photo by Margaret Sunshine [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• In a hotly contest blogelection, Dave Cameron lost a scholarship to someone from DailyKos. [slog]
• Dan Savage’s obsession with Marlee Ginter continues. [slog]
• The New York Times spend a(nother) day and a half in Seattle hitting up the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the Public Library, Center for Wooden Boats, Neumo’s, Cafe Presse, Quinn’s, Matt’s in the Market, the Zig Zag, with time for a jaunt to Columbia City along the way. [nyt]
• On Apple Cup weekend the presidents of WSU and UW give up a pay raise. [p-i]
• The Blethyns are angry that Google is directing people to their news stories and making money along the way. This, I think, says a lot about what the Times’s might think that the main function of a newspaper is to deliver advertising. [horsesass]
• Urban hikers are trekking from library to library, saving gas along the way. As I always wonder, why take a two hour car trip to take a long walk anyway? [myballard]

agendaesque:

• NON-Agenda: at least one person is excited about NKOTB. [reverb]
• AGENDA: 826 Seattle celebrates mustaches with a music showcase, the non-Movember crowd breathes a sigh of relief that the month of ill-advised facial hair is nearing an end. [seattle.lj]
• AGENDA: So many good shows tonight like the Hold Steady at WaMu [lineout], Deerhunter + Times New Viking (the glorious contrast!) at Neumo’s [subsonic], but I will also be seeing Sera Cahoone tonight in Dick Cheney’s secret bunker. [seattlest]

photo by Scott Cahill Rude [flickr] via our group pool [#], which hungers for your pictures.

• Approximately a thousand words about the Goodwill glitter sale on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Pack your redbull and shopping bags for this weekend. [times]
• You can keep that Obama sign in the window until all the color fades, but please take down those election signs. [p-i]
• Ably dodging a “spec” controversy, CHS gets a design intern and a new logo. [capitolhillseattle]
• Enjoy Thanksgiving by watching captive animals gnaw on frozen turkeys [zoo]. This post includes the best two photos of the day. Recomended! [slog]
• It turns out that the best place to get coffee in front of a fireplace with wifi and a view might not be Tully’s. [seattlest]

While we’re all pondering candidates over here at Metblogs, I would like to issue a hearty endorsement for Trolloween, Fremont’s Halloween celebration/birthday of the Troll. I haven’t had this much fun at a Halloween party since I was still young enough to trick-or-treat.

I mean, where else can you find robots dancing with princesses?

Or bands made up of skeletons?

It may just be that I’ve always wanted to be in a parade, but never had any reason to- but getting to march through the streets of Seattle with a bunch of other costumed revelers, well, like I said, I’ve never had so much fun on Halloween as an adult. So, if you’re ever in the neighborhood and looking for something to do on Halloween, I wholeheartedly recommend the Fremont Art Council’s Trolloween celebration.

* 12:00 PM: Seattle Mystery Bookshop hosts Larry Karp, author of Scott Joplin mystery The King of Ragtime and its predecessor, The Ragtime Kid. Karp can be relied upon for meticulous research and interesting, authentic characters. [LINK]

* 1:00 PM: Peter Jamero, author of Growing Up Brown: Memoirs of a Filipino American will be reading and discussing his book at SPL International District Branch Library. Books will be available to purchase and Jamero will sign upon request. [LINK]

* 2:00 PM: Everyone and their brother has told me to read Snow Falling on Cedars, and one of the everyone’s even gave me a copy. It’s sitting in the pile of books that I avoid looking at for months at a time. I’ll get to it eventually. It’s a tall pile. And tilty. In the meantime, the author of the book that inspired Snow Falling on Cedars, Mary Woodward, will be at the Central Library. Woodward will show images and read from In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story, a true story of the internment of Japanese Americans and one community’s unique response. Books will be available for purchase and signing. [LINK]

* 2:00 PM: Front Porch Theatre presents All the Kings’s Men, the Pulitzer-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, at Northgate Community Center. Actors and community members will read selections from the book, with a moderated discussion to follow. This is the last Front Porch production of All the King’s Men, but the Intiman Theatre will be running it until November 8th. Except you have to pay Intiman. And if you go to Saturday’s Front Porch event you can enter a raffle to win tickets to the Intiman production. It’s a win-win! [LINK]

* 2:00 PM: Richard Ellis is back with Tuna: A Love Story, this time at Elliott Bay Books. Really, I know there is a lot happening around town on Saturday afternoon, but anyone who has ever eaten a tuna roll (tekka maki) should read Tuna. Anyone who has ever sat down at a sushi bar with one or two hundred bucks burning a hole in her pocket and told the waitress and chef to keep the saki and sushi and sashimi coming until the money runs out must not only read Tuna, but buy a copy, get it signed, and apologize to the author for being a sushi whore. This sushi whore will be wearing all black, by the way, in hopes of remaining relatively anonymous among her fellows. [LINK]

* 6:00 PM: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a book launch party charging a cover, but that’s what’s happening at Caffe Vita on Capital Hill. The Stranger’s Charles Mudede, One Pot, and Caffe Vita are hosting a dinner followed by a book signing for Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky. Miller’s book Sound Unbound just hit bookstores. $45 for dinner and a copy of the book; $30 to latecomers, and also includes a copy of Sound Unbound. [LINK]

map by fundrace x googlemaps

When I feel election anxiety and start seeing frantic e-mails from candidates making their final push, it’s fun to delve into Fundrace to see where the money is coming from, particularly close to home. Nationwide, of course, the Democrats are having a better time of it fundraising than the Republicans, but we are swimming in a sea of especially deep blue, with their database shows that $13,046,780 has been given by people who identified their city as “Seattle” — $1,594,184 from 1,430 people to Republicans and $11,452,596 from 11,290 people to Democrats.

Some of the seven-to-one democratic advantages are especially stark when you take a peek at how employees at some of Seattle’s biggest or most noteworthy employers are contributing.

These are all just off the top of my head and more careful searches would turn up more thorough results (for instance, the line for “Starbucks Coffee”, above, combines searches for “Starbucks” and “Starbucks Coffee”. I’m sure that there are many similar examples). update: the original post included “older results”; the current version omits these 2004 contributions.
Anyone finding other interesting search results?

for Wednesday, October 29, 2008

* Seattle Public Library has announced that My Jim by Seattle author Nancy Rawles is the 2009 Seattle Reads selection. My Jim is based on the character of Jim in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Told from the perspective of Jim’s wife, Sadie, My Jim offers a different perspective on the familiar novel. SPL has ordered 38 new trade paperbacks in anticipation of demand, to supplement the six hardcovers currently in stock. [LINK]

The past few years have seen a number of authors retelling classic novels: Ahab’s Wife by Sena J. Naslund, (Moby Dick); March by Geraldine Brooks (Little Women); Wicked by Gregory Maguire (The Wizard of Oz). I’ll be interested in how Rawles’s contribution to the genre compares. Has anyone out there already read it? What did you think?

* 12:15 – 1:45 PM: SPL’s Wallingford Branch hosts Book-It Repertory Theatre for another presentation of their “Danger: Books!” program. Professional actors will read from banned or challenged books. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is way up there on the list of frequently banned or challenged books, which ties in nicely with Seattle Reads 2009. [LINK]

* 6:30 PM: YA Fantasy author Patrick Carman visits SPL Ballard Branch to read from Stargazer, the fourth novel in his “Land of Elyon” series. [LINK]

* 7:00 PM: Laura Anne Gilman will be at the U-District UW Bookstore to read and sign book number five in her “Retrievers” series, Free Fall. A little different from the current wave of paranormal romance novels dominating genre fiction sales, Gilman’s “Retrievers” books tend more towards the Science Fiction end of the spectrum than Fantasy/Horror. They aren’t bad. [LINK]

* 7:30 PM: Town Hall Seattle presents Mike Chinoy, former Senior Asia Correspondent for CNN and author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis. Chinoy will talk about North Korea policy in the Bush Administration, as well as what challenges the country may present to our next president. $5 at the door, or via www.brownpapertickets.com, 800/838-3006. [LINK]

~Mason Cooley

Readings, signings, and other things vaguely literary for Wednesday, October 22, 2008—
* Author Richard Farr will be at the SPL Douglass-Truth Branch at 6:30 PM to read from Emperors of the Ice: A True Story of Disaster and Survival in the Antarctic, 1910-13. It really is about penguins. Who doesn’t love penguins? Penguins are awesome!

* The Montlake Branch hosts Deborah Rohan, author of The Olive Grove: A Palestinian Story. Rohan will read and sign from 6:30 – 7:45 PM.

* For children and their dependents, local authors Kathryn Galbraith and Deb Lund will drop by the Ballard Branch to share their newest picture books. 6:30 – 7:30 PM.

* The SPL Central Library will honor the winners of the Washington Center for the Book’s 2008 Washington State Book Awards at 7:00 PM in the Microsoft Auditorium (Level 1). 2008 marks the 42nd year of the awards. This year’s winners are Matt Ruff in Fiction, for Bad Monkeys; Samuel Green in Poetry, for The Grace of Necessity; Coll Thrush in History/Biography, for Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place; David R. Montgomery in General Nonfiction, for Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations; George Shannon (w/ Laura Dronzek, illus.) and Sherman Alexie share the Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award.

* Frightening and bizarre Food Network host Sandra Lee is making the rounds with her Semi-Homemade books. She’ll sign copies at the Women’s University Club at 7:00 PM.

* At 7:30 PM, Town Hall Seattle will feature Russell Shorto, author of Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Religion in the Great Hall. Shorto traces the current “culture war” between science and faith back to Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method. Downstairs, David Zirin will be promoting A People’s History of Sports in the United States. As usual, $5 at the door, or via www.brownpapertickets.com.

* Elliott Bay Books has Jonathan Carroll in-store at 7:30 PM to read and sign his new novel, The Ghost in Love. Library Journal Review says The Ghost in Love is an “occasionally scary, often luminous work of unconventional fantasy.” The description reminds me of A. F. Rützy’s End Credits , only with a dog. And luminous, instead of funny. Anyway, I’m looking forward to comparing the two.

almost as scary as a pack of pub-crawling zombies and a whole lot prettier. photo by Danny Ngan [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• The perfect accessory for any home: a PDL Portable Confession Booth. Now for sale on eBay. [slog]
• No matter what boundaries GeekySwedes use, Archie McPhee is still moving to Wallingford. [fremontuniverse]
• The clearest explanation of the bailout rescue plan you’ll read all day. [fnarf]
• the Washington Center for the Book announced its awards for this year. Party in the Library! [threadcount]
• Huskies, we have a new Alma Mater. Or do you keep alma mater that was current at the time your degree was awarded? [times]
• Be forewarned, Zombie season is once again upon us. [seattle.lj]

photo by photocoyote [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• Have a spare half-million dollars stashed under your mattress? Buy a condttage. They’re green! And on sale. [myballard]
• Press releases from Inslee [dw] and Riechert [dw] voted against the bailout. The latter voted a lot like the tiny fraction of Congress in competitive districts. [536]
• Stylish people at fashion shows in Seattle? Shocking. [subterfuge]
• No, Virginia, WaMu isn’t going condo. [flickr/bigblog]
• A whole bunch of heartening new details on what Linda Derschang and Ericka Burke are planning for Oddfellows. Even though there won’t be any taxidermy (shocking!), it still sounds like it will have the magic touch we’ve come to know and love: morning cafe, takeaway food and wine all day, vintage mercantile styled neighborhood hangout lounge. And it should be ready by December. [voracioius]

photo via macarthur foundation

Earlier this month the Stranger crowned their latest crop of local geniuses with $5,000, a cake, and a big party at the Moore. Today, Seattle has another “genius” in our midst thanks to the MacArthur Foundation’s new list of fellows, each of whom receive $500,000, paid quarterly over five years [macfound]. At least a half-million hearty congratulations, then, to University of Washington geomorphologist David Montgomery[#], whose studies of the earth’s surface and environmental change have considered the local, global, and interplanetary level put him in good company with the music critic, saxophonist, fiber artist, urban farmer, fiction writer, epigrapher, and others who won this year’s grants. [#]

In addition to being an inspiring award, it also sounds like the makings of the best cocktail party ever.