A nearly one-note comedy about a trio of 12 year-old boys who will do anything they must to get to a “kissing party” attended by the girl one of them adores, Gene Stupnitsky’s Good Boys has an endless fascination with hearing preteens curse. Is it funny the first and fourth and seventh time? Sure. Does the novelty wear off? A bit.

The film—produced by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen—has very funny moments, don’t misunderstand.

Max (Jacob Tremblay), Lucas (Keith L. Williams), and…

At first the title seems too simple, if not a bit stilted, especially for those who had never heard the name: Mike Wallace Is Here.

Yet as the documentary about the hard-hitting TV newsman soon makes clear, those are the four words no crooked politician or conniving businessperson ever wanted to hear.

The film deftly weaves news and interview clips from Wallace’s half-century on TV with the times he himself answered questions as tough as those he asked, fleshing out one of the…

Several years ago, Whatcom READS featured Jim Lynch’s excellent novel Border Songs, about a dutiful, extremely tall, bird-loving rookie Border Patrol officer and his observations of life along the 49th parallel between the United States and Canada. 

Since then, he has written several fine books. Before the Wind continues Lynch’s tradition of finding the humanity in a lovable cast of eccentric characters and setting them in the glorious scenery of coastal Washington state.

As its…

It’s mid-August, that moment when it still feels like summer but foggy mornings and cooler nights are reminding us that fall is just around the corner.

Suddenly you realize you need to get out there and do everything on your summer to-do list. Maybe you thought you’d finally hike Oyster Dome, or take a ferry to the San Juans, or head up the Skagit to spend a day on the river. In any case, a good day trip requires a good picnic. Here are a few great places to stock up on supplies for a…

If you need a few days break from “real life,” consider heading south to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Sandwiched between the coastal mountains and the North Cascades, the valley is the state’s burgeoning wine country, where lush, meandering hills and dales are heavily populated with wineries, the majority of them small, family-owned enterprises.

I spent the night at one of them, the Black Walnut Inn and Vineyard, a Tuscan-style inn that sits high up on a hill overlooking rows of…

The summer of 1969 was a busy one. Not only did astronauts land on the moon, but the Stonewall riots became a symbolic force for the burgeoning gay rights movement, Muhammad Ali was convicted of evading the draft, and Woodstock made musical history. Additionally, a cooperative studio space dubbed Good Earth Pottery opened in mid-August in the historic Fairhaven district in Bellingham. Fifty years later, owner Ann Marie Cooper says the ceramics-focused venue is still going strong,…

What happens when a gaggle of Icelanders strut into a performance venue in a small town to share their comedic chops while guests dine on lamb chops?

If you’re referring to the interactive comedy dinner show, Waiter!...There’s an Icelander in My Soup!, the seven actors sharing their talents Aug. 18-19 at the Conway Muse will be helping raise funds for Theater Artists for Social Action, a small group of socially minded thespians whose intention is to focus on the needs of marginalized…

For the upcoming 50th anniversary of Woodstock, which took place Aug. 15-18, 1969, I considered claiming that I had been there. After all, people have been doing that very thing for the duration of the half-century that has passed the historic weekend of music, chaos and mythmaking took over Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in rural New York.

The number of people who attended Woodstock: 400,000.

The number of people who say they attended Woodstock: millions.

Sadly, I am too young…

Skagit is a land of wild rivers, soaring glacier peaks, fertile valleys and forested dots of islands sprinkling an inland sea. Powerful predatory whales live in these waters and feed on the tastiest wild fish on earth, the Chinook. Ours is as exotic as any landscape on the planet, and perhaps it is more threatened than many.

Those whales—the southern resident orcas—aren’t especially shy and can be viewed almost daily, although their numbers are in precipitous decline. Deaths in their pods have exceeded live births, threatening a spiral to extinction. They’re sick, and they’re starving. The cause? Increased human activity around the Puget Sound, as a region that is loved too much and too recklessly.

Alarmed by the decline of these iconic creatures, the Washington Legislature this session passed sweeping protections for the Salish Sea’s ailing orca population. Championed by lawmakers who represent Skagit and the San Juans, a quartet of bills cover a variety of measures, including whale watching, pollution and more. Yet budgets passed by the House and Senate so far contain no funding to continue the governor’s task force on orca recovery. There’s no agreement on plans to increase Chinook runs. And revenue measures to help pay for everything, from increasing hatchery production to enforcement of habitat protections, have yet to be decided.

As we dedicate this issue to celebrate all the best our region has to offer in scenic beauty, in recreation, in menus and samplings that are unique to who we are, let us acknowledge how fragile it is and how fierce we must be in its protection.