Rick Steves at Hempfest 2008 by Seattlest's own Ronald Holden. We're not afraid to admit it, we kinda have a thing for Rick Steves. Steves has gone beyond local travel guru and bespectacled PBS travel host to become an outspoken advocate against the criminalization of marijuana and the U.S.'s "War on Drugs." He has done so while still coming across as sensible and trustworthy. Steves is the antithesis of every stoner stereotype in mainstream culture,......

Last night we flipped on the tee-vee, and stumbled on a KCTS fundraiser: Dr. Daniel G. Amen in his self-produced show, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life." If you missed it, you're in luck: it's showing fifteen more times locally. This is the same Dr. Daniel G. Amen featured on Quackwatch (his response) and whose claim to help "prevent" Alzheimer's was severely critiqued on Salon recently (once again, Amen responds). Whatever else is true (Amen......

Is February Jane Austen month? PBS has turned every Sunday evening into a Jane celebration (see the KCTS Jane Austen blog for the definition of overkill), but if you want to experience Jane Austen the way she meant to be experienced (if you get our drift) and are too lazy to read a book, then Book-It's Persuasion is all you, baby. Book-It is the place where they actually act out the whole book, which to......

George Porter (of The Meters) and his band, Porter Batiste Stoltz, are descending upon Fremont's Nectar Lounge tonight, providing you with the opportunity to experience legendary New Orleans dirty funk right here in Seattle. Porter was the bass player for the original Meters back in the '60s and '70s. Russell Batiste, Jr., and Brian Stoltz jumped on the funk train with Porter in The Meters' late '80s reincarnation--the Funky Meters. George Porter, Jr.'s, bass is......

Seattlest mentioned in one of our posts about Rick Steves' Town Hall appearance two weeks ago that a friend of ours was racing through Europe with Rick's tour company at the time. Meanwhile, the "Rick Steves' Politics Through the Backdoor with Rick Steves" thing at Town Hall was great (actual title: "Travel as a Political Act"), but we wondered who, exactly, he thought he was converting with it. Rick's a liberal, he was in front......

The post we wrote yesterday about Rick Steves ("Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world.") seems reasonable if you only know the man through his travel shows on PBS. He was on the Town Hall stage for all of about four seconds last night before destroying that illusion. Actually, he lives in a few different worlds; one here, in Edmonds, Washington, U.S.A., and another in Europe where he spends a third of every......

Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world. The voice, the haircut, the folksy European dinners with friends one after another after the other. Just once we want to flip to PBS in time to see Steves in Friedrichstraße going berserk on a ticketing agent, but it won't happen because the world is his oyster. A friend of Seattlest's is currently on a 5-week Rick Steves tour of Europe, which we love telling people......

No, not that Michael Jackson. The other Michael Jackson, the world's leading beer critic/scholar/historian/writer, was found dead in his London home last night. Likely, not many of you have heard of the anti-child molesting Michael Jackson. He was possibly the most important driving force in the world-wide beer community over the past 30 years. Starting with his first publication of "World Guide to Beer" in 1977, he has always been a strong voice for......

Striking out on one's own and carving a living from the breast of the land was once the mark of an American hero. The colonists, the homesteaders, the gold rushers, even, are mythological giants without which our country would have no identity, no past. Our city in particular was an outpost of these kinds of guys, scratching sustenance from a far and isolated territory. Today, if you live in the woods you're a wacko. We're......

Two weeks ago we were watching American Experience: Influenza 1918 on PBS, because something else was a repeat. So we were reminded that between spring of 1918 and the end of that year, 675,000 Americans died of the flu -- 20 million worldwide-- and no one still knows why, precisely. (In fact, about 36,000 Americans die of the flu annually.) But then just last week, we saw this article in the Seattle Times, which......

Monday AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Barbara Ehrenreich talks about her book Dancing in the Streets, in which she explores the desire for collective joy (see photo), historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. 7:30pm // Town Hall // Tickets $5 Tuesday MANUSCRIPT READING: Frances McCue, former artistic director and co-founder of Richard Hugo House, reads from "Chasing Richard Hugo" and presents a short film shot in Montana with Charles D'Ambrosio, Bill Kittredge and......

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......

Wednesday, November 8 >>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. >>>Pacific Science Center......

Town Hall - All the Thrill of Cable Access, Live! (TM). In Seattle, this is actually a draw. Maybe it's also due to their PBS-minded Upstairs Downstairs set-up. Last night the upstairs was jammed with 800 perspiring Albrightists, ready to hear her declaim on the prospects for faith-based political strategery (we believe this is related to the President's plan to hold Condi over his head during battle, to bring the sun to a stop in......

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines. Houstonist announces their new Cops spinoff "World's Funniest Tazer Videos" and the possible cancellation of their pervs' "World's Grossest Bathroom Videos" and PBS trains cams on cows at, uhg, Mootube. Also,......

Despite near-daily attendance at the film festival, Seattlest has managed to keep up with PBS's cooking reality series Cooking Under Fire, which airs on KCTS Wednesday nights at 8:30. Among the six remaining contestants are two Seattleites, Autumn Maddox and Jean-Paul Abernathy, competing for their chance to work for NYC-based celebrity chef Todd English and become "the next great American chef." A third Seattle contestant, Blair King, was 86'd (the show's industry-inspired term for "eliminated")......

Continuing Seattlest's new feature, Downer Friday: Sites around the world have been commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a place Seattlest has personally visited and personally been marked forever by. In Seattle Dr. Robert van Pelt will be giving a talk entitled 'Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State' at the Lemieux Library of Seattle University on Feb, 3, 7pm. For those stay-at-home types, a six hour BBC/PBS documentary also named 'Auschwitz: Inside......