Towards the very end of last night's People Talking and Singing, as the clock ticked past 10:00 and John Roderick announced he'd play another song and take a few requests from the audience, our butts chimed in: "Hey, this is starting to go on a little long." Our brains, and most of the rest of us, were enjoying themselves thoroughly. But Town Hall started life as a Christian Science church, and the pew we sat......

True confessions time: We've never set foot in 826 Seattle. We think we might have seen the building once, at night, while driving somewhere else. We'd turn in our hipster license, but as Seattlest Jeremy notes, "parenthood remains the antidote to hipness." We've never been all that hip, but we are writers, we (used to) read McSweeney's, and we've been aware of Seattle's hippest educational center, 826 Seattle, since before it opened. We just chose......

The third annual 826 Seattle benefit People Talking and Singing will fill the seats at Town Hall next Thursday. Comedian Patton Oswalt had to cancel, but the event still features host John Roderick of the Long Winters, Dave Eggers, comedians Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman, New Yorker music critic (and current blogosphere gadfly) Sasha Frere-Jones, local songstress Rosie Thomas, and Geologic of the Blue Scholars. People Talking and Singing has become the must-see annual......

Bumbershoot 2005 hosted the inaugural People Talking and Singing show, where 2,800 festival attendees packed McCaw Hall to see Dave Eggers, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Mike Doughty, Sarah Vowell, and Death Cab for Cutie, all the while raising $18K for 826 Seattle, the youth writing center in Greenwood. Last year's event, also at Bumbershoot, was hosted by Daily Show Resident Expert™ John Hodgman and singer Jonathan Coulton. Eggers, Handler, Gibbard, and Vowell were back......