This news may only be important to the truly NBA-obsessive, but for those who haven’t heard, Kevin Durant has left the Oklahoma City Thunder to join the Golden State Warriors. From Durant’s standpoint, the reasons are obvious. He believes that he has gone as far as he could with the Thunder and sees the Warriors …
Samm Henshaw will release his second EP, The Sound Experiment 2, via Columbia Records this summer. He describes this song as “a mission-statement to honing your craft, and being able to do anything when you put the work in.”
On Saturday June 25 the long awaited return of So Cal’s Tiger Army came to El Corazon. The last time Tiger Army played in Seattle I think it was 2008 or 2009. The band took some time off, but Seattle hadn’t forgotten them. The club was packed and there was already a good crowd when …
Just heard about Garrison Keillor’s recent retirement from A Prairie Home Companion. He actually did so as well back in 1987, but over the next several years he gave in, bit by bit, to his audience’s demands until the show returned in its full reincarnation in 1994. Now that he is 72 years old, however, …
Much as the Golden State Warriors’ loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA finals has been described as a collapse, Game 7 was anything but. It was biting, scratching and kicking warfare for a full 48 minutes. Such games always come down to someone making a big play at the end, and when Kyrie …
Johnny Cueto, whom the San Francisco Giants acquired last winter, is the hands-down best free-agent signing thus far in 2016. Yesterday, he won his tenth game and reduced his season ERA to 2.10, which would actually be about half that total if you subtracted the five-run innings he suffered on two occasions in April and …
After the United States’ 2-1 Copa America quarterfinal victory over Ecuador Thursday night, the team jogged and sprinted by turns around the pitch. It may have been helpful conditioning, but they looked like they were running for sheer joy, reveling in the cheers from the fans still filling half of CenturyLink Field here in soccer-mad …
Today’s NPR Fresh Air show features a review of a debut album by Margaret Glaspy, who grew up in Red Bluff, CA. I once was treated to a private concert with some friends at her mother’s house, where she sang country tunes and Great American Songbook standards, with a banjo accompanist who did a respectable …
She’s all the rage in NYC. After you hear this song and see this video you will understand why she’s our unanimous 2016 Artist of the Year. Mitski insists she didn’t write this song to stick it to the smelly white boy indie rock establishment, but it works on that level anyway. Mitski will be …
Game over, writers. The robots are are here and writing scripts. – Harper Hull
As one would expect, Muhammad Ali’s passing on Friday has generated a flood of tributes and commentary over the weekend, far greater than the usual obituaries that stand at the ready at the Times and elsewhere for such occasions. To this, I would add the following comments. First, Ali strikes me as one of the …
I may live in a blue state, but the politics of my immediate neighborhood tinge red. Obama doesn’t come here to raise money, but a lot of right-of-center political celebrities stop by, including Sarah Palin when she did her Going Rogue book tour in 2010. It made sense, then, that Donald Trump and his plane …
Regardless of who takes home the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship trophy, the Golden State Warriors’ 2015/16 season will be remembered mostly for their 73-9 regular season record, much as the 1995/96 Chicago Bulls are remembered for their 72-10 mark. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the Warriors did more to validate themselves as champions in …
As is my wont, I recently got hooked on a song released many years ago, a totally new discovery to the clueless me. The Cure’s “Exploding Boy” popped up on KEXP and I thought, “Holy shit, Robert Smith’s still got it.” Of course, the song was released probably circa 1980 as a B side. Anyway, …
The Golden State Warriors ended their playoff series last night with a 125-121 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers. Though the Blazers won only one of the five games, the widespread consensus is that they gave the Warriors all they could handle. Game 5 was no different than most of the other games, with the …
The news that Stephen Curry would play in last night’s Game 4 between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Golden State Warriors seemed a significant but not earth-shaking development, and when I checked the first-half score and saw the Blazers up by ten, I figured the game was over and that Curry would need at …
This one’s one of the best podcasts I’ve heard in a while in terms of knowledgeability and candor. Mark Salter was on McCain’s staff for a long time, including during the 2008 campaign. One of the points he makes draws from that experience, when they knew for the last couple of months that they were …
In Game 3 of the NBA West Semifinals last night between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Golden State Warriors, the Blazers did to the Warriors what the Warriors have done to the NBA for two years. Every time the Warriors made a run at the Blazers in the second half, even closing the lead …
Has the news of the greatest underdog story in all sports reached you? Leicester City have been perennial doormats in the English Premier League, when they haven’t been relegated to the second or even third tiers. This season most predicted them to finish near last and be relegated again. They were 5,000-to-1 odds to win …
The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR, is about an hour off the beaten interstate track, but it’s well worth the trip. It is the home not only of Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, but also a remarkable collection of vintage airplanes and spacecraft, including V2 and Gemini Titan rockets. The Spruce Goose, in …
This part-pug puppy watches The Lion King and experiences all of the tender sadness:
The Columbia Sky Observatory in Seattle, WA offers the tallest view available to the public west of the Mississippi. It can be a little frustrating to negotiate the surrounding one-way streets to get there, but the panorama is well worth the effort and the $14 fee. The Columbia Observatory may not be as well-known as …
The first thing you notice about Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers and their new coach, Chip Kelly, is how far it is from the city itself—about an hour’s drive south to Santa Clara in a neighborhood dominated by corporate office buildings. With its exposed white framework, the stadium has a slight resemblance …
For the first three quarters of Game 2 of the NBA Western Semi-Finals, the Portland Trail Blazers did everything they could to defy conventional wisdom. They crashed the boards, made big shots and on defense forced the Golden State Warriors to work for their points, and at the beginning of the fourth quarter the Blazers …
Last Saturday I headed back to the Highline for a sweaty, rowdy night of pure punk rock. Headlining the event was Moral Crux, a band I’d seen once before and was totally blown away by. They blew me away again. Front man James Farris is the quintessential punk. Sporting short platinum spikes, tight leopard print …
One should never judge a series by its first game, but with their 118-106 victory, the Dubs took care of business with a 20-point lead in the first quarter, never allowing the score to get close after that. Lillard and McCollum shot a combined 30% from the floor—they and the Blazers may have been a …
When I saw the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Los Angeles Clippers back in November, I wrote at the time that the Blazers looked better than expected, while the Clippers seemed to have more than their share of issues. I would have never predicted, though, that the Blazers would not only make the NBA playoffs …
I once heard a fan at AT&T Park say that he liked pitching duels when watching baseball on television, but when he was at the park, he wanted to see runs scored. I understood his perspective; hits and baserunners are a lot more interesting from the upper deck than a continual succession of pitches going …
Wednesday night April 27, Seattle’s Tractor Tavern hosted England’s Subways. Bursting with power and dripping with charisma, the band is led by they very boyish looking Billy Lunn. Add his brother Josh Morgan who thrashes the drum kit like a wild animal and Charlotte Cooper on bass. Charlotte was no slouch in the charm department. …
Night Two of the 2016 Seattle Ska Fest. The first band I saw was already on stage. The Mean Threes, a trio from Vancouver, BC, reminded me of a lot of sixties folk rock with provocative poetry and a reggae beat. Not a lot of on stage energy in this band, just laid back stuff …