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?

August

• 8/29: Vampire Weekend & Beach House – Marymoor Park, $39.50

September

• 9/13: The Gaslight Anthem – Showbox SoDo, $19
• 9/14: Ratatat – Showbox SoDo, $27.50
• 9/22: Pantha Du Prince – Decibel Festival (Neumos), $12
• 9/23: Flying Lotus – Decibel Festival (Neumos), $20
• 9/25: The xx – Paramount Theater, $26.50
• 9/27: The Flaming Lips & Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Paramount Theater, $40
• 9/27: Neon Indian & Prefuse 73 – Showbox Market, $18
• 9/29: Arcade Fire – KeyArena, $50
• 9/30: Dirty Projectors – Showbox Market, $23

October

• 10/1: Rusko – Showbox Market, $20
• 10/2: The Black Keys – Showbox Market, $30
• 10/4: Caribou – Showbox Market, $16
• 10/7: Switch – See Sound Lounge, $20
• 10/13: Holy Fuck – Neumos, $13
• 10/23: Big Boi – Showbox SoDo, $29.50
• 10/27: of Montreal & Janele Monet – Paramount, $29.50
• 10/27: Deerhunter – Showbox Market, $16

November

• 11/2: Gorillaz – KeyArena, $63-$105

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!

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.

Every spring, as soon as the weather starts to get warm, they arrive right on schedule. Clouds of hundreds of the shitty little bugs gather by the Quad, in the middle of the upper mall or right before you get to Campion. There’s no stopping them, and they seem to get worse every year.

“Last year I had one, maybe two f**king gnats get in my mouth,” said Michael Gehlke, junior Math and Computer Science major. “This year they are unstoppable. I’ve inhaled at least 5, and it’s barely even May!”

The gnats are becoming a serious issue, as some think that their increasing numbers will soon spiral out of control. The clouds are getting bigger, and worse, they are showing up at increasingly more locations on campus. Public Safety has launched an “investigation” into the issue, and the department said they are developing a “5-year-plan” to deal with the gnats.

“We first have to educate people on the issue at hand today. There are ways to avoid an attack, but they require absolute attention to your surroundings and strategies to avoid contact with the bugs,” said Mike Sletten, director of Public Safety. “It’s pretty much like a zombie movie.”

The admissions department also plans to catch as many gnats as possible in “big-ass garbage bags” on the day before the accepted student open house this month.

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.”

The victim’s name is being protected, but the documents indicate that she’s a 20-year-old college student who was bar-hopping in Milledgeville, a small college town south of Atlanta. A friend of the victim told investigators in a statement about partying with Roethlisberger at the Capital City club, where he purchased a round of shots for women in the VIP room and announced, “All my bitches, take some shots.”

Another witness, Ann Marie Lubatti, stated that the victim told her about having unprotected sex with Roethlisberger. After hearing her friend’s account, Lubatti and another woman, Nicole Biancofiore, “walked up to the first cop we saw and told them what happened.”

Read the full police document and The Smoking Gun’s article for more details, but the bigger question that this incident brings up is Big Ben’s potential punishment–this is the second time in a year that the quarterback has been accused of sexual assault. Roethlisberger denies the allegations, and police are waiting on test results before deciding whether or not to charge him.

Most fans and media are saying that Ben needs to be suspended for at least 4 games and that if he makes another mistake, a “strike three,” that the Steelers should trade him before his contract expires. The team itself could also face fines around $200,000, as the NFL now holds teams responsible for their players’ off-the-field transgressions.

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.

The table of demo iPads was bustling with people anxious to get their hands on the device, and there were lines behind every unit. The rest of the store was comparatively dead–it was surprising to see how many people just wanted to try the thing out.

“We’re encouraging people to give it a shot to see if they like it before they decide to buy one,” Chen said. “It’s really cool, a lot of people just want to come in, play with it, just see what it’s about.”

Holding an iPad in my hands was a distinct experience. It’s different than anything you’ve held before, the bright display and amazing thin-ness combine to make it seem like you’re holding nothing but pure screen. It may be “pretty much just a big iPod touch,” but the size (Over three times the screen real-estate) turns it in to a completely different machine entirely. Web pages don’t require you to scroll around to see everything, you can view both a list of your emails and the emails themselves on one screen, and the iTunes and Remote applications blow the ones on the iPhone out of the water.

The iPad has a large, 10-inch screen and runs the same OS as the iPhone and iPod touch. Photo by Angelo Carosio | The Spectator

The iPad makes for a perfect couch, bed, and casual browsing computer. While I didn’t get the chance to sit down with it, trying it in a variety of different scenarios (on a table, on a dock, holding it completely) made me realize that there doesn’t seem to be a wrong way to hold this thing. While holding it made it a bit awkward to type on, with it on a table on on your lap the keyboard seemed accurate and much easier to use than it’s iPhone counterpart, mostly due to the extra space.

“This is a completely new way to browse the web,” said one customer while browsing NYTimes.com on a demo iPad. “It’s just amazing.”

The next step for Apple after such a successful product release will be to ensure the quality of apps on the iPad app store live up to the quality of the device. Such a large screen will give developers much more to work with, and it seems that the store is already seeing innovative, useful apps that might not have been possible with the iPhone. Apple’s already created an iPad version of it’s iWork software, which allows for document creation, and new apps from giants like Netflix, ABC and Amazon ensure that the iTunes store isn’t going to be the only place you can go for content.

It’s hard to say whether or not this device will gain traction as fast as the iPhone and iPod lines did after their initial releases, but if the scene today was any indicator, it seems very possible. The price helps too: the iPad starts at $500, which is half the price of their entry-level laptop. For people who mostly use their computers for surfing, watching and playing games, that price seems pretty attractive.

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.”

On opener “It’s Working,” Andrew VanWyngarden’s deeply reverbed voice floats above an upbeat, energetic guitar and drum groove that at times feels straight from a James Bond chase scene. “Love, it’s only in your mind,” he sings over the obligatory backup choir. “Not your heart.” First-released “Flash Delirium” doesn’t even have a chorus, but the thick synth bass lines, explosive drumming and seemingly random flute solo stay stuck in your head long after the song’s over. 12-minute centerpiece “Siberian Breaks” goes from retro folk to indie rock to outer space electronica and back again without missing a beat.

The style takes more clues from “Oracular”‘s B-list banger “Of Birds, Moons and Monsters” than their more famous songs, and where “Oracular” was stylistically all over the place, “Congratulations” has a much more consistent sound throughout. This could be seen as a positive or negative thing, depending on how you listen to music. These songs won’t be taken nearly as well out of context, but a listen to the whole album revels a great piece of music that will demand repeated listens to fully comprehend.

There’s no doubt that this is a polarizing record, but it’s a great way for the band to say that they’re not interested in playing the pop music game. They focused on the amazing singles on their first album, and the rest of the album lagged in comparison. While there might not be any songs on “Congratulations” that are as good as ‘Electric Feel,” the overall level of quality makes the album much more enjoyable to listen to.

It will be interesting to see if “Congratulations” will have a big impact on the music scene in the same way as their first album did. It doesn’t seem like it, but maybe just their name on it will encourage the less musically adventurous types to give some experimentalism a shot. Who knows, maybe they like freak-out space rock!

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.”

As the Redhawks prepare for a potential tournament, they will have the departure of Garcia looming over their heads. Once Garcia hires an agent, there is no chance he can return to play his senior year–even if he doesn’t get drafted. It was widely speculated that he would make this move, but that doesn’t mean it will be any easier for the team.

“There may be a handful of players in the country who have as much upside as Charles. I am extremely proud of how he has grown and developed throughout the year. I support his decision 100% and look forward to watching him reach his tremendous potential in the NBA,” Coach Cameron Dollar said in the statement. “I will be forever grateful for all he has done for the university and our basketball program.”

The Redhawks finished their regular season by winning eight of their last nine games, including a 74-64 victory at Utah Valley University last Saturday. The team is hoping to earn a berth in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), or the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT). Seattle U will learn its postseason fate on Sunday, March 14, when the tournament committees release their selections.

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.

For example: You may have heard that the United States beat Canada in hockey Sunday in one of the most anticipated events in the entirety of these games. You probably didn’t watch it, however, even if you wanted to. Despite the game being the most viewed TV event ever in Canada, NBC gave the game the cold shoulder. It was relegated to cable network MSNBC and online, so you could either watch the game in standard definition or badly streamed with frequent dropouts. Trying myself to watch the historic game, I was forced to first prove to nbcolympics.com that I subscribed to a premium cable package (I don’t, I had to call my parents to get their Comcast account information) and then was presented with the lovely atrocity you see above as a full-screen player. It was even worse on my HDTV: that banner ad stays the same size no matter what resolution you’re viewing at, so a lower-res display like a TV will have almost 1/3 of the total screen space taken up by ads and blank space that it’s impossible to get rid of.

In the meantime, real NBC is showing a tape-delayed bobsled race from 5 hours ago. After that, they cut to in-depth coverage of ice dancing, a sport they says caters to their “largely female” Sunday night audience better than hockey. I don’t think that’s the real reason the game wasn’t on real NBC, and one of NPR’s bloggers seems to agree.

The basic problem with NBC’s coverage is that they haven’t improved the fundamentals of the coverage in spite of massive changes in the way people take in content. The prime-time coverage is largely as it’s always been: a few events (including figure skating) are heavily showcased, a few other events (most skiing and speed skating fall into this category) are usually shown in an abbreviated format regular viewers instantly recognize as “USA-Plus” (meaning you see the Americans, plus a few other people who are relevant because they either do very well or wipe out spectacularly)

Hockey can’t be shown in this format. A hockey game lasts around three hours, and provides little time for cutaways to other sports or commercials, which is a staple for the network.

The way NBC is covering these games is a blow to actual sports fans. The real excitement and suspense of watching sporting events is ruined when the winner has been spoiled to you by print and web media hours before the event even shows on TV, and in this day and age those sorts of things are impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, perhaps one of the biggest stories of the games so far is pushed aside to cable and the internet while the coverage on the main network is people dancing around in frilly outfits. Sure, not a whole lot of people in the United States watch hockey, but not a lot of people watch figure skating outside of the Olympics either. Olympics viewers will watch events that are compelling and have athletes that they connect with, and a USA vs. Canada hockey game has all those.

I’m tired of having to avoid Twitter and Facebook and seattletimes.com so I can live in a bubble and have at least some amount of suspense. I’m tired of only seeing Americans doing their ski runs and having 3 minutes of commercials per 5 minutes of content. I’m tired of the hassle I have to go through to watch any kind of live events. NBC: it’s 2010. You’re being scooped by PRINT MEDIA. People consume media differently now, and you better get your shit together before ESPN comes in and shows you how to really cover sports.

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.

Instead of a link to a news story and comments about that news story, people in reddit’s user base are encouraged to pick an interesting part about themselves and answer questions about it. There are no restrictions: people can answer questions about their job, a previous experience they’ve had, even their sex life. Other reddit members will then ask questions and vote on other’s questions, and the most popular will drift to the top where the submitter will be able to answer them easily.

“I Am A, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal,” reads the title of the site’s homepage. That slogan comes across with the variety of the submissions. On the homepage now there are IAmAs from ex-Scientologists, former NFL athletes, Jeopardy contestants and even a federal lobbyist.

The NFL IAmA about a very retired Packers player from the 60s who worked under coaching legend Vince Lombardi has hundreds of questions and thousands of views. The former place-kicker talks about his Super Bowl win, the medical issues surrounding pro football and the differences in the sport now versus the ’60s. If you’re wondering what an 80 year old man is doing on an Internet forum, all you need to know is that it’s his grandson relaying the questions to him and answers back to the Internet.

“Lombardi didn’t put up with a lot of bullshit,” he wrote. “Apparently one guy had his agent call Lombardi to negotiate his salary. Lombardi promptly hung up, dialed a number and traded the guy to another team.”

Musician Steve Vai submitted an AMA so people could ask questions about his Grammy Award-winning recording career.

While most of the IAmA’s are from everyday people who have an interesting part of themselves they wish to share, celebrities and other well-known people have also popped up to answer questions, either on their own or through a correspondent friend. In September 2009, a post was quickly rushed to the top of the page. “I am a Grammy Award-winning career musician who has been actively playing and recording for almost three decades. AMA.” (AMA stands for ask me anything)

The musician didn’t reveal himself, but answered questions about his Grammys, the major label recording industry, his stance on the music file-sharing debate, and his personal favorite music. Before long, the reddit userbase determined that the musician in question was Steve Vai, a former guitarist for Frank Zappa and solo artist with 14 albums.

The unveiling prompted Vai to post a photo confirming that it was indeed him, shown here. Once people knew who he was even more questions came about Frank Zappa and his career in particular. Although he didn’t get to every question, it was still an incredible thing for so many people to be able to ask questions of a famous musician.

IAmA shows a different side of this hyper-connected world we live in. While it seems like most user-driven content lacks real depth, this gives everyone the chance to feel important and share their lives in a way that goes a whole lot further than starting a blog that nobody reads or posting a badly written comment on a news article. Everyone can learn something from reading about other people’s interesting lives, and everyone can also learn something about themselves by answering others’ questions. There’s a reason that IAmA won the best reddit community of 2009 award.