Fresh Poulp

Warm up with a hot drink

Spice things up with a pumpkin-spiced latte at Starbucks. Or sit by the fire and have a hot white chocolate outside Dilettante Mocha Café at Kent Station.

Look for the shades of fall

Watch the leaves chane color at the Lake

Wilderness Arboretum in Maple Valley, Game Farm Park in Auburn, Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks Park in Kent or your favorite local park.

Bundle up

Shop until you drop for fall clothes at Kent Station, the SuperMall in Auburn, Kohl’s in Covington or one of your favorite shops. Stock up on warm clothes - sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves.

Have a fall-themed party

What is a better way to get into autumn than throwing a party? Decorate your dining table with fall colors, bake a pumpkin pie and invite your friends and family over.

Catch a high-school football game

Nothing says fall more than football. Catch a game at one of the high schools in the area on Friday nights. Remember to bundle up because it can get cold!Five Faves: Have a favorite jazz bar? E-mail southeast@seattletimes.com.

We’re back with another installment of “Art Gone Bad.”

A few weeks ago I wrote about a bench sculpture that inexplicably had become a magnet for acts of depravity in Belltown. It’s a fiberglass bench with steel plumbing pipes for legs. Some folks who live and work nearby have been trying to get rid of it for eight years, mostly because drug dealers and addicts gather there.

But the city wouldn’t budge because it’s more than just a bench. It’s art.

Well, last week the neighbors finally got their way. The city arts commission voted to remove the art bench. In a few weeks it will either be reworked so nobody can sit on it, or, more likely, installed elsewhere.

It’s the first time, at least that anyone at the art commission could recall, that public art in Seattle has been uprooted due to a public outcry.

“We are committed to keeping public art on display, but we also don’t want to have artworks out there that are being chronically vandalized or misused,” says Lori Patrick, spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.

When I first wrote on this subject, I was ridiculed by some artists and art critics. They said I was a dim reactionary missing an obvious point: Art doesn’t hurt people. People hurt people.

This seemed like an odd take coming from people who spend their lives celebrating the power of art.

No, the art bench didn’t force anyone to be a pimp or a junkie. But if good art can help revitalize a public space - as is often claimed - then why can’t art that is poorly chosen or is simply bad lead to the opposite?

It’s a variation on the broken-windows theory. I love public art and think it brings incalculable energy to a city. But there are places where it feels like the art drains the charge rather than sparking it.

Ballard’s Jeremy Mattox has a nominee. He says his neighborhood has been under an art pall for three years due to “five towering thingamajiggers” - sculptures on top of cedar posts called “Witness Trees,” erected in Bergen Place Park in Ballard’s downtown.

“Whereas the Belltown art bench attracts crime and litter, our public art repels most anything a rational person would associate with humanity,” he says.

Gerald Guite, of Normandy Park, has been demoralized by the same work of art nearly every day since 1979.

It’s called “Earthwork at Johnson Pit #30.” It’s located in what used to be a gravel pit in SeaTac overlooking the Kent Valley. The county had a worthy idea of reclaiming some of these wastelands as giant sculptures.

So an artist terraced the 4-acre site and put in 16 tree stumps painted black with tar, called a “ghost forest.”

In a sign at the site, the artist says it wasn’t his goal to refurbish the gravel mine into an idyllic, attractive place. That would have “socially redeemed those who wasted the landscape in the first place.”

Guite says the artist got his wish.

“It’s an ungodly place,” he says. “Which is saying something, because it has such a great view of the valley.”

Dozens of readers sent examples of art they think has gone bad. “Aurora Borealis,” those glare-inducing towers of multicolored metal in the water alongside the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. “The Wall of Death,” that spiky contraption beneath the University Bridge that often doubles as a trash dump.

The art I loathe most is “The Kingstones,” a hideous sculpture of a family watching television on the sidewalk at the front door to the KING-5 studios on Dexter Avenue North. It’s there because a car once crashed into the building, and KING execs wanted art that would double as a car blockade. It seems they got a people repellent, too.

Kurt Kiefer, who made the Belltown art bench, was kind enough to respond to me despite the bad things I’ve written about his “evil bench,” as he put it. He says I’m sliding down a slippery slope.

“If my bench is disliked for attracting illegal activity, then it could very well make sense to move it,” he e-mailed. “If, on the other hand, a resident of the block just doesn’t like it because they think it’s ugly, or because they don’t agree with the artist’s premise or because they simply hate the notion of art in public places, then that’s obviously a different story.”

Agreed. I’m not advocating a mass art purge. But art isn’t sacred, either.

Kiefer urged me to write about something that matters. Race, gentrification, poverty, global warming, fortified-wine sales or bus rapid transit would all make better topics, he suggested.

Sorry. Art always matters. And not only when we appreciate it.

Danny Westneat’s column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

BAGHDAD - The court-martial that cleared a U.S. Army sniper of two counts of murder sentenced him Saturday to five months in prison, reduced his rank to private and ordered his pay withheld for planting evidence in the deaths of two Iraqi civilians.

Sectarian violence, meanwhile, claimed at least 40 more lives across Iraq.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed by gunfire, one in Diyala province north of Baghdad and one in a southern district of the capital.

Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval, 22, was acquitted Friday of murder charges in the April and May deaths of two unidentified men. The five-man, two-woman panel decided he was guilty of a lesser charge of placing detonation wire on one of the bodies to make it look as if the man was an insurgent.

Military prosecutors had argued Sandoval should be sentenced to five years in prison.

The Laredo, Texas, native had faced five charges in the deaths of the two unidentified Iraqi men. In dramatic testimony during the four-day court-martial, one of Sandoval’s colleagues, Sgt. Evan Vela, testified he had pulled the trigger and killed one of the men Sandoval was accused of murdering.

Vela said the sniper team was following orders when it shot the men during two separate incidents near Iskandariyah, a volatile Sunni-dominated area 30 miles south of Baghdad, on April 27 and May 11.

Vela and Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley will be tried separately in the case.

Gary Myers, one of Vela’s lawyers, claimed last week that Army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to “bait” their targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords, then kill those who picked up the items. He said his client was acting on orders.

Vela goes before an Article 34 hearing, the equivalent of a civilian grand jury, today. Hensley goes on trial Oct. 22.

In violence Saturday, Iraqi soldiers acting on a tip tried to intercept a suicide driver as his pickup truck headed toward Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

But the driver detonated his explosive payload, and three soldiers and three civilians were killed, an official said.

Twenty-five miles northeast of Mosul, a car bomb exploded in Hamdaniyah, killing four policemen and two civilians, according to police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga.

Also in Mosul, a drive-by gunman killed a top local Sunni religious figure and a journalist died in a mortar attack.

At the end of a three-day trip to Syria, Iraq’s Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said his country would not be used as a U.S. base to launch attacks against Iran or Syria.

NEW DELHI - A U.N. special envoy arrived in Myanmar on Saturday for talks with the country’s military rulers, whose ruthless crackdown on anti-government protesters has sparked international outrage.

The streets of Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, were devoid of chaos that marked three days of violent suppression by soldiers and police.

About 300 die-hard protesters marched down a street in Yangon’s Chinatown on Saturday, waving the peacock-emblazoned flags of the democracy movement. They dispersed when soldiers arrived.

Monks and civilians called diplomats to report that troops had shown up at three monasteries late Saturday but were prevented from entering by neighborhood people. The soldiers left, with threats of returning in larger numbers.

After landing in Yangon on Saturday afternoon, U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari immediately traveled to the new capital of Naypyidaw, about 240 miles to the north, where the generals who rule Myanmar, also known as Burma, live in relative isolation.

Details of Gambari’s schedule were not available, nor was it clear whether he would be allowed to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-democracy leader under house arrest for most of the last 18 years.

Gambari’s mission to Myanmar reflects the growing international concern and anger arising from the generals’ brutal clampdown on protesters, in which the government acknowledges that 10 people have been killed. Diplomats and dissident groups estimate the true death toll may be as high as 200.

Some observers have feared a repeat of a 1988 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in which an estimated 3,000 people were killed.

The demonstrations began last month in response to steep increases in fuel prices but soon became a vehicle for popular anger over 45 years of autocratic military rule. Last week, as many as 100,000 people marched in central Yangon, including many monks, who have great moral stature in the deeply Buddhist society.

The uneasy quiet on Yangon’s streets Saturday, however, suggested the armed crackdown that began Wednesday might have succeeded. Internet connections remained cut off, constricting the flow of photos and video that had helped galvanize world opinion against the junta.

“The strategy is to neutralize the demonstrators, and they seem to have done that very effectively,” said Tim Huxley, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Asia.

Human-rights organizations and Burmese activist groups in exile have called on leading nations, especially China, to pressure the junta to stop using force against its opponents. The U.S. has imposed new sanctions, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, one of the few multilateral organizations to which Myanmar belongs, issued a statement expressing its “revulsion” at the bloody crackdown.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

A Sub Pop Records employee casually surfing various Internet music blogs last June came across it on a Radiohead fan site notorious for this kind of thing - an unauthorized free download of the entire Iron & Wine record “The Shepherd’s Dog,” which the label had scheduled for official release three months later.

For the Seattle-based label, the question never was whether the album would leak - anticipated releases pretty much all do these days. It was a matter of when.

Sub Pop execs figured maybe a month or month-and-a-half prior to the release date, which was last Tuesday.

“Already?” Iron & Wine’s manager reacted when told of the leak. “This soon?”

In early summer, advance CDs of “The Shepherd’s Dog” had been sent to the music press for review. Sub Pop traced the leak to a reputable Nashville music magazine. Its CD had been uploaded to a common server in the office and somebody grabbed the digital file, which eventually found its way onto the Internet, said Stuart Meyer, Sub Pop’s manager of A&R (artists and repertoire).

The recording industry is in a funk, dealing with sorely lagging sales and a generation of young consumers who consider free music their birthright. Now, it also must deal with the economics of new records getting leaked prematurely on the Internet.

Labels can fight the unauthorized release of their music as they have in the past with nasty court battles that tarnished the industry’s reputation. Or they can go with the flow, staying one step ahead of the leakers. Common sense suggests that album leaks can benefit both the label and the artist by providing exposure to the music, building good buzz for an upcoming release (assuming it doesn’t suck).

Hipster labels, such as Sub Pop, must tread cautiously. If they come down too forcefully against illegal downloading - and the music fans who do it - they could be seen as corporate money grubbers and lose the “indie cred” they depend on for their sustenance.

Album piracy dates back to the days of Napster, a file-sharing service where users uploaded their favorite music so that others could enjoy it, too. The recording industry sued Napster and some of its users for copyright infringement, prevailing in a settlement that led Napster to reorganize.

While Napster no longer is part of the album leak underground, it spawned other sites where users can download digital music files. Internet music blogs and forums - such as the Radiohead Web board where “The Shepherd’s Dog” was leaked - serve as clearinghouses for leaks by either posting pirated mp3 files or links to file-sharing sites where they can be snagged.

When Sub Pop got wind of the Iron & Wine leak, it contacted the offending blogs and Web sites to remove the link, which they did.

But had damage to the future sales of “The Shepherd’s Dog” already been done?

Meyer doesn’t think so.

The Shins’ “Wincing the Night Away” also leaked online three months before Sub Pop officially released it in January 2007. Yet it sold 120,000 units in the first week - a huge number for an indie release.

Trying to stop leaks

The industry has spent a lot of time and money coming up with ways to plug leaks, such as:

• Encrypting advance CDs with watermarks so sources of leaks can be traced.

• Limiting drastically the distribution of advance CDs to the most trusted of sources.

• Making new records available in advance only as digital streams (the equivalent of listening to a song on the radio), which are nearly impossible to download.

• Shortening the time between the distribution of advance music and record release dates. Sub Pop sent out a limited number of advance CDs for Band of Horses’ Oct. 9 release “Cease to Begin,” all of them watermarked. Most of the music press has received a link to a password-protected Web site, where Sub Pop is streaming the new record.

When the new Iron & Wine leaked in June, Seattle’s KEXP-FM played tracks off the illegally downloaded digital file until Sub Pop told them to quit.

“When a record like that is out there, there is a certain demand that we should be playing it, particularly a station like ours,” said Don Yates, KEXP music director. “Listener expectation is just getting stronger and stronger.”

Some labels are responding to leaks by adding trimmings to a CD when it ultimately is released, such as special packaging or a bonus disc, in hopes of boosting sales.

Labels also are making free downloads of unreleased music available to fans.

On its Web site, Sub Pop routinely posts a free mp3 track for every one of its releases prior to the record coming out. It also authorizes distribution of that unreleased track through podcasts, such as KEXP’s “Song of the Day.”

In a few cases, Sub Pop has streamed an entire album on its Web site - “kind of beating people to the leak,” Meyer said.

“I think that’s really a good thing to do. The way people think now is: ‘If a journalist can hear the whole record before it’s released, why can’t I as a fan hear it?’ ”

Justifying their ethics

Music fans who download unauthorized album leaks defend their actions, even when the music they are downloading is of an artist they like and want to support.

“I have justified it by going to live shows when the band is in town,” said Dan Murphy, a 30-year-old student from Seattle. “More money goes directly to the artist that way, where they maybe get $1 for any record sale. But it’s still wrong. It’s still stealing.”

Throw something that’s free in front of people, and it’s like obsessive-compulsive disorder - they have to download it, said James Kirchmer, a 37-year-old Seattleite with a professional background in the local music scene.

“They don’t even know what they’re downloading half the time,” he said.

Kirchmer said he has no ethical problem downloading album leaks because he believes the sound quality of the mp3 format is poor and a digital file has negligible value. He said his motivation is based on curiosity.

He recently downloaded a poor-quality mp3 leak of an upcoming Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album but had not yet found time to listen to it.

“Downloading really is a hassle,” he said. “It takes up space on my computer. I’m downloading music just to check it out. If given the option to listen to a stream, I’d do that.

“So what does that tell you? Am I stealing stuff? No. I just want to listen to the music, basically.”

Musicians differ

Reactions vary among musicians whose music is leaked.

When The Shins’ James Mercer heard that his band’s album leaked months in advance, his first question was whether those who illegally downloaded it liked it, Meyer said.

Chris Martin, guitarist for the Seattle-based instrumental avant-rock band Kinski, said a bandmate discovered a leak of their new album, “Down Below It’s Chaos,” about a month before Sub Pop officially released it Aug. 21.

“As far as our band is concerned, we don’t really care that much,” Martin said. “I think if you’re really into the band and into the record, you’re still going to want to buy the CD or vinyl for the sound quality.”

The records likely to be hurt by leaks are those getting negative buzz, he said.

“If the record stinks, people are going to hear it and say, ‘I’m not going to buy that,’ ” Martin said. “For good records, though, they could get a higher profile.”

Matt Herrebout, a photographer and Web designer who edits the Northwest Music Blog, said bands often contact him asking to be featured on his site.

“I say to them, ‘Give me good content and put it in the form of an mp3,’ ” he said. “Streams just don’t cut it. Bands starting out often don’t want to give up the goods but they should because nothing is better to promote a band than its music.

“You’re not going to get noticed if you hold back and are paranoid about your work.”

Will remove it

Elbows (www.elbo.ws), a compiler of music blog posts and a popular repository to search for leaked music, has a breathless yet tortured justification on its FAQ for artists and labels that don’t want their songs linked to or from the site:

“Although Elbows is only meant to give our users a taste of something different so that they can discover new artists, buy their albums, tell their friends, go to their shows and make them pretty darn popular with little or no effort or budget on the part of the artist or label, we understand that there may be some legal issues with the tracks listed on the site. E-mail us … and we will have it removed as soon as possible.”

Scott Lapatine, who founded the music blog Stereogum.com in 2003, recalls the carefree days when bloggers didn’t bother obtaining permission for the digital music files they posted. Now that Stereogum is viewed as legitimately as Rolling Stone or Spin in influencing musical tastes, it has ceased posting album leaks and other unauthorized music files.

Instead of hiding from the labels, Lapatine spends time negotiating with them to post exclusive, unreleased tracks on Stereogum before any other press gets them.

“Once the promo [advance CD] goes out to everyone, it’s going to leak, and once it leaks, in my readers’ minds, it’s old news,” said Lapatine, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

In effect, Lapatine is persuading the labels to beat unauthorized leakers to the punch by leaking with Stereogum first.

Getting exclusive content is key for Stereogum because competition is intense, especially against music blogs that disregard copyrights and insist on posting illegal downloads.

Stereogum does acknowledge unauthorized album leaks, however. A new feature on the site, “Premature Evaluation,” reviews leaked records without posting the pirated files or links to the music.

“It’s out there,” Lapatine said. “So we have to discuss it.”

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com

MONTREAL - The Presidents Cup is supposed to be a team event. Based on the beating the United States delivered Saturday, the only excitement left is a match between the two biggest attractions at Royal Montreal.

Thousands of Canadian fans who wanted to see the International team hoist the cup might have to settle for a consolation prize of their beloved Mike Weir trying to take down Tiger Woods of the United States.

And like the rest of these matches, it seems like a tall task.

Woods won twice with different partners, neither match going longer than 15 holes. The United States pitched a shutout in the five alternate-shot morning matches and turned back an International rally in the afternoon fourballs with one of its own. When 11 hours of limited cheers finally ended, the United States had a 14 ½-7 ½ lead, the largest at the Presidents Cup in seven years.

That means the International team must win 10 of the 12 singles matches today to take back the cup.

“It’s not over,” International captain Gary Player said. “But things don’t look too good. The egg is not sunny-side up.”

All eyes will be on Match No. 4, which Player and U.S. captain Jack Nicklaus orchestrated and both players welcomed.

“Anybody who plays Tiger has got their hands full,” Weir said after winning one of the 2 ½ points the International team earned from 10 matches Saturday. “But I’m playing well, and I feel like if I can keep that up, it’s going to be a great match.”

Woods played Australian icon Greg Norman at Royal Melbourne in 1998 and Ernie Els in South Africa in 2003, winning both times. He told Nicklaus he had no preference on an opponent, but gladly accepted a match against a fellow Masters champion.

“I give Tiger all credit,” Nicklaus said. “He had the choice to do it or duck, and he did not duck it.

“I said, ‘You probably will not be the darling of the gallery tomorrow.’ He says, ‘I’ve had that before.’ ”

The outcome is starting to look familiar, too.

The last time the Americans held such a big lead was in 2000 in Virginia, when they rode a 14-6 lead into the biggest rout in Presidents Cup history.

Phil Mickelson showed Woody Austin how to stay dry in stealing a half-point in the afternoon when both made birdie over the final two holes.

It included one comical moment when Mickelson had to step into the lake to hit a shot, just as Austin did the day before. Lefty didn’t go face-first into the water, as Austin did Friday, but he did borrow a caddie’s shoe, a veteran move.

Woods went 3-1 in the team matches, his best record in the Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup.

Other tournaments

• David Branshaw shot a 3-under-par 69 to lead second-place Bill Haas (70) by two strokes after three rounds of the Viking Classic, a PGA Tour event in Madison, Miss.

Seventeen players are no more than six strokes behind the leader.

Players who missed the cut included Kirk Triplett, a Pullman High School graduate; Michael Putnam of University Place and Jeff Gove of Seattle.

• Lorena Ochoa, seeking her fourth consecutive win, shot a 3-under 69 and overtook Stacy Prammanasudh on the last hole to take a one-stroke lead into the final round of the Navistar LPGA Classic in Prattville, Ala. Prammanasudh (73) three-putted for a bogey on the 18th hole.

Ochoa, who is at 13-under 203, entered the final day with the lead in five of her six victories this year.

Jimin Kang, a graduate of King’s High School in Shoreline, and Wendy Ward, who lives near Edwall, outside Spokane, had 73s and are tied for 14th place at 4-under 212. Paige Mackenzie (74), a former Washington Huskies standout, is at 1-over 217.

• Continental Europe clung to a 9 ½-8 ½ lead after Britain & Ireland rallied in the foursomes in the Seve Cup in Killenard, Ireland. The event ends with 10 singles matches today.

Al Roker, 53, has been weather and feature reporter on NBC News’ “Today” for nearly 12 years and a frequent presence on the Food Network. He’s now executive producer of “Heavyweights,” a Food Network series that debuted earlier this month with a focus on America’s best-known food companies and the competition that keeps their creativity bubbling.

“It’s the brands you know and the stories you don’t,” he says.

Q: The publicity materials for the show say it’s about “cola wars, Ding Dongs, Devil Dogs and Chicken Kickers.” Have you ever personally kicked a chicken?

A: I have never kicked a chicken. No chicken has been harmed in the making of this show.

Q: What exactly is a chicken kicker?

A: I don’t know! [It’s a chicken strip made by Domino’s Pizza.]

Q: You had gastric bypass surgery in 2002. How much weight did you lose?

A: I lost initially about 140 pounds, but about 20 of them have crept back on. So it’s tough producing a show like this because all the companies have been sending samples. We literally have two freezers filled with ice cream from Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s.

Q: For a guy who lost all those pounds, it seems odd to have a show lurching out of the gate with a caloric content spiraling into the several thousands. What’s up with that?

A: They’re not to be eaten every day, but every now and then, what’s wrong with a Devil Dog?

Q: So you do occasionally hear a Twinkie whispering on your shoulder?

A: I must admit, I am not a fan of the Twinkie.

Q: What do you remember about the kitchen you grew up in?

A: My mom had to feed six children and a husband on a budget and on time. … We lived in a small house with one small kitchen, your typical Sears four-burner stove and refrigerator arrangement, and yet she would turn out Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner every year.

Q: What was your favorite place to eat out as a kid?

A: We went out exactly two times in my childhood - once to a Chinese restaurant and once to the legendary Toots Shor’s. I saw Jackie Gleason.

Q: You’re a big fan of game shows. Which is your favorite?

A: “Family Feud.”

Q: If you could create a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, what would it be?

A: I’m not sure how good I’d be. I kinda like bland flavors. The wildest I get is mint chocolate chip.

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com