photo by
by dennyt [flickr].

Denny made it to last night’s eclipse party. Here’s a great shot of the red moon and the extended singalong.

Last of the quarterfinals now. Seattle Daily Photo held off a late challenge by Blogging Georgetown, while Glitter Pissing continues its Cinderella run.

Did Cinderella piss glitter? Or was that Snow White?

Hurry, sale ends Wednesday night at 9pm.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Seattle Bubble/Accidental Hedonist (closes Sunday night)
Lookout Landing/Huskies Fan (closes Monday night)
West Seattle Blog/Kirida (closes Tuesday night)

The original bracket post

And that’s the quarterfinals. Just two rounds to go, starting with the first semifinal on Tuesday. I really need to shorten the time periods up next year.

photo by benjy [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Stranger commenters hate everything. [lineout, slog]
• the Streetcar gets its first taste of vandalism. [seatrans]
• No Depression calls it quits. [bigblog]
• “to the drunk hottie who fell off my motorcycle” [craigslist]
• rad: all about how the WaMu building turns its windows into a giant LiteBrite. [times via citizenrain]

I’m just going to go ahead and quote straight from an email I got this morning:

Please join me in Cal Anderson park on February 20th at 7:01PM to sing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” karaoke-style for the 51 minutes that the eclipse is, in fact, total.
If you want to bring along music to sing along to…feel free. If you want to play an instrument, feel free. If you want to bring your whole band, go ahead. I will have a megaphone so that people can take their turn on the top of the hill if they want. If you bring your own megaphone, don’t be a dick.

This is the worst of all possible ideas, and therefore will likely turn out to be awesome. Having done my fair share of interpretive dance to this song while drinking straight from a champagne bottle, I’m almost sad that I’m going to be down at the Triple Door for Grand Archives instead of at this. I’m counting on you, Metroblogging readers, to report back. Please?

Blogging Georgetown is not my idea of a typical blog. Why? Because it is useful. John P. consistently delivers passionate, yet thoughtful and well-written advocacy that not just informs his neighborhood, but the surrounding city as well. I may have only been to Georgetown once, but I still read Blogging Georgetown frequently and was more than pleased to be able to interview its author for this tournament.

It was just about this time last year that you were making the switch from P-I Reader blog: Georgetown Stew to Blogging Georgetown. Did the transition and (I imagine) resulting freedom affect your writing as you expected?

Writing for the PI blog was tough for me, because I feel my legitimacy as an independent writer was undermined by the fact that Hearst more or less was getting a freebie, and I was giving it to them. I believe it made it tougher for the community to see my writing as advocacy. In moving on, I could experiment with different topics without fear that I was wandering too far off of the blog’s mission; to escape a sort of self-censorship I felt when I wrote for the PI blog. The end result was–I believe–me being more effective in what I originally set out to do.

Are you still the only contributor?

Yes.

You’re anonymous, right? How does that affect your ability to report things in the neighborhood?

I’m semi-anonymous. A cross-search could easily reveal who I am, where I live, and what I do for a living. But people in the neighborhood know who I am. I dabble in various local projects and I feel that those personal connections help keep me accountable for what I write.
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Sound Transit has a public opinion survey here. It appears that they are requesting the general public’s help in determining where and how much Sound Transit should expand throughout the greater Seattle/Everett/Eastside/Tacoma region. It only takes a few moments, so please fill one out.

From Sound Transit’s website:
* How important is transit in managing growth and getting around?
* How ambitious should a transit package be?
* What solutions will help Sound Transit manage your dollars and increase guarantees to deliver the projects on time and on budget?
* What are the highest priorities for expansions, ranging from light rail to regional express bus to commuter rail?
* When should such a plan be brought to the voters for their consideration?

In the coming months, the Board will discuss which service expansions should go to voters as part of a transit-only ballot measure, and when the vote should happen. Your feedback will help us make those decisions.

Defective Yeti was one of the four sites picked to receive an automatic bid during our Blarch Badness author caucus and for good reason: Matthew Baldwin, the man behind the Yeti, is quite possibly the best humorist writing in Seattle. (So much so that I can even forgive him for getting that damn Thank you for being a friend song stuck in my head for a week.) After threatening to debase myself further with pathetic begging, he kindly agreed to answer a couple of questions about his site and the Badness.

With the fact that we didn’t formally inform people last year that they had been entered into our little tournament, did you even know you were in it?

Oh my goodness, of course. I’m as obsessive about my referral logs as the next self-absorbed blogger, so as soon as the first person clicked over from your joint I was all over it like hollandaise sauce on Eggs Benedict. Disgusting, disgusting hollandaise sauce.

But, you know, I was nominated for a few Bloggies there back in Ye Olde Olden Dayes of blogging and was soundly beaten by a newcomer with name recognition in his corner, a pivotal moment in my life that engendered in me both a healthy wariness of Internet-related awards and a lifelong vendetta against Wil Wheaton.

You put up a pretty good showing considering your competition, West Seattle Blog, is – in my opinion – the Mafia. How do you deal with your popularity?

Ignore it, when possible.

In the wake of losing the aforementioned Bloggie, I resolved to make my site as popular as possible, and spent the following year trying to write memetic posts rather than writing about the things I cared about. Twelve months of that was quite enough, thank you.

Since then I’ve done pretty well at not giving a rat’s ass about readership (as is probably evident in my rather desultory posting schedule of late)(where “of late” = “since 2003″). At this point I’m not even sure if I still have one, though dozens of people still comment on each and every one of my posts to point out my copious grammatical errors.
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Mid Beacon Hill tried to concede gracefully when the Hood polls were taken over by Diebold. But would we let her? Noooo. Instead we forced her to stay in the race AND submit to an interview by me – drunk and obnoxious spice metroblogger. Why? Because we like her and because we think she’s doing good work. Since J is also extremely nice, she complied with only the slightest hint of arm twisting. Let’s jump right in, shall we…

How many minds are behind Mid Beacon Hill?

Just me.

Are you completely anonymous?

At this point, I’m only nominally anonymous.

When and what got you started in this tawdry blogging business?

A year ago I was doing a lot of gardening and wine drinking and neighborhood picture taking, and I happened to come across a blog by this guy in San Francisco who was doing the same. I loved how his drunken little photo essays captured his love of, and his ambivalence about, the neighborhood where he’d settled down. First I became an obsessive commenter on his blog, and then I decided I had to totally rip it off.
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As I try to recover from last weekend’s Beerapalooza festivities, it’s time to look forward to Seattle’s busiest beer season. Over the next six weeks, the events are nonstop. First out of the gate is the 4th Annual Real Strong Beer Festival at Collins Pub. Several strong beer styles will be represented, including barleywines, imperial stouts and double IPAs. As with their American Belgian Fest, Collins will offer glasses of each beer for $5 or sets of 3 for $14. There will also be special menu items available to pair with the beers.

Collins owner Seth Howard was kind enough to take a few minutes to write out the list of beers for me. One that really caught my eye was the Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout, a beer from Colorado that people have been raving about lately. This is the first time I’ve seen it in Seattle. Other highlights include the Deschutes The Abyss (also an imperial stout) and various vintages of barleywines dating back to 2004 from breweries like Anchor, Moylans, Full Sail, Rogue and Hale’s. Here’s the entire list:

Anchor Old Foghorn ’06 & ’07 (barleywine)
Avery Hog Heaven (barleywine)
Avery The Reverend (Belgian-style quadrupel)
Boundary Bay Old Bounder (barleywine)
Deschutes The Abyss (imperial stout)
Full Sail Old Boardhead ’05 (barleywine)
Great Divide Old Ruffian (barleywine)
Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws (barleywine)
Hair of the Dog Fred (strong ale)
Hale’s Rudyards Rare ’05 (barleywine)
Heads Up Brewing 9MM IPA (cask-conditioned in a firkin)
Left Hand Widdershins (oak-aged barleywine)
Moylans Old Blarney ’06 (barleywine)
North Coast Old Stock (barleywine)
Oskar Blues Ten Fidy (imperial stout)
Rogue Morimoto Imperial Pilsner
Rogue Old Crustacean ’04 (barleywine)
Speakeasy Double Daddy IPA
Stone Double Bastard (strong ale)
Stone Old Guardian (barleywine)
Winthrop Barleywine ’04

The festival starts this Friday, February 22nd and will run until the beers are gone, which should be about a week or so. I plan on being there early and as often as my liver function will allow. Yes, these are big beers with a lot of alcohol–even one or two can put a serious dent in your sobriety level. So take a bus or bring a designated driver whom you can tempt and taunt mercilessly as you sample these delicious beers.

And now, the Battle of West Seattle. In one corner is last year’s semifinalist West Seattle Blog, wielding its mighty Westside user base. In the other corner, you have Kirida, who was nominated for the tournament by West Seattle Blog. The student now faces the master. And since West Seattle Blog is involved, you just know the polling system is going to crash.

Open polls blah blah blah:
Seattle Daily Photo/Blogging Georgetown/Mid Beacon Hill – Defective Yeti/Glitter Pissing (closes Wednesday night)
Seattle Bubble/Accidental Hedonist (closes Sunday night)
Lookout Landing/Huskies Fan (closes Monday night)

The original bracket post

Tomorrow, the last of the quarterfinal brackets.