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Film/TV • Horrors

Watch SLAY, Our Horror Film Fest Online THIS WEEKEND (Or In-Person on Oct 29-30)!

by The Stranger • Wednesday at 11:45 am

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Get ready for a screaming good time... the terrifying fun of SLAY—our scary short film fest made by horror lovers like YOU—returns STARTING THIS WEEKEND (October 22) and through October 31, streaming online AND at the Egyptian Theatre with special host Old Witch!

Earlier this year, we asked filmmakers to send in their homemade short horror films (eight minutes or less) capturing whatever it is that scares them most—from classic ghost stories and slasher films to dystopian cults and political nightmares. AND BOY, DID YOU DELIVER! For the 2021 version of SLAY we have 18 frightening, freaky, and fun films that are guaranteed to scare the poop directly into your pants!

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE for the LIVE and in-person screenings at the Egyptian Theatre on Friday, October 29 and Saturday, October 30, and if you'd rather stay home and watch it online, we have FIVE opportunities to do just that on October 22-31, and you can GET LIVESTREAM TICKETS HERE!

Want a sneaky peek at what you can expect from SLAY 2021? Then grab a spare pair of undies (just in case!) and read the descriptions and watch the new SLAY trailer below!

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Savage Love

New Savage Love: The Goodies

by Dan Savage • Wednesday at 10:50 am

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JOE NEWTON
I'm a woman in her forties in a relationship with a man and I have my first STI with symptoms. Genital warts—yay! I noticed them about two months ago (near my b-hole) and went to the gyno today and had them treated. My question is, do I need to tell my boyfriend? We've been dating for about five months, and we don't use protection because I have an IUD. More background info: My BF hasn't gone down on me. He wants to, but I'm very subby and it's hard for me to get off that way, so I've been putting him off. And now that I want him to try, I have warts. I don't know if he's seen them. Maybe? We haven't had sex from behind in months and I think that may be why. Maybe he saw them before I did and stopped wanting to have sex in that position? He did want to fuck me from behind a couple of days ago, but I said no because I was embarrassed. Do I need to tell him I have HPV/genital warts? We've been having unprotected sex about five times a week for the last five months.

Worrying About Really Terribly Situation

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Sponsored

Love Indian Food? We got you covered at Cedars on Brooklyn. Enjoy our Seattle Restaurant Week’s special menu from October 24th – November 6th, 2021.

The legendary Cedars Restaurant on Brooklyn has been within the heart of the U-District for the past 45-plus years. The Brooklyn location serves a wide range of Indian curries, naans, and tandoori fried meats. In collaboration with Seattle Restaurant Week, a delicious fixed-price menu ranging from Indian curry specialties to enormous garlic naan will be served at our U-District location.

I, Anonymous

I, Anonymous: NOT OK, BOOMER!

by Anonymous • Wednesday at 9:30 am

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Steven Weissman

Hey, asshole—you're a creepy 70-something white man in Dockers and I'm a young Asian American woman quietly riding the bus to work, but because I probably "remind you of the war" or some shit, you think you have the right to hit on me every fucking time you see me. For weeks, you've been telling me I look pretty and you like my outfit and waving at me from across the bus, even though I have my headphones in and do not answer back and sit FAR away from you. Get the fucking hint! It's annoying and embarrassing. But the other day went too far. You tapped me on the shoulder from behind and said I dropped something. You handed me a folded-up piece of paper, and I should've thrown it in your fucking face, but because you surprised me, I took it like a dumbass. It read "I want to get to know you. Robert 253-XXX-XXXX." You got off the bus before I could tell you to leave me the fuck alone, and I'm furious at myself for taking the stupid note and YOU for making my bus ride to work a stressful, creepy perv show!!!! LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE.

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Slog AM/PM

Slog AM: Rolovich to Sue Washington State University for "Illegal Termination," Facebook Reportedly Will Change Its Name, Ye Wins the Mask Game

by Jas Keimig • Wednesday at 8:36 am

Talk about fumbling the bag.
Talk about fumbling the bag. Sean M. Haffey/Getty

Some stats for dat ass: 1,887 of 63,000 Washington state workers—around 3 percent—were fired or walked off the job due to the vaccine mandate, reports the Seattle Times. And another 3 percent-ish got "an accommodation that allows them to work in a less-public role without being vaccinated" while 4.6 percent are "in a state of flux." In total, 92 percent of state workers have been confirmed as vaccinated, a high enough rate that there's no threat of the state not being able to provide essential service due to labor disruptions.

We maybe could have guessed this was coming: Former Washington State University coach Nick Rolovich's lawyer told KOMO that his client plans to sue the school for "illegal termination" over being fired for his refusal to get the COVID vaccine. Apparently, Rolovich—who used to be the highest paid state employee—had asked WSU for a religious exemption from the mandate but was denied and ultimately terminated for his vaccine refusal. Rolovich's lawyer also claimed that WSU Athletic Director Pat Chun had "animus towards Coach Rolovich's sincerely held religious beliefs." Drama!

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Sponsored

PayByPhone GIVEAWAY TIME! You Could WIN a Locally Sourced Bundle of Goodies.

We’re excited to bring our next PayByPhone Block Party to the virtual streets of Seattle, where we will be celebrating our favourite local artists, businesses and creators throughout the community.⁠⁠

TWO lucky winners will not only win one of our very special bundles ($500 value each), but we will also be donating $250 to a local organization in each of their names!⁠⁠

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News • Health • Cops

Unvaccinated, Unmasked, and Unemployed: Firefighters Drop Their Boots After a One-Off Community Breakfast to Show They “Still Care”

by Hannah Krieg • Tuesday at 6:24 pm

A dozen or so firefighters and cops walked into City Hall and left their boots on the steps after refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate.
A dozen or so firefighters and cops walked into City Hall and left their boots on the steps after refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate. HK

Pancakes, bacon, eggs – you name it, the firefighters had it all at their community breakfast. Except for vaccines and, consequently, their jobs.

A vaccine mandate on city employees went into effect Monday. As of that morning, 99% of city employees complied: they got vaccinated and showed proof or else requested an exemption for medical or religious reasons.

The Seattle Fire Department reports that 93% of its employees are vaccinated, 6% submitted requests for exemptions, and 1% did not submit records of vaccination. That 1% amounts to 11 individuals from the SFD who would rather be unemployed than vaccinated. According to a blog post from the Department, the separation process has begun for those people.

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Slog AM/PM

Slog PM: Pierce County Sheriff Charged, Thieves Abscond with Cash and Pie in Ballard, Michete Makes It "Hard"

by Jas Keimig • Tuesday at 5:55 pm

Remember Mimi from her face reveal party?
Remember Mimi from her face reveal party? Courtesy of Mimi
A bit of housekeeping: You may have noticed a change in my byline. I've been going by Jas and my pronouns are they/them. I don't care if you think non-binary people are spiders or the singular use of "they" is dumb. I'm just letting you know so that when you insult my intelligence in the comment section, you can do so properly. Don't make this weird!

There's a pie thief on the loose: According to MyBallard, pie-robbers broke into A la Mode Pies in Ballard last weekend. After hurling a rock through the shop's front window, one dude made off with the tip jar early Sunday morning. An hour later, another thief nabbed the cash register and a whole pie. "At least he's a fan of A la Mode Pies," owner Chris Porter told the neighborhood blog. I cackled.

Pierce County sheriff charged with two misdemeanors by the Attorney General's office: Sheriff Ed Troyer is looking down "one count of false reporting and one count of making a false or misleading statement to a civil servant," thanks to AG Bob Ferguson's office, reports the Seattle Times. If you'll remember, earlier this year Troyer—who is white—falsely claimed that newspaper carrier Sedrick Altheimer—who is Black—"blocked his driveway and threatened to kill him." An ol' case of white man crying wolf.

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Food & Drink • Things To Do • EverOut

25 Restaurants to Try for Seattle Restaurant Week

by EverOut Staff • Tuesday at 4:10 pm

Top Chef star Shota Nakajimas karaage restaurant Taku is participating in Seattle Restaurant Week for the first time this year.
Top Chef star Shota Nakajima's karaage restaurant Taku is participating in Seattle Restaurant Week for the first time this year. Taku

Frugal gourmands everywhere rejoice over Seattle Restaurant Week, which happens twice a year and lets diners tuck into prix-fixe menus at a slew of different restaurants hoping to lure new customers with singularly slashed prices. Due to the continuing pandemic, the format has been adapted a bit: This fall, restaurants have the flexibility to offer $20 lunches, $35 and/or $50 dinners, and can offer takeout, delivery, and/or onsite dining. Over 200 restaurants are participating, so it can be daunting to figure out where you want to eat first. We've rounded up this list of restaurants worth trying so you can make the most of this event—everywhere from Karachi Cowboys and Korochka Tavern to Taku and Communion. We've also noted which ones have been designated as Asian American and/or Pacific Islander-owned, Black-owned, women-owned, LGBTQ-owned, and/or family-owned, according to the official Seattle Restaurant Week guide. For more ideas, check out our food and drink guide.

Cafe Munir
Stranger contributor Naomi Tomky wrote, "Tucked away in a residential corner of Ballard, this Lebanese restaurant makes diners rethink ordinary ingredients. Hummus takes a star turn with the addition of lamb sizzled in butter, pears grab attention when mixed with tahini, pomegranate, and parsley, and simply grilled chicken skewers are the signature dish (though partial credit goes to the debaucherously garlicky sauce that comes with it). The lengthy menu of mezzes—small plates—highlights local, in-season vegetables with Middle Eastern flavors like baby onions preserved in Lebanese wine and honey with fresh cheese, and winter greens with Aleppo chili. And almost everything goes well with the traditional Lebanese spirit, arak, available plentifully here."
Ballard
Takeout
Family-owned

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Film/TV • Enviro

Art House God Terrence Malick Is Now Selling Cars for Ford. What a Surprise.

by Charles Mudede • Tuesday at 3:03 pm

Days of Pickup Heaven
Days of Pickup Heaven YouTube/Ford

Many consider Terrence Malick to be a cinematic genius and philosopher who thinks very deeply. His 2011 film The Tree of Life brought the birth of the universe, the formation galaxies, the ripples of time, the days of the dinosaurs, and an afterlife of Plutonic forms right into the suburban home of an all-American family — severe daddy, dreamy mommy, and a moody son with a dead brother.

Malick's latest film is an ad for one of the biggest automakers in the world, Ford. It is narrated by the Hollywood star, Don Cheadle. Its title: “Leading the Electric Revolution and Sustainability.” What cannot be doubted is that Ford gave the director all the artistic freedom he needed to make exactly his kind of film: lots of striking images that never fail to add up to nothing:

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Film/TV • Music

Todd Haynes Loaded His New Velvet Underground Doc with A Lot of Stimuli

by Dave Segal • Tuesday at 12:45 pm

Moe Tucker, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Lou Reed in The Velvet Underground.
Moe Tucker, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Lou Reed in The Velvet Underground. APPLE TV+

The photo of Nico driving a tour van is worth the price of admission alone. That pic of the German actor/model who briefly loaned her haunting, daunting vocals to the Velvet Underground's 1967 debut album aside, Todd Haynes's The Velvet Underground is loaded (pun intended) with striking images, montages, transitions, and structural quirks that mess with over-familiar music documentary tropes. And, praise be, Haynes tapped no outsiders to contribute their sincere but unfulfilling platitudes, like 98.6 percent of all music docs have done throughout history. The Velvet Underground is a two-hour no-bullshit zone in which even long-time fanatics will learn things about and witness new images of this most revered of cult rock bands. Haynes's handiwork may not be the best way for neophytes to see the light about the Velvet Underground, but it's fitting that he created an artwork that aligns with hardcore VU fans' sensibilities.

Anyone who watched Haynes's biopic of Bob Dylan, 2007's I'm Not There, or the 1987 short Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story could've anticipated that this doc would skew toward unconventionality. The phrase "blink and you'll miss it" came to mind often. Haynes homages avant-garde filmmakers Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas with frequent split screens that sometimes multiply to 12 tiles while also weaving in super-imposed images. It's impossible to absorb everything, so multiple viewings may be necessary to grasp the references and allusions fully.

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Stranger Election Control Board

The Stranger Endorses Teresa Mosqueda for Council Position No. 8

by Stranger Election Control Board • Tuesday at 12:30 pm

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The SECB is shaking with anger that we even have to write an endorsement for Teresa Mosqueda. Mosqueda, the incumbent, pulled in nearly 60% of the vote in the primary. Her closest competitor got 16%. Should have been an automatic victory. But, UGH, whatever, I guess we’ll do some democracy.

As the scoreboard suggests, most of the city already understands that Mosqueda is an unstoppable force of progressive change. When COVID kept everybody home except for health care workers and grocers, Mosqueda led the way to bump up pay for grocery workers.

When big business conspired to kill the head tax, she bounced back up and introduced the JumpStart tax, which saved the city’s financial ass during the pandemic and created a dedicated fund to spend on affordable housing.

Her work to create walkable, bike-able neighborhoods for all continues apace, with plans to invest $100 million more in bike, pedestrian, and transit projects in the offing. She has a knack for saying she’ll do something and then getting it done, and we’d like to see more of what she does, please.

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Savage Love

New Savage Lovecast: America’s Post-Pandemic Sex Life

by The Stranger • Tuesday at 12:15 pm

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Our opening “Sexcess” story features a woman who discovered she’s natural born pegger. After some initial reticence, now her man begs for it.

A gay man has a fraught relationship with his parents. He visits them, but they don’t visit him. He learned recently that he has Aspergers Syndrome, and also that his family thinks he’s an asshole. So, with his newly understood diagnosis, does he owe them an apology? Or are his parents the assholes here?

On the Magnum, Dan interviews one of our favorite guests, Dr. Justin Lehmiller about how sexual behaviors have changed during the pandemic. Covid’s silver lining? Americans are trying butt stuff!

And, after a blindfolded anonymous scene from an app hook-up, the caller realized that he recognized his lover as an acquaintance. Now what? Should he tell him?

Listen here:

News • Film/TV

Vivian Hua Will Step Down as Northwest Film Forum's Executive Director in 2022

by Jas Keimig • Tuesday at 10:00 am

Vivian Hua is moving on from Northwest Film Forum.
Vivian Hua is moving on from Northwest Film Forum. LEO CARMONA

On a recent bright fall afternoon, hints of September's Local Sightings Film Festival decorated the inside lobby of a darkened Northwest Film Forum. After nearly 18 months of closure, the beloved local cinema and nonprofit just reopened its doors to the public. And now, three of the organization's leaders—Vivian Hua, Christopher Day, and Rana San—gathered in the space with me to discuss the next big chapter in the Film Forum’s history.

In January 2022, Hua will step down as executive director of Northwest Film Forum after three years in the position. They guided the arts nonprofit through one of the most turbulent times in history, during which the Film Forum managed to quickly pivot to virtual screenings, support the local movement for Black Lives Matter, and put on 25 film festivals. Now headed into a new capital campaign phase, Hua said they feel like it’s a good moment to shift gears personally and professionally.

“I have always felt the pull between being both an artist and an arts administrator, and those decisions in my life are always dictated by intuition and the needs of one's deeper self,” Hua told me. "Now is a time where I feel strongly that I need to focus on my creative projects and shift my focus toward the environmental and sustainability space.”

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Film/TV • Homo History

Paul Lynde: The Gay Uncle at the Center of Halloween’s Strangest Disco

by Matt Baume • Tuesday at 9:40 am

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Halloween specials have a mixed history on television. There are a handful of great, iconic ones — the It’s the Great Pumpkin, old episodes of Roseanne, about 60% of the Treehouses of Terror on The Simpsons — and then there are some genuinely bizarre misfires that I love even more, like Tim Curry singing bemusedly in The Worst Witch.

Among those lovable misfires, one of the most notorious is The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, a truly hypnotic TV artifact starring Betty White, Margaret Hamilton (the original Wicked Witch), Florence Henderson (aka Mrs. Brady), actors from Happy Days and H.R. Pufnstuf, and an up-and-coming band called Kiss.

And ruling over it all: Paul Lynde, the snide quippy comedian made famous as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and as a Hollywood square. The show was only broadcast once, but it’s gained legendary status for its sheer strangeness — and the behind-the-scenes story is even stranger.

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Slog AM/PM

Slog AM: State Patrol Loses 6% of Staff to Anti-Vaxxers, Congress Accuses Amazon Execs of Lying, Spokane Gets Weather Report with a Side of Ass

by Rich Smith • Tuesday at 8:33 am

Great time to apply to wear one of these hats.
Great time to apply to wear one of these hats. David Ryder / GETTY

They couged it: The state's highest paid public employee, Nick Rolovich, hit the eject button on his job as head coach of the Washington State University whatevers when he failed to get vaccinated against the deadly respiratory virus before the state's October 18th deadline. Four assistant coaches joined him on his voyage, the Seattle Times reports.

About 6% of the Washington State Patrol quit rather than take a life-saving vaccine: Nearly 130 employees left "for varying reasons and in varying ways," including "67 troopers, 6 sergeants and 1 captain" on a staff of 2,200 with a force of 1,100. Austin Jenkins tweeted out the press release. An unvaccinated cop is a state agent with the ability to force people at gunpoint into a confined area as a deadly respiratory virus continues to ravage communities. None for me, thanks!

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Slog AM/PM

Slog PM: Nearly All Seattle City Employees Comply with Vaccine Mandate, Meet Olympia's Pumpking, Where Do You Pee in Seattle?

by Chase Burns • Monday at 4:50 pm

Call us Vaxx Town.
Call us Vaxx Town. Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

99% of City of Seattle employees are down with the city's vaccine mandate: Today's the final day for city employees to show proof of vaccination, request an exemption, or face removal for failing to do their part in preventing the spread of coronavirus. As of this morning, nearly all of the city’s 11,000 employees have complied, reports Hannah Krieg, leaving just about 150 workers who haven't requested an exemption or submitted proof of vaccination. Twenty-four of those 150 people work at the Seattle Police Department.

Those numbers are quite a bit lower than the "Seattle could fire 40% of police force over COVID-19 vaccine mandate" fearmongering earlier this month.

Pissing and shitting in public: Where do you do it? The pandemic has caused most public restrooms to shut down, and many businesses aren't rushing to reopen them. Naomi Ishisaka's latest column in the Seattle Times looks at the city's potty desert, the failed promise of Mobile Pit Stops, and the public health consequences of failing to give people places to poop. What's your favorite public restroom in Seattle? It's no La Dive, but I like Trader Joe's bathroom on Capitol Hill.

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