Our friend Suzette Smith from the Portland Mercury contributed a few blurbs to this round-up.

If Enumclaw has a million fans, then I am one of them. If Enumclaw has ten fans, then I am one of them. If Enumclaw has only one fan then that is me. If Enumclaw has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world is against Enumclaw, then I am against the world, reads the top YouTube comment on Enumclaws newest music video.
"If Enumclaw has a million fans, then I am one of them. If Enumclaw has ten fans, then I am one of them. If Enumclaw has only one fan then that is me. If Enumclaw has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world is against Enumclaw, then I am against the world," reads the top YouTube comment on Enumclaw's newest music video. "2002" Screenshot

Feeling auspicious? Are all these 2s in 2day's date (2/22/22) tingling your 3rd eye? Cosmo says it's time to start manifesting. Let's start by manifesting today's news.

Mark Lanegan is dead: The Ellensburg-born musician behind Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age and a lifetime of other projects passed away at his home in Ireland this morning at 57. No one's released an official cause of death yet.

KEXP dedicated most of today's airtime to Lanegan. Here's their bio on him:

[Lanegan's] distinctive baritone vocals and dark, poetic lyrics propelled Seattle's own Screaming Trees to grunge stardom in the '90s. He followed with a prolific solo career, releasing twelve albums, most recently 2020's Straight Songs of Sorrow. Lanegan was also known for his work with The Gutter Twins and Queens of the Stone Age, as well as collaborative albums with Isobel Campbell, Duke Garwood, and Skeleton Joe. Lanegan was generous with his talents, lending his vocals to The Twilight Singers (a project of his Gutter Twins bandmate Greg Dulli), UK electronica projects Soulsavers and UNKLE, Neko Case, Warpaint, Moby, Martina Topley-Bird, and so many others.

During Cheryl Waters' set, I felt these three Lanegan tracks hard.

Anthony Bourdain loved Lanegan and ended his Seattle episode of Parts Unknown with a sing-a-long to Lanegan's "Strange Religion."

Mark Lanegan wrote about that sequence after Bourdain died for The Guardian:

There’s this final shot of him sitting at the bar, listening to one of my songs… In retrospect, you can see the pain written all over his face. It never occurred to me that somebody like him could be unhappy. But I’ve been thinking about being someone like that, who travels so much… I know how difficult it is, and how lonely it can be.

In some strange religion, those dudes are driving in a 1973 Buick Century about now.

Fresh PNW music darlings Enumclaw (they're from Tacoma) dropped a single today: It's called "2002" and I've played it five times, but, considering today's date, maybe I should play it 22 times for good luck. Or 222? I'm no numerology expert but I do know I've had their 14-minute-long debut EP Jimbo Demo on repeat for too many minutes over the past year. Please drop album, thx.

(Partial) ZooTunes line-up dropped:

June 15: Indigo Girls
June 16: Neko Case
June 19: Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine with Allison Russell
July 18: Old Crow Medicine Show
July 31: The Roots
August 11: Mt. Joy
August 21: Cake
August 28: Shakey Graves

I once watched Indigo Girls perform Swamp Ophelia from front to back to a crowd of mostly middle-aged lesbians (and me) in a field in Wisconsin. I think I cried. Time is fuzzy.

If I'm the first person to tell you it's fucking cold outside, lucky you. If you live outside, you don't need a blog to tell you the temperature. Here's the emergency shelter the King County Regional Homelessness Authority is offering due to cold weather. They currently plan to keep the shelters open on and off into Saturday morning.


Since I've invoked Hannah, might as well redirect you to this post that Hannah just published: The Seattle City Council Let the Eviction Moratorium End. Council Prez Juarez says “We cannot have a healthy economy if nobody pays rent," so rent's due in March. The managing attorney at the Housing Justice Project says the city is "not really as prepared as we think we are" to handle the depth of rental assistance needed immediately/years ago.

Other council-related news: The streeteries live to see another year.


In a consequential update on the situation in Ukraine, today Russia "recognized" Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian areas that are currently under Russian control—effectively expanding the country's borders. In response, the US and several European nations sanctioned Russian banks.

The men convicted of murdering Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty of federal hate crimes today. The jury found they had violated Arbery's civil rights and targeted him because he was Black.

This morning, the Portland Police Bureau identified Ben Smith as the man responsible for Portland's mass shooting on Saturday. Smith fatally shot one woman and injured four others in Portland's Normandale Park. Smith's identity was already public, verified by the Oregonian and OPB on Monday, after they spoke with his neighbors and family members.

The Oregonian reports that Smith has been charged with second-degree murder, "four counts of attempted first degree murder, two counts of first degree assault with a firearm, and two counts of second-degree assault with a firearm."

New top dog at Bellevue Arts Museum: The museum's board of trustees announced E. Michael Whittington as their new executive director. Whittington comes from the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, where he served as the president and CEO. The museum's last executive director, Ben Haywood, resigned last March after an open letter accused Haywood of treating artist Tariqa Waters with harm and disrespect "by not providing her with a budget, speaking ill of her to other (white) artists, and failing to publicly apologize for his previous actions. The letter note[d] that Waters, fresh off her 2020 Neddy Prize win, is the first Black and Black woman curator to run a show at the museum," reported Stranger writer Jas Keimig at the time.

An update on the legislative workers' sick-out:


After a quick pass of the bill, Rich says "it looks like Dems want to significantly slow-roll the unionization effort. The bill sets up an agency with a director who must commission a report to study the best way to unionize legislative workers. Report due fall of 2023. Bargaining would end July 1 2025."

She's hung: I forgot to mention that you'll see Betty Wetter's dick-train at HUMP this week.