…in the story I tell in this week’s “The Bounce to Ecstasy!” column: “Tell John McLaren You Saved Him a Buck or Two by Dialing 1-800-COLLECT“. As always, full archives of the column can be found here.

Tonight’s STIFF lineup features my two favorite of the festival’s movies thus far: the delightful Frank & Cindy (7:00 at the Capitol Hill Arts Center), and, of course, my own Haymaker & Sally (9:30 at the Central Cinema). If you must choose only one, choose Haymaker & Sally, but I recommend both. And do review them (and any others you see), so that you can have a voice in who wins the audience award! (All you have to do is sign up for an account on the STIFF page–very easy to do.)

As many of you already know, Jason Reid has been assiduously documenting the Sonics relocation saga (perhaps to the tune of a future feature length documentary). Well, his most recent movie, a seven-minute Manhattan-shot splendor made with fellow Haymaker & Sally stalwart Camp Jones, has taken the web by storm. See it below, along a televised shout-out from KOMO-4 anchor Dan Lewis:

Finally, I should add that the Save Our Sonics rally he’s promoting in the videos is slated to feature former Sonics Gary Payton and Xavier McDaniel. To paraphrase Wayne Brady on the Chapelle show, is the X-Man gonna have to choke a Sonics owner?

My most recent Weekly web column is up, and the title pretty much tells explains it. As the result of a site redesign over there, the archive of my columns has been moved here.

No radio interviews for you!

Back in February, I wrote a piece comparing the Sonics’ situation to the movie Major League. Well, the information being revealed by the upcoming trial continues to make the comparison more apt. Today, we learn that, in response to the team’s motion to exclude testimony by KJR radio host Mitch Levy and author and Stranger columnist Sherman Alexie, the city’s lawyers have filed a motion disclosing that the team allowed Kevin Durant to appear on KJR only once all last season. Sure doesn’t sound like a team trying to market a wildly talented, good-looking rookie star who confesses to a crush on Beyonce and can do a dead-on impression of his coach’s raspy voice.

Check out my most recent web column, on the Sonics owners, e-mails, and my friend Craig.

Full archive of them can be found here.

A little Monday morning paparazzi action for you, courtesy of “The Dirty” and a hot tip from my man, Matt N.

It’s Spencer Hawes and the Durantula hanging out with what appears to be next year’s pledge class. More photos here.

This week, the state announced that it has increased the list of viaduct replacement options from three to ten. But with the political process seemingly dragging and with removal of the old, unstable structure still four years off, some might wonder: what if an earthquake were to hit in the meantime? After all, it was the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake that set the structure sinking into Elliott Bay, and since then a group of earth sciences and urban planning experts at the University of Washington have repeatedly warned the state to shut it down as soon as possible. If an earthquake were to strike at rush hour tomorrow and a collapsed viaduct killed thousands, would the state end up paying damages on wrongful death lawsuits?

Many states employ “sovereign immunity” to protect their governments from litigation, while others cap the damages their governments can pay. For example, Minnesota, the state with the most recent highway collpase, doesn’t have sovereign immunity, but does cap damages at $1 million per incident. (Bridge victims there are being compensated through a $38 million fund set up by the state legislature.) Washington waived sovereign immunity in 1961–Attorney General Rob McKenna’s recent efforts to curtail the state’s immunity have failed–and places no cap on damages. So, in theory, this hypothetical’s plaintiffs could go ahead with their suits and demand a lot of money. But succeeding would be a tricky prospect.

“If it were a huge earthquake and even new buildings were collapsing, it would be a lot harder to say that the state was negligent with the Viaduct,” says Chuck Paglialunga, whose law firm, Paglialunga and Harris, handles cases involving wrongful deaths and negligent highway design. “On the other hand, if it were a mild earthquake, and the Viaduct still collapsed, that might show it was unreasonably dangerous.”

But the size of the earthquake would be just the beginning. Were there affordable interim measures the state could have taken to lessen the risk? It’s already spending nearly $15 million on emergency repairs; designing and implementing a replacement structure or system will be vastly more expensive. (Of course, the UW experts who called for the Viaduct’s closure noted that a planned interruption is less costly than an emergent one. It may also be worth considering that the costs of steel and cement are expected to continue to rise, as China’s economy continues to grow.)

However, even if the math favored the plaintiffs–that is, that the probability of a disaster multiplied by the cost of damages exceeded the cost of repairs—the state could probably invoke “discretionary immunity.” This court-created doctrine holds that high-level discretionary acts by the government–basically, decisions of policy direction, as opposed to implementation–are immune from lawsuits.

Still, there might be one last angle. “Here’s the kicker,” says Louis Wolcher, a professor of torts at UW Law School. “There are two different kinds of theories a plaintiff can assert. One is, you should have designed it better, retrofitted it, or shut it down. The other is that you should have provided adequate warning.” Wolcher notes that the state might argue that local drivers were aware of the risks, and admits he’s at a loss as to what such warning signs might say. Nevertheless, perhaps the state will want to add this eleventh, interim option to its list.

Check out Reid’s latest opuses, conveying the full range of swirling, gripping emotions produced by the Sonics relocation saga:

In his column today, Joel Connelly cries “enough already” on the levies proposed for the 2008 ballot and the potential burden they might place on Seattle and Seattle area taxpayers. He points out that the ballot could contain all of the following: a $6 billion Sound Transit light rail proposal, a $150 million parks levy, and a $75 million Pike Place Market renovation levy. (To these he adds the City Council’s proposed 20 cent tax on disposable grocery bags.)

Nevertheless, the key to the problem–insofar as we have one–is not in the spending, but in the word that appears only once in his column, in a quote from former Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald: regressive. The tax burden of Seattleites is actually quite modest, mainly because neither the city nor the state see fit to assess an income tax. Most of our public works are funded by increases in the sales tax, which falls just this side of a poverty tax, or in the slightly less regressive property taxes. (Washington’s tax structure has been called the most regressive in the nation.)

Our low tax burden is one reason our transportation infrastructure has fallen so far behind our population growth. We can continue to face the liberal’s dilemma of regressively funded public works (a divide-and-conquer dream for the Tim Eyman crowd), or we can figure out a more equitable way to create the spending increases needed to fund big city infrastructure. A progressively structured income tax, even if just within the city, would be a good start.

Note: I originally posted this on the Daily Weekly this morning. I was flattered with a response from Bruno of Bruno and the Professor that makes some good points.