McCain/Palin vs. Obama Biden isn't the only high-stakes two-on-two battle going right now. Tonight at the Paramount, B-boy duos from around the world will battle for a $10,000 top prize at the Coosh Crash Test. The event is being presented in part by world-famous local b-boy crew Massive Monkees, whom I wrote about when they were doubling as the Sonic Boom Squad. It should be a hell of a show.

A view of Dan Corson's Matrix-599 nm, in The Engine Room.

12:30 p.m., Lunch: Hallava Falafel
"The best falafel in town," as Stephanie Spear, of the Georgetown Truck Stop put it. I concur. This truck has been parked in front of the 9lb for the past few weeks, and today marked my third sandwich in as many weeks.

1:33 p.m., The Engine Room
Curator Jordan Howland and artist Dan Corson worked until 4 a.m. to get this work (shown above) installed. I enjoyed the way the blue-washed room, and the orange and black striped ropes pull your eyes to the tall ceiling. (For my preview of the show, check out the Artopia pull-out. In print only, sorry.)

2:03 p.m., Dessert: Pocco Carretto
Can I get a small with three flavors? Answer: Burnt Sugar, gianduja (hazelnut and milk chocolate), and malt. I made a mess of myself eating this stuff. I am very lucky woman: this cart doesn't usually travel very close to where I live.

2:30 Grown-Up Kids Games
Power tool races with goofy, skull-decorated, vacuum cleaner engines. An overgrown, industrial see-saw that spun, and a pick-up blocks game that had many fascinated.

3:03 p.m.
In the shade outside The Corson Building, John Boylan led a talk about neighborhoods, pondering the issue: Who gets to decide what Georgetown is? Who gets to decide what Georgetown becomes? (BTW, Sabey's Ice House sign is up for the first time today, the architectural rendering showing a brick-arched mall-ish structure with tattooed hipsters out front.)

5:07 p.m.
Across from The Engine Room, in the Brew House there was opera, which (though I'm not a fan of opera) sounded amazing in the super-tall, raw space. (Gavin Borchert wrote about this in the pull-out.) The opera singer approached the audience descending a set of rickety, rusted stairs. I couldn't stop looking at the moss on the interior brick walls. A gorgeous space. There will be dance here, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

This fest goes until midnight, and right now the streets are packed, with various bars spilling people drinking in the sun. Ride a bike if you can.

For more images, check out Laurie Pearman's slide show here.

Performances: Friday-Sunday, May 30-June 1, at both 4 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Olympic Sculpture Park PACCAR Pavilion
Co-presented by On The Boards, tickets are $24, and available here.

Artist talk: Performance in public spaces
A panel discussion.
Olympic Sculpture Park PACCAR Pavilion
Saturday, May 31, at 2 p.m.
Free.

The audience sits in chairs, listening to the performance in headphones while the actors come upon them out of the crowd, telling the story of two invisible men. As part of a critically acclaimed troupe of intellectually disabled actors from Australia, Back to Back Theatre, the characters both are these men, while telling a story about them.

You'll sit inside a plastic-walled, makeshift set of risers, with a puffy set of headphones hung on the back of each chair. The acting will be phenomenal, with the venue almost another character in itself. The view is above (with one of Dennis Oppenheim's Safety Cones) and there will be tourists walking through the open stage, asking directions, wondering what that huddled mass of people is staring off at (and then, realizing it's now them, walking stage left). You'll hear the crunching of gravel under the actor's feet, and the blare and rumble of trains, mixing with the ambient music in your ears. I don't want to ruin the surprise of what the show might look like, as that's best left for the audience to discover, but if you'd like a preview, check this.

Note: It was chilly last night, overlooking the water, so dress warmly. The best-prepared audience members were in hats and gloves.

A model prepares for Thursday's thaw fashion show at a fitting. Photo by Lance Mercer.

What do folk legend Woody Guthrie and Thursday's second annual thaw fashion show, a benefit for Huntington's disease, have in common? Guthrie, who wrote a handful of songs about the Pacific Northwest ("Roll on Columbia", "Grand Coulee Dam"), was diagnosed late in life with Huntington's, a genetic disorder who's symptoms manifest as a combination of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and MS.

Though Guthrie was diagnosed in 1952 and eventually died from the disease, there is still no cure. It was Guthrie's wife who helped to found the Huntington's Disease Society of America- the NW chapter of which, Liz Weber, the wife of Seattle musician Stone Gossard, is now president.

"When I became president of HDSA, my first order of business was to create a fundraiser that would appeal to an audience that had never heard of Hungtinton's Disease," says Weber of the impetus behind the event that raised nearly $50,000 last year for Huntington's- a disease that her mother also suffers from though Weber herself does not. With the funds raised, the organization was able to send 14 people to the 2007 National convention for HD families--one of the only places where many who are affected by the disease say they can feel normal--as well as increased the hours worked by a social worker who provides free services to HD families in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

The inaugural thaw show was such a surprise success, that this year, they've more than doubled their capacity. What this weekend was a cavernous concrete floored warehouse in SODO, filled with racks of chic clothing and models shivering as they tried them on, will tomorrow be transformed into a full on fashion show complete with catwalk, beautiful people showcasing the work of nearly 30 independent designers and awareness for the cause of the hour.

Liz Weber helps with the model fittings. Photo by Lance Mercer.

"Huntington's Disease is rare. In the Northwest, we hadn't gotten masses of people to attend events by marketing our cause," says Weber, " I figured that fashion was a way to access a piece of our community that wouldn't otherwise find a connection to Huntington's Disease."

After last year, Weber has had no trouble attracting the work of designers from the Northwest--Seattle lines like Alula and Leanimal, Portland bringing standouts such as Kate Towers, Holly Stalder and Frocky Jack Morgan--and beyond. Their work will be highlighted on and off the runway, in the thaw shop, where show goers can purchase donated items that range from handbags by Sabrina Love and Kimberly Baker Jewelry to limited edition tanks.

"I love independent designers. They are the artists that I support," Weber asserts. "This event brings attention to emerging artists and a rare disease. For me, it's a two for one deal."

For tickets and more information on Huntington's Disease visit www.thawfashionshow.com

Jody Rosen, the Slate music critic who was just in Seattle last week giving a fantastic presentation about the history of "Jewface" music for Nextbook, is said to be on the short list to replace Kelefa Sanneh as the NYT's pop music critic. (Sanneh is trading up to the New Yorker.)

Our Sandi Kurtz reports:

Careers in dance are notoriously short, and so dancers often move when a new opportunity presents itself, which is why Casey Herd will be leaving Pacific Northwest Ballet at the end of this season for the Dutch National Ballet, a bigger company with even more performances. Herd has been at PNB almost all of his professional life, starting as a corps member in 1999, becoming a principal in 2006. He has an interesting persona on stage, a kind of sunny disposition with shadows underneath. His performance in Jerome Robbins' Fancy Free is an example -- just a happy-go-lucky sailor on shore leave until he dances for the girl, and comes across with a suggestive rhumba. His recent appearances in Rom�o et Juliette take that even further. As Tybalt, he was commanding, aggressive and dead sexy -- the women sitting near me in the audience were almost swooning at the intermission.

By chance I sat next to his mother at the performance in 2006 where his promotion was announced, and she told me about taking him to his first classes in Salt Lake City, patiently traveling on the city bus. She was thrilled to be here, and thrilled to see her son dancing. Lucky for us, we'll have a few more chances to see him as well, maybe even in Fancy Free, on the all-Robbins program later this spring.

John Longenbaugh reports from last night's meeting about the future of the rehearsal rooms in the Center House:

An interesting meeting but not much in the way of big revelations. The Seattle Center development folks talked us through the four plans for the Center, and aside from the first one (the Do Nothing Plan) all of them included a radical re-think of Center House, breaking it up into an open-plan building with lots of easy East-West pedestrian traffic. This might mean the end of the Center House Theater (Book-It and Seattle Shakes) and would definitely mean that TPS would need to relocate.

TPS was well-represented; of the 15 people who talked during the Community Forum section 5 of them were TPSers and one of them was from the board of Seattle Shakes. I talked with Karen Lane (head of TPS) afterwards and she stressed to me that they aren't panicking and they aren't angry, they're just trying to raise awareness of the situation. She said she also believes that the Center is sincere in wanting to honor all of their existing relationships with the current residents and that includes TPS, but at the moment she's only heard one suggestion as to where they could go, which is that they'd relocate TPS's offices and rehearsal spaces to another building to the North that's oddly skinny (40 feet wide). It's hard to imagine that this wouldn't mean a significant downsizing in the square footage they currently offer for rehearsals.

She also says that a lot of this will depend on how much money the City decides it can get for remodeling Center House from a blocky converted Armory into some sort of glass and steel restaurant/retail extravaganza.

What do I think? I think that it's going to be hard for TPS to be able to make the argument that in the midst of all this architectural dreaming the City needs to make sure that they maintain several large dusty rooms that can be rented out for a few bucks an hour to a bunch of theater artists. I worry that TPS doesn't have the political or economic clout to ensure that they get a bunch of shiny new rehearsal rooms someplace else at Seattle Center, and while they offer a variety of other services, the rehearsal rooms are invaluable to a wide variety of companies, from the big Equity houses down to shoestring fringe operations.

Photos courtesy of Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker
Where: McCaw Hall
When: 2, 7:30 p.m. today and Friday; 2 p.m. Saturday
Cost: $18 to $115

I caught PNB's performance of Nutcracker a few days before Christmas. It was the first time I've seen the performance since I was a kid, and I was expecting a show fit for little people. And while there were plenty of the young-adult set in attendance (as well as a puppy. Seriously.) I was surprised at how well the production relates to adults as well. Kind of a rarity in the post-Shrek world of kiddie flicks. Mike Myers take note: Tchaikovsky and Hoffman had the family entertainment bit worked out 100 years ago, and they didn't need penis jokes, Eddie Murphy, or Smash Mouth to do it.