The Stranger back issues from June 2008:
PUBLIC EDITOR
Jun 05, 2008; ... While touring Europe in the flower of my midlife, I took a class on Middle Platonism as taught by the esteemed professor John M. Dillon at the Centre for the Study of Platonic Tradition at Trinity College in Dublin. You will perhaps accept that as a credential when I declare that this issue of ...
I, ANONYMOUS
Jun 05, 2008; ... To submit an unsigned confession or accusation go to forums. thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and guilyy. One submission will be published in the paper every week, but al submissions to I, Anonymous can be read at www.thestranger.com. SEATTLE, YOU ...
FRANK'S FRIENDS
Jun 05, 2008; ... IN THE HALL During the last legislative session, state house Speaker Frank Chopp infuriated his fellow Democrats when he killed legislation that would have allowed homeowners to sue contractors for shoddy work. At the time, house Democrats accused their own leader of carrying water for ...
Bombs Away
Jun 05, 2008; ... City Cracks Down on Food Not Bombs' Meals for the Homeless On an unseasonably cold and gloomy Sunday evening, a line of about 50 people stretches across Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. The men and women in line clutch large plastic trays as a group of about a dozen volunteers ...
Co-op Clash
Jun 05, 2008; ... City's Oldest Housing Co-op Threatened Residents of the nonprofit Apex cooperative in Belltown are locked in a legal battle with a furniture-store owner and a developer over the future of their hundredyear-old building. The Apex, at Bell Street and First Avenue, is one of the ...
Played Out
Jun 05, 2008; ... Drumming at Cal Anderson Park Irks Neighbors CAPITOL HILL By now, those living along the perimeter of Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill have probably come to accept latenight noise as a fact of life. After all, the park is two blocks from the bar-filled Pike/Pine area, ...
Over the Hill
Jun 05, 2008; ... Controversy over Downtown Pride Parade Finally Fizzles Karma can be a bitch. When Seattle's small LGBT Center vowed in 2007 to produce a second QueerFest-a parade and festival on Capitol Hill to compete with the official Gay Pride Parade and festival, which moved downtown in ...
Roosevelt's New Deal
Jun 05, 2008; ... Controversial Roosevelt Landlord Has Big Plans for the Area ROOSEVELT Since Hugh Sisley began buying houses in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood 40 years ago, his properties have degenerated into squalor. But he has dreamed, all the while, of one day redeveloping his 43 ...
Darcy Burner Has a Plan
Jun 05, 2008; ... The Democratic Challenger's Iraq Proposal Ever since it was released back in March, Darcy Burner's "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq" has been generating an impressive amount of national press coverage-especially for an exit strategy put together by a Democratic ...
THE HORROR
Jun 05, 2008; ... MAKING A FILM IN SEATTLE CAN DESTROY YOU. I was the screenwriter, fundraiser, second-biggest investor, PR hack, extras coordinator, and a sometime producer of the largest, most expensive locally produced film ever made in Seattle. It took five years, it cost $1 million, and its extremely ...
Death: The Remix
Jun 05, 2008; ... Death: The Remix Dario Robleto Grinds the Bones of History In plain terms, Dario Robleto takes amazing things and performs operations on them. Did you know that the first nuclear test explosion instantly melted the sands of the New Mexican desert into glass? Did you know ...
THE GATES
Jun 05, 2008; ... Mimi Gates, the single most powerful person in art in Seattle, announced June 2 that she's retiring at the end of June 2009. By then, she will have been director of Seattle Art Museum for 15 years. This is no surprise. Last year was the mother of all SAM years, and directors habitually ...
The Overlooked Titan
Jun 05, 2008; ... The Overlooked Titan Jerome Robbins Finally Arrives at Pacific Northwest Ballet Jerome Robbins was a difficult man. His reputation as the greatest American choreographer of the mid-20th century-as the bald man in tennis shoes who commanded ballet and Broadway; who ...
Rise of the Lady Hurricanes
Jun 05, 2008; ... Rise of the Lady Hurricanes Basketball in the Shadow of Emily Dickinson In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais (Grand Central Publishing) $13.95. The following review consists of sentences lifted in full, yet recombined and out of context, from In These Girls, Hope Is a ...
FIGHTING THE SILICON DRAGON
Jun 05, 2008; ... CONSTANT READER Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy roleplaying game that has consumed years of the lives of awkward basement-dwelling adolescents, is in trouble. For some time now, the game has been losing players-teenage boys and young men with sick-making amounts of disposable ...
Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints
Jun 05, 2008; ... Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella (Knopf) $15.95. Life is tough for a dance critic. Sitting in the dark, taking notes without looking down for fear of missing a gesture, she must have sharp eyes, a greedy memory, and everlasting patience. Once at home, she has to ...
X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking
Jun 05, 2008; ... X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking by Jeff Gordinier (Viking) $21.95. The clot of people commonly referred to as Generation X was born with one great hope: their disillusionment with the poisonous optimism of their forbears. X ...
My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy
Jun 05, 2008; ... My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy by Andrea Askowitz (Cleis Press) $14.95. In response to Andrea Askowitz's 237-page complaint memoir called My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, I'd like to propose another book called I'll Give You Something to Be Miserable About. In ...
AMERICAN TREASURE
Jun 05, 2008; ... (ProQuest: ... denotes "strike-through" in the original text omitted.) BAR EXAM Targy's is on a residential street on upper Queen Anne, so far from the lounges and condominiums of the main drag, it's like a different part of the country. The one-armed barkeep says that Targy's ...
Discomfort Inn
Jun 05, 2008; ... Discomfort Inn I Went to the Lake City Déjà Vu Showgirls' Lunch Buffet and All I Got Was Semipermanent Brain Damage "Is this the kind where they show their vaginas?" I asked I my friend as soon as he got into the car. "Yes," he said. "So, like, do you think we have to look at the ...
SEASON OF THE GRILL
Jun 05, 2008; ... As I learned conclusively over Memorial Day weekend, when my family and I logged several hours watching the Food Network's Memorial Day BBQ Weekend programming extravaganza featuring Bobby Flay, it's barbecue season. Especially riveting was coverage of the Memphis in May World Champion Barbecue ...
WILLOW LETELLIER AND CAROLINE WILLIAMS
Jun 05, 2008; ... Servers at Le Pichet 1933 First Ave, 256-1499. If I worked here, I think I would binge more than serve. Do you have this problem? WILLOW: The food is definitely tempting. This morning I admitted to Caroline that I sometimes bypass the brioches and breads to eat our ...
THE HAPPIEST HOUR
Jun 05, 2008; ... BIMBO'S BITCHIN' BUBlUTO KITCHEN AND CHACHALOUNGE 1013 E Pike St, 322-0703. Location: Capitol Hill. Description: A popular hipster rendezvous and Mexican-tchotchke wonderland. Prime novelty: A vending machine stocked with budget-friendly delights, including a ...
Young Americans
Jun 05, 2008; ... Young Americans Truckasauras Release Their Debut, Tea Parties, Guns, and Valor BY TRENT MOORMAN Truckasuras w/the Dead Science, Past Lives, DJ Introcut Sun June 8, Nectar, 9 pm, $8, 21+. Just after midnight this past Saturday, Truckasauras slipped their ...
Not Your Typical Basement Show
Jun 05, 2008; ... The Round Celebrates Three Years of Unpredictable Music, Poetry, and Art About 100 people are gathered in the dark basement of the Fremont Abbey Arts Center-not a bad turnout for a cold Tuesday night-and everyone is giggling and singing and waving their hands in the air. From ...
TACOCAT HATE ME
Jun 05, 2008; ... FUCKING IN THE STREETS "Our lead singer hates you." This was the second time in the past week that Bree from TacocaT had told me as much. The first was at Season of the Witch, her DJ night at Moe Bar, on the night of the Long Blondes show at Neumo's. It's kind of an endearing thing to ...
CRYSTAL CASTLES
Jun 05, 2008; ... CRYSTAL CASTLES Crystal Castles (Last Gang) *** There's a moment on Crystal Castles' self-titled debut, during the breakdown of the snarling electro-goth anthem "Love and Caring," when the 8-bit beats and beeps shift suddenly from the song's rigid, robotic grid ....
THE BLACK ANGELS
Jun 05, 2008; ... THE BLACK ANGELS Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic) ** Austin's Black Angels waver somewhere between the bipolar, overconfident heroinjangle of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the warped, aciddrenched psych-punk of fellow Texans the Butthole Surfers ....
PERHAPST
Jun 05, 2008; ... PERHAPST Perhapst (In Music We Trust) *** You can bet that every review of Perhapst's self-titled debut (this one obviously included) is going to mention the credentials of the band's John Moen-an indie-rock hall-of-famer who's played drums with the Dharma Bums, ...
IT'S A HIT
Jun 05, 2008; ... IT'S A HIT SINGLES, REMIXES & MP3S In Loving Memory of ... EP by Let's Wrestle (Stolen) Skinny, high-on-the-neck bass lines; drumming that alternates between supertense and bash-happy loose; gnat-in-a-metalcanister guitar; cheapo organ; broad ...
HIPHOP YA DON'T STOP
Jun 05, 2008; ... First I'd like to send my heartfelt condolences to Xzibit and his family; last week, just over a week after his birth, X's newborn son, Xavier, passed away. Damn. RIP. I'd also like to send my condolences to the family and friends of Tero Smith, known to the rap world as Camu Tao-MC/ ...
JAPANTHER AT THE SMELL AND THE BOOTY CAVE
Jun 05, 2008; ... UNDERAGE At the stroke of midnight two Saturdays ago, I turned 20 years old at hole-in-the-wall all-ages club the Smell in smoggy downtown Los Angeles. I was there to take a break from the stresses of English 102 and everyday life, but mainly to see Japanther, one of the most energetic ...
BUG IN THE BASSBIN
Jun 05, 2008; ... MOVEMENT 2008: DETROIT'S ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL The biggest story of this year's Movement: Detroit's Electronic Musk Festival Is that there was no story. The annual Memorial Day weekend event has been plagued by organizational and financial drama almost every year since Its 2000 ...
THE SCORE
Jun 05, 2008; ... SPRING BOOKS In Artists in Exile (HarperCollins), author Joseph Horowitz nimbly choreographs a panoramic cast of exiled artists who came to these shores as refugees-from conductor Dimitri Mitropolous (described as a "Dr. Caligari of the podium, clawing the air with huge hands ..."), ...
DRUNK OF THE WEEK
Jun 05, 2008; ... JOSELINE MUDEDE MacDONALD Yes, the sister of that Mudede. Joseline lives in fancy-pants London now, and I have to say, you can take the girl out of Seattle, but, hey, don't be surprised that when she's here on holiday she'll still get good and shit-canned with you at a local bar. And ...
BAND OF THE WEEK
Jun 05, 2008; ... PRIEST AND PARAMEDICS "Priests and Paramedics" is the name of a song on Pedro the Lion's infamously morbid album Control. Specifically, it's a song about a man being stabbed to death by his wife. You would be right to assume that Priests and Paramedics, a trio from Monroe, don't play ...
POSTER OF THE WEEK
Jun 05, 2008; ... This one comes to us from Zanne Camp, and holy crap, a lot of work must have gone Into It. Hand-written lettering, embroldery(l), plastic, electrical tape ....
PARTY CRASHER
Jun 05, 2008; ... When: Sat May 24. Where: The Gorge. BARK AT THE MOON The campground for the Sasquatch! Music Festival is sprawling: tents and tarps as far as the eye can see. There's hardly any music, mostly just the sound of yelling, distant and near, coming from all directions. This ...
Kung Fu Panda
Jun 05, 2008; ... On Screen This Week's New Releases Kung Fu Panda dir. Mark Osborne, John Stevenson Snarky irreverence will always have a place in cartoons, of course-to claim otherwise would be to invite an anvil on the head-but in the case of Dream Works Animation, there's the ...
Stuck
Jun 05, 2008; ... Stuck dir. Stuart Gordon It isn't often that a vintage Last Days item is reenacted in all its grotesque glory in a feature film, so Stuck (from Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon) is what one might call a Major Motion Picture Event. Back in 2001, a nurse's aide named Chante ...
Yon Don't Mess with the Zohan
Jun 05, 2008; ... Yon Don't Mess with the Zohan dir. Dennis Dugan Remember the '90s? When Adam Sandler was our everything-when he was king, queen, court jester, landed gentry, sheriff, yeoman, America's sweetheart, and, urn, candlestick maker? And Robert Smigel was Secretary of Consistently Making ...
CONCESSIONS
Jun 05, 2008; ... STIFF 2008 I'm not totally clear on why we need two film festivals at the same time-I barely have the waking hours for one, and it's my job to give a care. But Seattle's True Independent Film Festival is an admirably scrappy adversary (or companion) for SIFF: It's monumentally more ...
He Got Cinema
Jun 05, 2008; ... He Got Cinema A Fresh Director Emerges from the Local Hiphop World Manoj dir. Zia Mohajerjasbi STIFF, Tues June 10, Rendezvous, 6:15 pm. Seattle is in the process of developing a cinematic language of its own. And it is the brave ambition of this new ...
Death Wish of the Stars
Jun 05, 2008; ... I [hearts] Television(TM) There's one hard and fast rule of fame that every celebrity should know: You can't make money if you're DEAD. However, this simple (and I would say obvious) rule is being ignored by today's celebs. Take for example the newest reality competition debuting this ...
RESPECT YOURSELF: THE STAX RECORDS STORY
Jun 05, 2008; ... RESPECT YOURSELF: THE STAX RECORDS STORY The documentary offers no new insights or information about the second (or first-depending on how feel at the moment) most influential black American music label of the '60s-'70s. We are shown how it all began, how a multiracial flower appeared in ...
BEFORE THE RAINS
Jun 05, 2008; ... RECENTLY REVIEWED BEFORE THE RAINS Directed by a cinematographer, Santosh Sivan, and staring the beautiful Nandita Das, Before the Rains is about an important moment in all 20th century independence movements, the moment that made them possible: the moment when the middle class ...
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN
Jun 05, 2008; ... THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN There is a dark castle. There is a sleeping prince. There is a king with very bad thoughts in his head. The prince's life is in danger. His professor wakes him up, opens a secret door, and leads him out of the chamber. The king's assassins arrive ....
THE FALL
Jun 05, 2008; ... THE FALL From Tarsem Singh (The Cell), this inspired children's fable-framed in 1920s Hollywood-involves broken hearts, masked heroes, and a sinister villain named "Governor Odious." Every frame of the film is drenched in beauty, and even as the story eventually ...
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
Jun 05, 2008; ... INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL As someone who, as a boy, spent countless hours whipping invisible Nazis in the backyard, and clinging to the family car in an imaginary dash to Cairo, it pains me to announce that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a ...
IRON MAN
Jun 05, 2008; ... IRON MAN Like most origin stories, director Jon Favreau's film spends a lot of time before its superhero gets fully, recognizably superheroey, concentrating instead on the events that lead the title character-in this case boozy playboy weapons manufacturer Tony Stark-to begin fighting ...
OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES
Jun 05, 2008; ... OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES After saving the Allies' bacon in WWII, a strapping French superspy goes undercover in Cairo, a mission complicated by slumming Nazis, henchmen in fezzes, and ridiculously leggy dames. Oh, and an assassin who wields chickens. Bond spoofs may be old hat, but ...
PRICELESS
Jun 05, 2008; ... PRICELESS A romantic farce with a plot as thin as a credit card, Priceless is the story of Irène, a hardened gold digger who preys on elderly men at lavish parties and seaside resorts. Except it's a French movie, with sweetie-pie Audrey Tautou as the minx-and despite the screenplay's ...
ROMAN DE GARE
Jun 05, 2008; ... ROMAN DE GARE There's a nice little thriller at the center of Claude Lelouch's latest film, but the packaging is so complicated that you end up more aggravated than on edge. Dominique Pinon plays Louis, a man who happens to be hanging around the gas station where Huguette (Audrey Dana), ...
SEX AND THE CITY
Jun 05, 2008; ... SEX AND THE CITY The only reason this movie got made was because the fans demanded it. And someone finally got paid enough. It's welt known that Sarah Jessica Rariter and Kirn Catrall don't get atong-for years one or the other kept refusing to resurrect her role as a cosmo-sipping sex ...
SMART PEOPLE
Jun 05, 2008; ... SMART PEOPLE If, as you settle into your seat at a Smart People matinee, you dream of the next coming of dysfunctional-intellectual family specialist Noah Baumbach, your hopes will be dashed by the first scene, in which our curmudgeonly hero, Victorianliterature professor Lawrence ...
SON OF RAMBOW
Jun 05, 2008; ... SON OF RAMBOW In Garth Jennings's admirable Son of Rambow (which was the opening night film of SIFF 2007), two fatherless boys-the sheltered and devoutly religious Will (Bill Milner) and the bullying and all-butabandoned Lee (Will Poulter)-bond while trying to remake First Blood for a ...
SPEED RACER
Jun 05, 2008; ... SPEED RACER For a pair of guys who made their bones with movies about pistol-packing lesbians (Bound) and gravity-defying kung fu (The Matrix), there's always been a puzzling air of Sturm und Drang around the work of the Wachowski Brothers, a sense of weightiness that undercuts the ...
THE STRANGERS
Jun 05, 2008; ... THE STRANGERS Sleazy and unsettling, writer-director Bryan Bertino's "inspired by true events" tale of a couple being terrorized in their exurban home by three masked boogeymen gets a lot of mileage out of the simple things. Doors are pounded on menacingly; blurred figures creep into ...
SURFWISE
Jun 05, 2008; ... SURFWISE Sometime in the mid-1950s, Dorian Paskowitz, MD, had a revelation. He was at the peak of his career but felt horrible about himself and his life. He just wanted to go surfing. So he quit the rich life, took pilgrimage to Israel, had sex with women all over the world (he believed ...
THE VISITOR
Jun 05, 2008; ... THE VISITOR The movie is fine, but Richard Jenkins is a miracle. Richard Jenkins is best known as the father on Sur Feet Under. He's probably lurking in your favorite film, where you recognize his anonymous, impassive white-guy face but don't know his name. Finally, he's the star of ...
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS...
Jun 05, 2008; ... WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS ... Painfully unfunny, What Happens in Vegas is as bankrupt as you'd expect from a romantic comedy born from a tourism slogan. Jack (Ashton Kutcher) has just been fired from his job. Joy (Cameron Diaz) has just been dumped by her fiancé. Both head for Las Vegas with ...
YOUNG@HEART
Jun 05, 2008; ... YOUNG@HEART Considering that human beings have been eating, singing, dancing, and dying for more than 200,000 years, you'd think we'd be as good at dying as we are at eating and singing and dancing. But we're not. Now there are more old people wandering around than ever before, and they ...
SONICS DEATH WATCH
Jun 05, 2008; ... Vol. XXI Clay Bennett and his Brooks Brothered Gang of Lawyers have filed a motion trying to prevent me from testifying for the City of Seattle in their lawsuit against PBC (the owner of the Sonics). In their motion, they identify me only as a "contributing writer for The Stranger," and ...
PUBLIC EDITOR
Jun 12, 2008; ... Dan Balz of the Washington Post. Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek. These are the names one conjures when thinking of quality political coverage. One most certainly does not conjure up the name ELI SANDERS, who for the past 10 months has been ...
I, ANONYMOUS
Jun 12, 2008; ... To submit an unsigned confession or accusation go to forums. thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and guilty. One submission will be published in the paper every week, but all submissions to I, Anonymous can be read at www.thestranger.com. DO THE WOMEN OF ...