Here's my story on Al Gore's appearance last night at Town Hall. Organizers said Gore would not be doing any interviews during his Seattle visit. But that often means no interviews other than with Joel Connelly, who has the exclusive one-on-one with the former vice president.

For a fan's perspective, Andrew at the Northwest Progressive Institute live-blogged the event. He says:

The audience displayed controlled passion. Many of us want Gore to run, but we can communicate that to him without having to yell it.

He went to get his book signed, but resisted asking Gore if he was going to run for president.

Others have already done that, and will continue to do so. I wanted to send a different message. And so, when I got to the front of the line, I simply said:

"Thank you for your work to restore our democracy. It means a lot."

The Strangers was in full force at the Gore event, with Dan Savage, Annie Wagner and Christopher Frizzelle on the job. Savage live-blogged the event.

They did ask Gore the big question.

A couple of people told me excitedly that Gore is definitely dieting, and we all know what that means. Town Hall's Susie Tennant handed me a book and Frizzelle and I joined the line at the end. Gore signed our books and when we asked him if he was going to run, Gore said...

I'm not going to reveal what Al Gore said. You can read about it in Frizzelle's column this week.

Wagner doesn't think Gore will run.

There was much pop-culture bashing tonight; and as much as I hate to call a halt to all of the Donna Brazile-inspired fat-pinching prognostics, Gore sounds like a professor, a kindly scold, an elder statesman. He doesn't sound like a man who's running for president. That speech had a lot of red meat, but no A-1, if you know what I mean.

Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski said Gore's lecture almost put him to sleep.

"Sooner or later the truth will come riding to the rescue," he said someone else said.

At this point (or at least at this point in my notes) the Larouche choir breaks in and starts singing in the middle of the room. I'm pretty sure that's not the truth Al had in mind. After they were swept peaceably from the hall Gore continued on his truth theme: Philosophy, the printing press, the facts, Relativity, the Ecology of Information, "truth force"... It got real lecturey and if the Stranger guys weren't typing so furiously behind me here I may have started dozing. "Common Sense is the Harry Potter of the 18th Century." He was talking about the printing press and the democratization of information that followed its invention, but then he jumps forward to the radio how the Nazis used it and then on to television and the evils lurking therein, but Al's not so much mad as hell here as, like...unamused.

Gonsiorowski sat with the press last night, which he second-guessed during Gore's media bashing.

At this point I remember glancing around for a nearby exit because it seemed like Gore was going to start pointing at the media seats at any moment. "I'm not with these guys! I just snuck in here! Uh, go La-roOouche!" But he flipped it again and started talking about the importance of protecting the neutrality of the internet.

OOPS: I meant to include this post from the Weekly's Aimee Curl. She writes:

The new Gore may be more professorial than presidential, but his passion resonates. He serves as a salve that reminds us of a time when they weren't out there attacking our freedoms and we weren't attacking other countries. But it's more than just that. He speaks truth in a way that compels, even inspires.