From his Pride ’07 set [#] nifty hand-stiched panorama by Andrew G. Davis [flickr] of a busy Seattle Center during yesterday’s Pride festivities. Have any great pictures from the weekend? Please put a few of them into our collection [#] when you get a minute!

The National Associated of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) recently announced the winners of their video competition that challenged public policy student to create a short video about public policy issues. The grand prize went to Jon Hickey, currently a student at the UW’s Evans School, who created a one-minute cartoon short expressing his feelings on the issue of immigration.

To view the video, click [here] or visit the NASPAA’s site for more information on the competition. Congratulations, Jon.

Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear opened up for Canadian dynamo Feist last night at the Moore — not an obvious combination, but the Bear’s Dungen-esque psycho/folk seemed to please the crowd as a warmup. The main act got a warm reception as well, applying a punk veneer to many of the radio-friendly singles which have rocketed her to increased popularity. Feist’s storied struggle with damage to her vocal chords was in evidence last night, at least to my untrained ears — but the occasional failure to produce certain notes didn’t detract from the overall experience and actually made the show a bit more personal, despite the large venue.

(Your correspondents were seated in true nosebleed altitude, on the Moore’s “Second Balcony.” The Feist herself claimed to have climbed into the last row on that balcony, before the show, just to experience how high up and distant it was. This is our excuse for the crummy photo quality.)

Brunch at Victrola this morning brought a neologism written on the chalkboard for all to see:

I appreciated the polychromatic gloss, as an initial perusal of the Oxford English Dictionary offered only:

cupping, vbl. n. Surg. The operation of drawing blood by scarifying the skin and applying a ‘cup’ or cupping-glass the air in which is rarefied by heat or otherwise.

But what’s this! Under “DRAFT ADDITIONS JUNE 2007″ we find listed Victrola’s use of the term in a non-surgical sense:

orig. U.S. The action or an instance of judging the quality of coffee by tasting it; a coffee tasting. Freq. attrib.

I still maintain ‘cupping’ sounds like something you’d have to pay extra for at Cuff, but who’s to argue with the OED about verbal nouns?

Musician Kristy Kruger is a pianist, guitarist, singer and songwriter whose music includes elements of tradtional American folk and jazz; she’s been referred to as a “female Tom Waits”. The death of her brother in Iraq inspired her to set out on a tour of the US to perform memorial shows for him, and for all fallen soliders, in all 50 states. This weekend she comes to Georgetown for a show at Jules Mae’s Saloon.

Leslie of Leslie & the Badgers opens the show, Sunday, June 24th at 8; her set is followed by Kruger’s. There is no cover for the show; instead, they’ll pass the hat around and ask for donations which go toward the memorial fund Kruger has created in honor of her brother and to the Fisher House, an organization that donates “comfort homes,” built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers, which enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times – during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

I love to eat. I love to drink. I’m currently sitting here on my couch – full, tipsy, and incredibly satisfied. You see, we just returned from a 2.5 hour meal at Pasta Freska. I can’t say enough good things about Pasta Freska. In fact, my folks are coming for a visit in a month or so and Pasta Freska is top of the list for them as well.

There are no menus for dinner at Pasta Freska. When you sit down, Chef Mike Horrri greets you and comes over to your table. “So, let’s talk about dinner!” He’ll ask you if there’s anything you don’t like or don’t eat. “Seafood ok? Spicy good?” It’s best to just smile and nod unless of course, you have a severe allergy. One of our dear friends doesn’t eat seafood and she communicated that to Chef Mike. Another friend doesn’t eat pork. But the rest of the table was fine with everything.

So, what happened next? More after the jump.
(more…)

Cecil Adams, the noted genius and expert on everything, just published a column called “Take me out to the ballgame: Is there a homefield advantage?“

Tonight’s Safeco Field answer: Hell, no.

The M’s, as you may have heard, welcomed back to Safeco Field long-lost local baseball hero Ken Griffey Jr., now employed by Cincinnati. The crowd gave Junior a warm round of applause, and then the Mariners gave Junior’s Reds a warm butt to kick.

Reds 16, M’s 1. And really, it was all over in the first inning. In classic Seattle fashion, the opposing team may have gotten an assist from the home plate ump in the first couple innings (see also: Seahawks/Pittsburgh Super Bowl), but there was no question about the outcome. The M’s rolled over and played dead.

I finally make it to an M’s game this season and look what happens. Hopefully the next one will be an improvement.

For those coming to Capitol Hill to celebrate Pride, be safe out there & resist temptation: don’t drink and drive Lamborghinis, O.K.?

I have found my Seattle Textbook, and it’s Steve Callihan’s website, A Seattle Lexicon. It’ll take me a week to read through it, and I may forget 75% of it immediately, but I finally feel like I’ve got a window to the “everybody who’s anybody knows this info” … you know, the grassroots cultural foundation of the town.

But, oh, the roll call of the dead diners dead diners is heartbreaking. I love diners, so that page is like a cemetery of loved ones I never got a chance to meet.

(On the upside … he says there’s still a Farrell’s in San Diego! Anybody else have Farrellphobia?)

this vision of harbor island courtesy Manuel Wanskasmith [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• Excellent question: Why is the Stranger’s Queer Issue written mostly by men? [ericacbarnett]
• Seattle, home of the 3.5 day workweek? Looking at traffic patterns and seeing long weekends [sightline]
• Seth K. confesses to public urination, bringing a little bit of Paris to Greenlake [seattlest]
• You’ve seen the parodies of Microsoft’s new Surface computing by now, right? [sarcasticgamer]
• Spend Saturday morning with the Saturday Knights and a whole lot of Top Pot [reverb]
• Is summer driving the style (or stylish) out of town? [pikepine]
• Real headline: Nickels Orders Probe of a Probe [times]
• Bumbershoot wants more Myspace friends. And not just any friends, Top 4 friends (as if choosing a top 8 wasn’t momentous enough). If you’re willing to risk waves of seething internet drama among your online friend catalog, go ahead and evict a lifelong pal for a local mega-festival and you might win great prizes. [bumbershoot]