Recognizing the difficulty in deciding which weekly to read each week, the following table aims to simplify your lives. Maybe you’re a regular reader of only one paper. Maybe you feel compelled to read both for the benefit of weblog readers. This roundup might just be what you need to help you know which one to pick up in the morning.
The Stranger
(image, roq la rue [#])
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Seattle Weekly
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reasons
to read:
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- you wonder what it’s like to be on the
road with a Seattle band –Dave Segal follows U.S.E. to
Japan for an educational travelogue [#]. Seattle’s happiest band,
previously uncategorizable reveals their genre (arena rocktronica) and
their true intended audience (famous kickboxers). Along the way, we
learn helpful travel hints (tambourines are troublesome at security
checkpoints) and handy Japanese phrases (”sumimasen” =
“excuse me for being an ignoramus”).
- you’re a fan of literary smackdowns
– In his review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, Christopher
Frizzelle takes on heavy hitting critics Kakutani and Updike [#] for their less than glowing takes on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close [$]. If you’re
convinced, see Foer for yourself at Chop Suey next week.
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- you like beer — and who
doesn’t? A lengthy Seattle Weekly
feature [#]
that didn’t inspire a second page nap. Maybe it was the
illustrated timeline. interesting
detail: the founder of
Red Hook brewery (Gordon Bowker) was also involved in the creation of
Starbucks and the Seattle Weekly. Go
ahead, do the math.
- you’re
interested in the the end of homelessness — an interesting
story [#],
if only for the fact that there is a ten-year plan to eliminate
homelessness from Seattle. Predictably, there is not widespread
agreement about this and the SW is
skeptical.
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reasons
to skip:
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- you’re a big fan of John Paul II –
as if the hateration during his life wasn’t enough,
this week’s “Savage Love” uses the occasion of a zombie fetishist to
take on the dead Pontiff [#]
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- you don’t like stories about gross foods –
let’s just say that the words “pig intestine, blood cake, beef tripe,
and braised pig feet” put an end to any hopes of making it through the
review of Chiang’s Gourmet [#],
let alone any thoughts of ever eating there.
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weekend
conference coverage:
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- Erotic Arts (1 page)
- EMP Pop (0.14 page, “suggested”)
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- Erotic Arts (0 pages)
- EMP Pop (1 page)
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eerie/unexpected
similarities
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- Both papers feature articles that could be considered to be
expressing doubts about the monorail.
This is expected from the Weekly (the
monorail is their John
Paul II), but when the Stranger is
less than enthusiastic, the world seems all sorts of out of balance.
- The Wedding Present,
playing this Sunday at Neumo’s, gets a
glowing portrait in both music sections. This must somehow be
meaningful.
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