President Obama announced today that AG Holder & the DoJ are making $2 billion from the ARRA available, specifically for state and local law enforcement and criminal justice. The funds will be allocated through the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program.

“JAG Program funds can be used for a variety of efforts such as hiring law enforcement officers; supporting drug and gang task forces; funding crime prevention and domestic violence programs; and supporting courts, corrections, treatment, and justice information sharing initiatives.” (from the White House press release)

King County is eligible for $4,882,208, and the White House estimates that about $454,027 of that would go directly to County projects, and $2,701,067 for the city of Seattle. Seattle’s take is the largest single municipal amount, with Tacoma coming in 2nd at $1,394,464. The total for all Washington State counties and municipalities is $14,304,690; add in the funds allocated on the state level ($22,401,901) and Washington’s total rises to $36,706,591. LINK.

Are you worried that your closest personal relationship has become too good and/or too comfortable?  Well then, as far as I’ve been able to tell, the best remedy for that is a short stint on CBS’s globetrotting, fight-inducing reality show, The Amazing Race.   Lucky for all of us, an open casting call for season 15 will be taking place tomorrow at Muckleshoot Casino in Auburn from 12-3pm.  The KIRO-7 website has all details you’ll need, or just read on as I sum them up below.

• Must be 21 years of age to audition.
• Auditions must be 60-seconds or less, one take only.
• Auditions not guaranteed, first come first serve.
• You may bring a VHS tape or DVD to the casting call if you desire, but it is not required.
• Blank applications will also be available on site.

Download Application(s) in advance HERE

Muckleshoot Casino
2402 Auburn Way South
Auburn, WA 98002
(253) 804-4444

photo by petergawa courtesy of flickr pool: Hank III & Assjack

Wednesday night at the Showbox Market was packed like a good cigarette with  Hank III and AssJack enthusiasts. This rockabilly turned metcalcore show was littered with groups of bearded moshers armed with whiskey in their back pockets and pbr’s in their hands. The dreary, rainy outside air did nothing to dampen the mood of the crowd– one that bounced to every honky-tonk beat, and shoved with every scream and croon of AssJack. My soft spot for the roots of Hank III didn’t do much for increasing my interest in metalcore, but the energy was hard to argue with. After a few whiskeys of my own and a pbr in hand, I bucked up and joined the crowd for jumping, jiving and a little agro-dancing. Let me just say, jumping side-by-side with large Hank III fans is much more fun than I could’ve imagined. The enthusiasm of the night can be summed up in one lyric:  “Even though I’m broke, I got a six pack of beer”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfoC6qoxwbY[/youtube]

Friday

• Hollow Earth Radio’s Magma Festival starts tonight with the Moondoggies (a.k.a., “Seattle’s hottest band” and one of the few Hardly Art acts without an “and” in their name), Kusikia, Triumph of Lethargy, and TacocaT (the band, not the extraordinary delicious sometimes brunch special at Linda’s). The festival runs across through March’s weekends and $35 gets you into every show. This one’s $9 and the doors are at 7:30pm. [veraproject]
• Mount St Helens Vietnam Band roll out a new album along with an ice cream flavor of their very own tonight (courtesy of Molly Moon). It’s something of a double CD release party since Say Hi (formerly “… to your mom”, now to everyone I guess) just dropped “oohs & aahs” on Tuesday. The always effervescent Visqueen open. [neumos]
• Ridiculously enough, there’s also the matter of a SxSeattle send-off at the Tractor for New Faces, Hey Marseilles, and Champagne Champagne) [sots] and M.Ward at the Showbox.

Saturday

• The 8th annual Sound Off (a battle of the underage bands) concludes with a bout between semi-final winners Dyno Jamz, Makeup Monsters and Sol, who will try to clutch the crown and the fantastic prizes at Sky Church. In addition to besting each other, they’ll need to make it past Dearboy, who claimed the fan-powered wild card spot. $10, 8pm. [emp]
• Magma makes its way to Fremont with Mount Eerie (whose shows are never quite the same, but are always wonderful and any Phil Elverum performance falls into my permanently recommendable category),Tiny Vipers, and Mike Dumovich + Lori Goldston. $8, 8pm. [fremontabbey]

7:00 PM – Adam Frank: The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate
UW Bookstore, U-District
Frank traces the history of science through the history of myth and metaphor, e.g. comparing the development of the Big Bang theory to creation stories.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Jack Hamann: On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of WWII
Suzzallo Library (UW), Room 101
With so many books about the Iraq war and the Bush administration out, Hamann’s account of the 1944 Fort Lawton court-martial might seem quaint or dated; however, this book was directly responsible for the verdict being overturned in 2007, an act that directly affected the lives of real people, some still living, who suffered the consequences of misjustice for over 50 years. It’s a fascinating story of race and discrimination that took place right here in Seattle. Justice is always relevant: On American Soil reminds us not to get complacent. Hamann is an award-winning journalist and former NewsHour Seattle bureau chief.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Dobby Gibson & Matt Hart: Poetry Reading
Open Books
Gibson is “epigrammatic”. Hart’s “surrealism is charmingly personable”. I’m getting a Waiting for Gide vibe.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Jerry Mander: The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth
Elliott Bay Book Co.
The activist and author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television tells the story of grassroots resistance against the SuperFerry, a joint corporate and military project which threatens the Hawaiian marine environment. The battle against the global military-industrial never ends. Vive la resistance!
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Jan Nickman, David Lanz, Gary Stroutsos: Film Screening
Living Temples: Sacred Land and Q&A with Director
East West Bookshop, Seattle
Nickman is the Emmy-winning director of the film series Living Temples. The first film of the series is Sacred Land. This event is not a reading or a signing, but it’s in a bookstore, so there you go.
[LINK]

By Design 09 is NWFF’s annual program of film selections that explore design and the moving image. This year’s event kicks off Friday night with a free opening night reception that includes audio-visual performances by digital artists including Kamran Sadeghi, Scott K. James and more. Also on Friday night is an in-person appearance by MK12, a film collective from Kansas City making innovative short films and the first night of a documentary about noted architect Rem Koolhaas. The series also features a screening and panel discussion with local motion graphics designers, two collections of creative new short works and a documentary about Milton Glaser, often considered the personification of American graphic design.

Over at SIFF, it’s a revival of Five Easy Pieces starring Jack Nicholson as a gifted pianist who rejects life as a concert musician to live as an “ordinary Joe” working on an oil rig by day and going bowling and hanging out with his girlfriend at night. Everything changes when he finds out his dad is dying–he hightails it back to Washington state where he reunites with his unusual old man, a musical genius who raised his family in a Socratic style on an isolated island in the beautifully filmed San Juans.

Saturday morning at SIFF is a Filmf4Families screening of Babe, beyond a doubt one of the most charming and good-natured films about talking animals ever made. (Word to the wise: if your post-film giddy mood tempts you into renting the sequel, slap that temptation down: the second Babe is exactly as horrible as this original film was wonderful, which is very much.)

It took 23 years to film The Betrayal, opening Friday at Grand Illusion, and the story is every bit as epic as you imagine a two-decades in the making film would be. It’s also a very intimate story, the tale of the Phrasavath family who escaped from Laos after the US abandoned the Laotians recruited for its secret war in Laos, fought parallel to the then-ongoing Vietnam conflict. Hoping for safety in America, the Phrasavath family found themselves fighting yet again for their survival. The Academy Award nominated documentary was directed by Ellen Kuras in colloboration with one of its subjects, Thavisouk Phrasavath.

Late night at the Grand Illusion: The Black Gestapo, a freaky “blaxploitation” flick very, very loosely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Teenaged Jason Schwartzman and jaded tycoon Bill Murray are first unlikely friends then even unlikelier rivals for the affections of a lovely young widow in the off-kilter comedy Rushmore, this weekend’s Midnight movie at the Egyptian.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice has been one of my favorite literary characters ever since I was a wee lass and I’ve always been interested in the different ways Alice and Wonderland are used in other artists’ works. Sometimes the results are disappointing, but sometimes they’re brilliant. Phoebe in Wonderland, starring young Elle Fanning as a girl whose casting in a school production of Alice in Wonderland triggers her retreat into a Wonderland-inspired fantasy, could go either way, but here’s to hoping it’s on the brilliant side. At the Neptune.

Central Cinema celebrates kitschy superheroes with a double feature of Batman and The Toxic Avenger.

Do you have tickets for Watchman? It opens officially Friday and many local shows are sold out as there are many, many people eager or anxious to see how this highly-anticipated, highly-hyped film turns out. I’m one of them but I won’t be able to make opening weekend: if you see it, do let me know what you think.

1. Based on the list provided by the P-I, they’re essentially keeping the core of the current seattlepi.com website talent, including one current web geek and one former one (in Brian Chin).
2. The only “high-end talent” they’re hanging onto is Joel “Crankypants” Connelly. That’s a bit of a surprise, given that he just about bit the head off West Seattle Blog’s Patrick Sand at the No News Is Bad News event.
3. Don Smith is on the list, which is good news for the Reader Blogs.
4. The sheer number of producers and editors (3 apiece) really hints at the “aggregation” model many of us thought might be the way forward.
5. But while Andrea James and Joe Tarakoff are great business writers, they sure seem like luxuries within this vision of things. The business niche is already crowded with the Times and the Puget Sound Business Journal
6. And right now, no investigative journalists, no city beat writers, and with Hector Castro declining an offer, only one potential general beat writer (Monica Guzman). My guess is that they’re going to let the hyperlocal bloggers do the city news and hire freelancers and rely on crowdsourcing to backfill anything they can’t do.
7. They’re going to need a sales staff in a hurry, so if you’re a laid off salesperson with online ad experience willing to do startup work for startup pay, e-mail your cover letter and resume to michellenicolosi@seattlepi.com right now. But make sure you proofread at least twice before you send it in. She is a newspaper editor, after all.

On the whole, I’m not sure what to think. This is the core of seattlepi.com, but I’m not seeing the niches (other than business), and I’m doubtful charging for content (which Hearst has been discussing) is going to work without niche content. And while I know some of these people, and they’re all good, smart, web savvy journalists, and I really want this to work… this doesn’t look like a news site. This looks like the opposite of Crosscut — a strong and lightweight (and cheap) chassis but no compelling content. Crosscut struggled because of too much talent, not enough technical prowess, and a lack of understanding of how the web works. There’s serious technical prowess here, and everyone on the list not named Joel Connelly knows how the web works; will relying on the unpaid crowd, cheap freelancers, and the great cloud of local bloggers allow them to hang onto their 2,400,000 readers?

Bonne chance, guys. You’re gonna need a lot of it.

10PM UPDATE: Looks like a few more people are in the “no comment” group now, including a number of metro editors, photographer Joshua Trujillo, and a surprising name — managing editor David McCumber. But McCumber is suggesting he’s no-comment-for-the-sake-of-being-no-comment.

And for as critical as I was earlier, some of the newer details coming out — 20 person staff, startup mentality — sound really… familiar.

Coastal Kitchen has posted their (in)famous bathroom language lessons on the internet. I highly recommend downloading Bahia de Banderas. [LINK]

And, now an answer to speculation about the future of the Post-Intelligencer: “Hearst makes offers to staff for online-only P-I” [seattlepi]

(via dylan [twitter], who will probably write much more about this later).

Don’t throw away your Penny Saver, or whatever that crap the mailperson sends that’s always overflowing with deals from QFC. Inside I found a coupon for one free bagel at Noah’s Bagels. Sure, they only give you this free bagel on Friday AND you have to go in before 11am, but free is free is free.

Of course, cream cheese is not free. So it goes.