Is Bellevue the Next Williamsburg?

Theater • Books

Joan Didion, Britney Spears, and George Orwell to Appear at Hugo House

by Katie Herzog • Monday at 3:40 pm

The greatest living American writer after the author of this post.
The greatest living American writer (after me, of course). Jemal Countess/Getty Images

In a Christmas cabaret show that would make the baby Jesus weep, Christopher Frizzelle, editor of The Stranger, and Sarah Paul Ocampo, cofounder of the The Typing Explosion, will bring not one but two Joan Didions to Seattle. Since Frizzelle and I work together, he answered some questions about the show via Slack.

KH: What’s this thing you’re working on? I hear Joan Didion is in town.
CF: Oh, yes. In fact, two Joan Didions. A lot of people have seen Joan Didion give readings. But how many people have seen two Joan Didions at once? This will be a special and rare occurrence.

Two Joan Didions?
One of us is playing Malibu Joan, and the other is playing Manhattan Joan.

So that's what your wig is for.
I love that wig. I may start wearing it all the time.

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News • Enviro

Inslee's 2019 Climate Plan Won't Include Carbon Pricing

by Lester Black • Monday at 3:10 pm

Inslee wont proposal a carbon fee this year.
Inslee won't propose a carbon fee this year. KAREN DUCEY / STRINGER

Gov. Jay Inslee won't attempt to put a price on carbon emissions during this legislative session, instead proposing a package of climate change policies that require utilities produce 100 percent "clean energy" by 2045, tightens fuel standards for vehicles, promotes electric vehicles, and incentivizes energy-efficient building.

The plan is an attempt to meet the legislature's 2008 goal of reducing Washington's greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent below their 1990 levels by 2035.

Inslee's package comes after the state's voters handily defeated a carbon fee that would have put a price directly on carbon emissions and after multiple failed legislative attempts by the governor to directly regulate carbon emissions through either carbon pricing or a "cap and trade" system. This plan doesn't make any such attempts. At a press conference on Monday, Inslee emphasized that this package was more politically feasible.

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Music

DJ Bad Ginger Pushes Her High-Energy House-Music Sets Into the Red

by Dave Segal • Monday at 2:43 pm

DJ Bad Ginger strives to create sets that make people feel like the best and most badass versions of themselves.
DJ Bad Ginger strives to create sets that make people "feel like the best and most badass versions of themselves." nickydigital.com {SMILE}

DJ BAD GINGER (aka HANNAH BREWER; Studio 4/4)

Current top 6 tracks:

Endor, "Dance & Dip (Club VIP)" (Strangelove)
"This secret weapon of a track has been in almost every one of my sets since I discovered it. Whenever I drop it, there is almost always another DJ hovering over me trying to peep the track title! Endor is an amazingly underrated producer. He nails everything from '90s-style deep house to ravey bangers like this one."

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Science • Enviro • Death

Welcome to the Long Night, Welcome to Hell

by Nathalie Graham • Monday at 2:19 pm

Grab your candles, grab your kerosene, and maybe a good book—Winter is coming.
Grab your candles, grab your kerosene, and maybe a good book—Winter is coming. SteveMcsweeny/Getty Images

Hello, and welcome to The Long Night, The Eternal Doom, and the Endless Winter (do not confuse any of these with The Great Dying). It isn't here yet, but rest assured, its cold, dark fingers are inching toward us and inching us toward 15 (and-a-half) hours of night every day night.*

It's still technically fall, which means there's still daylight left to lose. In fact, there are approximately 5 (and-a-half) minutes left of sunshine ready to be gobbled up by The Dark™ before the winter solstice. That's on Dec. 21. You will recall that this was the date when the world was supposed to end in 2012. Life may have been simpler if it did. Now it just feels like it's ending every Dec. 21. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded of your own mortality. But, mostly, it makes you sleepy at 3:30 p.m.

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Politics

Trump's Nominee for Attorney General Wants to Impose Christian Rule

by Rich Smith • Monday at 1:45 pm

Not my favorite rule, tbh.
Not my favorite. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Looks like Brett Kavanaugh isn't the only Trump nominee who likes to reveal the extent of his sycophancy and the paucity of his moral imagination in obscure legal journals!

On Sunday The Daily Beast dug up an essay in the The Catholic Lawyer written by William Barr, the guy Trump nominated to replace Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. In the essay, Barr argues that the government should impose “a transcendent moral order with objective standards of right and wrong that…flows from God’s eternal law.” Establishment clause aside, God's eternal law is famously harsh on women, gay people, and Onanists—to name a few—and those are just the sorts of people who stand to lose if the Senate confirms Barr as Attorney General.

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Savage Love

Am I Still Preserving My Boyfriend's Virginity?

by Dan Savage • Monday at 1:21 pm

Originally published on Dec. 23, 2008.

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I'm a 34-year-old straight woman living with a 32-year-old straight man. His daughter is 2, and I am the only mother she has ever known. (Her real mother is a crack whore somewhere.) My boyfriend tells me he loves me, but it doesn't feel like he wants to spend any time with me. I pay the rent and am the only person in our household with a full-time job. When I get home, I want to relax. He wants to go out because he has been sitting at home all day. If he hasn't been at home, he has been running around with his friends. This pisses me off, and I am not afraid to tell him so. His response? "You're just jealous because you have to work!" Damn right I'm jealous! Also, I do all the cooking and don't get any help with cleanup or housework.

Other factors include my 13-year-old son, who has had trouble adjusting to a baby in the house; my boyfriend's outstanding warrants; and the fact that I have desperately wanted another baby for 10 years. What on earth should I do?

Back Against The Wall

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Enviro

Study Connects Climate Change to Mass Extinction While Trump Promotes Fossil Fuels at Climate Conference

by Katie Herzog • Monday at 12:38 pm

A turtle swims among barren coral reef
A turtle swims among barren coral reef Rainer von Brandis/Getty Images

More bad news about the planet.

According to a study published last week by researchers at the University of Washington, climate change—that thing Republicans are trying desperately ignore—was the cause of planet's largest-ever mass die-off.

Called the Great Dying, this period took place around 250 million years ago, and up to 80 percent of all species on the planet went extinct after global temps rose by over 10 degrees Celsius (18 F).

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Housekeeping

Meet The Stranger's New Art and Music Critic: Jasmyne Keimig!

by Chase Burns • Monday at 12:00 pm

jasmyne.jpg

Big news, Sloggers! Today, I'm very fucking excited to announce that Jasmyne Keimig will be joining The Stranger as a staff writer starting in January 2019. We've been huge fans of Jasmyne and her writing since adding her to the staff as an arts intern earlier this fall, and we're happy she accepted our offer to join this madhouse full-time. (ICYMI: Read her recent feature on artist Anthony White.)

Jasmyne will be the paper’s primary visual arts writer and also share music coverage, along with standard Stranger duties like blogging about celebrity diarrhea and talking shit about the 2.5 other media companies in town. As Seattle continues to change, there's an immediate need for sharp, engaging art criticism that records and celebrates Seattle’s art scenes. The Stranger has always been committed to the arts, and our addition of Jasmyne is a reflection of that commitment.

To get you acquainted, Jasmyne sent us some notes:

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Things To Do

The Best Festivals in Seattle: Winter 2018/2019

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Monday at 11:48 am

The Seattle Wine and Food Experience (Feb 21-24) is an annual extravaganza of all things edible and drinkable.
The Seattle Wine and Food Experience (Feb 21-24) is an annual extravaganza of all things edible and drinkable. Inside Seattle via Facebook

Below, we've rounded up the biggest and best festivals you need to know about this season, like the Timbrrr! Winter Music Festival and the Emerald City Comic Con. You can also find a complete list of festivals in Seattle this winter on our Things To Do calendar, or check out the rest of our critics' picks from Seattle Art and Performance.

Stay in the know! Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app (available for iOS and Android), or delivered to your inbox.

DECEMBER 11
Deck the Hall Ball 2018
Radio station 107.7 ("The End") presents a stacked lineup for their annual winter music spectacle with a few PNW superstars this year, including Death Cab For Cutie, Young the Giant, Bastille, Billie Eilish, and Jenn Champion.

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Tech

New Year's Resolution: Stop Sharing Your Location Data with Everyone All the Time

by Eli Sanders • Monday at 11:21 am

A New York Times investigation is yet another reminder: take control of your smartphone privacy settings.
A New York Times investigation is yet another reminder: take control of your smartphone privacy settings! Atsushi Tomura / Stringer

If you're looking for an easy and important resolution to make before 2019, this investigation from The New York Times suggests you should be resolving to take control of the way your smartphone shares your location.

The Times found your personal coordinates may be transmitted to corporate entities "as often as every two seconds," so that those companies can then store, analyze, and re-sell your moment-by-moment travels on a "hot market" of "advertisers, retail outlets and even hedge funds seeking insights into consumer behavior."

In short, your phone is tracking you more closely than you likely know; you've probably consented to and amplified this by enabling "location services" on apps with confusing privacy disclaimers you've never read; and because of lax-to-nonexistent regulation you probably can't get the companies that now know years of your daily, second-by-second movements to erase that data. But you CAN cut down on how closely you're tracked going forward.

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Arts • Things To Do

The 78 Best Things To Do in Seattle This Week: Dec 10-16, 2018

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Monday at 11:00 am

Christopher Frizzelle suggests you throw your knowledge of drag, humor, and the English language out the window and go see the Dina Martina Christmas Show.
Christopher Frizzelle suggests you throw your "knowledge" of drag, humor, and the English language out the window and go see the Dina Martina Christmas Show. DAVID BELISLE

Our music critics have already chosen the 43 best music shows this week, but now it's our arts critics' turn to recommend the best events in their areas of expertise. Here are their picks in every genre—from an evening of stand-up with Conan O'Brien to Disney's The Lion King, and from a talk about Scandinavian trolls with Lotta Gavel-Adams to an opening party for a new Dick's Drive-In in Kent. See them all below, and find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

Stay in the know! Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app (available for iOS and Android), or delivered to your inbox.


MONDAY

FOOD & DRINK
12th Annual Cookbook Social
At Tom Douglas’s annual gathering at the Palace Ballroom, you can sip wine, purchase cookbooks, sample recipes inspired by the titles on display, get autographs, and visit with the authors of some of the season’s most exciting cookbooks. This year’s roster includes Instagram star Linda Miller Nicholson, who shares how to re-create her vibrantly-hued handmade pasta in Pasta, Pretty Please; Hsiao-Ching Chou, whose Chinese Soul Food explains how to make comforting dishes like dumplings and stir-fries; Julien Perry, whose Seattle Cooks collects signature recipes from top chefs and bartenders in the Seattle food scene; and Kausar Ahmed, who includes her favorite recipes from Pakistan in The Karachi Kitchen. JULIANNE BELL

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Film/TV

Millions of People Are Watching Netflix's Shit Christmas Movies. I Am One of Them.

by Ciara Dolan • Monday at 10:45 am

kurclaus.png
The Christmas Chronicles | Netflix

While attending a recent conference in New York, Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos reported that, in the week since it debuted, the streaming giant's new original film The Christmas Chronicles—which stars Kurt Russell as a roguish but tenderhearted Santa—has exceeded 20 million views. "If every one of those [20 million streams] was a movie ticket purchase, that's a $200 million opening week," Sarandos gloated. "Even movies that go on to $1 billion don't typically do that in the first week."

Sarandos' brag is a false equivalency, since the majority of those viewers probably didn't purchase a Netflix subscription just so they could watch The Christmas Chronicles, and there's absolutely no way that many people would've pried their bums off the couch to go see it IRL if it'd been released in theaters. But still—20 million views. In one week. Assuming most of those viewers weren't repeat offenders, like the 53 Christmas Prince diehards who Netflix data-mined and brutally called out last year, that's a ridiculous number of people. And I am among you, my festive brethren—I have seen all four of Netflix's new seasonal offerings: The Holiday Calendar, The Princess Switch, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding, and the aforementioned Christmas Chronicles.

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Resist Trump

Resisting Patriot Prayer, Part One: How to Talk About Alt-Right Groups

by Alex Zielinski • Monday at 10:20 am

altrightprotests_35.jpg
AARON LEE

Fighting right-wing extremism begins at home. In Portland, that means we need to have some real honest conversations about Patriot Prayer, the militant right-wing group based in Vancouver, Washington. For the past few years, Patriot Prayer’s top priority has been visiting Portland to incite violence, taunt the city’s lefty leadership, and collect praise from right-wing blogs. City officials continue to grapple with the best way to combat this violent group—but the responsibility doesn’t rest on them alone. As we charge into the second half of Trump’s term, let’s start changing the way we talk about our local alt-righters.

Adjectives Matter

Patriot Prayer is not just a group of rabble-rousing conservatives who enjoy waving American flags. Patriot Prayer is a far-right extremist group whose members use racist and misogynistic rhetoric to threaten minorities. Yes, the group’s membership includes women and people of color—but also includes members of the self-identified white nationalist group, the Proud Boys.

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Music • Things To Do

The 43 Best Music Shows in Seattle This Week: Dec 10-16, 2018

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Monday at 9:38 am

Songwriter Kurt Vile will bring his psychedelic wit, slow-melting vocals, and sarcastic pathos to the Moore on Saturday.
Songwriter Kurt Vile will bring his psychedelic wit, slow-melting vocals, and sarcastic pathos to the Moore on Saturday.

This week, our music critics have picked everything from George Clinton (aka the King of Funk) and Parliament Funkadelic to Frank Zappa's son, Dweezil Zappa, to the unofficial Hardest Working New Wave Reunion Band™ the English Beat. Follow the links below for ticket links and music clips for all of their picks, and find even more shows on our complete music calendar.

Stay in the know! Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app (available for iOS and Android), or delivered to your inbox.

MONDAY

ROCK/POP
Chris Pureka, Lana McMullen
Proudly genderqueer, Chris Pureka focuses on the personal, not the political or the cultural, except in the obligatory sense in which everything is political and cultural to some extent. She’s sometimes solo, sometimes with a group, never loud, never obnoxious, never blatting in your face. Pureka has made a career out of gently but insistently poking at the gaps between people, the misunderstandings, the struggles, three steps forward and two back, and, occasionally, grace, or something like it. Her songs offer that rare commodity of feeling cherished and understood all in one shot. ANDREW HAMLIN

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News • Cops

Motorcyclist Wins $65,000 Settlement After King County Deputy Pulls Gun on Him

by Lester Black • Monday at 9:14 am

A screenshot from Alex Randalls August 2017 video posted to YouTube.
A screenshot from Alex Randall's August 2017 video posted to YouTube. YouTube

King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht has agreed to update her department's use of force policies and pay a man $65,000 in damages after one of her department’s detectives drew his gun on an unsuspecting motorcyclist in a video that went viral last year.

The settlement, which was shared with me by the motorcyclist, states that the sheriff has agreed to implement an order classifying aiming a gun as a “use of force” and requiring that the department to track every single time an officer points their gun at a person. This is already standard practice for many law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Seattle Police Department.

Alex Randall was waiting on his motorcycle for a light to turn green in August of last year when King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) Detective Richard Rowe approached him from behind with his gun drawn. Randall had his helmet camera running at the time and captured the tense exchange.

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