There are a whole lot of readings tonight including a book at Third Place that involves wit, whimsy, and haunting images.

First, I'd like to turn your attention to Lindy's post from yesterday, which talked about a cookbook about fat. The event is hosted by One Pot and the author of the cookbook is going to be interviewed by Angela Garbes, who is one of my favorite people.

Michael Medved reads at Town Hall, from his book The 10 Big Lies About America. In the books section this week, Charles writes about the Seattle conservative's newest book:

Before examining them, some background on this Medved chap. He is the last man standing on the far right in far-left Seattle. He has a radio show, he is on TV a lot, he is in the habit of crossing his legs when he sits, and his upper lip often raises his broad mustache with the pride of a confident weightlifter. That is Medved. Now, his book.

You should read the whole thing. It's a great book review.

Up in the U District, Achille Mbembe, who some person or another calls "One of the most brilliant theorists of postcolonial studies today," reads from Rethinking the Future in a Neo-Liberal Age.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Peter N. Carroll and Peter Glazer, who are members of the awesomely named Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, read from a newly discovered memoir called War is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War. A lot of ambulance drivers in the Spanish Civil War went on to write books. Maybe you could ask the editors of this memoir why that is. Bonus points if you call them "The two Peteys" during your question.

And at Open Books, we have two poets. It's that time of year, isn't it? It's dark at noon, there are rivers falling from the sky: It's time for poetry! Dan Kaplan and B.T. Shaw. Kaplan is the author of Bill's Formal Complaint, a collection of weird poems. Kaplan is good at coming up with bizarre images, like an orchestra full of armless people, and making them seem like solid, real constructs. Shaw has written This Dirty Little Heart, which is full of lovely poems about Byron and swimming. You can read a little more about Shaw's book here, including a sample poem that has one of my all-time favorite endings for a poem: "Meanwhile. Obviously. Night." If you can't get into the One Pot thing Lindy wrote about yesterday, this is the reading of the night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

The author most famous for writing the Mongo the Magnificent mystery series is dead at 68.

I really loved the Mongo mysteries. How could you not love a collection of semi-paranormal mysteries starring a criminologist dwarf who used to be a circus acrobat? I really loved the way Chesbro alluded to Mongo's dwarfism without continually going "Hey, look! A midget!" My favorite Mongo mystery that I've read is The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone, in which Mongo's brother becomes the messiah to a doomsday cult. His books are always a lot of fun, and apparently Peter Dinklage has been trying to turn Mongo into a James Bond style film franchise, which I would love to see.

A Poetry Slam and a sold-out Annie Liebowitz reading and a book about gorillas tonight, along with things I'm actually going to talk about.

At Redwood, at around Happy Hour Time and for the duration of a couple of basketball games, the authors of The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac will talk with anyone who shows up about basketball. These are the people behind the Freedarko basketball blog. I don't like sports, but I know that this book looks like an amazing book, like if McSweeney's published a basketball guide. It's shocking to me that this is the reading of the night, but there you go. They look like smart, funny people.

Up in the Ballard branch of the library, Jay Spenser will read from The Airplane: How Ideas Gave us Wings. Are there airplane fanatics the way there are model train fanatics? If so, they'll be there tonight.

Up at Third Place Books, Richard Silverstein reads from A Time to Speak Out: Essays on Israel/Palestine. This will surely be a civil evening, as every discussion I've ever had about Israel and Palestine has remained a civil and courteous discussion.

And at Town Hall, Robert Laughlin reads from The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind, which is about how 95% of all American scientists now believe Jesus rode around on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Slog Tipper Alyson points us to this lovely Vice Magazine interview with Lynda Barry. It begins exactly the way every interview with Lynda Barry should begin:

Vice: You. Are. Amazing.

But then the minute Barry starts talking, it's clear she's distracted:

Lynda Barry: Thanks, but I’m not feeling very amazing at all. Ever since I found out an industrial wind farm is being planned for right beside our place—67 turbines, each standing 40 stories tall, 1,000 feet from our door. We’re looking at losing everything we’ve worked for—maybe having to move and start over. I’ll try not to mention it again, but if you would like to know more about a whole other side of “wind energy” you can visit the website I run for our community. It’s at betterplan.squarespace.com. I do want people to know these machines are not benign. They bring a lot of misery to those who are forced to live among them.

She says she'll try not to mention it again, but about a quarter of the interview is about the turbines. The other three quarters is great stuff, though, and I think, in many ways, it wouldn't be a great Lynda Barry interview without some sort of sad distraction pulling on the edges of it.

Slog Tipper Maggie informs us that there is a new bookstore opening up on the Ave in the U District, called the Book Kennel ("Ha ha, Dawgs, get it?" Maggie helpfully adds. I say "helpfully" because I actually didn't get it until she explained it to me.) They'll be going into the space where the Tiger used clothes store was, at 4321 University Way NE.

Apparently, they're now hiring, so maybe you Borders employees might want to think about taking a little jaunt to the Book Kennel to see how the rate of pay compares. This is pretty ballsy, though: It's directly across the street from the University Book Store, and sources say it'll probably sell some used textbooks and UW-branded stuff. Not counting the Great Depression, this is literally the worst time in American history to open a bookstore, and a bookstore-fight during this retail Christmas could get a wee bit ugly.

There are a whole bunch of events going on tonight, including a family survival guide and a juicing master and some other events I'm going to talk to you about right now.

At the University Book Store, Jesse Reklaw signs The Night of Your Life, in which he turns people's dreams into cartoons. He's the Slow Wave guy. My favorite dream comics are Rick Veitch's Rare Bit Fiends, especially this one where he adapts a dream that was talked about by the 3 Stooges' Moe Howard.

UPDATE: In the comments, —MC writes:

Don't forget, the signing at U Bookstore also includes Kaz Strepek, the creator behind the brilliant Mourning Star comic series. And ladies, he's single.

Max Power reads at Town Hall from America's Nuclear Wasteland: Politics, Accountability, and Cleanup . I'm sorry, but I can't resist posting this:

And lastly, and most importantly, there's the PowerPoint-Off at the Rendezvous. Doug Nufer and Matt Briggs fight to determine the future of the Hugo House once and for all*. I wrote all about it yesterday. If you've never seen Nufer or Briggs read, you should go to this. They're both super-entertaining, and it's always fun to see what creative types manage to do with PowerPoint (or some open source PowerPoint-type clone.) This is obviously the reading of the night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

* Results will actually have no bearing on the real Hugo House whatsoever, but it still should be entertaining.

Via Maud, there's news that the Collins dictionary has included the word "meh" as the newest word in the English language

I'm not really crazy about the word "meh"—I guess you could say I'm meh about it—because it's the vocal equivalent of a disaffected shrug. I was having a very long e-mail argument once with some douchebag about his use of the word "cunt," (I really hate using the word "cunt," when used as a description of a woman, especially when it's a douchebag guy using the word) and he finally just ended the fight by saying "Meh. I'm not into political correctness." If he had said "Meh" to me in person, I would've fucking driven his head through a wall.

But in any case, I'm completely in favor of "meh" going into the dictionary because it was competing against the words "jargonaut," "frenemy," and "huggles." Those are all much worse words than "meh."

I totally missed out on getting this in the readings calendar for the print edition—it's in our online readings calendar, of course—but there's something happening tomorrow that sounds like a lot of fun that I wanted to turn people's attention to.

In the comments thread to this story about the Hugo House, local author Matt Briggs challenged author Ryan Boudinot to a PowerPoint-off to determine the future of the Hugo House. Briggs was more in favor of the old House, with its semi-unfocused community programs. Boudinot was on the side of Lyall Bush's changes. Here's part of one of Briggs' many posts:

I find Matt Carvalho's expectations of an Executive Director curiously corporate. The word expectations summons to mind bullet lists of action items, road maps, and gant charts. (Although I like a good flowchart as much the next person.) Does he know what Seattle's expectations are of Hugo House? This is perhaps judged in the dollars and cents as these things are required to be of money raised, and money spent. If grants are good, expectations are met. I'm simplifying, but I doubt the board is measuring the number of sonnets being written or the number of zines being produced at Hugo House. In the last two years, I haven't been aware of any communication of expectations.

Here's part of one of Boudinot's many responses:

As for what people want, Matt, I can only speak for myself. You apparently speak for a larger community, a mourning coalition of folks who've had their expectations dashed. I'll tell you what I want. I want a place that hosts readings and events with talented writers from around the world. I want a place that offers classes on a wildly diverse array of subjects. I want a place that provides kids with opportunities to explore writing and literature. Do I expect everything that Hugo House offers to be my cup of tea? Hell no. I even expect to think that some of it sucks. Under Lyall Bush, HH took some risks, had some big wins, a few misses, but overall became an organization devoted to stripping pretense from the writing process and promoting the creation of new work.

Boudinot declined the PowerPoint-off—among other things, he was working on his novel, which is due out next year—but local poet, novelist, and all-around showman Doug Nufer has agreed to take on the pro-business side of the House. I expect the reading will be laced with the kind of surreal humor that Briggs and Nufer are known for. They're great local writers, and they both have a good sense of Seattle's writing community. And I think they're both aware exactly how crazy the idea of a PowerPoint-off is. So it'll be funny and informative and not quite like most other literary events you'll see in Seattle. The event is tomorrow night at the Jewel Box Theater at 7:30 pm, and it is free. You should go.