photo by BabySeal [flickr]

You can find this and many other wonderful images in our Flickr pool!

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Ask anyone you know to list countries with a strong filmmaking tradition and they’re probably not going to mention Slovenia. Slovenia’s a small nation with a population of just over half that of the city of Los Angeles, a language spoken only by its inhabitants, and a long history of being incorporated into other countries and/or empires. It was only as recently as 1991 that Slovenia finally achieved independence. Slovenes have been struggling for centuries to hold on to their own identity–not an easy task, but one they’ve managed to achieve nonetheless.

Somehow during this long struggle Slovenia has managed to develop a cinematic tradition that’s over 100 years old. Northwest Film Forum is giving you a chance to get a taste of this tradition with their series At the Crossroads: Slovenian Cinema which runs December 5th through 14th.

The first film in the series is Vesna, a film so beloved in Slovenia that the national film award is named for it. Released in 1953 (while Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia), Vesna is a sweet and light-hearted comedy in which the title character, daughter of a tough math professor, is courted by a young student named Samo whose designs on her may or may not be cover for his true desire: a glimpse of her father’s final exam.

Other films in the series include Dance in the Rain (12/06), a New Wave styled examination of the dying relationship between Peter, a struggling painter, and Marusa, his stage actress older lover. As their relationship grows more and more distant, the landscape around them grows more and more decrepit and desolate. Emotional solitude is a theme that crops up also in Paper Planes, a quietly thoughtful story of a photographer whose fashionable parties leave him feeling unfulfilled and empty, until he meets the beautiful young ballet dancer whose image enraptured him from the first time he saw it on film. (12/07).

In Raft of the Medusa(12/12), two young provincial schoolteachers are convinced they’ll die of boredom until a troupe of avante garde artists arrive in town to introduce the locals to Dadaism, Surrealism and Futurism, outraging the rest of the town but charming the teachers into joining their artistic revolution.

Idle Running (12/13) is a delightful low budget film about a slacker university student named Dizzy who spends his days idly watching TV, drinking with his buddies, and socializing with his dorm mates, who exemplify the types you find on any college campus, including the inseparable couple only marginally aware of the world surrounding their own private universe and the great girl that all the guys like but none of them date. Dizzy would be happy to drift along on his own lethargy forever but then his studious new roommate moves in his pregnant girlfriend, Dizzy’s own girlfriend abandons their committment-free relationship and Dizzy is challenged to take the first steps towards actually living his life instead of simply experiencing it.

The final film in the series, on 12/14, is Sweet Dreams, a Vesna award winning film from 2001. Thirteen year old Egon lives with his sweet but crazy grandmother and his no less crazy but not nearly as kind-hearted mother in Tito controlled 1970s Yugoslavia; his navigations through the complicated world around him while he pursues his goal of conning his mother into buying him a record player present a unique look at an era of the past.

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Show of hands, UW students/faculty/staff: Do you even read the UW Daily?

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I’m willing to bet that most of you only read it when there’s nothing else to read, or when you’re in some campus waiting room and it’s that or a 1987 admissions pamphlet for the College of Forestry. And even then, you probably flipped a coin to determine which one to read.

The Daily on the UW campus is only relevant now for one group — departments running ads advertising for student workers. It’s underread, underwritten, and under litter boxes all over the U District. But it’s not really the editors’ fault this has happened. They’re facing down the same turn in the market that every other newspaper has had to face. And they’re facing it by doing the only thing they can to get readers — be mind-numbingly provocative. It doesn’t matter that Dino Rossi would likely slash and burn higher ed so much that they’d be paying 25% more a year in tuition for a devalued education. What’s important is people read that endorsement and reacted. And people picked up the paper just to see what the latest outrage was. So they published more idiocy. Which just drove more outrage. And the spiral continues. Now they can play the aggrieved party tomorrow at the midday Red Square, pull in the local media, and just keep building on that outrage.

It’s a sucker’s game. They’re just reeling everyone in with their act. And the biggest suckers, ironically, are the biggest players of this outrage game in our local media — the same people who’ve played everyone else for suckers for over a decade now. I hope when John Fay gets his first Gawker or Fox News paycheck he remembers to send a thank-you fruit basket to the Stranger headquarters.

And the rest of you, maybe it’s time to go back to ignoring the existence of the Daily. After all, on a campus where a majority of undergrads are on Facebook and the president has over 750 friends, the Daily doesn’t even have a Facebook page.

Let The Daily finish its slide into irrelevance. Pay no attention to their outrage-baiting.

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And it’s USC offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian.

PS to Mormon haters: He was BYU’s quarterback in the mid-1990s.

PPS: I think it’s a great hire.

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Starbucks’ holiday drinks usually leave me cold — not for me Josh’s strange Peppermint Mocha Fetishism. But this year I’ve turned a new leaf (or rhizome), as their 2008 Winter Lineup includes an imaginative re-thinking of the old standby: Gingerbread Latte. New this year is the Gingersnap variant, which marries a reformulated sugar syrup with a genuine ginger innovation: “authentic Austrian crystallized ginger.” Yes, it’s the Kurt Waldheim of caffeinated beverages.

The only problem comes when you order the drink for the first time, thinking you’re going to get a beverage and not a substrate for sprinkled candy topping. Upon gradual consumption of the drink the crystallized ginger eventually settles to the bottom of the cup, where it engorges itself on milk and syrup, transforming itself into something resembling soggy bits of syrup-sponges. Exactly what you won’t know, at least not the first time you tip the cup all the way up to suck up the last dregs of latte and get, instead, some kind of bizarre lukewarm chewy invader. It’s like a bizzaro-world version of Bubble Tea: The Drink You Masticate®.

Despite this frightening first encounter with drink invaders of the Middle European kind, I’ve gradually accepted the Gingersnap into my ordering habits, soggy ginger and all. Any thoughts on this or other members of Starbucks’ red cup brigade?

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It’s time again for the only reason to not do all of your Christmas shopping online: the Urban Craft Uprising is Saturday and Sunday, at the Exhibition Hall, from 11 - 5. They’re doing swag bags again for the first 100 or so people to enter each day, full of nice things from many of the vendors. It’s the perfect time to buy a handmade gift from a local vendor for all of the people on your Christmas list, or, if you’re like me and only have two teenage brothers to buy presents for, for yourself. And if that doesn’t tempt you, you should know that I have never heard of anyone getting trampled to death at the Urban Craft Uprising, which has to be an added bonus in this dangerous shopping season. Bring cash, since some of the vendors don’t take credit cards and the ATM at the top of the stairs often runs out of money pretty early.

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I’ve been following the story unfolding on Rainier Valley Post regarding Noemi Lopez, a woman who was brutally murdered by her ex-husband. Her children, ages 6, 13 and 15, and her sister, discovered the body when they returned home. She had been stabbed more than 60 times. One of our fellow neighborhood bloggers, Amber, who runs the Rainier Valley Post, lived next door to Noemi and her children, and has been giving in-depth updates since the story broke.

The three children went to stay with their aunt with nothing but the clothes on their back. Amber has created a PayPal account for those of you that would like to contribute to buying the three kids new clothes, shoes and winter coats. The details are here, including instructions for mailing a check, should you be so inclined.

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Need I say more?

the Thermals with the Shaky Hands, and Champagne Champagne. $14 [chopsuey]

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After the recent bout of “gang” related shootings in the Puget Sound area, it seems that more people are aware that Seattle actually has gangs, not just “gangs”. The difference? According to Dictionary.com, a gang is a “group of criminals or hoodlums who band together for mutual protection and profit.” According to me, a “gang” is a “group of bored wannabe-gang members posturing and acting like big thugs who make really stupid decisions.” There is an apparent difference, a legitimacy that wasn’t there before. Well, I’ve done some looking around and have come to the conclusion that yes, Seattle really does have gangs, but not in to the extreme that say, Los Angeles has gangs. Or maybe that’s more my assumption yet again.

Gang Territories

While browsing through Seattle 911 (Seattle PI, a great reference source), I found this map showing gang “territories” in the greater Seattle area. It shows more official gang activity than I had previously thought. I’d like to say that I’m not typically this oblivious to what is going on. I lived for a few years in the Rainier Beach area, hung out in West Seattle, Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, and other neighborhoods of the city that show up on the map as neighborhoods where gangs like to congregate. I’ve seen plenty of kids that likely could have been or likely were in a gang. I knew kids who carried guns. I continued to dismiss all of it as “gang” and not gang activity. The greater the occurrence of incidents involving guns, violence, and deaths, the more likely it is that Seattle does have a legitimate gang problem.

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photo by machel spence [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• the City Council sets a course for more streetcars, and step on it! Because the South Lake Union one’s been such a hit, right? [seattletransitblog]
• West Seattle Blog is about to turn three. (Holiday) Party in the Junction, etc. [wsb]
• More about Deborh Lawrence’s impeachment ornament. Now VIRAL! [arttogo]
• Perhaps you’d like to buy a condo on the cheap(er)? Auctions abound, signifying a the real estate cloud o’ doom has reached Seattle. [alexgarcia]
• Not afraid to be servicey, CHS & friends help a neighbor find a $50 date on the hill. [capitolhillseattle]

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As regular readers recall, we simply adore “best”, “worst”, “most” and “least” lists, which is why the instant I saw the “The Most Expensive Small Towns in America” headline at BusinessWeek I rushed to click it open and check to see if any local towns made it on the list only to discover that, sure enough, there was one: Clyde Hill.

According to its official website, Clyde Hill is located 1.5 to 2 miles east of the City of Seattle and is bordered by Bellevue, Kirkland, Medina, Yarrow Point and Hunts Point. Prior to looking at the Clyde Hill website I had no idea that Yarrow Point and Hunts Point were, in fact, towns and not simply neighborhoods, but to be fair I thought the same thing about Clyde Hill at first, too. Population of Clyde Hill is just under 3,000. The median home sales price is $1,466,093 and the median household income is $132,468,. Since two public and two private schools, town government, the gas station and the Tully’s represent 295 of the approximately 300 jobs in Clyde Hill, it’s a safe bet that most of the residents commute to work.

Clyde Hill follows Stinson Beach, CA, Water Mill, NY, Block Island, RI, Hidden Hills, CA, Far Hills, NJ, Sands Point, NY, Sullivan’s Island, SC, Stone Harbor, NJ, Kenilworth, IL, and Rancho Santa Fe, NM, on the list, making me wonder if there’s some connection between the number of words in a town’s name and its cost of living.

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photo by BrittneyBush [flickr]

I adore this foggy Space Needle shot from last Sunday.

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A couple years ago a stand-off between a menorah and a christmas tree resulted in eerie scenes of winter wonderland at Sea-Tac. This year, via the Seattle LiveJournal community [#], comes word of the latest pairing in winter icons. It seems that the baby Jesus has company this year at the State Capitol. The Freedom From Religion folks have sent a little sign to Olympia to sit along side the nativity scene. [times] My own perspective is that the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s are so drenched with holiday music, overwhelming advertisements, and inescapable decorations that it doesn’t seem too grinchly to suggest that an airport or government building free of “spirit” or “anti-spirit” could be more of a refuge than an insult. Your mileage my vary.

While we’re on the topic of holiday insults, it turns out that the Bush family doesn’t want to spend their last days in the White House being taunted by their tree. Seattlest brings us the story [#] of local artist Deborah Lawrence whose McDermott-loving, Bush-hating ornament nearly made it onto the official tree before someone took a look at the fine collage print. [komo]

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All of a sudden, there’s a reason to go to Greenwood besides doing jello shots at the Baranoff. Gainsbourg, partly owned by Hannah Levin and taking over the old Northside Grill space above 85th, is a dark and friendly little bar with decently-priced small plate of French inspired food. (Do like we did and class up your pitcher of PBR with the escargot, which is much better than it should be at $6.)

You’ll recognize the bartenders from McLeod Residence and The Sunset, and for being pretty small the space is nicely laid out–a few booths, a line of two-person tables, and one big table with hidden leaves and a large candelabra that is an accident waiting to happen. There’s also a pretty cozy couch by the window, near the fake fireplace.

The place is a little hard to find right now, tucked in a row of storefronts with no obvious signs, and for now they are waiting for a liquor license and so only serving beer and wine–you’ll have to go across the street for liquor, for now. Gainsbourg looks exactly like what it’s claiming to be: a friendly neighborhood bar.

It’s located at 8850 Greenwood Ave. N.

(Image via Invisible Hour.)

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photo via stephen malkmus [myspace]

Once upon a time there was a band called Pavement that gave college indie-rock geeks (before being an indie rock geek was a primetime drama character trait) something to obsess over in the nineties that wasn’t grunge. Now, of course, they have faded into the mists of record shop legend, but frontman Stephen Malkmus lives on with his merry band of heroes, the Jicks. Who, by the way, feature one Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney fame on drums.

They’ll bring their sprawling, noodling, rocking all the way from Portland to Neumo’s this Saturday night. You can buy tickets right away ($17 plus fees) or try your luck and win a pair by sending a note to seattle.metblogs @ gmail.com. (please include your name and mailing address, since the tickets are “real” and not “will call”). I’ll pick a winner by the end of the day. A winner was already chosen; thanks to all for entering.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks + guests; $17; 6 December, 8pm, [neumos]

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