Bloglander

While many of us consume our entertainment digitally these days, whether it’s a movie, TV show or album (quaint phrase, that), Tuesdays still act as the release date for the vast majority of new goodies for those of us who just have to have our own “official” Blu-ray copy of Sharknado II: The Second One.

Today, that Sharknado dream can become reality — in an “unrated” and “extended version” no less — as the DVD hits stores and online retailers. Each Tuesday, we’re going to make sure you don’t miss out by highlighting a few new music and video releases to help you figure out how to spend your hard-earned home-entertainment dollar.

Here is what’s new and worth your attention, released Tuesday, Oct. 7:

MUSIC

Weezer, Everything Will Be Alright in the End. All the Weezheads dreaming of a return to “the blue album” or Pinkerton will find much to love from Rivers Cuomo and Co. after a forgettable few Weezer albums.


The Vaselines, V for Vaselines. Scottish pop-rockers and Nirvana inspirations The Vaselines (they wrote “Molly’s Lips” and “Son of a Gun”) release just their third studio album in their 28-year history.


Field Report, Marigolden. The Milwaukee folk-rockers Field Report, led by former Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) musical partner Chris Porterfield, builds on their buzzworthy 2012 debut that garnered praise from the likes of Emmylou Harris and Aimee Mann.


MOVIES

The Mad Men and baseball fanatics might want to spend some time with the “based on a true story” feel-good flick Million Dollar Arm. And those with a greater tolerance for Seth McFarlane’s smug mug can check out A Million Ways to Die in the West. And Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow (now rebranded as Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow) is the obvious popcorn-pic of this week’s releases. Here are three smaller flicks you should have on your radar:

Obvious Child is easily the most charming rom-com based around an abortion that you’ll ever see, thanks to the star-making turn by former Saturday Night Live and Parks & Recreation actress Jenny Slate as a New York standup who finds herself knocked up from a one-night stand.


To Be Takei is a documentary about everyone’s favorite social-media machine/Star Trek actor, tackling everything from his very public coming out to his efforts to, less interestingly, produce a play.


Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is the directorial debut of Mike Myers, and tracks the unlikely career of one of Hollywood’s ultimate insiders in Gordon, who befriended Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix in college, and went on to manage the likes of Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper and celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse. 

HERE

A pair of teenagers wanted in connection with an Okanogan County murder were located yesterday afternoon in Oregon. (KXLY)

The debate between Republican candidates vying to represent the 4th Legislative District was filled to capacity last night. Here's what they said. (S-R)

Investigators have concluded that the April police shooting of a murder suspect in north Spokane was justified. (KREM)

Despite yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, same-sex marriages aren't legal in Idaho just yet. (Inlander)

THERE

The U.S. led a series of airstrikes against ISIS near the Syrian border town of Kobani to stop militants from seizing the town. (CNN)

Prosecutors at the Justice Department are planning to file charges against several big banks for their role in the financial crisis. (NYT)

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to two Japanese scientists, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, and American Shuji Nakamura for their work developing LED light technology. (Businessweek)

You know the Inlander has a wide array of event listings always at your easily searchable disposal, and the staff even picks some highlights, aka Staff Picks — you can find them right here. But in case you don’t have the time to peruse each day, “What’s Up Today” is here to highlight a few options.

Tuesday night, pop-punk crew Less Than Jake shows off their middle-aged ability to keep up the rock at the Knitting Factory. Read about what the band has been up to in Arts & Culture Editor Mike Bookey’s story and interview with the band.
Tonight also marks the first appearance of National Geographic Live at the INB Performing Arts Center. There are several editions of this interactive show comingin the next few months. Tonight, underwater photojournalist David Doubilet and biologist Jennifer Hayes visit Spokane to talk about “Coral Kingdoms and Empires of Ice.”

And aspiring hockey stars and casual fans will want to make their way to the Eagles Ice-A-Rena for the opportunity to “Skate with the Chiefs” and get some player autographs from the pros. The cheap entry price, just $5, goes to benefit the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery. 

Here's another work by local artist Dave Rowles. It just needs one thing — a caption. Put yours in the comments below and later this week, we'll share the caption Dave had on his cartoon, as well as our favorite submissions from our readers, right back here at Bloglander. 

Good morning Internet users! Welcome to a new weekly or at least semi-weekly addition to Bloglander. Monday Morning Place Kicker will get you caught up with all the sports and sports-related happenings from the weekend so you can at least fake your way through a conversation with your sports-obsessed co-workers.

This is probably one of the best Mondays to launch this column because there's a lot of insanity to discuss in the sports world. And for once all of it happened during actual games! Let us start close to home...

COUG-ING IT
It doesn't bring me joy to use this term, but it's become the only way to explain some of the impossibly awful losses Washington State football has brought upon themselves in recent years. Urban dictionary has a couple of entries:

1. The uncanny ability of the Washington State University football to team to, despite all odds, lose football games at the last possible moment in a spectacular display of giving the football to the other team.
Couging it - the 2013 New Mexico Bowl

2. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Blowing a lead. Losing a game when you have already defined the win.

The Washington State Cougars were kicking ass until the fourth quarter when they fumbled three times instead of running out the clock. They sucked so bad they were Couging it.

The Cougs really, really Coug-ed it on Saturday night, though. They're going to have to update that definition.

If you didn't see it, or hear about it, WSU quarterback Connor Halliday broke the NCAA single-game passing record by chucking a dizzying 734 yards. If you put all those passes together, they'd go half-way to the moon several blocks from your house.

The dude was on fire, but so was Cal's Jared Goff, who tossed 527 yards and five touchdowns on his own. For this reason, the game took more than four hours to come to a head, when, down 60-59 (yes, that's a football score), the Cougars easily took the ball to the Cal goal line and, instead of using all their downs to try to punch it in for a touchdown, went for a field goal. A 19-yard-field goal. A chip shot. A lay up.

And the kicker missed, wide right.

Sitting in the near-midnight glow of my television, I actually said "Coug-ed it" aloud to the empty room, like so many others likely did across the region. The look on Halliday's face when that kick went wide was so brutal, no Mike Leach monologue on the future of technology could possibly fix it.

WSU heads to face the burliest band of smart kids ever assembled when they roll down to Stanford on Friday night.

HERE

An accidental shooting in north Spokane involving two teenage boys playing with a gun has left one victim hospitalized and in critical condition. (S-R)

Temple Beth Shalom on the South Hill was vandalized with a swastika painting during Saturday’s Yom Kippur service. (KREM)

Pullman's first pot shop opened its doors on Saturday, just in time for homecoming at Washington State University. (KXLY)

84-year-old Sister Madonna Buder of Spokane, the oldest woman to ever finish an Ironman triathlon, will make history again by competing at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, this weekend. (KXLY)

THERE

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from five states — Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin — seeking to ban same-sex marriage. The court's decision makes same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia. (Inlander)

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to British-American scientist John O’Keefe and Norwegian researchers May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser for discovering the brain's "inner GPS." (NYT)

A fifth American Ebola patient, Ashoka Mukpo, a journalist for NBC News, arrived in the United States. this morning and is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. (Reuters)

Meanwhile, the condition of Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan is getting worse. (WaPo)

In a letter dated a few days before the liberal city council got its unofficial "supermajority," Mayor David Condon asked the council to form a joint task force to talk about money. He wanted to analyze how much any future policy change (including any council-proposed ordinance) would cost the city.

The council's response: No thanks.

"We're the legislature. We're a separate branch of government. We have our own process and procedure," Council President Ben Stuckart tells the Inlander. "If the administration wants to run the legislature, they should run for the legislature."

While the mayor and council agree on some things — Condon and most on the council are working to convince citizens to pass this fall's street levy and park bond, for example — their divisions have become increasingly clear as the council has become more liberal this year. One of those pressure points is around the council's push to make the city greener. Administration spokesman Brian Coddington says part of the mayor's desire for a joint group is the result of questions about the cost of a recent Stuckart-sponsored ordinance requiring the city to use recycled paper.

When Stuckart presented the ordinance at a council meeting in July, he cited figures he'd received from the environmental programs section of the city utilities department. The switch would cost the city about $8,900, he estimated. And if they switched to buying all paper products through one contract, they could save $3,000, bringing the total impact down to $5,900.

But now the administration is presenting a very different estimate of what the paper switch will cost: $25,000. That's according to the city's in-house print shop, which oversees the city's paper purchasing, Coddington says.

So how did two city departments come to such vastly different estimates?

Lloyd Brewer, who oversees the city's environmental programs, says it's about details. The estimate he sent the council was just for the basic copy paper the city uses the most: 8 1/2 by 11 inches, legal and tabloid size.

"It didn't include envelopes or other kinds of paper," he says. "I thought the direction they were heading was to write the ordinance just for that. They ended up writing the ordinance to cover just about any type of paper product we buy."

It turns out covering every type of paper in City Hall is not cheap. And that other piece — the one about saving money by consolidating how the city orders paper — may be a ways off. That's because different departments are at different points in ongoing paper supply contracts and because the city isn't sure where it could store all that paper.

"It's not something ... that's going to be able to be done in the shorter term," Brewer says. "It will likely be a year or a couple years."

(The law does include a caveat that recycled paper should only be purchased if it "performs adequately for its intended use and is available at a fair and reasonable price." So, how much leeway do departments really have in choosing the more expensive recycled option? Brewer says he expects clarification on that from the council or city legal soon.)

Councilman Mike Fagan, the group's outspoken fiscal conservative, says he's not sure the council should jump into a joint relationship with the administration to analyze every ordinance, but he's concerned about potential costs of the new council majority's priorities.

"I think these things are happening because of the direction of the council. The left has got the majority at this point and the Sustainability Action Plan was created by those that lean to the left," Fagan says. "I don’t really care about the Sustainability Action Plan and I don’t know what’s in it, but I have heard conversations that we’re just taking these planks one at a time. ... The taxpayer needs to know what’s going on. It's those guys we work for that are paying the bill."

For Stuckart, even $25,000, in the scope of the city's total $600 million budget, is worth the environmental value of switching to recycled paper. But to the administration, it's a warning sign.

"This is an example of why it's important to have a good discussion about the fiscal impact before you move ahead with an ordinance," Coddington says. "It makes sure everybody is on the same page and understands all of the ramifications."

The U.S. Supreme Court decided this morning that it will not hear appeals to rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states: Indiana, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia, effectively allowing marriage in those states. In the cases in question, lower courts had struck down bans on same-sex marriage and those decisions had been appealed. With the Supreme Court refusing to hear the appeals, the earlier decisions will stand and same-sex weddings could begin immediately. And with those decisions no longer in question, they'll also now apply in other states covered by the same appeals courts, bringing the total number of states where gay marriage is legal to 30.

“I’m blown away by this. It is a watershed moment for the entire country," an ACLU lawyer told the Washington Post.

You'll remember that Idaho has spent the year undergoing its own battle over marriage equality. For now, the state remains a "Meanwhile..." footnote in talk about today's SCOTUS decision. Because Idaho was not one of these five cases, the decision won't immediately clear the way for marriages there. The Supreme Court seems to be indicating that it will defer to the lower courts on this issue (at least while they're rejecting same-sex marriage bans), and that's likely to have some effect on future rulings — it's just unclear exactly what. In early September, the 9th Circuit heard Idaho's case, in which the state is defending its voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. That court could rule at any time.

In it's 7th year, Terrain featured local artists, musicians, readers, food trucks and vendors at its new location at the old Washington Cracker Co. building on W. Pacific Ave. Spokane showed its support for the one night event by packing the place, causing a long line to form just to enter the venue. 

They move onto the INB Performing Arts stage with purpose. At the most, there’s 30 minutes between the Pixies set and their openers, Royal Blood (a hard rock two-piece worthy of a listen). And here they are, just four people waving, bowing. Not once over the next 2-hour set will any of them say words that aren’t a part of their songs into their microphones. They are here to play music.

Onward, they start up into “Wave of Mutilation,” Black Francis’ aging but still great voice soars over the auditorium. The crowd, filling around two-thirds of the room, loves it. While the venue has assigned seats, most people will stand throughout the set.

The best part about seeing the Pixies live is experiencing the beauty in how their songs work. Through the loud, scuzzed-out dissonance coming from the guitars and bass, melodies appear, tasty morsels that delight the ears.

Before the show had begun, the superfan sitting next to me wondered if I’d ever seen the influential indie rockers before. After replying no, he explained I should have brought an extra pair of pants because “the music would make me poop my pants.” Thankfully, that didn’t happen, but the show did rock hard. Especially wonderful were “Ed is Dead,” when people got to really dance, “Nimrod’s Son,” when people got to shout, and “La La Love You,” when drummer David Lovering led the singing audience though the chorus. Things got funny when it was clear he wanted to end the song but the band just kept playing. Poor guy. 

For anyone skeptical of their new album Indie Cindy, the handful of songs they played from it — like “Indie Cindy,” “Bagboy” and “Greens and Blues” — fit in quite well with the rest of the set, even if less people seemed to be familiar with them.

Kim Deal wasn’t there, that was very clear. But touring bassist Paz Lenchantin did everything she could to satisfy the role. To take over for someone so integral for the band must be daunting, but especially on wispy vocal harmonies, when she wasn’t singing alone, she did well. Often, though she just kind of faded into the background.

Guitarist Joey Santiago smiled maybe once in the whole set. That came in the second-to-last song, “Vamos,” when he went to the center of the stage to wail on his instrument. He then took Lovering’s drumstick and started strumming his guitar with it. He threw the stick on the ground, it bounced back and he caught it. He threw the stick down and rolled his guitar stings over it on the ground. The madness was so awe-inspiring, he had audience members in front bowing down.

Of course, you know what they ended with; it’s the song they had to end with — “Where is My Mind.” The audience swayed, and more cell phones were taken out to document this song than any other.

After a 29-song set, it appeared we weren’t going to get an encore, but finally, the four-piece played one more song, a rollicking "Planet of Sound." They rode us hard and they waved and bowed and they were out of there. True professionals.

If you wanted the Pixies to sound exactly like their albums, this show wasn’t for you. If you wanted the Pixies to sound like they did at the beginning of their reunion tour in the mid-2000s, this show wasn’t for you.

If you wanted a damn good rock show with musicians dedicated to their craft, this was the show for you.