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Mainstream news is having a hard time reporting on Robert and Brenda Vale's study (actually a book) called Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living. CBS News begins its story like this: "So apparently Rover whizzing on the carpet isn't the worst thing he does. Not by a long shot. He's also killing the planet." Locally, the Seattle Times is more laconic: "Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners."
The upshot of the Vales' figurings is that the ecological footprint of a medium-sized or large dog, based on its food intake, is greater than that of an SUV (a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser) driven 10,000 km per year. (That's including both the SUV's fuel and the energy used to build it.)
While the book's title is clearly a provocation, the message gets lost in the weeds. In both stories, there's a lot of scoffing from the outset, even though the study's limited parameters have been backed up by New Scientist, in their article, "How green is your pet?"
The Times pitted our local eco-wonk, Sightline's Clark Williams-Derry, against New Scientist.
"When I saw the study I ran some quick numbers," Williams-Derry said. "The average dog has to eat at least twice as much as the average person for this to be right. People are just heavier than dogs so, I just had to scratch my head at that."
[UPDATE: I should have checked Sightline's blog before I wrote this: Clark picks the study apart on a number of its assumptions--not least of which is what we're actually feeding our dogs.]
One: Regardless of what the authors intended, the conclusion that should be drawn from the study is that eating meat, in general, is energy intensive. It doesn't matter who is eating the meat, you or your dog; it's costing an arm and a leg ecologically. That is not always the case, depending on who is raising the meat, but it's fair to say that our industrial meat producers don't tend to have sustainability top of mind.
That is why someone like Michael Pollan might suggest that "A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius." He's had to retract that statement because of the "carbon" qualifier, which leads to a fairly strong criticism of the Vale's study. Inputs are not the whole picture--there are also outputs....
Don't forget to email jeremy(at)sunbreakmagazine.com for your chance to win tix to Zubatto Syndicate this Thursday night at Town Hall. Winners announced tomorrow afternoon!
Andrew Boscardin, a local jazz guitarist and composer, is trying to break down musical barriers with his newest project, Zubatto Syndicate, a 12-piece almost-Big Band that's drawing its musical inspiration as much from contemporary rock and pop as from Glenn Miller.
The idea's pretty simple: jazz music, no matter how technically brilliant, has a much lower appeal than a three-piece punk outfit. But Boscardin was energized seeing the success of more orchestral-minded bands ranging from locals like Hey Marseilles! to international touring acts like Gogol Bordello, so he set out to try to bridge the gap with danceable, rocking tunes. Zubatto Syndicate may borrow from funk and rock and maybe even hiphop, but it's executed with the skill and talent of trained jazz musicians.
So the band's debut this Thursday, Nov. 5, at Town Hall, is well worth the drive to First Hill. And just to sweeten the deal, The SunBreak is giving away three pairs of tickets.
Just send an email to jeremy(at)sunbreakmagazine.com for your chance to win, and we'll let you know by four o'clock on Wednesday if you're going.
Thanks to Slightlynorth, I've got TV on the Radio's "Wolf Like Me" going through my head. There are far worse fates. (From the SunBreak Flickr pool.)
There seemed some reason for optimism yesterday as the Seahawks got one of their top players back from injury. Cornerback Marcus Trufant's back was healed enough for him to play against Dallas. He probably wishes he'd taken another week. Trufant picked up three pass interference penalties trying to defend Dallas' receiver Miles "Always Smilin'" Austin, who still ended up with a touchdown catch. The Seahawks lost 38-17.
The only trouble Austin encountered all day was on his attempted "dunk" attempt of the football over the ten-foot-high crossbar after his touchdown catch--Austin didn't quite have the ups to make it and flipped the ball over the bar at the last second.
By the end of the game, Trufant was getting inside help on Austin, which is not the scenario you envision for a guy with a six-year, $50 million contract.
Meanwhile, the Seahawks offense was fighting itself. T.J. Houshmandzadeh's frustrations at not being more of a focal point in the offense have reached the "openly-second-guessing-his-quarterback" point. At this point, Hasselbeck apparently has to explain after every play why he didn't throw to Housh.
"He needs to get in line," Jim Mora said of Houshmandzadeh.
The bright spot for the Seahawks was the play of middle linebacker David "The Heater" Hawthorne. Taking over for the injured Lofa Tatupu, Hawthorne played like the Tatupu of old, recording five tackles, two sacks, and forcing a fumble. At this rate Tatupu may end up getting Wally Pipped....
Stokley Towles's Waterlines closes with one final performance this Sunday at 7 p.m., at Noodle Works Studio in the ID. Tickets $11.
Stokley Towles has a great way of playing a beat-change. Say he's been performing a monologue as a water supply worker who wakes up at night to pay attention to the rain, and he needs to shift gears back into lecture mode for the next scene. After the last word of the monologue he just stops, giving the audience a moment to absorb the oddity of the subject, and slowly scans the audience with his bright blue-gray eyes. And once he glances across all the faces, evaluates the response from the twenty or so people packed into the well-lit office break-room where he's performing his show Waterlines, it's done. The moment has passed and he can go on, the audience willing to follow him along the next tangent.
Brendan Kiley, writing about Waterlines in The Stranger this summer, described the writer-performer as "a disarmingly charismatic man—tall, tanned, and wholesome looking, like a Christian camp counselor," and that's a pretty good take. Cheerful and engaging, Towles, with the support of the city and Seattle Public Utilities, has crafted a compelling short work that's somewhere between a lecture and an educational TV show a la Bill Nye, about Seattle's water supply.
Performed in an office break-room at Noodle Works Studio—a brick building kitty-corner to the Uwajimaya parking lot in the International District—Waterlines completes breaks down the boundaries of performance and lecture. There's no stage, no lighting per se, and though Towles occasionally performs in character, more often than not he's simply talking to the audience, telling them a true story about where are water comes from and what's in it.
In tangential leaps and bounds, it tells the story of SPU's water tasters (yes, we have some), explores the weird stuff you find in the sewers, talks about grease hot-spots, rats in toilets, where our municipal water comes from, and gives you the back-story on bottled water. It's sometimes esoteric, sometimes mundane, and always enthusiastic, almost to a fault. On more than one occasion, Towles came dangerously close to didactic with his illustrations, such as well he demonstrates the comparative cost of a bottle of water versus tap water with a cascade of pennies.
That said, Towles's work is a fine example of fundamentally re-thinking how the arts can play a greater social function. The piece reminded me quite a lot of local artist Chris Jordan's Running the Numbers series, where he uses dry statistics to illustrate terrifying social, economic, and ecological problems by actually representing them visually: the millions of bottles and bags consumed by Americans every few minutes, the number of children without healthcare, and so on. Similarly, Towles's work simply makes his audience focus on what they take for granted every day, and hopefully makes them ask difficult questions about what it will take to preserve those luxuries in the future.
In the back seat of a '77 Thunderbird, squashed between my brother and sister while my mom taxied us somewhere, I learned to hate country music. It was the '80s and KMPS was playing corporate-filtered country through the cheap speakers of our American car. I guess anyone else would have felt the same. Things change.
Many punks and former punks are embarking on what I've been attempting to coin as the "punk rock retirement plan." Namely, country music. Chuck Ragan (of my favorite post-hardcore band, Hot Water Music) is quickly building a reputation as a master of this genre. His Revival Tour gathers musicians from various punk and non-punk bands to join him onstage.
A Revival Tour show is organized much like a true Southern revival. The music starts with all of the bands and performers on the stage playing a song together before performers take their turns, inviting others to share the spotlight with them. There is no true headliner and the band schedules posted around the venue merely said "Revival Tour."...
Not many people picked up the former Soundgarden howler's last studio album. Released in March, Scream debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200, then plummeted with record-breaking speed. The problem? Chris Cornell fans rejected his club-friendly makeover and Timbaland fans (are you out there? anyone?) didn't get the concept. Musical FAIL.*
But Scream may get a second, beat-free life thanks to Canadian musician-producer Jordon Zadorozny. Brought in by Michael Friedman, an LA industry guy who heard "'Black Hole Sun' greatness deep within" some of Scream's songs, Zadorozny has, with Cornell's permission, "peeled back all the beats and turned up whatever guitar" he could find in at least one track, "Never Far Away."
Listen for yourself. Is it better than what you hear in the video? Overly produced in the opposite direction? (Where's the guitar coming from, anyway?) Would you, old-school Soundgarden fans and smitten grunge-era girls, buy a re-imagined, rocked-up Scream?
*Not exactly. Scream is just the latest phase of Cornell's genre-dabbling career (which I had the pleasure of speaking to him about earlier this year.) The album's actually an addictive, not entirely guilty pleasure that improves with each listen. But Cornell's vocals are, regrettably, buried beneath layers of flowery electronica.
The episode starts with only six contestants left, and of them two guys, Christopher and local designer Logan left. Althea thinks that girls are stronger, well except for Gordana, who is a Bosnian Serb, so she doesn't count.
The contestants have face away from the runway, and when they turn around, their winning looks are onstage. Their challenge this week is to create a companion piece that complements and enhances their best look. Logan doesn't have a winning look, so he has a sad. The look he's working with is his gown from the first episode. He buys 40 zippers.
Logan says Althea is making pants like Melvin, who got kicked off early on for his jodhpurs. Logan is from Idaho, so he can work on his car and make a dress--the best of both worlds. Christopher is working on thirty yards of fabric and wants to make a crazy, high-volume gown. Of course.
Tim comes in and helps Carol Hannah have a breakthrough. He loves Irina's tapestry fabric, and says that what she's doing is unexpected in a good way. He tells Christopher that next to his winning dress, the one he's working on looks twenty years older. OUCH. He tells Althea that it's a good start, though the volume of the pants are disconcerting. Tim isn't wild about Gordana's design, but he's excited about Logan's piece. Ruh roh, Althea is annoyed that the collar on his outfit looks like the one she made for the Christina Aguilera challenge. She gossips about him with bitchy Irina and her model.
Everyone has a lot to do the day of the runway show. Irina won't lend Gordana a hook and eye. Logan thinks Irina needs to be humbled. Althea thinks Carol Hannah is a one-trick pony because she always makes dresses. Irina thinks Althea's sweater looks like the one she made the previous week. So basically everyone has turned into big ol' bitches.
At the runway, the judges are season 2 alum Nick Verreos, Nina Garcia, and random Kerry Washington. Every designer is totally in love with his/her look. Nina thinks Christopher's huge gown is ill-proportioned and bottom-heavy. They love Irina's outfit, calling it elegant and cozy, though Nina thinks the dress itself looks cheap. They don't like Gordana's at all. (Nick says it looks like a Polish office worker, and there is nothing grosser than a Polish office worker. YUCK.) They love Carol Hannah's deliciously simple and light pocketed dress. Nina thinks Logan's dress looks like an unflattering student project. Nick thinks it's '80s futuristic. They love Althea's pants. Irina calls out Althea's big sweater for looking like hers.
The judges deliberate, and Althea wins. The bottom two are Logan and Gordana. Gordana's in and Logan's out. Frowny face. He's taking his silver pants and he's going home. Here's his goodbye speech:
Next week: more bitches talking shit.
Return to part one of our interview with Etta Lilienthal.
Photo courtesy of The SunBreak Flickr Pool's Great Beyond
Happy Halloween! If you haven't made plans yet, The SunBreak sponsor Central Cinema is having a Lost Boys Quote-Along--head over to sponsor Scarecrow Video for a list of other Halloween cinema options. I'll be out shopping for a handlebar mustache.
The big business story of the week was Boeing's selection of North Charleston, S.C., over Everett, for its second 787 Dreamliner assembly line. The Everett Herald supports the union's account that Boeing was dumbfounded when they agreed to the no-strike provision, and that North Charleston had really won the Boeing sweepstakes back in February.
The H1N1 virus vaccine is still in short supply, but the government is releasing extra Tamiflu for children who are infected. Tamiflu's (rare) side effects mean it's not for sniffles. Mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan has come down with the flu and is taking Tamiflu. CHS has the October King County H1N1 statistics: so far 135 people have been hospitalized and two have died. And speaking of health news, I chatted with Michael McCarthy of the online Seattle Health Guide.
The only campaign news worth repeating is that I have voted and don't need to pay attention to any of the last-minute mud-slinging and elbow-throwing. Alea jacta est, Seattle. Those political mailers are going right into the recycling. For the sake of fair and balanced reporting, though, here's Stephen Colbert on R-71....
Photo courtesy of The SunBreak Flickr pool genius Slightlynorth
We've got strong winds above Seattle right now, over 25 knots, says UW weather guru Cliff Mass. He's is of course delighted. Cliff likes weather. Your balmy day with clear blue skies...*yawn*.
This latest forecast calls for "SUSTAINED" winds of 40 knots over the waters of the Puget Sound. Mass also calls out those on "southern side of the San Juans, northern Whidbey Is, or on the NE Olympic Peninsula coast," and forbids them from even thinking about being on the water.
Mass's weather blogging is always a good read, but it's also intriguing to see how a forecast develops. Back on Wednesday, Mass saw the Pineapple Express on the way, and felt confident enough to forecast rain and much warmer temperatures, along with breezes. By Thursday he'd perked up at models that showed real wind arriving this evening. Now he's refined the forecast once again. As predicted, the early snow in the mountains is no match for the tropical air.
She likely broke your heart with "Fidelity," admit it. That vocalization on heart ("ha-ha-ha") seems skittering but try it at home. It's the singer's equivalent of an entrechat six. Regina Spektor seems nonchalant about it, the reinvention of laughter inside a heart.
Her new album Far opens with "Calculation," and here she lyrically, surgically, removes your heart and slaps it against a granite countertop. "Hey this fire, it's burnin', burnin' us up," she announces pleasantly. The album contains 13 songs that will tantalize a certain kind of music critic or fan with "meanings." If you like, you can start decoding the lyrics and the mystery, taking Spektor's temperature.
Strictly speaking, she has already come far. Born in Moscow in 1980, she left in 1989 when Perestroika brought on the peregrination of restless Soviets. Her parents were escaping anti-Semitism, so their next stop, Austria, can't have seemed in retrospect a well-researched choice. Italy didn't take either. Finally they settled in the Bronx.
You can read her lyrics as a kind of poetry which is not true of most--if poetry today can be too dependent on sight-reading, pop song lyrics lie there on the page, evoking nothing but banality until the singer interprets them. "Human of the Year" has a stanza that goes:
The icons are whispering to you,
they're just old men,
like on the benches in the park,
except their balding spots are glistening with gold.
First, that's a nice image. Secondly, just as poetry's description asks you a question about what you think you've seen, these lines ask a question about what holiness is. Maybe it is the ability to see the gold in bald spots....
The episode begins with Jen and the rest of the Blue Team having a sad about how Restaurant Wars turned out. Of course, local chef Robin is happy the team she was on won, and the fact that she's still around. It never bodes well when a contestant is talking about how good they're doing in a competition at the beginning of an episode, so I fully expect Robin to be kicked off by the end of tonight's show. Reality TV producers, I'm onto you.
For the quickfire challenge, they have to make a gourmet TV dinner inspired by a TV show. They draw knives, and Robin gets Sesame Street, which Robin didn't watch as a kid, so she's thinking of making something with a cookie and, like, ground beef with an egg. Douchebag Mike has never watched an episode of Seinfeld, which is hard to believe. Robin's meal turns out to be a burger with an egg on it, crispy kale, carrot salad, and an almond chocolate cookie. The bottom two are Robin and Jen, the latter of which is seriously slipping of late. Beardo Kevin wins for the umpteenth time with his meaball take on The Sopranos. And all of a sudden Top Chef is doing a line of frozen foods (by Schwann's home service)? Teacher, no!
For the elimination challenge, the contestants are taking over judge Tom Collechio's restaurant Craftsteak at the MGM Grand. Robin is nervous because she doesn't have steakhouse experience, and everyone is making their big meat plans. But as we all know from the previews, the big twist on this episode is surprise guest Natalie Portman, who is vegetarian. (She used to be vegan, right? Google backs me up on this.) So everyone's menu ideas are spoiled. Now Robin is excited because she loves cooking for vegetarians. Folks are divvying up the veggies and fighting over eggplants. It turns out that Beardo Kevin doesn't eat meat during Lent. Douchebag Mike is feeling cocky as always (his mom was vegan?), but then his leeks are undercooked.
Now it's time to feed the judges and Natalie Portman and her coterie. Robin's dish goes out first, but she runs out of time and doesn't get garbanzo beans on all of her plates. She's also making a dish she's never made before, which is generally not a good idea at this stage of the competition. It's a wild mushroom-stuffed squash blossom, with beet (not to be confused with beef) carpaccio, fresh garbanzo beans, and a chermoule sauce. It's too saucy and unbalanced seasoning-wise, but Natalie Portman seems to like it.
Brother Michael said he wanted his dish to confuse and please Natalie Portman, and with its banana polenta, it gets just that reaction. Jen's dish is more of a side dish than a main course, and her nerves are showing. Douchebag Mike's protein-free dish doesn't go over well, even though Natalie Portman likes leeks and purple is her favorite color! Brother Bryan also doesn't get a few things on his plate, but they all like making innuendos about how a garlic blossom is a like a little prick on your tongue that gets big in your mouth. And that is what Padma said. Kevin's dish is sloppy, but tastes as good as always.
Kevin, Michael, and Eli are the top three. Kevin wins yet again for his meaty mushroom and turnip meal. Yay for Lent-abiding Beardos. Brother Michael is mad, because his dish was Art and must be regarded as such. Robin, Jen, and Douchebag Mike are the bottom three. Robin talks and talks and talks and comes off as unfocused as her dish. Jen seems defeatist, and Mike is arrogant and combative with the judges. I am convinced Robin is going home, but no! It's Douchebag Mike for his leeky meal. Robin lives to cook another day.
Next week: They're cooking room service for Padma? Looks like that with Mike gone, now it's Brother Michael who's back to being mean to Robin.
"The local angle really does get people's interest," said Michael McCarthy, editor, publisher and et al of the Seattle Local Health Guide. He's a slender, bearded man with a warm manner and it's not all that surprising to learn he's an M.D. himself, trained in internal medicine by Virginia Mason.
His online health guide currently devotes a section to H1N1 flu developments, another to health advice and tips, another to healthcare industry news. It's attracting about 25,000 readers per month--all the flu news has pushed numbers up ever since May, and once people find the site, they come back. The initial site was born in 2007, and reborn a year ago in its Wordpress incarnation.
It may be time, McCarthy admitted a little ruefully, to work harder on the site's revenue stream. Like many people who have founded a news site, he's driven primarily by the sense that it's a public necessity.
Michael McCarthy
McCarthy writes stories himself, and aggregates health industry and policy news from sources like Kaiser Health News and ProPublica. "There are more than enough stories out there," he emphasized. He likes to follow a story's real-time transmission, from a World Health Organization H1N1 conference, to the CDC presser hours later, to a public announcement the next day by Madrona's public schools about their flu policy.
"Part of what's valuable is just finding what's good that's available," he added. Health care news that hasn't caught mainstream interest is out there, but it's chasing too few reporting resources.
His imaginary "reader" is a mom staying educated on health care, but in practice, the site casts a much wider net. McCarthy points out that King County total employment in the health care sector rivals Boeing's. Recently he's begun working with the Seattle Times, which has, thanks to a grant from American University's J-Lab (via the Knight Foundation), started exploring content collaboration with local bloggers....
- Tickets for TCV's Paramount show go on sale Saturday, October 31, at 10 a.m. (A presale, for those with the not-so-secret password, is already in progress.) It will sell out, so don't wait.
There are "supergroups" and then there are Supergroups. Them Crooked Vultures, which makes its Seattle debut November 21, falls into the latter category by name recognition alone. You don't have to hear music from Josh Homme (vocals, guitar), John Paul Jones (bass), and Dave Grohl (drums) to know it's going to rock. But proof is in the pudding:
Best hint at what these guys (Kyuss, QUOTSA, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, etc., between them) can do is that last 30 seconds. What a jam.
Few authors are as successful in shape-shifting and genre-hopping as Michael Chabon. From the epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to the mind-boggling Jewish-Alaskan homage to crime noir, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, to the sword-swinging adventure tale, Gentlemen of the Road, Chabon has always shown an incredible knack for adopting and reinventing whatever writing style he takes on.
Chabon's newest book, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, shows off Chabon the essayist, thoughtfully dissecting and reflecting upon what it means to be a man in modern America.
"A father is a man who fails every day," Chabon writes in the book's first essay, "The Loser's Club." It is a line that serves as both a wonderful introduction to the stories ahead and as an invitation to the rest of us to go ahead and join the club. Nothing to be ashamed of in here.
While Manhood for Amateurs is certainly told from a male perspective, the book is by no means a boys-only tree house of stories. In fact, many of the essays are either about, or are at least inspired by, the women in Chabon's life. From his mother's support and eventual consolation following a failed comic book club, to the dazzling pride and adoration he feels for his own daughter during her bat mitzvah, Manhood for Amateurs is as much about being a man as it is an ode to the women we love, who have the patience enough to love us back.
In "A Woman of Valor," Chabon reminisces about one of his first flames, the little-known DC Comics superheroine, Big Barda. For nine edifying pages, Chabon takes us on a journey through the history of Barda and her contemporaries (Wonder Woman, Super Girl, Sheena) and proclaims, after much rumination and analysis, Barda to be the most perfect of the super heroines.
Lacking the usual chauvinist cliches--the "tininess" of Shrinking Violet, or the "insubstantiality" of Phantom Girl, or the nonsensical narratives (or lack thereof) of Wonder Woman and Super Girl--Barda was, according to Chabon, the first true female role model in the world of comics. Not only was she strong and vigilant and fully capable of kicking some ass, she was also intelligent, thoughtful, empathetic, and vulnerable only to those who had earned her trust and her love. Most importantly, Barda was submissive to no one....
Jeff Blucher returns to our photo of the day feature with a frankly kind of haunting picture of the Center for Wooden Boats. No wind, no sailors, no color ... brr. (From the SunBreak Flickr pool.)
Like everyone with half a brain, I will be avoiding Belltown this Halloween even more than regular weekends. But might I interest you in braving the prematurely-dressed Sexy Falcon Heenes and Zombie Billy Mays tonight? I know, I know, but what if there existed a band to make it worth your while?
England's The Heavy combines classic funk with r&b and straight-up rock. They love rusty horns and hard-hitting drums and a bass groove, and from the sounds of it, they also have a thing for James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, and Isaac Hayes. Their debut Great Vengeance and Furious Fire got accolades up the wazoo in the British press, and with new release The House That Dirt Built (out earlier this month), they're hoping to explode on this side of the pond as well. Check out the video for single "How You Like Me Now" above, and head to the Croc to see them tonight.
- The Heavy plays the Croc Friday with openers Thee Emergency. $10 adv, $12 at the door, 21+.
In the U.S., your chances of being struck by lightning are 1 in 280,000. The odds of winning the Washington Lotto are 1 in 6,991,908. So you're 25 times more likely to regret going out in that thunderstorm.
Opening October 30 at SIFF Cinema at McCaw Hall, the lightning-strike documentary Act of God (through November 5, tickets: $10) is directed Jennifer Baichwal, who earlier gave us Manufactured Landscapes. That may be enough to get plenty of you into the theater, but the movie's combination of sheer visual spectacle, heartbreak, and existential questioning makes it unique.
I'm not saying you can't miss it, but if you go, I think there's a good chance you'll be surprised at the intensity of your response. You leave the theater feeling a bit singed and hallucinating the smell of freshly formed ozone.
There's no narrator as such--Baichwal moves from interview to interview, with astonishing visuals of lightning strikes intercut with the series of "talking heads." Some have won this lottery-...
Tonight the Houston Dynamo travel to Seattle as the Sounders' first-ever MLS playoff opponent. This battle will stretch out over the next two weeks, for the MLS quarterfinals are a home-and-home affair. The Sounders face Houston again one week from Sunday. Will this battle be as epic as the three Houston/Seattle postseason matchups that have preceded it?
To wit:
--The 1988 Wild Card Playoff, a.k.a. the Fredd Young phantom interception game.
--The 1993 NBA Western Conference semifinals, which stretched to seven games.
--The 1996 "Houston You Have a Problem" Western Conference semifinals sweep.
Let's take each in turn, shall we? Today's edition...
Houston 23, Seattle 20 (OT), January 3, 1988. [box]
The 9-7 Seahawks finished 2nd in the AFC West, and had to travel to Houston's Astrodome for this Wild Card game. Husky legend Warren Moon led the Oilers' run-and-shoot attack, predicated on short passing. But he heaved a deep one early that the Seahawks' Melvin Jenkins intercepted. Dave Krieg hit Steve Largent...
Tonight at 7 p.m., Greil Marcus, one of the country's most astute cultural critics and music journalists, stops by Seattle Central Public Library to speak about his new work: A New Literary History of America (Harvard Univ. Press, $49.95), a doorstop anthology of work by the best and brightest in American letters, edited by Marcus.
The book is somewhere between pop culture compendium and Comp. Lit. wet dream: clocking in at over a thousand pages and featuring essays by everyone from Camille Paglia to Ishmael Reed, it ranges widely over the bric-a-brac of American culture. "Literature" is a bit of a misnomer, as the cultural products explored include everything from jazz to Mickey Mouse to war memorials, stretching from the Founding to Obama's election.
Marcus, a long-time music journalist who started his career in the early days of Rolling Stone before moving on to the Village Voice and others, has long since established himself as one of the most insightful writers in the country. He did more than most any other journalist to establish pop music writing as a serious endeavor, and has long since expanded his purview to everything from visual art to political culture. So even if the thought of dropping nearly fifty bucks for his book is a bit of a stretch, the talk along is worth hitting.
I was out of the country for a couple weeks and came home to a DVR chockful of television goodness. (This is why my TiVo is my best friend.) Over the past few days, I did a TV marathon to get all caught up for the new episodes this week. Yesterday's uber-recap of Top Chef here. Video preview for tonight's episode of Project Runway above.
We start off the "Sky's the Limit"episode of Project Runway with only four guys left, so local designer Logan Neitzel moved into the other apartment with Epperson, Christopher, and Nicolas. The boys talk about showering and cuddling. You know, GUY STUFF.
This season of Project Runway continues to be Project Boreway with the Macy's I.N.C. "design two outfits that are blue" challenge (yawwwwwwwnnnn). Logan was paired with Althea for the second time. She commented that it's nice that he's so chill and doesn't have as big of a personality as a lot of the other contestants, while Gordana said that everyone--males and females alike--think that Logan's hot. (True.)
Blue outfit-making is relatively drama-free for Logan and Alithea, but on the runway, the skirt on their suit rides up to near-hooha-displaying shortness. Their second outfit, however, a ruffled sleeveless top with high-waisted, wide-leg trouser jeans, is so chic that neither of them is in danger of going home. Judges Heidi Klum, Michael Kors (who has again deigned to show up), along with whatever intern Nina Garcia found at Marie Claire and a Macy's Marketing EVP, don't even comment on their outfits and just make them instantly safe. Irina wins for the second time, while Louise gets kicked off for her hot ruffled mess.
On the next episode, the designers face a wedding challenge, which Logan has been dreading. But it ends up being an anti-wedding challenge, as all of the women they're designing for are recent divorcees, so the contestants have to take the old wedding gown and transform it into a fashionable new look. Logan picks Leah, whose dress has a ridiculously long train (the more material to work with, my dear). The designers only get a couple yards of additional fabric to work with, so Logan finds a nice wool to make pants out of. But when Tim Gunn sees what he's been working on, he's concerned, as very little of the outfit comes from the original dress. After hearing what Tim had to say, both Logan and Epperson are thinking about starting over entirely, though they both have it easy compared to poor Shirin, who had the smallest, plainest, polyester gown to work with, and a high-maintenance client who wanted a big Cher-inspired outfit with feathers and other assorted gawdy gobbledygook. Of course, everyone gets it done, though Logan's vest and trousers are down to the wire. He feels like the final product is more the result of his client's input than his vision as a designer, and when it comes down the runway, he says he wants to "put his head in a hole and hide." At judges' table, Heidi, Michael, Marie Claire intern, and the President of Jimmy Choo have nothing good to say about Logan's outfit: it looks like Oktoberfest, it's executed amateurishly, it's unflattering, it's matronly. Shirin's turns out well (because she doesn't listen to her client at all) and Epperson's is also problematic. Gordana wins for her punk organza shift dress, and the bottom two end up being Logan and Epperson. But--phew!--Epperson is the one to go home, for first using too little of the wedding dress only to ultimately use too much.
This is the perfect time for the next episode's challenge to be for the designers to make a ridiculously over-the-top Bob Mackie-inspired stage look for Christina Aguilera. Of course. It goes without saying that the gays are very excited.
The workroom is strewn with lace, sequins, and feathers galore. Logan doesn't know much about Christina Aguilera, but he hopes she doesn't mind zebra print or fur. Once again, Shirin is in crisis mode and scrapping her outfit entirely, after Tim tells her that her dress looks like student work. Carol Hannah and Logan are flirting, and Carol Hannah is completing distracted by Logan's hotness. (Sigh.) Cocky from her two wins, Irina is acting bitchy and has started shit-talking people, saying that Shirin isn't even a designer and Carol Hannah is both annoying and mediocre. We haven't gotten to see much of Logan's outfit the whole episode, but on the runway, it turns out to be a short sequined leopard print mini-dress with a fur capelet. Gordana's dress is a disaster, so she's lucky she has immunity. The judges (Heidi, Bob Mackie, Nina Garcia, who has decided to show up for once, and Christina Aguilera) don't think that Logan took his punk look far enough, but he ends up being safe. Carol Hannah wins for her glam stunner of a black strapless sequined and feathered gown. Shirin's out for her thrown-together witch's costume.
At the beginning of the next episode, everyone's excited to have made it to the final seven, and they're already starting to think about Bryant Park. The contestants are told that they're going to meet a top designer known all over the world, but it only turns out to be boring old Michael Kors. This week's challenge is all about being inspired by the places that have inspired Michael Kors. YAWN. Logan gets last choice and ends up with Hollywood, so he's thinking something boho-leaning with skinny jeans. Tim Gunn comes to the workroom and seems non-commital about Logan's outfit, and when his model comes in for a fitting, the jeans he's made are a little too skinny, even for a non-menstruating model. Irina continues to take shape as this season's villain, talking about how everyone else is just getting by, while she is only getting better. Because nothing says onward and upward like a huge cowl-necked sweater. On the day of the runway, everyone is rushing to get done. Somehow, Logan's model now fits in the jeans, so her strict cocaine diet must be working. Logan's outfit walks the runway first, and the only thing he's concerned about is whether or not it's "Hollywood" enough. The judges this time around were Heidi, Michael Kors, Nina Garcia (those three have only been at the judges table together this season, what, twice?), and a completely random Milla Jovovich. Nina thought Logan's outfit wasn't styled enough, but Heidi liked the edge. Michael Kors had the most damning statement: "They're clothes, they're not fashion." Ultimately all the judges thought that his outfit was just boring. But Nicolas and Christopher's outfits were way worse than that. Somehow, Christopher makes it out of the bottom two yet again, so Nicolas goes home for his grey menswear pants that were not at all Greek. And ugh, Irina wins for the third time. I look forward to when she crashes and burns sometime soon.
Tonight: Althea hates Logan for copying a collar she did a couple weeks ago. DRAMA.
Reading the IAM District 751 machinists union response to Boeing's North Charleston selection for its second 787 assembly line reminded me strongly of the dockworkers union in The Wire. President Tom Wroblewski, in his wounded outrage, talking about "betrayal," "loyalty," and a man's "word," summoned up shades of Frank Sobotka.
"We remain committed to the Puget Sound," said Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes division, giving "committed" a fairly capacious meaning that could soon include "My new phone number begins with area code (843)."
And state Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla) said, "I think we could have enacted some of the reforms we needed last year," referring to reducing business costs in worker's compensation and unemployment insurance.
It's an education for everyone, which arrives, ironically, just as Boeing is cutting back on picking up its employees' lifetime-learning tab. Yesterday KIRO 7 asked whether this was the "first step in Boeing leaving the state."
It is hard to square any of these responses with Boeing having moved its corporate HQ to Chicago in 2001. For most of the decade, they have not even geographically been a hometown corporation that might be expected to "do right" by local workers, where management might share a personal "commitment" to the region, and were concerned simply with paying their fair share of taxes. They have been rent-seeking, to the evident detriment of their production line's timeliness...
Have you seen the great photos Slightlynorth contributes to our Flickr pool? I think we could showcase one an hour and still fall behind. And they're all good!
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