I don’t know about you, but when my stuff develops sentience and can have an opinion of where it would like to stay…that’s the day I get rid of everything.

(Seen in Redmond)

If you’re into Tour de France, then it’s your lucky day. Magnuson Park is hosting some big Cyclefest Outdoor Cinema, where kids can hunt for things and big kids can watch cyclists ride through the Alps. I doubt the beer is free, but watching Lance’s thighs on a big screen are.

Here are the details.

The Seattle Department of Transportation unveiled a brand-spanking new website this morning.

Perhaps taking a cue from the Washington State Department of Transportation, the Seattle DOT has a Twitter account and a Facebook page. Where the two seem to differ (at least on the surface) is that the WSDOT follows all of their followers back in order to provide real time traffic updates and incident reports via direct message.

The Seattle Department of Transportation’s website doesn’t work well in Google Chrome, but it plays well with IE and Firefox.

What do you think about your city and state departments going all social these days?

Have you been hovering near the far edge of your seat of choice in anticipation of Throw Me the Statue’s latest album? Then you’ll be pleased to read that you can get a digital copy a few weeks ahead of the physical release date. Take it away, twitter:

Although I would have been fine with sparing a few plastic or vinyl forests and just taking my local pop electronically, I do appreciate the instant download. See for yourself. [secretlycanadian]

photo by Danny Ngan [flickr] via our group pool [#].

Our summer membership drive continues as we look for Seattleites to join the ranks of Team Metblogs. In case you missed it, here’s a refresh on the pitch:

Do you like to do things in the city and tell people stories about your experiences? Do you have zany &/or insightful takes on the news of the day? Are you obsessed with the impending local election or all of the sportsballs bouncing around town? Are you fixated on making beautiful photographs of our fair city? Is there some facet of Seattle that so capitvates you that you’d like to share it with an audience of adoring readers?

If the answer to at least one of those questions is “yes”, then do I have just the “job” for your volunteer efforts! We’re looking for a few great bloggers to join the ranks at Seattle Metblogs to help fill these pages with wonderful content. If you’d like to be a part of the team and have time to contribute a few times a week, please fire up your e-mail machine, point it to seattle.metblogs @ gmail.com and tell us a bit about yourself.

12:00 PM – J.A. Jance: Fire and Ice: a Beaumont and Brady Novel
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
10% of all sales during the signing will be donated to the Cancer Fighting Flamingos.
[LINK]

12:00 PM – Poetry Appreciation Group: Discussion
SPL Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium
Join fellow poetry lovers to read and discuss poems.
[LINK]

4:30 PM – Make A Book! Workshop
SPL New Holly Branch
“Instructors from the Seattle Center for Book Arts show you how handmade books can add a creative twist to traditional soft-cover and hard-cover books. All bookmaking materials and supplies provided. For ages 12 and up.” – SPL
[LINK]

6:30 PM – Jennifer Worick: Backcountry Betty Crafting with Style: 50 Nature-Inspired Projects
SPL University Branch
Worick will discuss a variety of craft projects that she has divided into habitats, from your backyard to the seashore.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – David Hartwell: Reading & Signing
UW Bookstore U District
The senior editor for Tor books will appear in conversation with author Eileen Gunn.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Get a Clue: Plotting, Selling and Promoting the Mystery Novel: Discussion
Richard Hugo House Cabaret
“A panel featuring award-winning mystery authors Curt Colbert, Julie Kramer and Robert Lopresti and moderated by Bharti Kirchner. The panelists will discuss the ins and outs of writing the mystery novel, how to sell the novel for publication and what to do after it’s sold, with a particular focus on how the author can assist with marketing and promotion. Books will be for sale.” (RHH)
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Randy Sue Coburn: A Better View of Paradise
Elliott Bay Book Co.
A predictable, yet improbable, novel of father-daughter reconciliation, featuring the usual suspects: a successful, urban, 30-something female; her abrasive, dying father; their difficult relationship; the sage family-member/friend-of-the-family whose timely advice gives the protagonist much needed perspective; and a secret baby. Okay, maybe not a baby, but a secret someone. If this were a genre romance novel, it would totally be a secret baby.
[LINK]

photo by g stonebraker [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Eric Grandy is even more excited about the Pains of Being Pure at Heart coming to the Block Party than I am. So far, he’s appreciated 2/10, with the Song of the Spring and Summer and Maybe Autumn, too, “Young Adult Friction” (the band’s foggy platinum spray paint basement fireworks party thesis statement, first single, and raison d’etre) next in the sequence.  [lineout]
• With wolves back in the picture, elk chill out on the overeating. [dailyscore]
• Jansport is giving the “Cap to the Hill” crew $10K to plan a party; they’re aiming to resurrect 500 Pine for one magical evening. [ctth] with a bit of help from their friends. [ctth]
• A track from Pearl Jam’s forthcoming album emerges, sounds poppy. [vulture]
• Though some grump that we’re still not a grown-up city [crosscut]; most of Seattle is excited about light rail’s opening weekend [hound, chs, etc], seeing it as a step against neighborhood balkanization [seattletransitblog].

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

• Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the USA’s little trip to visit the moon in person. To celebrate, the Northwest Film Forum made space on their 1969 calendar for a rebroadcast of the original television broadcast (R.I.P. Cronkite, B.T.W.) of that one small step tonight. They’ll begin the showing at 7 pm; it will be followed by a live remix presentation by filmmaker and sound artist Joe Milutis that reworks images of major NASA events leading up to and including the landing. Put on your space suits and moon boots! $6-9, 7:00 pm. [nwff]
• If you’d rather follow along in decades-delayed synchronization, Jason Kottke’s re-creating the day of the moon landing to the second online. The landing coverage starts at 1:10 and the moonwalking starts at 7:10 pm. [kottke]

Tom Pfaeffle, longtime local sound engineer and friend to musicians everywhere, was fatally shot in Twisp this weekend while on a camping trip with his family. From Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground:

while on a camping vacation with his family in eastern washington tom was trying to enter what he believed was his hotel room and unknowingly began to jostle the door handle when he was suddenly shot twice through the hotel door.  tom fought valiantly for his life with his wife val for two more hours until the EMS arrived.

Tom not only embodied the best of the human spirit’s ability to be a selfless and unconditionally loving person, but he was a master of his craft.  he gave countless hours and unpaid time teaching young people at the seattle art institute’s live sound and recording engineering programs and his roots run deep not just in the northwest music scene but worldwide [Kay Kay].

Tom was involved with tons of bands, on their records or tours or live shows, from BB King to Nirvana, Alice Cooper, Heart, and nearly everyone that came through The Tank Studio in Black Diamond. He left behind a wife and two children, and many many friends.

12:05 PM – Thrilling Tales: Adult Story Time
SPL Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium
‘”Butch Minds the Baby,” by Damon Runyon. In a classic yarn by the inimitable Brooklyn raconteur, matters grow complicated when a safecracker can’t get a babysitter on the night of the big heist.’ (SPL)
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Paul Collins: The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World
UW Bookstore U District
A fabulous book about what has been described as the most import secular work of all time.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Bibi Gaston: The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter’s Search for Home
Elliott Bay Book Co.

For forty-three years, all I knew was that Rosamond was beautiful and that she had killed herself. I may have spent the rest of my life knowing just those two things and everything would have gone on the way things do. After all, who really needs to dredge up something you can’t do anything about? But in the summer of 2003, I went back to the Forester’s Pool in Pennsylvania where I had distributed my father’s ashes in the waters where he had learned to fish and swim with his mother, Rosamond. That day, I was given a plain cardboard box containing a thousand pages of Rosamond’s diaries that people thought had vanished. For seventy years, her diaries and scrapbooks languished in airplane hangars, flooding basements, and dusty closets. They disappeared into the dark corners of a family’s pain. Retrieved from darkness, the diaries changed my life forever. Through them, I learned a good part of Rosamond’s story and found a home in the words of my grandmother.

[LINK]