* 7:00 PM: Comixtravaganza! continues with Seattle artist Greg Stump at SPL South Park Branch and Community Center. Stump will teach students how to make their own comic books. And there will be snacks!!!
[LINK]

* 7:00 PM: The Center for Spiritual Living presents Caroline Myss, “world famous medical intuitive” and author of Beyond Reason. Myss will tell attendees how to draw upon “mystical wisdom… to rewrite [their] journey to health.”
[LINK]

* 7:30 PM: Elliott Bay Book Co. welcomes debut author Janice Y.K. Lee. Lee will read, discuss, and sign her novel The Piano Teacher. This is a knockout first novel, set in wartime Hong Kong– tragic, yet without melodrama.
[LINK]

If Burien’s not the first place you think of when you think about creative art in the Seattle area, that may very change this weekend with the opening of the Burien/ Interim Art Space (B/ IAS), a year-long experiment in showcasing art and gathering community at Burien’s Town Square.

Utilizing land that would otherwise sit empty due to the current state of the development industry (condos meant for the space won’t be built for at least a year), Burien Arts Commissioners Dane Johnson and Kathy Justin worked with a number of community partners to hammer out a deal that turns this lot into an “artistic P-patch”. The terms of the donated lease allowed the city to install today a series of sculptures. The Passage is a 30 ft high sculpture fabricated from recycled and scrap metal that depicts a mother and child walking together “to share and explore life”. Other sculptures for the space include The Fire Pod, an 11 ft high steel sculpture with six claw-like tendrils and 12 firing points that shoot out flames and, like The Passage made its original debut at the Burning Man Festival; Synapse Naust, a 16 ft high fire cauldron designed by Charlie Smith, Jamie Ladet and a group of Seattle artists, into which you can logs can be tossed so the burning fire illuminates the detailed patterns cut into the sides of the structure; Tree Spire, a 15 ft tall tree with a circular bench around its base; and, The Hemeta, a hollow-formed bronze sculpture.

The festive opening celebration for B/ IAS takes place this Saturday, January 24, starting at 4pm with live music and the spectacle of watching The Fire Pod, The Passage, and Synaspse Naust set ablaze.

In this morning’s press release about lay-offs and budget cuts, the company blamed the loss of revenue on soft PC sales and the increasing popularity of netbooks.

Client revenue declined 8% as a result of PC market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks.
…
Microsoft will eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today. These initiatives will reduce the company’s annual operating expense run rate by approximately $1.5 billion and reduce fiscal year 2009 capital expenditures by $700 million.

Microsoft has uploaded a webcast of Steve Ballmer (CEO), Chris Liddell (SVP and CFO), Frank Brod (corporate VP and chief accounting officer), and Bill Koefoed (GM of Investor Relations) to “discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information.” The webcast is available at http://www.microsoft.com/msft through the end of the day, today.

Also, TechFlash has posted Ballmer’s memo to employees about the lay-offs. The three-pronged approach seems to geared towards presenting a consistent message. In his email, Ballmer writes, “Our financial position is solid. We have made long-term investments that continue to pay off.” This echoes his quote in the official press release: “…I am confident in the strength of our product portfolio and soundness of our approach. We will continue to manage expenses and invest in long-term opportunities to deliver value to customers and shareholders…”

The market doesn’t seem to be buying it. Microsoft traded as low as $17.07, today, down 12%, the lowest price since January 1998, and its largest percentage drop since November 2000. Microsoft ended the day down 11.7 percent, at $17.11.

The laundry list of disclaimed factors that could inhibit MS emerging as “an even stronger industry leader” includes just about every conceivable eventuality, some vaguely worded enough to cover multiple causes, including a giant meteor colliding with the Earth or radioactive weasels invading Redmond. Neither is as likely as more legal woes: in 2007 Microsoft spent $1.8 billion on legal fees related to an European Commission (EC) fine, itself $1.4 billion.

From Seattle’s office of Film & Music:

SEATTLE SYMPHONY TO PERFORM FREE CONCERT AT CITY HALL

Carolyn Kuan, Associate Conductor of Seattle Symphony Orchestra

City Hall will host the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in a free performance on Friday, January 23. The symphony concert is a special performance of Seattle Presents, a free lunchtime concert series presented year-round by the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs.  Associate Conductor Carolyn Kuan will conduct works by Bernstein, Haydn, Bach and Seattle-based Brazilian composer Jovino Santos Neto with guest violinists Annalise Hastings and Felicity James. The performance is Seattle Symphony’s fourth at City Hall. Last January, nearly 300 people packed the City Hall lobby to hear the symphony perform.

Get Bach to where you once belonged!

Brought to you by an email I received from Vain:

Free haircuts! That’s right, on Friday evenings for the next few weeks VAIN will be offering free haircuts by appointment at our downtown salon with VAIN apprentice stylist in training TT. TT is already known for her stellar skills with braids + dreads, and she’s been ramping up on haircuts as part of her continued training on the VAIN salon floor. Appointments are limited, so call VAIN downtown fast at 206.441.3441 to book your free Friday night haircut with TT!

You’re welcome.

The Fremont Wine Warehouse (#) is a veritable wine-lover’s paradise that’s tucked in the old Red Apple Market space in the heart of Fremont.

Owner Michael Cawdrey, former owner of the Red Apple Market and Wine Bar, hosts weekly wine tasting events featuring wines by local vintners along with top-notch imports from around the world.

I popped in last Saturday and was warmly welcomed by Cawdrey, who had invited two importers to showcase wines imported from France and Argentina in a sort of head-to-head competition.

The space, which is sparsely decorated and brightly lit, is focused on offering quality wines at an affordable price. Cawdrey seems as passionate about bringing fine wines to the neighborhood as he does about offering them at discount prices.  No bottle is more than $25.

I chose the 2006 Malbec by Henry Lagarde from Argentinia over one of the French wines I sampled. The Malbec was priced at $10.96 and sells for $12.99 at most other stores. It was amazing and according to Cawdry the top seller for the weekend. The six wines featured ranged in price from $7.97 to $16.

For this Saturday’s tasting Cawdry has invited Dave Marks of Cascade Trade to present wines that are new to our region from Oregon and California.

Cawdry keeps a log of customers purchases to cross reference in case you enjoyed a particular wine in the past, but forgot the name. He also sends out weekly email blasts to update customers on each week’s coming event.  Included in his emails are tasting tips that make it fun and interesting for aficionados and novices alike.

The Fremont Wine Warehouse, located at 3601 Fremont Ave. N. Ste 212, hosts wine tastings every Saturday from 3-6 p.m. For more information, call 206-632-1110.

* 12:00 PM: Seattle Mystery Bookshop gets back in the game with two guest authors, today. Charlie Huston will be signing The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. I can hardly wait to read this one! Huston tacks in a new direction, with a slacker protagonist that gets a job as a trauma cleaner. Huston claims that the story is based on the old TV show The Rockford Files [the whatever]. “Freeze, turkey!”
Tim Maleeny will sign Greasing the Piñata, third in his Cape Weathers series. Cape Weathers is a character, not a place, by the way. In this installment, Weathers investigates the death of a US Senator found on a Mexican golf course. And, ew, some of his parts are missing! Maleeny writes twisty, tricky mysteries with lots of snappy dialogue and appealing characters.
If you work downtown, go on your lunch hour. Quit eating at your desk, it’s not good for you.
[LINK]

* 6:30 PM: Ballard author Kristine Leander reads from Norwegian Seattle at SPL’s Ballard Branch. Of course. Sponsored by Secret Garden Bookshop.
[LINK]

* 7:00 PM: The U-District UW Bookstore hosts Maria Semple, to read and sign her satirical novel, This One is Mine. Semple is a television writer and producer; in this book, she taps her own experience to tell the story of a TV writer who quits working to have a baby.
[LINK]

* 7:00 PM: Cheap Wine and Poetry is back at Richard Hugo House. Join playwright and director Keri Healey and poets Rebecca Hoogs, Jeremy Richards and Ed Skoog. Hosted by Charla Grenz.
[LINK]

* 7:30 PM: Local publishing company Black Heron Press is pleased to present Ron Dakron at Elliott Bay Books. Dakron is promoting his new novel, Mantids, and the paperback edition of Hammers, his third book (1998).
[LINK]

We’d heard rumors inflating the job cuts at Microsoft as high as 17%. As Stan mentioned last night [mb], the official announcement arrived today. Microsoft will cut up to 5,000 jobs (or about five percent of their workforce) over the next eighteen months, beginning with 1,400 today:

The company said that jobs would be eliminated in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources, and IT. A spokeswoman said the company would provide “generous severance and outplacement services.” [microsoftblog/p-i]

Not clear about what proportion of these jobs are in the Seattle area, but it seems safe to assume that the bad news will hit many around here.

(via fimoculous)

Most of my focus in this series has been on the P-I, whether it’s viable as an online news site without the print side of things, and how we’re going to have to confront the possibility that we’ll be a zero newspaper town in the coming years. A few people, though, have reminded me that the Seattle Times, despite their tenuous financial position, is not dead yet. Indeed, shutting down the P-I buys the Times as much as two years to try and come up with a way out of their financial troubles. They will keep their ad sales team while no longer splitting ad revenue with Hearst. They will inherit P-I subscribers (though how many remains to be seen). And they own their own press and their own buildings.

But how much of this is a virtue for the Times? The end of the JOA has the same double-edged sword of a messy divorce settlement — while the ex-wife may get the house and car and leave the ex-husband with nothing, the ex-husband doesn’t have to make the mortgage payment and car payment or pay for their upkeep. He walks away with nothing, but he owes nothing. She walks away with everything, but now she has bills to pay. And so, while the Times is left trying to maintain their old business model and union contract in order to keep the presses running, Hearst is left with no financial obligations and can opt to pursue an online news site without worrying about keeping the presses running.
(more…)