I’m happy to announce that I’m signed up for my very own web sports column at the Seattle Weekly. It’s called “The Bounce to Ecstasy!”, after the catchphrase coined by the sublime Bill Raftery. I join two much more well-known and accomplished individuals (Krist Novoselic and John Roderick) as a Weekly web columnist. My columns will basically be glorified blog posts, but they may be in print every now and again and I’m getting paid for them, which is nice. This week’s installment offers a solution for the Mariners’ woes. Look for a new one at this address every Thursday.

My friend Mike posted this graphic from phd comics yesterday. I know this cycle too well:

Similarly, this entertaining article from Jessica Winter in Slate documents the epic procrastination/perfectionism of Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote following the publication of their big hits (Invisible Man and In Cold Blood, respectively). My favorite part is the authors’ false claims of stolen and/or burned manuscripts–really just a half-step above the “my dog ate it” excuse. I wonder if a similarly anguished procrastination is secretly at work with Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger. Either way, the article struck a little fear in the heart of this wannabe scribe (though of course I have no great success—save the underappreciated buddy cop masterpiece Haymaker & Sally—to drive my anxiety), and I hope it does the same for a certain friend who needs to finish his opus, post-haste.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s my article from this week’s Weekly on Yale Lewis, George Clinton’s lawyer. You can pick up a copy of the print edition until tomorrow morning, when the next issue comes out.

I also recommend this video by my friend Patrick on the recently deceased photojournalist Dith Pran, who survived the Khmer Rouge and coined the term “Killing Fields.”

Finally, while Pran had the talent, determination, and luck to make it out of Cambodia, turn his experiences into a career, and help educate the world, he’s obviously the exception. I wonder what will happen to this guy. I can’t imagine being anything but indefinitely homicidally pissed after an experience like that. God bless America.

I had my first hard news story published in the Weekly. It’s on the debate over House Bill 2712, a piece of proposed anti-gang legislation that has parties who are typically allies pitted against each other. Check it out.

To cap off the slew of basketball-related posts I just put up, I direct you to my article on the Boom Squad, the b-boy crew that performs during breaks in Sonics games. As always, if you like it, feel free to leave a comment over there.

Now it’s time for some shameless self-promotion. In case you don’t live in Seattle or haven’t heard, I got the cover story in this week’s Seattle Weekly. Click on the mini-cover below to read it:

As always, should you be inclined, leave a comment (at the Weekly site) and/or use the e-mail the article to a friend feature, so the wonderful folks at the Weekly can see how wonderful I am, too.

My good friend Jason “Reidster” Reid and I also made a video trailer for the article:

And finally, a version of my blog post on Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels ran in the print edition as well.

Greetings, Readers–the few I have left after my recent shift to a basketball-heavy format. As many of you know, the reason I write about the Sonics so much is that I cover them for the Seattle Weekly, where I am also trying to score a fellowship. But a couple pieces of good news:

1) Good news for me–I got an article published there (the first that wasn’t just a converted blog post). It’s on the hard-hitting news subject of scalpers at Sonics games and probably won’t win me a Pulitzer, but it was fun to write and hey, it’s a start:

Welcome to the Hard-Knock Life of a Sonics Ticket Scalper

Feel free to read it, re-read it, comment on it, use the “e-mail article” feature, etc., so the kind folks at the Village Voice media realize what a talented and popular scribe I am.

2) Good news for you and me–I can now post in the Weekly’s other blogs (and maybe could have all along, something I didn’t realize), meaning the writing I do over there (and thus the writing that appears here) will cover a greater variety of subject matter. This, I hope, will make things a little easier on those of you who aren’t so into the basketball posts.