For years now I’ve been meaning to read Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta series, but never have gotten around to reading it. When I heard there was a film version being released, I thought I might go see that but never quite got around to that, either. If you’re in the same boat, you can make up for the former at any of our fine local comic book stores and you can make up for the latter by checking out the fiolm at the Egyptian this Friday and Saturday, the 23rd and 24th, at midnight.

It may come as a surprise to many but the Circus is cool again! Seattle hosts several Cirque du Soliel type of shows including Teatro Zinzanni and numerous other little circuses. The newest addition to the family is Zen Circus. Located at the Buddha Bar in Belltown (2222 2nd Ave in Seattle).

But you needn’t be a Euro Trash clown (and I use that term lovingly because they happen to be some of my favorite clowns) to perform there. In fact Zen Circus allows anyone to take the stage on Sunday nights from 9PM to 2AM. There are no time limits, it’s free to perform there and best of all you get to work your material in front of an audience.

So, if like me, you dream about running away with the circus, get an act together and come by on a Sunday night and wow the audience with your amazing circus skills! Or come by and watch tomorrow’s great circus performers before they become fluent in Cirquish. I’ll be performing there and so should you!

21+
Cover Charge: NONE!

If The Office hadn’t already been over, I would’ve thought that the preview for this news story was still part of the show. The lead paragraph says it all:

A high-speed stolen car chase in Pierce County ended with both the suspect’s car and a police car crashing in Fircrest. The 28-year-old suspect was eventually found naked, hiding in someone’s hot tub. [king5]

I guess bitches and orgasms don’t look so bad by comparison now, huh?

• Business Week profiles [#] Vivace, from its humble sidewalk cart beginnings to perfection-obsessed mini-empire. (via capitol hill seattle [#], who deems them “outside of our normal stomping grounds”.)
• It’s not too late to register for Sunday’s “Chilly Hilly” [bikeseattle]
• The Here & Now edition of Monopoly proves to be prophetic. Although they won’t get the coveted pyramid penthouse view, other people may soon be allowed to live in a condo-ified Smith Tower. [times]
• Can’t wait to see Charlize Theron & co. dressed up as Seattle circa 1999? Some Battle in Seattle stills were posted this week. [movieset]
• Addison might tire of ferry boats and spin-off from Grey’s Anatomy [givememyremote]
• In case you missed it: the ultimate guide to viaduct comment threads [slog]

I’m not even going to try to be witty this week. Everyone knows this one, so let’s just see who can get to the comments first.

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All previous where in seattles were:
#4 = Admiral Twin Theater @ California and Admiral [mb]
#3 = Rainier Square concourse @ 5th and Union [mb, hl]
#2 = Eagle Aerie #1 also known as the ACT Theater @ 700 Union [mb]
#1 = Arctic Building @ 306 Cherry Street [mb]

You might have a high-maintenance lady dog in need of a feather boa, but you’d better cover your eyes when you go shopping for her in Wallingford, lest your delicate sensibilities be offended by the new pet store “High Maintenance Bitch.” Some members of the Wallingford Chamber of Commerce have gotten themselves all bunched up over how offensive the word “bitch” is when it’s out there for all to see: “‘I am probably the most progressive liberal person in the world and I am personally offended by the sign,’ said Janet Stillman, executive director of the Wallingford Neighborhood Office. ‘It’s so blatant and so in your face.’ [Daily News]” Their other concern is the vocabulary lesson all the wee kids in the Wallingford Kiddie Parade are going to get when they march past in July.

Seriously, Moral Outragers? I’m sure you never sully the wheels of your vehicle to go to Capitol Hill, but would you be as upset to get a burrito from Bimbo’s Bitchin’ Burrito Kitchen? Or is “bitch” only offensive when it’s applied to your precious Pekingese?

And just when you though NIMBYers couldn’t get any more ridiculous, the Seattle Times turns down an ad in their Northwest Life magazine because of the word “orgasm” and proves you wrong [Times Colonist]. Now, we here at Seattle Metroblogging may sometimes be a little society matron-ish, but we would like to go on the record as being in full support of orgasms, in print or otherwise. (We also support strip clubs and are considering making a map for you of the migratory patterns of the hookers on Aurora, just because we love you.) “‘Corey Digiacinto, Seattle Times communications manager, said their advertising department regularly reviews ad content to meet high standards of integrity and quality. “We felt the content of this ad was inappropriate in its context and would be objectionable to a wide audience. In such cases, we work with the advertiser to find alternatives that meet their needs. That was the case here as well.”‘” The replacement headline reads, “Your lust for fine fare can now be satisfied.”

That is clearly a much, much less punchy line. I’d go to Victoria for orgasms of food, but a lust for fine fare is a little too prissy for me. Poor Tourism Victoria, who are just trying to point out that Victoria is a lot more fun than people think it is.

NIMBY: 2 Common Sense: 0

How about that sold out Thermals show last night? Fuckin’ A is right.

Here’s what I can tell you about it. They started with the best song from the Body, the Blood, the Machine and ended with the best song from More Parts per Million. In between, the first few rows of spectators brought the most pit back from hibernation. Hutch climbed on his monitor, clutched the faux pagoda roof, leaned over the audience, pantomimed along with the lyrics, yelled “thank you very much” several times. Tall, frail-looking floppy-haired bespectacled kids shoved, karate chopped, air punched, and were joyfully pushed back by kids with four-inch mohawks. One woman looked like she was hating every second of the show. No one caught the birthday boy Chop Suey employee who dove majestically from the stage during the encore.

Aside from the fact that the show was every bit as amazing as anticipated, one piece of advice for the sweaty teens in the audience. Please buy, borrow, or download More Parts Per Million immediately. Although you were excited about all of the songs, you should have been more thrilled about the ones from their first album.

And it’s official — this bracket is busted beyond all recognition. West Seattle keeps bringing the upsets, short-circuiting Electrolicious, while the usr/bin/girl robots stuff a sock in BlatherWatch. And now, the thrilling conclusion.

BALLARD REGIONAL
Regional Finals
February 22
#7 #!/usr/bin/girl vs #8 West Seattle Blog
And what’s remarkable is that for all the bellyaching about the “Ballard Regional” the West Seattleites are now just one vote away from the Final Four. But now, can the flannel-wearing, Admiral movie watching, Spud eating insurgency prevail over an anime army? The suspense is… no, that’s not a “killing me” feeling. I think that’s a kidney stone.

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UPDATE:
Dpolls apparently has given up the ghost. I’m not exactly sure who was leading at the time the poll stopped worked. In fact, WSB thinks /usr/bin/girl was winning and vice versa. So, at least this is easy.

Here’s a new poll. Cross your fingers that PollDaddy isn’t floating in the virtual fishtank tomorrow. Two things:

1. I’m extending the deadline one day — to Thursday. It will now close at the same time the U District closes. Hopefully.

2. To maintain the “vote once-per-day” attitude I elected to NOT cookie-lock the poll. That means you can vote as many times as you like. HOWEVER… since this will run three more days I ask you to please keep it to three votes per person. In fact, if I see clear evidence that someone’s been flooding the poll, I’ll kill it and we’ll draw a name from a hat. Got it? Be polite in your ballot box stuffing, please.

UPDATE #2:
What did I say up there? That if you start flooding it I’ll be pissy? Well, someone did. So, I blew away the results, and it’s now cookie-locked. Please act like grownups, OK? It’s just a stupid poll.

Take Our Poll from PollDaddy.com

Voting is still open in the second round of theU District regional, and also in the West Seattle and Capitol Hill regional finals. Tomorrow, on to the U District for the last of the regionals.

the Shins // the Paramount // 20 february 2007

Everyone is required to have a story about how the Shins changed his life. For me, it happened in the cozy womblike showroom of the Sit & Spin at one of the first shows that I’d been to after moving to Seattle. I’d downloaded “Sphagnum Esplanade” from somewhere and it seemed like a good enough reason to check out this laundromat rock club. 764-HERO played and then eXBeSTFRIenDS blew fire and didn’t catch the draped ceiling ablaze. Then this band that was just [or about to be] signed to Sub Pop came on and everyone got over the flamethrowing pretty quickly. Between songs, murmurs of widespread approval: “Wow, this band is good“, “They’re from Albuquerque” “That’s in New Mexico!” “Doogie Howser is from there, too.” This was before they even played “New Slang (When You Notice the Stripes)”.

Maybe I exaggerated about the life-altering properties of the event,¹ but it was at least a gateway drug. I don’t know if the same can be said of last night’s performance at the Paramount. It was a really good show (At least a 7.2 on a scale where 1 is that annoying drummer on the sidewalk and 10 is Broken Social Scene at the Showbox with Leslie Feist slow dancing with Kevin Drew to “Lovers’ Spit”).² I suspect that everyone there knew what to expect and it’s much harder to do close-up magic in a cathedral.

This is not to say that the band was without some excellent tricks up their sleeve. As the smoke machine bellowed fog onto a coolly lit stage decorated with a silhouette of a leafless tree on the back wall the opening undersea notes of “Sleeping Lessons” welcome the band. They pull down the giant scrim to reveal the album artwork and it’s off to the races with the slow buildup of the opening track exploding after a slow, two-minute buildup, leading deftly into the bouncing, cartwheely madness of “Australia”, catching its breath with “Pam Berry”, and then falling into the swelling multipart ooh-aah-ooh chorus of “Phantom Limb”. It is the both the best four-song progression from any Shins album and an excellent way of starting the show.

From there, they drop into the back catalog. James Mercer’s tour-ragged voice and the additional vocal support of tourmate Viva Voce’s Anita Robinson and the Fruit Bats’s Eric Johnson,³ allows a few liberties with the classics by adding harmonies, speeding up some songs, slowing down others under the glow of a half dozen exposed dangling lightbulbs, washes of candy-colored pastel spotlights, and a backlit bass drum swirling with colors. The setlist⁴ breaks down into a few alternating clusters: upbeat pop gems (“Kissing the Lipless” through “Girl on a Wing”), the excessively pretty quiet songs (“New Slang” is in desperate need of better mixing and a thousand lighters in the audience, but this is made up for by “Saint Simon”, and the ethereally beautiful “A Comet Appears), later the usually reserved “Gone for Good” is sped up and turned from heartsick to lightly aggressive. Along the way are quirky angular lyrical gems like “Girl on a Wing” and the celebration of salvation through record stores and relocation, “Know Your Onion!”.

Although Mercer’s sore throat diminishes the usual perfection and pristine high notes, it adds immediacy and realism to the performance. As is the case with almost every Shins show following their Seattle debut, a pair of underpants end up thrown from the audience.⁵ This time, it’s an oversized pair of “granny panties”, almost large enough to be worn as a shirt and inscribed with “I love you THIS much”. They quickly become a decoration for the mic stand, occasional sweat mop, and frequent prop in Mardi Gras antics. After “closing” with the opener from Oh, Inverted World, “Caring is Creepy”, the band eventually returns for an encore featuring a cover and cathartic anti-drudgery anthem “So Says I”.

No, the messy sound system at the Paramount doesn’t match the grandeur of its setting. Yes, listening to the albums through noise-isolating earphones will reveal all of the subtleties of the production values — shakers, delicate strings, finger cymbals — are lost. And seeing songs you love performed live in a big venue might not change your life, but sometimes a good show and a reminder of how much you like a band is enough.
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Competitive cheerleading–a sport in which cheerleading teams are judged on how well they perform their physically demanding dance/gymnastic routines–is most popular in the Eastern and Southern US but there are teams all over the country. There are even teams here in ‘Washington and just because we don’t have quite the cheerleading history doesn’t mean we don’t have our share of talent. Redmond’s own Galaxy Cheer organization [GC]‘s Youth Squad just became 2007 CheerSport National Champions, an already impressive feat made all the cooler by the fact that this is only their second year in attendance aht prestigious competition..

Congratulations to the the whole team.

photo c. Christopher Ambler. Click to enlarge.