BASTILLE DAY AT THE MARKET: Seattle's French restaurants are in Francophile overdrive tonight in celebration of French independence. Le Pichet (1933 First Ave.) starts its annual party at 6 p.m. and features Gypsy jazz until 11 p.m., when the d.j. takes over. Maximilien (81A Pike St.) has a special three-course dinner tonight for $35 and an accordion player. And Cafe Campagne (86 Pine St.) tops them all: a street fair is happening in Post Alley......

ENJOY THE HEAT: Coleman Pool, a public pool in West Seattle is an inexpensive way to enjoy the warm weather (finally!). Even if it's not sweltering, the heated salt water pool and the giant tube slide make for hours of healthy fun in the sun, as long as you don't forget to wear sunblock! 7 days a week, 12-7pm // Coleman Pool, 8603 Fauntleroy Way SW // $3.75 adults, $2.75 children and seniors LIFE......

At the same time that major-label releases from Nirvana and Pearl Jam were drawing international attention to Seattle's rock scene, the Gits were building an underground following with their raucous, blues-infused punk sound, their 1992 debut album, Frenching the Bully, and their singer's versatile, vibrant pipes. Cobain had cadence and a smooth/sandpaper rasp. Vedder had a deep-welled baritone croon. Mia Zapata had a sweet, soulful, explosive growl that should have been just as famous.......

TRASH TALKING: Not totally through with film after SIFF? Tonight, trash cinema provocateur John Waters appears at Seattle Arts & Lectures. From groundbreaking indie work like Pink Flamingos to cult classics like Hairspray to contemporary satire like Pecker and Cecil B. Demented, Waters has been pushing the boundaries of the cinema for about 40 years, and has moved from the indie fringes to the mainstream with popular stage musicals of his classic films. 7:30 p.m.......

NOT REINVENTING THE WHEEL: If you're considering quitting your corporate job--you know, the one with benefits and a customer lunch expense account--to build your own business from the ground up, you're crazy. Have you read the financial pages in the newspapers of late? Sometimes, however, it takes exactly that edge of craziness to make your dreams come true. In that case, let us direct you to the Six Hour Start-Up Conference this weekend. Your bucks......

Writer/director Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) is not for everyone. But enough people in Seattle are for him that last night's 9:15 p.m. showing of latest film Mister Lonely had the little theater at the Northwest Film Forum completely packed, and now the film's run has been extended another week (through May 29th). The plot: Diego Luna is a Dangerous-era Michael Jackson impersonator, the radiant-as-always Samantha Morton is a voluptuous Marilyn Monroe impersonator. They......

ART/MUSIC DIALOGUE: Cross your artistic boundaries when World music KEXP DJ Jon Kertzer and UW School of Music Professor Philip Schulyer dialogue about how Algerian music influenced and shaped a current Henry Art Gallery exhibit by French-Algerian Kader Attia. 7 p.m. // Henry Art Gallery // Free RADIO/DRIVE: Yale School of Music graduate and mountain climber Sean MacLean soothes you through the afternoon rush hour on KING FM’s, "Five for the Drive." They publish the......

Last night the Northwest Film Forum had a line out the door with moviegoers eager for some classic European cinema. As previously mentioned, the Italian sex comedy Divorce--Italian Style (and its follow-up, Seduced and Abandoned) are showing in the small theater through tomorrow, leaving the big one to hold the main event, the NWFF's latest film series, Duel of the Cool. In this corner, France's Jean-Paul Belmondo, former boxer (hence the big, oft-broken nose),......

BOOKS: Mary Roach enjoys "bird-watching--though the hours don't agree with me--backpacking, thrift stores, overseas supermarkets, Scrabble, mangoes, and that late-night Animal Planet show about horrific animals such as the parasitic worm that attaches itself to fishes' eyeballs but makes up for it by leading the fish around." In her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, she discusses how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so elusive and what scientists......

MUSIC: The Hotel Cafe Tour at Neumo's is sold out, so why not change things up with internationally celebrated Irish pianist John O'Conor at Meany Hall. Impress your friends with an all-Beethoven recital including the "Pathétique," "Waldstein," and "Moonlight" sonatas, and Bagatelles, Op. 126. Melinda Bargreen calls him "spectacularly good." And Beethoven, hell, if Wikipedia is correct, that guy was no slouch either. 7:30 p.m. // Meany Hall, University of Washington // Tickets: $20,......

MUSIC: Yes, we know, you wanted to catch Vampire Weekend at Neumos but the show's sold out. What we suggest you do instead is walk across the street to the Comet and enjoy Jet Lag Palm, The Antiques, Slow Skate (they're out sick), and Half Light. The bill is half local music, so it doesn't have to travel as far to get to your ears. Save the planet! 8pm doors // Comet Tavern, 922......

MUSIC: The question of the day is whether to hear Jens Lekman at Neumos or a re-formed The Cult. It's six of one, half-dozen of the other, isn't it? But since The Cult show is sold out, you're better off dropping by Neumos for Swedish indie pop. His new album, says Pitchfork, spans "the baroque pop of Scott Walker, the upbeat rhythms and bright harmonies of Northern soul, and the beach-party disco of fellow......

FILM: If you see only one documentary about fonts this year, make it Helvetica. New York taxi numbers are also in Helvetica. The font is on IRS tax forms, U.S. mailboxes, and ConEd trucks. The 50-year-old sans serif font spells out countless logos: Sears. Bloomingdale’s. JCPenney. Crate & Barrel. Target. Fendi. Jeep. Toyota. Energizer. Oral-B. MetLife. Nestlé. Once you realize Helvetica is everywhere, says Hustwit, "you just can’t stop thinking about it." 7:15, 9pm......

POETRY: Eavan Boland is from Dublin, Ireland, and we take it that "Eavan" is a girl's name there. It's not immediately obvious, it it? She carries more of a charge in her than that boggy, peaty, old Seamus Heaney. One of her poems, The Pomegranate, begins: The only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell. And found and rescued there. Love and blackmail are the gist of......

Friday Theatre: The Solo Performance Festival, SPF2: Sweatproof!, returns to the Theatre Off Jackson with a terrific lineup of uni-personned shows. In fact, tonight has a terrific lineup all on its own, thanks to the Unicycle Collective. Their MonoLodge 4 is an evening of solo shorts from Seattle veterans and up-and-coming talents: Keith Hitchcock, Jennifer Jasper, Troy Mink, K. Brian Neel, Becky Poole, Mary Purdy, Seth Rosenbloom, Mark Siano, and Jenna Bean Veatch. (Saturday......

Documentary: Los Angeles and art don't have the strongest association. (Glen Hansard at the Oscars, shaking his statue at the audience, "Make art! Make art!") But it's more of a signal-to-noise problem. The documentary The Cool School explores the lives of the founders of L.A.'s artistic "cool." Regina Hackett describes the situation: Back to L.A. in the early 1950s: Progressive artists had nothing going for themselves except themselves. New York didn't bother to spit......

The Irish writer whom we hadn't heard of until writing this, Anne Enright, is in town flogging her fourth book, The Gathering, a Booker Prize winner. (Which reminds us that Eavan Boland is visiting this March 3.) Her book, says the NY Times:...inhabits the restless, angry consciousness of Veronica Hegarty, one of a dozen children of a “vague” mother — a “piece of benign human meat, sitting in a room” — and a mannerly,......

If you were fidgeting during There Will Be Blood thinking, "GAH! This isn't obscure enough! Where are some old Finnish movies?" the Northwest Film Forum can help. As that is no more than two people, tops, and one lives in Finland, we're providing some friendly hype for their Finnish New Wave series. Today they're screening Eight Deadly Shots, which gets 8.8 out of 10 stars on IMDB:In a small Finnish rural community in the winter......

We caught War Made Easy at the Film Forum last night, but we weren't in the big hurry we thought because its run has been extended through Monday, the 21st. Despite being narrated by Sean Penn, it's fairly lo-fi -- a cool-headed interview with media critic Norman Solomon intercut with film and video footage to illustrate salient points on how gullible/acquiescent the American public is when it comes to run-ups to war and how supine......

Last night, a besuited Crispin Hellion Glover took the stage at Broadway Performance Hall with the perfunctory greeting: "Good evening. Presently, I will read to you from eight books." And he did. Now, we were kinda expecting something along those lines, as the Northwest Film Forum's blurb on his film events this weekend announced: All performances preceded by Glover’s one-hour slide show, which consists of ten eight different stories dramatically narrated by Glover himself.......

"They should take off their left socks." "Let's dance to Jesus." "Let's talk about Jesus." "It's a time to be jolly after all." "It's like a wine disco." "It's like hanging out covered in blood." "We need some leap frog!" "We need some Percosets." Seattlest actually heard all of the above during Clockwork Reduction Live Friday night at Northwest Film Forum. Some of the words came from the mouth's of performers, others came from the......

Making up for weeks of hibernation and workaholism, Kim will hit the parties this weekend. Tonight, she’ll don her Groucho glasses for a lesbian function at Jabu’s celebrating the births of her two favorite Sagitarii. Saturday, it’s to the War Room for a company party with the missus and her workmates. Finally, she’ll ship off to the sub-tropics on Monday, where she’ll spend what remains of 2007. While his wife is taking a Wilderness......

We have to be honest: We were slightly annoyed when we read the email promoting Seattle School's (of Motel fame) latest event. Anything that calls an organization "insanely exuberant" and says that it is putting on one of the "craziest film events in the history of the city" is trying pretty hard to sound zany and exciting. But as we told Seattlest Audrey, we're a sucker for weird (you should have seen us in college)......

With all the great films finally starting to hit the mainstream theaters, it's certainly the most wonderful time of the film year™. But don't forget your local indie moviehouse, as the NWFF kicks off their 10th annual Northwest film fest, Local Sightings: Northwest Film Forum's premiere showcase of Northwest filmmaking is back, bigger than ever, October 4-11, 2007. The festival, which happens at NWFF's theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest......

Monday the 10th, at 7pm, the Paramount Theatre presents Charlie Chaplin's 51st, 52nd, and 53rd films, all from 1916: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, and The Vagabond. They're all half-hour or so shorts from early on in his Mutual Films era, and feature Chaplin's genius for environmental comedy, with mishaps with escalators and fire poles. In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote that his notion of humor was based on "the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears......

Seattlest's heart's cockles always get warmed when we see a bunch of people who choose to ride their bikes to get around get together, so we were predisposed to love Northwest Film Forum's Second Seattle Annual Bike-In last night. (Almost getting slammed by a driver opening her car door while riding over probably added to our joy at making it there.) Unlike most communal bike events in Seattle (Critical Mass, Bike to Work Day), the......

Memorial Day weekend is finally behind us, so it's time to settle into SIFF. Yes, it's absolutely lovely outside, but Seattleites can only handle so much sun. Get away from all that UVA/UVB exposure and spend your time in the theaters' comfortable darkness. This week brings the opening of SIFF on the Eastside, starting Thursday at the Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue. And tomorrow night, Anthony Hopkins is in town to pick up his......

MUSIC: Other than at Sasquatch in May, tonight's your only chance to see Smoosh on their current tour, when they open for Bloc Party at the Paramount. Yeah, Bright Eyes are also playing over at the Showbox, but seriously, you'd try to get scalped tickets to go see them over Smoosh? Whatever. 8pm // The Paramount // $25.50 plus fees FOOD & FUNDRAISING: Tarragona Wine and Food on Capitol Hill is hosting a wine tasting/auction......

FESTIVAL: The first-ever (official) Lebowski fest in Seattle kicks things off at the Showbox. Tonight's the chubby dance-rock of the oft tighty-whitey-clad Har Mar Superstar and a screening of the Coen Brothers' classic. Tomorrow's bowling with The Dude at Kenmore Lanes. Wear your best bathrobe and pound some white Russians, or you'll be out of your element, Donny. 8pm doors // Showbox // $15 MUSIC: We still haven't gone to a show at the......

PUPPETS: Puppets are cute when you're a kid, but when you get older they're a bit creepy. Creepy though they may be, Drunk Puppet Night removes the kid context and serves up "mature" puppetry, which may or may not involve tales about puppets trying to make rent. Continues March 2, 3, 9, 10. Doors 7pm, show 8pm // Rebar, 1114 Howell @ Boren // $15 MUSIC: Buttrock Suites sets modern dance to live renditions......