might be good news that the median price jumped $10,000, to $390,000, but then again it might not.

For one thing, that's very much in the ballpark of the $8,000 homebuyer credit. For another, the median doesn't tell you about short sales.

But that's Seattle--Seattle Bubble points out that except for Seattle and the Eastside, home prices around King County took a dive, year-over-year. And even so, while Seattle's median price for homes was up almost four percent, the condo median was down over six percent. UPDATE: The Bubble gets granular, and finds the median affected most by sales of Eastside homes.

Sally Pepper, one of the many artists who have performed with the Moisture Festival, which opens this week at ACT. Photo by Michelle Bates

Wednesday

• Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle talks about the topic of his book Critical: What to Do About the Health-Care Crisis @ the Seattle Sheraton
• Open Satellite and the Henry Art Gallery co-present a lecture by Brad Cloepfil, one of the founders of Allied Works Architecture @ Kane Hall on the UW campus

Thursday

• Opening of The Jammer @ the Balagan Theatre
• Opening of the fifth annual Moisture Festival, with the Grand Variete and Libertease (burlesque) shows @ ACT Theatre
• Eighth annual Young Playwrights Festival, featuring eight original plays written by Seattle students ages 14-18 @ ACT Theatre
• The Esoterics celebrate Samuel Barber's 100th birthday-week with his entire choral oeuvre @ Plymouth Congregational Church

Friday

• Mike "Soul Coughing" Doughty presents "The Question Jar Show" (an acoustic evening) @ the Triple Door
• Opening night of Lush Life 2, a group show that runs through May 7 @ Roq la Rue
• Martin Lawrence does stand up @ the Paramount

Saturday

• "Fantasmical" art from fairy tale artist Alexandra Sandlin and painter/poet Dennis Julius Loeb @ Rung Studio (part of Georgetown's Second Saturday Art Attack)
• Mobile Chowdown 3: Seattle vs. Portland, from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. @ Safeco Field Parking Lot
• Toy-Box Trio, a three-piece that performs chamber music like a sideshow band, is having their CD release party @ Empty Sea Studios

Sunday

• Northwest Associated Arts combines four choirs and an orchestra for Mozart's Requiem @ Benaroya Hall
• PNB's Doug Fullington and soloists Maria Chapman and Lesley Rausch discuss 3 By Dove @ the Elliott Bay Book Company
• Red Pine reads from his new translation of Lao-Tzu's Taoteching @ the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Monday

• Stephen S. Hall talks about his book Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience @ Town Hall
• Silent Movie Mondays: Gloria Swanson stars as preacher-seducing Sadie Thompson @ the Paramount
• Chang-Rae Lee reads from his novel The Surrendered @ Seattle Public Central Library

Tuesday

• "One of America’s most brilliant classical virtuosos" (Guitar Player Magazine), David Tanenbaum gives a recital @ Benaroya Hall
• John Boylan's Next Conversation on "Retreats and Residencies," a round-table discussion from 7-9 p.m., with SuttonBeresCuller @ Vermillion