I’ve been in Seattle five months, and my first “real” guests have arrived. You know, the ones who actually just want to see you, and hang out with you, and know what you’ve been up to, but who are too shy to actually kick off their shoes and browse through your refrigerator. So they say, “Show me Seattle.”

The problem being, of course, that we’re still tourists here ourselves. Five months, you know? I still only know three diners, although I’m getting better with cafes. So we can show them the touristy things we’ve seen and liked, and go see some of the touristy things that are still on our list.



So we took them down to Pike Place Market … and started eating. We got there early, because we wanted to get a window seat at Lowell’s. Lowell’s is good, because it satisfies my need for diner food (even though they don’t have a counter or booths, really), they have a seafood selection so that you know that you’re in the northwest, and if you time it right or don’t mind waiting, you get a nice view of the water.

And the food is really yummy.

They make a big deal about the corned beef hash. Well, everyone who serves corned beef hash makes a big deal about whatever corned beef hash they serve, but Lowell’s serves really top notch stuff.

So, yeah, I gotta say, if you’ve got friends who don’t mind being dragged to a place that’s not really convenient … Lowell’s is an interesting place to start the Seattle experience.

Honestly, I’d been sitting on that title for a couple months now, so I just felt I needed to use it.

But, anyway. Daft Punk plays at the WaMu Hall (which is just a big concrete box in the Qwest Field hall — with colorful curtains!) tonight at 8, with NYC dance-punkers The Rapture opening. Need tickets? Good luck.

As best as I can tell, this is Daft Punk’s first Seattle concert in ten years (that right?), so if you miss out, I’m sure they’ll be back around in 2017. By then, you’ll be approaching middle age and swatting West Nile infected mosquitoes off your children while the robots hold court at ZooTunes. In other words, if you’ve got the money burning a hole in your pocket, tonight’s the night you go meet the person with whom you will have those toddlers who will be bouncing to “High Fidelity” at the zoo in ten years.

Or maybe it’s a robot, if you’re one of those robosexuals. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m no robophobe.

While I might categorize Utilikilts and Crocs in the same “unfortunate fashion” file [mb], but I had no idea that they could inspire such conspiracy-minded vitriol. Here, “Baptist for Brownback” finds a Utilikilt video (“complete with twirling”), sees a gay-fueled sissification apocalypse, and responds with an unintentionally hilarious screed:

The kilt, long associated with those ghastly Scots, has seen a drastic increase in popularity among the jet-setting homosexual crowd. One manufacturer of this perfectly obscene item, Utilikilts in Seattle, was recently interviewed and subsequently featured prominently on the front page of Yahoo News.

Friends, we are living in a world where nothing is sacred and very little is left to the imagination. The very last thing we need in this country is for homosexuals to be permitted, by law mind you, to wear a skirt. It is understood, that while the sodomite would unnaturally embrace the feminine attributes of a man-skirt or kilt, the main purpose is that it grants them easy and quick access for fornicating. [b4b]

Go ahead, read the whole thing. Right now I’m struggling to decide whether it’s sincere or satire and if the answer to that question makes it more or less ridiculously funny. I can say that for someone who despises this “hot trend”, this cra-cray Baptist sure spent a lot of time digging through the internet to turn up some juicy links about flashers, kilt-related sex arrests, and all sorts of kiltlover fansites. For now, though, he hasn’t yet tuned into the Stranger’s recent calf-obsession as further proof of the diabolical nature of kilts.

You might be asking yourself, hey, those Metbloggers put up the Enumclaw horse sex video link, so why didn’t they cover the case of the dentist who played the practical joke on his employee by temporarily giving her boar’s teeth.

Well… no one ever sent us a picture. The post is only worth its bacon with a picture.

Despite the cloudy and somewhat cool beginnings, the sun came out and so did the punk polka fans. Yes, you read that right – punk polka. We walked over to the Ballard Seafood Fest this afternoon (preserving the carbon neutral-ness of the event for us) to catch what I can only describe as Big Band meets Funk meets the Wedding Singer.

Yes, Brave Combo played for a wildly enthusiastic crowd this afternoon. I watched the show with my man and let me tell you – if I could afford to have them play at any potential future wedding I happened to have, I would in a heartbeat.
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crowds swell outside neumo’s demanding entrance to girl talk

…The main problem with booking the biggest act of a festival at the end of the night in a smallish venue is that a lot of people end up outside arguing with the (rather patient and sympathetic) police and the security about the injustice of not letting people in when others leave. As far as I could tell no new people were allowed into Neumo’s after the start of the Trucks’s set, possibly earlier.

Stuck outside for an hour and a half with the hippie dancers, chanters, occasional drunks, negotiators, believers, and refund-demanders I kept trying to figure out how was it that Murder City Devils closed last year’s Block Party on the mainstage while it sits empty tonight and Girl Talk is playing inside?

let’s all just hope that iamserio.us got in to tape it; otherwise the next time he’s in the neighborhood is 8 September in Portland [p'fork]

update: Brian posted .FLACs of the whole set [iamserio.us]

photo by ERIK98122 [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Danny Westneat thinks that the death penalty is fundamentally flawed, but occasionally useful. [times]
• A ‘blog post about a letter about a comment to a ‘blog post and the fluidity of online identity, Dan Savage, and “ecce homo” [slog]
• dig out your secret recipes: Tillamook’s mac & cheese cooking contest is coming back [citizenrain]
• hooray! Moools + Mount Eerie “reunion” in September at Vera. [lineout]

Do you like seafood? Do you like sidewalk sales? Do you like visiting Ballard? If so, then this is your lucky weekend. The Ballard Seafood Fest takes place Saturday and Sunday.

Come feed your inner Viking with the Alder Smoked Salmon Barbecue ($8 pp, $7 pp for seniors). At La Senoritas Beer Garden you can partake of Maritime Pacific’s varieties, brewed right in Ballard. If wine is more up your alley (or down your throat as the case may be), the Ballard Rotary has a Wine Garden. Sample wines from Apex/Bridgman, Kana, Saint Laurent, Silverlake, and Sleeping Dog among others.

If it’s entertainment you want, then entertainment you will find on the Main Stage. Come listen to Brave Combo or the Duffy Bishop Band or take in Wylie and the Wile West Show.

There’s fun for the kids too with giant inflatables, carnival games, and a toy boat workshop. It wouldn’t be summer without watermelon and Ballard Market is sponsoring a watermelon eating contest just for the kids. Sorry parents, you’ll need to purchase your own melon and eat it without the incentive of prizes. The kids however, will be in the running to wine a bike!

Lastly, there’s shopping. The ‘Biggest and Oldest Sidewalk Sale in Seattle’ started yesterday on Market Street and Ballard Avenue. There are plenty of deals to be had (I got a great shirt for my boyfriend yesterday at 60% off).

As a bonus, the Ballard Seafood Fest is going carbon neutral with the help of Native Energy and Sustainable Ballard. So when you’re contemplating how to get to the event, give the METRO serious consideration.

Friday 8 p.m. – Arthur & Yu in-store @ Easy Street Records, West Seattle

Friday-Saturday – Capitol Hill Block Party @ Capitol Hill – I go for Girl Talk (you should too, if you are concerned about shaking your thing of groove), I stay for the rest. A ton of Cool Kids Bands. Actually, if you put them all a scale, collectively, undoubtedly much more than a ton. See more by Josh here.

Saturday-Sunday – 61st Annual Pacific NW Scottish Highland Games @ Enumclaw Expo Center, Enumclaw – They throw down with a harp competition, along with other games Celtic. Do they race ‘em? Do they throw ‘em? Do they play ‘em while they race ‘em and/or throw ‘em? Go find out.
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After much speculation and controversy, secrecy, lies and a devoted fan base, it is finally happening, and it is not the last Harry Potter, nor the finale of Sopranos–not even the first episode of the new season of Weeds (though I’m not sure I’m going to make it till Aug. 13th for that). No, it has been announced that there will be a H & M store opening next year in Northgate mall.

That means my planned trips to Vancouver for H & M and Dim Sum will only be required for a few months till we get our own. (Theirs opens this fall).

Now I can’t write much more, because I have wasted enough time at work worrying about this in a flurry of text messaging with my mother, who is clearly far more on top of this stuff than me. She says she found this in Seattle Magazine, page 191, August issue. So I’ll have to trust her on this–and hope!