Here’s what you might have missed on Slog today:

Chase and I discuss four unstreamable titles—read if you want a tight ass like Mickey’s or have any desire to watch Steven Soderbergh’s early work.

Rich Smith watched King County Executive Dow Constantine’s State of the County address so you don’t have to.

Matt Baume gets horny over our city’s sexy trees (and the Seattle Tree Walks app).

Dr. Anthony Fauci testified in front of the Senate’s health, education, labor and pensions committee this morning: In his opening remarks, he offered some optimism regarding how close a “return to normality” is. He also fiercely clashed with the dimwit from Kentucky—Sen. Rand Paul—over a baseless claim that the National Institutes of Health helped fund a Wuhan lab blamed for creating the coronavirus. America 🙂

“I feel confident that if we continue to vaccinate people at the rate that we’re doing, that we will very soon have a situation where we will have so few infections in this country, we will begin to return to nomality that all of us desire so much” — Fauci pic.twitter.com/YXZJZvndyT
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 11, 2021

Atlanta district attorney will seek hate crime charges and the death penalty for spa shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long: Long, who is white, is accused of killing eight people—six of them women of Asian descent—in Fulton and Cherokee County spas back in March. According to NPR, the indictment “only covers those four killings that happened at two spas in Atlanta” and not the killings in Cherokee County that left four dead.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler stands with Rep. Liz Cheney: According to the Seattle Times, the Washington GOP representative intends to vote to keep Cheney in House Republican leadership, breaking once more with the pro-Trump wing of the party looking to kick Cheney to the curb. Both politicians voted to impeach our former president back in January over his role in the Capitol Hill insurrection. Word’s still out on whether WA’s other two GOP representatives—Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers—will vote in favor of Cheney. It all seems a bit too little too late, dontcha think?

Oh and by the way: GOP Sen. Joni Ernst calls her own party’s drive to oust Cheney as “cancel culture.” If Ernst continues ringing that cancel culture bell, Cheney might end up with a sizable Substack deal.

As Rich Smith covered earlier today: King County Executive Dow Constantine (virtually) gave his State of the County address. You can read Rich’s full report on the speech here, but here’s a few key takeaways:

A few announcements in this speech:
-A new hotel in ~Uptown~ to House the homeless
-Return of Trailhead Direct, though in a slightly diminished form
-$150 million for rental assistance
-Vaccine popups at schools to vax all middle and high school students
— Rich Smith (@richsssmith) May 11, 2021

Russell Wilson and Ciara sign first-look deal with Amazon Studios: The deal would be to “develop and produce scripted series and films” with the online behemoth, reports GeekWire. All grist for the mill.

Uggs were the look of the season. Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick has already won an Oscar in my mind. JK

I spent a lot of time yesterday sitting in the hot sun at Westlake Park: On the “set” of KIMI, a forthcoming HBO Max thriller directed by theeee Steven Soderbergh and starring Zoë Kravitz as an agoraphobic tech worker with a shitty (yet very-Seattle) blue dye job. They shot most of the interior scenes in L.A. and will spend the week shooting exterior scenes around town. Most of the day consisted of waiting for enough cloud clover to make the city look sufficiently gloomy. Crews sprayed the streets with water to give it that wintry, rainy Seattle touch. A drone captured the view from above. An observant Soderbergh acted as a quiet center of gravity within the mass of crew piled into the park. And Kravitz briefly emerged—clad in short Uggs and a blue wig that felt very I’m-Depressed-in-Seattle-Circa-2020—to shoot a short scene near Sephora. All this Hollywood is going to my head!

Today I spent a lot of time running around downtown, working off a tip that the production had put up no-parking signs on Seneca between 2nd and Western. I trolled the area for a glimpse of the bespectacled director—no dice. Some downtown workers heard the crew was nearby, but no one had seen them. I found two security officers standing near what looked like a production zone and asked if they’d seen a film crew. They claimed to be guarding a set for a mayo and fish sticks commercial. Something smelled fishy. All of this is to say I missed the crew today ¯_(ツ)_/¯

(Be an ally and help a sister out: Do you know any filming locations for KIMI? My DMs and email inbox are wide open. Steven, the inbox is open for you, too.)

I should also note: A Cartoon Network show was also shooting this afternoon in the First Hill area. Lots of film commotion going on today.

National Rifle Association bankruptcy case dismissed: After a judge determined that the unhinged organization did not file the case “in good faith,” reports NPR. The NRA had declared bankruptcy and tried to reorganize in Texas as a way to evade dissolution by the New York attorney general over alleged “fraud and abuse.” Those fuckers weren’t so lucky this time around—we may live to see the NRA go the way of the dinosaur.

A mass school shooting in Kazan, Russia leaves seven children and two adults dead: The BBC reports that 21 other people—mostly kids—were injured and a 19-year-old suspect has been detained by authorities. Videos on social media show children jumping out of the school’s windows to avoid getting shot, with Russian TV reporting that two had died from falling. Mass shootings are relatively rare in Russia and President Vladimir Putin has already responded by tightening restrictions on civilian ownership of guns.

I fucking love a good tracker: And King County has breached the 50 percent vaccination benchmark, baby. Celebrate by consensually French-ing the cutest fully vaxxed person you know.

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░
50.7%
— King County WA Vaccine Tracker (@KingVaccine) May 11, 2021

Over 70 dead bodies found floating in the Ganges River: Amid India’s grim battle with coronavirus, villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have run out of wood to cremate the dead, resorting to giving these poor souls water burials. Officials cannot determine the cause of death due to the bodies’ decomposition.

Tom Cruise told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association where they can shove their Golden Globes: The movie star has reportedly given back his three trophies from the event to “protest” the appalling lack of diversity within the association that runs the rather boring ceremony. This comes on the heels of NBC canceling the 2022 Golden Globes until the HFPA gets its shit together. Wait until Hollywood realizes the whole system is rotten.

Coastal Kitchen is back open: The fish house, which has called 15th Ave home for nearly three decades, will reopen tomorrow after temporarily closing in March of last year. As Capitol Hill Seattle blog notes, it’s one of the few businesses to come back after going dark for the past 15 months.

The Israeli military continues to bombard the Gaza Strip: An Israeli airstrike on a 13-story residential caused it to completely collapse as the Palestinian death toll rises to 32, reports Reuters. Three in Israel have also been killed. As Rich reported in AM, the attacks began Monday after Hamas launched rockets towards Israel following the Israeli military’s storming of “the third holiest” religious compound in Islam, Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. Al-Jazeera has live updates of the situation here.

Kids in Washington aged 12-15 won’t be required to get the vaccine to go back to school: Officials from the Washington State Board of Health said they’ll hold off on that decision until a vaccine is fully approved by the FDA, reports the Seattle Times. If you’ll remember, earlier this week the agency greenlighted the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use in 12-to 15-year-olds. But until it’s formally approved, there will be no requirement for schoolchildren to get the jab in our state. That said, WA health secretary Umair Shah said they would still incentivize families to immunize their kids against the virus.

For your listening pleasure: “U KNOW ME” by COBRAH.