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There are way too many good concerts in Seattle in the next 3 months
Aug 27th
Gorillaz perform at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in California.
I spend a lot of money on shows–it’s just too hard to resist all the amazing bands that come through Seattle all the time. The next few months are going to especially bad for my wallet, however, because it feels like 3/4 of my favorite bands right now are going to be playing a show here in the next several months.
I’m going to try to break it down, show-by-show, to figure out which ones are worthy of my money and which bands I might have to miss this time around.
Behind the jump you’ll find a list of the notable shows with their dates, prices and links to tickets. Anyone want to go to any with me? 
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My take on the Oregon QB battle
Aug 20th
Who will take over Oregon's prolific offense, senior Nate Costa or Sophomore Darron Thomas?
I haven’t been this excited for a football season ever. There are so many compelling storylines in the Pac-10 in the leadup to this season, and one that’s been covered by anyone and everyone is the battle down in Oregon over who will take over the Ducks’ offense after the unfortunate departure of last year’s starting QB Jeremiah Masoli.
Both Costa and Thomas are getting equal reps in practice so far, and head coach Chip Kelly has been pretty quiet about who he thinks is “ahead” in the fight to be the starter. However, there’s been a lot of reporting and speculating done based on their performance in practice. Based on these reports, I’m seeing a pattern emerging: both are too inconsistent, and have a lot of work to do before the season opener.
Rob Mosley on practice today:
Costa threw a pass intercepted by Cliff Harris that involved some sort of miscommunication, because there wasn’t really a receiver close. Thomas responded by running for a touchdown. Then they moved on to driving the team down the field needing to make up a deficit in the closing seconds of a game. Thomas didn’t convert his first chance, taking a couple of sacks in the process, and Costa was intercepted on his first play, by Marvin Johnson. Thomas then drove down to a field goal.
My impressions from reading practice reports are that while both quarterbacks have their moments of brilliance and are turning in their fair share of beautiful passes and good play, they are losing their focus too often and throwing too many interceptions.
Kelly seems to agree, saying in an interview that he needs the QBs to be more consistent:
“They’re doing good things and they’re doing bad things. We need more consistency out of both of them. There are times when, wow, that’s a real good play.
Then there are other times where, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get ourselves out of that play. There is a check system in and you didn’t get to it.’ A couple of those sacks weren’t their fault. The running backs missed a guy so they’re not looking for the ‘hot’ (receiver). But I still think we need more consistency out of that position overall.
If I had to make a prediction as to the stater vs. New Mexico, I’d put my money on Costa at this point. If both players continue to be inconsistent, Kelly will go with the player who has the most experience, and that’s definitely Costa. He’s been with the team much longer, has had (slightly) more playing time, and his short resumé includes a win on the road at UCLA.
While some argue that Thomas would be the better choice “for the future,” this team should not be focused on the future: It’s NOW time. With the ridiculous amount of returning starters the Ducks have to gamble on a less experienced QB could be a total waste of the returning talent there is this season.
Kelly has said that he’s not interested in a 2 QB system, but at this point that might be his best bet, at least for at least the first game. Since it’s pretty much a cupcake, let them each play a few quarters, decide who handles the situation better and make that man the starter the next week at Tennessee.
Only 2 weeks until kickoff!
Annoying clouds of gnats take over campus area
May 9th
They're a bit hard to see in this picture, but those little suckers are HIDING and want nothing more than to fly into your open mouth. Photo by Angelo Carosio.
You know what it feels like. Walking to class along the upper mall, talking to a friend, on the phone, whatever. Then, out of the blue, without any kind of warning at all, you’re engulfed in a cloud of bugs. The gnats were swarming in their little cloud right at your face level, and your distracted self didn’t notice. Now, it’s too late. They are in your hair, in your eyes, and probably in your mouth. That gnat attack is a terrible, horrible thing to experience. More >
Stay classy, Ben Roethlisberger
Apr 16th
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Rothlisberger on NFL photo day. Image via Pittsburgh Steelers.
It seems Ben Roethlisberger had a bad night.
The Super Bowl-winning VIP quarterback has been accused of sexual assault by a college student, and 572 pages of Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) records obtained by the Web site thesmokinggun.com reveal all the gritty details of Big Ben’s booze-filled night of questionable decisions. Her statement reads like the beginning of a particularly skeezy episode of “Law & Order: SVU.”
“He left and came back with his penis out of his pants. I told him it wasn’t OK, that no, we didn’t need to do this and I proceeded to get up and try to leave…He followed me into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.”
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Crowds line up to try out Apple’s ‘revolutionary’ iPad
Apr 4th
Customers at the University Village Apple Store got their first look at Apple's new device. Photo by Angelo Carosio | The Spectator
After several months of waiting and years of speculation, it’s finally arrived. The Apple iPad has been called a “revolutionary” “”polarizing” “magical” and “useless” device by various reviewers, but today the public finally got to lay their fingers on the glass and try it for themselves.
Lines slowly grew outside the University Village Apple Store before the 9 a.m. opening, but there was no shortage of iPads for people who didn’t pre-order the device. Jason Chan, an employee at the store, said that even though they had sold over 500 already, there was more than enough iPads to go around well after noon. Employees were cheering as people left the store with their new toys, and overall the environment was festive and exciting.
MGMT skip the singles on freakout-filled ‘Congratulations’
Mar 30th
MGMT’s cover for their new album ‘Congratulations’ is a serious early contender for the best cover of the year, and it seems that the psychedelic zanyness portrayed on the cover was exactly the style the band was aiming for in their much-anticipated follow up to “Oracular Spectacular.”
Much of MGMT’s success has been due to their megahit singles such as the Grammy-nominated “Kids” and the spectacular “Electric Feel,” but the band made it clear long before the follow-up was released that they weren’t going for the same level of pop this time around. They weren’t planning on making “Kids pt. 2,” and they said that if listeners go in expecting that, they will only be disappointed.
Instead, “Congratulations’ skips the pop and marches straight into Wonderland, and the result is an album full of insane 70′s spy movie grooves, 12-minute freakout epics and songs called “‘Brian Eno” and “Lady DaDa’s Nightmare.”
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Charles Garcia to declare for NBA draft this summer
Mar 8th
Charles Garcia reaches over a Fresno State player on Nov. 19 at KeyArena.
The Redhawks will have to find someone else to shoulder their winning hopes and dreams next season.
Star forward Charles Garica, the Redhawks men’s basketball team’s leading scorer with 18.7 points per game, has said that he plans on declaring for the NBA draft at the end of the season.
The announcement was first posted at Fox News before the official word came in a statement from Seattle U late Monday.
“It has always been a dream of mine to have an opportunity to play in the NBA. I want to thank Seattle University, Coach Dollar, and my teammates for putting me in this position. I also want to thank the city of Seattle for all their love and support,” said Garcia. “We have had an amazing winning season that I hope ends in a postseason tournament.”
NBC’s olympic coverage needs to join the 21st century
Feb 23rd
NBC's fabulous full-screen streaming player, complete with a mandatory banner ad.
If you thought NBC choosing Jay Leno over Conan O’Brien was bad, evidently it was just a warmup for a whole lot of other terrible choices during the Vancouver games.
The Spectator wrote an editorial last week about the games so far where we called out NBC for tape-delaying events for most of America. This is a problem, but it’s also how its been done for years and years. Even the “Miracle on Ice” in the 1980 games was not seen live in the United States. For the most part, Americans are used to seeing delayed Olympic events.
The biggest problem with NBC’s winter game coverage is what they are choosing to show, where they are showing it, and how they are chopping up the events to be more “easily digestible” and “universally” appealing.
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Introducing the Web 2.0 interview: IAmA
Jan 26th
I am a Best Buy Salesperson. I am the writer of famous Twitter account shitmydadsays. I am the creator of Ren & Stimpy. I am Roger Ebert. Ask me anything.
This is the basic premise of IAmA, a recently-added sub-page of the social news site reddit. Reddit usually has its users voting on links to stories and content submitted from elsewhere on the Web, but IAmA takes a different approach: turning the comments page that is part of every submission into a large-scale virtual interview.
Get ready: Apple promo for Jan. 27 event invites you to ‘Come see our latest creation’
Jan 19th
iSlate? iTablet? iPad? One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the upcoming Apple press event isn’t what they’re going to release, but instead what the almost inevitable tablet Mac will be named, and more importantly, what it will do. We will all find out on Jan. 27 when Apple holds one of their world-famous press conferences to announce new gadgets. The tablet Mac is almost a certainty, and it’s about time.
The rumors surrounding an Apple tablet running some form of Mac OS have been around since shortly after the iPhone was released. There have been many a press conference where geeks held their breath hoping for that “one more thing” to be announced at the end, only to have their hopes and dreams shattered when the only noteworthy product release was slightly redesigned iPods. The speculation is immense: some bloggers are saying it’s going to have a new version of iPhone OS on it, essentially making it a huge iPod Touch, or, as a source close to Apple put it, an “iPhone on steroids.” Others are claiming it will run a full-fledged version of Snow Leopard, like a normal Mac computer with new touch controls. Nobody really knows anything for sure.
The real question that the idea of an Apple tablet brings up is the who factor. Who is Apple going to cater this device to? If the market they’re looking for is the e-reader market, and they’re trying to go toe-to-toe with devices like the Kindle, a modified iPhone OS would work great. But the price would have to be low for any legitimate competition, and that’s something we all know Apple isn’t very good at. If it’s aimed at creative professionals like artists, photographers and filmmakers, it would almost have to run a full copy of OSX. I’d like to see them try to market a device to professional artists without Illustrator and Photoshop or to filmmakers without Final Cut. It just wouldn’t work.
As it stands right now, it seems like Apple isn’t really doing anything groundbreaking here, but rather doing what they’ve done in the past: taken emerging tech and made it easy to use for the masses. They did it with smartphones and the iPhone, with MP3 players and the iPod, and with old-school command-line computers and the Mac. There are plenty of tablet PCs out running Windows right now, but none of them are impressive, none of them do anything too exciting out of the touch or pen input that people are buying them for. For Apple to be successful here, they have to provide something new and exciting to get everyone’s attention, as well as the ability for the kind of people who usually buy tablet PCs to do what they’ve been doing for years on the friendlier Mac OS.
Since this device has been kept under wraps so well, the only thing that exists is rumors and guessing. There are rumors that magazine publisher Conde Nast is making tablet-formatted versions of its magazines for use on the tablet, which would point to a more iPod or iPhone like gadget with an emphasis on content consumption. There are also rumors that it will cost around $1000, which seems like a bit much to pay for a device aimed at reading magazines and e-books. Again, nobody really knows anything.
This tablet announcement is perhaps the most significant Apple announcement since the iPhone. We pretty much knew almost everything about the iPhone before it came out (including the completely obvious name), because a smartphone is a little bit easier of a thing to pin down. The idea of a “tablet” Mac could mean a whole load of things, and really the only thing to do is wait patiently until the 27th. Plenty of blogs will be posting up-to-the-minute reports of the announcement, and I know I’ll be glued to my screen for the duration.
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