Could your apartment use a bit more animal dander? Have your bundles of yarn achieved an unnatural state of order? Tired of your frisbees going unfetched? Exceeded the statute of limitations on going to the dog park alone?

You could be a prime candidate for this Saturday’s massive adopt-a-pet extravaganza. Sixteen local shelter and rescue organizations will combine, Voltron-style, to help King County residents meet the the best and brightest animals available. In addition to the opportunity to find your new fuzzy friend amongst the hundreds of dogs, cats, and hamsters, the event will feature a very exciting talent competition. I expect that the winners of the contest will have the pick of the litter (as far as potential guardians are concerned).

Get there early: last year, all of the available animals found a home by the end of the day. In addition, KUOW was reporting that a dozen Italian racing greyhounds would be among the dogs available for adoption.

King County Kent Animal Shelter [metrokc]

21615- 64th Ave. S, Kent

Saturday, June 24, 2006 (9:00 am)

But not really.

Mayor Nickels (or is that Mayor Gridlock?) now claims “an estimated $5 billion will be available for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel” (pending a number of developments, including the local improvement district tax). Now this sounds all rosy, but how much of the money do we actually have? Council President Licata has already stated that the mayor is “looking through deep rose-colored glasses in his revenue projections.”

Now I’m all for getting rid of the viaduct once and for all. I think we’ll have a better waterfront and a better city without it. But right now there are two many unanswered questions. Do we even have the money for a tunnel? Is there a better, more affordable way to open up the waterfront? Is there a better way to spend five billion dollars?! Why does our Kyoto-touting, earth-loving, CO2-reducing mayor want to build a brand new highway through downtown?! Come on Greg, show some consistency.

On a lighter note, I was struck by the funniest mental image when I read Mayor finds $2.6 billion more to pay for viaduct tunnel plan, the headline from the Times. I imagined Greg Nickels walking along the sidewalk, wearing a propeller cap and licking an oversized lollypop, tripping over a large, Scrooge McDuckesque sack of coins (complete with giant dollar sign). “Yay, tunnel money!” exclaims the mayor! Yeah, okay, I’ll stop now.

If you’re as wary of SIFF as I am (all of those lines and rules and very obsessive people are scary, kids), you’ll be glad to know that it’s over and we’re back to regular old midnight movies at the Egyptian.

Unfortunately, the first movie they’re showing is The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Brian Froud’s well-loved fantasy tale. I object to this movie because of the insistence over many years by many people that I bear a striking resemblance to Kira, a pointy-faced puppet. I do not consider this a favorable comparison, and would therefore not be sad if the damnable movie fell off the face of the earth.

But most people are not saddled with unfortunate Gelfling heads, and as a result lots and lots of you love The Dark Crystal. Jerks. It is the story of Jen, a Gelfling, who has to find the missing shard of the crystal so that the world is not ruled by the Skesis. He teams up with Kira, the only other surviving Gelfling, Audra, a witch, and Fizzgig, Kira’s pet, uh, something.

The puppetry in this movie is, admittedly, amazing. No one rides a bicycle, but Jen plays the flute and I seem to remember a rather well done high-speed chase. There are a lot of people that consider The Dark Crystal a Jim Henson masterpiece, and if I didn’t dislike it so much I’d probably agree.

It’s Pride weekend, and because of the split between the people who want to keep Pride in Capitol Hill and the people who wanted to move it downtown, there’s a whole lot going on. Fortunately, the good people at Queen City have made a list of all of it.

The parade will be on Sunday, it seems, going from Westlake Park to Seattle Center. If you can’t make it, you’ll be able to watch it on tv from 6:00-8:00 Sunday night.

This Saturday night The Pillows and the Stereo Future will be playing at at the Croc. Since I’m a big fan of FLCL/Furi Kuri/Fooley Cooley, the show in which The Pillows’ music was prominently featured, I’ll be there with bells on!

Well, ok, not literally bells but you get the idea.

The Pillows and The Stereo Future
Crocodile Cafe
Sat., 6/24/06
5 pm
$13 advance/$15 at the door, all ages

It looks like Seattle’s other alt-weekly is getting into the blogging game, too. As far as I can tell, the revolution hit the web today, but items started accumulating late last week with an inaugural post [#] celebrating Seattle Weekly awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Where the Stranger has “the Slog” [#] and “LineOut” [#], Seattle Weekly has “Daily Weekly” [#] and “Post Alley” [#]¹.On top of that, the Weekly includes “Mossblog” [#] a very special site for Knute “Mossback” Berger’s musings. Appropriately enough, he kicked things off with a response [#] to his column in which he called the carless a bunch of moochers.

To date, the offerings from Seattle Weekly seem less obsessively updated and lack the ability to comment. But it’s only been running for a few days; so it’s likely that features and frequency will develop with age. (update: Chuck Taylor writes [#] that the omission of comments will be remedied shortly)

–

1. Your mileage with these analogies may vary. For instance, LineOut is music-focused and PostAlley seems more general-arts.

Alaska Airlines is trying to make up for all of its dog-tossing, cabin-pressure-losing hijinks by giving us a straight shot to Mexico. Beginning in late October, flights from Seattle to Cancun will not have to stop in Los Angeles anymore. Start planning your vacations now.

“There will be flights four days a week, Alaska Air said, leaving Seattle at 8:22 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday beginning Oct. 27. Flights from Cancun will leave at 4:35 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.”

There will also be a straight shot from Portland to Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta.

(Via the Puget Sound Business Journal.)

In need of Wednesday night plans?

• Hang out with ‘bloggers ‘blogging about ‘blogging from a blogging meetup! Meetup.com’s original weblogger group convenes for their monthly get-together tonight at Ralph’s Market in Belltown. In addition to the usual fun of seeing the what happens when the city’s blogerati step out of their blogging dens and into the wild, this evening’s festivities hold the promise of free desserts. Anita Rowland has promised cake and cherry pie in honor of a very special birthday.

  I expect to drop by for a little bit. If you’re interested in Metroblogging Seattle’s latest casting call for new writers, but have some questions I should be around to try to answer as well as for general chatting purposes. [meetup]

Got something better on your plate? Leave your suggestions in the comments or send us an e-mail about a future event.

The Sightline Institute today released the 2006 Cascadia Scorecard, an annual publication that analyzes sustainability for the Northwest. This year’s focus is on the connections between community design and health (ie. how where you live affects your health and life expectancy). The study found that people who live and work in dense, walkable communities are healthier, less obese, and have longer life expectancy. In short, if you move more and sit in gridlock less, you’ll actually be healthier. Astonishing, I know!

You can check out the entire report or read the PI’s take on it.

(photo, gregory perez [flickr])

For Father’s Day, KEXP hosted a dance party for indie rock dads to take their indie rock children to bust a move. Not only did the event sell out quickly, those without a kid under age ten couldn’t get in to see the future hipsters of America polishing their moves. Thanks to the magic of the internet, even the childless among us can glimpse inside the heart of the kid dance revolution with an extensive photoset [flickr].

(via the kexp weblog [#])