This Seattlest took one look at the weather forecast and headed to sunny Florida yesterday. Now here we are in our hometown of DeLand, population 24,375 (per 2006 census). Our mother doesn't have wireless at the house, and is operating off a 1997 iMac. It's cute and compact, but slow as hell, so we headed out this morning for the one source of public wifi in town: Boston Gourmet Coffeehouse. A couple of things about......

This morning's commute is pretty bad, but as this rain is expected to last well into the evening, by then Duck Tour may be the only way to navigate the city. Already (as of 8:35 am): --Amtrak service between Eugene and Vancouver, B.C. is suspended because of mudslides. --Sounder service was also cancelled. --Most highways and roads on the coast are closed. --Stevens Pass is closed. --Westlake Ave. in Seattle is blocked between Galer and......

Of that much, we are certain, given Ted Miller's nine hundred word essay on Christal Morrison's "killer looks." First off, he's right. The girl is absolutely stunning -- in that bible school, girl-next-door kind of way. In fact, we'll readily admit that when we saw her smiling face on the front page of this morning's PI, we cut straight to page D1 for the full-size photo. Yeah, she's not bad. After cooling ourselves off with......

Amazon released an eBook reader today, it's three years in the making. They call it Kindle. Here's a big 'ol Newsweek piece about it. Barnes and Noble has seen its stock drop 5% today (as of 3:01 EST), as investors ask and answer the question--is print dead? (Note--you aren't reading this in print.) News of the Kindle launched a spirited discussion amongst various Seattlesters touching on the merits of eBooks, of iPods, book history, and......

We asked, Jeanine Anderson answered: she shared photos from Friday night's pop surrealism opening at Roq La Rue in our Flickr pool. late fauna of north america: who goes to the Roq? Thanks, Jeanine! We managed to snap a couple as well. Here's the crowd at 7:30: And here's Little Miss Seattlest requesting that we stop looking at art or taking pictures and go to dinner (at Marjorie, across the street, which was yum):......

Tonight's three-man show at Roq La Rue brings three quintessential pop surrealists to town. Brian Despain: Scott Musgrove: And -- our personal favorite -- Ryan Heshka: Our only regret from our Jeopardy! audition was forgetting to answer "Buy an Ryan Heshka original" when they asked what we'd do with the money. We went with "travel." All three artists will be there tonight, so while you have until December 1 to get there, this is the......

After kittens yawning and cross-species friendship, dear sweet Jens Lekman may be the most precious thing found in all of nature. The Gothenberg Swede makes orchestral pop songs in the vein of Morrissey or the Magnetic Fields without even being gay (just European). To promote Night Falls Over Kortedala, one of the best reviewed albums of the year, Jens has been touring around the States with his almost-all-girl backing band: For the 10/23-11/10 leg......

Mateo Messina, a Seattle native, has been composing television and film scores and penning symphonies for 10 years. His most recent score is for the upcoming, buzz-magnet comedy Juno. His latest symphony will be heard tonight at Benaroya Hall's (sold out) Symphony Legacy concert. (That's him above, at last year's show.) Messina's Symphony--a benefit for Seattle Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center--features the combined musical talents of the Northwest Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest......

Seattlest has been making some semblance of a living writing about music for a few years now. During that time, we've tried to put into words performances by some truly great artists (Chris Thile comes to mind), and it never gets easier to verbalize music. Talking about music really is like dancing about architecture, although we have felt the inexplicable desire to dance inside extraordinary buildings before. Our point is that we headed off......

According to his blog, NYTimes Op-Ed columnist and Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman is "sick as a dog" today, right before his visit to Town Hall tomorrow night. Krugman, like Bill Greider at Rolling Stone in the Reagan years, has taken up columnistic arms against the flow of disinformation from the White House. Who will tell the people? Krugman, that's who. (Actually Greider will too.) Sick or not, Krugman will be at Town Hall to......

Some things go together so naturally that you wonder how they ever existed apart from each other. Peanut butter and jelly, Spencer and Heidi, the gays and Halloween. And now a musical double-header that seems to be a match made in heaven: Rocky Votolato and Jesse Sykes (and the Sweet Hereafter). Thanks to Barsuk (their shared record label), the two singer-songwriters are on the road together, and their joint appearances promise to be something......

Someone just forwarded Seattlest the coolest Washington State ferry pictures of all time saying they were embedded in an email going around the office. We'll paste them all below, in order and with the authors commentary intact. If you took these or if you know of a place online where we can link to these, please email Seattlest. [UPDATE: We've been directed to the Bitter End blog, although he didn't take them either. Ross Fotheringham......

Wait--choke back that vomit. We're making shit up. Speculating doom, if you will. Only half of that title is true. Charles Cross' 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain actually is being adapted for the big screen. By highly-anticipated The Kite Runner and Wolverine screenwriter David Benioff, no less. (Aside: Seattlest once met Benioff at an Austin bar, while unsuccessfully schmoozing with Hollywood types. Before we knew better, we asked him, "Are you a writer, too?" Ha.)......

CHS had the news last night, and then Metblogs posted before us, too, so to make up for our tardiness, we visited the Office Nomads site, chatted with cofounder Jacob, and took pictures. They just signed a 3-year lease the beginning of this month, and are in full prep-mode before their opening on November 1. (Open House 6pm-9pm.) The new Office Nomads offices are located in the old Heath Printers building on Boylston, the block......

Hello all-- News from the front lines of the blogging revolution: We've killed guest comments. Well, to be accurate our corporate overlords have killed guest comments. Ist-wide, the vast majority of spam and boorish behavior comes from guest commenters. As many Internet pundits have observed, total anonymity seems to make even the nicest person act totally insane. It hasn't been much of a problem here at Seattlest, and I'd like to thank those guest commenters......

We're not very strong on commas -- maybe that should be "Our Post About Lunch, With Elizabeth Hurley"? Oh well! We had the chicken ciabatta ($9.95) at the Nordstrom's Grill. That's the lunch part. Wait, we had a cup of decaf, too. On our way in, we noticed all these people standing around the cosmetics department, not moving, which annoyed us because we were a little hypoglycemic and they were between us and our food.......

Tuesday night Seattlest won $35 playing pub trivia at the Boxcar Ale House in Magnolia. And we earned every goddamn penny -- it was a brutal slog of an evening. "I'm about to get stabby," said one of our teammates at about 9:50, when it was clear that we weren't getting out of there anytime soon. The quiz was a reasonable 50 questions. And Tuesday's host -- we didn't catch her name -- wrote a......

Seattlest spent this weekend visiting friends in Spokane. We know, we know. "Why, in God's name would you go to Spokane?" Trust us, we've heard it before. But Spokane isn't all bad. It has a few great restaurants, a small but fascinating music scene made up alternately of young, unable-yet-to-escape kids in punk rock bands and older, happy-to-be-settled-down really good musicians all playing in a small town which is full of outdoor opportunities in urban......

The art installation at the condemned hotel on Bridgewayin Fremont this weekend was a little too successful for its own good. Wow, packed. We had an easier time getting to the beer than seeing any art and only managed to fight our way through the crowd to get into a few rooms--one member of our party declined to climb the stairs at all since they were so slammed with would-be patrons. Porch collapses happen......

There's an article bemoaning our pending loss of Daly's Drive-In in Eastlake in the Post Intelligencer today (with accompanying blog item--probably both inspired by a slightly previous blog item from the Stranger) headlined "Popular drive-in on way out." The thing is, Daly's isn't popular. It should be, and it was, but it isn't. Red Mill Burgers, say, the Phinney location, is popular. There's always a line out the door and it takes forever to......

The P-I is still defending its decision not to run the random photo of Arab-lookin guys the FBI passed them last week, as if not participating in a man-hunt for two guys who happened to ask a question about the workings of the ferry in front of the wrong citizen detective is something that needs any more ink. Robert Jamieson Jr says: The trouble with public outings goes beyond these men being stripped of their......

It's been a few short weeks since we shared our friend's tasting notes on Bacon Salt. Since then, we're sure you've ordered several jars and whipped up any number of tasty bacon-salty recipes. (That or you shrugged and read one of Seth's sports posts instead.) But if you have incorporated Bacon Salt into your daily cooking routine, now's your chance to earn the best prize of all -- even more Bacon Salt. Because at a......

Pike Place Market’s very public Centennial Celebration wraps up this Friday, the 100th anniversary of its onion-borne existence. As with any freshly-minted centenarian, the Market will dawdle obliviously amid the avid attention of family, friends, and Willard Scott the press. To commemorate the milestone, there will be stage performances, special presentations and, as we noted earlier this week, other activities taking place from 9am on. But the candles won’t truly be lit until around......

They'd finished their "last" song, gone backstage and waited. But there would be no encore because there was no call for one. People had begun filing out of the Crocodile like Night of the Living Dead extras. A few of us lingered, hoping for more, but after the band peeked out and saw that most everyone had already left, they too called it a night. Vocalist/keyboarder Rachel Stolteand and The Comas' Nicole Gehweiler took......

Fate, karma, kismet -- call it what you will but the week before A Fine Frenzy came to town a friend in Switzerland sent us a YouTube video of her song "Rangers." We listened, found the album, and two days later noticed she was coming to town that Sunday. Here is the video, just so you can follow along: (And here is YouTube's A Fine Frenzy catalog.) What we didn't know at the time was......

Slippery Joaquim's picture is titled "the invasion" and Seattlest, for one, welcomes our new freight-handling overlords. From the Seattlest Flickr pool, where you should be posting pictures yourself at least until such time as our new masters outlaw it.......

Taking in the sights by serene_d, one of the attention-grabbing pictures you can find in the Seattlest Flickr Pool. You take pictures around our fair city? Your pictures should be there as well. Thanks for sharing!......

Visitor by Slightlynorth, one of the pretty pretty pictures in the Seattlest Flickr Pool. Won't you add your pictures as well?......

-- Seattle's got one. Where else can you find a Starbucks with a La Marzocco espresso machine? -- Ironically, he was flying into town for a Goldfinger reenactment event. -- Let's move more of our commute to the water, suggests West Seattle Blog. -- Turns out it's crowded at the Pike Place Market. Plan your produce trips accordingly. -- Seattle's home to a half restaurant? And you have to try it, along with 10......

Maybe you caught the thing about the guy who tours the country putting political signs up on highways in The Stranger this week? While we think he should have a long talk with the Name Analyzer, there's no denying the "Freeway Blogger" does great work. He sent Seattlest a few links to stuff he put up around town:......