Well, I finally (and most unfortunately) had my very own hot tip moment yesterday. Sitting on the U District-to-Queen Anne express, I noticed an unpleasant smell. The source? A pile of human excrement under the seat.

So as a public service, I say to you all: watch where you’re putting your backpack.

• It seems that one time only performances come but once a year. When David Schmader’s legendary real-time commentary for Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls was added to the 2003 DVD, he threatened to hang up the act for good. Tonight, he resurrects it at the Triple Door. The film, which follows the rise of a potato-chip-loving dancer, is a perfect example of the “So Bad It’s Good” aesthetic; Schmader’s running commentary makes it all the more hilarious. [upcoming]
• Tonight is the first stage in the all-out takeover of Seattle by Editors. If you close your eyes and mentally squint, you could easily confuse them with Interpol, except with legitimate British accents. They play a free in-store session at the Queen Anne Easy Street Records at 6. Tomorrow they join stellastarr* for a sold-out performance at Chop Suey, which they’ll follow with a DJ set. [~easystreet]

Having trouble making it through the troubled logic of this week’s “Mossback” column [#] in which the Seattle Weekly editor discusses his thoughts on saving Seattle Center by respecting its artificiality? Microsoft Word’s AutoSummarize “feature” comes to the rescue with a 15% synopsis:

Mossback loves Seattle Center but recognizes that it needs help. The driving one is this: Seattle Center is unique in that it was born from a world’s fair–1962’s Century 21 Exposition. Unlike most fairs, our city fathers saw the advantage of keeping the fair site largely intact. By remaining a precinct apart, Seattle Center can continue to maintain many of the qualities of a world’s fair. Like a world’s fair, it is a blend of public and commercial interests, featuring high-minded arts (theater, opera, gallery space) and low-brow entertainment (the Fun Forest). A refurbished Center must also avoid the yuppie trap. Every world’s fair, after all, is also part Puyallup Fair.

The major representative point that you miss with the condensation is a head-scratching equivocation about the polarizing Experience Music Project: “Love it or hate it, it is hard not to suggest that visitors spend an afternoon there.”

I don’t hate the EMP, but I’m wondering if there are other Seattle attractions that you hate and would recommend that your friends waste their time and money visiting?

Photo: Scott Rettberg.

Medical researchers at UW want your help. Well, your computer’s help, anyway. The Rosetta@home project uses distributed computing – that is, sharing a complex computational task among many computers – to model complex protein structures, with an eye towards contributing to the development of treatments for diseases like malaria, cancer and AIDS. Pooled together, thousands of home computers running the program can exceed the capabilities of the world’s most powerful supercomputer.

Participants in the program download and install software, which then runs when their computers are not otherwise in use [details]. I haven’t joined Rosetta yet – my laptop is so stuffed full of [completely legal] music that it might not be able to handle any additional computational demands – but it’s just so cool that I had to share.

A few blocks away from my apartment, the remains of a crime scene in front of Twice Sold Tales. It turns out that a police shooting took place earlier in the evening. Christopher Frizzelle, who lives across the street, has the gory details over at the Stranger’s weblog:

According to someone in my building, the shots rang out sometime after 8 o’clock–meaning, about two hours ago–and yet the guy is still there on the ground. According to this source, who is a 31-year-old musician who is currently staying with a friend of his in my building, no ambulance ever arrived, but according to someone else an ambulance and firetrucks arrived right after the shooting and then left. [slog]

The entry continues with an eyewitness account (from someone else in the building) describing the police fatally shooting a gun-weilding man near the bus stop.

update: now with more camphone pictures [slog]; the Seattle Times has also filed a short report [#].

The last I heard from my buddy hanging out in Cantwell’s office, about a half an hour ago, the powers that be had decided against ejecting them at 5:30, instead going the, “Ok, fine, hang out here. See if we care” route. They had a conference call earlier with a few folks in D.C. who never actually gave them an answer–a “long, boring” conference call full of equivocation and bullshit, apparently.

When I talked to him the first time earlier this afternoon, whatever room he was in was noisy and full of other people on the phone. This time it was quieter, and it sounds like they’ve settled in to wait until they get what they want to hear.

I just received a phone call informing me that a bunch of folks are staging a sort of sit in down at Maria Cantwell’s office in the federal building right now, demanding that she clarify her position on the war to her constituents. They want to know if she supports the demand to remove troops from Iraq ASAP, and they’re not leaving until the federal marshals come in to kick them out/arrest them (rumor has it that’ll be around 5:30). If she doesn’t support the removal of the troops, they’d like her to sponsor a public forum to state just why not.

I’m stuck in the office all afternoon, but if anyone heads down there to check things out, let me know what you see.

• What better excuse to break your spring diet and exercise resolution than Ben & Jerry’s infamous Free Cone Day? The weather is cooperating and there are at least four three stores within moderate proximity to the city center (West Seattle, Ballard, U. Village, and Kirkland). Make a complete circuit and hit all of them, or just bring disguises to your preferred location and line up over and over again until the ice cream headache gets the best of you. Don’t forget your sunscreen and pack a magazine, the lines are bound to be massive. (reminder via spanning_time [#])

• By the time you’re all sugared-up, the sun-drenched guitar pop of the Stills will probably sound like an appropriate way to round out the evening [ticketweb].
• Last month Show Your Bones made a play for prime iPod playlist real estate. Tonight, fashion-forward Brooklyn post-punks Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs bring the live version to the Paramount [#]. Amazingly enough, day-of-show tickets are still available — hurry up and grab one if only to see what Karen O is wearing.

With 54% of the votes, “Pioneer Square” is in the lead. I wonder how it would fare if they showed an actual picture of the neighborhood

Does anyone actually like niche-marketed versions of Monopoly? Whenever I’ve played one, everyone spends most of the game pointing out just how wrong the developers were in associating a favorite landmark with a particular square on the board — either out of offense at having it situated in a low-market district or neglecting to put related sites into a property grouping.

The ad wizards at Hasbro are at it again, and this time they want public input into the new face of Monopoly. Nostalgia and cultural currency be-damned, the upcoming “Here and Now” edition will replace the Atlantic City streets with properties from twenty-two American cities. By some miracle, Seattle is on the list. Internet voters will determine whether Pike Place Market, Puget Sound, or Pioneer Square will score a spot on the board (nevermind the fact that only one of these could sustain four houses or one hotel).

Relative property values will be determined by the number of votes cast for each city; so your enthusiasm for participating in the poll will contribute to Seattle’s virtual fate as either roach motel or luxury rental.
(via the p-i [#])

With all of the controversy over whether Key Arena will have long-term tenants, you may have started thinking about the rest of Seattle Center and what the heck can be done to make it better and less of a monument to mid-century private-public partnerships. If so, it turns out that you weren’t alone. A special task force was called together nine months ago to deliberate on how to make the city’s “living room” into less of a fixer-upper. The P-I has a lengthy preview [#] of their report, here are the main recommendations:

• Seattle Center could stop being defecit spenders if the city would take on the $50 million in debt from the last Key Arena renovation.
• Overhaul the monorail since it’s the only one we’ve got
• Re-invent the Center House by letting in some sunlight
• Offload Mercer arena to the storage-hungry Opera
• Take back Memorial Stadium for underground parking, mixed sports usage, and a “grand entrance” to the Center
• Make Fun Forest more relevant, less carnie

The fun part about all of this is that the City Council will start talking about the Sonics deal before looking at the committee’s report (on Friday). And, of course, there’s the usual question of where we should find the necessary cash: the commission wants to avoid overcommercialization, Ron Sims wants to avoid more taxes.

Last summer, Megan Seling got all existential and depressed over Fun Forest [stranger], which is among the suggestions for areas in need of renewed relevance . What do you love or hate about Seattle Center, and what do you think is worth saving or changing?