photo by corey hau [flickr] who brings us the story of television repair shops being displaced by condos via our group pool [#]

• Muppets spotted on Summit. Plz explain, thx? [chs]
• Muppets spotted on album covers. [lineout]
• You can’t go to Starbucks tomorrow from 5:30 until 8, get a free coffee at Vita instead. Bet it will be tastier. [seattlest]
• Poor? Need a new toilet? Welcome to Seattle. [times]
• Why has the story about B & O’s impending demise resurfaced, full-force, this week? [citizenrain]
• Why do people look at the Stranger’s ‘blog? [slog]

I bet you’ve heard this already, but: Sasquatch has released the 2008 lineup.

R.E.M. / The Cure / The Flaming Lips U.F.O. Show / Death Cab For Cutie / Modest Mouse / M.I.A. / Flight Of The Conchords / Rodrigo Y Gabriela / Michael Franti & Spearhead / The Breeders / Built To Spill / The Hives / Tegan & Sara / The Presidents / Ghostland Observatory / Ozomatli / The New Pornographers / Blue Scholars / The National / The Kooks / Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks / Cold War Kids / Beirut / Rogue Wave / Okkervil River / Fleet Foxes / Kinski / Mates of State / Crudo (featuring Mike Patton & Dan The Automator) / Sera Cahoone / Battles / Destroyer / Dyme Def / The Blakes / Pela / Jamie Lidell / The Cops / Dengue Fever / Siberian / Say Hi / White Rabbits / David Bazan / The Little Ones / “Awesome” / Dead Confederate / The Heavenly States / 65daysofstatic / Grand Archives / Vince Mira with the Roy Kay Trio / Joshua Morrison / Throw Me The Statue / J. Tillman / Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down / The Cave Singers / Matt Costa / The Shaky Hands

Which…wow. They’ve expanded to three days this year. The schedule hasn’t been broken down into days yet, but I bet dollars to doughnuts that it’s going to be nearly impossible to pick just one day to go. It might almost be worth camping at the Gorge, and I don’t even like camping under the best of conditions.

Bumbershoot, are you paying attention? You have a lot to live up to this year.

Tickets: “All Tickets are General Admission. The first allotment of tickets are $55.50 (plus $1 charity) per day, available for the on-sale weekend only. Beginning Monday, March 10th tickets are $65.50 (plus $1 charity) per day. The week of the festival (beginning Monday, May 19th) tickets are $75.50 per day if still available.”

In 2007, Latona Pub celebrated its 20th anniversary. Tonight, the Green Lake-area pub celebrates their 18th Annual Rogue Brewer’s Night by welcoming Rogue’s brewmaster John Maier and his wife Stacey to Seattle. The Maiers are making the trip from Newport, Oregon with a cask-conditioned firkin of Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown Nectar Ale. They’ll also be joined by Chris Studach, who inspired the Hazelnut Brown and is pictured on the bottle. Studach, an Oregon homebrewer, introduced the idea of adding hazelnuts (the official state nut of Oregon) to a nut brown ale in 1993 at an American Homebrewers Association convention. Maier loved the idea and thus the Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar was born.

In addition to Studach relating stories about Maier and the early days at Rogue, there will be a few special Rogue beers on tap (other than the Hazelnut Brown) and prizes will be given away. The festivities get under way at 8 pm. Yes, it’s a Monday night, but this might be worth making the trip out to the corner of Latona and 65th. You can always call in sick on Tuesday.

No bandwagons were joined in the writing of this post.

I’ve been a fan of Mike’s Chili Parlor ever since my then boyfriend (now husband) brought me there one sunny Seattle summer day when we started dating. We sat outside, ordered 2 bowls with cheese and onions and a side of fries. When the chili came, I admit, I balked. It was… not what I expected. But then I tasted it. Then I soaked my fries in it. Then, I’m pretty sure I finished the whole bowl. I was hooked.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one.
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photo by andrea [flickr] a newish contributor to our group pool [#]. take some pictures. join the fun.

• In a shocking turn of events [mb] Paste (no really, it’s up to you) Magazine has decided that maybe Seattle’s music scene is actually irrelevant after all. [bigblog, everywhere except paste's site]
• Maybe Death Cab for Cutie isn’t snubbing Seattle on their spring tour. Then again, maybe they count “Sasquatch” as Seattle, which is actually further from here than Bremerton. [reverb]
• La blogothèque comes to Seattle, takes the Bainbridge ferry with Throw Me the Statue, shoots some (as usual) beautiful concert videos. [blogotheque]
• Holy scoop! Victrola soon to be under new Whidbey management. [seattlest]

AGENDORAMA: tonnes of great shows this weekend. Probably most notably is the Mountain Goats at Neumo’s. That one’s bound to be a regular sweat lodge of dudes singing along and getting in touch with their deepest hidden sentimentality. But maybe still worth it! [neumos] There’s also the semi-annual Great Lineup in a Weird Venue of BOAT, Menomena, and Blitzen Trapper who play tonight on campus at the University of Washington to celebrate the fifth [!!] birthday of RainyDawg Radio. (As a onetime campus technology funding bureaucrat, the half-decade survival of that student-run station fills me with pride and makes me feel old. Nicely done, big dreamers!) [UW]
What else are you up to, dearests?

• “Mocumentaries” have a tendency to be either really, really funny or really, really not, but there are exceptions. Drop Dead Gorgeous, a beauty pageant satire filmed in faux-documentary style is one of those exceptions. Certain parts of it are brilliant, with a keen, biting wite and parts of it aren’t nearly as clever as the filmmakers apparently meant them to be. Overall, though, it’s the sort of movie totally worth watching with friends, pizza, and beer which makes its weekend run at Central Cinema just perfect.
• The Grand Illusion is all about food this weekend: the Organic Shorts Festival, a series of short films about the state of agriculture in America and Ruby’s Town, about an annual turkey race held between two towns who depend on turkey farming for their livelihood both start Friday and run through the weekend Go back Monday through Thursday for films in the Rural Route festival and see short films about rural experiences all over the world and the invisible inhabitants of Iceland.
  Late night brings the reprise of Pets, a 70s sexploitation feature.
• I’ve been meaning to go to the Port Townsend film festival every year since it started but somehow I never get around to it. SIFF’s got its audience award winner this weekend: Eden, a film by MIchael Hoffman in which chef Gregor pursues his passion for food and the titular waitress.
• Jack Black isn’t always funny, but when he is, he’s really, really funny. He stars in Be Kind, Rewind along with Mos Def, a film with definite comedic potential: after Black accidentally erases all the videotapes in the store where Def works, he sets out to replace them by recreating and refilming every movie the store’s few loyal tape renters request. Be Kind, Rewind opens this weekend; if you see it at the Metro this weekend you have a chance to win prizes in their trivia contests.
• Another film festival winner–from Berlin this time–is Alice’s House which opens at the Varsity; Alice is a manicurist in Sao Paolo struggling to escape the domination of her difficult family life.
• Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog is a Nebula award winning novella by Harlan Ellison about a young man wandering the wastes of post World War IV America in the company of his trusty telepathic dog. It’s a provocative tale that constantly challenges the reader’s expecations. It’s also the source material for one of the weirdest films I”ve ever seen. This 1975 cult classic stars a young Don Johnson and Jason Robards and is this weekend’s midnight movie at the Egyptian.

photo by ~wesa~

Twice in the last few weeks, someone has turned into the Metro Tunnel at Convention Place Center while exiting the I-5 Express Lanes. The response by security is immediate: security sees the car turn into the station and run straight to the driver, gesturing for them to stop. They take down the license plate number, radio the information to somewhere, then escort the car out onto Olive Way. From a statistical standpoint, it’s been an even split with car type and gender. The first time I saw this happen was a woman driving a Mercedes. This time was a man driving a Geo. I will need to watch for more examples.

Speaking of wrong-turn drivers, I happened to see this last week in the Seattle Times Rant and Rave column:

Rant “To the other cyclist who ruined my morning bike ride to work by yelling, ‘It’s a one-way street.’ Yes, I was traveling the wrong way for half a block on a quiet, otherwise empty, Montlake street. You were not in danger or inconvenienced, nor was anybody else. Apparently, you have earned the right to be the cycle police. In the future, unless you or another person is in danger or inconvenienced, please keep your thoughts to yourself.”

Ok ok, so the “driver” was really a “cyclist” and it wasn’t a wrong turn. Personally I think you shouldn’t drive or ride the wrong direction down a street regardless of the length. Thoughts?

Today was the opening day of the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, which runs through Sunday at the Washington State Convention Center. Since I eagerly anticipate this show every year, I wasted no time in getting over there the moment I had a chance. Plant allergy sufferers might be a little overwhelmed by it, but I adore the heady scent of flowers that washes over you the moment you enter the space. Covering both the north and south sides of the convention center’s fourth floor, the garden show is packed to the gills with everything related to gardening you can imagine and then some. Whatever the size of your yard and whatever you want to do it, you will find the tools to do it at the show. Don’t know what you want to do? Get inspired by the professionally designed and built show gardens.

The show gardens have always been my favorite part of the show–I’m amazed at the ingenuity and craft that goes into making them. Two of my favorites this year were a garden designed to resemble a placid mountain pastoral scene and one with fences made from old skis. Another I liked had a “tequila sunrise” theme that combined a small bubbling pool with a vaguely Southwestern themed furniture arrangement, the whole scene tied together with the red in the plants surrounding the patio complementing the red in the furnishings. All of the show gardens deserve praise and I have to say that as much as I appreciate the more extravagant and unusual gardens, I have a lot of love for the settings that look like they could be the patio of your average Jane Notamillionaire, too.

This year I was especially looking forward to the container gardens on display and they did not disappoint. I was amazed at how much greenery the designers were able to fit into show gardens no bigger than the size of an average condo’s patio or balcony. I don’t even have that much space at my own home but looking at the pots on display I found more than a few I could use to work with my very limited space. Plus, the vendors and exhibitors at the show are all friendly and helpful and there a ton of resources available. Even if you have no interest in doing any gardening yourself, the show’s still great fun and I highly recommend it. My only regret about the show is that I forgot to take my regular camera and had to snap shots with my crappy cellphone camera–the entire show is gorgeous.

One of the points of Blarch Badness is to get small good local bloggers more exposure in an increasingly noisy Seattle blogging world. Kirida, which is on a surprising run into the Final Eight, fits right into that model. Mona is a 25 year old native of Saipan who blogs about life as a sailor-mouthed mother in West Seattle. The folks over at West Seattle Blog nominated her for the tourney, saying that she’s the funniest blogger on the Westside. I would have to disagree — she’s one of the funniest this city has to offer, and it’s time she stopped being a West Seattle secret. Of course, now West Seattle Blog has to face the very blog they nominated. How ironic.

I pried an interview out of her while she was changing her husband’s adult diaper.
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Living in Seattle presents some difficult decisions for the beer drinker. If you go to the Collins Pub Real Strong Beer Festival on Friday night, will you have the energy to drag your carcass out the next day for Elysian Brewing’s 12th Annual Winter Beer Festival? Give it a shot! With spring fast approaching, this may be your last chance to enjoy your favorite winter beers or try one that you missed. Elysian’s bringing out twelve beers for the festival, six domestic craft brews and six Belgian beers. They use a system where you buy tokens from your server for $4 each.

1 token = schooner of domestic craft beer
2 tokens = schooner of Belgian beer OR sampler of all six domestics
4 tokens = sampler of all six Belgians

Here’s a list of the beers offered:

Sampler 1
Elysian – Bifrost
Elysian – Jackfrost (JD barrel aged)
Great Divide – Hibernation
Deschutes – The Abyss
Sierra Nevada – Celebration
Full Sail – Wreck the Halls

Sampler 2
Elysian – Bête Noel
Brasserie d’Achouffe – N’ice Chouffe
Brouwerij Het Anker -­ Gouden Carolus Noel
Brouwerij Huyghe -­ Delirium Noel
Brasserie St. Feuillien -­ Cuvee de Noel
Brasserie Dupont ­- Avec les Bons Voeux

This is a solid lineup and the sampler format is a great opportunity to taste several very good Belgian beers in one sitting without paying $8-10 a glass. The festival gets under way at Elysian’s Capitol Hill location (1221 E Pike St.) at noon on Saturday 2/23 and runs until 10pm.