Is it just me or does it seem like summer is flying by this year? Get out there and enjoy it while you can. There’s a lot going on this weekend for kids and grownups too. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

Bubble Fest at the Pacific Science Center

We went to this last year and had a great time. It’s bubble madness with bubble shows, bubble pits, stations for blowing your own bubbles, and you can even kayak through the bubbles in the science center “ponds.”

August 6-10 at the Pacific Science Center

Bicycle Saturday

Just about every other weekend, the city closes off the 4-mile stretch of Lake Washington Boulevard that leads up to Seward Park to motorized vehicles, making way for cyclists big and small. It’s a beautiful ride along the lake, with plenty of choice spots to stop for a picnic, if you’re so inclined.

August 9, 9am - 6pm

Schoolhouse Rock!

If you have fond memories of spending Saturday mornings watching a cartoon bill sing the blues about the long road to becoming a law, then this Bellevue Youth Theatre production of Schoolhouse Rock! is for you (but you can pretend it’s for the kids).

Friday, August 8, and Saturday, August 9, at 7pm. Sunday, August 10, at 2pm.

Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival

The Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival brings you not one, but two free plays at Volunteer Park this weekend. Alice in Wonderland at 2pm and The Wind in the Willows at 5pm. Bring a blanket and suncreen.

Both plays run Saturday and Sunday.

Dances of Mexico

Learn about the history of Mexican folk dance when Ballet Folklorico Ollin, comes to the Queen Anne branch of the Seattle public library.

August 9, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Know of any other fun family activities this weekend? Share ‘em in the comments!

This just in from Metblogger Ryan: 3 pedestrians were trapped under a van in Belltown on Western (location changed from original post). Not sure of the cross street. Ryan says “this is a terrifying scene. I’m sick to my stomach.” I hope the pedestrians are OK. We’ll update later. For now, steer clear of the scene.

Update: Black minivan…3 people hit…one person on the way to hospital unconscious. Two trapped.

Update: Northwest Cable News and Seattle LJ (originally but has since edited) that the incident was a car hitting 3 cyclists. Ryan on the scene: “can neither confirm nor deny. I didn’t see any bikes but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any. Although, they pulled big boots off of the guy I took a picture of…he definitely wasn’t dressed for cycling.”

Update: Seattle PI Blog states:

A 60-year-old man died early Wednesday evening after an accident involving a Ford van and a pedicab near Western Avenue and Cedar Street.
Details were few after the crash, which happened about 7 p.m. A woman in her 60s – the wife of the dead man, according to a Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman – was rushed to Harborview Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.
The 23-year-old pedicab driver was also taken to Harborview with non-life-threatening injuries.

Ryan: “Heard cop rush past me on cell phone say, ‘Yeah, I’m here and this is a *terrible* motherf**king accident.‘” and “Also heard fireman yell over to a medic ‘You better hurry up! This isn’t good!‘”

Last update via Komo4:

Witnesses said the pedicab, with the name Cascadia Cabs, was heading west on Cedar towards Western with its two passengers when it ran a red light. The driver was screaming, as if he had lost control of the vehicle.

Seattle police later confirmed that there was an equipment failure on the pedicab that contributed to the accident

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.612 OPS.

All you non-stat-minded, non-baseball people just went, “Huh?” But here’s the deal. OPS is the sum of a player’s on-base percentage (their ability to get on base, whether by hit or walk) and slugging percentage (the total number of bases a player accumulates where a homer equals 4 bases, a triple equals 3, etc. divided by the total plate appearances — at bats and walks). It’s a quick-and-dirty way to determine whether a hitter is doing the two things they should be doing — getting on base, and getting a lot of extra base hits.

And Vidro was a hitter — the Mariners’ DESIGNATED HITTER, in fact. His job was to hit, not field, not pitch, just hit.

.612 is a bad OPS. The average OPS in the AL right now is .750. It’s abysmal for a DH. Not only is he last among all regular DHs in OPS, he’s almost 100 points behind the next worst hitter — 39 year old Gary Sheffield, who is wrapping up his Hall of Fame career as the Tigers’ grumpy old man.

If you look at all players in baseball with at least 300 plate appearances (which takes into account most part-time players), you find Vidro near the bottom of the list, with a guy who can only steal bases and a now injured shortstop in a mega-slump.

And again, Jose Vidro is a DESIGNATED HITTER. His job is to HIT. Not steal bases. Not field. Hit. And he couldn’t.

He might be the worst designated hitter to ever get 300 plate appearances ever.

And the Mariners traded for him in 2006, sending away two prospects to the Washington Nationals. Why?

So he could be their designated hitter. No, I’m not kidding.

And that pretty much sums up everything that’s been wrong with the Mariners in the last few years. They’re like that guy you know who always seems to offer stock picks for companies that tank. You find yourself wishing you could make money off betting against his idiocy.

photo by shawnmebo [flickr]

Here are a few of the Blue Angels pictures that jumped into our Seattle Metblogs photopool over the last few days. If you want to add your photographic memories to our pool, come on in. Just remember to wait 15 minutes after eating.

(Psst, here’s a really helpful hint — if you have the photos you put in the pool set so that we can download them, we’re far more likely to include them in Metblogs posts. If you don’t, then we have to take screenshots, cut them out with Photoshop, clean them up a bit… and that assumes we have Photoshop. Or time.)

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Aurora Avenue isn’t everyone’s favorite choice for a scenic weekend drive, but I’ll admit to visiting the enormous Home Depot at 116th street yesterday — some plantings had gone wild in June’s orgy of rain and it was time to prune back their territorial ambitions. After having procured the garden shears I set off for, I spied a taco trailer that I hadn’t seen before just off the exit ramp back on to Aurora — El Camión.

This has apparently been there for a few months, judging from reviews around the web (1, 2). As a previous devotee of the Redmond taco truck (Taqueria Guadalajara) I’m just glad there’s one a little closer to home. The burrito I ordered (carne asada) was delicious, and the two salsas I tried out of their selection (an avocado-based green and a smoky, creamy red) brought some hope that future trips to big-box stores in North Seattle could be accompanied by reasonably-priced, authentic taco truck detours.

Last night was the Seattle Metblogs monthly meetup. This month we were at Six Arms in Capitol Hill. We had a huge turnout this month and were only missing 3 active authors from the site. We also met a few new friends and a potential new author (Hi JP!).

We had lots of tasty food, my favorite being the tots! We also apparently drank them out of their IPA and Wheat brews.

The shot above was just about the best one I could get in the dark upper section of the place. Initially a shot to show just how wide the fisheye is, I think it captures the meetup pretty well.

Don’t forget, our birthday party is coming up next month on the 14th. More details will be coming soon, so keep an eye out for that!

This is truly the best place in the world to live. We have mountains. We have rivers. We have camping, hiking, bicycling, and beaches. This weekend I went rafting for the first time, off in the far reaches of Washington State on the White Salmon River.

I love water like nothing else. We arrived at Husum Falls in time to watch plenty of rafters heading over this class IV waterfall. We traveled 5 miles upriver to BZ Corner to the launch. From there, a series of class III and class IV rapids keep riders on their toes, with space in between to admire the beautiful scenery.

Nearing the falls, our guide (who is also incidentally my sister’s new boss) had us practice maneuvers until he felt satisfied that we could handle it. Approaching the falls, the first thing I noticed was the crowd of spectators on the bridge and banks lining the river watching the carnage. Paddling furiously up the falls, Mike yelled “Down!”, we grabbed the rope, wedged ourselves between the seats, and took a deep breath.

It feels like 30 seconds go by before the water closes in over your head. The water seems to have a mind of its own, grabbing at you, trying to pull you out of the boat. A gallon of water is forced up the sinuses and you can’t tell which way is up. All in all, it only took 6 seconds from the top of the falls until the raft pops back out of the water, at least according to the video I saw afterward. We made it clean through this time, coming out of the water in time to hear the cheering of the crowd.

We ran the route a second time, though we weren’t as successful with the falls this time around. We missed the correct alignment by just a few feet, but it was enough to flip the raft. Luckily, we had someone running safety and he tossed us a line. Even experiencing the carnage firsthand, I loved every minute of it. If you haven’t been before, there are plenty of more-local places to go. Suggestions for a really great section of river? Let me know in the comments.

photo by danny ngan [flickr] via our group pool [#]

Since this morning seems to be official announcement time, I thought I’d mention that we are looking for a few new writers to help out here at Seattle Metblogs. Are you an avid chronicler of the arts and/or sciences? Obsessed with local politics? A die-hard follower of local sportsballery? Been frustrated that we’re missing something that you’d love to be writing about? Now’s your chance to make a difference in this little world.

Here’s how you make your big break into the glamorous world of volunteer cityblogging: you need to live in Seattle and be excited about it enough to commit to writing a few posts per week. If this sounds as great to you as it does to us, send me [josh (at) metblogs.com] a note to introduce yourself.

p.s. Want to see what you’d be getting yourself into? Feel free to drop by the Six Arms on Wednesday; we’ll be meeting there at 7:00.

Nine Inch Nails returned to Seattle’s Key Arena last night for their first official show supporting “The Slip,” their latest album that hit stores last week. And not a second of the 2-hour-plus performance last night was a wasted effort.

(Excuse the crappy cellphone camera pic.)

Simply put, Trent Reznor and his band - now nearing 20 years of existence together - have outdone themselves with the visuals and imagery that accompanies the already-stellar music on this tour. From the opening track selection of “1,000,000,” a giant wall of lights was on cue with every note the band played. It seemed like old hat at first, what with seemingly every huge rock act nowadays dazzling the crowd with as many visual wows as audio ones. But after a few songs, I realized something extremely insane was about to happen.

After three or four more songs - of which “Closer” and “March of the Pigs” were included curiously early on - a giant backdrop came down behind the band, which was to be the setting for all kinds of insanity for the rest of the night. The backdrop was some kind of screen that generated the most outrageously creative effects at a show that I’ve ever seen.

At one point during “The Greater Good,” a particularly creepy and unsettling track from last year’s “Year Zero,” the backdrop displayed a close-up of a face with dark, leering eyes staring into the crowd. It soon became eerily obvious that this face was indeed the face of none other than Trent Reznor, slowly whispering lyrics that were enough to make my flesh crawl. The scene looked like the perfect environment for some kind of terrifying snuff film or low-grade horror flick, but Reznor’s freakish expression more than compensated for any lack of carnage or nudity.

But, I thought to myself, this was Nine Inch Nails. This is what they do. Their music inspires. It gets to you. It leaves an undeniable imprint on the listener’s psyche, and with enough repetition, the music can often become almost like a drug. (Ironically enough, “The Perfect Drug” wasn’t in the set list for the night.)

The rest of the list, however, left no room for disappointment. “Wish,” “Only,” “The Hand that Feeds,” “The Good Soldier,” “Terrible Lie” and “Head Like a Hole” were all definite highlights, with various set changes and equipment switching going on the entire time. Interestingly enough, there was a 10-minute instrumental interlude about halfway through that included a cellist, a xylophone and lots of bizarre programming jamming together. The result was subtle, artistic and perhaps a little too long, but launching back into the furious “Wish” directly after the tranquility was the perfect way to grab the audience’s attention again.

All in all, Reznor’s work is undeniably brilliant, both on stage and in the studio. He’s a rare man who has the brain of a musical genius and backs it all up with an absolute knockout punch of a live performance. Let’s hope they make another run through town, and soon.

Block Party, this may be a little indelicate, but we need to talk about your size. See, it seems that you’ve grown out of those pants you’re wearing, and it’s making you really difficult to be around. While it’s nice to have the mainstage in the middle and all, it makes it ridiculously difficult to get from one side to the other. I spent most of the weekend pretty stationary mostly because I was afraid of getting sucked into the crowd. If you keep this up, people are going to get hurt.

The best $2 I’ve ever spent were used to sit in that corner window at the Comet on Friday. The guy selling cans of PBR had put up a sign that said “Comet VIP Seating $2″ behind him, but I don’t think anyone believed him, so I watched almost everything at the mainstage perched in the window, getting high fives, and able to see everything, including a little too much of Tim Harrington when he came careening over to the hot dog stand during Les Savy Fav’s set. (The best $1 I spent was on a Creamsicle during the Fleet Foxes’ set–man, those things are delicious.)

The best dance party of the weekend came, unsurprisingly, during The Saturday Knights’ appearance as the super secret Neumos guest. (Told you so.) I feel like I’ve been practicing tantric record appreciation for the last few years, waiting for these guys to finally release something other than the EP I’ve had since they were giving them away at the Crocodile in 2005, and I’m so pleased that Mingle was the album I was hoping for. Most of the crowd in Neumos around us clearly were not Metroblogging readers, because they had no idea who was coming up, and when The Saturday Knights walked on with a full band and started in on “45″ the crowd sat in stunned silence for a second and then let loose. By the end of the set I was drenched in sweat and beaming, without once having been trampled to death by the crowd.

Image via Josh

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