Bloglander

HERE

The police shooting that left Jacob Dorfman dead on Tuesday may have been preceded by a confessional post on Craiglist. Authorities are trying to figure out if the author of the "goodbye cruel world" post was Dorfman. (SR)

Riverfront Park had more security calls in 2012 than the previous year. OVER THREE HUNDRED MORE SECURITY CALLS?! (KXLY)

If you ever want to know why libraries are dying and printed books don't matter to kids, go ahead and call Gonzaga Prep. (KREM)

Holy crap! How could we forget that it's Agriculture Week! I give you a cute pig photo! Rejoice!

YONDER

You know how cops are supposed to crack down on gangs? Well, what's if the cops ARE a gang?! Mind explode. (LA Times)

Drone conspiracy theorists: your worst nightmares are coming true in Seattle. (Seattle Times)

If you think Switzerland is all chocolate waterfalls and rainbows, think again. The country has high levels of civilian gun ownership, like the United States. (Washington Post)

Sexual abuse of children 'rampant' in India. (Al Jazeera)

WE HAVE THE SAME FAVORITE FOODS

the Scared is scared from Bianca Giaever on Vimeo.

Welcome back to GOOD READS, where Inlander staffers share a few of our favorite stories in hopes you'll love them too.

1. "For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact…" (Mike Dash//Smithsonian)

…and unaware of WWII.

2. "The Spy Novelist Who Knows Too Much" (Robert F. Worth//New York Times Magazine)

The story of a man who turns real secrets into fiction.

3. "How Two Newspapers Wound Up Staging The Same Sob Story…" (Barry Petchesky//Deadspin)

Remember that Ray Lewis story we recommended a couple weeks ago? Here's why it wasn't unique. 

4. "The great Omaha manhole fireball photo mystery" (Matthew Hansen//Omaha World-Herald)

In search of a viral photo that no one is sure is real. 

5. "Theater of Pain" (Tom Junod//Esquire)

In the NFL, the pressure to play overrides the pain. And that's making "the injury issue" worse. 

Keep scrolling over here.

The Logan-area coffee shop, Chairs Coffee, is opening another location in the former University Bar (or Bulldog), at the corner of Sharp and Hamilton. Ideally the shop will be open mid to late March, just in time for March Madness, co-owner Chris Nichols says.

Chairs Coffee and Public House will serve Roast House coffee, local beer and liquor, Nichols says. (They applied for a liquor license last week.) They also plan to have live music and open mic nights. 

“Overall it's mainly a coffee house and a public house, all kind of together,” Nichols says. “We want to allow people under 21 to be in there. We want it to be a place for Gonzaga, but also [for] the Logan neighborhood and Spokane.”

Nichols believes that the new location will fill a gap in the neighborhood business scene. Although there are other coffee shops, bars and restaurants in the area, Nichols says Chairs Coffee and Public House will offer everything under one roof.

“We want to make sure that the students have awesome food, a little healthier than the normal bar,” he says.

The hope is to renovate the interior, open up the ceilings and redo the floors, he says. 

The whole thing has moved quickly — Nichols and his partners saw the space for lease a week and a half ago. They called that day. Although it might seem hasty to some, Nichols says he's confident.

“We're excited,” he says. “We have the experience … and we have a lot of good people around us.”

Chairs Coffee, a popular Logan-area coffee shop, is opening a new location closer to Gonzaga University.

There’s a battle going on among Pita Pits, and the Gonzaga Pita Pit made it to the final four. But now, with only a day left in this round of voting, Spokane is falling behind and in danger of getting knocked out of the tournament.

Yes, the whole thing is largely a marketing promotion to get you to “Like” the Pita Pit page on Facebook, but there’s the possibility of a real reward — the winning store will give out free pitas for a day. 

Voting for this round ends Thursday at 9 pm. The top two will battle it out from Feb. 8 to 14, and the winner will be announced on Feb. 15. Here’s where to vote.

“We’ve got a great store here, and great customers who deserve free pitas,” owner Erik Morris says. “It’s really for the fans and customers.”

He grew up in Coeur d’Alene and first got involved with the tastiness of Pita Pit as a student at Washington State University. The Gonzaga Pita Pit just celebrated its seven-year anniversary of at the end of January, with a day of $3 pitas.

It’s not surprising that the other stores still in the running are also located in college towns or neighborhoods. Here’s what we know about the competition:

3. Indiana, Pa.

The Pita Pit in Indiana, Pa., is a bit of an underdog because its city, known as the Christmas Tree Capital of the World, has fewer college students and people in general. The store is on a main street not far from the campus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania. 

2. Claremont, Calif.

The Pita Pit in Claremont, Calif., is apparently pretty new, or at least it doesn’t show up on Google Street View images of the building from August 2011. Here’s a message from the new owners, who are offering customers 5 percent off if they vote in the store. They say: “Please help us out! This is our first business and we're trying desperately to win!” Claremont is home to the Claremont Colleges, a group of seven higher education institutions.

1. Williamsburg, Va.

Finally, the Pita Pit in Williamsburg, Va., is located in a classy building that’s pretty much on the campus of the College of William and Mary. It looks like they have very nice outdoor seating. Last week they alerted fans on Facebook that they were losing for the first time, and they’ve since rallied to retake the lead.

A former Spokane Target store manager has reportedly given up his red shirt and returned to his old line of work, taking a job with the National Nuclear Security Administration to oversee all nuclear weapons nationwide. 

The Project on Government Oversight recently reported retired Air Force Col. Steve Asher had been named acting Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security.

Retired Air Force Colonel Steve Asher has been named acting Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security/Chief of Defense Nuclear Security at the NNSA, according to the Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor, which means he is in charge of all nuclear weapons sites around the country.

That's a long way from the clearance rack where just a few years ago the retired colonel was interviewed by KREM 2 for a feature on Black Friday sales.

KREM posted a follow-up today with side-by-side photos of the colonel in uniform and the friendly store manager from their 2009 feature.

A trade publication, Nuclear Weapons & Materials Monitor, reported Asher started working for the NNSA as a security consultant in late 2012. The NNSA is apparently shaking up its commanders after recent security issues.

Here's more background information on the situation from Mother Jones.

click to enlarge

Kevin Spacey’s majority whip Frank Underwood is practically a cartoon. And that’s its second biggest strength.

Spacey plays Underwood as a meld of Mike Huckabee, Bill Clinton and Lucifer, Prince of Darkness. Consider House of Cards a political reboot of the canceled 666 Park Avenue, the devil whispering in ears, signing away souls, pulling strings to command his puppets to his will.

His monologues come out silky and loquacious, wrapped in vivid metaphor and overwritten prose. Take a parody of a slick-talking southern attorney and exaggerate it three times, and you have some sense for Spacey’s performance.

And yet… it’s captivating.

The best part of his portrayal is the cheesiest: Spacey, and Spacey alone, has the power to break the fourth wall, turn to the audience, and tell us all his plan. Sometimes it’s just a wink or a raised eyebrow, other times it’s a full-blown soliloquy about his manipulation. The device, borrowed from theater, is odd enough on television (or whatever Netflix is) to stand out. It’s going for Shakespeare, it’s ends up more Bond villain.

But there’s a place for Bond movies.

You can nitpick House of Cards all you want. No, a leaked draft of an education bill wouldn’t be a gangbuster above-the-fold story on inauguration day. No, journalists don’t walk up to sources and explicitly offer the entire sum of their integrity to politicians they’ve met for the first time. The show is essentially set in a fantasy world, sure as Middle Earth or the forest moon of Endor, where politics, punditry, unions, charities and the human condition have very few similarities to our own.

But realism shouldn’t always be used to define great art. Rather, “great art” shouldn’t always be used to define great art. There’s a place for foie gras and there’s a place for Taco Bell Beef Baja Chalupas. Great fast food can be delicious too.

House of Cards is not Mad Men or the Sopranos, and it shouldn’t be judged by their metric. It’s a closer fit with Prison Break, Con Air, 24, or Revenge. It’s a crackling good yarn — which is a different, but not necessarily lesser, standard for “great art.”

It doesn’t mean that House of Cards is immune to criticism: Most of the surrounding characters are nearly as vibrant as Spacey’s, and some of the other plots drag down the show’s momentum. Underwood is begging to be brought low, for his elaborate plans to backfire, but for at least the first half of the first season of House of Cards, everything just falls into place. Entertaining shows need conflict and suspense, and, as addictive as House of Cards is, there’s not yet enough of either.

But don’t dismiss the show for its silliness. Praise it for precisely that reason.

Each year, right around this time, I begin to tire of winter, but thankfully this is also the time when the Sasquatch Music Festival unveils its lineup. And this year's it's awesome. Take a look at this fab-o-lous poster.

If you're having trouble reading all of that, here is the full lineup in normal print. Tickets are on sale now.

Mumford & Sons, The Postal Service, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Sigur Ros, Vampire Weekend, The xx,  The Lumineers, Arctic Monkeys, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Cake, Primus (3D), Empire of the Sun, Imagine Dragons, Bloc Party, Andrew Bird, Grimes, Dropkick Murphys, Built to Spill, Alt-J, Steve Aoki, Azealia Banks, Tame Impala, Father John Misty, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Tallest Man on Earth, Devendra Banhart, The Presets, Laidback Luke, Schoolboy Q & Ab-Soul, Danny Brown, Earl Sweatshirt, Killer Mike, P.O.S., Death Grips, Shad, El-P, Michael Kiwanuka, Solange, Twin Shadow, Divine Fits, Dirty Projectors, Japandroids, Azari & III, Disclosure, Baauer, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Menomena, Ryan Bingham, JJ Grey & Mofro, Porcelain Raft, Youth Lagoon, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Holy Ghost!, Matthew Dear, Toro Y Moi, John Talabot, Shout Out Louds, Surfer Blood, DIIV, Torche, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Atlas Genius, Youngblood Hawke, Capital Cities, Fang Island, Red Fang, Reignwolf, Baths, Lusine, Yppah, Odesza, Four Color Zack, Beachwood Sparks, The Barr Brothers, Shovels & Rope, Willy Moon, Peace, Elliott Brood, Radical Face, Nancy & Beth (Megan Mullally & Stephanie Hunt), Akron/Family, Caveman, Telekinesis, Indians, Chvrches, Wild Belle, Suuns, Brown Bird, Bombino, Robert DeLong, Seawolf, ZZ Ward, Hundred Waters, Luke Sital-Singh, Wake Owl, Deep Sea Diver, Jherek Bischoff, Sean Nelson, Rose Windows, Nacho Picasso, Brothers From Another, Knowmads, Let’s Talk, Ra Scion, OC Notes “Golden Gods,” Kingdom Crumbs, Theoretics, Nissim (D. Black)

Spokane is getting its very own climate change rally.

"Spokane (and other cities) will rally in solidarity with thousands of Americans heading to Washington D.C. on February 17th, where they will make "Forward on Climate" the largest climate rally in U.S. History," says Crystal Gartner of the Sierra Club.

Gartner adds: "We rally to tell President Obama that it’s time for him to lead in the fight against climate change. It is time for a renewable energy future – one that doesn't include dirty and dangerous fuels like coal, fracking, or tar sands. Here in the Northwest and in Spokane, it is imperative that we protect our health, environment, and local economies from coal exports."

Joining the Sierra Club in organizing is Occupy Spokane.  

Details: 

What: FORWARD ON CLIMATE Solidarity Rally in Spokane. Speakers include Spokane City Council President Stuckart and others, followed by a half-mile march downtown to Main Market Co-op, 44 W. Main.

When: Sunday, February 17 at 1 p.m.

Where: Rotary Fountain in Riverfront Park, Spokane, near North Howard and West Spokane Falls Blvd.

For More Info: crystal.gartner@sierraclub.org or Forward on Climate site or Coal-Free Spokane.

More City Hall Eyeball here.