The Esurance Capitol Hill Block Party is nearly upon us. At Lineout, reports of street closures in progress and calm event organizers were filed at noon [#] and assurances of ticket availability were made yesterday afternoon. While the whole weekend’s lineup is impressively solid and wide-reaching, genre-wise, and you might want to sneak out of work early to arrive (the doors open in a hour) in time for the Saturday Knights followed by Matt & Kim, you might also want to fit a little room into your schedule for a disco nap in the sun to prepare yourself for Girl Talk.

If, like me, you missed getting tickets for his sold out show at Chop Suey this winter [mb], this is the opportunity you’ve been longing for to remedy that fatal error in judgement. I since listened to the tape of that set and crowded into the teeming dance tent at Coachella and learned that as incredibly astounding a mash-up creation Night Ripper is on record, it pales in comparison to the manic energy of the live show. If you aren’t dancing like crazy, tearing your clothes off, and trying to climb on stage to free your inner celebutante by the end of the evening, it might be time to seek professional help.

For further proof that July is shaping up to be the best month ever — iPhone, heatwave, cold streak, Harry Potter (movie, book, rock), fireworks, et c. — look no further than the rest of the weekend. Spoon, who just released a stunningly good and sillily titled album, close out the Block Party’s main stage tomorrow and on Sunday, consistently impressive [mb] dance punks the Rapture will be warming up the crowd for rarely-touring, always outstanding, French robots Daft Punk [!!!!!!!] at the WaMu Theater (possibly with their crazy glowing pyramid? A guy can dream, right?). Rumor has it that the show’s sold out, but I have a feeling that if you showed up in an Interstella 5555 costume, you might be able to find someone willing to part with a spare ticket.

A couple of interesting pieces of news about the bus tunnel: (1) it will be re-opening in a couple months after what seems like forever and (2) third avenue is going to remain transit-only through downtown during peak travel hours even after the tunnel is back in service. [p-i] While it’s not perfect, keeping the street reserved for buses seems like a great idea and a nice way of taking advantage of the situation to make traffic less awful now that drivers are used to the street being off limits during rush hours.

• The Grand Illusion is showing Walerian Borowczyk’s erotic horror version of “Beauty and the Beast” entitled The Beast.The L.A. Weekly says the film “tweaks the boundaries between art and porn,” plus it’s a French film made in the late 1970s so you know it’ll be interesting, at least. They’re also running 1972 “Blaxploitation” horror flick Blacula and a 1976 horor flick called J.D.’s Revenge. They’ve got a couple other schlocky horror movies starting Monday, check their site for details.
• The midnight movie at the Egyptian is Another Gay Movie, a gay-themed spoof movie that mocks film conventions in the manner of films like Another Teen Movie. I will not be able to make this one, so someone (who is 18 or older) go and tell me how it is, okay?
• The Simpsons Movie opens wide this weekend but if you’re interested in going to see it you already knew that.
• NWFF presents a story of misjustice: The Trials of Darryl Hunt tells a sad, outrageous story about an unfair trial and and unjust conviction. Starts Friday; on Friday and Saturday Mr. Hunt’s attorney will be on hand to answer audience questions as will a couple of local attorneys.
• Also at NWFF this weekend, “From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema”. The series includes Francis Ford Coppola’s first film ever, a Roger Corman produced reworking of a Russian sci-fi film as well as a number of Soviet sci-fi films from the 50′s on.
• It’s Election time at Cinema on the Lawn
• The classic “mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap is Saturday’s selectin for the Seattle Outdoor Cinema. (I have a friend who can recite this entire movie, from start to finish, off the top of her head. It’s actually kind of impressive.) Across town in West Seattle they’re showing an even funnier film by the same team – Best in Show.
• Also opening wide this weekend: I Know Who Killed Me, starring Lindsay Lohan who is an excellent actor when she’s not off trying to kill her film career.

Upcoming:

• Northwest Film Forum and Three Dollar Bill Cinema present their second annual karaoke challenge in which local filmmakers make karoake videos for their favorite songs and then perform the songs for an audience. Tues, July 31, advance tickets recommended. [brown paper tickets]
• Havana has their own outdoor movie night now on Wednesdays; this coming Wednesday head down for a showing of Dogtown & Z-boys

TypeCon is a conference for people who are serious about type and design. Every year it is held in a different city; this year it is being held in Seattle.
	image by swanksalot

The organizers of TypeCon are the Society of Typographic Afficionados and their local partners Cornish, the School of Visual Concepts, and UW and they’ve worked together to create a conference that includes speakers from outside Seattle as well as noted locals like Art Chantry, Tim Girvin and Modern Dog. There are also a multiitude of workshops and other typical conference fair–exhibitions, panel discussions, films, etc.–and many opportunities for type and design pros and fans to mingle and network. The festival runs from August 1 through August 5; on August 1 there is a free to the public screening of Gary Hustit’s documentary about the “Helvetica” typeface. For full details, see their site.

9 p.m. – 26th Annual Seafair Ball @ Shilshole Bay Beach Club – They gots an invitational art exhibition, butoh dancers, food, tarot, henna, and DJs amok. And hey, since it’s a Ball, you should make yourself look all pretty.

Red Cigarette & The Bad Habits @ The Re-bar – Chill and swing to The Habits’ 1940′s music. They throw in a fashion show and burlesque and a DJ, just in case.

Pure Cirkus: Evil Live @ Heavens – I haven’t been to Heavens yet; it looks a little cheesy from the outside, but, maybe not. They’ll have fire, suspension, and clowns. Maybe they’ll hang clowns by hooks, that’d be evil. Or just weird. Or just interesting.

Yacht Rock for Puget Sound @ Neumo’s – Members of Cool Kids Bands (Math & Physics Club, Visqueen, Dusty 45′s, etc.) cover smooth-rock sounds of the 70′s and early 80′s. If you’re unawares, “Yacht Rock” is the term for that flavor of muzak, popularized by a bunch of homemade funnee videos. I miss the hipster disco revival of the 90′s; it pleases me to no end that they’ve moved on to soft rock!

Thursday-Saturday – Outdoor Cinema @ All Over – Zee has blogged about this in detail; drill down through her post to find out where “Election” and “Spinal Tap” and “Best in Show” and “Casino Royale” are playing. ‘Cause it’s gonna be beautiful out!

Sometimes you just have to enjoy something for what it is. That is how I felt after the Femi Kuti show last night. There are a million different things that I wanted to write about in this entry, from his political affiliations to the history of his relationship with his famous father, from the way that he is percieved in Nigeria to the way he is percieved here in the U.S. but I am skipping over all that to just describe what was, at its most basic, an incredibly energetic, entertaining show.

Dressed in a tribal shirt and pants outfit matched with a pair of Teva sandals, Kuti displayed skill on each of the instruments he played, the sax, the keyboard and on vocals. Additionally he spent much of the time on stage spasmodically conducting for the brass band backing him up. Said brass band, all male and dressed in button down t-shirts which they must have all tye-dyed together, as they were all the same colors in varying patterns, played strongly through out the entire night. The female half of his troupe (and it truly was a troupe, with about 15 people on stage at any given moment) were far less dressed, wearing cropped tops with shredded skirts, as was appropriate to show off their amazing dancing (okay, really I mean bodies)

The back up dancers kept the energy up in this show like none I have ever seen before. Calling them back up dancers seems slightly unfair, as they shared the front of the stage with Kuti the entire time, and while the beautiful music came from Kuti, the beautiful booty shaking which kept my attention came from these lovely women. While I tried to figure out how I could move like that for 20 seconds (I swear to god, there has to have been motors hidden under those skirts), they managed to keep up these movements for two hours.

Kuti’s set was filled with his songs, as well as with breaks in the music for him to talk to the audience. The audience was well involved and rarely stopped dancing, though it did seem to get a little impatient with the talking, despite their clear support of his political messages.

Whether you know the background regarding Femi’s father and his creation of a musical genre, or if you wandered in off the street (I heard some kids offering to buy a bum outside the Showbox a ticket) this show was just simply the kind of beats that keep a body moving.

photo by aaron morris* [flickr] via our reader-powered group pool [#]

• Water Taxi getting ready to double its capacity, just in time for Freeway Fright ’07 (interesting also for the fact that we’re now pre-naming our massive civic inconveniences.) [westseattleblog]
• Esurance Capitol Hill Block Party, now with more right-wing supporters than ever! (the lineup is still stellar) [seattlweekly]
• Michael van Baker’s friends finally got around to eating a trout [seattlest]
• Penalties for eating too much, or not enough, sushi at Mikado [citizenrain]
• Erica C. Barnett hates the Science Fiction Museum, finds attendees are lame, Sci-Fi author crusty, EMP non-experiential. [lineout]
• “Big Blog” profiles Harry Potter fans [bigblog]
• Takeover times, what will happen to the poor alt-weeklies? (n.b., Creative Loafing just purchased the Chicago Reader and the Washington City Paper, whose previous owners still hold shares ^[slog] of the Stranger and the Portland Mercury) [gawker]
• down with seafair pirates, up with madison pirates! [capitolhillseattle]
• Congratulations! Gluten-free Girl is a married lady! [gfg]
• funny ways of making the safeco experience more fun [p-i]

* Speaking of Aaron Morris, look what he did to the cityscape over at the P-I [bigblog]

Rivet Magazine is releasing a new issue, “The Power Issue”, and to celebrate they are throwing a party tonight at First Hill’s own The Hideout (1005 Boren). Festivities begin at 8 pm and include free admission, $5 magaziines and a cash bar. This issue of Rivet includes work by Susan Robb, Branglen Davis, Jennifer Borges Foster, Jennifer Zeyl and Taha Ebrahimi.

Now and again one of my more urban friends, especially the ones who moved here from back East, will complain that Seattle is “too suburban.” You can’t walk places. You’re too dependent on a car.

As with a lot of things, it mostly seems to depend on where you live.

Walk Score wants to help you find out just how walkable your neighborhood is. They use a Google map mash-up to pinpoint an address, find all of the Stuff surrounding that address, and give you a “walkability” score of 1 to 100. In other words: just how easy is it to walk to stores, restaurants, bars, libraries etc. from where you live?

My house scores a 48. My old apartment in downtown Bellevue scored an 80. Someone who lives just off of Broadway on Capitol Hill will score a 94. On the other hand, my parents’ house on San Juan Island scores a whole 2 points, and that’s only because Walk Score’s algorithm doesn’t understand the problem of swimming to a store.

The Walk Score people freely admit that their algorithm is imperfect: they don’t account for safety, public transit, or “pedestrian-friendly design.” It’s an interesting idea, anyway.