FOOD ORGY: Get thee to the Seattle Center this weekend for the annual Bite of Seattle. Over a hundred booths, multiple beer gardens, cooking demos, live entertainment... all in the name of of good, local eating? Sounds like a great weekend event to us! Take advantage of the Just A Bite area, offering mini versions of local restaurant specialties for $3.75 a serving. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri & Sat; 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun // Seattle......

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...with the recent trend of oak aging beer, we were pumped to hear about Brouwer's Big Wood Fest starting this Thursday at the Fremont bar. Brouwer's will clear their taps to have 40+ wood aged beers pouring this weekend. They won't discriminate; Belgian style sours, big, burly stouts and everything in-between will be lined up side-by-side. What is wood aged beer you ask? It is exactly what wine makers......

Seventeen teams showed up at the Old Pequliar last night to see if our voice would give out. We managed to get through the evening without having a Peter Brady moment, but we're grateful to those of you who were willing to step up to the mic at a moment's notice. We thought we'd produced a slightly more difficult quiz than usual, but we were proven wrong -- every team got 40 or more......

Admittedly, the only reason we know this is because we submitted a poem and it's on a bus, and so we were invited to the party. Sadly there was never any chance that we were going to stand up in public and read it. Its only purpose is to disrupt the glances of bus riders lingering over the list of things you're not allowed to do on buses in Spanish, the announcement of whichever UW......

Oh, no, we've got the right Eleanor Friedberger, Ms. Friedberger. We were there. We saw what you were up to. You and your brother, Matthew, correct? The man making like an evil genius on a midway organ. Look, we just have a few questions, we understand you wrote this, these, yes, these are your words?And I did not fail to bust off a nail as the dodge door handle dodges my hand -- delicate, delicate,......

Mariner big leaguers are feeling good with the team at 13 games over .500, but if they belonged to an M's farm team, they'd be expecting a pink slip. Future Mariners, you see, aren't supposed to try to win too much. So says Greg Hunter, the Mariners' director of minor-league and scouting operations:A good gauge is .500. You want your clubs to be somewhere around there, whether it's a few games above or below. You......

There's been a lot of hype about this disc--Clarkson fired her management and pissed off Clive Davis in the process of making it--and you can bet pretty much every reviewer will mention that somewhere in their assessment. We're sheep, so we thought we'd open with that and get it out of the way. We'll be honest. Nobody's going to be giving Kelly Clarkson an award for being a great lyricist, so just get it out......

What can you say about something like Smokey Joe's Cafe that isn't self-evident from the hype that it's the "Longest Running Musical Review in the History of Broadway(TM)"? Either that does it for you or it doesn't. If you're (relatively) young, bent and jaded you probably won't connect with the graying clap-and-sing-along demographic excited by the highly polished but hammy renditions of popular top 40 songs from their childhood. Our friend Andy who tagged along......

We're the kinda betting person who will say something in March, like, "We'll bet you the final four contestants on American Idol will be Melinda, Blake, Jordin, and Lakisha," but we won't put any money on it. Then, when that's exactly what happens (as it did last night), we'll be all, "Gah! Why didn't we put money on it?" Maybe we should just go ahead right now and say we'll put ten bucks on Melinda......

There's a classic science fiction short story called The Country of the Kind by Damon Knight that was published in 1955. The narrator of the story walks around a utopia acting like a huge asshole, disrupting lives and smashing up properties. He thinks of himself as the king of the world because everyone around him is too nice--like enlightened and tolerant and kind--to stand up to him. It's a humane and permissive society, completely free......

Haley's gone. Not surprising. American Idol elimination rounds aren't really all that bloggable now that we think about it. Now that we think about it, maybe we'll refrain from blogging about them until Sanjaya inevitably gets kicked off, or wins. Last night, in case you missed it, J-Lo brought the house down with her new Spanish-language single. We never thought we'd fall in mad love with J-Lo, but she managed to pull us over to......

For our headline, we borrow the words of that magnificent artisan of the English language, Fox Sports Northwest's Brad Adam. Could anyone sum up Felix Hernandez' breathtaking, complete game shutout, no-hit-thru-seven-innings performance last night any better? Probably not, but let's take a look-see. "He threw me a pitch my last at-bat, I'm not kidding you, it moved about 6 feet and it was a 95-mile-an-hour sinker. I mean, what can you do?" -- 2B......

We knew that Carlos Guillen's 2001 bout with tuberculosis was serious, but until we read this feature by Jon Paul Morosi (formerly of the P-I, now with the Detroit Free Press), we never knew that Guillen was so close to death:He could barely sleep. He had a fever every night. He battled headaches and weakness. He lost almost 20 pounds. He coughed up blood. Yet, Carlos Guillen continued to play shortstop for the Seattle Mariners.......

--One branch of the Hendrix clan is suing another that apparently gave the green light to the tasteless Hendrix Electric Vodka. Can someone please stand up and sue Love for the video game abomination? --Scooter Libby: Not Guilty! Wait, guilty, of course. --Three protesters were arrested in Tacoma today and one was shot. Shot? What the hell is going on down there? Ah, rubber bullet. --Lake City Way speed traps exposed! --Wawona fans are......

When you occasionally answer the question "What are you doing tonight?" with, "Going to a high-school basketball game," you become accustomed to receiving weird looks from people. No matter. We have an inordinate amount of fun at these games, at least half of which isn't related to basketball at all. At Tuesday's O'Dea/Blanchet game, the Blanchet band was particularly compelling. For instance, this skinny, ungainly kid who didn't appear to even play an instrument (though......

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where......

A website entitled "People Against Fundamentalism" is setting up a direct action against the Seattle megachurch Mars Hill for December 3rd at 11am outside their Ballard campus to protest the preachings of Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll. There is a certain...passion to the website's descriptions of Mark and his attitudes towards women, as you can see here: 'Preaching' may be too staid of a term. He [Mark Driscoll] has been relishing in his misogyny, rolling......

We caught one of those Sound of Young America stand up shows the other night at the Rendezvous, featuring three openers - ranging in quality from okay to just slightly less than great - followed by the hilarious, bordering-on-genius headliner Brent Weinbach. Someone named "Brian Palmer" accurately summed up Weinbach's surreal schtick better than we ever could in this intro to his interview with him from last year: Onstage Brent Weinbach holds the microphone......

Seattle Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas announced today he'll resign at the end of the year, leaving a job opening for anyone who likes getting screamed at. Manhas has attempted to get the school district financially solvent by closing schools. It's totally sane. Unfortunately, a lot of parents aren't. Maybe Manhas will join his former spokesman, who quit in disgust after last week's rowdy public meeting (video here), where psychotic parents hurled racial epiphets and, in......

This guy, Buju Banton, is going to stand up on the Neumo's stage on Wednesday and play a song called "Boom Bye Bye." "Boom Bye Bye," in the context of the song, is meant to convey the fact that Buju has just shot a fag in the head and is bidding him adieu. It seems like an odd booking choice for Neumo's, because the club is located in the heart of Capitol Hill - a......

Forget Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest. The true blockbuster of the summer is Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society's Pirates of Penzance, playing at the Bagley Wright Theatre at Seattle Center. As with any Gilbert and Sullivan play, Pirates' plot does not stand up to rigorous analysis, and the G&S Society seems to know this. They treat the ridiculous twists and turns with wit and whimsy, creating a world in which everything seems possible.......

Something needs to be said about Erica Barnett's article in La Strangeur concerning the possibility that the City Council will make the final decision on the Viaduct without the requisite and meaningless public referendum, and that something is: "Hell Yeah!" Do we have to vote on every damn decision that's made around here? The City Council exists to make decisions on transportation infrastructure. That's what they do. Seattlest's job is to spend a little time......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

Think you're safe from profiteering because you're thousands of miles from a natural disaster? Think again, Jack. The robber barons who run Dick's Drive Ins are reaching for your pocketbooks YET AGAIN. They increased prices on practically every product on the menu last month. Modest profits aren't enough for these pigs. We've lost track of how many times they've raised their prices, but we can present these shocking statistics. Since Dick's opened: The price of......

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi. SFist can finally admit it: It's possible that Bary Bonds juiced. Is Bay Area artist (tempted to put quotes around that) Thomas Kinkaid "kinda crappy" or "explosively crappy" or does he just like marking territory? SFist wonders. Technology comes in the form of new Mac goodness......

After Wired ran a story documenting the GoogleCenter of the United States a bunch of ists jumped on the opportunity to figure out their own middle. Gothamist, Chicagoist, Bostonist and Seattlest all zoomed in on their creamy GoogleCenters. A crack cartography team is hard at work determining the GoogleCenter of the Ist-a-verse as you read this... Austinist read a book about Olympian Bode Miller and liked it. They also took a few pictures of the......

Anyone who thought that our state legislature had any chance at all of forcing Wal-Mart to act less like Wal-Mart raise your hand. Yeah, none of you. House speaker Frank Chopp sat on the "Wal-Mart Bill" yesterday instead of allowing a vote on it, despite a big push by his traditional allies in organized labor. The bill would force employers of 5,000 or more in the state of Washington to allocate 9% of their......

Don't wait until the last possible day to apply for the soon-to-be vacant seat on the City Council. Applications are due on Friday, but you know it's going to be crazy, so get yours in now. Hundreds (give or take an "s") are expected to apply. So far...well, as of the 27th of December (cut us some slack, it was the holidays--yeah, we said it) ten concerned citizens have stepped forward. Including last year's council......

You may or may not be aware, but Congress is all in a tizzy (repeatedly) over a number of bills either recently passed or currently on the docket, and reconvened earlier this week to try to get all warm and fuzzy before the year ends. Seattlest did some digging and if any of you are even half as confused as we are, we hope this helps. We're going to break these bills down, James......

We generally keep news items concerning Seattle South to ourselves in the hopes that one day the powers that be will scoop up a handfull of clay and fashion Portlandist.com to blather on about it, but so far no luck. The thing is that there's a question of journalistic ethics arising down there and Seattlest is a sucker for stories about journalistic ethics (uh, the ethics of others, of course. Pay no attention to that......