Do you like the Rat City Rollergirls? How about burlesque? Well, put the two together and what do you have? Black Eyed Burlesque: featuring the Rat City Rollergirls.

November 21st & 22nd you can join the Rat City Rollergirls at Theatre Off Jackson for two unique nights of burlesque. Performers include members of:

Grave Danger
Throttle Rockets
Socket Wenches
DLF
Rat Fink Refs
Lightening Fists of Science

There will also be appearances by RCRG alumni, pre-show by DJ Maude Elletee and a few other special surprises. Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets starting at $20 for GA, $30 for Premium Reserved Seats or $125 for a special VIP package which includes a table for two on stage, champagne service, a gift bag and VIP access to an after party on the 22nd.

If you’re 18+ you should come out and support your local Rat City Rollergirls for what is sure to be a fun and unique experience.

Image courtesy of pdgibson via Flickr & CC.

…that you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit. The Seahawks have gorged themselves on their beyond mediocre division for the last four years, but now even beating the 49ers at home (after a humiliating loss to open the season on the road) turned out to be a pipe dream. Coaching, talent, teamwork, and luck win in the NFL and I’m not sure where the Seahawks are distinguishing themselves in any or all of these categories when it matters.

Seahawks fans, it’s time to stop going nuts over opponent false start penalties; Mike Holmgren’s swan song looks headed for a 4-12 season. On the plus side, that might be enough (when you factor in the tie breaker) to win the division.

This was the scene in the Montlake parking lot yesterday after the Huskies fell to BYU. Did a tailgate party get a little wild or are people using the lot as some kind of home remodeling dumping ground?

The Mariners lost to Texas tonight, 4-6. Now that the four-game winning streak has ended, I feel comfortable writing this without jinxing anything: Seattle has been worth watching the last couple weeks. If you stopped following the team back in mid-June — and there are many of you — consider giving them a second look. Not only did they win four in a row, they did it against decent teams (Cleveland, Texas). In the previous week they tied a series with Oakland, and they took two of three from Minnesota (a matchup U.S.S. Mariners thought would turn ugly).

Sure, a four-game win streak isn’t front-page news, but last night’s game may be the top pick for this season’s highlight reel, as Adrian Beltre hit for the cycle — a feat we haven’t seen from a Mariner since John Olerud in 2001. If that small olive branch isn’t enough to bring you back, probably nothing else will this year.

photo by your mistakes are your style’s photostream

If you are a Mariners fan and you’re female,  this one is for you.

The Savvy Girls of Summer are hosting a pre-game event next Tuesday for female Mariners fans and children under 14. Tickets are only $11 and include the game and a pre-game event w/ snacks, wine, and a Moose visit!

From Deidre Silva, one of the savvy girls, and author of It Takes More Than Balls: The Savvy Girls’ Guide to Understanding and Enjoying Baseball, “What makes this different from a Girls Night Out or Ladies Day event is that there will be a brief panel discussion featuring women who work in the sports industry. This is a good opportunity to expose your kids to a dramatically different sports perspective than we normally experience. Fox Sports commentator Angie Mentink will be on hand as well as a few women who are executives in the Mariners organization, including one of the player’s wives.”

More details, including the event schedule and online reservations, available here.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Carlson [flickr] via our group pool [#]

This past Sunday saw thousands of women descend upon Genesee Park in South Seattle for the 17th Annual Danskin Women’s Triathlon Series. They swam 1/2 a mile in Lake Washington, biked 12 miles on I-90 and ran 3.1 miles around Genesee Park. There were women of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds who participated. I’m happy to say that I was one of those women.

A co-worker convinced me to sign up for the triathlon and I’m glad that she did. I trained with the Team Danskin Heart Zones training group, which was founded by Sally Edwards, a pioneer in the sport of triathlon and former Ironman world record holder. The group training was amazing as was having the opportunity to spend time with Sally Edwards and hear her speak.

It was an unbelievable experience and I would encourage all women to give it a try.

For more information:

Official Danskin Triathlon Series website
Heart Zones Training
Team Danskin

Photo courtesy of Shawn via Flickr.

Willie Bloomquist attempts to throw out a runner at 2nd base. photo by kevin.devin

If you’re a casual fan, you’ve probably forgotten all about the Mariners. You may even think that by now, after several years of miserable personnel decisions and a mostly lopsided win-loss record, they may be headed for a rebound. Please allow me to disabuse you of that notion vis-à-vis commentary regarding the Mariners’ recent choice not to part ways with starting pitcher Jarrod Washburn and his absurd contract:

U.S.S. Mariner:

In case you weren’t sure, today was a great reminder that we’re all rooting for the worst run organization in baseball. There’s not another franchise with worse leadership or more incompetence in positions of power. From the CEO on down, these people don’t know baseball. They don’t know how to run a baseball team, build a roster, or win baseball games.

This organization is a massive collection of failures. They pile ridiculous decisions on top of each other, only outdoing their stupidity with an arrogance that refuses to learn from their mistakes. They are the Pets.com of MLB, only they refuse to go out of business.

I’m far too attached to the childhood memories I have to ever root for another team, but if the M’s screw up this offseason and don’t completely overhaul the baseball operations department, hiring somebody who actually understands baseball, I’ll spend the next few years rooting for these people to fail miserably and be embarrassed publicly.

These people don’t deserve success. They deserve to be looking for new jobs.

Fire them all.

Lookout Landing:

For some reason the Twins generously granted the Mariners a glorious opportunity to at least partially undo one of their greatest recent mistakes, and they passed it up. In so doing, they only confirmed that, while Bavasi may be gone, his legacy remains, and that this is an organization that doesn’t understand the first, most fundamental thing about building a baseball team. This was a gimme. This was some higher power saying “hey you guys have been through enough, here, let me give you a break.” And the Mariners didn’t care. They just didn’t care. Were this a college exam, the exam consisted of one question, and the question was “Spell the word ‘blue’,” and the multiple choice answers were (A) blue, (B) green, (C) yellow, (D) black, and the Mariners wrote “6″ on their Scantron. This was the easiest test you could imagine, and the Mariners failed.

They failed.

Just sayin’.

Despite their recent moderate success, it appears the nightmarish failure of this year’s Mariners has had consequences beyond the dugout. This morning KOMO fired popular blogger and radio reporter Shannon Drayer. That, combined with the contract expiration of FSN reporter Cara Capuano means there will be two less people covering the Mariners for the remainder of the season.

Drayer’s firing is especially puzzling. Her blog was well regarded by the difficult-to-please Mariners blogging community and her interviewing skills were second to none. That she was able to earn the respect of the most hard core fans while fitting in with the players in the clubhouse was a very unusual feat. No reason was given for her firing but the M’s horrible season has surely lead to a ratings decline. Additionally, this is KOMO’s final year broadcasting Mariners games and it appears they’ve already started divesting.

Next year KIRO will broadcast Mariners games resuming the duties they lost in 2003 [times]. They would be smart to hire Drayer post haste.

[via Geoff Baker]

.612 OPS.

All you non-stat-minded, non-baseball people just went, “Huh?” But here’s the deal. OPS is the sum of a player’s on-base percentage (their ability to get on base, whether by hit or walk) and slugging percentage (the total number of bases a player accumulates where a homer equals 4 bases, a triple equals 3, etc. divided by the total plate appearances — at bats and walks). It’s a quick-and-dirty way to determine whether a hitter is doing the two things they should be doing — getting on base, and getting a lot of extra base hits.

And Vidro was a hitter — the Mariners’ DESIGNATED HITTER, in fact. His job was to hit, not field, not pitch, just hit.

.612 is a bad OPS. The average OPS in the AL right now is .750. It’s abysmal for a DH. Not only is he last among all regular DHs in OPS, he’s almost 100 points behind the next worst hitter — 39 year old Gary Sheffield, who is wrapping up his Hall of Fame career as the Tigers’ grumpy old man.

If you look at all players in baseball with at least 300 plate appearances (which takes into account most part-time players), you find Vidro near the bottom of the list, with a guy who can only steal bases and a now injured shortstop in a mega-slump.

And again, Jose Vidro is a DESIGNATED HITTER. His job is to HIT. Not steal bases. Not field. Hit. And he couldn’t.

He might be the worst designated hitter to ever get 300 plate appearances ever.

And the Mariners traded for him in 2006, sending away two prospects to the Washington Nationals. Why?

So he could be their designated hitter. No, I’m not kidding.

And that pretty much sums up everything that’s been wrong with the Mariners in the last few years. They’re like that guy you know who always seems to offer stock picks for companies that tank. You find yourself wishing you could make money off betting against his idiocy.

In consideration of the shockingly large number of people with peanut allergies, Safeco Field is taking the step of providing two “peanut controlled zones” at the stadium during the Mariners’ games on August 5th and September 9th. As reported in the Times’ Mariners Blog and elsewhere, sections 311 and 312 will be cleaned thoroughly the night before each game to rid them of peanut influence and all peanut products will be banned for both games, including the concession stands which won’t sell any peanut products during the peanut ban games.

Why there are so many people with peanut allergies, I don’t know. Since peanuts are one the tastiest and most versatile foods that there are, I really feel for the allergic for not being able to eat and enjoy them. Since I rarely go to baseball games, I’ve never stopped to consider that peanut allergy sufferers would be inhibited from going, but now that the subject’s been raised; yeah, I can totally see how it might suck to be a baseball fan who is allergic to peanuts. While it’s probably impossible to completely eliminate all risk of allergen exposurem I think this is a cool idea and give the M’s a thumbs up for it.

If you’d like to get seats in the peanut free sections during these games, you can get them directly from the Mariners site. [nopeanuts]