1. The Northwest Film Forum's annual holiday party is tonight. NWFF throws awesome parties, and I don't see why this one would be any different, unless budget cuts are really starting to sink in.

Doesn't sound like it: Screenings of TV Christmas specials (including the surreal and hilarious and weirdly-evocative-of-my-childhood "Pee-Wee's Christmas Special"), a dreidel spinning tournament, and egg nog contest (as in, make some and bring it, if you think your stuff's good enough).

And, as if that weren't enough, Josh Feit is this year's Santa.

DJs will start spinning at 9 pm, and the party should go late into the night, in true NWFF fashion.

Tonight at the Northwest Film Forum (on Pine and 12th Ave in Capitol Hill), at 7 pm. Free.

2. It seems like Cliff Mass is everywhere—all over the blogz, on the TV, the single most reliable source for everything meteorological in Seattle. His popular blog, the appropriately-named "Cliff Mass Weather Blog", updates once every day or two with Mass' forecasts. His weather prophecies are constantly tweeted and re-tweeted. Earlier this year, he got some particular attention for calling out King 5, for weather sensationalism, on his blog, saying they "find the most extreme temperature maxima in the region to provide some reason for concern." Aw, shit!

What really started Mass' celebrity status was the release of his all-encompassing Northwest weather bible—The Weather of the Pacific Northwest—which was a total surprise smash hit when it came out last year, flying off the shelves faster than the local indie bookstores could keep up. Before the book, Mass was a UW meteorology professor whose Friday evening forecasts on KUOW had earned him a loyal following of weather nerds. Now, he's practically a pop icon --pretty dazzling for a UW meteorologist.

Proof of Mass's newfound stardom: he's reading from his compendium of weather knowledge tonight at Third Place Books. Says the Weather sage: "In this talk I will describe the unusual circumstances that have to come together for us to get a big snowstorm, details of convergence zone snows, the Fraser River Gap flow, arctic fronts, and more. My favorite topic."

Tonight at 7 pm. Third Place Books, at 17171 Bothell Way NE (technically Lake Forest Park). Admission is free.

3. In the Seattle Art Museum's "Word" series, poets perform original works based on SAM's featured art exhibits. Tonight, Storme Webber, author of the one-woman show "Wild Tales of a Renegade Halfbreed Bulldagger" and Deborah Woodard, author of the poetry book "Plato's Bad Horse," both respond to Heide Hinrichs collection of cluttered and unsettling installation art.

Tonight at the Seattle Art Museum, at 7:30 pm.

4. Local writer Russell Scheidelman, a middle-aged, panama hat-wearing Capitol Hill gentleman, once had a zine called Organ and Bongos, which documented something called "cocktail nation." Now, he has a blog called bourbondandy that's about "finding the good life where few go looking." He's turning the blog into a self-produced magazine about fine liquor and clothiers, and he's having a party tonight to celebrate his first issue.

I've read Scheidelman's blog before, and I kinda like it—his writing is wonderfully inflated. In one bourbondandy post, Scheidelman writes about New Orleans. While there, he frequented many "lordly establishments," while he "cuirassed in suit and tie." His final word: "As would strike me on subsequent initiations into the public inner sanctums of the rich and powerful, this was far more pleasant and less forbidding than I had previously imagined."

I don't think Scheidelman would mind you crashing his party, so long as you wear something nice. He writes: "You are invited to this classy literary drink fest; and I hope you show up in some equally fancy duds."

Tonight at 9 pm, at the Blue Flamingo Underground Lounge, at 415 E. Denny Way.

5. I have a hard time getting a handle on M. Bison. I love the eclecticism, although I do wish they were a little more focused: sometimes it's soft-folk cooing in the vein of the Fleet Foxes; sometimes they're doing gypsy folk with Nintendo bleeps instead of accordions; and sometimes its straight-ahead indie piano rock. The only thing I'm sure of is that they should change their name. Well, and that their show tonight at the Sunset Tavern is going to be rad.

M. Bison is playing with Pillow Army, tonight, at the Sunset Tavern, in Ballard (5433 Ballard Avenue Northwest). Admission is $7.