The MVP Challenge 5K will raise funds for Andrew Moritz, former University of Washington Men’s Basketball player and former Seattle Storm practice squad player. Andrew has a desmoplastic small-round-cell tumor.

“It is a very rare form of cancer,” reads the event’s website. “There are only two hospitals in the U.S. that staff specialists to treat this cancer. Funds raised via the event will support Andrew’s medical bills as well as the out of pocket travel expenses Andrew and his family incur.”

Andrew Moritz. Photo credit: Sid Hastings. Photo courtesy our news partner seattlepi.com.

The event starts and finishes near the Green Lake Community Center basketball courts (7201 E Green Lake Dr N).

DAY OF RACE SCHEDULE

8:30 am: Registration, bib and chip pick up
10:00 am: 5K Run & Walk Start
10:30 am: Start of the Post-race Celebration
10:45 am: Start of the Free Kids Dash
11:15 am: Awards Ceremony

According to the races’s registration page, “local celebrities including NBA legend Shawn Kemp and former WNBA world champion Storm player Adia Barnes” will be at the event.

The MVP Challenge 5K is hosted by the Adia Barnes Foundation and the Marvin Thomas Memorial Fund.

Thanks for the tip, Heidi!

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Video of the chat, titled The Oatmeal Shows The Post How To Draw and Answers Questions, can be viewed here:

“I love your style!” a fan wrote to Matthew. “Where do you hang out in Seattle so I can bask in your awesomeness and the awesomeness of those around you? Also, more kitty cartoons please!”

“I spend a lot of time in Fremont, because that’s where I live” Matthew answered. “Lately I’ve been going to Green Lake a lot. I run there, there’s some really good coffee shops there. I generally avoid downtown and Capitol Hill, just because they’re kind of a pain in the butt to get to from where I live.”

Last spring, Matthew shared a few thoughts about Green Lake Park with us.

Riding a bike at Green Lake, he said, “is sort of like taking your jet-ski into a 4-foot-deep hot tub and doing laps.”

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Sean Penn, 2008. Photo credit: Seher Sikandar for rehes creative

Sean Penn was at Green Lake Park earlier this evening (Monday, July 18, 2011), according to reports from people at the park.

Just before 5 p.m., Charlotte Smith tweeted “Just lapped Sean Penn @ greenlake. Not kidding.” 

Less than an hour later, “Carol Anonymous” added that her daughter had also seen the Academy Award-winning actor running around Green Lake, and over on Facebook, Karen Laurie of Cafe Lulu asked, “Any idea what Sean Penn is doing in town? He was just spotted running around Greenlake by one of the Cafe Lulu gals.”

Welcome to Green Lake, Sean!

Update, 11:25 p.m. According to Albert Rodriguez, Sean Penn is at The Triple Door tonight for a Tim Robbins & the Rogues Gallery Band show.

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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OnlineShoes.com will be hosting the event, which is a promotion for the New Balance Minimus. Although no shoes will be for sale, runners will be able to test out the shoes and provide feedback to New Balance. There will also be be “Minimus to Win it” games with New Balance swag for prizes.

Molly Mesnick, Co-op Manager for OnlineShoes.com, met her husband Jason Mesnick on the 13th season of the reality dating show The Bachelor.

The event will be at the south end of Green Lake Park. Look for the OnlineShoes.com tent and van.

Photo courtesy OnlineShoes.com

Update, August 3:

OnlineShoes.com shared the following video of the event with us:

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Just after 7 p.m., Brian Joo (브라이언 주), a Korean-American R&B singer, tweeted from his phone that he was “in Greenlake, WA having some coffee and enjoying the beautiful lake.”

An hour later he posted the following photo:

Photo via @Brianjoomuzik

“Beautiful Greenlake,” he tweeted. “For some reason, Seattle feels like home to me.. Might move here in the future ;)”

Joo, who is wildly popular in Korea, has more than 100,000 twitter followers. Fans from around the world responded to his tweets with words of appreciation for how beautiful Green Lake looked.

Many of Joo’s Seattle fans expressed enthusiasm about the possibility of him moving to the area.

Seattle was the first stop on Brian Joo’s Unveiled 2011 U.S. Club Tour.  On June 17, he played at iMUSiC (332 5th Ave):

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Battle at the Lake is a five-on-five outdoor basketball tournament that traditionally features the finest basketball players in Seattle.

The tournament is judged by well-known basketball players. In past years, Shawn Kemp, Jamal Crawford, Nate Robinson, Brian Scalabrine, Isaiah Stanback and Will Conroy have made an appearance.

The event also features music, food, a dance team, a dunk contest, a three-point shooting contest, women’s and kids’ exhibition games, and a swimsuit fashion show.

Here’s some footage, via rickypharoe, of last year’s dunk contest:

The Battle at the Lake is made possible by The Marvin Thomas Memorial Fund, which has a mission “to provide positive, supportive and safe programs for children.”

For more information about Battle at the Lake, call (206) 683-4060 or email lyteskin11 [at] yahoo.com.

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Green Lake resident Joshua Tufts reports seeing film production vehicles last Monday (May 16, 2011) on Bagley Ave N just north of East Green Lake Dr N.

Last Wednesday (May 18), Joshua’s son Brayden got these autographs from cast members Aubrey Plaza, who also plays April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation, and Jeff Garlin, best known for his role as Jeff Greene on Curb Your Enthusiasm:

Photo courtesy Joshua Tufts

The Safety Not Guaranteed cast and crew can be found in Maple Leaf today (Wednesday, May 25 2011).

Our news partner Maple Leaf Life shared this information:

Scenes for “Safety Not Guaranteed,” an indie movie involving time travel and Kristen Bell (you haven’t been Forgetting Sarah Marshall, have you?) will be shot Wednesday afternoon at Wild Root, and we’re told the cast and crew will be lunching at the Ale House.

No, Kristen won’t be here. But co-star Jake Johnson will.

As to the movie…here’s the advance word fromThe New York Times:

Darius, a young magazine intern, is recruited to help a staff writer, Jeff, with a story about a bizarre young man who has advertised for a time-traveling partner. She, Jeff, and fellow intern, Arnau, travel to a small town to get information on the paranoid but strangely compelling young man. But Darius feels torn, underhanded and disloyal when she begins to have genuine feelings for her subject, who is clearly smitten by her as well.

According to Internet lore, the movie started with a fake classified ad:

Update, Thursday May 26 - Film crews were in Laurelhurst earlier this month.

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Matthew Inman at SXSW, March 2011. Photo credit: Liang Shi

Last week, I learned that Matthew Inman, a popular comic artist, is a regular visitor to Green Lake Park.

Matthew Inman writes, draws, and codes The Oatmeal, “an entertainment site full of comics, quizzes, and other delights.” The site has more than 250,000 Facebook fans and more than 150,000 Twitter followers.

Popular ‘The Oatmeal’ strips include How to pet a kitty, Ten Words You Need To Stop Misspelling, and Why I’d Rather be punched in the testicles than call customer service. A recent strip looked at The 4 Seasons of Seattle Weather.

His book 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth (And Other Useful Guides), published on March 1, 2011, reached #5 on the New York Times Best Sellers List and #2 on the Amazon Best Sellers List. 100% of book sale profits this week (ending Friday, April 8, 2011) are being donated by Matthew to the Japan Relief Fund.

Matthew is often spotted at Zoka Coffee Roaster & Tea House (2200 N 56th St), where he can be seen working on his comics. Last February, he tweeted a twitpic from the Tangletown coffeeshop which captured “The 10 types of high fives and when to use them” in progress on his laptop. The comic can now be found in 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth.

Earlier today (Wednesday, April 6, 2011) I received an email from Matthew, which he wrote at the Tangletown Zoka.

Although Matthew doesn’t follow neighborhood news closely (he does, however, follow KING 5 on Twitter, ”so at least I get tweets when something horrible happens like a dog catches on fire or a busload of child molesters go on a field trip to the Fremont troll”), he was kind enough to take the time to email us a few thoughts about Green Lake Park.

Matthew, a marathon runner, trains at Green Lake Park a few times a week. Like any regular park user, Matthew has some “favorite” types of path users. “Often times,” he says, “I’ll be in the middle of a long run (16-21 miles) and I’ll start to pass someone, usually a weekend runner wearing khaki shorts and Crocs, Vibrams, or some other ridiculous footwear. They’ll see me pass them and suddenly become convinced we’re racing each other and they HAVE to regain the lead, so they’ll sprint as fast as they can until they’re ahead of me. They usually can only hold this pace for a few hundred feet and then they peter out. It makes me wish I had a sign on my back that showed how far I’ve run.”

Matthew also calls out “the linebackers,” which travel in groups of four or five and walk shoulder-to-shoulder, forcing everyone else onto the grass.

And, Matthew has these words for cyclists at Green Lake Park: “I don’t know what kind of exercise you hope to get out of a 2.8 mile, paved, flat course, but unless you’re riding at 30mph in your hardest gear and doing 40 laps there’s really no point in riding a bike there.”

Riding a bike at Green Lake, he says, “is sort of like taking your jet-ski into a 4-foot-deep hot tub and doing laps.”

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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The film just debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Last Tuesday (Jan. 25, 2010), it sold for a reported $8 million, according to The Seattle Times.

Tobey Maguire | Photo credit: David Shankbone

From our news partner Fremont Universe:

“The Details” stars Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks and Laura Linney and Ray Liotta. Maguire plays Dr. Jeff Lang, who along with his wife Nealy (Banks), lives a regular middle-class life in Seattle. What begins as a series of innocuous events and bad decisions by Lang ultimately becomes something a bit darker in this black comedy.

The film was shot entirely in Seattle and features the Montlake and Fremont neighborhoods as well as many Seattle-specific references. Our sister blog Queen Anne View has some photos from when the film was shooting in Kerry Park way back in September 2009. Here’s some video of the film shooting in Ballard.

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Bryan Clay | Photo credit: Eckhard Pecher

KING 5′s Allen Schauffler reported last night (Monday, Jan. 31, 2011) that Bryan Clay, who earned the title of “world’s greatest athlete” at the 2008 Olympics, is a big fan of Green Lake.

Bryan Clay is the reigning Olympic champion for the decathlon.

“If you ever jog, walk or ride around Seattle’s Greenlake,” Schauffler writes, “you might have seen him, probably out for a run with his wife, Sarah.”

“My in-laws live right up the road here on Phinney Ridge,” Clay told Schauffler, “so we’re down here at Greenlake jogging all the time. We’re at the lower woodland track doing track workouts and things like that.”

Read more at king5.com.

©Amy Duncan for My Green Lake | Seattle's Green Lake Blog, 2011.

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Post tags: celebrities, phinney, running, woodland park