Even if this was John McCain's Chief of Staff, we still wouldn't vote for him. Photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr Photographer Jessiqua A couple of Seattle's finest neighborhood blogs are also covering Nickelsville. Blogging Georgetown and West Seattle Blog are both giving thorough coverage to the story.Did someone say gumbo? Honest to god, Louisiana-made gumbo in Seattle? Hallelujah! The Central District News has a glowing (tummy-grumble-inducing) review.Ballard High graduate Jean Smart won an Emmy last......

"Baklava" by Seattlest Flickr Photographer nikchik. A Central District woman got quite the hilarious scare yesterday morning when she spotted a silent smiling "intruder" while walking her puppy around the block. It turned out to be a life-size cut-out of GWB, stuck in neighborhood bush. But let's be honest, it would scare the bejeebus out of us too...especially in the dark!MyBallard covers the proposed car camp for homeless residents in Ballard.You've got just over two......

Safeco_1999 by Seattlest Flickr Photographer sonoazure. To us, a stadium. To Microsoft, a conference room. Rainier Valley Post warns: beware the Microsofties on I-90 today! The Microsoft annual meeting will be 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at Safeco Field today, and I-90 is sure to be a clusterfuck.Flu season is just around the corner and the B-Town Blog has a comprehensive list of south Sound sites for flu shots.Lights & Sirens reports on the oldest homicide suspect......

[Untitled] by Sea Kay. We say: wear a helmet! MyBallard clears up the confusion about when it is actually okay to drive in 15th's bus lane.PhinneyWood has photos to show what happens when a car gets t-boned by a metro bus, careens into a parked car, and sends the once-parked car crashing on to a Phinney Ridge porch.Ron Sims twitters about what good shape Dan Savage is in, the P-I's Big Blog reports it, and......

"En La Mer" by Seattlest Flickr Pool contributor Forrest Pangborn. Trust us-- we'd rather be exploring some tide pools today! CHS, Cap To The Hill, and Seattle Metblogs are all talking about the coolest new hyper-local, easy-on-the-eyeballs website to hit the Emerald City. Hint: restaurant inspection reports are so public record! West Seattle Blog was one of the first to report results from the Primary vote yesterday! Dang, those guys are good. Now, has......

By all appearances, The Slog, has morphed into upscale French underwear. We came across this display over the weekend at the Galeries Lafayette in Biarritz. Just how pricey? Well, 43 euros is $65. Each. Same brand is also available in white cotton briefs, $54 for a three-pack, but not nearly as sexy. Surprisingly, there's a sexy-Sloggi website. Safe for work, too.......

We walked into our caucus location -- a hot, overcrowded elementary school with signs that said "Welcome to the First Grade" -- as an undecided voter, and two and a half hours later walked out as an undecided voter, but with a deeper appreciation of democracy. Not that it made much difference in real-world terms. Our precinct (189 people turned out) went heavily Obama, which we understand is how the wind blew in Seattle......

We've been Ellen Forney fans since we read "I Was Seven in '75" -- back when it ran in The Rocket. Her latest project is Lust, a collection of the "Lustlab Ad of the Week" cartoons she does for The Stranger, published this month by Fantagraphics. We interviewed Forney about the cartoon at Georgetown's All City Coffee, just down the block from the Fantagraphics store where there will be a book launch party tomorrow night.......

Maybe when your club is as steeped in musical history and genetically bound to its host city as the Crocodile Cafe, explaining a sudden shut-down is embarrassing. Maybe a public statement is too daunting a task. Maybe a background in law teaches you to keep your mouth shut. Whatever the reason, Stephanie Dorgan could pick up some PR tips from Matt Feigenbaum, owner of Bellingham's just put-to-rest Nightlight Lounge. Feigenbaum sent a 1500-word "formal......

Hey, Seattlest! I'd like to start a sex advice column, but there's a catch-22. I'm not a columnist yet, so no one's sent me any questions, but unless I answer questions I don't have a column. Can I just pick a question Dan Savage answered in "Savage Love" and answer it myself? If anyone asks, I'll claim I "solicited questions from friends." I read his column every week -- I must be a friend, right?......

Of that much, we are certain, given Ted Miller's nine hundred word essay on Christal Morrison's "killer looks." First off, he's right. The girl is absolutely stunning -- in that bible school, girl-next-door kind of way. In fact, we'll readily admit that when we saw her smiling face on the front page of this morning's PI, we cut straight to page D1 for the full-size photo. Yeah, she's not bad. After cooling ourselves off with......

Conventional wisdom says these days ain't happy ones for pulp-and-print publications. Circulation's down. Ad revenues are down. Everyone wants to read online. So nearly every newspaper, magazine and television news program has a host of blogs these days, to compete with the millions of self-described experts, autodidacts, conspiracy theorists and Chuck Norris-aficionados who propagate the blogosphere with their own brand of citizen journalism (read: poor spelling and poorer grammar). Indeed, it's hard to get noticed......

If you were here right now, you'd see us looking around suspiciously like we don't quite trust we're awake because we just read Knute Berger's latest deep thought over at Crosscut and we...agree with him.While promoting green consumption might be politically more palatable than getting people to change their habits and expectations, promoting consumption still offers an answer that doesn't solve the bigger problem. Global warming's hawks have to be honest with us: Fighting the......

Slate asked Dan Savage and six other "sexperts" what, despite their experience, they still don't get about sex. Savage's answer: What I don't understand is ... gee, how people can be so willfully stupid about sex. Sex came first. Before marriage, there was sex. Before religion, there was sex. Before freakin' humans, there was sex. All human cultures, and all our fanciful religions, were constructed around sex, built to regulate and control sex, sanctify and......

At the moment, Seattlest is an Enemy of Slog, due in part to this critical post on Seattle's aging weeklies. (In retrospect, we should not have implied that Dan Savage was getting older. He's evergreen, like many of our trees.) But we're not bitter -- it's an honor just to be listed! -- but puzzled by the news that Dan's getting kicked upstairs and arts editor Christopher Frizzelle is now Editor di tutti. There's so......

Dan Savage and Jamie Pederson aren't the only gay dads in town--apparently there's a whole bunch, and some of them are looking to form a support group. "My partner and I had a baby a few months ago and were surprised at the lack of support, social outlets for Gay men with babies/kids so we decided to get off our ass and start one ourselves," says Larry Nicholas. Good on ya, Larry. They're meeting at......

Well, this piece certainly is interesting. We recognize it as satire because we know the cultural context that is Dan Savage. We only wish that Mr. Savage would have done the same about a month or four ago when he royally skewered Garrison Keillor, who wrote his own bit of satire in this Salon piece. At first, we couldn't help but giggle at his error in judgment. Perhaps he didn't understand Mr. Keillor's cultural context?......

Tonight's episode of This American Life is "What I Learned from TV," compiled from live performances on their tour of the same name. Pieces by David Rakoff, Sarah Vowell, and Dan Savage will be included. Seattlest went on March 7, when the live show hit the Paramount, and we can confirm that the Rakoff and Savage stories are solid. (We're also happy that Alexa Junge's piece, about her experiences as a female TV scriptwriter,......

We confess: we wondered if it was worth it. This American Life cut down on the new radio shows so they could produce their new TV show (debuting on Showtime next month). And it's not that we didn't think they could make TV, but we really did miss the radio show. But this trailer for the TV show? It restores our faith, gives us hope, and inspires us to contemplate dropping HBO for Showtime,......

MUSIC: Dancing on the Valentine features wall-to-wall Duran Duran songs covered by local bands, including Say Hi to Your Mom, Valu-Pak, Speaker Speaker, and Peter Parker, all to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 8pm // The Crocodile, 2200 2nd Ave // $10 -- to fight disease! MOVIE: Age of Consent, a rare Michael Powell film featuring James Mason (Eddie Izzard's voice of God) slurring his lines and Helen Mirren as an incredible young hottie,......

Yesterday morning, as we were getting ready to leave for work, we heard Deborah Brandt mention to Harmon Shay that "this is the last Monday we'll be doing this together." Yup -- with a week to go, Brandt announced her upcoming departure on air. She went on to tell Harmon that the news was published in the newspaper a few weeks ago -- and that she's already heard some people say so long, good riddance,......

The P-I's Joel Connelly fires a shot across the Stranger's bow this morning with a satirical column titled "Peer into future after car ban -- it isn't pretty." Connelly depicts Seattle's dystopian future, in which automobiles, smoking, erections, and unhealthy food have all been banned, and Stranger writers are the city's icons:The "Bicycle Blockade of Ballard Oil" is a heroic painting that officials frequently show their guests from "the outside."... The mural depicts its chief......

MUSIC: Deerhoof. Some have dismissed Deerhoof as bland or simply weird. Others praise the complex composition of their songs. We just think they're good. *Sample tracks on MySpace 8:00 pm // Neumo's // $12adv (All ages, bar w/ ID) AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Charles Johnson delivers his talk, "Whole Sight: The Intersection of Culture, Faith, and Imagination." Literary critic, screenwriter, philosopher, and cartoonist, Johnson is the author of Middle Passage (1990), winner of the National Book Award.......

You may or may not know that hyperlocal blog Capitol Hill Seattle is running a poll pitting Capitol Hill's living room, Victrola, against Capitol Hill's overly-caffeinated-stream-of-consciousness, the Slog. (You can also vote for squirrels in another hotly contested match-up.) We see the Slog's Dan Savage has imported some Chicago machine tactics, keeping up a steady drumbeat to stir the populace, advocating "re-voting," and (here's where it gets shocking) asking Portlanders to vote for Slog.......

--Dan Savage sits across the table from Steven Colbert tonight on the Report (11:30pm, Comedy Central). Give em hell, Dan. --How can a timber company make money without cutting down trees? Hopefully they come up with something. --If you just paid a premium for granite counter tops in Seattle you'll be happy to know that granite is so last week. --Where are your favorite Griswoldian houses? --Defective Yeti experiences two fantasies he never knew......

Even before we got drunk during last night's game, we felt like we were in some substance-induced hysteria. Just a weird, weird game. We don't think people are grasping just how unusual the weather at Qwest Field was. Not only was it the coldest ever for a Hawks home game (obviously, the years in the Kingdome weren't much competition), the 34-degree temp would've been the 2nd coldest recorded game temperature ever at Husky Stadium. It......

Wednesday, November 15 >>>UW iSchool at Kane Hall, 7:00-9:00pm. "Voices in an Empty Room: Five Apologies for the Narrative": Children's author Richard Peck discusses his writing and teaching careers, and his experiences with the kids today. He'll read from On The Wings Of Heroes, his new novel about a World War II childhood. Free with RSVP. Kane Hall, Rm. 220. >>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. We saw this book talk about adoptive parents and thought......

Susan Paynter thinks all the talk about "freedom of speech" around Referendum 1 (the four-foot rule, etc.) is a ruse -- what the clubs really want to keep "legal" is prostitution: If we want a vote, up or down, on legalizing prostitution, then, in the words of G.W. Bush, bring it on. But if, outside of Nevada, we still oppose the oldest profession when it is practiced on the street, do we ignore it when......

--Another Seattle Weekly staffer bites the dust. Phillip Dawdy is out. --Head's up Seattle daters: Where's the best place to find, "young, single, heterosexual women who put out?" --Mars Hill's Mark Driscoll has decided that all pastors should travel with a eunuch battalion since their frumpy and unavailable wives do nothing to protect them from the temptations of the road. --Does Simon Cowell do his "insert-city-name-here singers are miserable" act everywhere he visits, or......

What's the kindest thing you can say about the Empty Space Theatre closing its doors after 35 years? It can't be this, in the comments section over on the Stranger's Slog: No more life support for dying theaters. E[mpty] S[pace] should have gone under 10 years ago. Creative destruction is important to arts scenes. Energy that could have gone into pulling together a new theater was dumped into propping up a dying one. That......