Yes, tomorrow in Pullman the “college” “football” teams based at the University of Washington and Washington State University will play a “college” “football” “game” that will determine who goes home with the Apple Cup.

And it could well be the worst college football game we’ll ever see in our lifetimes. As best as I can tell, no two teams from the so-called “BCS conferences” (Pac 10, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big East) have ever met in a game with both teams having tallied 10 losses already in the season. Yes, the college season was only 10 games long from WWI to the 1960s and it’s only been expanded to 12 this decade, so having two ten loss teams meet has been highly improbable to impossible for most of college football history. Still, an 0-10 Husky team facing a 1-10 Wazzu team — that one loss being against Portland State, which is in the so-called Football Championship Subdivision, one level below the level Wazzu plays at, the Football Bowl Subdivision — is a rare thing.

One we should be happy is rare, because it’s going to be an awful game.

Consider that Wazzu has lost its eight conference games by an average score of 55-8. That Washington’s season total rushing yards (842) is less than what 42 individual players have rushed for (and two of those players are on the same team). That there are four teams in college football (Texas Tech, Tulsa, Houston, Oklahoma) with more offensive yards per game than UW and Wazzu COMBINED.

We’re looking at history, folks. It’s the “OJ-in-a-Bronco” kind of history, but it’s history.

So, here’s a little poll for y’all.

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of Montreal at the Showbox SoDo last night. (more photos [flickr / slideshow].

The main mistake of Montreal made was kickng off their Skeletal Lamping tour with a setpiece featuring Kevin Barnes trotting onto the stage astride a LIVE HORSE. Because, as far as expectations games go, that’s a tough one to beat even when you know that no band, no matter their level of sanity, is going to take a horse with them on the road. Still, every show after that will be measured by an equine yardstick and no matter how much spectacle there is (and there will be a whole lot of it), a certain segment of the audience will await the moment of the horse’s arrival.

As far as I could tell, though, the show had everything but that stallion. Pigs and ninjas. So many sexy ninjas. Death and rebirth. Guitar playing tigers and crowd-warming cowboys. The air filled with pig-launched flying feathers. Covers of “Take Me Out” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as encore. The song about Antarctica left unblemished by crass commercialism. Too many costume changes to track, and bizarre scenes of buddhas, the old west, blasphemous nuns, and animal tableaus. Silver-faced John McCains staging a hanging. Body paint, centauric transformation, and a resurrection in shaving cream. This two-plus hour dance party (setlist [flickr]) left the expansive room hungry for more, jittery from too many energy drinks, and coughing up feathers and glitter in awe when it was all over.

photo by Brittney Bush Bollay [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• On a day with other big pirate news comes another story of grand theft in the form of a half dozen parking meters being stolen from beneath the crumbling viaduct. [seattlest]
• Speaking of disappearances, all of the Sound Transit artwork has been cleared out of Broadway storefront to make way for demolition. [capitolhillseattle]
• WiFi in the Ferries still won’t be free, but it might be cheaper under a new contract. [westseattleblog]
• As the Stranger and its blogs start to look more and more like a locally-owned nationally-focused publication (confusing ANTM handicapping [tc] aside, the converse is happening at Seattle Weekly ), I was pretty excited to learn that you can subscribe to category-specific RSS feeds from the Slog. Maybe this has been around forever or maybe it’s part of the URL upgrade that irked Dylan last week? Those who want to keep Seattle news at the top of the heap would do well to plug the “City” archives into their RSS readers. [slog]

Climates, part of SIFF's Zeitgeist series

• Zeitgeist Films is an independent film distributor that for 20 years has been presenting the best of world cinema, reviving the movies of established master filmmakers like Jacques Demy and Derek Jarman, as well as providing a launching pad for current creative artists like Todd Haynes and one of my favorites, Guy Maddin. SIFF Cinema pays tribute to Zeitgeist with two weeks of their films, starting this Friday with the lovely Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the complicated romantic musical that established a young Catherine Deneuve as an international star for her turn as a young woman whose seemingly simple love affair creates complications for everyone in her orbit. Saturday sees screening of Guy Maddin’s deliriously fun Careful along with two of his short films, The Heart of the World and My Dad is 100 Years Old. Naturalistic documentary Into Great Silence, about an austere monastery in the French Alps, and film-within-a-film satire on French cinema Irma Vep play Sunday and Monday. Tuesday is Manufacturing Consent, an examination of the ideas of Noam Chomsky, Wednesday is Climates, a film about loneliness, loss, and love gone awry on the beautiful Aegean coast, and Thursday brings Francois Orzon’s nailbiting thriller, See the Sea, particularly recommended to anyone who enjoyed his Swimming Pool and Under the Sand.
• SIFF’s Films4Families series continues Saturday morning with To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic film rendering of Harper Lee’s classic novel, starring Gregory Peck in a masterful performance as a man driven to do the right thing no matter the cost. This is an exceptionally good movie choice for parents of kids in the upper years of grade school or the early years of junior high who will find the film an excellent springboard for discussions about morality and manners.
• NWFF kicks off their own excellent film series on Friday night with a reception for their Festival of New Cinema from Spain. In recent years, Spain has become a true hotbed of cinematic creativity with a host of artists pursuing a wide variety visions and challenges. An eclectic selection of films includes opening night feature Under the Stars which combines family drama with a depiction of the surprising friendship between two completely different people. Other films in the series include a surreal exploration of the self in Me, a struggle to dust off the relics of the past and transform them into a brighter future with Seven Billiard Tables, a collection of refreshingly original shorts, the ineffable joy of falling in love In the City of Sylvia, and more.
• Halloween’s been over for a while now, but horror fans can still get some thrills at The Grand Illusion with a pair of Stuart Gordon flicks from the 80s: The Re-Animator and From Beyond, both adapted from HP Lovecraft stories and best appreciated by those with a strong stomach for gore.
• Swing by the Grand Illusion late nights this weekend for 1976 “blaxploitation” shocker Dr. Black & Mr. Hyde, both cheesy and creepy.
• Who you gonna call late night at the Egyptian this weekend? Ghostbusters, of course. Oh, sure, the special effects that seemed so nifty at the time of its original release look majorly schlocky now but the goofy charm remains as strong as ever in this movie where every character is perfectly played.

UPDATE: A 28-year old Lake Stevens man has been arrested in relation to the Monroe armored car robbery that made headlines with a most unusual get-away vehicle: an inner tube. The robber held up an armored car with pepper spray, possibly escaped down the Skykomish River on an inner tube, and when police arrived, found a small group of men matching the description of the subject. A Craigslist ad placed 3 days before the incident asked for men looking for work to show up at a specific time wearing specific clothes, likely to fool police.

The suspect apparently wasn’t as smart as he thought. While he used an unlocked wifi account to post the Craigslist ad, police were still able to match DNA left on evidence at the scene to the suspect. A witness also reported the license plate number of the suspect’s wife to police after noticing unusual objects behind a dumpster next to the bank, which the suspect was observed picking up later in the day.

Ref.

On this Election Eve, it’s time to finally get around to talking politics here on Metblogs, something we don’t do that often. Waiting until election day in a city where 1/3 of you have already turned in your absentee ballot probably isn’t smart, but hey.

I talked to the other authors about whether they wanted to endorse, and most all of us said they were going to go straight ticket with the Stranger endorsements.

(Aside on the Stranger: Isn’t is a little odd that a paper that would continue to keep images of those Danish cartoons of Muhammed online — and proudly, staunchly, and rightfully defended their publishing of those cartoons — now turns tail and pulls down their “Hell Houses” article the moment Michelle “I’m a shrill disingenuous harpie and you can too!” Malkin and Matt “Wait, I’m still relevant?” Drudge come sniffing around?)

But we were all in the tank for Obama, anyway. And I think we all prefer four more middling years of Gregoire over four hell years from Dino “Greased Weasel” Rossi. But most of all, there were buckets and buckets of scorn heaped on Tim “I Don’t Have A Real Job Anymore, I’m Just The Political Equivalent Of A Panhandler” Eyman’s I-985, which would, among other things, make it impossible to get 520 rebuilt without raising taxes. Wait, I thought this was about road improvements without raising taxes. Oh, right, it’s Tim Eyman logic!

Downticket, we’re pretty much with the Strange, pro-transit, anti-silly-King-County-amendments. The one issue more than one of us differed on was I-1000, the Assisted Suicide initiative. The issue here is we don’t see safeguards within the initiative to prevent insurance companies from covering death cocktails while denying costly treatments. There’s been anecdotal evidence of this happening in Oregon, and while it is anecdotal and mostly from those opposing the Oregon law, a couple of minor changes in the language would plug that hole. So, split decision on that.

Anyway, if you haven’t voted, that’s our advice, and by the way, go look yourself up in the King County election database and go vote tomorrow. If you have voted, well, good for you.

for Thursday, October 29, 2008

* 7:00 PM: The Burke Museum, rare contributor to our local Lit scene, busts out with Richard Ellis and his non-fiction book Tuna: A Love Story. Ellis is a noted marine artist, as well as the author of over a dozen (really interesting) books, including The Book of Sharks, Imagining Atlantis, and Encyclopedia of the Sea. Presented in conjunction with Elliott Bay Books. [LINK]

* 7:00 PM: Daniel Chirot, UW Sociology professor, co-wrote Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder with Clark R. McCauley. Now he’ll be discussing the book at the University of Washington Club tonight. Genocide, it’s what’s for dinner. [LINK]

* 7:00 PM: On an only slightly less bloodthirsty note, David Wolman will be at the U-District UW Bookstore to discuss and sign his book Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling, a subject near and dear to my heart. Although, technically, there is no such thing as Olde English. There is Middle English, and before that the language wasn’t English at all, it was Anglo-Saxon, thank you very much. A former professor of Middle English was very firm on this point. I’m still scarred. [LINK]

* 7:30 PM: Open Books in Wallingford hosts Chicana poet Lorna Dee Cervantes. [LINK]

* 7:30 PM: A bunch of New York Review of Books heavyweights will be at Town Hall to discuss the war on terror, the occupation of Iraq, and this year’s presidential election, including Tom Powers, Martin Kettle, Jonathan Raban, and Michael Tomasky. Apparently, there was a series of essays published in the Review, The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush. I confess, I never read the Review. I do read Jonathan Raban, though, whose presence alone makes this Town Hall worth the cover. Well, Raban and the promise that all of the writers featured will have harsh words for our current president and his, er, administration. Just six more days… or too many months, depending on whether your glass is half full or half empty. $5 at the door, or via www.brownpapertickets.com, 800/838-3006. [LINK]

the stills // the paramount // 20 october 2008

On Monday night, Kings of Leon, We Are Scientists, and the Stills played at the Paramount. [flickr/slideshow].

But first, though, some quirks of the Paramount. Did you know, for instance that the entire interior is under copyright and that no photographs of it can be made without permission? Or, that for rock shows, the opening band is rarely listed on the ticket and that they start an hour before showtime? I knew the latter and arrived just as the Stills were tuning and a few extremely punctual VIPs were settling into their photopit seats.

Read more

photo by David Lindes [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• Oh dear. This has to be one of the more poignant personal explorations of life inside the freeze from one of the city’s better young writers. It’s stuff like this that makes me more annoyed by arguments [wired] that personal weblogs are finished. [ohmygodseattle]
• the Weekly explains why artists aren’t allowed to drink onstage [sots], but there’s still no good explanation of why the police are increasingly enforcing an outdated old law. [reverb]
• Smith is staying closer to home with its house cheapbrew. It’s been real, PBR, until it wasn’t. [capitolhillseattle]
• This is about a good a reason as any to mention that Phil Elverum and Julie Dorion put out a gorgeous new record early this month. [pwelverumandsun]
• Early this year we heard about how Jim Anderson’s recordings from the Crocodile’s soundbooth from 1992 to the club’s closing were going to be donated to the University of Washington. A few more details have emerged, but it may take a while before you’re plugging in to relive your favorite show. [10things]
• Wallingford’s favorite ice cream parlor is diving into breakfast, oatmeal style. [mollymoon]