photo by Forrest Pangborn [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• the DECIBEL Festival starts tonight. Three Imagninary Girls explain it to you in terms that even non-electro warriors can understand. [tig]
• Greg Kucera & Regina Hackett tell you how to get your art represented. [arttogo]
• Boeing to challenge US News & World Report in the collegiate rankings game. [ideas.nyt]
• WaMu found a suitor in JP Morgan Chase. [slog]
• Everything you loved about 1621 12th Avenue is gone or soon to be that way. Latest casualty = Lower Level. [seattlest]

Casa Latina is a Seattle-based non-profit that exists to serve Latino seasonal workers in the Seattle area. By providing educational and economic opportunities to immigrants, Casa Latina empowers them to get the skills and jobs they need to get themselves and their families out of poverty. They do a great job of providing these resources to the many people who utilize them; a tribute to their success so far is that even though the organization was founded in 1994 they’ve already outgrown their space. In order to better serve the community, Casa Latina is expanding; Monday marked the groundbreaking ceremony for their new space in the Central District, at 1620 S. Jackson. At project completion, this will give Casa Latina 10,000 square feet of facility, including a 6,000 sq. ft. space to house their classroom space and a function hall. The project has two phases; phase 1 is what’s just now underway and this is renovating the site’s exisiting 3,000 sq ft space with a 1,000 sq ft addition. This will serve as the long-term home for the Day Worker’s Center which currently operates out of a trailer and two temporary shelters with no indoor heating, plumbing or phone services.

Casa Latina anticipates having phase I complete and ready for occupation by December of this year. Project design is by Johnson Architects; the general contractor is M.A.D. Construction, a local family and minority owned business who have agreed to work with Casa Latina and the local union to provide training opportunities for Casa Latina members.

Great community projects like Casa Latina provide a real value to our city - not just to the people directly affected (the laborers whose increased education and experience allow them to provide better lives for their families and the employers who get hard-working, highly-motivated employees), but to all of us and I’m really excited about their expansion. The new Casa Latina home will be the first day labor center in the US that’s been built from the ground up and I hope it will serve as an inspirational model to other cities.

photo by viv | seattlebonvivant [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• CHS founder to whine on the radio about the Blue Angels. [chs]
• I often miss internet humor entirely, but this suggestion for how to improve the air show is awesome and funny and I really LOLed. Maybe jseattle can incorporate it into his interview. [seattlest]
• Blaynelicious is back, pulling shots at Hotwire, while we wait to find out if he won Project Runway. [westseattleblog]
• Too many errors of inference to refute; probably easier if Knute Berger just vows to step away from the statistics. [crosscut]
• Adbusters really hates hipsters even though they must be a big slice of their readerbase. [adbusters, via fimoculous]

photo by Andrea [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• Bradley Steinbacher, like many others in recent weeks, is leaving the Stranger. “Dude, what the fuck?” [slog]; “Now it’s gonna be all ladies and fags” [slog]; He will be missed. [slog,slog,slog,slog,slog,slog,slog,slog,slog, slog, slog, slog, slog, slog, slog, slog]
• Let’s hope this doesn’t also mean the end from A. Birch Steen. [stranger]
• The Times finds P-I reporter Mónica Guzmán buying an iPhone. [bigblog]
• Les Thugs are playing a free pre-SP20 show at Neumo’s. [nwmb]
• King Cobra is already for sale. [soundonthesound]
• There’s a 10 year anniversary party for Roq La Rue tonight [belltowner]

photo by sea kay [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• All of your tips are belong to shift managers no more. Eighty-six million pounds of spare change to be redistributed. [starbucksgossip]
• Taxidermy is so hot right now. Cool addict discovers Foxmaid. If someone bought me this fox I would not turn it away. [cooladdict]
• Dinner parties on the highway. Sounds slightly better in concept than in practice. And that’s not saying much. [citizenrain]
• Now that all of that anti-trust stuff is over, Microsoft leans left in the political donations game. [dailyweekly]
• Never Forget. LJ-ers to boycott journaling tomorrow in protest over free accounts being booted and depressed bisexual faerie fanfic being suppressed. But where will we host our strike blogs? [firefoxnews]
• The U-Village Apple Store, gay mecca. [ohmygodseattle]

per a google image search, helena bonham carter is a christmas tree

With apologies to LCD Soundsystem, I didn’t think anything could put me into a worse mood today. It’s cold outside and the days are so short I arrive to work when it’s dark and leave when it’s dark.

The Seattle Streetcar is turning out to be the most disappointing transportation device since the Segway Scooter. The Segway Scooter even has the advantage of being cheaper. And faster, apparently.

UW president Mark Emmert, after presiding over two of the most unfortunate events to occur on campus in recent memory, lost an Athletic Director in Todd Turner whose downfall seems to have something to do with the fact that he wouldn’t sell his soul in exchange for football wins.

Then, I read this gem of a headline on the front page of the P-I’s website:

Ho-ho-no: McDermott votes against Christmas [p-i]

Congressman McDermott apparently voted against House Resolution 847 which:

“Acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.”

This, after voting in favor of House Resolutions honoring the importance of Ramadan and Diwali. P-I reporter John Iwazaki even dubbed McDermott “McGrinch”.

Frankly, what caused my mood to spiral further downward was not that McDermott voted against this resolution. I don’t care. No, what I care about is the enormous waste of time these House Resolutions are that honor this holiday or that person or, and I’m not joking, the House Joint Resolution “recognizing the contributions of Christmas tree industry to the United States economy.” [hjres 15] Yes, you read that correctly. Our United States House of Representatives spent time drafting and voting on a resolution to honor the apparently huge, positive impact that Christmas tree sales have on our economy. Allow me to reproduce, in its entirety, this important historical record:
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photo by lele mcleod [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Giant Squid invade McLeod Residence! To mark the opening of Cassandra Nguyen’s exhibition of plush adolescent-sized squid in the parlor, the McLeods will be hosting the Cephalopod Appreciation Society for tonight’s party. They will be on hand to facilitate live drawing, squid poetry, and other activities from 7:30 to 9:00 tonight. (Don’t tell your tentacled friends, but there are also rumors of squid snacks and inky beverages.). [mcleodresidence]
• SIFF is giving you two weeks to absorb Sergei Bondarchuk’s seven hour film version of War & Peace, presented in the original Russian language audio with English subtitles. On the weekends, they’re allowing an hour break for meals; during the week you can start one day and finish later. [seattlefilm]
• DORKBOT will be doing Strange Things with Electricity, starting Saturday at 911 Media Arts Center. [dorkbot]
• Hard to believe, but the Fantagraphics bookstore is already celebrating their first anniversary. From 6 to 8 pm, they’ll be having a party run by Ellen Forney, Jim Woodring, and Jim Blanchard with musical accompaniment and a twenty percent off sale. [flog]

A couple of your ever-vigilant Metroblogging correspondents stumbled upon another foam party last night, this time in Cal Anderson Park’s water feature. Foam was piled at the far end and heaped all around the base of the big cone. At least two fountains foamed in two weeks clearly points to the presence of a bandit, someone roaming the neighborhood with a need to soap.

Are they out for a good time, or is the purpose something more sinister? Commenters on Seattlest have stated that soaping fountains leads directly to dead fish and polluted water. Capitol Hill foamster, are you out to harm the fishies? Are you hoping for cleaner homeless people and drunken hipsters? Just what is your grand, sudsy plan?

daft punk // wamu theater // 29 june 2007 (more photos of pyramid power [flickr])

We got to the cavernous WaMu Theater (complete with VIP lounge for Washington Mutual cardholders) just as the Rapture were starting and sounding surprisingly great given that they were playing in a giant metal box only half-filled at the time. I’ve seen them several times in venues large and small and have always been impressed with their angular, high-energy dance rock. Tonight was no exception; the band brought plenty of cowbell, but there was really just not enough enthusiasm from the crowd to live up to previous exhaustingly epic performances. As much as I like the Rapture, they’re really not the sort of music for quiet contemplation and the audience makes a big difference in the taking a show from fun to breathtaking.

Here, the crowd was (ovbiously) there to hear Daft Punk and required more convincing than I might have imagined. Although many valiant pockets of appreciative dancing erupted, they just weren’t quite contagious enough to infect the whole room for more than a few minutes. When “House of Jealous Lovers” doesn’t drive the masses out of their collective minds, you know it’s an uphill battle. It certainly didn’t help that the Rapture was stuck on a really dark stage and their repeated requests for more lights were met with feeble efforts from lighting techs who may have been surprised that there was an actual band onstage with people and instruments playing music. By the end, they got a few more spotlights and maybe a few more fans, leaving with good natured waves and “Over and Over Again”.

By the end of their set, several people in aluminum foil, masks, neon jumpsuits started to filter in while Kavinsky spun pulsing beats under the uncharacteristically bright house lights. Perhaps the venue was trying to fend-off a transformation to a rave? In addition to the few costumed revelers, there were a shocking number of people with crutches, some adorned with glow bracelets and held in the air. (The healing power of music? An exceptionally jock-infused crowd? or the refusal to miss a rare Daft Punk appearance despite injury?)

Each teasing pauses on the soundsystem only further heightened the anticipation for the headliners, and each hint of their impending appearance was skinny fists raised like antennas to heaven in pyramid formation. At last, the lights fell and the giant pyramid with its two robotic pilots appeared in a silhouette of blinding lights and the chanting sounds of “Robot Rock” and was met by a sea of bobbing tiny LCD screens to meet their master’s powerful onstage gaze. Daft Punk’s set was immaculately structured, both musically and visually, with relatively simplistic light and sound arrangements gaining complexity through the imperative-filled “Technologic” to an amazing free-wheeling mix of “Around the World” (or maybe a crazy collage of several entirely different tracks with samples from “Around the World” thrown in? Does it matter?)

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According to the New York Times, Bill Gates’ $82 billion net worth makes him the fifth richest American in history. I don’t think their numbers are adjusted for inflation, though. The numbers are measured as a percentage of the economy as a whole. That said, the Gates Foundation is clearly the wealthiest charitable foundation in the world. With $33 billion in assets (and another $31 billion coming its way from Gates’ buddy Warren Buffet) the Foundation easily has another two or three decades of work ahead of itself to give away all that money. Ignoring Gates’ personal fortune for a moment, the Foundation’s worth is greater than 95 of the 162 countries the World Bank lists GDP figures for. It would slot in between Croatia and the Dominican Republic. It’s interesting to me that one of the most powerful organizations in the world sits in a nondescript office building on Eastlake Avenue. Let’s be thankful Gates is a sniveling nerd who happens to care a lot about world health and education issues instead of someone like Howard Hughes or the robber barons of the late 19th century.

Oh, and for a little context, if the Gates Foundation feels in a rush to give away its money and close up shop, it could always fund the war in Iraq. At $12 billion a month [forbes], they’d be done in time for the start of baseball season next year.