From The Department of Long Overdue Laws comes this (from a WSDOT email):

Last May Gov. Gregoire signed into law a measure that will make Washington roads safer by banning text messaging while driving. This law takes effect Jan. 1, 2008. It includes reading, writing and sending text messages. The fine will be $124. Traffic fines can be higher if the violation occurs in a construction zone.

Gov. Gregoire also signed into law a measure that bans the use of cell phones while driving unless the driver is using a hands-free device. That law will take effect July 1, 2008, and will also carry a $124 fine.

To this I say, hah hah! While all you schmucks have to pull over to text your friends, I can still type letters on my Corona Manual Typewriter that sits, oh so invitingly, in the passenger seat of my car. Let’s see you ban typewriting while driving, Ms. Governor!

Pitchfork doesn’t think there’s anything worthwhile happening in Seattle on New Year’s Eve. [#] Anyone want to prove them wrong with evidence of something great going on Monday the 31st? Or are you all just going to fly to Oklahoma City to see the Flaming Lips?

image, via flickr user B.K. Dewey

I think I’m posting this, popped into our flickr group by B.K. Dewey, more for me than for you–I’m headed to the airport tonight to spend a week on the East coast in places that are not this pretty, and I’m very cranky about it. Still, you have to admit, Seattle is sometimes a very lovely town, even if we do have a streetcar to nowhere and not enough low-income housing.

• As I previously mentioned, the Gene Wilder-starring Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is this weekend’s midnight movie at The Egyptian.
• The Grand Illusion continues its holiday run of Bad Santa and It’s a Wonderful Life, two very different holiday films.
• Central Cinema is screening Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, a film I only got around to watching this year, despite my decades-long love for Hitch’s work. This is less film than “stage play on film”–a film subtype that almost always does justice to neither the stageplay nor the film itself–and seems to me to be far too clever by half. There are some interesting film techniques in it and Farley Granger makes an impressive screen debut, holding his own against the novelty of Jimmy Stewart playing a moral relativist.
• Northwest Film Forum has a newly restored 35mm print of From Here to Eternity, the film with perhaps the most famous make-out scene of all time.
• Francis Ford Coppola makes some pretty fine wine and he makes some great movies, too. His latest is Youth Without Youth in which Tim Roth’s professor of linguistics gets his youth restored to him just in time to reunite with his lost love and get chased by Nazis. At the Harvard Exit.

photo by Marko Kivelä [flickr]

Now that Devils on Horseback fell to the VPC Waffle, I’m betting that this is the match to decide the eventual CHS tournament champion. Squirrels vs. Hillku. You know what to do. Early and often. [capitolhillseattle]

photo by ryanobjc [flickr] who shared it with us by way of our user-powered group pool [#]

• Stop the presses: musicians have dayjobs. [seattlest]
• Annie Wagner gets on the floor with Julian Schnabel. [thestranger]
• question 1: is Starbucks chaning their logo? question 2: what is a “coffee plug”? [starbucksgossip]
• $88.6 million from Congress gets you from Capitol Hill to the U-District in three minutes. [seatrans]

• the Three Imaginary Girls holiday party was among the first casualties of the Crocodile Closure. Luckily, they found a new home for the event and will be carting indie rock santa, indie rock darling Tullycraft, indie rock holiday singing supergroups, and indie rock devotees up to El Corazon (a.k.a., El Corazon (formerly Graceland)). As if that change of scenery isn’t astounding enough, it’s also crashing the bar staff’s holiday party. In addition to getting to sit on John Roderick’s lap, you’re attendance will also benefit Treehouse. $8, 8 pm [tig]
• Last year, Sigur Ros galavanted around their home country, playing unconventional shows for the people of Iceland. Kind of like a big series Takeaway Show, except out in the country, with more glaciers and a lot more angelic mewling. The entire tour was committed to film, and eight shows make up what looks like a stunning concert film called Heima. It is currently for sale on DVD (apparently hard to find), but unless your home theater is enormous, seeing it in a theater seems like a better option. Tonight it gets one, much-awaited, showing in Seattle. $11, 8pm, [Metro].

O.K., people of Marysville. “Paying it Forward” sounds nice and all. [times] Just remember, you start off brimming with goodwill and buying a latte for a stranger then all of the sudden you end up with Haley Joel Osment senselessly stabbed to death in an alley and a yard full of Las Vegans holding a candlelight vigil outside your trailer to Sarah McLaughlin music [imdb].

I’m just saying. Holiday cheer is one thing, but let’s not tempt fate shall we?

Last night I happened to be walking by a streetcar stop with some time on my hands so I thought I would give it a try while it’s still free to ride. After discovering that the arrival times on the readerboard aren’t entirely accurate, I managed to get aboard the Lake Union-bound car and rode all the way down to Fred Hutch. I walked around for a few minutes to see if there was anything around that would make me want to take the trip again and discovering that the answer was, “No, not really”, I got back on and came back downtown.

Tacoma has a streetcar, too; it travels several times an hour between the Tacoma Dome and the Theater District, with stops in between them at spots where people are likely to want to go. It has to wait for traffic lights just like the bus, but it has its own dedicated track, so it’s a quick and efficient way to get from one part of downtown Tacoma to another. Also, it’s free, all the time. I really like the Tacoma streetcar and I really wanted to like the South Lake Union Streetcar, too, but now that I’ve had a ride on it, I think I have to agree with Ryan‘s assessment of it: “It’s basically a moving umbrella”. Riding in traffic meant that riding the streetcar wasn’t any faster than taking the bus; I watched several people get off the streetcar to walk over to the 70/71/73 bus stop and wondered why they didn’t just get on the bus in the first place. The answer, I strongly suspect, has something to do with the streetcar currently being free. I’ll be curious to see how many people take it once it costs money.

I try not to be negative about any form of public transportation because I actually like having it and would like to see our already-okay system even more improved but the streetcar just seems pointless to me.

I love how the brick-ish style siding is falling off this Georgetown building. I have driven past this building a number of times and never really noticed it was fake brick to begin with.