What are you guys doing this weekend?

After work, I’ll be walking around Green Lake with the boyfriend. Then heading to a Gay Porn Party (not at all like a key party, more like watching the pool boy flirting with the pizza guy while eating banana splits and drinking mojitos, then talking about girly things like orgasms and vacuuming).

Deciding if I should go to The Pride Parade. I went when it was still around Broadway, and enjoyed how uncrowded it was. I’m not big on jumping over people just to see guys wearing leather chaps. I can see that at home without saying excuse me to hundreds of people. So does anyone know how packed this thing usually gets?

I’ll be doing my longest run yet at the Shore Run. 6.7 miles in what appears to be 87 degrees of sweaty, chafing heat. I hope I make it to Monday.

Whatever you’re doing, have fun, forget to take your Vitamin D and wear lots of sunscreen.

• As previously mentioned [#], SIFF Cinema re-opens with Guy Maddin’s clever and inventive “docufantasia” My Winnipeg
• The Varsity offers up a number of excellent choices: Up the Yangtze about the incredible changes affecting the legendary Chinese river and is one definitely worth seeing.
• By the time I first saw Monty Python & the Holy Grail at The Egyptian a few years back, I’d already seen it at least a dozen times and heard some of the more popular quotes from it at least a zillion but I went, anyway, curious to see if watching it on the big screen is any different from watching it at home. For me, the answer was “yes”. You might want to check it out for yourself at the Egyptian Friday and Saturday night at midnight.
• Central Cinema screens Girlfight, a film about a teenaged girl determined to become a boxer despite all the negative nellies in her life.
• Northwest Film Forum presents Frownland, Ronald Bronstein’s debut film, a black comedy in which a self-described “troll from under the bridge” struggles to make a life for himself in an uncaring New York City.
• Except for the time I idly scanned a dozen pages of one of the novels while waiting for my nails to dry, I have been largely untouched by the Harry Potter phenomenon so while I get that it’s a big deal for a lot of people, I had no idea that there was an entire genre of “wizard rock” bands inspired by the series. Apparently there are lots of “wizard rock” bands out there, enough to inspire an entire film about them. The Wizard Rockumentary: A Movie about Rocking and Rowling opens Friday at the Grand Illusion. Wizard rock bands Hogwarts Trainwreck, Colin and the Creeveys, and the Fizzing Whizbees play between showings on Friday and Saturday.
• Late night at the Grand Illusion: Mausoleum, a creepy 80s horror flick starring Marjoe Gortner and Bobbie Bresee in the tale of a woman turned savage by a devilish family curse. Too bad Harry Potter wasn’t around back then to cure her.
• Want to see a movie but don’t want to give up being inside? Head to Fremont Saturday for the first Fremont Outdoor Movies selection of the summer, Superbad.

Image by Jeanine Anderson

When my mother was in town from Florida a few weeks ago, she mentioned that there were $50 gas caps at the pumps, and above that you’d have to go inside to pay. I wasn’t sure if that was happening here, since I don’t drive and therefore have little cause to go to gas stations, but Jeanine Anderson dropped this into our photo pool, so I guess that it is.

Are you noticing this at your local gas stations, Metroblogging readers? Is it everywhere? Does it take more than $75 to fill up your car these days?

If you’re planning to drive on the viaduct on Saturday, be aware that maintenance work will cause single lane closures in the Battery Street Tunnel.

Speaking of the viaduct, the WSDOT has come up with eight different potential scenarios for handling the viaduct menace; with titles like “Demand management/low capital”, “Four-lane integrated elevated”, and “Alaskan Way/Western Avenue couplet”, they can be found for your reading pleasure at the WSDOT’s page dedicated to the viaduct [wsdot]. According to the WSDOT, the Governor, County Executive and Mayor will make their final recommendations for a waterfront solution in December of this year.

Maybe you already know. Maybe you used to know. Maybe you’ll know again soon. Whatever your perspective, this column looks to answer one question: what’s it like being single in Seattle?

So I have to confess: I was on Jdate for a while. I had just broken up with my fiance and things were desperate. I was set on dating a Jewish guy (my ex wasn’t). So there I was.

Triathlete Boy messaged me one day after we “clicked”–that is, both said “yes” to each other’s profiles. He was an engineering type from the East Coast, big into triathlons and other outdoorsy activities. Not much in common, but he did keep kosher, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. I said yes to the date.

Identical Twin Boy was just the opposite: we seemed to have everything in common. His profile quoted the same Peter Bjorn & John lyrics as I did on Facebook. His cat and my dog were both white and fluffy (his named Snowball, mine named Matzah Ball). We read the same books, watched the same movies, listened to the same music, and I had a history of falling hard for guys who met that description.

But the same thing happened on both dates: they could barely look at me, let alone talk to me! They sat opposite me mumbling into their tea cups, staring into them as if seeing the answer to the universe.

It’s not just me: a number of friends have noted the same experience with alarming frequency. And at a much greater frequency than other cities I’ve lived in.

What’s up with that, Seattle? Is it just the higher frequency of engineering types here that correlates to and/or causes this? Is it just the higher frequency of shy people on dating websites? Or is it a Seattle phenomenon? Does something in the clouds make men turn inwards?

Photo by evil robot 6

I was leaving the off-leash dog area next to Dr. Jose Rizal Park earlier tonight when a local resident approached to give me a warning. Allegedly, there have been 6 women raped in the neighborhood over the last two weeks; the most recent of which was on Monday. He told me that it hasn’t been reported much in the news because (in his opinion) the victims were homeless women likely camping in the park at night.

I searched online and only found one mention of the incidents.

This park is located next to the landmark Amazon building on Beacon Hill, formerly the VA Medical Center. I’ve taken my dog there a few times but since there is rarely anyone else there, we prefer to go elsewhere. I was alone in the park with my dog for about 30 minutes and while I was aware of my surroundings, if something had happened I do not think anyone would have known.

The resident also informed me that there is a large work party coming in on Saturday and Sunday to help clear out the brush and debris to make it a bit safer for those who use and live near the park.

Edit to add: Seattle Times report, King 5 report.

photo by shawn [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• Is the Stranger readying a neighborhood blog killer or just preparing to add comments registration system? Please please please the option number two. [capitolhillseattle]
• Oh no. First suicidal dolphins [guardian], now disappearing salmon? [nerdseyeview]
• Gluten-free girl launches a spin-off. Oh, and she’s starting a second website. [gfg]
• Let’s all indulge the dream of a magnetic poetry float in the Gay Pride parade for just a few moments. [hillku]
• Tips and tricks on doing buses right instead of the horribly wrong way we’re doing it now. I have never seen this many comments on Crosscut ever. [crosscut] Maybe it’s because “Driving is no longer fun”. Oh, Joel Connelly. (confession: I couldn’t make it through either of these articles.) [pi]
• Outdoor movie season starts this weekend in Fremont with Superbad. [seattletraveler]

I was too stupid/tired/busy/lazy to go to Chop Suey last night for the Three Imaginary Girls birthday bash; so I’m happy to see that they’ve posted a recap and some great pictures [#] of their “Exile in {Imaginary} Girlville” event:

photo by laura musselman [flickr] via the t.i.g. group pool [#].

If you were charged with creating a documentary about your hometown, how would you tell its story? Would you present a linear history or an examination of cultural trends throughout its various ages? Would you focus on the places or the people? If you were Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, known for his self-concious and surreal films (including The Saddest Music in the World and shorts like Fleshpots of Antiquity), you might create a truly original documentary like My Winnipeg, the film that reopens SIFF Cinema after the break following this year’s festival.

Maddin takes an extremely loose view of the documentary form with My Winnipeg, which he describes as a “docufantasia”, a strange term that perfectly fits this intriguing film. He presents the story of Winnipeg in a uniquely personal way, casting himself (as portrayed by actor Darcy Fehr) as a sleepwalking man trapped in his perpetually sleeping hometown by the power of his past. Maddin seeks escape from the ties that bind him to Winnipeg by recreating on film his personal history, a history which he seamlessly blends with Winnipeg’s civic history via archival footage (both actual and recreated) and old family movies combined with footage shot for the film in black and white to match the old noir films that he loves.

Noir influences one of the best choices Maddin made for his film–casting legendary noir film fatale Ann Savage (Detour) as his larger-than-life and wickedly funny mother. One of the film’s amusing conceits is that “Maddin”’s brother and sister are characters portrayed by actors he has hired to represent him but his other “really” is his mother. This meta-humor adds an excellent element of sly, self-mocking satire. The scenes featuring his mother are both cringe-inducing and hilarious, usually at the same time.

My Winnipeg tells its story in episodic form which allows Maddin room to present different chapters of the city’s history without straining for connection between events from different eras, using his musings on his family’s issues as a springboard to the city’s. If some of the facts he presents about Winnipeg seem too outrageous to be true, well, that’s part of the charm of the story. Ultimately, My Winnipeg becomes a dreamy concoction of a film that is both sharp-tongued and soft-hearted and ultimately offers up a suggestion of what “home” means in a way that seems more honest than a more straightfoward portrait of the city might offer. Maddin’s twisted vision of Winnipeg makes me want to visit it more than any travelogue could and left me happily pondering what makes my own hometown, Seattle, so meaningful to me.

My Winnipeg screens at SIFF Cinema June 27 – July 3.