The Stranger's 2013 Queer Issue by Noisy Creek

Queer Issue 2013

Is currently 3 feet away 13.5” tall

And includes Solomon Georgio on Grindr p. 27 And Conner Habib on Scruff p. 24

And also Ray Van Fox on Tumblr p. 31

Eli Sanders, Jen Kagan, Evan J. Peterson, and queer wedding fashions by Marti

Jonjak

Pride calendar p. 36

Khaela Maricich on Twitter p. 18

Dan Savage on leather bars p. 22

Sarah Galvin on fetish sites p. 23

100 % LOCAL TRUCKS

WHERE YA AT MATT, CARAVAN GRILLED CHEESE EXPERIENCE EZELL’S EXPRESS, BARKING FROG & MORE

CARTS

SECRET SAUSAGE, BIKELAVA, BIG FOOD FALAFEL SALAM, LOS AGAVES ROASTED CORN, TAIYAKI TANDOOZY, TIGA DARA & MORE

CRAFTS

TUESDAY SCARVES, TARBOO CELLAR DOOR MERCANTILE CHOKE, JACLYN ROSE EMBROIDERY & MORE

POP-UPS

MARINATION, PO DOG, LIL WOODY’S ROUX, JOSHUA HENDERSON & MORE

UP PICNIC 12 TOP CHEFS. 12 SIGNATURE DISHES. ON THE LAWN FOR CHARITY. FEATURED POP-UP CHEFS ANNOUNCED JULY 1ST VIF EXPRESS & PICNIC TICKETS PASSES ON SALE NOW

“We believe that every woman’s engagement ring should match her personality.”

Open seven days a week.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THE BACTERIA FOUND IN YOUR VAGINA CAN AFFECT YOUR HEALTH?

We are looking for volunteers to participate in a research study to see how bacteria that live in the human vagina promote good health or cause conditions like infections.

Women who are at least 18 years of age with or without bacterial vaginosis (BV) infections are eligible.

The results of this study will help us understand vaginal infections like bacterial vaginosis.

Participation in the study involves clinic visits to collect

Participants in this the study can be compensated from $50 to $625 depending on participation level.

Interested?

Call the HMC ID Research Clinic (206) 685-5092

callback information if there is no answer when you call.

Study Guide Questions for The Stranger, Volume 22, Issue 43

1. The theme of this year’s Queer Issue appears to be “technology.” Without using the internet, ﬁnish this simile: “A technologythemed Queer Issue in 2013 is as stale as…” Be creative!

2. In his review of the documentary ﬁlm How to Make Money Selling Drugs, BRENDAN KILEY calls drug dealing “one of the only reliable growth industries in America.” Given that Mr. Kiley is currently employed by an alternative weekly newspaper, how long do you think it will take for him to turn his experience as an underpaid print journalist who often covers the drug trade into a vastly more lucrative career as a drug kingpin?

a. Six months.

b. One year.

c. The question is ﬂawed, as it refers to Mr. Kiley as a “journalist.”

3. In her review of a gallery show by local artist Klara Glosova, JEN GRAVES writes: “The show could have used a good editor.” Do you think Ms. Graves appreciates the irony of this criticism? Why or why not?

4. True or false: The Stranger has a news section.

5. After 25 years of the Fremont Solstice Parade, The Stranger has suddenly noticed its existence. In essay form, describe at least one other Seattle neighborhood (outside of Capitol Hill) that Stranger photographer KELLY O should deign to visit in the next 25 years.

6. This week, music editor EMILY NOKES cowrote the music lead with BREE McKENNA, who is also in Ms. Nokes’s band, Tacocat. Draw a nepotism tree illustrating the connections between other Stranger writers, freelancers, and the subjects they choose to cover. Note: You may need more than one sheet of paper for your tree.

Submit your answers at THESTRANGER.COM

COVER PHOTO by TIMOTHY

RYSDYKE

LAST DAYS

The Week in Review BY

DAVID SCHMADER

ONE HULK’S OPINION

MONDAY, JUNE 17 This week of shocking progress, insistent women, and career-ruining failures to communicate kicks off in California, where Shasta County sheriff’s deputies responded to a call about a potential domestic dispute and wound up with their minds blown. Details come from CNN, which reports the scene played out today in the Northern California city of Redding, where “what began as a verbal fight between family members at some point became physical.” By the time cops arrived, they found a 59-year-old man bleeding in the driveway and his son standing nearby, with both his hands cut off at the wrist. “Based on interviews, the sheriff’s office alleged that the 27-year-old son stabbed his father multiple times with scissors,” reports CNN. “Then, the sheriff’s office said in a press release, Jason Dunn mutilated himself by using a radial-arm saw to sever his hands.” Perhaps most amazing of all: Despite their life-threatening injuries, both men are still alive. As neighbor Gary Rinehart told CNN, “This is definitely the craziest thing that’s ever happened on this street.”

TUESDAY, JUNE 18 In worse news, the week continues in Ohio, where three people are facing federal charges after allegedly

GOOD RIDDANCE TO INSTRUCTIVE RUBBISH

I drink bourbon. You drink Busch Light. You gel your hair like a Backstreet Boy, and you’re 30. Despite these superﬁcial yet obvious incompatibilities, I dated you for nine months—and for most of it, I actually believed that we loved each other. I didn’t even see the ﬂaws of my thinking when you got blackout drunk on my birthday and abandoned me. Not even when you failed to pick me up from the abortion. I accepted your apology after you said that I’m only attractive to you when I wear makeup. I even deluded myself into thinking that I must have gotten genital herpes from a nonsexual source because I was faithful to you. I deluded myself because you temporarily abated my depression. I deluded myself because I’m insecure and a masochist. I guess I truly needed to see the chlamydia meds with not just your name on them but hers as well. You are my third-least-favorite person after the two men who humiliated and violated me in a park six years ago. I pity you but thank you. I learned so much. —Anonymous

enslaving a mentally disabled woman and her daughter in subhuman conditions for more than a year. Details come once again from CNN, which identiﬁes the indicted trio as 26-year-old Jordie Callahan, 31-year-old Jessica Hunt, and 33-year-old Daniel Brown, who, according to charging papers, persuaded a woman that they knew “suffered from a cognitive disability and received monthly public assistance payments” to move into their shared Ashland home in May 2011. “Federal prosecutors said the people accused of holding the [mother and daughter]… collected the woman’s government benefits and beat her in order to get painkillers for themselves,” reports CNN. “They kept her in a room with a free-ranging iguana and ordered her to feed the reptile fruits and vegetables her daughter was denied… Sometimes their captors’ pit bulls got table food while they had to eat from cans.” Including, allegedly, dog food. By day, the mother and daughter were allegedly made to do manual labor; at night, they were allegedly padlocked inside their shared bedroom. Each member of the trio of suspects has been arrested and charged with forced labor.

Gay Pride? What About “Green Pride”?

Am no big deal, and Hulk not brag, but Hulk marching in gay human parade this year. “But Hulk! You am homophobe gay hater,” you scream at Hulk. NOT AM TRUE. Hulk no like anyone—regardless of sex orientalism. Besides, Hulk have plenty of gay nonfriends. But everyone hate and fear Hulk, so it not like Hulk invited to gay parties.

Hulk would love be gay, but Hulk not accepted in gay community. Oh sure. Gays say Hulk physique am ﬂattering—but turn right around and make fun of Hulk hair? And pants? Hulk sorry he not shop at Marc Jacobs… but Hulk in Pier 1 just last week! That not count for something??

Hulk go to twink bar. Gays say Hulk too big. Hulk go to bear bar. Gays say Hulk need beard. Hulk go to drag bar. Gays say Hulk look like green Kathy Bates! Hulk thought lesbians like Hulk—but lesbians just want She-Hulk phone number!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19 In much better news, the week continues with some shocking progress, thanks to Exodus International, the “Christian ministry” that’s spent the past 37 years trying to convince the world that homosexual attraction is a psycho-spiritual afﬂiction that can be overcome through prayer (and is thus undeserving of any and all “special rights”). In the 21st century, Exodus existed mostly as a punch line, thanks to the parade of “ex-gay” spokespeople who steadily reverted back to their natural gay state. (Being “ex-gay” is like riding a unicycle— with focus and practice, you can do it, but it’s constant work, you can never just coast, and eventually you just want to get back to your normal, not-ona-unicycle life.) Anyway, today the ex-gay unicycle fetishists of Exodus International took a huge step forward by announcing their plans to shutter the organization (?!) and effusively apologize to the LGBTQ community (!!!!).

“For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical,” said Exodus president Alan Chambers in statements made on the group’s website. “I understand why I am distrusted and why Exodus is hated. Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change… I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine. More than anything, I am sorry that so many have interpreted this religious rejection by Christians as God’s rejection. I am profoundly sorry that many have walked away from their faith and that some have chosen to end their lives. For the rest of my life I will proclaim nothing but the whole truth of the Gospel, one of grace, mercy and open invitation to all to enter into an inseverable relationship with almighty God.”

Right fucking on, Alan Chambers, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Hulk want acceptance, too! But when Hulk “out, loud, and proud,” puny army shoot missiles! That why Hulk celebrate “green pride” by marching in puny gay human parade. So what if Hulk not gay? Hulk have pride! Hulk have feelings! Hulk have… have… sad.

Stop… STOP LOOKING AT HULK!! OR HULK SMASH!!!

Besides, Bruce Banner totally gay. (Maybe that make Hulk bi?)

•• In much worse news, today James Gandolﬁni, the American actor best known as Tony Soprano, the murderous mob boss with the psyche of spun sugar in the HBO series The Sopranos, suffered a heart attack and died at age 51. This is terrible, and not even the bazillion brilliant words that have been and will be written in tribute to the man’s towering talent will help.

THURSDAY, JUNE 20 In more heartening news, the week continues in Austin, where today the Texas House of Representatives held a committee hearing on HB 60, a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks and close all but five abortion clinics in the largest state in the contiguous United States. On hand for the hearing: more than 300 women, who traveled from around the state to voice their disapproval of the proposed restrictions. However, after seven-plus hours of testimony, the Associated Press reports, State Affairs Committee chairman Representative Byron Cook announced, “The testimony has been impassioned, but it has become repetitive, so I am going to only allow another hour of testimony on this bill.” In response, the gathered crowd roared their disapproval so strenuously that Representative Cook fled the room. When he returned, he agreed to hear three more hours of testimony from another 50 women. At 3:40 a.m., the hearing ended, with the more than 10 hours of testimony successfully postponing the vote. Good work, Texas women. (In worse news, conservatives will push the bill through the house next Monday. But, as Last Days went to press, senate Democrats were in the midst of a 13-hour filibuster to block the measure until Texas’s special session ends Tuesday at midnight, NBCDFW.com reports.)

FRIDAY, JUNE 21 In stupider news, the week continues with Paula Deen, the soon-tobe-former Food Network host and celebrity diabetic who had a distinctly shitty week. Insti-

gating the shitstorm: a discrimination lawsuit ﬁled by a former employee, who claims her time spent managing Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, a Savannah restaurant owned by Deen and her brother Bubba Hiers, was rife with sexual harassment and racial slurs. On May 17, Deen sat down for a deposition in the case, during which she admitted that she wasn’t above dropping the occasional N-bomb in reference to black people and acknowledged that she considered planning a plantationthemed wedding. Earlier this week, the facts of Deen’s deposition hit the internet, and today, Deen issued not one but two apology videos —one a highly edited mess that was quickly taken down, the other an unedited twominute apologia in which the 66-year-old Deen insisted, “Your color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter to me.” The end result of all this hubbub: a terse statement from the Food Network, announcing that it “will not renew Paula Deen’s contract when it expires at the end of this month.”

SATURDAY, JUNE 22 In worse news, the week continues in Ohio, where today a wing walker was performing on a Stearman biplane at the Vectren Air Show near Dayton when the plane crashed and exploded, killing both wing walker Jane Wicker and the plane’s pilot in front of a bunch of onlookers. Condolences to all.

SUNDAY, JUNE 23 The week ends.

Send hot tips to lastdays@thestranger.com and follow me on Twitter @davidschmader.

Iguanas roam free at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG

A Blocked Path to Citizenship

How the GOP’s Immigration Deal May Exile a Local Gay Couple

BY KEEGAN HAMILTON

Otts Bolisay and Ken Thompson were mutually smitten but timid when they met through mutual friends in the summer of 2000, so they didn’t truly connect until bumping

into each other at a Halloween party later that year. With Thompson dressed as a sailor and Bolisay wearing a “harem girl” costume, they formed a natural pair. They have been madly in love ever since, a model couple sharing a cozy home on Beacon Hill with two cats. Under normal circumstances, their fairy tale might end happily ever after. Instead, owing to the proposed immigration reforms currently before Congress, Bolisay and Thompson will likely face a heart-wrenching decision in the coming year: They must choose whether to separate or leave Seattle and live together abroad in indeﬁnite exile.

Bolisay, 40, who is of Filipino descent but hails from the Bahamas, lives in the United States on a temporary work visa that expires next year. If their relationship was a hetero marriage, Thompson, 47, could sponsor Bolisay for a green card or petition US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a provisional waiver that would let him stay after his visa expires. But, because the federal government does not recognize same-sex partnerships, the couple is stuck counting down the days until Bolisay is either forced to leave or remains in the country illegally, risking deportation and hefty ﬁnes.

“Our situation is this: In 17 months, we will have no country to live in together as a couple,” Bolisay explains. “Basically, we can get married here, the State of Washington will sanction our marriage, but the United States won’t actually let us live here.”

At a US Senate hearing on May 21, Senator Patrick Leahy proposed an amendment to the immigration bill (ofﬁcially called the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act) that would have reversed the federal policy on same-sex, binational couples like Bolisay and Thompson. “I do not believe we should ask Americans to choose between the love of their life and love of their country,” said Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont. “Discriminating against a segment of Americans because of who they love is a travesty, and it is ripping many American families apart.”

Researchers at UCLA and the Center for American Progress estimate that there are at least 267,000 LGBT-identiﬁed individuals among the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. Approximately 24,700 same-sex couples are binational (one US citizen and one noncitizen), along with 11,700 gay couples of two noncitizens. Nearly 7,000 same-sex couples that include noncitizens are raising an estimated 12,400 children under age 18.

Naturally, Senate conservatives, led by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, immediately vowed to oppose the entire immigration package. Graham condemned “redeﬁning marriage for immigration purposes” and called Leahy’s amendment “a bridge too far.” Four Democrats, including former San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein, cowed to Graham’s bluster and forced Leahy to withdraw his antidiscrimination proposal just half an hour after he introduced it.

Thompson was at the airport when he heard the news. “My heart fell, and I might have cried if I’d been someplace less public,” he says. “You’d think I’d be used to this, but it really hurts every time.”

For Bolisay, the turn of events was extraordinarily bittersweet. He works as a communications specialist for the immigrant rights group OneAmerica, so it was no small irony that he and Thompson ended up as collateral damage in a compromise that may have ultimately paved the way for a long-awaited revamping of the nation’s immigration laws. (On June 24, the Senate voted 67–27 to approve a plan that devotes roughly $30 billion to added border-enforcement measures, another compromise to build bipartisan support.)

“It was very sad,” Bolisay says. “It’s odd to feel something so critical to your life is being

Approximately 24,700 same-sex couples comprise one US citizen and one noncitizen.

decided by this group of people far away who very often have no idea what’s best for you or people like you.”

The failure of Leahy’s amendment was a letdown for the burgeoning alliance between LGBT and immigrant-rights activists. While the two movements have long been simpatico, strategic collaboration began only recently. Thompson, a board member on the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, recalls noticing the shift while campaigning for Referendum 74 last year to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington State.

“In the beginning, it was all about this is the right thing to do, we’re brethren,” Thompson says. “People felt that way for a long time. Then I felt there was a group of [LGBT] movement leaders whose switch to embrace the coalition has been more calculating… the

lightbulb went on in people’s heads that it wasn’t just the right thing to do—it was actually the path to victory.”

Last year, the LGBT organization Equality Maryland joined forces with the immigrant group Casa de Maryland to help win referendums on same-sex marriage and in-state tuition for undocumented students. Equality Maryland executive director Carrie Evans says she had trepidation about trying to convince gays to help subsidize immigrant education.

“We didn’t know what the reaction of the community and our supporters would be,” Evans says. “I’m an eternal pessimist. I thought people would be like, ‘What the hell? What are you doing this for? This isn’t a gay issue.’ We had a couple supporters who were like that, but the overwhelming majority were very encouraging.”

The difference maker, Evans says, was recruiting four teenagers who were both gay and undocumented to serve as poster children for their cause. Nationally, “undocuqueers” have assumed key leadership roles in both the LGBT and the immigrant movements. Jorge Gutierrez, a 29-year-old project coordinator for the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, part of the organization United We Dream, describes overcoming the double burden of coming out as gay in a traditionally Catholic community and also putting himself at risk by outing his undocumented status.

“We see oppression and discrimination in our own community,” Gutierrez says. “That creates resiliency. It’s not a coincidence that our leaders, those at the forefront, are both [gay and undocumented]. We know the urgency of ﬁghting for our rights and standing up for our humanity.”

The impact of gay and immigrant voters in the 2012 election prompted some moderate Republicans to soften their positions on immigration and gay marriage. But any optimism sparked by that shift was quickly

extinguished when Leahy and the Democrats failed to call the GOP’s bluff on threats to scuttle the entire immigration overhaul over same-sex, binational couples.

Bolisay says the “Sí, se puede” cheers that followed the Senate committee’s approval of the immigration bill spawned conﬂicting feelings. “Would we really ruin it for everybody else?” Bolisay asks. “It’s all that homophobia you’re feeling coming to the surface and saying, ‘If we’re really going to derail this whole thing, maybe we shouldn’t have even been present in the ﬁrst place.’”

The remote possibility remains that the House or Senate could reintroduce Leahy’s amendment, and the Supreme Court ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act could also beneﬁt same-sex couples battling the immigration bureaucracy. In the meantime, Bolisay and Thompson are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

Bolisay can renew his temporary H-1B work visa, but only if he leaves the country and has an employer willing to hire him a year in advance—a dicey proposition. Their relationship survived a yearlong separation when Bolisay’s previous visa expired in 2007, but this time, Thompson may accompany him to the Bahamas or they might try emigrating, perhaps to one of the 14 countries that currently recognize same-sex unions.

Remarkably, even with the bitterness over their exclusion, both Bolisay and Thompson are still generally supportive of the Senate’s immigration proposal.

“I’m tremendously happy about the good things in the legislation,” Thompson says, “including the path to citizenship, and protections for LGB and trans folks who are in [federal immigration] detention centers. We’ll see if that all stays in. Fingers crossed.”

AMERICAN DREAMS Ken Thompson (left) and Otts Bolisay.

KELLY O

ACrass Course A New UW Program Lets Students Prosecute People for Minor Crimes

BY CIENNA MADRID

vocal group of students and alumni at the University of Washington School of Law (UWSL) is protesting a decision to give law students the power to prosecute people for nonviolent minor offenses, such as driving with a suspended license and violating court orders, through the King County prosecutor’s ofﬁce. Law school administrators argue that the school’s new criminal prosecution program, slated to begin in January, will provide invaluable experience: “The basic idea is that it gives students a chance to get out into the community and learn by doing,” explains UWSL dean Kellye Testy, who notes, “We’ve gotten positive feedback about this clinic—a whole lot.”

But the clinic’s critics, many of whom are people of color studying at a predominantly white law school, point out the obvious: Minority suspects are charged with crimes at disproportionately high rates, and a criminal prosecution clinic will induct students into an orderly system of institutionalized racism.

is taking a lopsided approach. The UW is not offering a complementary program to defend people accused of crimes. In fact, the university suspended a workers’ rights clinic when the prosecution clinic was announced (administrators say that the workers’ clinic is only on a temporary hiatus while its instructor takes a sabbatical). Coger says, “There was nothing about the clinic that addressed or even acknowledged racial disparity.”

Two years ago, the US Department of Justice noted that “Seattle Police Department ofﬁcers may stop a disproportionate

“It’s basically the antithesis of social justice,” explains Johanna Gusman, 29, who graduated this month from UWSL and helped organize the group of current and former students objecting to the clinic. “It certainly runs counter to the school’s public motto of creating ‘leaders for the global common good.’” In addition to concerned undergrads, 40 alumni also sent a letter to the school on April 23, stating: “This decision puts UWSL ﬁrmly on the wrong side of history, in opposition to the civil rights struggle of our time—the growing movement against mass incarceration and criminalization.”

Law clinics give students practical experience working in specialized areas of law. Each year, UWSL offers about 13 clinics to its third-year law students, which range in topic from tax to the Innocence Project, which exonerates wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing. Typically, each clinic consists of one instructor—in the form of a watchful attorney—overseeing eight students. The low student-teacher ratio makes clinics incredibly expensive to produce. Student participation in clinics isn’t mandatory, but it is “highly encouraged,” notes Deborah Maranville, who runs the law school’s clinic program.

Criminal prosecution clinics are rare at universities in the United States. At the time of its unveiling in March, details on the UW criminal prosecution clinic’s structure and goals were scarce. “It had no syllabus, no teacher, no structure, no guidelines,” says 28-year-old Stephen Coger, a third-year law student. Details on the clinic are still being hammered out, but administrators say that it will most likely include eight students prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanor crimes—including drunk driving—for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Ofﬁce. But some students complain the university

number of people of color where no offense or other police incident has occurred.” Just last year, senior King County deputy prosecutor James Konat resigned after being censured by the state supreme court for using racially charged language, making an “inappropriate appeal to racial prejudice,” and talking about the “black code” during a murder trial.

And while King County doesn’t track defendants’ ethnicities for the roughly 15,000 misdemeanor and felony charges it ﬁles annually, a 2011 report compiled by a coalition of judges, law professors, and attorneys called the racial and ethnic disproportionality in our state criminal justice system “indisputable.” In 2005, for instance, their Preliminary Report on Race and Washington’s Criminal Justice System found that in Washington, black people were jailed at 6.4 times the rate of white people, while Latinos were jailed roughly 1.3 times more than their white counterparts. The report also notes that just 30 years ago, our state “had the highest rate of disproportionate minority representation in its prisons.”

Those statistics have names and faces for students like Gusman. “We envision putting our families in jail,” she says. “Then we’re faced with the idea of our school directly

JOHANNA GUSMAN “We’re faced with the idea of our school directly having a hand in jailing poor people and minorities.”

MOLLY BAUER

Marijuana is illegal for anyone under 21 unless prescribed by a physician.

Frequent marijuana use can lead to addiction (1 in 6 youths; 1 in 9 adults).

It is illegal to use marijuana in public.

It is illegal to gift or share marijuana. It is a felony to provide marijuana to a minor. Driving under the influence of marijuana is a crime.

Many employers still drug test for marijuana.

It is illegal to purchase marijuana until licensed stores open in December 2013.

Marijuana remains illegal according to federal law.

Less

a

glass, more a display cabinet.

having a hand in jailing poor people and minorities. Imagine if we said, ‘Okay, you can do this clinic, but you can only prosecute misdemeanor crimes in the Madison Valley area.’ It would be shut down immediately. It wouldn’t ﬂy. So my question is, is this clinic really appropriate for a public university?”

At a private university, it was recently deemed inappropriate. Faculty at Seattle University School of Law overwhelmingly voted this spring to kill an identical criminal prosecution clinic proposed by the King County prosecutor’s ofﬁce, citing, among other things, the school’s commitment to social justice. (In one e-mail exchange between SU faculty, obtained conﬁdentially by The Stranger, a

Students would be charging people with crimes such as DUI.

faculty member argued against “providing clinical resources to an ofﬁce that overwhelmingly prosecutes poor people of color.”)

Still, proponents of the UW clinic argue that the program will allow students to change a broken criminal justice system from within. “Frankly, if people are concerned about reforming the justice system, as I am, the place to do it is in the prosecutor’s ofﬁce,” says King County prosecuting attorney Dan Satterberg, whose ofﬁce will be responsible for directing the clinic’s students. “Not by boycotting the system, not by saying we’re evil and shouldn’t be taught on campus. We need to engage the bright minds on campus and get them into reform.”

Dean Testy adds that the school is “on the same page ideologically” as students. She

Have Dems Given in to the GOP Agenda?

If Progressives Don’t Change the Narrative in Olympia, They’ll Lose Forever

BY DOMINIC HOLDEN AND GOLDY

At an afternoon press conference on Monday, June 24, Governor Jay Inslee announced that a long-contested state budget deal was “imminent”—just hours away. But by the time The Stranger went to press Tuesday, no agreement had been reached.

If lawmakers fail to pass a two-year budget before the current one expires June 30, the state will be plunged into a government shutdown. More than 25,000 state employees have already received layoff notices, and many thousands more private contractors stand to lose their jobs.

“The 8,000 employees at our state corrections system will be reduced to 3,000, and those layoffs will include our community corrections ofﬁcers,” state senate minority leader (and Seattle mayoral hopeful) Ed Murray (D-43) warned via e-mail. “Sex offenders will no longer be tracked. Our state prisons will close to new offenders, sending them instead to our already overburdened county jail facilities.”

More to the point of the progressive agenda: Schools won’t be able to budget, Murray continued, while programs to help the hungry, assist kids in preschool, provide services to the mentally ill, and aid other vulnerable populations will run dry.

But even if this short-term crisis is

agrees that the best way to effect change is by educating the next generation of prosecutors on the social, racial, and economic inequities prevalent in the criminal justice system and then immersing students in that ﬂawed system. “We want them to learn by doing,” she says.

Still, minority student groups have organized against the program and contacted alumni and public defenders to do the same. While canceling the clinic seems unlikely, minority student groups are lobbying the school for a criminal justice clinic to offset it. Students also want UWSL to develop a diversity plan that details how administration will help faculty foster thoughtful discussions on race and social justice within the context of their law classes (they also want the school to hire a critical race theorist).

Since the controversy erupted, UWSL has convened a 14-person advisory committee to oversee the clinic’s implementation—including several students of color and a sociology professor who specializes in issues of racial disparity. In addition, Maranville, who oversees the clinic, says that all students who participate will be required to take a class that addresses systemic issues in the criminal justice system.

“No one here has any interest in making racial disproportionality worse,” Testy adds.

The assurances ring hollow to Gusman and her peers. “Criminal law classes at UW have a reputation for being terrible,” Gusman says bluntly. “It seems that issues of law, social justice, and racial disproportionality are secondary, if not tertiary, to other issues. UW law professors just don’t know how to talk about race. How can we trust them to do this clinic right when they can’t even do this in our criminal law classes?”

averted, the long-term crisis will remain. For the awful truth about Olympia is that it has been implementing a slow-motion government shutdown for years, and by taking us to the precipice of a ﬁscal cliff, Republicans have ensured at least two more years of the same.

To enact a Republican agenda, all the GOP obstructionists have to do is nothing Do nothing and our state’s structural revenue deﬁcit slowly starves universities, K-12 schools, health care, and capital investments. Do nothing and the only taxes at our disposal to address court orders and emergencies are taxes that regressively sap the poor. The GOP wins simply by keeping Olympia at loggerheads.

Even more discouragingly, state Democrats appear neither willing nor able to embrace the progressive narrative that Pres-

The GOP wins simply by keeping Olympia at loggerheads.

ident Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren used so effectively last year: that everybody deserves a chance to succeed, and that the wealthy who proﬁt the most from our system must also pay a greater share to fund the public schools, clinics, and infrastructure necessary for the success of all. If state Democratic leaders want to secure a progressive, sustainable budget, that is the story they must tell—broadly, boldly, and relentlessly. They need to barnstorm the state with one aim in mind: persuading voters to tax the wealthy and invest in our state. Only then will they have a political tailwind in Olympia.

For however strong the Democratic hold on the governor’s mansion, unless Democrats ﬁnd the will to champion the taxation of income and wealth, voters will keep getting the Republican agenda by default.

MEDICINE MAN WELLNESS CENTER

In compliance with RCW 69.51A

www.medicinemancompassioncare.org

Suffering

from terrible anal pain? Does it hurt to go to the bathroom?

You may have an anal ﬁssure. (We’re completely serious and may be able to help)

You may qualify for a research study of an investigational cream. All study related medication and treatment will be provided at no cost. You do not need health insurance to participate. If eligible, you will be compensated for time and travel.

To ﬁnd out if you qualify, email VEN307@ventrusbio.com call 855-4-PAINAF (855-472-4623) or visit www.clinicalstudysites.com

Cannabis usersWe need your help!

Please help improve cannabis science in Washington. About 15 minutes - Confidential mjsurvey.org

More than 100 types of rolling papers

Is It Legal at the Airport?

Tips for Flying with Your Pot

BY BEN LIVINGSTON

Last October, medical pot patient Lori— who asked that we not use her last name since she can be fired for using marijuana— flew from Sea-Tac Airport to California while carrying her stash. “I didn’t want to get busted for smuggling or anything, so I called the TSA officer over, gave him my license, and let him know I was traveling with marijuana. He said, ‘no problem,’ and ushered me right through.”

Last month, she did the same thing at Sea-Tac Airport, but instead of allowing her past security without a scene, the screener pulled her aside and called in a TSA manager, who then called in the Port of Seattle police.

“They took a whole police report, but they didn’t confiscate anything,” Lori explains. “They told me that in three or four weeks I might get a letter from the prosecutor’s office, and there might be a fine.”

But Port of Seattle police sergeant Jason Coke is surprised by the case. “As far as we’re concerned, [cannabis] is personal property,” he says. Although certain personal property is banned on airplanes, he explains, pot isn’t, assuming it weighs less than the legal possession limit.

“This isn’t illegal for them to ﬂy with,” Coke says.

Coke looked up Lori’s case and found records of her driver’s license, boarding pass, medical cannabis authorization, and stash of pot. He says port police generally report case outcomes to the TSA, and officers document the amount of pot—and that the person was legally entitled to possess it—to show the federal agency that police have done their due diligence, despite letting most fliers keep their cannabis. In Lori’s case, no report was sent to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, and he assures me the port police will do no such thing.

Sergeant Coke says carry it on, don’t check it.

TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers says airport screeners don’t speciﬁcally search for illegal drugs. “If an ofﬁcer discovers an item that may violate the law during security screening, even in states where marijuana is legal, TSA will refer the matter to law enforcement to make a determination on how to proceed.”

Sergeant Coke suggests a few practical tips when ﬂying with cannabis: Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t have outstanding warrants. Carry it on, don’t check it—proving you qualify to legally possess pot is easier in person. And allow for an extra half-hour in case, as with Lori, police want to photograph your stash.

SOURCES SAY

• State senator Don Benton (R-Vancouver) has ﬁled an ethics complaint against fellow Republican state senator Ann Rivers (R-La Center), accusing her of attacking him with a profanity-laced “uncontrollable tirade” that left him fearing “the threat of physical violence.” Rivers has released a document admitting that she called Benton “a piece of shit” on April 19, after he followed her to her senate ﬂoor seat and repeatedly called her “weird.”

• According to the Columbian, former Republican state senator Cheryl Pflug calls Senator Benton’s complaint the “height of hypocrisy.” Pflug claims that Benton cursed her out on the floor of the senate following her vote last year in favor of same-sex marriage: “He put his face up against mine and yelled, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’” A lobbyist who witnessed the incident confirmed Pflug’s story, telling the Columbian that Benton used the F-word “as a verb, and as a noun, and an adverb, and an adjective.”

• On Monday, June 24, the Seattle City Council passed its bill appropriating $500,000 from the city’s general fund to start a concerted effort to house or shelter every Nickelsville resident by September 1, albeit slightly amended. The bill originally cited New Orleans and Baltimore as cities worth emulating, as they “have been successful at moving most of the individuals

off the streets.” However, a quick look at the homeless populations in those cities (3,439 and 1,795, respectively) seems to suggest otherwise, a fact we pointed out on Slog. Council president Sally Clark said in the council meeting that “there was some reading of [the original] that made it sound like that had solved the homeless problem completely… which was not the intent of the wording.” Oops!

• Another amendment to the council’s Nickelsville outreach bill “adds the general fund appropriation of $500,000 that was inadvertently left out of the original,” Clark said on the dais. “That’s kind of a big one,” she admitted. Double oops!

• Sources say that Jeremy Griffin, the South Seattle man whose house activists blockaded last month to prevent his foreclosure and eviction, could still lose his home. (Griffin fell behind on his mortgage during a period of unemployment, but now that he can pay again, Wells Fargo won’t take his money.) After the blockade, Griffin won a stay on his eviction in King County court, but it expired on Tuesday, June 25, and a judge reinstated the eviction order. Griffin could be booted from his home as soon as next week.

• Delivering a gut-punch to the Northwest, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced on June 18 that it will not examine the impacts of climate change—including changes in air and water quality—when studying the environmental impacts of several proposed coal export terminals in Oregon and Washington. Environmentalists and local politicians were counting on those impacts to help kill the proposals.

Queer Issue 2013

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES YAMASAKI

Here at Stranger Queer Issue HQ, we’ve really been sweating over what to call this thing. We’ve known for weeks that this Queer Issue was going to be all about apps and internet-y things and how social media has altered/ampliﬁed/improved/ ruined certain aspects of queer culture. We knew that Dan Savage was writing about how fetish websites have killed leather bars. And that Khaela Maricich was writing about Twitter and how hard it is to be a musician in the age of constant feedback. And that Solomon Georgio was writing about Grindr. And that Sarah Galvin was writing about how certain

fantasies can make you feel like a monster until you realize there’s a whole online world of people into what you’re into and—well, you’re just going to have to read that one. Actually, that’s a great idea. Stop reading this throat-clearing, frankly unnecessary introduction, and go read her piece right now. You’ll eat it up. It’s on page 23. Anyway, the point is that we had a bunch of pieces lined up but we still didn’t have a name. We had porn star Conner Habib writing about Scruff as the future of porn, and Jen Kagan writing about a Scruff-like app called Sizzr that’s being developed as you read these words, Ray Van Fox and Evan J. Peterson writing about Tumblr, and Eli Sanders writing about the importance of spending time away from the internet. But we didn’t have a name for the issue. Like an overall title.

Exciting behind-the-scenes moment: Picture the staff of The Stranger running around (naked—why not?) tossing out ideas for what to call this, coming up with bad headline after bad

KHAELA MARICICH ON TWITTER P.18

headline, everyone cringing at each successively worse idea. “Let’s Talk About Tech, Baby” and “Boom, Boom, Boom, Let’s Go Back to Your Hotspot” were certainly not going to cut it, and the people who proposed them have been ﬁred. “Queer 2.0” was out, too, just for sounding so dated, although someone made a touching case for “Queer 2.0: Electric Boogaloo Back in the Habit the Legend of Curly’s Gold.” Someone else thought of titling it “The Tech-Savvy At-Risk Youth,” since we get so many questions about the tech-savvy at-risk youth and, let’s be honest, they’re all queer, but considering their at-risk status, we don’t like to divulge anything about them, especially their queerness. Then there was “Putting the Queer in Qwerty,” which I regret even typing. And then of course there’s always the literary-homage approach, like “The Great Grindr” or “The Sun Also Reboots” or “Gone with the WiFi,” but, you know, no. And then “Queer Window,” like as in Rear Window but… like, with internet

CONNER HABIB ON SCRUFF P.24

windows? Yeah. So you can see the ﬁx we were in. “Virtually Queer” isn’t bad—it’s certainly better than “Queerdom in the Realm of Bytes and Pixels,” as one of the steampunks in the accounting department proposed—but “Virtually Queer: Queer Issue 2013” is pretty redundant. Which is how we ended up with our emoji title:

There are (at least) a couple things missing in this issue: (1) There’s nothing in here about surveillance and internet privacy, which is a pretty glaring oversight, given the news lately, and (2) there is nothing in here about the It Gets Better Project, which the guy who shares an ofﬁce wall with me started and which, more importantly, has probably done more for queer culture than anything else discussed in this issue. But who likes hearing about oversights? I don’t!

In closing, there are a number of great things about this Queer Issue, including: (1) the mix of very traditional and super-weird fashion ideas for brides and grooms, drawn entirely from local designers and retailers, selected by Stranger fashion columnist Marti Jonjak, (2) the Pride calendar so plentiful it starts on page 36 and goes until page 43, (3) the utter absence of any writing about sports at all, even though an NBA player recently came out of the closet, and (4) the whole page of Kelly O’s photos of Solstice Cyclists wearing nothing but body paint on page 53, which isn’t related to the rest of the issue and isn’t even queer, but what the hell, it’s nice to look at.

—Christopher Frizzelle, Editor

RAY VAN FOX ON TUMBLR P.31

DAN SAVAGE ON LEATHER BARS P.22

GEORGIO ON GRINDR P.27

J. PETERSON ON TUMBLR P.32

SARAH GALVIN ON FETISH SITES P.23

JEN KAGAN ON SIZZR P.29

ELI SANDERS ON THE REAL WORLD P.35

SOLOMON

EVAN

The Delicate Art of Not Giving a Fuck

Making Music in the Age of Twitter — the Age of Constant Feedback

BY KHAELA MARICICH

How much do I care what people think of me? Let’s frame this another way: Do I know how many Twitter followers I have right now? The answer is no. I don’t know how many followers I have, because I forced myself to take the application off my phone back in January. What would happen if I weren’t constantly writing little sentences and sending them out into the world, hoping for a response like a strung-out performing poodle? Sometime last year, back when I was actively noting the rising and falling count of people who subscribed to my sentences, I wrote a sentence about it: “The world is loud.”

I’ve been battling the world with my head lately. The world stretches and flexes around me in various shapes, and I am in the process of deciding exactly how much of it I care to acknowledge. In the past 1.25 paragraphs I have used the term “the world” four times already; the truth is that it’s very difficult to find a good synonym for “the world” because I don’t exactly know what it is. The world is everything, right? The world is the sum of whatever I can see, and of course this view keeps changing. My old friend Phil, from the band Mount Eerie, has a song where he sings, “OH, THAAAAA WOOOORRRRRRLLLLLD,” and the memory of this reverberates in my head whenever I catch myself using the phrase too much. Back when we lived in Olympia together in the 1990s and early 2000s, my circle of friends and I employed a lot of astronomical and geological terms in our attempts to describe the scope of what we observed. I named my band Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano, and then shortened it to simply the Blow, which in my limited exposure referred to an explosion or the wind or a hit in the face. I dismissed all other possible connotations. Our field of view back then was pretty limited: All we could really see was ourselves, the buildings, the lake, the moon, Mount Rainier, and the empty sky stretching above us. I look back on those years as a pretty exceptional time, one that probably couldn’t be repeated unless the internet someday goes extinct. Living in that little town, it felt like nowhere else even

existed. When I first happened across Olympia, it was as though I had discovered a secret parallel plane where gravity was reversed and the weirdos were suddenly cool; freaks like me flocked there as refugees from the many places where we didn’t fit in. Can you remember what it was like

Can you remember what it was like when there weren’t glowing holes of possibility everywhere, in every hand, on every desk?

back when there weren’t glowing holes of possibility everywhere you looked, in every hand, on every desk? The surface of one’s surroundings was solid, opaque. Aside from the escape of a good book or magazine, you basically were stuck wherever you were, so getting your location right really mattered. It was a certain kind of magic to have found a place where we were able to reinvent the world in our own likenesses. I guess the town sealed itself off as a form of protection,

like a science experiment in a petri dish, the way Earth ﬂoats through space inside its own atmosphere in order to keep the air breathable, keep the temperature correct.

Picture me, walking slowly down the sidewalk, singing out loud to myself, wearing an outﬁt I probably assembled with my eyes closed, smelling of BO. I’m doing a languorous saunter down the two blocks between my apartment and the warehouse where my friends and I have studios. If the moon was out, I would probably be stopped for a while, maybe in the middle of the street, squinting my eyes to try and perceive it accurately. Among my most vital concerns in those days, being able to see the moon clearly was near the top. I needed to be able to see it as a complete sphere spinning at a measurable distance from the planet where I stood, because this was proof of the much larger order of things, and I needed to get a handle on what was really going on. I wrote a song with the lyrics, “Moon moon, someone said that you’re a piece of paper, a piece of paper just pasted on the sky. Moon moon, I’ve a hunch that you’re a giant ball of rock a million miles from me and all the people in my town.” The song was a tool for reminding myself of the facts. Let these lyrics be evidence that I was aware that among the things that existed, there were other people in town, people who weren’t like me and didn’t think staring at the moon was cool. These other young citizens owned the sidewalks just as much as I did, and somehow our bubbles of self-absorption managed to overlap without popping. They kind of canceled each other out in a way. Here is a somewhat embarrassing example of how insular my tiny world was, within the already tiny place where I lived: I have never listened to Bikini Kill, which is one of the most inﬂuential bands to have come out of that town. I knew that they were linked to the riot grrrls, and I could recognize them as important

KHAELA MARICICH is a writer, artist, and one-half of the band the Blow. She writes about herself and other things at khaelamaricich.com and tweets @thebl0w. She grew up Catholic on Queen Anne Hill and tried not to be gay, but it didn’t work.

GRAND OPENING

members of the local society, but we moved in different spheres, and their vital concerns were pretty distinct from mine. While I was moonstruck in the street, the Bikini Kill girls were somewhere else in town, staring hard at their own essentials, striving to articulate their own facts. What’s funny is that I can of course see the direct way in which the bold feminist gestures of the riot grrrls carved a path of freedom for me to pursue my gentler considerations as a performer, but back then those ladies basically just scared the shit out of me.

For the record, it isn’t lost on me that the model of a town where nobody thinks about anything but themselves is pretty much your basic provincial village, and that as much as it might have functioned as a haven for some, it could also be viewed as a particular kind of hell. I’m sure one reason that our little biosphere was left in peace was that, to a certain degree, we must have been insufferable. Gaining this perception, transitioning from the inside view to the outside one, can be awkward. In 2004, I moved to Portland and started slowly becoming aware of all the things that existed, about which I had no awareness, and I encountered that slight nausea that comes from realizing you’ve imitated something without even having known about it. Portland has an insularity of its own, which makes it a fairly gentle transition from village life, and I took it slow, to be sure; I didn’t open the door of my mind particularly quickly. It would still be years before I could stomach a New Yorker article or even, let’s be honest, the Oregonian. But the bubble of security of my old home was broken. My delicate atmosphere of self-assurance and fearlessness, an Eden in blissful ignorance, was over.

this is how the world began to stretch, as the limits of possible exposure expanded into unimagined territories, and my ﬁeld of view ﬁlled up to the brim with information, which accumulated around me in so many unseemly hoarder-piles. And I guess it’s been like this, a little bit out of control, for a while now.

“TMy girlfriend and bandmate doesn’t seem to care a whole lot about being looked at by other people. She isn’t kinky about it like I am. She doesn’t get addicted to the beam of a hot eyeball.

Upon my move to Portland, the things that I did (in this order) were: (a) made some catchy electropop songs with a computer whiz, (b) bought a laptop and started a blog, (c) made a huge multimedia performance piece that was more complicated than self-revealing, and (d) got my heart spectacularly broken by a sophisticated girl who was open to everything except, ultimately, me. I remember wandering around Portland at night with my shredded heart, not bothering to look upward because the sky was too much to deal with; it loomed so raw and punctured and terrible. The fabric of daytime was being perforated as well. I bought a digital camera that recorded video, and I was constantly looking through it and recording what I saw—moments that I used to experience directly I now collected as little objects to be relived on another occasion, by myself or by someone else. It was a way of displacing time; now could also be later, and my isolated moments could be known by others. Everyone else seemed to be doing it, too, and that was handy because I was lonely as hell and very much in the mood for distractions. The catch, though, and this was a big one, was that the cameras could at any moment be aimed at me. At any moment, I might be on the record for what I had said or done, which meant that the potential audience for my actions could be inﬁnite. And

he thing about making something is that you have to keep looking at the thing you are making, and it’s a lot like looking at yourself, and it can get weird.” I wrote this on Twitter sometime last year. For the past two years, we have been making a new record for our band, the Blow, and on a music-industry timeline, you know, two years equals about two decades. For a long time, people asked us when the songs would be done, and then at a certain point everyone stopped asking, I think because they fear the album might never actually be finished. Will the record ever be finished? Yes. It is in fact done, and my bandmate Melissa Dyne is in the other room of our apartment here in Brooklyn, listening to it as I type this. It is coming out in the fall. Is there any good reason why making this album has taken so long? Maybe I just really enjoy looking at myself. Melissa doesn’t care much for looking at herself, I think. We live together, in the gay way, and in six years I have never once caught her checking herself out. Two years in our apartment in Portland and four here in New York, and she barely seems to register the fact that we even have mirrors. Me, I am always staring at myself, trying to figure out who or what I am. The bathroom mirror is for up-close facial, the full-length in the living room for working on dance moves. I ask the standard questions one asks when looking at oneself: “Do I exist?” (“Yes, strangely, it appears that I do.”) “Do I look older than I used to?” (“Yes.”) “Am I pretty?” (“Maybe. Keep looking.”) Melissa also doesn’t seem to care a whole lot about being looked at by other people. She isn’t kinky about it like I am. She doesn’t get addicted to the beam of a hot eyeball. Hence her comfort with performing on a riser at the back of the room across from my spot on the main stage, with the audience in between us. It’s not that she doesn’t know how to command attention when she wants it. Just yesterday, she permed her hair into a deep ’70s yacht-rock fro, and at an event recently where Brian Eno was present, instead of attempting to chat him up, she just stood where she was in her soft pink motorcycle jacket, emanating coolness, and then Eno turned his electric blues and gave her a solid once-over. I, meanwhile, gripped my plastic wine glass tightly and forced myself not to do anything spastic.

A medium like Twitter, where you can write something and immediately check to see if it’s gotten a response, radiates a pretty strong charge for someone like me. The naked impulse to get people to look at you can be more compelling than the work of

The naked impulse to get people to look at you can be more compelling than the work of giving them a good reason to do it. When I first started using Twitter , I hadn’t yet found the page where you can see whether people have favorited or retweeted you, and in these blissful first months I just threw out sentences and simply didn’t think about where they landed. On the day I discovered the window where I could see if people were watching me back, a weird new dimension opened up.

giving them a good reason to do it. When I first started using Twitter, I didn’t even realize that response was an option. I hadn’t yet found the page where you can see whether people have favorited or retweeted you, and in these blissful first months I just threw out sentences and simply didn’t think about where they landed. On the day I discovered the window where I could see if people were watching me back, a weird new dimension opened up. Unlike looking into a mirror, where one faces the mysterious presence of oneself in an atmosphere of stillness, checking to see if one is being watched by an intangible audience is a disco affair, with the attentions of the imagined viewers (Twitter, the press, guests at a cocktail party) flashing and teasing and threatening to disappear. But sequestering myself isn’t a long-term solution. If it were, I’d be back in Olympia with an unpaid internet bill, instead of living here in New York City, which is basically the Twitter of cities, in an apartment two blocks from an address that Jay-Z name-checks in his song “Empire State of Mind.” (“Took it to my stash spot, 560 State Street.”) The feeling of living and working here is one of being on the map, in the crosshairs of the camera. People want to know what you are working on because there is an expectation that one knows at least a little bit about almost everything; people want to watch what you are doing, so that they can add your endeavors onto the heap of everything that’s happened so far in the entire history of human activity.

“It occurs to me that maybe I should have used my twentysomething youth privilege for something more signiﬁcant.” “For the most part I spent my 20s trying to dress as ugly as I could while still reading as generally attractive.” I wrote both these sentences on Twitter last year after watching the HBO series Girls, and every time I reread them I crack myself up, so there’s one reason not to abandon the social media. What was I doing for all those years in my 20s? I saw a photograph of myself recently from that era, and I was actually shocked by my appearance, how much I truly did not care how I looked. I’m wearing some kind of granny bra that gives me the physique of someone much older and a skirt with the waistband rolled up so that my belly hangs out over it. My hair is insane, and my eyes look very wideopen and so incredibly tender. I know I had mirrors back then, but I guess they weren’t about appearance, or maybe appearance wasn’t about being pretty. Appearance was

about existing, showing up, letting yourself be as much of yourself as you could muster. (I might add, as well, that getting people to want to sleep with you without using your appearance to do it is a pretty great conﬁdence builder.)

At one point, some years after the aforementioned photo, I built myself a fort out of theater curtains in the recording studio at the warehouse building. The recording studio was a massive room ﬁlled with sunlight, and I hated to miss out on daylight, but I loved spending time inside those curtains. I covered the interior surfaces with pages from the 2001 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and I wrote a song in there called “What Tom Said About Girls.” The song is written from the point of view of a guy, who explains that men look to the glow of hot women as a distraction from the terrifying depths of outer space that surround our planet. I like going back there in my mind, lying under the pictures of bikini girls, steeping in my own atmosphere, singing the lyrics to myself.

“There still exist on this planet plenty of dark places, and who knows what’s lurking there.

I’m a man among the movement to ﬁll it in with a pretty face. Light it up like a billboard on the hillside, with a g-girl on the horizon!”

As far as I can tell, life is an ongoing challenge to ﬁgure out how to keep being here with the greatest degree of potency, and you get to decide which here it is, in which you want to show up.

The real answer to why the album took so long is that we made it while living in a world with very little available space; we created more space for ourselves to work with out of the material of time. In order to take hold of time, which can be difﬁcult to get a handle on, we had to zoom out in perspective—far enough out to see the big noisy city as a small point of light on a medium-sized sphere; even farther out to perceive the thousands upon thousands of illuminated satellites chattering back and forth, rotating in circles, keeping each other posted, keeping track of the time; and even farther still, to the point where we could see the orbit of one much larger, quieter, heavier satellite that glows less ﬂashily, and sometimes doesn’t glow at all, just hangs there alone in the dark. This satellite told us not to sweat it, that the amount of time we were asking for was not so much to ask for in the big picture. Comment on this story at

Learning the Ropes

How Recon Killed Leather Bars

BY DAN SAVAGE

The internet killed leather bars. Kinky gay guys who wanted to get laid used to have just one option. If you wanted to tie someone up or be tied up, if you wanted to spank someone or be spanked, if you wanted to piss on someone or be pissed on, you had to screw up the courage to walk into an actual leather bar. And it took some courage: Leather bars were dark and scary places, and most gay men steered clear of them.

Many gay men steered clear of guys who admitted to going to leather bars.

Pre–AIDS epidemic, there was a huge stigma attached to kinky sex. Normal and good gay men had normal and good gay sex— oral sex and anal sex—while only kinky freaks indulged in dangerous BDSM “practices and activities.” Then along came the AIDS crisis, and everything was ﬂipped upside down: Now anal intercourse was dangerous, and the standard-issue kinks were safe. Spanking didn’t transmit HIV. Fucking did.

But one thing didn’t change: A gay kinkster who wanted to get laid/bound/spanked still had to work up the nerve to walk into a leather bar. And since walking into a literal leather bar meant coming out as kinky—the stigma lingered—the figurative leather bar was set pretty high. Many kinky gay men described walking into a leather bar for the first time as their second coming out. And the gay kinkster who went to a leather bar for the first time was lucky if he met someone he found attractive. If the kinkster was super-lucky— we’re talking win-the-lottery lucky—that attractive person’s kinks aligned with his own. Then along came online personals, and suddenly kinksters didn’t need to walk into leather bars anymore—they didn’t need to come out as kinky—in order to get laid. And they no longer had to waste time meeting people and establishing mutual attraction before figuring out if their kinks aligned. They could lurk on a site like Recon.com—the most popular personals site for gay kinksters—create an ad listing their kinks, and respond only to ads from people they found attractive who were also hand-inblack-leather-glove kink matches.

Leather bars still limp along in most cities (Seattle has two), it’s true, but they don’t play the crucial role they once did. Online personal ads offered a more efﬁcient method of sorting and matching kinksters—straight and gay kinksters alike—but this came at a cost. The efﬁciency and anonymity of the internet undermined the community and camaraderie of the leather bar.

DAN SAVAGE has a new book out, American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics. Follow him on Twitter @fakedansavage.

Having My Cake and Eating It Too

How Fetish Websites Took Me from Feeling Like a Monster to Finding Some Sweet Action

BY SARAH GALVIN

I’ve known about my weight-gain fetish since before I knew I was gay. Sort of: The scenarios that turn me on are so far from sex—as sex was explained to me as a child (when two people really love each other, etc.)—that for years I thought I had discovered some kind of black magic. My fantasies were strange enough that the fact that they involved women seemed arbitrary. I learned to read very early partly so I could read the sexy parts of books over and over inconspicuously. “Hansel and Gretel” was a favorite. I say black magic because for most of my life, my sexual desires have made me feel like a monster. I might have struggled to remain inconspicuous forever if it weren’t for a few enlightening Google searches.

Our body-image-obsessed culture makes my daily life a sort of scary, pornographic Easter egg hunt. The theme of weight gain saturates the media, conversations about it are everywhere, and grocery checkout stands are stacked with magazines that obsess over which celebrities are fat now. Imagine if the thing that got you off could appear anywhere at any moment. As a young teenager, when I realized I had a fetish, this was awful. Telling people I was gay was fairly easy for me, because in comparison to the other things I get off on, fucking another person who has a vagina seems mundane.

The ﬁrst time somebody made me come, it was completely by accident. I was 19, and we were walking down Pine Street as she told me at length how over the past year she had gotten too fat to ﬁt into her favorite jeans. “What’s wrong?” she asked me when I stopped abruptly. I told her I had a foot cramp. Then I suggested we get pizza.

I wasn’t ashamed that I liked fat girls (I was somehow spared that heap of cultural garbage). I was ashamed to want such power over another person. That is the main source of the excitement—the idea of controlling someone from the inside out, or witnessing a fundamental loss of control that allows me to imagine myself in a position of power over them. I was in love with the girl who made me come on the street, in a tender high-school way. But then again, to derive pleasure from something that obviously made her unhappy

felt ugly to me. I thought no one would want to be with me if they knew I had those thoughts.

But I couldn’t help myself.

I didn’t tell anyone until I was 21. It took me half an hour, cringing under a pillow, to say anything besides “I have to tell you I’m into something weird.” My girlfriend tried guessing: “Operation Ivy?” And then, when a seagull ﬂew by the window, “Birds!”

Finally, I told her. She didn’t break up with me. She didn’t tell me I was disgusting. She took me out to dinner. I felt like a new person. In general, the way that people I have dated have reacted when I tell them my big scary secret gives me hope for humanity. Somehow, it didn’t occur to me that someone might enjoy knowing a way to get me off as reliably as ﬂipping a light switch. I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to tell someone.

My encounters with people who share my interests have all involved the internet. It is so much easier to tell someone you’re into this kind of thing if you know they’re into it, too— i.e., you’re both on a website devoted to it. It’s also easier to talk about if you’ve done a bit of research on your own time. The porn I like most is made by people who have the complementary kink—women who get off on gaining weight and want others to witness the process. I am an atheist, but the fact that people exist who not only get off on such

an obscure thing, but also showing others that they’re getting off on such an obscure thing, makes intelligent design seem almost plausible. And it seems that many fetishes complement each other in this way. I’m reminded of the rare ghost orchid that can be pollinated by only one species of moth.

These videos on YouTube and Dailymotion document weight gain in various ways—measurements, weigh-ins, and conspicuously outgrown clothing are popular. I personally like nothing more than a girl splitting a button-down shirt over a period of months like a busted home-run baseball. Often, they look like they’re going to masturbate as soon as they’re done ﬁlming; sometimes they look like they’re about to do something unimaginable. At the end of one video, a woman tilted the camera up to reveal she was wearing clown makeup. Once, I had just gotten off when the camera angle changed so I could see the woman ﬁlming herself had very few teeth. Her laughter

My date got three kinds of cheesecake, and we went to a hotel.

looked positively evil. I was genuinely frightened, but I liked her.

Some of my girlfriends have gained weight for me, some just talked dirty to me about it. Of course, there are always questions, such as “Are you calling me fat?” (the answer is either no and you’re gorgeous or yes and you’re gorgeous) and “How much would you want me to gain, ideally?” (not enough to cause health problems and not more than you’re comfortable with) and “Are you only attracted to fat girls?” (no—though I like them a lot).

I’m not sure how unusual my fetish is, but on websites devoted to it, like Fantasy Feeder and Feedism.net, people frequently post things like “Is anyone from Glasgow online?” One night, my Gmail video chat box popped up, and there was a naked girl eating ice cream. All she said was, “You’re cute.” I have no idea how she found my email address. She ﬁnished her pint of (I think pistachio) ice cream while we both beat off, and then she disappeared. I had a

series of similar Skype dates with a woman in Manhattan who was in grad school for social work and loved Oreos. There was talk of meeting in person, but then we both found more conveniently located girlfriends. When I was invited to a Fantasy Feeder meetup a few months ago—at the Cheesecake Factory, obviously—I was terriﬁed. What were people like who were like me? What would we do? I hoped something would happen, but I didn’t think I was ready for a frosting-covered orgy with strangers. I think most of all I was afraid these people would somehow conﬁrm that I was right to be ashamed of myself. They did not. They were very friendly, and for some reason, all eager to talk about Dr. Who. There was a tall, possibly albino guy who looked like a beautiful ghost. The only person who gave me the creeps was a guy in a poofy Renaissance fair shirt who hit on my date relentlessly. When she said she wished she could just eat and fuck for days at a time, he said, “You just need a guy with a lot of stamina.” “Or a woman,” I said, “any woman at all.” Everyone ate a lot, more than seemed physically possible. It was exciting that no one there knew what we were up to. My date got three kinds of cheesecake, and we went to a hotel.

She was 20, from a small town, and had never slept with a woman before. She said she was on Fantasy Feeder because people had always told her she should diet, but she liked being fat. She wasn’t into gaining. It seemed she liked a particular body type and found the site to be a convenient means of shopping for it—teenage boy or perhaps elf bodies, considering she picked me? She was working on a degree she hoped would get her a job designing artiﬁcial limbs, but she was currently taking a photography class. She took some pictures of us that would endanger my political aspirations, if I had any. I stayed with her for two days. The second morning, we drank hotel instant coffee naked in front of our window overlooking Puget Sound. We watched the city appear as a fog burned off, and I felt a tremendous sense of possibility. We kissed, and then I went to school. I won’t deny my fetish is a little monstrous, but then, what sex isn’t? I don’t feel bad about it anymore. I’m a nice monster, mostly—so let’s get pizza.

Comment on this story at THESTRANGER.COM

SARAH GALVIN is a poet, currently pursuing an MFA degree at the University of Washington. Her poems can be found in iO, Dark Sky, PageBoy, and Alive at the Center, a Northwest poetry anthology. Shockingly, she also writes food reviews.

Facing the Torsos

Scruff and Other Smartphone Hookup Apps Are the Future of Porn

BY CONNER HABIB

You’re at a gay bar with a group of searching, horny guys, and you’re talking to a bunch of them at once. “Pull your dick out,” you say to one of the cuter ones. He does, and it’s hard and good-looking. “Nice dick!” you say, naturally.

“Sup,” someone else says to you while you’re admiring it, but you don’t pay him much attention.

One of the guys in the group has been talking for a while, but he’s so boring that you turn your back on him mid-sentence and ignore him.

Just a few feet away is a guy who’s really attractive but doesn’t seem interested. You go up and say hello. When he doesn’t respond, you say hi again. Nothing. Well, you’ll see him again a few days later anyway, in the same spot, and you’ll say hello again.

But look, there’s that boring guy you turned your back on. Now that you know what it feels like to be ignored, you reluctantly say, “Sorry. I had a phone call.” Or whatever. Then you pick up the conversation right where you left off.

These are the absurd in-person equivalents of phone hookup apps like Scruff, Grindr, Mister, and Jack’d: brief hellos (“sup”), the trading of nude pics, the dance of expressing interest, dropping in and out of conversations, and picking up chats you abandoned days ago.

It’s obvious in the imagined bar above that our in-person behavior doesn’t mirror our behavior and expectations on the apps. But there’s a good deal more confusion as to how much of our behavior and expectations on the apps should mirror real life. This can be seen most clearly in the common declaration of many proﬁles: “I wouldn’t talk to someone without a head at a bar, so have a face pic.”

I don’t like when proﬁles don’t have face pics, and I wouldn’t talk to a headless person in life, either. But neither would I—at least for the most part—ask to see a guy’s dick at a bar and expect him to pull it out. And I wouldn’t suddenly stop talking to someone with no explanation. So there’s a tension and confusion between how much “real life” we’re supposed to

enact on these apps. This is, in part, because when we download an app, we don’t just download the standard features, we download a narrative.

The narrative we’re sold is a nice one, and sometimes it plays out: You create a proﬁle, you chat with guys, you meet in person and fuck or even go on a date. I’ve had the good fortune of having this happen, but that’s not what usually happens. Just last night I was on Scruff while in bed, facing the gay man’s dilemma of too-horny-to-sleep-but-too-tired-to-goout-and-get-some. Typical. With my phone hand, I was scrolling through pics, and with my other hand, I was casually and lazily playing with myself. I talked to a few guys, unlocked my photos, jerked off, and called it a night. Also typical.

Masturbation cued me in, as it has more than a few times, to something valuable: These apps are geared not speciﬁcally toward sex but toward stimulation, masturbation, and desire. Put another way, hookup apps are pornography—individualized, participatory pornography.

As a porn actor, I’ve been hearing fearful noises from porn studios and misguided journalists for years now, bemoaning how porn isn’t as lucrative as it once was. While a lot of these concerns are aimed at the internet, what’s overlooked is that a lot of our sexual attention is being diverted to our devices and hookup apps. Instead of writing about how apps compete with bars, we should be looking at how apps are dovetailing with other forms of sexual imagery. Because the substance of these apps isn’t hooking up—it’s browsing. All the traditional elements of porn are there, and more. By creating a proﬁle, we agree to put ourselves on display. Many of the photos we post are borderline pornographic, even if they’re “G-rated.” They’re chest pics or pics of us looking seductive, or they’re

goofy because we’ve sexualized gooﬁness. Exhibitionism is part of the agreement of these apps. We turn ourselves into desirable objects for others to look at.

Meanwhile, we’re voyeurs, looking into everyone’s little windows. The interface is similar to the way we view porn now, not fixating on one scene until we come but flipping through scenes—bringing up the next and the next until we find the one we want to stick with. The ability to chat with the person whose image you’re getting off to amplifies the individualization of the experience. While I’m looking at someone’s dick, I’m also wondering: Is he a top or a bottom? Does he like the same sexual acts as me? But it goes further than that—everyone on the app has access to what turns them on about personalities, too. Does he like the same movies? Is he into comic books? Will he wear that Thor helmet in his pic when he fucks me?

And the best thing is—unlike porn on the computer—we get to be on the screen,

As a porn actor, I’ve been hearing fearful noises from porn studios for years now.

too, displaying ourselves to the other player.

But these encounters often do not lead to meeting. When you get to the point of hooking up, the person you think you’re about to hook up with disappears. Or the person says, “I’m busy.” Or you call it off because you don’t feel like cleaning out your butt or going all the way over to that neighborhood because that’s like a 20minute walk!

And of course, there’s the possibility that the person in the photo is not who he seems to be, that he’ll look different than his photos, or that maybe he’s expecting too much from you.

So instead of meeting up, the next step is turning the app off (or leaving it on) and masturbating. After the interaction has, um, come and gone, you “star” or “favorite” a guy’s proﬁle and revisit the scene again—like a replay, only better.

With apps, we create living pornography on the spot; they embody exhibitionism and voyeurism par excellence. They’re

portable, they’re accessible when we want them to be (in your ofﬁce! In the Starbucks bathroom!), they’re not one-way like much live cam porn, they’re not expensive, and everyone who signs up is agreeing to the same basic premises.

Some features are even optimized for the pornographic experience. The Global feature on Scruff, for example, allows you to engage in chatting and pic sharing without the promise of an encounter. If the person you’re talking to lives in Papua New Guinea and you live in Chicago, you’re probably not getting it in anytime soon. In other words, the Global feature presents a more realistic expectation of what’s probably going to happen when we sign on.

This kind of realistic expectation can help save us from becoming dependent on these new technologies or trapped in the nervous energy that propels them. We’ve all seen people at bars staring into their phones, chatting up the very same sorts of guys they feel unable to approach in person. When we use the apps too frequently or depend on the narrative we’re sold— one of meeting rather than browsing—it can become a crutch and diminish our skill sets for approaching others. We all know someone (or may be someone) who checks his apps constantly or inappropriately. I’m guilty of saying hi to someone via app when he’s sitting four tables away from me at the coffee shop (embarrassingly, he didn’t respond even as I watched him check his phone).

If we can see most of our time on these apps for what it is, we can access the apps’ potential. Seeing the apps as pornographic allows us to interact with our desires rather than try to approximate in-person experiences. Engaging in—rather than just receiving—personalized sexual imagery can afford a degree of healthy detachment through which we can explore the contours of what gets us off. Right now, because the apps are clinging only to the prepackaged narrative, their potential isn’t yet realized. Not expecting our devices and apps to approximate the same experiences we have via in-person contact will let us drop realtime expectations for them. Then we can face the torsos, whether they have faces or not.

Comment on this story at THESTRANGER.COM

CONNER HABIB is a writer, lecturer, porn star, and anthroposophist. Follow him on Twitter @connerhabib.

Every Flavor You Can Dip Your Stick Into

Grindr Enables Some Pretty Gross Generalizations About Entire Races of People—Although People Are Surprisingly Receptive When You Call Them Out on It

BY SOLOMON GEORGIO

In the summer of 2003, MTV’s Making the Video premiered Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.” I was a tenderhearted 20-year-old working at Denny’s at the time, and a few of my coworkers gathered together at a friend’s house to be mesmerized by Bey’s ﬁrst solo venture. Afterward, my coworkers and I were squealing over the videoand how beautiful our baby queen turned out to be. A few minutes into the discussion, a coworker’s boyfriend stuck his thick neck into the convo and uttered the following words out loud: “I guess she’s pretty, but I’m not attracted to black girls.”

Now, I had never heard anyone dismiss the attraction of an entire race prior to this, and I sure as hot fuck didn’t expect Beyoncé to be the catalyst. I snapped at my coworker’s boyfriend and told him never to speak out of pocket like that again.

However, there was quite a bit of hypocrisy to the soapbox stand I was taking. As a young, openly gay black man, all my sexual experiences at that point in my life had been with white men. Somewhere deep down, I suspected that I was only attracted to white men. Once I heard meatmouth’s opinion on black women, I knew I had to evolve my rudimentary notions of what I could be sexually attracted to.

The root of my issue was that I didn’t find myself attractive. A heaping portion of my insecurities involved my race. These insecurities then became amplified by the universally accepted superficiality of gay men. A lot of ideals within the gay male community do nothing but separate us by race, age, masculinity, and body type. We categorize ourselves, and there ends up being marginalized groups within a marginalized group.

In the years after that janky comment about Beyoncé, I did everything in my power to accept that I look great in the skin I was born in, and I made double sure to have some enjoyable sex with every possible ﬂavor I could dip my stick into. I’ve had relations with a Brazilian man with a speech impediment that made him sound like he had an Irish accent, a heavyset Somali who only performed oral sex if I had a condom on, a middle-aged Native American drag queen, a petite Japanese power bottom with a nine-inch penis, et cetera, et cetera. This plethora of gentlemen helped shake the constraints of my earlier

mind-set by being kind lovers who gave me the conﬁdence to believe I was as beautiful as they were. And now, a decade later, my sex life looks like a United Colors of Benetton ad, and rarely do physical attributes play a role in my continued search for a partner.

This new outlook has especially helped me navigate the current social-media era of gay male apps like Grindr.

As much fun as you can have on

My sex life looks like a United Colors of Benetton ad.

Grindr, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve come across a proﬁle speciﬁcally pointing out what race someone is not attracted to, some with extradefensive phrases like “it’s just a preference.”

It’s gotten to the point where I recently deleted the app from my phone entirely, to preserve my fantasy that the current ﬂeet of gay men are more enlightened than that coworker’s meatmouth boyfriend was a decade ago. Granted, as I mentioned, I’ve had my hang-ups in the past, but I would never have the audacity to announce such a hurtful hang-up in a public location where a myriad of decent human beings, including young men just entering the gay community, can stumble across it. As a matter of fact, I strongly believe that never mentioning your racial sexual preference would have zero effect on your sex life. Also, Grindr provides only 120 characters for a proﬁle. It’s a super-garbage move to use that little space to make declarations

that shut out other users and not even mention what you can provide as a human person other than a slightly blurry photo of your fucking torso.

For the sake of “research,” I downloaded the app again so I could interview all the guys I came across who deemed it necessary to publically advertise their racial preference on their proﬁles. I put together a safe and nonjudgmental opening question:

Hi, my name is Solomon, and I’m putting together an article about racial sexual preference. Do you have a moment to answer a few questions about your own racial sexual preference?

Then I started scanning through the app. After ﬁnding more than a hundred local men who made some kind of statement about race, I received only 15 responses. All of which were requests to see a picture of my penis. Dick pic requests aside, I did notice that almost a quarter of the men I messaged immediately updated their proﬁles to remove any mention of racial preference after receiving my polite inquiry.

I’m slightly disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to properly interview anyone, but I’m glad that some Grindr users took my question to heart and altered their proﬁle. I don’t want anyone to force themselves into interracial relations, but using dismissive phrasing is unnecessary. Homosexuality is a natural occurrence, but racial sexual preference is usually based on social stigmas that develop into a skin-color fetish. The same can also apply to the rampant ageism, desperate need to prove masculinity, and gym body obsession in our community. Don’t even get me started on the ongoing neglect of our trans brothers and sisters.

Being a gay man means being a deviation from the status quo, so it’s ridiculous that we would apply restrictive media ideals upon each other. That ain’t trill, nothing trill about it, that’s less trill than Gwyneth Paltrow calling Beyoncé to ask what twerking is. Overly focusing on superﬁcial physical qualities can lead to a frustrating life of unresolved personal insecurities. Honestly, I only get one penis in this lifetime, and it deserves to go on a shameless world tour.

Sizzr Sisters

Why don’t women interested in women have a smartphone app like the guys do? Oh, wait…

BY JEN KAGAN

Imoved to Seattle after I got dumped by the ﬁrst girl I ever dated. We’d been together for almost two years, and the shittiness of the breakup was compounded by the fact that, as I started to settle in, I had no earthly idea how to ﬁnd other lesbians in a new city.

My first few weeks in town, I met up with a lesbian friend of a lesbian friend to mark my arrival in Seattle the traditional lesbian way: with drinks at Wildrose. That night, like many subsequent nights, the two of us shared the Rose’s bar area with a handful of seated, impenetrable cliques while a sparsely populated dance floor stared back at us from the adjoining room. What else were we supposed to do? If there was a better way for a recent transplant to find kind, cute folks who wanted to fool around that night a way that did not involve lots of booze and awkward spaces that I read somewhere were full of lesbians on certain Tuesdays or every second-ish Saturday—I never discovered it. It would’ve been nice to have Sizzr, the Grindr-inspired app that’s currently being developed for women who like women.

The concept seems like a no-brainer, but similar sites and apps have launched and ﬁzzled before. Sizzr’s bootstrapping Vancouver-based founder, Jacqueline Clarke, attributes those failures to three things: creepy straight dudes, too-lesbian lesbians, and patriarchy. No big. She explains that other apps became “harems for men posing as women… straight guys sending each other pictures of their cocks, thinking they were sending them to women, but they were really just sending them to other straight men!” Sizzr’s Cock Block feature would allow a user to alert others if she encounters a serial sender of erect-penis-pics.

Other sites and apps were also “too lesbian,” which Clarke readily admits sounds terrible before declaring, “Agh, queer politics are so complicated!” She elaborates: “Basically, lesbians don’t need to be convinced to go to a lesbian event, because they’re already part of the community. I want it to be more like extending our arms to all of the closet cases and all the curious-butnot-sure girls. And that’s why our tagline is: ‘Come out, come out, whoever you are.’

It doesn’t matter what your identiﬁcation is, or what your label is, or how you deﬁne your sexuality. It’s just: Are you a girl who would like to have more girls in your life? It’s really simple.” Partly in an attempt to reach out to those women, Clarke brought on burlesque dancer Tristan Risk to be the dolled-up gateway face of Sizzr.

The most significant hurdle for this and other, similar projects, though, is that women have been socialized to not pay for sex. Getting lesbians to participate in funding has been difficult, despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback Clarke has gotten from everyone she’s talked to. Her biggest challenge, then, is figuring out how to market to women while tiptoeing around both external and internalized slut-shaming. I’d bet that expounding on “tribadism”—the Greek-rooted word for lady-sex that reeks of diagnosed perversity—in the pitch video is probably not helping things, but Clarke’s plan to put street teams together for some of the big upcoming Pride parades is promising.

She’s optimistic about Sizzr’s potential, and she’s conﬁdent that there’s demand for her product. At the end of our conversation, Clarke compellingly argues that female sexuality and technology have long been intertwined, and that Sizzr is an obvious next step. “What a way we’ve come,” she says, from ancient Greek dildo-wielders (“tribas”) to vibrators, the ﬁrst of which was a steam-powered masturbation machine used to treat hysterical women. “Now, we can just log on to our phone and… hook up.”

In the interest of advancing technologyassisted lady-pleasure, and putting to rest (or at least complicating) assertions by the sexuality police that women “have too many feelings” for something like Sizzr and that we just “don’t work that way,” stop reading right now and go donate: indiegogo.com/ projects/the-sizzr-app/x/3643060.

JEN KAGAN , once upon a time, was absolutely positive that she hated poetry, was totally straight, and would be an economist when she grew up.

Floating in Shades of Gray

Tumblr Allows Me to Be My Genderqueer Self in a Way My “Real” Life Doesn’t

BY RAY VAN FOX

People talk about how dangerous it is for young folks to meet strangers on the internet, as if the only possible outcome is that the innocent young girl they think they are talking to ends up being some old creepster guy with designs on their virginity or bank account.

These people don’t know a damned thing about Tumblr—at least, not the part of it where I hang out, where it’s basically the opposite. Lots of us have names and personas and pronouns that are different from the ones we have in “real” life, but we aren’t using them in order to deceive anyone. In fact, we are re-creating ourselves in our own image in order to be seen for who we actually are. But that’s because I hang out with genderqueer/trans/two-spirit folks online.

The internet is where my genderqueer community resides right now. I moved away from Seattle a while ago. Since then, I’ve lived in a sea of black-and-white gender roles, and it’s a bit rough to be the only person I know in town who wants to ﬂoat in shades of gray.

To be honest, some days this makes the prospect of leaving the house daunting. When the only way everyone looks at me is to fit me into an either/or, I end up caving to the prepackaged gender roles offered and finding a way to fit in. By the time I get home, I’m exhausted with all the tiny lies and self-betrayals involved in trying to squeeze myself into an identity that isn’t quite mine. Why would I leave the house and deal with that, when I can get online and interact with others without having to package myself in any shape but the one I’ve got?

Tumblr isn’t like Facebook, where the people I interact with have met me in the ﬂesh and have already formed opinions of me based on what they’ve perceived. Facebook friends include extended family, high-school acquaintances, even colleagues at work, many of whom I might not be comfortable sharing my gender journey with.

Tumblr provides a level of anonymity in the act of self-creation—of constructing my blog persona—that gives me freedom from

others’ preconceived notions based on my body. Because it’s all about what you say, not how you look. For a gender-variant person, especially one who lives where the spectrum is hard to see, that’s a rare and muchappreciated gift.

Especially on days when it feels overwhelming just to have a body at all—no matter what its shape or how people perceive it—I ﬁnd solace in the fact that my followers will listen to my thoughts on the performance of masculinity, are amused by my random forays into fan ﬁction, and might even agree with my rants about how a certain actor gives me a bad case of FUBU (where I’m not sure if I want to fuck you or be you). Seeing them “like” or reblog my posts, sometimes with commentary, sometimes with amusing tags, always in the interest of making connection and continuing conversation about the things we deal with on a daily basis, helps keep me sane. It’s to the point now that my community on Tumblr feels tighter than the one I have where I live, because we check in with each other constantly and know things about each other that we might not feel comfortable saying to the people we interact with in person. I’ve had conversations with fellow Tumblrers about coming to terms with gender identity, major depression, and the death of a parent. Somehow these folks, without even knowing some supposedly basic things about me, have created a safe space where I can be my most authentic, uncensored, almost fully ungendered self.

And yes, that space may be made up of a bunch of “strangers” who might look different than I imagine, but I can bank on the fact that their reasons for befriending me have nothing to do with my body. And I can’t tell you how comforting that is.

Art, Porn, Life

A Few More Words in Praise of Tumblr

BY EVAN J. PETERSON

Tumblr.com is for porn. No, really, it is. You can post writing there, and insular teens and college students seem to be very fond of this, but that’s certainly not what the folks I know go to this site to see. Tumblr is the internet’s greatest resource for free porn, whether videos or still pics. Stills were thought to be a dead medium for internet porn, but

Tumblr has effectively resurrected them, due mostly to the fact that they’re free.

One of the greatest draws of Tumblr is that it’s the multimedia equivalent of Twitter. You can post or repost, and many people do both for links, images, video, audio, and written copy.

Herein lies a revelation about queer culture: while some Tumblrs only post porn, others are effortlessly pioneering a bold, honest form of blogging by creating a free-association mix of compelling visual art, charming nostalgia, favorite music, self-portraits, and hardcore porn. These blogs are impressive collections of whatever-we-were-enjoying-at-the-moment. It’s the delightful, hope-restoring opposite of YouTube comments.

I’m not sure if straight Tumblrs are doing this. Porn, whether straight or queer, is almost always created by cisgender men, and most straight dudes do not seem remotely interested in having the latest Pitbull music video on the same page as vagina pics, quasiironic vintage porn, sports clips, and their favorite architecture.

Queers, however, are curating Tumblr blogs that are transcendental. We’re fucking with genre (French for “gender”), blending and exploding categories, which is what we’ve always done best. Aside from a cultural fixation on Tilda Swinton and Paris Is Burning, James Bidgood and Pierre et Gilles photos appear alongside the latest Beyoncé or Matmos single, beside images of exquisite teapots, following angry radical queer politics, next to runway photography, then a picture of some dude blowing someone—all uploaded or reblogged in the same hour. Just as the reposting trend is greatly influenced by Twitter, etc., the eclectic mix of damn-near-anything has the feel of iTunes on shuffle. Technology is undoubtedly shaping our behavior patterns and thought processes.

Here are some of my favorite queer Tumblrs, from the most hardcore to the merely playful:

Sissydudeomen2.tumblr.com

Now blogging more regularly at Sissydude.com, John Webster is a talented artist and queer Tumblr icon, arguably the reigning queen of these bloggers. The photos of his house are stunning (it’s a museum of kitsch). His site is the best example

of what classic gay men think about: sex, photography, interior decorating, penises, crossdressing, facial hair, vintage pop, jockstraps, little knickknacks, guns, semen, and dead actresses. It’s a damn fantasia.

Queering.tumblr.com

This one makes me wish I were a lesbian. This site is both tastefully elegant and utterly subversive, and most of the pornography is vintage. Run by several bloggers, there’s cheesecake, beefcake, bondage, peek-a-boo nudity, and more. Though primarily lesbian, Queering includes men and trans people of all natures. It’s pure queer nostalgia and curiously heartwarming in its presentation of same-sex couples from many eras (another big meme for queer Tumblrs).

Androphilia.tumblr.com

Androphilia has settled way down lately in the focus on the male body. Fine art and politics prevail, with international articles and other prose pieces. Though homoerotic, there’s been little recent nudity. Androphilia is still totally worthwhile—a recent post listed resources for queer Muslims, something few people spend much time caring about.

The-escapade.tumblr.com

Well of course I want to listen to En Vogue while I watch porn. This guy limits his Tumblr strictly to pop music and porn. For a quick get-off, it’s perfect. You can even listen to gospel as you clean up, which is both wonderfully campy and irreverent as shit.

Tranzbearnation.tumblr.com

This one defies description, as the best queer things usually do. It’s definitely bearsex oriented, but it’s also oddly mystical. It’s a sci-fi/fantasy gender-blending sex overdose, as though William S. Burroughs gave a shit about the internet long enough to blog.

Theantipodeanhomo.tumblr.com

Craig blogs from New Zealand and succeeds where many gay bitches fail miserably: He’s actually funny. His one-liners usually hit me exactly where I need it. Example: “I wish the royal family would do something about Harry’s rosacea.” Very little sex here, actually, and it’s only there to be criticized, but go ahead: Feed your shade tooth.

Step Away from the Internet

The real world is still the best place to meet homosexuals. I’m sorry, but it is. And it will never be improved upon.

BY ELI SANDERS

That thing where you’re at a gay bar, and summer is new, and people are dancing, and everyone’s sweating, and a guy you’ve been watching notices and moves closer. That thing where the two of you then get near enough that your sweat begins to commingle, and then his ﬂy presses against yours, or maybe it was yours that pressed against his ﬁrst. That thing where it ceases to matter

who went ﬁrst, because what’s now being communicated with certainty, through both pairs of pants, is that you’d both like them off, even if that’s for later and now is for sticking to each other here on the dance ﬂoor, wrapped in music and heat.

That thing where his neck cranes round so he can get his lips near your ear to say ﬁrst words to you, and you take in his scent, and as his mouth moves, his lips brush your lobe, your helix, your antitragus, your concha—folds of your ear you’ve never had names for but that are now shooting currents through your whole body. That thing where, message delivered, you unwind your necks, eyes locking for an instant, and then rewind them a different way so that you can deliver your response.

That thing.

That will simply never happen for two guys as they are meeting on Grindr. No matter how much money is raised to make Sizzr, it will never happen for two ladies as they are meeting there, either. And no matter how many people you sext on Scruff, no matter how many Facebook stalks become “pokes” and then chats, no matter what online intermediary people put between themselves and ﬁrst contact with other humans, that mediated contact will lack something.

You can imagine you feel breath against your skin while alone, online, and “connected.” I have imagined I felt it. And I have poked, back when people still poked, and I have chatted, and I have had letters unspool before my eyeballs that became strong sensations. But these were all imagined sensations. Not

one of them was real, not in the way of a lick that slowly evaporates off the skin, an actual, physical transmutation of spit into vapor, as opposed to some virtual vapor of intimacy.

I would go online, and I would meet him—finally! Him!—but he was inevitably invented. Even when I laid eyes on him through video chat, he was invented. I created stories about him that were amazing, but they were fictions. He would tell me stories about himself, and for all I knew, they were amazing fictions, too. It’s so easy to forget this while online. It’s so easy to focus on the thrills of self-declaration, of manipulation with

You take in his scent as he talks, his lips brushing your earlobe.

less consequence, of voyeurism, of fantasy, of the improbable relationship that’s being forged with one individual out of all the possible individuals out there with internet connections (which is so many more people than could ever ﬁt in a gay bar, and therefore so much more stunning, in its way, than a connection on a dance ﬂoor).

But when it begins in this way, it begins differently. It begins without the opportunity to inspect—up close—the cracks in his self-presentation, and for him to do the same with you. It begins without the possibility of exiting the bar together and seeing his truck, and learning he drove all the way from Silverdale, that’s how bad he wanted it. It begins without seeing some other guy in the bar shake his head, warning you off the mistake you’re about to make. It begins without you being able to literally smell that something’s not right.

True, there are times when ﬁrst meetings must be done by computer— when there is no gay space for miles and no truck to get to one in any case, or when the searcher is from a sexual sliver of the gay population. The internet is magic for rarities seeking rarities. But this is not how the majority of homos use the internet today. If it were, then Grindr would not be such a massive, mainstream homosexual success.

It’s a success that seems equally about convenience and avoidance. On Grindr, you avoid the possibility of catching his eye across the dance ﬂoor and having his look say back to you, in front of all your friends: “Don’t even bother.” And, if all you ever do is fondle your app and nothing more, then you’re at little risk of catching that new, sometimes-deadly strain of meningitis that’s been spreading among gay men in New York City.

But hardly anyone uses Grindr in just this limited way, and so the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has speciﬁcally warned men who meet each other through cell-phone apps to be more cautious. It has issued the same warning, by the way, to men who meet “at a bar or party.” Which is the thing about the old-fashioned way: It carries all the risks of the newfangled way, and more.

It also carries more reward, for the senses, from a kind of connectedness that only comes when one human encounters another human in physical space. I’ll take that deal over any other. An arm brushed at an art gallery. A clumsy excuse made to start a conversation on the bus, or in a park, or at a cafe. An introduction made by a friend, in an elaborate and totally transparent setup. Or a collision on a soccer ﬁeld, which is how I met my current boyfriend. He knocked me down. Then he scored on me. A year later, we moved in together. If I had been mediated that day, remote from physical reality, digitally screened off from the more intense forms of emotional vulnerability, then I wouldn’t have been able to fall for him.

ELI SANDERS (@elijsanders) is an associate editor at The Stranger and the winner of a 2012 Pulitzer Prize. For the record, he’s since scored on his boyfriend.

Pike Place Market

Pride Parties 2013

Every Party, Drag Show, Dance, and Cruise Happening This Weekend!

BY MEGAN SELING

WEDNESDAY 6/26

Pride Bonﬁre at Alki

A free, family-friendly way to get ready for Pride weekend. There better be s’mores. Alki Beach Park, 1702 Alki Ave SW, www.seattlegaysocialevents. com, 6 pm, free.

Celebrate Pride All Weekend at Madison Pub

Open every day at noon with pool, darts, pinball, trivia, and daily happy-hour specials. No cover, ever! Madison Pub, 1315 E Madison St, madisonpub.com, noon, free.

THURSDAY 6/27

Queervoyant: A Queer Art Showcase About the Future

This is the opening reception for an art show where 16 artists “share their vision of the future through art.” Artists include Joey Veltkamp, Clyde Petersen, Lisa Orth, and our own fashion photographer Timothy Rysdyke. Hard L, 1216 10th Ave, hardl.org, 6 pm, free.

The Totally Gay Sing-Along Host and curator Jason Miller has put together sing-alongable videos (subtitled, so everyone can participate!) featuring everyone from Lady Gaga and George Michael to Judy Garland and Diana Ross. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave, central-cinema.com, 8 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages.

Nasty at the Seattle Eagle

Music from Chuey and DJ King of Pants and dancing with the Nasty Cage Boys. Seattle Eagle, 314 E Pike St, seattleeagle.com.

I Love the ’80s Pride Kickoff Party

With music and videos from DJ Disco Vinnie. The Lobby Bar, 916 E Pike St, thelobbyseattle. com, 8 pm, free.

BAD@$$ES: Are We Queer Enough For You?

The Queer Teen Ensemble Theater’s sixth annual Pride production asks: “When the hero you’re dreaming of never shows up, can you become your own superhero?” Runs through Sun June 30. Gay City’s Calamus Auditorium,

511 E Pike St, qtet.org, free for people 24 and under/general admission $10–$20 sliding scale.

Pride Weekend at R Place

Celebrate Pride at R Place with RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Jujubee and Latrice Royale, as well as Wendy Ho! Jujubee will be at R Place Thurs–Sat, Latrice will be there Fri–Sat, and Wendy Ho will be performing Thurs–Fri. Tickets for Thursday night are only available at the door, but advance tickets for Friday and Saturday are available at brownpapertickets.com. R Place, 619 E Pine St, rplaceseattle. com, 9 pm, $20/$40 VIP.

Hairy-Ass Motherf*cker!

Music from DJs FistFight and Satan’s Pet, a snack bar, and go-go bears. RAWR! Pony, 1221 E Madison St, ponyseattle.com, 6 pm, free.

FRIDAY

6/28

Gender Blender

David Schmader says: “Seattle Pride will be awash in world-class drag queens, but tonight brings the densest concentration of brilliance.” Indeed! Look at this lineup: Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska Thunderfuck, Jackie Hell, Robbie Turner, Ade, Ben DeLaCreme, and MORE! Neighbours, 1509 Broadway, narkmagazine.com, 9 pm–4 am, $35/$75 VIP.

Trans* Pride

Yeah, we passed gay marriage, but there’s more work to be done! Come support the trans community by marching in this parade, which will assemble at Broadway and E Pine St at 5 pm before heading over to Cal Anderson Park for a big ol’ party with Julia Serano, Rae Spoon, Ian Harvie, and more. Assemble at 5 pm, Broadway and E Pine St, march at 6 pm to Cal Anderson Park, party till 10 pm, more info at transprideseattle.

Youth Pride Dance

A special Pride dance for people 20 and younger, presented by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. All Pilgrims Church, 500 Broadway E, glsen.org/washington, 8 pm.

Pride Night with the Storm

The Seattle Storm take on the New York Liberty! The ﬁrst 3,000 fans get a rainbow Storm koozie, and there will be a special half-time performance by Mary Lambert, who sang on Macklemore’s hit “Same Love.” KeyArena, Seattle Center, wnba. com/storm, 7 pm, $19–$59, all ages.

Pride Shabbat 2013

There will be snacks, a short Shabbat service, music, guest speakers, and more. All faiths welcome. Hillel UW, 4745 17th Ave NE, jconnectseattle.org, 6 pm, free.

Wet T-Shirt Contest

With cash prizes! Get $2 off the cover price with a 6/28 Storm ticket stub. Wildrose, 1021 E Pike St, thewildrosebar.com, 6 pm.

Gay Pride Happy Hour

Tommy Gun is opening early at 4 pm and keeping happy hour going until 7 pm, with $3.50 drafts and wells and fancy snacks (trufﬂe popcorn!) for $5 and less. Tommy Gun, 1703 E Olive Way, tommygunseattle.com, 4 pm.

Q Pride Weekend 2013

Rosabell (aka DJ Abel and Ralphi Rosario) make their Q debut. They were nominated for a Grammy! Q Nightclub, 1426 Broadway, qcapitolhill. com, 8 pm.

Lick! Pride Edition

A special Pride edition of Lick!, with music from Dewey Decimal, Mathematix, Res, and Riff Raff, and dancing from the Hill Rats. Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, chopsuey.com, 7:30 pm, $5.

Pride Weekend at the Cuff

Come dance with DJ Lady Bunny! The Cuff, 1533 13th Ave, cuffcomplex.com, $10.

Purr Pride

Kick off Pride weekend with music from DJ Mike Sniffen. Purr Cocktail Lounge, 1518 11th Ave, purrseattle.com, $5.

Jack at the Seattle Eagle

With Brian Malier, Eugene Tamborine, and Trouble! Seattle Eagle, 314 E Pike St, seattleeagle.com.

I Love the ’90s Pride Party

DJ Tanner spins the hits of the ’90s. The Lobby Bar, 916 E Pike St, thelobbyseattle.com, 8 pm, free.

KARAOKE BAR BUSINESS HOURS:12:00PM - 2:00AM (365 DAYS)

KARAOKE (EVERYDAY)

MON-THU 9PM-2AM FRI-SUN 7PM-2AM

COMEDY (EVERY TUESDAY) 7PM - 9PM

(EVERY THURSDAY) 7PM - 9PM

KAYAK CLASSES

2 1/2 HR/ 5 DAY

KELLY O

Suburban Relapse!

DJs Mr. Sister and K-Kost spin punk, riot grrrl, and no-wave, with go-go boys, an outdoor beer garden, and Absolut drink specials. Pony, 1221 E Madison St, ponyseattle.com.

SATURDAY 6/29

Capitol Hill Pride Festival

With food and music and drag performances—oh my! Guests include MC Mark “Mom” Finley, Jinkx Monsoon, the cast of “Le Faux,” and the Nasty Habits. Also, there is a DOGGIE DRAG COSTUME CONTEST. Woof! Broadway, between E Roy St and E John St, capitohillpridefestival.info, 11 am, free, all ages.

25th Annual Pride Breakfast

Pancakes! Central Lutheran Church, 1710 11th Ave, dignityseattle.org, 8 am, $7, all ages.

Wildrose Block Party

Wildrose is one of the best places to be for Pride— this party has great music from Don’t Talk to the Cops!, Glitterbang, Wishbeard, LA Kendall, and more! There will also be a photo booth, beer pong, and cash grab machine. A CASH GRAB MACHINE! Wildrose, 1021 E Pike St, thewildrosebar.com, 1 pm, $25 for a weekend pass.

PrideFest Family Day

There will be games from Camp Tent Trees, drag queen story time, a bouncy house, magic shows, and music from Recess Monkey. And it’s free! Cal Anderson Park, 11th Ave and E Howell St, seattlepridefest.org, noon, free.

Pride Cruise

Booze on a boat! With drag shows, DJs, giveaways, and more! Tip: There’s a cash bar, but no ATM onboard. Argosy Cruises, 1201 Alaskan Way, Pier 55, seattlegaysocialevents.com, noon, $40/$60 VIP.

Men at Sea

With free brunch! Music from Brian Maier, Freddy King of Pants, and Robbie Turner! Champagne! And more! Islander Boat, 1611 Fairview Ave E, brunch at 2:30 pm, cruise at 4 pm, narkmagazine. com, $25.

Queer Carnival

With Ivyyyyyyyyy Wiiinterrrrs! And Bright Light Bright Light! There will also be circus tricks, burlesque, dancing, and everything you’d expect from a crazy queer carnival. FRED Wildlife Refuge, 127 Boylston Ave E, 9 pm, strangertickets.com, $20.

KELLY O

The 2013 Seattle Dyke March

The rally starts at 5 pm at the corner of Broadway and E Pine St with MC Lamar Van Dyke and performances from Rogue Pinay, Militant Child, Hail Storm, and Violent Vickie. The march starts at 7 pm and winds around Capitol Hill before returning to the Seattle Central Community Plaza. Visit seattledykemarch.com for more information.

Jessica Sutta at Neighbours

The Pussycat Doll will be performing live for Pride weekend. With Randy Blue models, DJ Randy Schlager, and host Aleksa Manila. Neighbours, 1509 Broadway, neighboursnightclub, 9 pm.

Happy Hour at Tommy Gun

To celebrate PrideFest, Tommy Gun is hosting an extended happy hour from 2 to 7 pm with $3.50 drafts and wells and snacks for under $5. Tommy Gun, 1703 E Olive Way, tommygunseattle.com, 2 pm.

Q Pride Weekend 2013

With Mike Cruz and Wayne G, who’ve remixed stuff for Gloria Estefan, Cher, Madonna, and more. Q Nightclub, 1426 Broadway, qcapitolhill.com, 8 pm.

15th Annual Rainbow

Women’s Health Fair

Meet a variety of health-care providers from all kinds of different ﬁelds, including midwifery, naturopathy, massage, HIV testing and peer support, and more. Pap tests and mammograms also available for folks 40 and older—to make an appointment call 461-4489. All Pilgrims Church, 500 Broadway E, lbtqhealth-ywca.blogspot.com, noon.

Inferno Pride Party

With Lady Jane DJ, burlesque, hula-hoopers, and Emilio, “Portland’s Latin drag king.” Neighbours, 1509 Broadway, infernodances.com, 6 pm, $10.

Pride Weekend at the Cuff

With DJ and producer John LePage from San Francisco. The Cuff, 1533 13th Ave, cuffcomplex.com, 9 pm, $10.

Purr Pride Block Party

Doors open at noon, with DJ Pavone, DJ Skiddle, and the Peary Twins. Purr Cocktail Lounge, 1518 11th Ave, purrseattle.com, noon, $20.

Play House at the Seattle Eagle

An underwear party with DJ Matt Stands. NO PANTS! Seattle Eagle, 314 E Pike St, seattleeagle.com.

Talcum: Pride Edition

The Emerald City Soul Club celebrates Pride weekend with lots of dancing and some of the best soul you’ll ever hear. Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, chopsuey.com, 8 pm, $5.

Blacked Out & Lit Up

It’s the third annual black-light party with DJ Tanner. The Lobby Bar, 916 E Pike St, thelobbyseattle. com, 8 pm, free.

KELLY O

C.C. Attle’s Pride Saturday

Opening at 8 am! A special breakfast menu available until 2 pm, plus a drink special available all day long. C.C. Attle’s, 1701 E Olive Way, ccattles. net, 8 am, free.

It’s Raining Men

Changes in Wallingford has drink specials and guest DJs and a RAIN OF MEN. Changes, 2103 N 45th St, changesinwallingford.com.

Gay Pride Summer Soulstice

DJ General Meow will be spinning the best of ’60s and ’70s soul and R&B, and the bar will be serving era-inspired cocktails. There will be $3 PBR tallboys served all night, too! BottleNeck Lounge, 2328 E Madison St, bottlenecklounge.com, 9 pm, free.

Get Pretty at Sugar Pill

Makeup artist and beauty consultant Erin Orden will be at Sugar Pill for the launch of Armour Lip Gloss—she’ll help you pick out your perfect Pride color. There will also be guest merchants from Tomboy Exchange and Hourglass Footwear. Sugar Pill Culinary Mercantile and Apothecary, 900 E Pine St, sugarpillseattle. com, 11 am–6 pm, free.

Extreme Hijinx!

acoustic performance by Jamie Nova of Witchburn and Hell’s Belles. Proceeds beneﬁt the Melissa Erickson Foundation. Wildrose, 1021 E Pike St, thewildrosebar.com, 1 pm, $25 for a weekend pass.

2013 Pride Street Party

The Cuff’s annual party features guest host Lady Bunny, Crystal Waters, Stacey Q, and Dominic Paciﬁco. With a performance by the Sea & the Stars too! The Cuff, 1533 13th Ave, cuffcomplex.com, noon, $15.

2013 KEXP Pride Party

Doors open early (3 pm) for an afternoon of music (from DJs Gin and Tonic), hot dogs, go-go dancers, and a wet briefs contest. Later in the evening, DJs Eugene Tambourine, ROY G BIV, and Pavone will perform. Pony, 1221 E Madison St, ponyseattle. com, 3 pm, free.

SUNDAY 6/30

The 2013 Pride Parade

It’s the 39th annual Pride Parade! The parade starts at 11 am at Fourth Ave and Union St and heads north down Fourth Ave to Denny Way. This year’s theme is Equality: Passed, Present & Future. Downtown Seattle, Fourth Ave, seattlepride.org, 11 am, free, all ages.

PrideFest

After the parade, come to the Seattle Center for a fun, rainbow-ﬁlled family-friendly party with tons of music, food, performers, and more. Guests include Kristine W, God-Des & She, Mary Lambert, Princess Superstar, and Adra Boo of Fly Moon Royalty. There will also be something called a silent disco. I have no idea what that means. Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St, seattlepridefest.org, free, noon, all ages.

Pride Brunch

Enjoy a special brunch prepared by the chefs at Tom Douglas’s Palace Ballroom and get pre-reserved VIP seating for the parade at Westlake Plaza! Palace Ballroom, 2100 Fifth Ave, seattlepride.org, $35 for adults/$20 for children, 8:30 am.

Very Marry Brunch

A special Pride menu includes rainbow pancakes and “hangover biscuits and gravy.” Reservations recommended. Trace at W Seattle, 1112 Fourth Ave, 264-6060, wseattle.com, 7 am.

Red: The Party of Pride

A men-only party with music from Phil B & Tony Moran. VIP passes include complimentary water and snacks, backstage access to the DJ stage at PrideFest, and more. Neumos, 925 E Pike St, neumos.com, $30 general admission/$50 VIP, 9 pm.

Wildrose Block Party

With music from JDub, Tony Burns, and a special

KEXP and the 5 Point host a big ol’ Pride party in Tilikum Place Park, right along the parade route. There will be music from KEXP DJs El Toro, Riz, Larry Rose, and Sharlese, plus a beer garden, a cash bar, and a pig roast, with all the ﬁxin’s. Oink oink. Tilikum Place, Fifth Ave and Denny Way, 10 am, free, plates of pig roast $15 starting at noon.

Hula Hula Pride Parade

Karaoke Party

After the parade, head to Hula Hula for karaoke and $5 Bacardi daiquiris. Hula Hula Lounge, 106 First Ave N, hulahula.org, noon.

Q Pride Weekend 2013

With DJ Escape! Q Nightclub, 1426 Broadway, qcapitolhill.com, 8 pm.

Purr Pride Party

Music, drinks, and no cover! Purr Cocktail Lounge, 1518 11th Ave, purrseattle.com, noon, free.

Big Gay(ass) BBQ

DJs! Beer pong! Squirt guns! And more! Seattle Eagle, 314 E Pike St, seattleeagle.com.

C.C. Attle’s Pride Sunday

Opening at 8 am! A special breakfast menu available until 2 pm, and Malibu Rum and Svedka Vodka all day long. And! A Bloody Mary bar. C.C. Attle’s, 1701 E Olive Way, ccattles.net, 8 am, free.

Absolut Beach Party

With DJ Spirit Fingaz and a contest for the best swimwear. The Lobby Bar, 916 E Pike St, thelobbyseattle.com, 3 pm, free.

Happy Pride Ho Down

OutWest opens at 4 pm, so you can celebrate Pride in western style in West Seattle. OutWest, 5401 California Ave SW, www.outwestbar.com, 4 pm.

Gay Movie Marathon

Wind down from the pride parties with a marathon of movies, including Mommie Dearest (showing at 5 pm), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (showing at 7 pm), and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (showing at 10 pm). Loud singing is encouraged, they say! BottleNeck Lounge, 2328 E Madison St, bottlenecklounge.com, 5 pm, free.

The World’s Tiniest Tea Dance

Resident favorites Freddy King of Pants and DJ El Toro are joined by special guest DJ Colby B. The party is hosted by Ade, too! Pony, 1221 E Madison St, ponyseattle.com, 6 pm, free.

theSTRANGER SUGGESTS

Allyce Wood ART

In Allyce Wood’s new drawings, the world has run dry. Everything seems like a husk of itself. Harvests are ﬁbrous and striated, like precise medical drawings of muscles, tendons, bones. Dead and hollow pieces of wood are garlanded by parched leaves. Braids and nests have withered. Each drawing is so exactly beautiful as to be softly painful; each is a pang of self-conscious nostalgia for a lost world where these things are more alive. Though small, the show at SOIL, called Latent Utility: Present but Not Active Worth, feels like a major step forward for the young Seattle artist. (SOIL Gallery, 112 Third Ave S, soilart. org, noon–5 pm, free, through June 29) JEN GRAVES

Gender Blender

DRAG/NIGHTLIFE

‘Other Desert Cities’ THEATER

Picture the Wyeths in their grand Palm Springs living room on Christmas Eve: Dad is a gentle Republican politico and John McCain doppelgänger. Son is a goofball TV producer. Daughter is a lefty writer. Mom is a hilariously cruel Reagan-worshipper. “You are never going to meet anyone,” she says to her daughter, “if you continue to dress like a refugee from a library in Kabul.” That living room quickly becomes a family battleﬁeld, and watching the sparks ﬂy between mom (Pamela Reed) and daughter (Marya Sea Kaminski) is like watching someone welding. (ACT Theater, 700 Union St, acttheatre. org, 7:30 pm, $57–$62, through June 30) BRENDAN KILEY

Seattle Pride will be awash in world-class drag queens, but tonight brings the densest concentration of brilliance. On the bill: America’s New Drag Superstar™ Jinkx Monsoon, the unfuckwithable Alaska Thunderfuck, and a good-sized zoo of Seattle drag stars (Jackie Hell! Robbie Turner! Ade! Aleksa Manila! Mama Tits!). Hosting the whole thing: the dazzlingly talented Ben DeLaCreme. Bonus: Proceeds beneﬁt Gay City and Rusty Nails. SO MUCH DRAGGY GOODNESS. (Conﬁdential to Alaska: Your construction-site manager was the funniest thing I’ve seen all year.) (Neighbours, 1509 Broadway, narkmagazine.com, 9 pm–4 am, $35/$75 VIP, 21+) DAVID SCHMADER

Trans* Pride PRIDE

Our fair state provides some of the country’s strongest antidiscrimination laws for transgender people—which is great. But cultural discrimination is a more tenacious bug. Even in Seattle, trans people are routinely subject to contemptuous stares, cruelly ignorant medical care, hate crimes, and derision from their gay brethren. The remedy is visibility and support. In solidarity with our trans brothers, sisters, and siblings of queer gender, trans and nontrans folk should show solidarity at Trans* Pride. We may have passed gay marriage, but our ﬁght for equality is not over. (Assemble at 5 pm, Broadway and E Pine St, march at 6 pm to Cal Anderson Park, party till 10 pm, transprideseattle.org) DOMINIC HOLDEN

Elliott Bay 40th Anniversary BOOKS

Elliott Bay Book Company’s booksellers have been slinging books at your head (ﬁguratively speaking) for four decades now, and they’re celebrating with a mini-festival of gigantic local talent. Ryan Boudinot, Jim Lynch, and Maria Semple will honor a cornerstone of Seattle’s world-class literary scene. But more than marking an arbitrary number, the fact that Elliott Bay is doing better than ever since it moved from Pioneer Square to Capitol Hill three years ago is the best reason I can think of to throw a party, so let’s get to it. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, elliottbaybook.com, 7 pm, free) PAUL CONSTANT

Booker T. Jones

Happy Hour at Monsoon

If he’d only played on and cowritten “Green Onions,” keyboardist Booker T. Jones still would be a legend, as that’s one of the few songs that can be classiﬁed as perfect. Obviously, Jones has done tons of tremendous work since that 1962 smash, both with Stax house band the M.G.s and solo. The 68-year-old has cut three albums in the last four years, all with more spry, edgy funk than you’d expect from a sexagenarian. He’ll be supporting 2013’s Sound the Alarm tonight. (Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave, jazzalley.com, 7:30 pm, $32.50, all ages, June 27–30) DAVE SEGAL

Comedy Womb

CHOW/DRINK With its tranquil room, excellent service, and elegant Paciﬁc Northwest/Vietnamese cuisine, Monsoon has been quietly delicious on Capitol Hill’s 19th Avenue East since 1999. It can be spendy, but look: Happy hour to the rescue! Every damn day from 3 to 5 p.m., and again from 9 p.m. to close (call ahead), a menu of not-too-small plates— including papaya salad with grilled prawns, ﬂank steak là lôt, and kabocha squash dumplings—go for $5 to $7 each, with wine and cocktail specials to match. Also note: Sister-restaurants Monsoon East and Ba Bar have great happy hours, too. (Monsoon, 615 19th Ave E, 325-2111, 3–5 pm and 9 pm–close) BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

The rules of this pro-lady standup night are refreshing in their simplicity: no misogyny and no heckling. Based on the size, quality, and diversity of the crowds it attracts, the rules work. Every Tuesday night, fans pack the Rendezvous Grotto to watch two and a half hours of comedy, about half of which is delivered by women. Having so many women onstage and in the crowd makes male comics more mindful of their sets and their audience, while reinforcing what should be obvious: Women can be just as funny (or unfunny) as men. Equality, hurrah! (Rendezvous Grotto, 2322 Second Ave, comedywomb.com, 8 pm, $5, 21+) CIENNA MADRID

Marya Sea Kaminski

Jinkx Monsoon and Alaska Thunderfuck

Maria Semple

ARTS

Dirty socks and dreamscapes…below Two species of popes…49 Population-control pajamas…50

Art from Both Places

The Startling Openness and Locked-Up Secrets of Klara Glosova

BY JEN GRAVES

Aperson can have a whole lot of fun— and accidentally break a great many things—walking through Klara Glosova’s show at Gallery4Culture. It’s a treasure hunt of ceramics—charismatic clay sculptures scattered on the floors, propped against walls, perched on shelf edges. Some of the art is camouflaged, like the fourfold top of a cardboard box that got rumpled in the process of folding. You could swear it needs sweeping away, but it turns out to be made of clay and placed on the floor deliberately.

Glosova divided the show into two sides, domestic life versus dream life, and the Lshaped gallery lends itself to the division. On the Seattle scene, unlike most artists, Glosova has dual roles: impresario and maker. She created the NEPO 5K Don’t Run, an annual walk studded with the contemporary art of dozens of local artists. She also hosts blowout one-night exhibitions in her Beacon Hill home, where her husband and two children also live. Art and performances have appeared next to the toilets, in the recycling bins, on the bed pillows, in the shower. The place is called NEPO House, a play on open house—and the extent of the openness can be startling. I’ve been on this woman’s bed and in her bathtub. But NEPO House also reveals how little about a person’s life resides on the surface. Despite having been to nearly every NEPO House event, I do not know the life story of Czech-born Klara Glosova. She has not deployed her home as an extension of her identity. She’s used it as a site for reﬂection about art, which constitutes a quietly radical vision for an art that’s intimate but not egocentric, personal yet collective. Glosova’s art is never the center of NEPO events, because all the many artists are represented equally.

Entering Gallery4Culture—a public space distinctly different from her private home— feels like meeting her all over again, and oddly, more intimately.

Rather than the usual handout that lists the titles of artworks in an exhibition, Glosova hand-drew a map, turning art-viewing into a recreational adventure and abolishing gallery stufﬁness. The pathway into the gallery is a procession of boys’ athletic socks, made of clay. At the path’s terminus, looking like they’ve also been tossed to the ground, there’s a pair of girls’ shorts, the manufacturers’ tag painted precisely. Farther inside the gallery you ﬁnd cookbooks, bedcovers, slippers, piles of folded clothes—a tour through anyhome.

Glosova has displayed her ceramic doubles of everyday objects before, but here she’s synthesizing them with color photographs, esoteric texts written in ropy clay, and an abundance of sketches from her dream notebooks. The photographic prints are snapshots freezing ﬂeeting views: a plant in full ﬂower, the just-so way the moon hangs above that wintry tree. They’re simple moments memorialized, just as the ceramics perpetuate simple objects soon to be outgrown, used up, and discarded.

REVIEW

Klara Glosova: It’s growing on me. Gallery4Culture Through June 28

Then comes the dream world, setting the plainness of the previous objects on edge. Fragments remembered upon waking fill an entire wall (though unfortunately, to preserve the notebooks, the sketches were photocopied). The sketches are tantalizing, never finishing the stories they start. With so many drawings and sculptures, there is so much narrative traffic in the gallery that the concentrated madness that derives from awakening from a dream gets diffused; the show could have used a good editor. Certain material stands out, like the wizened old cowboy—David Lynch-ian—who pushes toward you with his pointer finger an enigmatic red “Gift Card.” Or the tiny, lumpen, seated figure appearing to shoulder an emotional burden more massive than someone that little can possibly take.

Glosova’s art is feminist in that it links naturally to artists whose work has reﬂected on their day-to-day routines as mothers. Imagine her ceramics exhibited alongside 1960s acrylic paintings of laundry by Sylvia Mangold, Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s art of performing chores and Mary Kelly’s exhaustive

Post-Partum Document from the 1970s, and Laurie Simmons’s oversized dollhouse photographs from the ’80s and ’90s. One sculpture by Glosova, called The Dark Side and alone in a side area, is a pair of pantyhose stuffed with clay that unevenly encrusted and stained them. It has the grim, dingy reality of an Edward Kienholz assemblage.

When it’s rooted in the groundless territory of dreams, Glosova’s art is cryptic, locked in mystery, a heavy yet ﬂoating vault. But her son’s dirty socks bring her screaming back to earth. “I dream like crazy,” Glosova tells me. “Sometimes I feel real split, between two worlds.” She made a good decision, to make art from both places.

ART

Getting Shot

Art About Guns, from Pew-Pew to No Safety

BY NATHANIEL DEINES

Sorry to disappoint all you constitutional scholars, but nothing in the group show 2nd Amendment: A Visual Dialogue really accesses the rational-legal issues surrounding the Second Amendment. Instead, the art at Bherd Studios is mostly an exploration of 12 artists’ personal relationships to ﬁrearms and, in one sorta puzzling case, swords.

REVIEW

2nd Amendment: A Visual Dialogue

Bherd Studios Through July 3

Some of the pieces have an element of joy, something that gets at the playful, consequence-free part of guns (because that’s totally a thing, right?). Like, say, getting shot in the woods just for funsies. There are two fantastical drawings of beautiful women holding popular ﬁrearms in rapt adoration, made by an artist who, until this exhibition, has shown her work exclusively at gun shows (Tatiana Kalderash). Also, taking up a good bit of ﬂoor space, there’s an oversize, teenage-wet-dream-pew-pew-ray-gun-type thing (Miguel Edwards).

Kate Protage’s simple, deliberate linoleum block prints of bullets—just crowds of them stamped on white backgrounds—stand in contrast to those romanticizing works. The series is called One Minute, each print illustrating a particular weapon’s ﬁring rate, its bullet spray over a minute’s time. Protage seems to understand that the power of the gun is its modesty, its smallness, its lack of space. The grains of tightly packed powder, lead (the densest matter) snug in the shell, the tiny explosion of the bullet sent so quickly as to collapse a great distance into nauseating nearness.

There are distinctly wearier pieces, too, like the video from Stranger Genius Award ﬁnalist Rodrigo Valenzuela. The camera drives along a sunbaked neighborhood in bleak disrepair, while an unseen man in voiceover describes the arrival of guerrillas in his village. The footage slips, repeats, and runs behind a layer of thick black bars, like it’s a full-color phenakistoscope. The footage is meditative, pretty, and nervous. What happened next?

Across the room, Adream de Valdivia hangs a large tapestry titled Father’s

LOOSE LIPS

• Bumbershoot 2013 has ﬁnally announced its comedy lineup. And boy does Bumbershoot love funny men Patton Oswalt returns, along with weirdo Todd Barry, pothead Doug Benson, and former Seattleite Reggie Watts Tim “The Ladies Man” Meadow, Joe Mande, Matt Besser, Kyle Dunnigan, and Jerrod Carmichael will also be performing, and the Vera Project’s stage will be dedicated to Northwest-based hilarity. There will be some funny ladies, too—four, in fact: Morgan Murphy Natasha Leggero Emily Heller and Julie Klausner (with special guest Ted Leo! Eeee!). Hooray for a good, funny lineup, but more ladies next year, please!

• HONK! Fest honked out all weekend, with marching bands making people happy all over town. Friday night Georgetown highlights included Sound Wave doing Macklemore, with a lady wearing Day-Glo orange REALLY enjoying it, and a deafeningly awesome battle of the bands between Portland’s Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers and the Seahawks Blue Thunder Drumline. Verdict on the battle: Blue Thunder was more fun, but LRSD is who we’ll want out in front when the revolution comes.

• Saturday night was the private opening for The Western Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off the Mother, Heather Hart’s new installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, which ofﬁcially opens Thursday. The piece is a house rooftop jutting out of the hillside. To celebrate, Amelia Love Clearhart climbed up on the roof—as everyone is invited to do—and sang the classic Al Jarreau tune that goes, “Does anyone wanna go dance up on the roof?” Despite her best efforts to get people to shake it, the famous Seattle stoniness was in full effect. Pointing at her own awesome ass, she asked the crowd, “Do you have one of these?”

• Are you interesting? Do you dig On the Boards? Do you want to be one of OtB’s new “interesting-person” ambassadors? The idea of the Ambassador Project is to bust the bonds of insularity and assemble ﬁve three-person teams to call some shots at OtB, including curating, artist interviews (onstage and on the website), and parties. On the Boards is looking for all kinds of folks: programmers, DJs, sculptors, musicians, graphic designers, architects, editors, photographers, rappers, gamers, vinters and distillers, and other people who grapple with aesthetic issues on a day-to-day basis. See ontheboards.org for full info.

• TEDxSeattle, the regional version of the international inspiring-speeches phenomenon, was a mixed bag at Seattle Center last weekend. Several of the “great ideas” were neither new nor interesting takes on the old (“Hi! I’m a guy who believes in green buildings because nature is sexy!”). It was a weird mix of not-rigorous and self-important Speakers are required to attend three training sessions; afterward, one said, “They make you feel like it’s the most important thing you’re ever going to do.” A highlight was photographer Matika Wilbur, who introduced her Project 562, documenting all 562 federally recognized tribes, with stories of racism, genocide, and hope. When Wilbur ﬁnished, telegenic host Jenni Hogan, unbelievably, called Wilbur “adorable.”

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, KLARA GLOSOVA

DON’T STEP ON HIM! This sad clay man is only three inches tall and sits on the ﬂoor.

Mondays and Fridays from 6 p m to midnight.

WETHINKCAPITOLHILLCOULDUSEMORE

MAGIC. PHOENIX

COMICS & GAMES 113 Broadway E, Seattle

Funerary Mantle. The mantle, traditionally used to wrap the dead, was made to honor his father and also other family members lost to cartel violence in Mexico. The symbol-heavy images on the tapestry appear to be applied mechanically, as if commercially printed. Rather than detracting from the work, its easy reproducibility acts as a grim promise of the continuing output of the war on drugs.

Most affective was Janet Galore’s Gunnilingus, a video playing on a small, charmingly framed screen showing a close-up of a Smith & Wesson .357, fully cocked, so as to allow a man with a handsome chin to tongue the hammer and rear sight with expert agility. The artist suggests the purpose of the piece is to convert the phallic power of guns into something feminine, but what the video does best is to short-circuit all the knotted discourse around guns and hit you on a visceral (lingual?) level. Even if you’ve never dry-fired a gun, you can imagine the sharp snap of the hammer as it closes. In the video, the man keeps his finger on the trigger as the tongue slides in and out of danger. The finger could easily slip, the hammer snap, and that softest, most sensitive bit of flesh get run through. This image of the gun portrays no safety or reassurance. You can only watch and wince and hope for the best.

Even if you’ve never dry-fired a gun, you can imagine the sharp snap of the hammer.

$25)—hereafter, for the sake of my aching word count, referred to as House—reads like it takes place entirely in The Zone. House begins, “Beneath the unscrolling story of new sun and stars and then-lonely moon,” when the narrator’s wife “began to sing some new possessions into the interior of our house.” Physics don’t work as you’d expect them to, characters are never named, and no other entirely human characters besides these two will come onto the scene for the rest of the book’s 312 pages. The number of concrete things is slim: We have a house, though the interiors are always shifting. Outside the house are woods and a lake, where our protagonist hunts and ﬁshes. Somewhere in the woods, there’s a bear lurking around. And the protagonist’s wife fades in and out of attention; she becomes pregnant, and then something bad happens and her grief manipulates their world, becomes solid and puts distance between them. House feels like a Tolkien epic set inside Plato’s cave written by Carl Jung, and it’s just as frustrating and mind-boggling and satisfying as you’d expect a book with that description to be.

BOOKS

Shifting Foundations

Matt Bell’s Novel Springs Out of The Zone

BY PAUL CONSTANT

MAt some points, it appears to be about the relationship between a man and a woman, and how that relationship changes when they make the impossible decision to bring a third life, something new, into the world. But at other points, the book seems to lose a plot entirely, and it becomes about nothing other than language.

A few chapters early and late in House annoy more than charm with their mantra-like repetition, but Bell’s language is for the most part enticing. It guides us through passages like this one, when our protagonist travels through his house and ﬁnds rooms ﬁlled with strange newness:

ost writers complain of an afﬂiction that strikes when they get too tired or they’ve written too much in a day, or when they’re not writing about something they care about: They fall into The Zone, a place where characters stop doing things that feel normal, when locations unmoor from the earth and ﬂoat around and change shape, when the writing becomes more about the writing itself than a person or place or thing. Matt Bell’s novel In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (Soho,

Some held objects obvious in purposed pairings—the crib and the cradle, the bottle and the blanket—but others less so: In one room, I saw the death of a cougar but not the cougar itself; in another, the moltings of a thousand butterflies; and then a single giant specimen of the same species, bigger than any I’d seen, first flapping slowly about the room, then becoming more and more agitated as it failed to find its escape, thrashing its iridescent body against the walls of its cell until its magnificent wings were broken.

If you crave naturalism, you should run, far away. But if beautiful, haunting language is what you want most, welcome to The Zone.

17171 Bothell Way NE • Lake Forest Par

COURTESY

JANET GALORE ‘Gunnilingus,’ at Bherd Studios in Greenwood.

BOOKS

Good Pope, Bad Pope

The Hatred of Benedict and Francis, Measured in Books

BY PAUL CONSTANT

In his brief time as Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger dressed ostentatiously. He wore fancy red shoes and golden robes and otherwise aspired to resemble a monarch from a time before democracy. His wardrobe was a “fuck you” to millions of poor Catholics around the world who revered him, and yet his daring fashion may be his most admirable quality.

REVIEW

The Trial of Pope Benedict by Daniel Gawthrop (Arsenal Pulp Press, $15.95)

On Heaven and Earth by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Abraham Skorka (Image, $22)

Framed as a biography of Ratzinger, Daniel Gawthrop’s The Trial of Pope Benedict lists the erstwhile pope’s multitude of faults with passion and conviction. Besides the more commonly known complaints about Ratzinger’s public ambivalence about the Catholic Church’s pedophilia problem (and his behind-the-scenes work to cover up the scandal), he also loathed the forward-thinking changes brought to the church after the Vatican II conference of the mid-1960s, and his very public snubs of Islam during a visit to Turkey may have been an attempt to incite religious violence.

Gawthrop’s understanding of Ratzinger’s biography and writings allow him to make some assumptions about the man’s character that are, at the very least, fun to entertain. (Of the Turkish visit, Gawthrop theorizes that Ratzinger appreciates Islam’s conservatism: “It’s quite possible that Ratzinger was coming out of the closet here as a moderate Islamophile, a Catholic suffering the ecclesial equivalent of that old Freudian canard, penis envy.”) While the book’s framing sequence, which imagines Ratzinger on trial at the Hague, is a step too far toward the dramatic, the rest of The Trial is an informative and damning account of a hateful mind that ascended to the global stage.

Ratzinger’s successor is making a splash on bookshelves, too. Quickly translated into English and published in the United States in those heady days immediately after Pope Francis was conﬁrmed, On Heaven and Earth is a pleasure to read. The book,

originally published in Argentina in 1995, is a dialogue between then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka about faith, other religions, fundamentalism, and guilt. It’s a conversation between two men of great intellect and great faith.

While at certain points some readers will part ways with Bergoglio, there are plenty of human revelations that will charm anyone with a pulse. Bergoglio admits that as a young seminarian, he nearly gave up his calling after becoming “enchanted by a young woman at my uncle’s wedding.” It’s a refreshingly un-Benedict-like admission of humanity, but ultimately it’s to illustrate his afﬁrmation that celibacy is important for priests. (In the same paragraph where he admits celibacy didn’t become a clerical law until 1100, Bergoglio afﬁrms: “Tradition has weight and validity. Catholic priests chose celibacy little by little.”)

Just when you start to believe that Bergoglio will make a wholly different kind of pope than Benedict—he’s practically a different species—you come to the more bruising passages. Near the end, his opinions on gay marriage spring not from his typical amiable thoughtfulness, but from pure-cut bigotry. Bergoglio fumbles toward the sciences to make his case, calling gay marriage “anthropologic regression,” and saying that while he doesn’t hate gay people, “every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity.” After so many decent statements delivered throughout On Heaven and Earth, this Ratzingerian retreat from logic and from love is more than just uncomfortable—it’s disappointing.

DANCE

Love Is Dead And Donald Byrd Performs the Autopsy

BY MELODY DATZ

In the online synopsis for Autopsy of Love, choreographer Donald Byrd gives us some handy study-guide questions: “Is romantic love a phantom state? Why do we crave myths that make us unhappy? How does our clinging behavior make real love impossible?”

REVIEW

Autopsy of Love Spectrum Dance Theater at Emerald City Aerialdrome Through June 29

Byrd’s self-consciously philosophical approach has its pros and cons. While I’d much rather see a work of dance that asks serious questions than another classical story-ballet fairy tale, Byrd’s thesis,

Other Desert Cities Now-June 30

The mythology of an iconic Republican family is challenged when their liberal daughter announces that she’s planning the publication of a memoir.

An Evening With Groucho Now-June 30

He’s back! Awardwinning actor/director Frank Ferrante returns with his internationally renowned portrayal of legendary comedian Groucho Marx.

ACT’s New Play Award

July 27 and 28

Come see the early

AUTOPSY OF LOVE Sexy, sultry, dead.

readings of Red Earth, Gold Gate, Shadow Sky by Mark Jenkins, an exciting new play that will be produced in our 2014 Mainstage season.

Construction Zone

July 23, Aug 27

The new hit play reading series returns. July’s installment is Battle Hymn by Jim Leonard. August is The Dangers of Electric Lightning by Ben Clawson.

(6/26) Sanjay Basu

The Human Toll of the Recession

(6/27) Jonathan Lyons How Benjamin Franklin Enlightened America

SNAP

(6/30) Michael D’Antonio ‘Mortal Sins’

(7/1) Reclaiming Prosperity

Building Stability & Security for Part-Time, Temporary, & Contract Workers

-SOLD OUT-

UniversityBookStore&ClarionWest

(7/2) Neil Gaiman

‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’

(7/10) Joseph J. Ellis

The Revolutionary Summer of 1776

(7/11) Susan Schneider

The Science of Consequences

( 7/13) Aisha Tyler Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation

(7/14) Jewish Peoplehood Crisis A Call For Conversation

CityClub Seattle (7/18) Civil Discourse

Moving to the Heart of the Matter

(7/25) Manuel Pastor Reclaiming Prosperity

Therapy for the People for individuals, couples &

families

Nicole Donahue, MA, LMFT

(206) 486-2655 www.nicoledonahue.com sliding scale available

staging, and presentation are so heavyhanded and theatrical, they distract from pristine choreography that could stand on its own.

The audience sits on opposite sides of the room in raised seats, purposefully designed to feel like the autopsy theater of a medical school. On the stage: a metal gurney, a drab ofﬁce chair, seven freestanding white doors, and a baby grand piano and podium resting under white sheets.

Actor Andrew McGinn, pianist Judith Cohen, and bass-baritone Clayton Brainerd enter—wearing white lab coats, clipboards in hand—and McGinn delivers a monologue about love while the dancers take their places. An Amy Winehouse song plays while a stunning couple—Jade Solomon Curtis and Donald Jones Jr.—perform a sexy, sultry blues-style duet. Their eyes are bright, and they move with an ease that makes it seem as if they’ve been dancing this way forever. To respond to Byrd’s primary question: How can passionate love be a phantom state when this display of passion is so freaking strong not 20 feet from where we’re sitting?

The dances, set alternately to Winehouse and the music of Robert Schumann (with lyrics by Heinrich Heine), are varied stories on the theme of love. At the end of the ﬁrst Winehouse number, Curtis abruptly leaves Jones and pairs up with someone else. At another point, frenzied dancers run around, crashing into and humping each other, eliciting nervous titters from the audience. Meanwhile, McGinn sits in the swivel chair or wanders the perimeter, frowning and taking notes, examining the state—or death—of love.

There’s a good mix of solos, duets, and even a line dance to keep the evening moving. Ty Alexander Cheng moves with an athletic fluidity uncommon in many male dancers—flinging himself to the floor and peeling himself back up, rolling his torso so that each muscle and rib is perfectly defined. New company member Shadou Mintrone is full of attitude and punky power, her perfectly raised eyebrow matching her constant rebuffs as each of her partners fails to meet her romantic expectations. Mintrone’s strong jazz dance background is a nice addition to Spectrum—her movement has just enough spitfire to match the balletic and lyrical styles of the others. The duets use each dancer’s individual strengths to evoke the various emotions of a love affair. Despite the heavy-handedness of the lab coats, clipboards, and staging, Autopsy can be heartbreaking.

said, “autopsy means ‘to know for yourself.’ And you only autopsy things that you know are dead.”

THEATER

Gone to Pot

The Financial Lives of the Poets Is a Rollicking Drug Farce

BY BRENDAN KILEY

SREVIEW

The Financial Lives of the Poets Book-It Theater at Jones Playhouse Through June 30

uburban dad Matt Prior is in trouble— the especially pitiable kind of trouble that results from bad choices compounded with worse luck. A career business reporter, Prior quit his newspaper job to start a website devoted to poets who wrote about money. That didn’t pan out—surprise, surprise—so he crawled back to the paper and was promptly laid off. Now he’s deep in debt and his house might be seized within the week, turning him, his two sons, his senile father, and his increasingly unhappy wife into ﬁve more economic refugees of the Great Recession. A late-night encounter at a 7-Eleven with some local stoners gives him the bright idea to become a pot dealer for some fast cash. That’s where his problems really begin.

He rolls his torso so each muscle and rib is perfectly defined.

Originally an entertaining novel by Jess Walter, now a rollicking stage comedy adapted and directed by Myra Platt, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a drug farce that sweeps its characters along like white-water rapids— as if the characters in Breaking Bad woke up to find themselves in A Confederacy of Dunces Evan Whitfield plays Prior with a combination of wildeyed exuberance and depressive sweetness, and the rest of the 17-member cast keeps the pace jumping with too many high-caliber performances to name. A sampling: Todd Jefferson Moore as the gruff and senile father, Mike Mathieu (of comedy duo the Cody Rivers Show) as Prior’s romantic rival who works at a fictionalized Home Depot, Jennifer Sue Johnson as the wry but distant wife. In one scene, Prior describes her “population-control pajamas,” made of “burlap, fiberglass insulation, and razor wire.”

But that is Byrd’s way. He wears his heart on his sleeve and presents his choreography through lofty themes and theses. During the postshow discussion, someone asked why the autopsy theme was necessary. “Well,” Byrd

The dialogue is sharp and funny—“You’re selling drugs to pay for private Catholic school? That’s so Iran-Contra!”—and though the exposition can be a little heavy on cute alliteration, it’s a small ﬂaw in this thoroughly enjoyable new play.

ALAN ALABASTRO

THE FINANCIAL LIVES OF THE POETS Breaking Bad meets A Confederacy of Dunces

ARTS CALENDAR Only the most noteworthy stuff.

ART

Museums

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

Fashion blockbuster! Future

Beauty is three decades of design from the country that’s had the single greatest influence on experimental world fashion during that period: Japan. You’ll see 80 gowns, by creators from Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto to Junya Watanabe, plus videos of runway shows, photographs, and ephemera made in response by contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman. The only question is: What will you wear? $17. WedSun. Through Sept 8. 1300 First Ave, 625-8900.

Gallery Openings

4CULTURE I Need Nothing: Tom Hughes builds forts! And you can even go inside them sometimes, but they’re small, so there’s only room for you and your painful childhood memories. Free. Thurs July 11, 6-8 pm. Mon-Fri. Through July 26. 101

Prefontaine Pl S

CLOUD GALLERY

Mark Walker: An exhibition of this British sculptor and sometimes iconographer. Free. July 1-31. 901 E Pike

FOSTER/WHITE GALLERY

Enchanted : Boundaries of aesthetics and species are blurred with Lindsay Pichaske’s kinda-familiar-looking-but-notreally animal figures. Space In Between : Eva Isaksen is one of those rare, non-schlocky collage artists. Free. Tues-Sat. Through July 27. 220 Third Ave S, 622-2833.

HARD L

QUEERVOYANT: Sixteen queer artists celebrate Pride with their imaginings of the future to come. Includes work from Timothy Rysdyke and MKNZ Porritt, creator of the tattoo glory hole. Free. Reception Thurs June 27, 6-10 pm. June 27-30. 1216 10th Ave, Ste L

M. ROSETTA HUNTER

ART GALLERY (SEATTLE CENTRAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE)

Leaves From a Different Tree: Paintings and mixed media from Lucia Enriquez, Kanetaka Ikeda, and the ever-interesting Mark Takamichi Miller. Free. Reception Thurs June 27, 6-8 pm. Mon-Fri. Through Aug 16. 1701 Broadway, #2BE2116 344-4379.

Continuing Exhibitions

4CULTURE

It’s Growing on Me : Klara Glosova. See review, page 47. Free. Mon-Fri. Through June 28. 101 Prefontaine Pl S

BHERD STU DIOS

2nd Amendment: A Visual Dialogue. See review, page 47. Free. Wed-Fri. Through July 3. 312 N 85th St, 234-8348.

JAMES HARRIS GALLERY

Steve Davis: Back to the Garden: Following his portrait series on incarcerated youth and institutionalized mentally ill people, Davis turns his camera on self-identified “modern ‘hippies.’” Draw whatever conclusions from this progression you like. Suara Welitoff: Everything’s happening all the time: Washedout, polarized video poetry. Free. Thurs-Sat. Through Aug 3. 604 Second Ave, 903-6220.

PLATFORM GALLERY

How to Stay Alive in the Woods: Naturalist painting, dioramas, and science projects collide and erupt in sculptures and paintings by Patte Loper. Free. Tues-Sat. Through July 27. 114 Third Ave S, 323-2808.

SOIL Latent Utility: Present But Not Active Worth: A breakthrough show for the young Seattle artist Allyce Wood of nine quietly magnetic drawings in which the world has run dry. Free. WedSat. Through June 29. 112 Third Ave S 264-8061.

Events

ØRNULF OPDAHL Opdahl comes to visit all the way from Norway to discuss

VOICES OF INDIA

his show, Mood Paintings of the North Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 NW 67th St, 789-5707. Free with admission. Sat June 29, 2 pm.

AKIKO FUKAI

The director of the Kyoto Costume Institute and curator of Future Beauty discusses the show and Japanese fashion in general. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, 625-8900. $10. Thurs June 27, 7 pm.

SWIMMING THE LIST

Check out the open rehearsals for Stranger Genius Award winner Susie Lee’s fusion of dance, technology, and music before the ensemble leaves for the Beijing International Fringe Festival. The Project Room 1315 E Pine St. Free. Mon-Wed June 24-26, 5-7 pm. Full preview and discussion Sat June 29, 6-7:30pm. visualart@thestranger.com

READINGS

Wed 6/26

WORDS ON WATER: VOICES OF INDIA

This three-night festival features authors Sudeep Chakravarti, Sonia Faleiro, Anu Taranath, Sonora Jha, and Mridula Koshy. Seattle Asian Art Museum (Volunteer Park) , 1400 E Prospect St, 624-6600. $12. 7 pm.

Thurs 6/27

JENNIFER BROZEK, KAT

RICHARDSON, LILLIAN COHEN-MOORE

Brozek is the author of The Children of Anu Richardson is the popular local author of the Greywalker series, but her most recent work appears in the anthology Clockwork Fairy Tales Cohen-Moore’s book Guide to the Village by the Sea was reportedly “crowd-funded.” University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. free. 4 am.

INGRID THOFT

Ridley Pearson calls Thoft’s debut novel Loyalty a “seductive combination of sass and smarts.”

It’s about a female private investigator. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 6343400. 7 pm.

JEANNETTE WALLS

The Silver Star is the second novel from the celebrated author of the memoir The Glass Castle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, 624-6600. free. 7 pm.

LIT FIX 2

The second outing of this booze-and-music-and-readers series features musician and young-adult author Danbert Nobacon, poet Arlene Kim, biographer Neal Thompson, and memoirist Brian McGuigan. The musical guests have yet to be determined at press time. Rendezvous Jewelbox Theatre, 2322 2nd Ave, 4415823. $5. 7 pm.

LOUNGE ACTS

This is a reading of a poem by Doug Nufer in the form of a lounge act with Nufer on vocals, the great Wally Shoup on sax, and Bill Horist on guitar. Readings by Phil Sparks, Adam Kessler, and others will follow. Barça , 1510 11th Ave, 3258263. Free. 7 pm.

WORDS ON WATER:

VOICES OF INDIA

JONATHAN LYONS

This is a reading by the author of The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin Franklin and Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America Ben Franklin deserves all the love he gets. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 624-6600. $5. 7:30 pm.

Fri 6/28

MATT BELL

See review, page TK. Elliott Bay Book Company , 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. free. 7 pm.

WORDS ON WATER:

Sat 6/29

SAHAR DELIJANI

Children of the Jacaranda Tree is a novel set in post-revolutionary Iran. It’s about three generations of a family. University Book Store 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. free. 6 pm.

ELLIOTT BAY 40TH

ANNIVERSARY

Elliott Bay Book Company has been slinging books at your head (figuratively speaking) for four decades now, and they’re celebrating with a minifestival of gigantic local talent in one reading. Confirmed to appear as of right now: Ryan Boudinot, Jim Lynch, and Maria Semple. Elliott Bay Book Company 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm.

Sun 6/30

MICHAEL D’ANTONIO

D’Antonio, who has won the Pulitzer Prize, reads from his new book, Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal. It’s a book that looks inside of an organization that set out to cover up pedophilia, and examines why and how they did that. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 634-3400. $5. 7:30 pm.

Mon 7/1

AMY LARKIN Environmental Debt: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy is about how globalism means globalwarmingism. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 6246600. free. 7 pm.

JAMES LOUGH

This Ain’t No Holiday Inn is an oral history of the Chelsea Hotel, which is where some of New York’s biggest lowlifes and most famous people (and most famous lowlifes) lived. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. free. 7 pm.

Tues 7/2

KEVIN HEARNE

The sixth book of Hearne’s supernatural series stars “the 2000-year-old druid Atticus O’Sullivan” and the villain this time around is Loki. University Book Store 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. free. 7 pm.

NEIL GAIMAN

This reading for The Ocean at the End of the Lane is already sold out, so if you don’t have tickets, you should feel really bad about yourself right now. Town Hall 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. $35. 7 pm.

TOMMY ZURHELLEN

Apostle Islands reimagines the New Testament in the North Dakota Badlands. It’s a sequel to Zurhellen’s last novel, Nazareth Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm. readings@thestranger.com

THEATER

Opening and Current Runs

THE FINANCIAL

LIVES OF THE POETS

See review, page 50.

HEAVY LAY THE CHAINS

A new play by Josh Hornbeck (of a theater company called “quiet”) about Douglass Alexander, the first African-American president of the United States, who has to negotiate between his integrity and compromise to do justice to his legacy as America’s “first black president.” Broadway Performance Hall , 1625 Broadway, www.brownpapertickets.com. $7-$12. Wed-Fri at 7:30 pm, Sat at 2 and 7:30 pm. Through June 29.

THE HORRIBLE LAMB

“After a run at the Seattle Fringe Festival in 2012, Sauer Bauer Productions has decided to remount its goofball televangelist

quasi-musical The Horrible Lamb! at West of Lenin. Written and co-produced by Tiffany Louquet, Lamb tracks Lyle (Caleb Stengel), a depressed slob who envies the success of Hal O’Luyah (Ben Erickson), a former childhood nemesis turned Christian superstar. Lyle wants in on the action, insinuates himself into Hal’s life, then tries to steal his (figurative) crown of solid-gold thorns. Lamb feels like a bunch of friends yukking it up together, which is great for them, but not always so great for those of us outside their circle. One notable exception: Mike Watt as Michelletto, a cue-card holder for the evangelical TV network who’s even dumber than Hal. He’s so dumb that some of his lines—such as when he hugs Lyle, sniffs his head, and says ‘your hair smells like the future’—backflip into the bizarro surprises of actual comedy. The rest of the actors deliver their one-note caricatures—drawling Jesus freak, cynical manager, shrewish wife—in a chorus of braying.” (Brendan Kiley) West of Lenin 203 N 36th St, www. brownpapertickets.com. $12. Fri-Sat at 8 pm. Through June 29.

OTHER DESERT CITIES

“When Brooke Wyeth, played by Marya Sea Kaminski, arrives at her parents’ Palm Springs mansion on Christmas Eve with a frighteningly revealing memoir in hand, she threatens to tear apart the powerful and prestigious Republican image the family has been carefully constructing for decades. Victor Pappas directs this Northwest premiere, featuring Pamela Reed (Parks and Recreation) as a snarlingly cruel and intelligent matriarch and Kevin Tighe (LOST) as a more bumbling but more humane patriarch. The text, with its reversals of fortune all played out in the family’s immaculate living room, is good. But the performances, which hang tight through multiple hairpin turns and disturbing revelations, are great.” (Brendan Kiley) ACT Theater, 700 E Union St, 2927676. $35-$60. Tues-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Sat at 2 and 8 pm, Sun at 2 and 7 pm. Through June 30.

PAST CURFEW

An annual festival of one-acts by the Young Americans theater company. Up this time: Betrayed by Everyone by Kenneth Lonergan, Waiting by Ethan Coen, and 4-H Club by Sam Shepard. Center Theater Seattle Center Armory, 3555267. $5-$15. Fri-Sun at 7:30 pm. Through June 30.

RAGE WITHIN/WITHOUT

Originally a solo show by Kathy Randels of New Orleans, Rage Within/Without is “a challenging examination of the roots of women’s anger told through movement, poetry, and true-life stories” that has been adapted for local actors. Directed by Melissa Fenwick. Theater Machine at Theater Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave S, 340-1049. www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-$12. ThursSat at 8 pm, Sun at 4:30 pm. Through June 30.

Dance

AUTOPSY OF LOVE

See review, page 49.

Special Events

PAELLA BRUNCH WITH THE BARD

A fundraiser for Seattle Shakespeare Company with a paella brunch and actors (Hana Lass, Connor Toms, and Jonathan Crimeni) playing your waiters. Serenades by Rob Witmer. Lecosho, 89 University St, 623-2101. www. seattleshakespeare.org. $100. Sun June 30 at 10 am.

THIRTY HOUR

IMPROVATHON To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Unexpected Productions will perform a 30-hour improv show from 6 pm Friday night through midnight on Saturday. Any audience member who makes it through the whole thing will receive a lifetime pass to any Unexpected Productions show. Market Theater , 1428 Post Alley, 587-2414. www.unexpectedproductions.org. Fri at 6 pm until midnight on Sat June 29.

theater@thestranger.com

means we recommend it. Tons more listings at THESTRANGER.COM

FIVE NIGHTS OF GENIUS

AT THE FRYE ART MUSEUM

Finalists for the 2013 Genius Award share and discuss their work with an editor from The Stranger in this ﬁve-part series. Find your favorite Genius and have a hosted cocktail before the program!

WEDNESDAYS 5:30–8 PM | JULY 24–AUGUST 21 | 21+

704 Terry Ave. $10 tickets include one cocktail. $40 full series pass comes with one cocktail per show plus your name on the 2013 Genius Patron list.

7/24 MUSIC • Hosted by Emily Nokes JESSIKA KENNEY & EYVIND KANG JHEREK BISCHOFF | KATIE KATE

7/31 FILM • Hosted by David Schmader BEN KASULKE | SCOTT BLAKE | ZACH WEINTRAUB

8/7 VISUAL ART • Hosted by Jen Graves MATTHEW OFFENBACHER | RODRIGO VALENZUELA SHERRY MARKOVITZ

8/14 LITERATURE • Hosted by Paul Constant APRIL FESTIVAL | MAGED ZAHER | NEAL STEPHENSON

8/21 PERFORMANCE • Hosted by Brendan Kiley AMY O’NEAL | PAT GRANEY | ZOE|JUNIPER

thestranger.com/genius | strangertickets.com

You’re Not Naked if You’re Painted!

Smurfs, Butterﬂies, Beethoven, and More—

My Favorite Fremont Solstice Parade Cyclists

PHOTOS BY KELLY O

For 25 years, the Fremont Solstice Parade has celebrated the official start of summer. A few years in, something very unofficial started happening—people started streaking the parade. Then that unofficial part of the parade grew into its own yearly tradition, the Solstice Cyclists, and anyone can participate, just like the parade itself. The body paint on the Solstice Cyclists is always impressive. This year I saw Smurfs, superheroes, Beethoven, butterflies, people painted head-to-toe in silver, and so much more! Go to thestranger.com/solsticecyclists to see more photos, including a newly married couple painted as a bride and groom. Awwwwww!

Rickshaw Restaurant:

Since 1976 this Northpark standby is a neighborhood favorite but also worth the trip for anyone who enjoys friendly service, a fun atmosphere, great deals on booze, and tasty Chinese food that caters to meat eaters and veggie eaters alike.

$20 to Spend at Rickshaw Restaurant. Your Price: $10.

Paragon Bar and Grill:

Sink into one of our plush booths with a friend or two and enjoy our chef’s offerings of Southern staples - fried green tomatoes, corn fritters, watermelon salad and more. Every night (excluding Monday & Friday) features hot live music with no cover! Also open for brunch!

$25 to Spend at Paragon Bar & Grill. Your Price: $12.50.

Six Strawberries:

Six Strawberries is Seattle’s ﬁrst artisan icepops company. We create delicious and dairyfree pops using as many NW ingredients as possible, all handcrafted here in the 206. Find us in local farmers markets, in select stores, and on our mobile route by bicycle cart. Flavors include: Strawberry, Blueberry Lemonade, Fudge, Caffe Vita Latte, PB&J, and Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. 4 Artisan Ice-Pops ($12 Value). Your Price: $6.

CHOW

Wigs and Eggs

Mama Tits and Sylvia O’Stayformore

Explore the Intersection of Brunch and Drag

BY DAVID SCHMADER

The combination of hot food and Seattle drag has a long and sordid history. Ground zero of the trend: Neighbours nightclub, which in the 1990s circumnavigated Seattle’s draconian

liquor laws—which decreed that only those establishments that offered food could sell hard alcohol—by setting up a six-foot steam table of breakfast delights that will live forever in infamy. Some imagine the Neighbours buffet as too monstrous to be real, like God or Dracula. But I saw it, with my own eyes, roiling and hissing in its darkened corner throughout many a drag show. Besides nourishing a generation of street hustlers, the Neighbours buffet operated as a sort of selfregulating intervention machine: If you were drunk enough to actually consider eating from it, you needed help. (To be fair, many people still speak wistfully of the buffet’s sordid charms, especially those who appreciate trays of coagulated eggs mixed with cigarette butts.)

O’Stayformore. Once a week at the Capitol Hill hot spot the Unicorn, there’s Mimosas with Mama, hosted by and starring Mama Tits. Recently, I attended both.

DQueen’s Brunch with Sylvia O’Stayformore

The Royal Room

Third Saturday of the month, noon

The spirit of the Neighbours buffet also informed Seattle’s next great fusion of drag and food: the super-weird and pretty wonderful brunch shows given by Dina Martina in the early aughts at the defunct gay bar Thumper’s. In the hands of the deranged Dina, who is essentially the Neighbours buffet in human form, these brunches were a woozy affair, blending point-blank daytime drag with driven daytime drinking and barely okay food. But even the last worked in its way—with the spottier dishes, it was easy to imagine Dina had done the cooking herself, perhaps using only her feet.

Mimosas with Mama Narwhal at the Unicorn Sundays, 1 pm

riving into Columbia City, I realize I’m nearing my destination by the sight of an enormous blond wig atop a cartoonishly shapely waitress. She is standing at the corner of Rainier and Hudson, waving at passing cars. This is Sylvia O’Stayformore, and the sight of her in her signature “Southern diner” garb—checked gingham dress, pinafore apron, name-tag corsage—ﬁlls me with good old-fashioned drag joy. True to her name, Sylvia O’Stayformore is generous, gracious, and forever welcoming—qualities that make her one of Seattle’s most beloved drag queens. She earned much of that love while hosting the long-running performance showcase Bacon Strip (RIP). Unlike many drag queens, Sylvia makes perfect sense in the daylight—she could be a character from Pee-wee’s Playhouse—and placing the character in an actual restaurant setting is a natural ﬁt (especially with actual service chores left to Royal Room staff).

Sturdier bread could fix everything; as it is, it’s a flimsy mess you won’t eat half of. But the straightforward two-egg breakfast ($9) was just what it should be, and everything was helped by the Royal Room’s seriously good Bloody Mary ($7), involving a superspicy house recipe and a humongous olive.

After an hour of eating and drinking, Sylvia welcomed to the stage a small parade of performers, including a drag king (Mr. Caesar Hard), a Lady Gaga impersonator (Miss Cannoli), and a comedian (Peggy Platt). Whereas some drag shows present as Serious Entertainment Spectacles, the Queen’s Brunch is more of a community affair, in line with old-school drag balls, where the audience applauds the spirit of the performer over the execution of the act.

The same can’t be said for Mimosas with Mama, the weekly extravaganza hosted by Mama Tits, a proudly plus-sized glamour queen who oversees a slick showcase of old-school drag performance. This means lip-synching and—in the case of priceless supporting queen Tipsy Rose Lee—dancing, and in the cartoon-carnival world of the Unicorn’s downstairs space the Narwhal, the whole thing takes on an impressive theatricality. Mama Tits keeps things moving with wit, self-deprecation, and tableside Jell-O shot service. The whole thing culminates with “30-Minute Hairspray,” a witty blend of bits from the John Waters ﬁlm and the hit Broadway musical that leaves issues of racial

Mimosas with Mama features tableside Jell-O shot service.

integration on the cutting-room ﬂoor in favor of a streamlined story of a big girl who just wants to dance.

Which brings us to 2013, when not one but two Seattle drag stars are dishing out their crossdressing arts in rooms offering full bar service and food that humans without death wishes will eat on purpose. Once a month at the Columbia City jazz club the Royal Room, there’s Queen’s Brunch with Sylvia

The choose-your-own adventure of Queen’s Brunch offers two paths. Fifteen dollars gets you access to a perfectly goodlooking buffet of eggs, hash browns, biscuits, and house-made chicken-bacon sausage, or you can choose from 10 discrete options across the breakfast spectrum. From the latter menu, the egg sandwich ($9.50) was a noble failure, involving scrambled eggs, lettuce, and tomato on a sesame-seed hamburger bun that just wasn’t up to the task.

As for the food: It’s traditional breakfast (eggs, potatoes, bacon, pancakes, fruit) served buffet-style, all you can eat for $15, and it’s thoroughly good, especially the cooked-dryand-ﬂuffy scrambled eggs. More importantly, the drinks are strong and cheap, and the audience is there to have raucous fun. “Thank you all!” shouted Mama at the end of the show. “If you weren’t here, we’d just be guys with penises between our butt cheeks.”

Comment on drag brunches at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

Every year since our ﬁrst Seattle Plum location, Plum Café, opened we have held a customer appreciate BBQ on July 4th. We are so thankful for the community’s support and dedication throughout the years; we look forward to seeing you at this annual event.

MAMA AND SYLVIA Plus daytime drinking and bacon equals YES.

KELLY O

DRUNKINNG WITH CHARLSE MUDEDE

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

OF JAZZ AND OYSTERS

At around 9:30 p.m., I walked into the Coastal Kitchen on Capitol Hill for two things: oysters and jazz. The cost of the oysters: $1.25 a pop during the jazz; cost of the jazz performance: nothing. The type of oysters: sea cow; the name of the group: Pork Chop Trio (sax, bass, drums). The raw oysters, which came from the Hamma Hamma delta, were served on a small bed of ice that came with a slice of lime; the jazz was basically standards, performed right next to a short ﬂight of steps that lead to the second, raised section of the restaurant’s seating areas—the third is outdoors in the back. The oysters provided me with no surprises and no disappointments (I sucked, pressed, burst, and swallowed the ﬂesh).

As for the music, the first session was a touch too loud, but the second one was just perfect, and I believe this unevenness had something to do with the drummers. In the first set, the drummer was a woman who was clearly filling in for somebody,

and so the set wasn’t that tight, with each player seeming to be nowhere else but in his/her own world. In the second set, a male drummer replaced the woman, and the trio’s performance was much more grounded and coordinated. (When I googled the male drummer’s name, Davy Nefos, on my smartphone, the images presented by the search matched the appearance on the drummer in the second set—the other two players were Josh Clifford on sax and Geoff Larson on bass.)

Two other things about my visit: One, I had three nearly perfect manhattans; and two, I learned that the man who shucked my oysters was a former tenant of mine. Yes, I’m a Marxist, and yes, I have been a landlord; but no, I never owned a factory like, you know, Friedrich Engels. The oyster shucker informed me that he started working for Coastal Kitchen after he decided not to renew the lease of a seafood shop he opened in Issaquah two years ago. “I saved some money, got the place, but it turned out there wasn’t a strong demand for good seafood out there. People just wanted shrimp skewers and things like that.” Indeed, like the light radiating from a lightbulb, gustatory perception diminishes the farther one is from the core of a city. To live in the rural is to live with a completely blind tongue.

CHARLES MUDEDE

An impression of the Pork Chop Trio.

RECOMMENDED!

Here’s where we think you should go, brought to you by the letters G and H Disagree? Write your own damn reviews at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

GUANACO’S TACOS PUPU SERIA • University District: A Salvadorian restaurant with affordable prices, Guanaco’s Tacos’ specialty is (despite its name) pupusas (corn or rice pancakes stuffed with your choice of meat, cheese, and veggie). Guanaco’s also serves various Latin American foods, from time-honored favorites (burritos with beans and rice) to more exotic meals (beef soup with yucca and chayote). Despite the restaurant’s name and the dictionary definition on the menus describing a guanaco as “a large South American cameloid mammal,” there are, rest assured, no guanaco tacos. The branch on Capitol Hill closed down a while back, so go to the U-District one. (4106 Brooklyn Ave NE, 547-2369, guanacostacos.webs.com, $)

HALLAVA FALAFEL • on the road: The vaunted Hallava Falafel truck roves from Georgetown to Capitol Hill and beyond, serving great falafel for your lunch-, dinner-, and drunky-time needs. (on the road, hallavafalafel.com, $)

HARBOR CITY • International District: To love a roasted duck is to also love the way the Chinese cut their meat: with a bold rhythm and a democratic method. Every section receives the same swift chop. The breast, neck, legs—chop, chop, chop. A good chopper often means a delicious duck. Harbor City, nestled into a hole in the wall in the I.D., has ducks that are very meaty, soft, and flavorful. They also serve dim sum (some will tell you it’s as good as or better than the dim sum at Jade Garden)

CANDY COCKTAILS WITH GHOSTS

Christa McMahon Manager, Mars Lounge 5247 University Way NE, 632-5132

I thought I liked Mars Lounge in the U-District because the building resembles the set of a John Waters movie, and because every person who works there is absurdly attractive, but manager Christa McMahon said it may be (of course) because of ghosts. The building, formerly a Frosty Freeze, is among the oldest in the neighborhood, and is supposedly haunted by a tall pacing man and a lady who loiters in the bathroom.

“People always say they feel drawn to the place,” Christa said.

On a Saturday night, the bar looked as if several theme parties had converged upon it. A guy in a tan polyester suit and a lady with a tiny orange sequined hat drank margaritas, while a group of girls hula-hooped to Outkast with an enthusiasm that threatened to wreck their table. I had a roasted eggplant and zucchini garden wrap, which would have been perfect if the fries it came with were fried rather than roasted. Already perfect: the Milk Dud White Russian. A rainbow shelf labeled “Candy Shop” in glittery letters contains such oddities as Smarties vodka and Lemon Drop whiskey. Christa told me the director of Seattle Jello Wrestling is a Mars Lounge employee, and at some point they hope to host one of the events on their patio. I’ll be there. SARAH GALVIN

CHOW BIO

and other traditional Chinese dishes. Their chicken feet, shumai, and shrimp balls are reportedly outstanding. (707 S King St, 621-2228, $)

HATTIE’S HAT • Ballard: With stiff drinks and good food, Hattie’s is one of Ballard’s most beloved dives. The all-American menu has everything from classic burgers with sweet-potato fries to smoked-salmon club sandwiches and buttermilk-soaked fried chicken (with good stuff for vegetarians, too). Be sure to fully appreciate the bar: Hand-carved in France and brought by boat around Cape Horn (or, alternately, made by Chicago’s Brunswick Company—no one’s really sure), it was installed right there in 1904, and it’s arguably best enjoyed with an excellent and potent Bloody Mary. (5231 Ballard Ave NW, 784-0175, hatties-hat.com, $$)

HAWAIIAN BREEZE • Wallingford: Hawaiian Breeze makes a great version of saimin (basically ramen on steroids) with veggies, Spam, linguica, or barbecued chicken. The bowls are massive, and the broth is oceansavory (with cabbage and carrot, too), but it’s the shoyuand-ginger-marinated, charcoal-tinged bird that conjures up a really good beach-park picnic. You can also order sushi from Hawaiian Breeze’s sister restaurant, Shima. Note that service runs on island time, that is, sloooow. (1719 N 45th Street, 632-2583, hawaiianbreezeseattle.com, $)

HEARTLAND CAFE & BENBOW ROOM • West Seattle: The Heartland Cafe specializes in decent, gutfilling Midwestern comfort food with farm-implementson-the-wall decor. The star here is the homemade apple fritters at breakfast—racquetball-sized orbs, fried crispy on the outside, dense and bready on the inside, narcotically delicious. But the star of the Heartland Cafe is the Benbow Room—go back through the cafe, bear starboard, and find yourself in the chart room of a Spanish galleon (via 1950, which means burgundy vinyl upholstery with gold-coin buttons). Fishing nets! Treasure maps! An inland sea with listless goldfish! A lighting effect that defies description! It’s the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, minus the children, plus booze. Ahoy! (4210 SW Admiral Way, 922-3313, heartlandcafeseattle.com, $–$$)

HEAVEN SENT FRIED CHICKEN • Lake City: Ezell Stephens is no longer involved with his namesake Ezell’s, but he’s making bird good enough for God himself at his Heaven Sent Fried Chicken chain. (14330 Lake City Way NE, 363-1167, plus two more locations, heavensentfriedchicken.com, $–$$)

HIGHLINE • Capitol Hill: In place of the defunct and super-cheesy Club Lagoon on Broadway, the world welcomes entirely cheese-free bar/vegan eatery Highline. It’s brought to you by the owners of Georgetown’s late Squid & Ink, and it’s a meat-free, punk-rock drinkin’ paradise. Highline’s menu is packed with seitan, tempeh, and soy creations designed to replicate the greatest hits of pub grub, but the emphasis is on the bar here. The unspoken moral code of the core constituency of heavily tattooed-and-pierced vegan boozers and nicotine fiends: Do whatever the fuck you want to yourself, just leave animals out of it. This is a beautiful thing. So is the space, a humongous wide-open room with seating for dozens, a photo booth, a free foosball table, and Broadway’s best balcony. Also: live music. (210 Broadway E, 328-7837, highlineseattle.com, $–$$)

HING LOON SEAFOOD • International District: The seafood at Hing Loon is excellent—fresh and expertly handled—while the land meats are unremarkable. Other highlights include small, hat-like dumplings (shumai) steamed in bamboo (good for throwing during an argument); a black cod smothered in salt and then charred over flames; and lovely mushrooms steamed and dressed lightly in soy and sesame oil. (628 S Weller St, 6822828, $)

HOLY CANNOLI • Belltown: At Holy Cannoli—home of “Detroit’s Finest Italian Delicacies”—Detroit native Adrienne Bandlow brings Seattle “the delicious food regional to the area that I grew up in, but also regional to the area in Italy my family comes from.” Bandlow herself comes from a background in behavioral health and public policy, with an undergraduate degree in social justice, a master’s in public administration, and post-graduate in risk management/decision analysis. Our analysis reveals that people are very happy she made the decision take a risk on selling cannoli stuffed with sweet fillings and stromboli stuffed with meaty/ veggie goodness at her narrow Belltown storefront. A few stools are available, but you’ll be a hero if you get it to go back to the office or home. (2720 Third Ave, 841-8205, holycannoliseattle.com, $)

HOMEGROWN SUSTAINABLE SANDWICH

SHOP • around town: We’ll let Homegrown speak for itself: “Our goal at Homegrown is not only to create sandwiches out of sustainable ingredients but also to make sandwich creation sustainable itself. This goes beyond using fresh, sustainable ingredients... Homegrown strives for sustainability as a local business through the green materials we print and serve on, to our rejection of bottled water, to our 100% compostable and recyclable product. We consider our environmental impact for every ingredient choice... We like to call this sandwich environmentalism. Enjoy.” All the earnest verbiage aside, in this case, good intentions equal good sandwiches. (3416 Fremont Ave N, 453-5232, plus two other locations, eathomegrown.com, $)

HONORE ARTISAN BAKERY • Ballard: Everyone says this French bakery near Delancey in Ballard is great, and Stranger reader-reviewer J. particularly loves the kouign-amann, “which is like crack pastry—salty, sweet, chewy, and flaky all at once.” The macarons also make people rave. (1413 NW 70th St, 706-4035, honorebakery.com, $$)

MUSIC

Yes Homo

Six Queer Bands We Love

BY EMILY NOKES AND BREE MCKENNA

Hello and welcome to our Seattle queer band roundup! “Queer bands,” as we are using the term, are like other bands, only they have queer members. Just like when a “girl band” has all

women in it, or like the rare “dude band,” full of dudes. For some bands, sexuality and LGBT issues play a prominent role in their music, while other bands of queer persuasion simply play music and happen to not be straight. We gaylords, fag hags, and glitterencrusted allies over here at The Stranger make efforts to ALWAYS include queer musicians in our coverage (unless they suck), so this queer-band presentation is less like a “token list of things we never care about until there’s a holiday based on it” and more like “SWEET! In honor of this being The Stranger’s Queer Issue, here are six great queer bands we’d like you to check out, regardless of whether or not they are playing a show in the next seven days, which is usually the ﬁrst thing we base music coverage on!”

HALF-BREED

Half-Breed are a brand-new guitar-anddrum sensation queering up the world of sweet indie-pop. The upbeat up-and-comers are Micaila Hopkins and Ashley Nieves, roommates at a Capitol Hill DIY queer/ art space. Initially the two were merely looking to play music together for fun, but soon it became apparent that their simple, ultra-catchy jams were too good to keep to themselves. Beachy guitar riffs and perfectly sparse drumming bring to mind K Records staples like Beat Happening and Heavenly, while clear melodies occasionally hint at the bigger studio sounds of bands like Tegan and Sara. With songs about summer boyfriends and the perils of fucking your friends, HalfBreed are sure to provide ear candy for all. The duo spoke about the importance of queer identity and tea-bag tattoos.

Any thoughts on corporate/sponsorship aspects of Pride?

Hopkins: It sucks. I understand that Pride needs to be funded by something, but I really wish it wasn’t giant liquor companies that show their support by having $10 “drink specials” and showering me with Budweiser Mardi Gras beads.

Do either of you have any amazing gay tattoos?

Nieves: I don’t know if it is amazing, but I did get the ofﬁcial gay triangle at Alleged Tattoo during Pride last year.

Hopkins: [Laughs] I have a tea bag on my right knee.

S

The simply titled S is the brainchild of one Jenn Ghetto, originally famed for her whispered vocals with the sorely missed Northwest institution Carissa’s Wierd (and um, not to mention lead singer of Silly Goose, Seattle’s premier Blink-182 cover band). A solo bedroom project now three albums deep, S has expanded to include a brand-new (hella gay) backing band of drums and bass—the ﬁlled-out live sound makes us crazy excited for the newest batch of songs. If her album titles aren’t indicative enough—Sadstyle (2001), Puking and Crying (2004), I’m Not as Good at It as You (2010)—the starkly honest lyrical outpouring of at least a few S songs have the ability to evoke the gnarly truths of all of your failed relationships. Ghetto answered a few questions about Queer Rock Camp and tighty-whitey contests.

just gonna say it, D.E.B.S. What I really want is for Stacy Peck from Pony Time to make a lesbian rom-com—that’s sure to be the best thing to happen to gay cinema since John Waters.

Do you have any amazing gay tattoos? You know, none of my tattoos are very gaythemed. I do want a tattoo that says, “I am George Clooney.” I feel like I might be getting close with that one.

GLITTERBANG

Glitterbang are a dance-inducing, infectious electro-pop duo made up of DJ/keyboardist JV and commanding lead singer Nicki Danger. The band came together about four years ago, when current Chop Suey booker Jodi Ecklund saw Danger play with her previous band and told her she was playing with the wrong people. Ecklund (who now acts as the band’s manager) introduced her to JV, and the two quickly became sonic soul mates. Glitterbang’s inspirations hit everything from Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk to LCD Soundsystem, Parliament, and JayZ, and Danger said her vibrant vocals and pop instincts can be traced back to listening to Whitney Houston’s ﬁrst record on repeat, along with early Janet Jackson and a wide variety of hiphop. We talked with Danger about tedious album making and party spandex.

Your album Occasionally, Love Is War came out earlier this year. How long did that take to come together?

How long have you been a band? Any plans for any releases?

Nieves: We have been a band for almost a year and a half now. We have been slowly recording with intentions of releasing an EP

Hopkins: The full EP will be done soon, we promise!

How important is being queer to the band’s identity?

Hopkins: Being queer is a huge part of our daily lives and has helped shape us into the people we are today. The community in Seattle has been incredible, and we wouldn’t be the band we are, or have come this far, without them. At the same time, there is a lot more to our band’s identity, and we try to represent all of it.

Have you played at a Pride before? Have any best/worst/weirdest Pride memories?

Nieves: We have not played Pride before. We got asked to play the Dyke March this year but sadly had to decline.

Hopkins: The worst memory for me was deﬁnitely last year when the Queers Fucking Queers ﬂash mob dance party turned into the Seattle Police Department pepperspraying and arresting everyone for no reason. It’s a sad day when we can’t even dance in the streets during Pride.

What are you wearing/not wearing to Pride?

Nieves: This Pride I think my sleazy alter ego Maurice might make an appearance. Watch out, ladies.

Hopkins: Nothing but moisturizer.

What’s your most favorite gay movie?

Nieves: Does Mrs. Doubtﬁre count?

Hopkins: I’m going to go with Skate Bitches

Tell me about your new lineup for S. My band is so gay right now. There is not much else I can say about that, but everyone is real gay.

What’s your take on Pride festivities?

Well, I used to try and avoid it. It was just too much for me—so many rainbows, body shots, tighty-whitey contests, everyone ridiculously drunk and making out and puking and then making out some more. Now I guess I embrace Pride more, though. Like, I’m not gonna get in there, but I love that it’s happening and I hope everyone has the best time.

Our record took a long fucking time to create. We are freakishly OCD about every little detail. We rewrote and remixed each song at least a dozen times; we had a tough time knowing when to let songs go or when to be “done.” I’m also kind of a slacker, so that may have added time—JV and Jodi have deﬁnitely had to crack the whip on my lazy ass. We make all of our own loops, so pretty much everything that is played live was created by either me or JV. We do use a couple of samples—three to be exact; I will never tell what they are.

“My favorite gay movie is Point Break, hands down.”

Do you have any favorite bands that you’ve seen play at queer festivals?

One year, Leslie & the LYs played Wildrose, and it was such a killer show. She had a headset, totally boss moves, backup dancers, all of it. I wish she would play every year.

What was volunteering for Queer Rock Camp like? What was the best rock camp band name you’ve heard?

Queer Rock Camp is like the most fun queer thing I have ever done. There is actually a song about it on my new record. Teaching a bunch of queer kids how to write and play music is so cool. The showcase is absolutely amazing. Best band names were the Reservoir Rips and Finger Bang. Oh man, so much fun. Teenagers!

What’s your favorite gay movie?

My favorite gay movie is Point Break, hands down, everyone knows it. Also, I am

Where did you record? Some stuff was recorded in my apartment, some in JV’s studio, and some at London Bridge Studios. Most everything we do is at home. London Bridge is pretty cool, though—they have the same board that everyone was freaking out over in the Sound City documentary. You can really tell how special it is when comparing tracks that were mixed there.

Does Glitterbang’s queer identity inform your lyrics?

Being queer has deﬁnitely impacted my writing. I mean, I’m not writing about fucking and/or falling in love with dudes.

What’s your take on Seattle’s Pride festivities?

I think that Pride is really great and important for the community. I miss it being on Capitol Hill—I don’t really connect with the parade or the mainstream path it has taken. I do like that thousands of homos get together to let their hair down; I just wish it was in Volunteer Park.

Half-Breed S Glitterbang

RACHEL ROBINSON, TOP RIGHT: KELLY O

Ever been to another city’s Pride fest?

We played Control Top Gayass Party last weekend in Portland with Ononos and Double Duchess. It was awesome.

Got a special outﬁt planned for Pride? It will probably involve ﬂuorescent printed party spandex!

AGATHA

Riotous Northwest punk band Agatha were formed four years ago when members Karl (guitar/vocals), Nein (bass/vocals), Josef (drums), and Kaelen (lead vocals—like, blistering, awesome vocals) got to know each other while involved in the organization For Crying Out Loud (formed to address sexual assault/support survivors in radical commu-

nities). Their shared music tastes and queer commonality helped inform Agatha’s raw punk sound that bleeds with ﬁercely intelligent lyrics. Their songs ache for a better everything, confronting issues like class war, lack of community spaces, and gender inequality. And as far as queercore anthems go, Agatha’s “Queer as in Fuck You” (“Not gay as in happy/But queer as in fuck you”) off their 2009 demo, Panic Attack, is downright incendiary. Kaelen and Karl talked about the history of Pride and recording in July.

How does Agatha’s collective queer identity inform your sound or lyrics?

Karl: We didn’t start the band off with any real political agenda; we just wanted to play good punk music. We weren’t intentionally trying to start a queer band. But I think we started to realize that we were all queer and shared a lot of common political beliefs. We are also intentional in the way that we want our lyrics to come from a really personal place; we come from a background that is a mix of community projects/collectives, radical politics, and DIY punk ethos.

You put out a self-titled LP on Olympia’s Rumbletowne Records last year. How long did that take to come together? Do you have other albums out there?

Karl: We probably took about a year and a half or so to put out that record. We recorded it with our buddy Joey at Left Field Studios, which is really just a house in Olympia. We actually recorded in the attic of the house during very hot days in July—we were pretty much playing in our underwear, and everything kept going out of tune. We also have an older 7-inch, Nothing Is Static, on Rumbletowne and a split LP with our friends Dogjaw from Olympia.

What’s your take on Seattle’s Pride parties?

Kaelen: Seattle Pride is something I get excited about every year. I think people’s interpretations of its purpose are really different, and events can vary greatly. Companies have recognized that they can make a lot of money off Pride and have molded it into something from which they can proﬁt

The ﬁrst Pride was a riot—trans* people and queer people were tired of having their lives criminalized. I think there’s also this thing where people don’t want to get too serious during Pride; they just want to have fun. I totally get that and am not interested in shaming other queer and trans* people for celebrating Pride at a beer garden or at an inaccessible space. I do think it’s possible to talk about, act out against, and challenge transphobia, heteronormativity, and criminalization of our lives and still have a shit ton of fun.

Have you played Pride before?

Karl: A couple years ago, we played a punk show at the Cha Cha. It was probably the gayest we had ever seen that place.

Best, worst, weirdest Pride memories?

Kaelen: A few years ago during Pride, my girlfriend and I were catcalled while holding hands and walking outside of Linda’s. A line of dudes on either side whistling and shit. I screamed “FUCK YOU” in the loudest, gnarliest voice I could manage. They didn’t know what to say. That felt good. Later that night, across the street, the ﬁrst Queers Fucking Queers—a dance party in the streets—came out of left ﬁeld and was incredible.

NIGHT CADET

Formed last summer, stirring dream-pop quartet Night Cadet comprises songwriter/ keyboardist Seth Garrison, violist/composer Barret Anspach, guitarist/keyboardist Garrett Vance, and drummer Spencer Bray. With inﬂuences that include Cocteau Twins, Angelo Badalamenti, and Kate Bush, their songs are vast—heart-wrenching vocals soar over lush string arrangements and glimmering guitar—with enough passion to carry you through the joy of falling in love and the pain of breaking up. Two-song 7-inch Valley/

Night Cadet

Agatha

STEPHEN MILLER

MOLLY BAUER

Seaside will be released next month, and it is gorgeous: “Valley” gallops with swelling emotion while “Seaside” radiates a woozy, lovesick euphoria. Garrison answered a few questions on the terrors of Pride and the Northwest’s happening queer music scene.

Where did your band name come from?

We were originally called Cadet—which I liked because it’s simple and stately—but we had to change our name because of this dumb Christian band out of Eugene. We didn’t want to ﬁght with them, so we added “Night” because we like the image it creates.

Your ﬁrst batch of recordings, a four-song EP, came out last February—where did you record?

We recorded with Erik Blood down in Sodo. We had the songs done before our second show, about a month into being a band. Recording and producing them took a little more than three days. That Erik is efﬁcient! And so are we!

Does Night Cadet’s collective queer identity inform your sound or lyrics?

I’m one of those people who thinks my queer identity informs most of the things that I do, so put simply, yes. That said, I don’t think there’s anything in the songs that would force the listener to inject that same identity—the feelings there are universal.

Have you played Pride before?

Yes! Last year, my other band the Fancy played Jodi Ecklund’s Gay Ass Party at the Funhouse. It was the last one, and it was by far the most fun I’ve ever had at a Pride.

Best, worst, or weirdest Pride memories?

Weirdest: Seeing Sophie B. Hawkins at Cleveland Pride. Best: Coming up with/committing to the idea of throwing an awesome alternative queer music festival called ’MoWave! Worst: Every other memory.

Any favorite local queer bands?

OH HELL YES! The list is so freaking long if I can count bands with at least one homo in them—can I do that? S, Sundries, Glitterbang, My Parade, Pony Time, Wishbeard—Jordan O’Jordan is my favorite thing IN THE WORLD—Hot Tears from Olympia, Magic Mouth from Portland…

FUCKING DYKE BITCHES

“Fucking dyke bitches” was originally a homophobic slur used by a neighbor to refer to guitarist/vocalist Anthea and guitarist/ vocalist Claire while the two were living in their hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. They reclaimed the dis as an emboldened band name before moving to the

Northwest, where Fucking Dyke Bitches evolved into a four-piece (CJ took on bass duties, Nora the drums), queerissues-tackling punk band whose smart and seething lyrics (“Queer is more than he or she!”) are hurled over Babes in Toyland–and Plasmatics-worthy guitar hooks. They recently toured with Olympia homohardcore band Dick Binge and shook Asheville, North Carolina—making the local news when community demands were made to censor their band names on the club’s marquee. The band answered questions from the road.

Tell us about your band’s transformation/ moves across country.

Claire/Anthea: We formed in North Carolina in an attempt to promote queer visibility in an area that is largely homophobic. We were writing music to deal with the frustration that we were experiencing on a daily basis. In the decision to move, we struggled with how the band’s main signiﬁcance had been to promote a radical queer voice in the South, where both of us are from. After moving to the Northwest and gaining stability with our current lineup, we’ve been able to develop our song structures and material.

Do you have any best/worst/weirdest Pride memories?

Anthea: I saw The L Word band, Betty, at Pride in Ohio. I don’t know if that was the best, worst, or weirdest, but it was really… something. Oh, and watching a sea full of dykes lose it when Melissa Ferrick sang “Drive” was really, really entertaining.

Nora: Being the only sober person at a huge dance party around 4 a.m. was pretty much the worst time I’ve had at Pride.

CJ: I’ve never really done Pride. I’m looking forward to celebrating it in Seattle this year.

Favorite current queer bands?

Dick Binge, Aye Nako, the Need, Team Dresch, Molasses Gospel, RVIVR, Half-Breed, Romantic Animal, S.B.S.M., Yva Las Vegass, Hot Tears, Saint Lorena, Agatha, Xanax, Dynasty Handbag, Big Dipper, just to name a few.

Favorite gay movie?

Anthea: Foxﬁre.

Nora: But I’m a Cheerleader.

CJ: All Over Me. Jenn Ghetto from S might be the modern-day Leisha Hailey from All Over Me. Also, Aimee & Jaguar, any shorts by Sadie Benning, and Golden Gums by Matt Wolf.

Claire: Fried Green Tomatoes.

Do you have any opinions on the corporate/sponsorship aspects of Pride?

CJ: It’s frustrating that in order to celebrate certain parts of our identities, like being queer, we're expected to ignore other parts of ourselves, like being anticapitalist or punk.

Anthea: As gay rights have become an issue in the forefront of mainstream politics and news, LGBTQIA communities have become target groups for companies. These corporations that market toward LGBTQIA consumers are using their proﬁts to support conservative, antigay platforms. Assimilation is dangerous. It’s important to support alternative Pride events.

Nora: It’s really important for queers to be aware that we are being very speciﬁcally targeted, and to be mindful that typically conservative corporations are proﬁting from “celebrating” our identities. Fuck that.

Let’s talk gay tattoos. Any queer ink?

Anthea: Duh. We all have matching scissor tattoos that we got on our ﬁrst West Coast tour in 2012.

CJ: All the tattoos on my body are gay. Some examples are triangles, pansies, a faggy bear, “sisterhood,” and well… the scissors.

JENNINGS

MOLLY BAUER

Fucking Dyke Bitches

EVENT STAPH ARE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF INFECTIOUS

Seattle-based magma rock three-piece Event Staph have a scrappy, raw, and punk quickness. It’s not power rock, but there’s power in the chunks. With well-aimed ﬁngers, it slaps you in the face. You don’t even realize you’ve been slapped—you were gazing sluggishly at YouTube cat videos, and then WHAP. Guitarﬁring vocalist and lead man Shawn Lawlor screams and scurries torrents on the frets. Jamie Jaspers and Brian Voss lock and explode respectfully on bass and drums. This Event Staph combo sprouts boomed-out inklings of Dead Kennedys and Imperial Teen hooking up at a NoMeansNo show. Shawn, Jamie, and Brian spoke. I was not slapped.

What’s the origin of your band name?

S: Our name was Event Staff initially because we could ﬁnd one-of-a-kind shirts already made with our name on the back at

thrift stores, usually for 99 cents, and we’d give them away at shows. Then I got MRSA on my hand—that’s methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—and soon realized changing the spelling would be a little cheeky [laughs].

B: Our previous band was called Studﬁnder. Event Staph was for our gigs for events.

Let’s get into gay band domination. Anything special planned for Pride? S: Playing Pride weekend is always a great time. Wildrose really set the mark for putting on a great lineup of bands with a really fun three-day beer garden. The Funhouse also hosted amazing Sundays during Pride. My goal with Pride events is to try and get TWO new people of gay persuasion to actually come see a punk rock show, to step out of their gay comfort zone and experience something new. Do you really need to listen to a one-hit-wonder diva from the early ’80s singing along to a prerecorded karaoke-style rendition of her hit? Don’t get me wrong: I love me some ’70s/’80s divas, but until Grace Jones makes an appearance at the Cuff, I won’t be making it [laughs].

The lineup this year at the Highline is great; it reminds me of old-school shows, where you could have a punk band, a ska band, and then some trippy psych-rock band. The fact that we are playing right before Glitterbang from Seattle and Double Duchess from San Francisco goes to show how eclectic this lineup is.

What are your Pride Parade memories or thoughts?

S: My earliest Pride Parade story was when my parents came and stayed with me and my partner many years

ago. The parade was on Broadway then, and my parents really enjoyed themselves. We went back to our apartment and blasted Bad Boy Bill from our deck speakers until the manager came and shut us down—I think it might have been the sample of “I want to fuck you up the ass” blaring at 10 that got complaints. I stopped going to the parade long ago when I first saw an influx of majorcorporation-sponsored floats.

But I do think the parade, and the whole weekend really, deﬁnitely serves a purpose. People from smaller towns looking to feel part of a bigger community? Check. Visitors able to experience their ﬁrst time feeling comfortable with PDA? Check. People making new friends and possibly meeting their future partners? Check. So for those purposes alone, sure, keep having the parade. I’ll be at Pony.

Pickles or cucumbers? Which is gayer?

S: Cucumbers are deﬁnitely gayer. Easier to, well, you know. Pickles are just a little too… soft.

Who are some of your favorite bands and musicians? S: Deﬁnitely Imperial Teen, Roddy Bottum, and Will Schwartz. Their lyrics are bratty, fun, and queer-identiﬁed, and that drew me in.

B: Big Boys. MDC, though technically not gay, they had some of the ﬁrst and best anti-homophobia hardcore. Clitboys. Heard this stuff at age 15 in suburbia, probably before I’d ever met anyone gay. Of course, Pansy Division is hilarious.

J: Also, we don’t want to out anyone here, but Lemmy.

What did you seek out in music growing up? When did you ﬁnd your voice?

S: Well, I didn’t really seek out gay musicians to listen to when I was growing up; I just wanted to play the guitar and write songs. Finding my voice, lyrically, was a slow process. I feel like my songs evolved to include lyrics with gay themes and overtones. At ﬁrst, my lyrics were heavily disguised—in the closet, so to speak. By 1992, I was writing songs about crushes on men, and using “he” as the subject of my lyrics. It wasn’t until about 2000 that I started referencing my prostate in songs [laughs].

What Seattle music are you digging right now? S: Glitterbang are deﬁnitely one of my favorites. I also really love Witchburn.

B: Shake Some Action, Warning Danger, the Knast, Helms Alee, Sandrider.

Shawn, it’s time for goatee talk. You always have such sturdy, ginger plumage growing from your face. What’s the key to it all? Do you have special names for your techniques? Like “The Strawberry Shortcake”? S: Haven’t named any of my facial hair stylizations yet. Good idea. Ginger-Pop? [Laughs] Since I keep my hair cropped short on my head, I use my facial hair to change the shape to my face. Plus, when I didn’t have facial hair, I used to get the Andy Dick reference. And I don’t really like hearing that.

You are a connoisseur of ﬁne bears. What’s the best way to attract bears? Where are Seattle’s best bears? S: I like all kinds of bears. You can attract most bears with the scent of booze. You can also leave a trail of crumbs from your supply of special gingersnap cookies. You can hunt for bears anywhere, anytime, but here in Seattle they tend to hibernate in bars like C.C.’s and Diesel…

INTERVIEWS BY TRENT MOORMAN

Event Staph

Event Staph w/Double Duchess, Glitterbang, the Witches Titties, Yeah Girl, Violent Vickie, DJ Lisa Dank Sun June 30, Highline, 7 pm, $10, 21+

BETH ZIRNGIBLE

COMEDY LINEUP ANNOUNCED TODAY

PATTON OSWALT • DOUG LOVES MOVIES

WTF? LIVE WITH MARC MARON • IMPROV4HUMANS WITH MATT BESSER, TIM MEADOWS, BRIAN HUSKEY, AND HORATIO SANZ • AND A WHOLE LOT MORE

MY PHILOSOPHY

KANYE, KNOWMADS, ELZHI, BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER

Let’s just get this out of the way: As interesting as Kanye West’s Yeezus album might or might not be, it’s a bit less so with each and every review and think piece on it. Among my favorite observations in the Kantextualizing deluge were Jeff “Passion of the” Weiss’s, saying that no doubt this will be a lot of peoples’ My First Avant-Garde Record, and a random Tumblr user ranting that Pitchfork is wack (shock) for fawning over the Yeezus when they summarily dismissed a quite similarly harsh-sounding (also: far more political, far less misogynist) album that came out a few years back, namely M.I.A.’s Maya. More reminders that music critics are mostly irrelevant, even me. Any local yokel rappers brittle wit the god Mizell should stop giving me power over your emotions, and recognize that I know full well that these are only my opinions, word to Mac Mall.

KnowMads

Now: KnowMads (Tom Pepe Cheef and producer Jester) have been putting out music locally since 2007’s So It Goes crafting works that fall ﬁrmly within a trademark canon of SeaTown rap that’s at least a decade deep at this point—that sort of reﬂective, nostalgic-youngdude posi-core executing it solidly and building a dedicated fan base brick by brick through word of mouth and steady live shows. Their groundswell isn’t going unnoticed either, as KnowMads counted the Sasquatch! festival among their latest performances. The KnowMadic fam, between group projects and solo projects, have put out something like 10 albums. They’ll be playing Barboza on Thursday, June 27, with frequent collaborator La, the multitalented Dice, singer Camila Recchio, and Grimeshine playing cuts.

Wednesday, July 3, Detroit’s ex–Slum Villager Elzhi touches down at Nectar. He’s still one of the most underrated MCs out, and his single “Blue Widow” from last year evinced some icebox-cold Nas swagger left over from El’s last full-length project, the super-ofﬁcial Illmatic tribute LP Elmatic. He remains a testament to a thorough Motown rap ethic: If you can’t lick off crazy multisyllable rhymes without making a big deal about it, you shouldn’t even be rapping. Also on the bill are locals Luke (“Please say the muthafuckin'”) Rain and Black Magic Noize, plus a showcase of Oakland MCs (why not?) featuring Task1ne, Ro Knew, Tai the 13th, and Spends Quality

Saturday, July 6, Seattle’s Brothers From Another take the Neumos stage (with Sound Off! champ and bubbling young’n Dave B) to promote positive vibrations and their upcoming Tacos on Broadway EP. (I mean, these guys must be laced when they roll into Tacos Chukis— like, extra pineapple on them joints, you feel me.) They recently shot off a single called “Groov” with a rather low-wattage appearance from Asher Roth—remember him? Far better, in my estimation, is their newer single “Drunk Talk,” which they just ﬁlmed a video for. Now: Hurry up with my damn croissants.

STEEL TIGERS OF DEATH

MONKEY ESCALATOR, THE DUMPS, LOVE IN MIND $6

SEBASTIANS OF BREMEN

CLOUD PERSON ,OWL SERVICE, HONEY NOBLE $7

INDIAN WARS, FUZZY CLOAKS, WIMPS, SO PITTED $8

MATINEE: 4PM

FRED ROTH REVUE

THE SORRY DEVILS, THE ETHAN JENNINGS BAND $5

“NO WISING UP, NO SETTLING DOWN” TOUR 2013 ft. SOLE OF ANTICON/ FAKE FOUR

MOODIE BLACK (FAKE FOUR) 4 PIECE NOISE ROCK

BAND, ONRY OZZBORN (GRAYSKUL/ OLDOMINION), THE KELU BAND, MASTA X-KID, TRE ANGLE $10

PRIDE PARTY MATINEE: 4PM

RUKANDJI PHYSICS OF FUSION

CONTINENTAL SOLDIERS, DJ PHIL ANTHONY, SPECIAL GUESTS

TRANSMISSIONARY

LAZY ANIMALS, DEE DEES $5 9PM

TERRI TARANTULA

EMILY DANGER, TRENTALANGE $6 RED LIQUID

BIG BLACK CLOUD, DRUNK DAD, GANG CULT $5 NO SLEEP: JULY 4TH DANCE PARTY AIRPORT, YOURYOUNGBODY, LEATHERDADDY, IMPERIALS $6

to book a show e-mail cometbooking @gmail.com

@TAKEWARNINGSEA

FRIDAY JUNE 28TH @ TRACTOR TAVERN

HIPHOP YA DON'T STOP

BY LARRY MIZELL JR.

UP&COMING

Shake your sequined groove thing every night this week!

For the full music calendar, see page 73 or visit thestranger.com/music For ticket on-sale announcements, follow twitter.com/seashows

Booker T. Jones

Wednesday 6/26

Deﬁance, Ohio; Your Heart Breaks; Corner Kick (Vera) See Underage, page 77.

Sudden Vacation: Giraffage, Mister Lies, Beat Connection (Barboza) See Data Breaker, page 76.

Kill the Noise, Fury, MC Dino, Dig-Dug, Just One (Foundation) See Data Breaker, page 76.

Sean Nelson, Jenny Invert, Whitney Lyman (Neumos) Nine years in the making, Sean Nelson’s debut solo LP, Make Good Choices, abounds with joyful, literate orchestral pop and piquant rock; it’s like a master class on clever vocal arrangements and indelible melodies. You don’t have to be a Harvey Danger fan to get into one of the most infectious albums of 2013, but it might help. Nelson’s backing band for this show, Jenny Invert, recently moved to Seattle from New Mexico. They play sophisticated pop that doesn’t quite possess the dazzling dynamics of Make Good Choices, but is nonetheless accomplished and pleasurable. DAVE SEGAL

Thursday 6/27

KnowMads, La, Dice, Camila Recchio, Grimeshine (Barboza) See My Philosophy, page 67.

(Jazz Alley) See Stranger Suggests, page 45. Playing through June 30.

Benefit for Rain City Rock Camp for Girls: Sera Cahoone, the Redwood Plan, Cumulus, the Local Strangers, more (Chop Suey) My favorite moment in the recent “women of grunge” musical, These Streets, addressed the sometimes-surreptitious forces that can work against female musicians. For example, young male musicians who spend hours woodshedding in their bedrooms are seen as focused and driven, while young women who devote themselves to practicing guitar alone in their rooms get questioned about antisocial tendencies and depression. Rain City Rock Camp for Girls is the Seattle nonprofit devoted to carving out space for young women to engage deeply with music, and tonight’s benefit show features performances from an array of awesomely talented women, including Sera Cahoone, the Redwood Plan, and Cumulus. DAVID SCHMADER

Grimes

(Paramount) The aura spells that Grimes (the onewoman project of Claire Boucher) casts are weird and wonderful—her medieval, binary gauziness is consistently compelling. I ﬁnd there’s something original and likable in every album she’s ever made, from her 2010 Dune-inspired dark-wave album Geidi Primes to the more slick/supernatural indietronica of 2012’s Visions. And on a “sexism in the music industry versus rad feminism” tip, Grimes has my standing ovation for her words (in a blog post titled “I don’t want to have to compromise my morals in

6.27

Lonesome Locomotive

6.28 Friday (DJ/Dance/Tribute) Bombhiphop.com Presents the Return of… THE PRINCE & MICHAEL EXPERIENCE w/ Dj Dave Paul

$8 adv. 8pm Doors, 21+

6.29 Saturday (Bhangra / DJ / Dance)

JAI HO! Bhangra Nights Dance Party

order to make a living”) regarding her frustration with being infantilized, sexualized, condescended to, and the overall inequality/bullshit she’s experienced as a female professional musician. On behalf of tired females everywhere, thanks for speaking out! EMILY NOKES

Doug Nufer, Wally Shoup, Bill Horist (Barça) This very interesting free event combines the poetry of Seattle’s favorite wine merchant, Doug Nufer, and the sounds of two accomplished jazz musicians, Bill Horist (on the guitar) and Wally Shoup (on the sax). Because I do not have a nifty crystal ball nearby, I cannot tell you how this col-

laboration/experiment will end, but I do for sure like all of its elements—the poet, the jazz, and the bar. I also know that the performance will center on Nufer’s Lounge Acts, a chapbook to be released in the near future by Insert Blanc Press. CHARLES MUDEDE

Friday 6/28

Gender Blender: Mykki Blanco (Neighbours) Performance artist and poet Michael Quattlebaum Jr.’s female rapper alter ego Mykki Blanco makes the kind of ﬂexin’, fashion-forward, club-ready rap tunes that tons of Top-40 types are currently biting. And while he currently goes in over whomping electronic beats by the likes of bigname producers Brenmar, Flosstradamus, Supreme Cuts, and Sinden, Blanco’s ﬁrst EP, Mykki Blanco & the Mutant Angels, manages to tastefully blend elements of industrial, punk, and hardcore. Blanco pulls off all of these styles so well that it’s no wonder he takes offense at being simply tagged as a “gay rapper.” The music stands on its own merit, but the performance should be an even more “Bugged Out” and “Wavvy” experience in a live Pride weekend setting. MIKE RAMOS

The Purrs, Shake Some Action, Daydream Machine

(Barboza) Seattle’s Shake Some Action write really sweet, instantly hummable rock songs that pretty much align with their list of inﬂuences, which includes Big Star, the La’s, the Kinks, Stone Roses, the Beatles, XTC, and the Zombies. Honesty: What a concept. Portland septet Daydream Machine are still at that stage when they’re wearing their inspirations a bit too blatantly on their guitar cases. For instance, their song “Dawn” is almost a dead ringer for the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey.” Thankfully, Daydream Machine have good taste in shoegaze, psych rock, and drone. Long may they keep the Hawkwind in their sails. Finally, the Purrs celebrate the release of their album The Boy with Astronaut Eyes (Fin Records), a sterling collection of exquisitely wrought songs earnestly in thrall to the ﬁrst wave of psych pop. Extra credit: penning

7.2 Tuesday (Hip Hop)

Nectar and King David present: MIXTAPE KINGS SHOWCASE + DAVID & TASI’s AFTER WEDDING PARTY Featuring: NAVIA REIGNS, JumpmaNewz, Skott Stone, Loyal But Lethal, AkaMalik Feat. F&S, DJ GetMo

$5 adv. $7 D.O.S, 7pm, 21+

7.3 Wednesday (Hip Hop)

ELZHI, Luke Rain, Black Magic Noize, Task1Ne, Ro Knew, Tai the 13th, Spends Quality $8adv / $12dos 8pm 21+

& COMING:

a song called “So Fucking Beautiful” that actually is.

Saturday 6/29

Queer Carnival: Bright Light Bright Light, Trouble, Justice & Treasure, Futurewife, Nark, Ivy Winters, Can Can Castaways, guests (FRED Wildlife Refuge) See Data Breaker, page 76.

Male Bondage, Cold Lake, Seminars, Freak Vibe (Hollow Earth Radio) By the time I heard the Birthday Party, I’d already been a fan of King Snake Roost, Grong Grong, and Lubricated Goat. As a result, I always seek my ﬁx of noisy blues punk played by Aussie junkies with Charles Tolnay before hitting up Nick Cave. There’s almost assuredly a Birthday Party fan or two spending time onstage tonight, though the bands’ primary inﬂuences lie elsewhere. Male Bondage describe themselves as “Karp and Fugazi making out,” Cold Lake profess to sounding like Monorchid jamming through Entombed’s gear, and Seminars owe a tip of the hat to Rick Froberg. Not familiar with the reference points? Even better. Enjoy tonight’s bill and it might wind up that you prefer the students over the teachers. BRIAN COOK See also Underage, page 77.

Past Desires, Stickers, Viviane James (Cairo) Performances at Cairo often feel like a house show, and that’s a good thing—for several reasons—but tonight it’s a good thing because that’s exactly the type of environment in which Stickers’ raucous sax/vocals/drums/bass punk thrives. Joining are Portland’s synth-pop outﬁt Past Desires, whose recorded output on the internet vaguely recalls a less sing-along-ish version of Japanther, only instead of a dude drummer/singer, it’s a lady whose instrument is unknown at the time of this writing. Maybe she just sings. We’ll have to go there to ﬁnd out. Opening is Viviane James, whose performanceart thing I saw online featured much imitation laughter and heavy breathing, and it made me uncomfortable. GRANT BRISSEY

SeaProg: miRthkon, Tone Dogs, Operation ID, Austinitic, Trimtab, Bone Cave Ballet

(Columbia City Theater) Today is the second installment of SeaProg, a three-day festival focusing on progressive music. Don’t be scared: A lot of the music by these bands is complex and strange, but a lot of it is also worth wandering out of your comfort zone for. Headliners miRthkon—an “Oaklandish chambercore” unit—move mercurially and weirdly through avant-garde composition, highbrow jazz, and Rock in Opposition modes with precise abandon. They juggle whimsy, dissonance, and melodic beauty like middleweight champs. Operation ID

are one of Seattle’s most interesting prog groups, coming out of the Gentle Giant/Canterbury axis of beautiful, inventive jazz rock in which virtuosity serves a greater purpose than showing off one’s academic training. These young guys are already masters of their brainy domain. DAVE SEGAL

Pride 2013: Don’t Talk to the Cops!, Glitterbang, the Redwood Plan, Wishbeard (Wildrose) One of the best Pridelicious spots to hit over the weekend will most certainly be the Wildrose’s “Bush Gardens,” an outdoor music party offering you several ways to shake your sequined

groove thing. Funfetti Pop-Tart punks Don’t Talk to the Cops! will, of course, deliver all the rambunctious hiphop, effervescent dance moves, and catchy-as-fuck party hits you can handle—they remain one of the most entertaining local acts to see live. With the soft-serve, swirly queer dream pop of Wishbeard, the neon electro grooves of Glitterbang, and the driving synth explosion of the Redwood Plan. EMILY NOKES See also preview, page 59.

Freak Heat Waves, CROSSS, Thunder Grey Pilgrim, Marvelous Good Fortune

(Heartland) Hear ye, hear ye, it’s “doom stoner woodland creature nite” over at the Heartland Gallery! Swooping in from Victoria, BC, are Freak Heat Waves, a post-punk trio whose pulsing ambient journeys and shaggy krautrock jams are decidedly more chilled than their band name would indicate. CROSSS are also neighbors from the north (Halifax/ Toronto/Montreal), bringing you satisfying, melodic stoner-wizard metal for an oddly uplifting gloom trip. With Marvelous Good Fortune—a band whose uniform appears to be excellent purple cloaks—and the haunted black drone odyssey of Seattle/Debacle Records’ Thunder Grey Pilgrim. EMILY NOKES

Queensrÿche

(Moore) Queensrÿche, the Seattle area’s most popular progressive-rock band, have always epitomized why contemporary prog pales compared to the work of the genre’s 1970s pioneers. Their melodies seem overly melodramatic, their timbres overly compressed, and their vocals unintentionally risible. It’s hard to shake the notion that Queensrÿche are the archetypal prog band on which Tenacious D base their parodies of the style. But Queensrÿche recently split into two camps after a bitter intraband conﬂict, and this version is led by vocalist Geoff Tate; the other version includes original members Scott Rockenﬁeld, Michael Wilton, and Eddie Jackson and are playing the Crocodile on June 26. Tate’s group will perform 1988’s Operation: Mindcrime—a concept album about a rehabilitating drug addict turned political assassin—in its entirety. DAVE SEGAL

• THE MAD CAPS 10PM • $8

MONDAY 7/1

CONFETTI KIDS

RADIO TELESCOPE • ENCOURAGER

8PM • $8 ADV

WEDNESDAY 7/3

2ND ANNUAL MCA TRIBUTE DANCE PARTY! 9:30PM • $5

THU 6/27 - SUN 6/30 BOOKER T. JONES

Hammond B3 soulman touring in support of his new Stax/Concord Record release, “Sound the Alarm.”

TUE 7/9 - WED 7/10 91.3 KBCS welcomes OLIVER MTUKUDZI and THE BLACK SPIRITS

Zimbabwean afro-beat roots music against oppression

MON 7/15

ALBERT LEE

Grammy Award-winning British guitarist, And recipient of Guitar Player magazine’s “Best Country Guitarist”

TUE 7/16 - WED 7/17

THE GRANDMOTHERS OF INVENTION

Performing Zappa’s landmark 1975 album, “One Size Fits All,” in its entirety, featuring pivotal musicians behind the Zappa legacy

TUE 7/23 - WED 7/24

HAZMAT MODINE

One of New York’s most original bands, a septet that delivers rustic and joyful reggae, klezmer, rockabilly and gypsy-tinged music.

2033 6th Ave. | 206.441.9729 all ages | free parking full schedule at jazzalley.com

COMING UP: 6/26 Sean Nelson • 6/27 Christian Grinds + Striking Back • 7/23 The Cat

THURSDAY JUNE 27TH KNOWMADS LA + DICE + CAMILA RECCHIO

FRIDAY JUNE 28TH THE PURRS SHAKE SOME ACTION! + DAYDREAM MACHINE

SATURDAY JUNE 29TH THE GLASS NOTES JEREMY BURK + NATALIE QUIST

SUNDAY JUNE 30TH

RACHEL & LEIA’S BIRTHDAY SHOW ft. KING DUDE INTO VIOLENCE + VACATION

WEDNESDAY JULY 3RD JUAN MACLEAN J-JUSTICE + INTROCUT

SATURDAY JULY 6TH GENTLEMEN HALL

COMING SOON 6/26 Giraffage + Mister Lies • 7/7 We Were Heroes • 7/10 Futurebirds • 7/11 Wet City Rockers • 7/13 Whitney Lyman • 7/14 Lures • 7/17 Gran Rapids • 7/20 The Piniellas • 7/21 Tu B’av Fest • 7/25 Groundislava • 8/2 Conte • 8/3 Sebadoh • 8/7 Ken Stringfellow • 8/9 Jamie N Commons • 8/15 Filastine • 8/17 Real Don Music • 8/20 Majical Cloudz • 8/22 Scout Niblett • 8/23 Eef Barzelay • 9/6 Bleeding Rainbow • 9/7 Ewert and The Two Dragons • 9/18 Y La Bamba • 9/19 Porcelain Raft • 9/21 Hanni El Khatib • 9/22 Youryoungbody • 9/23 Jackson Scott • 9/25 Dirty Beaches • 9/27 Chelsea Wolfe • 9/28 Joan of Arc

Sunday 6/30

Double Duchess, Glitterbang, the Witches Titties, Event Staph, Yeah Girl, Violent Vickie, DJ Lisa Dank (Highline) See Sound Check, page 65, and preview, page 59.

New Lungs, Postmadonna, Special Explosion, Heavy Petting (Crocodile) See Underage, page 77.

SeaProg: Thinking Plague, Bill Horist, Moraine, Alex’s Hand, Dissonati (Columbia City Theater) The last day of SeaProg culminates with a tremendous lineup. For example, there’s the ever-ingenious guitar maverick Bill Horist, who finds multitudes of ways to make his instrument squeak in alien tongues. Fellow locals Moraine feature another phenomenal guitarist, Dennis Rea, and tap into that unnervingly fluid and powerful brand of prog and jazz rock that heavies like King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra summoned in those genres’ 1970s heyday. Last but most, Denver’s Thinking Plague rank among the world’s greatest prog outfits. They’ve recorded only six albums in 29 years, but their output is astoundingly original, a kind of mutated, über-intelligent art pop that sounds as eerie and alluring as jam between Renaldo and the Loaf and Magma. It would be a grave misjudgment to miss Thinking Plague. DAVE SEGAL

Face to Face, Teenage Bottlerocket, Blacklist Royals, Joshua Black Wilkins (Showbox at the Market) Not all pop-punk music has aged well since the 1990s. When I listen to some old favorites—Blink-182, Screeching Weasel, Less Than Jake, etc.—a lot of it just sounds like whiny dudes complaining about being stuck in the friend zone. The horror! But unlike some of their Warped Tour peers, Face to Face’s music has held up—I can shamelessly rock it, loud and proud, without feeling the need to blame nostalgia. Like so many others, their pop-punk anthems are about

releasing frustration, but their lyrics have an “us against them” mentality without turning it into a “man versus woman” war. Good on ya, Face to Face. MEGAN SELING

Ostad Hossein Omoumi, Jessika Kenney

(PONCHO Hall) Ostad Hossein Omoumi is a Persian classical music master (he performs on the ney, the traditional reed ﬂute); he was born in Iran in 1944 and has performed all over the world. He’s now based at UC Irvine, but he’s worked in Seattle before, and one of his students here is the remarkable independent vocalist Jessika Kenney. They’ll be joined in music and poetry by Iranian writer/scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. It’s the culmination of a four-day Classical Persian Music & Poetry summer workshop at Cornish that’s open to anyone. Do this! JEN GRAVES

Monday 7/1

Terri Tarantula, Emily Danger, Trentalange

(Comet) I will always love the part near the end of Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” when she busts out her freakishly and impossibly high “whistle” or “G-7” notes. One summer, in fact, I was playing Mariah really loudly with my grandma, with all the windows rolled down in her car. As we pulled up the driveway, Mariah hit those last few high notes, and it triggered G-Ma’s garage-door opener. Seriously. Mariah’s voice opened the fucking garage. NYC’s Emily Danger is a cabaret-via-opera-house-style of singer with a similarly impressive range. Her voice—sometimes soaring, sometimes angry—combined with her piano playing, and the dark and orchestral arrangements by her backup band (drums, guitar, violin, and synth) is momentous. It’s deﬁnitely a voice worth venturing out on Monday night for. KELLY O

Tuesday 7/2

Night Cadet, Friends & Family, Rin Tin Tiger, Edmund Wayne (Chop Suey) See preview, page 59.

PRIDE

WEEKEND! LICK! + TALCUM!

SATURDAY JULY 6TH FRI JUNE 28TH & SAT JUNE 29TH

BRIDE // ERIK BLOOD // DJS GUY FOX & DANGER GRANGER (GRIZZLED MIGHTY)

FRIDAY JULY 12TH

FRIENDS & FAMILY 7/3 MORAL CRUX 7/7 MISTER LOVELESS 7/10 KINGDOM OF HOLY SUN 7/11 CHOP SUEY FEST! 7/14 ACCIDENTAL BEAR QUEER MUSIC TOUR 7/18 MASTER MUSICIAN

PAUL HOOPER

Paul Hooper hits the stage with thought provoking, politically incorrect comedy that slams society and himself with absolute irreverence. An only child with OCD, Hooper channels his dysfunction into a cathartic harangue. This native of Charlotte, North Carolina, now residing in NYC, has been featured at the HBO Comedy Festival in Vegas, the Boston Comedy Festival, Michael Moore and Jeff Garlin’s Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival, the Vancouver Comedy Fest and was runner-up in the 30th Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition.

Wed, June 26

PEPPER PROUD JOSH PHILPOTT BAND 9pm ~ $7 Thur, June 27 Monqui presents ROYAL TEETH AMERICAN AUTHORS THE COLOURIST 9pm ~ $10adv/$12dos

HILLSTOMP GRAVELROAD THE SHIVERING DENIZENS 9:30pm ~ $10

Sat, June 29

local reggae, indie & classic rock AIRPORT WAY Album Release Party

BUZZ BRUMP SEBASTIAN AND THE DEEP BLUE 9:30pm ~ $8

Times listed are show times. Doors open 30-60 minutes before.

Tues, July 2 Second Ascent presents Fundraiser Climbers Party w/ GRAHAM ZIMMERMAN & SCOTT BENNETT live music from THE STRUGGLERS, DRAGONTAIL & the return of DJ SWEEP door open at 7pm ~ $6 Wed, July 3 local indie folk HONEY.MOON. TREE. INTISAAR JUBRAN MAIAH MANSER 9pm ~ $6 Fri, July 5 funk, soul & rock MOLASSES Reunion Show!!! THE BRAXMATICS THE FABULOUS PARTY BOYS 9:30pm ~ $8 Sat, July 6 soulful americana HEELS TO THE HARDWOOD TBA LANFORD BLACK 9:30pm ~ $6

SATURDAY, JUNE 29

Friday, June 28th - Saturday, June 29th Hattie’s, The Sunset & the Tractor present:

$20adv/$25dos • 21+ REBIRTH BRASS BAND 6pm eldridge gravy & the court supreme 5pm orkestar zirkonium 4pm richie aldente 3pm

SUNDAY, JUNE 30

$10adv/$12dos • all ages / bar with ID MARK PICKEREL AND HIS PRAYING HANDS, amy lavere, davidson hart kingsberry & special guests

DANCING, LUST, & BIG GAY LOVE

THE ROYAL ROOM Ayelet

Rose Gottlieb, Anat Fort, free

SEAMONSTER The Unsinkable Heavies a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Hollywood Undead, Pop Evil, All Hail the Yeti, 3 Pill Morning, 7 pm, $25/$30

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Open Mic: Guests a STUDIO SEVEN Elude, Transcendence, Baphomet MC, guests, 7 pm, $8/$10

TRACTOR TAVERN The Gloria Darlings, Pepper Proud, Josh Philpott Band, $7

a TRIPLE DOOR Pavlo, 7:30 pm, $22/$25

TULA’S Swojo, 7:30 pm, $8 a VERA PROJECT Defiance, Ohio, Your Heart Breaks, Corner Kick, 7:30 pm, $8/$10

HIGHWAY 99 Little Ray & the Uppercuts, 8 pm, $5

JAZZ ALLEY Vieux Farka Touré, 7:30 pm, $24.50

KELL’S Stevie Morris, free

NECTAR Counterpoint Culture, Goldbar, Home Sweet Home, 8 pm, $5

a NEPTUNE THEATER Red Baraat, 7 pm, $15/$18

NEUMOS Sean Nelson, Jenny Invert, 8 pm, $15

NEW ORLEANS Legacy Band, Clarence Acox

OHANA Live Island Music

PINK DOOR Casey MacGill & the Blue 4 Trio, 8 pm

RENDEZVOUS Damn Union, Chrononauts, $5, We Are/ She Is, Regional Faction , Sarah Tones, $5

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Wally Shoup Quartet, free DJ

BALTIC ROOM Reverb: DJ Rome, Rozzville, Zooty B, Antartic

CAPITOL CLUB Roll

Bounce: OCNotes, Spirit Fingaz, EverGrimeState, free

CHA CHA LOUNGE DJ Hank Rock, Cutz Like a Knife, free CONTOUR Rotation: Guests, guests, 10 pm, $5 THE EAGLE VJDJ Andy J

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN Passage: Jayms Nylon, Joey Webb, guests FOUNDATION Kill the Noise, Fury, MC Dino, DigDug, Just One

HAVANA SoulShift: Peter Evans, Devlin Jenkins,

Richard Everhard, $1

LAST SUPPER CLUB Vibe Wednesday: Jame$Ervin, DT, Contagious

LAVA LOUNGE Mod Fuck Explosion: DJ Deutscher Meister

MOE BAR The Hump: DJ Darwin, DJ Swervewon, guests, 10:30 pm, free NEIGHBOURS Undergrad: Guest DJs, 18+, $5/$8

PONY Bloodlust: DJs Gin & Tonic

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Fade: DJ Chinkyeye, DJ Christyle, 10 pm

THURS 6/27

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

ARABICA LOUNGE OAG Thang

BARÇA Lounge Acts by Doug Nufer: Wally Shoup, Bill Horist, 7:30 pm, free BLUE MOON TAVERN Sweet Lou’s Sour Mash, Molotov Colostomy, the Howl, $5

CAFE RACER Aaron J. Shay and Oliver Franklin

CAN CAN Vince Mira CHOP SUEY Benefit for Rain City Rock Camp for Girls: Sera Cahoone the Redwood Plan , Cumulus, the Local Strangers, guests, 7:30 pm, $20

COMET Sebastians of Bremen, Cloud Person , Other Animals, Honey Noble, $6

CONOR BYRNE Abies Procera, Norwegian Chalk,

Po’ Brothers, $7

COPPER GATE Fu Kun Wu Trio, 8 pm, free

CROCODILE The Bad Things , Sinner Saint Burlesque, Miss Mamie

Lavona & Her White Boy Band, Bakelite 78, $13

DARRELL’S TAVERN The 350’s, guests, free

DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia

DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free

EGAN’S JAM HOUSE

Carolyn Graye Student Showcase: Tasty Trio, guests, 7 pm, $15

a EL CORAZON Simple Monsters, Koji, Turnover, Ivy League , Have Mercy, 7 pm, $10; Armed for Apocalypse, La Fin Absolute Du Monde, Death Valley High, 7:30 pm, $8/$10

a GUAYMAS CANTINA

Oleaje Flamenco, 8 pm, free

HIGHWAY 99 Monster Road, 8 pm, $7

JAZZ ALLEY Booker T. Jones, 9:30 pm, $32.50

a JOSEPHINE Burning Love, Heiress, the Loss, Olde Ghost, Don Peyote

KELL’S Stevie Morris, free THE KRAKEN BAR & LOUNGE Punk Rock

Karaoke: Guests

LUCID The Hang: Caffeine, 9:30 pm, free

NECTAR Sugarcane, the Blackberry Bushes, Lonesome Locomotive, 8 pm, $5

NEUMOS Christian Grinds, Striking Back, Sky Pilot, Netty, 8 pm, $10

PARAMOUNT THEATER

Grimes

PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac, 8 pm

RENDEZVOUS Black Magic Noize, Boombox League, Ifthen, Todd Sykes, Espresso Brothas, 10 pm, $5

SCARLET TREE How Now Brown Cow , 9:30 pm, free

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB

Passion Party , Screens, Three Ninjas, AI Sound Design, 8 pm, $6

THE STEPPING STONE PUB

Open Mic: Guests

a STUDIO SEVEN Medic Medic, Steven Curtis, Beneath the Spin Light, Wes Mai, 7 pm, $10/$12

SUNSET TAVERN Caligula, Giza, $8

TRACTOR TAVERN Royal Teeth, American Authors, the Colourist, $10/$12

a TRIPLE DOOR Albare, 7:30 pm, $15/$17

TULA’S Carrie Wicks Group, 7:30 pm, $10

DEANNA AND DEBBIE OUTSIDE HARD L GALLERY

Iknow it LOOKS like Deanna is gently caressing Debbie’s face, but in reality, Deanna is SLAPPING Debbie—whapping her so hard, beer ﬂew out of her mouth. Why? Doesn’t it hurt? “It’s a drunken gay slut slap ﬁght,” Deanna told me. “We do this every night.” Daaaaang. This must be what the “hard” in “Hard L” stands for. KELLY O KELLY O

Cannabis usersWe need your help!

Please help improve cannabis science in Washington.

About 15 minutes - Confidential mjsurvey.org

THURSDAY

The Crocodile and Silent City Productions Present THE BAD THINGS: 11 YEARS OF JUNKYARD CABARET

Sinner Saint Burlesque, Miss Marie Lavona and Her White Boy Band, BAKELITE 78 21+

N.I.S. and adhl.org Present A BENEFIT FOR MUSICARES W/ PROPHETS OF ADDICTION

Midstokke, One Gun Shy, Robert Witworth, Hosted by Tee Wanz 21+

AYRON JONES AND THE WAY & THE STAXX BROTHERS Tip To Base 21+

Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas, The Duke Evers Band All Ages

TIMOTHY ROBERT GRAHAM Pigeon

Ghost Town Riot, Furniture Girls, Morning Prayers, LiMB LIFTR

NEIL HAMBURGER TIM HEIDECKER (OF TIM & ERIC’S AWESOME

VERMILLION The Hunting Club, Swamp Meat, Ephrata, free

VITO’S RESTAURANT &

LOUNGE Casey MacGill, 5:30 pm, free

THE WHITE RABBIT

Marmalade, $6

BALLROOM DJ Rob, free

CAPITOL CLUB Citrus: DJ Skiddle

THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark

HAVANA Sophisticated

Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

LAST SUPPER CLUB Open

House: Guests

LAVA LOUNGE Rock DJs: Guests

LO-FI London Loves: Guest DJs, $3

MERCURY Isolation: DJ Coldheart, $3

MOE BAR Saucy: DJ Rad’em, DJ 100 Proof, free

NEIGHBOURS Jet Set Thursdays: Guest DJs

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND The Lowdown: DJ Lightray, $3

OHANA Chill: DJ MS

Q NIGHTCLUB Drama

Thursday: Hyperfunk, END, Squnitz, Bryan Furious, free

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Damn Son: DJ Flave, Sativa Sound System, Jameson Just, Tony Goods, $5 after 10:30 pm

THERAPY LOUNGE DUH.:

DJ Omar, guests

TRINITY Space Thursdays:

Rise Over Run, DJ Christyle, Johnny Fever, DJ Nicon, Sean Majors, B Geezy, guests, free

FRI

6/28

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA The Purrs, Shake Some Action , Daydream Machine, 7 pm, $8

BLUE MOON TAVERN Spinning Whips, Thrust

Fund, Waterbear, the Drop Shadows, 9:30 pm, $6

CAFE RACER Mauricio Mrz, Jody Jensen

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER The Tripwires, Llama , Alessandra Rose, 8:30 pm, $8/$10

COMET Indian Wars, Fuzzy Cloaks, Wimps, So Pitted, $7

CONOR BYRNE Joel & Jesse Lege, Tallboys, $10

CROCODILE Benefit for Musicares: Prophets of Addiction, Midstokke , One Gun Shy, Robert Witworth, 7 pm, $15

DARRELL’S TAVERN Severhead, Eroder, Fraktal Phantom, $6

EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Jerin Falkner , 7 pm, free; Jessie Sawyers, 9 pm, free a EL CORAZON Hail the Sun, Speed of Sound in Seawater, Stolas, Fearless Leader, 7:30 pm, $8/$10; Says the Snake, IANA, A Hope Not Forgotten, Show Time, Home Alone, Destroy Louis, 8 pm, $10/$12

a GOOD SHEPHERD CENTER Live Score to Nosferatu: Tom Peters, 8 pm, $5-$15

GORGE AMPHITHEATRE

Paradiso Festival 2013: Guests

HIGH DIVE The Rush Project, $8

HIGHWAY 99 Nearly Dan, 8 pm, $15

JAZZ ALLEY Booker T. Jones, 9:30 pm, $32.50

JOSEPHINE Jenn Kelly, the Harvey Girls, Golden Gardens, guests, 8 pm, free KELL’S Stevie Morris, free THE KRAKEN BAR & LOUNGE BlackQueen, Augurs, Golgothan Sunrise, $5

LO-FI All City Jump Off LUCID Fade Jazz Quartet, Zizzy Zi Zixxy , free THE MIX Uncle Pooch, Slow Mover, Devils Hunt Me Down, 8 pm, free

NEUMOS Mark Farina, DJ

Riz Rollins, Wesley Holmes, $15

THURSDAY 6/27

THE TOTALLY GAY SING-ALONG Haiii gurlfran. How you feelin’? Pridey? I thought so. Well, we’ve got metric shit tons of pride-ﬂavored fabulousness to dump all over you like a big bucket of fudgepackulating glitter, so don’t fret your pretty little head. Let’s dive right the fuck in with one of my very favorite things in the known gay universe—the Totally Gay Sing-Along! Jason Miller of Central Cinema gathers together the gayest videos ever conceived from every dusty corner imaginable and plays them while you enjoy a nice cocktail and sing your delightful ass off. The cocktailier you get, the louder you get. Simple! These events are fun beyond the telling of it—you will drink and sing and dance in the aisles. You have no choice. Give in! It’s destiny. Central Cinema, 8 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages.

FRIDAY 6/28

GENDER BLENDER

We begin Pride weekend damn good and proper with the ﬁrst of three don’t-youdare-efﬁng-miss-it Kevin Kauer (aka Nark) gala events. Yes, it happens at Neighbours, and yes, you know I love to ignore the place like a hobo on the bus, but let me hit you with a few words: Alaska Thunderfuck, Jinkx Monsoon, Ivy Winters, Honey Mahogany, Ben DeLaCreme, Jackie Hell, Ade, Aleksa Manila, Kitten LaRue, Lou Henry Hoover, Cherry Sur Bete, Olivia LaGarce, Cherdonna Shinatra. Neighbours, 9 pm–4 am, $35, 21+.

LAST SUPPER CLUB

a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 5:30 pm; Zhongyu, Monkey Bat, Jolanda, 8:30 pm, free

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free

a SHOWARE CENTER 1964 (Beatles Tribute), 8 pm, $30-$70

a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Twista, 8 pm, $36.50

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Speed Whiskey, the Aimlows, 8 pm, $7

SUNSET TAVERN Frontier Ruckus, Legendary Oaks , 10 pm, $8

TRACTOR TAVERN Hillstomp, Gravelroad , the Shivering Denizens, 9:30 pm, $10

TRIPLE DOOR Wendy Ho, 8 pm, $20

TULA’S Lary Barilleau & the Latin Jazz Collective, 7:30 pm, $15

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Yada Yada Blues Band, free THE WHITE RABBIT The Bayous, guests, $8

95 SLIDE DJ Fever One

BALLROOM DJ Tamm of KISS fm

BALMAR Body Movin’ Fridays: DJ Ben Meadow, free

BALTIC ROOM Bump Fridays: Guest DJs

BARBOZA Just Got Paid: 100proof, $5 after 11:30 pm

CAPITOL CLUB Neoplastic: Marcus G, Jay Battle, DJ Shorthand, free

CHOP SUEY Lick!: DJ Mathematix, Dewey Decimal, 8 pm, $5

CONTOUR Afterhours, 2 am

CUFF TGIF: DJ Harmonix, DJ Stacey, 7 pm’ C&W

Dancing: Guest DJs, 11 pm, $5

FOUNDATION Felix Cartal, City 17, Simon Houser, MindHazzard

FUEL DJ Headache, guests

HAVANA Rotating DJs: DV One, Soul One, Curtis, Nostalgia B, Sean Cee, $5

Madness: Guests

LAVA LOUNGE DJ David James

MERCURY Re:Surgence: DJ Major Tom, $5

NECTAR Prince and Michael

Experience: DJ Dave Paul, $8

NEIGHBOURS Gender

Blender: Hoot n Howl, Brian Maier, Roy G. Biv, Mr. Charming, Freddy King of Pants, Futurewife, guests

NEIGHBOURS

UNDERGROUND Caliente

Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren

OHANA Back to the Day: DJ Estylz

Q NIGHTCLUB Pride 2013: Rosabel

RE-BAR TRIBAL!: Rob Noble, Michael Manahan, Guest DJs, 10 pm, $10

SCARLET TREE Oh So Fresh

Fridays: Deejay Tone, DJ Buttnaked, guests

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Crush: Guest DJs, free

TRINITY Tyler, DJ Phase, DJ Nug, guests, $10

WILDROSE LA Kendall,

LadyJane

THE WOODS Deep/Funky/ Disco/House: Guest DJs

SAT

6/29

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA The Glass

Notes , Jeremy Burk , Natalie Quist , 7 pm, $10

BLUE MOON TAVERN Colt

Kraft Band, Low Hums, Zmrzlina, Abba Kiser, 9:30 pm, $6

CAFE RACER Classical

Revolution

a CAIRO Past Desires, Stickers, Viviane James, 8 pm a CAPITOL HILL Capitol

Hill Pride Block Party: MC

Mark “Mom” Finley, Marcel Frederick, Puddletown Squares, Nasty Habits, guests, 11 am, free

CHATEAU STE. MICHELLE Steve Miller Band, 7 pm,

SATURDAY 6/29

MEN AT SEA

No one speaks of cruising anymore, and that saddens me. The wonderful Robbie Turner is your hostess on The Islander Champagne Cruise—a daytime ﬂoating bacchanal of dancing, lust, and big gay love. Featuring DJ Freddy King of Pants… and brunch! The Islander Boat, 1611 Fairview Ave, brunch 2:30 pm, cruise 4–7 pm, $25, 21+.

QUEER CARNIVAL

After the cruise, we are off to the Queer Carnival, featuring tricks (both kinds) and burlesque, with Artstar, Cherdonna and Lou, DJ Trouble, sexy, sexy, SEXY little Welsh pop stud Bright Light Bright Light and Jinkx Monsoon’s secret little love monkey, Ivy Winters! (Get a room.) Happy Pride, you sick wonderful twisted queers! FRED Wildlife Refuge, 9 pm, $20, 21+.

A VARIETY SHOW OF BELLYDANCE AND BURLESQUE

$8/ 8PM

BY ADRIAN RYAN

Gender Blender

$39/$65

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER SeaProg: Thinking Plague, miRthkon, Operation ID, guests, 2 pm, $60 for a weekend pass

COMET Sole, Moodie Black, Onry Ozzborn, the Kelu Band, Masta X-Kid, Tre Angle, $10; Fred Roth Revue , the Sorry Devils, Ethan Jennings, 4 pm, $5

CONOR BYRNE Sean Bendickson , $7

CROCODILE Ayron Jones, the Staxx Brothers , Tip To Base, 8 pm, $10

EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Elton

John-a-Thon: guests, 7 pm, $12

a EL CORAZON Buckcherry, Girl on Fire , Witchburn, Jaded Mary , 8 pm, $28/$30/$100

GORGE AMPHITHEATRE Paradiso Festival 2013: Guests

HARD ROCK CAFE 80’s Enough , $10/$13

a HEARTLAND Freak Heat Waves, CROSSS, Thunder Grey Pilgrim, Marvelous Good Fortune

HIGH DIVE Gravity Kings, Kissing Potion , Georgetown Orbits, $8 HIGHWAY 99 Hot Wired Rhythm Band, 8 pm, $15

a HOLLOW EARTH

RADIO Health Problems, Male Bondage, Cold Lake, Seminars, 8 pm

JAZZ ALLEY Booker T. Jones, 9:30 pm, $32.50

KELL’S Stevie Morris, free THE KRAKEN BAR & LOUNGE Foxhole Norman, Evaloki, Stab Me Kill Me, Diet Riot, $5

LO-FI Ever So Android , Gibraltar, Jupe Jupe , Black Nite Crash

a MOORE THEATER

Queensryche with Geoff Tate, 7:30 pm, $22.50-$42.50

QUEEN CITY GRILL Faith Beattie, Bayly, Totusek, Guity, free RENDEZVOUS Mile 9, Mr. Smith, 10:30 pm, $10

a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 6 pm; A Tribute

to George Harrison: Paul Moore, Keith Lowe, Eric Eagle, Andy Coe, 9 pm, $8/$12

a SHOWBOX SODO Chino y Nacho, 8 pm, $41.50-$61.50

a STUDIO SEVEN Timmy Shere Fundraiser Show: Skablins, Natalie Wouldn’t, Rude Tuna, the Trutones , guests, 5:30 pm, $10

SUNSET TAVERN Judy Talk, Grounders, the Mad Caps, 10 pm, $8/$10

TIM’S TAVERN The Faradays , Civilized Animals , free TRACTOR TAVERN Airport Way , Buzz Brump, Sebastian and the Deep Blue, 9:30 pm, $8 a TRIPLE DOOR Irma Thomas, 7:30 pm and 10 pm, $35-$45

TULA’S Anton Schwartz Quintet, 7:30 pm, $15 a VERA PROJECT Dyme Def, Fatal Lucciauno , Mega Evers, guests, 7:30 pm, $11

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Ruby Bishop, 6 pm; the Casey MacGill Trio, 9:30 pm, free THE WHITE RABBIT Daniel Ryan and the Players, $6 WILDROSE Pride 2013: Don’t Talk to the Cops, Glitterbang, the Redwood Plan , Wishbeard , guests

BALLROOM DJ Warren BALTIC ROOM Good Saturdays: Guest DJs BARBOZA Inferno: Guests, 10:30 pm, free before 11:30 pm/$5 after CAPITOL CLUB Get Physical: DJ Edis, DJ Paycheck, 10 pm, free CHOP SUEY Talcum Pride Edition: Gene Balk, Mike “Teal Pants” Nipper, Marc Muller, Mike Chrietzberg, Last 9 pm, $5

CONTOUR Europa Night: Misha Grin, Gil FOUNDATION Darude, Marq, Chaos, Spaceship Arcade FRED WILDLIFE REFUGE Queer Carnival: Bright Light

Bright Light, Trouble, Justice & Treasure, Futurewife, Nark, Ivy Winters, Can Can Castaways, guests, 9 pm, $20

HAVANA Rotating DJs: DV One, Soul One, Curtis, Nostalgia B, Sean Cee, $5

HIGHLINE Black Light Party: DJ Bret Law, DJ Richard J Dalton, Drew Paradisco, $10

ISLANDER BOAT CRUISE

Men at Sea: Brian Maier, Freddy King of Pants, Robbie Turner, 2:30 pm, $25

LAVA LOUNGE DJ Matt

NECTAR Jai Ho!: DJ Prashant, Ambush, DJ RDX, 8 pm, $5

NEIGHBOURS Jessica Sutta, Randy Blue Exclusive Models, Aleksa Manila

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club

Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal Darkness

NEUMOS Red Party: Phil B, Tony Moran, $30

OHANA Funk House: DJ Bean One

Q NIGHTCLUB Mike Cruz, Wayne G

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Guest DJs

TRINITY ((SUB)): Guy, VSOP, Jason Lemaitre, guests, $15/free before 10 pm THE WOODS Hiphop/R&B/ Funk/Soul/Disco: Guest DJs

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6

BY DAVE SEGAL

WEDNESDAY 6/26

KILL THE NOISE’S NAME PARADOX

Kill the Noise has released tracks on Deadmau5’s Mau5trap label, Skrillex’s OWSLA, and Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak, which tips you off to the sort of crowd-pleasing brand of electronic music this LA producer makes. His nearly 234,000 likes on Facebook also speak of the skeleton-facebandanna’d beatmaker’s populist inclinations. Kill the Noise actually makes a lot of it—sometimes it takes the form of electro house, sometimes dubstep, sometimes drum ’n’ bass, sometimes moombahton. Whichever style he’s executing, Kill the Noise stresses the extreme ends of the frequency spectrum and strives to maximize excitement. His music is more about visceral thrills than cerebral chills, which is why he makes the big money and you’re still struggling to get a gig outside your neighborhood dive bar. With Fury, MC Dino, Dig-Dug, and Just One Foundation, 9 pm, $10 adv, 21+.

TAKE A SUDDEN VACATION WITH GIRAFFAGE AND MISTER LIES

Giraffage (San Francisco producer Charlie Yin), who was just here in February, returns to bring you more of that airbrushed, moisturized R&B you love like a lover. His 2013 album, Needs, is probably the slickest thing on the great Alpha Pup label. Its chill vibe, artfully timestretched vocals, and deceptively tricky rhythms don’t exactly scream “ﬂoor ﬁllers,” but Needs is good head-nodding/

8 pm, $6 HIGHLINE Queer As Fuck Night 2: Lisa Dank, the Break Up, Witches Titties, Event Staph, guests, $10 JAI THAI BROADWAY Rock Bottom Soundsystem, free JAZZ ALLEY Booker T. Jones, 7:30 pm, $32.50

KELL’S Liam Gallagher LITTLE RED HEN Open Mic Acoustic Jam with Bodacious Billy: Guests, 4 pm NECTAR Indigo Pathfinder, the Whoopsie Daisies, Mirrorcandy, Clarity in Fiction, guests, 6 pm,

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Face to Face, Teenage Bottlerocket, Blacklist Royals, Joshua Black Wilkins, 7:30 pm a TRACTOR TAVERN Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands, Amy LaVere, guests, 1 pm, $10/$12 a TRIPLE DOOR Irma Thomas, 7 pm, $35/$40/$45 TULA’S Special Forces, 7 pm, $7; Jim Cutler Jazz Orchestra, 8 pm, $8 VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Ruby Bishop, 6 pm; the Ron Weinstein Trio, 9:30 pm

special-person-holding music. Mister Lies (20-year-old Chicago musician Nick Zanca) also released an album earlier this year, titled Mowgli (Lefse Records). This debut full-length highlights Zanca’s facility for meditative electronic soul and understated dance cuts that don’t neatly ﬁt into any generic cubbyholes (thankfully). Honestly, Mister Lies creates tracks that sound way more accomplished and emotionally resonant than his youth would lead you to believe. He reportedly made the album in states of insomnia and homesickness, and the wistful ache from those conditions seeps into the record. Sudden Vacation tour with Beat Connection DJs Barboza, 9 pm, $12 adv, 21+.

SATURDAY 6/29

BRIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT HEADLINES QUEER CARNIVAL

Orchestrated by disco savant DJ Trouble, this event is part of the Gay Pride celebration and includes “circus tricks and party tricks and cheap tricks, a burlesque affair surely full of strippers, aerialists, and knives.” That’s a daunting prospect for any musician to contend with, but Trouble assures us that UK heartthrob Bright Light Bright Light whose suave, sparkling electronic-pop songcraft should get rabid Pet Shop Boys fans hot and bothered—is going to be up for the challenge. Queer Carnival with DJ Trouble, Justice & Treasure, Futurewife, Nark, Ivy Winters, Can Can Castaways, and guests. FRED Wildlife Refuge, 9 pm, $20, 21+.

DJ BALTIC ROOM Mass:

Guest DJs

CAPITOL CLUB Island Style:

DJ Bookem, DJ Fentar

CONTOUR Broken Grooves:

DJ Venus, Rob Cravens, guests, free

THE EAGLE T-Bar/T-Dance:

Up Above, Fistfight, free

a FULL TILT ICE CREAM

Vinyl Appreciation Night:

Guest DJs, 7 pm

LAVA LOUNGE No Come

Down: Jimi Crash

MOE BAR Chocolate

Sundays: Sosa, MarsONE, Phosho, free

NEIGHBOURS Noche Latina: Guest DJs

PONY TeaDance: DJ El Toro, Freddy King of Pants, 4 pm

Q NIGHTCLUB Revival: Riz Rollins, Chris Tower, 3 pm, free

RE-BAR Flammable: DJ Wesley Holmes, 9 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Salsa:

DJ Nick THE STEPPING STONE PUB

Vinyl Night: You bring your records, they play them

WILDROSE Pride 2013:

DJ JDub, Tony Burns, Jamie Nova

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Verbal Abuse, In Defence, Deathraid, Babylon, $8

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Jerry

Frank

BLUE MOON TAVERN Andy

Coe Band, free

CHOP SUEY Sir Coyler & His Asthmatic Band , Photon Pharaoh, the Aimlows, BOG,

8 pm, $5

COASTAL KITCHEN Pork Chop Trio, 9:30 pm, free

COMET Terri Tarantula, Emily Danger, Trentalange , free

CROCODILE Hurry Up and Die, Negative Hole, Triple Sixes, Hilltalks, 8 pm, $5

EL CORAZON Big Country, Danny Newcomb, the Jilly Rizzo, the Halyards, 8 pm, $20/$25

KELL’S Liam Gallagher

MAC’S TRIANGLE PUB Jazz and Blues Night: Guests, free MOLLY MAGUIRES Open Mic: Hosted by Tom Rooney, free NEW ORLEANS The New Orleans Quintet, 6:30 pm

SEAMONSTER Monday Night Open Mic: 10 pm

SUNSET TAVERN Confetti Kids, Radio Telescope, Encourager , 8 pm, $6

TRACTOR TAVERN the Tallboys , Every other 7:30 pm, $5

TRIPLE DOOR

Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free THE WHITE RABBIT

Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder, $6

BALTIC ROOM Jam

Jam: Zion’s Gate Sound, $5 BARBOZA Minted: DJ Swervewon, 100proof, Sean Cee, Blueyedsoul, free

CAPITOL CLUB The Jet Set: DJ Swervewon, 100 Proof COMPANY BAR Rock and Roll Chess Night: DJ Plantkiller, 8 pm, free

CONOR BYRNE Get the Spins: Guest DJs, free HAVANA Manic Mondays: DJ Jay Battle, free THE HIDEOUT Introcut, guests, free

LAVA LOUNGE Psych/Blues: Bobby Malvestuto LO-FI Jam Jam: Zion’s Gate, Sound Selecta, Element, Mista Chatman $5

THE MIX Bring Your Own Vinyl Night: Guests, 6 pm

MOE BAR Minted Mondays: DJ Swervewon, 100proof, Sean Cee, Blueyedsoul, free NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND SIN: DJ Keanu, 18+, free OHANA DJ Hideki

PONY Dirty Deeds: Guest DJs Q NIGHTCLUB Reflect, 8 pm, free

TUES 7/2

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Abolishment of Flesh, Fields of Elysium, Psychiatric Regurgitation, Altar of Abomination, $8

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

CONOR BYRNE Ol’ Time

Social: The Tallboys , 9 pm

COPPER GATE The Suffering Fuckheads , 8 pm, free a EL CORAZON SMP Stiff Valentine, Dark Matter Noise, Grasp Logic, XY Beautiful, $8/$10; Scorpios, Joey Cape, Jon Snodgrass, Sundowner, guests, 8:30 pm, $10/$12

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN Monktail Creative Music

Concern, DJ Shonuph, free HIGH DIVE Letters, the Deepest Ocean, Jupiter, 8 pm, $6

KELL’S Liam Gallagher

MAC’S TRIANGLE PUB Open Mic: free

THE MIX Jazz Night: Don Mock, Steve Kim, Jacques

BY BRITTNIE FULLER

WEDNESDAY 6/26

GIVE FOLK PUNK A CHANCE

Whether or not you’re a fan of perhaps the most overtly sincere subgenre, “folk punk,” tonight the Vera Project provides an ideal space for queer performers and allies Bloomington (and surprise! Plan-ItX-afﬁliated) sextet Deﬁance, Ohio have inspired YouTube covers for roughly a decade. Their sing-along protest songs and gently harmonized acoustic punk positivity escalate on their new release, the Calling EP. With fuzz-poptrepreneur Your Heart Breaks and bristly pop-punk band Corner Kick Vera Project, 7:30 pm, $8 adv/$10 DOS.

SATURDAY 6/29

MALE BONDAGE: HEAVIER THAN THE BACON INDUSTRY

When a group likens its sound to “KARP and Fugazi making out,” it’s cause for both excitement and fear. Fortunately, Indianapolis-based Male Bondage pay proper tribute to both bands with thicksliced metal-punk riffs slabbed across an artful sludge-rock foundation. It’s also good to see the return of slow-burning hardcore band Cold Lake; this is their second show after more than a year of hiatus. New Seattle lo-ﬁ garage/postpunk band Seminars and Freak Vibe complete a bill that will casually incite nightmares. Hollow Earth Radio, 8 pm.

SUNDAY

6/30

POST-EVERYTHING ADVENTURES WITH POSTMADONNA

If you want sublime aural adventures

Willis, 8 pm

NECTAR Mixtape Kings Showcase: Navia Reigns,

Skott Stone, Loyal But Lethal, AkaMalik, guests, $5

THE OULD TRIANGLE Open

Mic: Guests, 8 pm, free

OUTWEST Wine and Jazz Night: Tutu Jazz Quartet, free

OWL N’ THISTLE Jazz Improv Night: Guests

SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free

TIM’S TAVERN Open Mic: Linda Lee, 8 pm

TRACTOR TAVERN Graham Zimmerman & Scott Bennett, the Strugglers, Dragontail, DJ Sweep, $6

THE WHITE RABBIT Thieves of the American Dream, Zander Yates, Alina Ashley Nicole DJ

95 SLIDE Chicken & Waffles: Supreme La Rock, DJ Rev, free

BLUE MOON TAVERN Blue Moon Vinyl Revival Tuesdays: DJ Country Mike, A.D.M., guests, 8 pm, free

CONTOUR Electric Groove: Guests

THE EAGLE Pitstop: DJ Nark

HAVANA Word Is Bond: Hoot and Howl, $3 after 11 pm

LAVA LOUNGE Metal: Doctor Jonze

MERCURY Die: Black Maru, Major Tom, $5

MOE BAR Cool.: DJ Cory Alfano, DJ Cody Votolato, free

NECTAR Top Rankin’ Reggae: DJ Element, Chukki, free

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Vicious

Dolls: DJ Rachael, 9 pm, $5

OHANA DJ Marc Sense

WILDROSE Taco Tuesday: Guest DJs

from some reigning indie-rock locals, this could be your Sunday night. Newish instrumental trio Heavy Petting forge post-metal and sparkly Midwestern emo indebted to American Football, and do it well. On the track “5,” guitar drifts in a Russian Circles–inspired soft-to-loud dream glaze, embalming the listener in sigh-inducing dynamic shifts. Another product of the area’s burgeoning prog-/ math-rock scene, spazzcore band Postmadonna have a new album that defines dizzying hedonism and squiggly bombast. To grasp their sound, imagine if a more self-indulgent Tera Melos were led by an aggressively ADHD Omar RodriguezLopez. This is the release show for their self-titled LP, which contains 11 tracks of amplified carnivalesque surprises that end almost faster than you can listen to them. It’s a thing that will excite people who love garish technical flair from musicians. With Special Explosion and New Lungs Crocodile Back Bar, 7 pm, $5.

PRESENTS

FROM INDIAN LAKES

PRODIGY $11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

Postmadonna

Cinemas Opens July 19th

Arts Corps (7/15) sundance@artscorps.org Three Dollar Bill Cinema (7/16) www.threedollarbillcinema.org Climate Solutions (7/17) sundance@climatesolutions.org Seattle International Film Festival (7/18) info@siff.net

An Educational Thrill Ride

How to Make Money Selling Drugs Is Part Exposé, Part Instruction Manual

BY BRENDAN KILEY

Meet “Big John” Harriel Jr. As a boy, the family he was living with was so poor, they sometimes ate lemons off the tree in their front yard. When the lemons stopped growing, Harriel knew

it was time for him to go out, ﬁnd work, and help put food on the table. So he got involved with his neighborhood’s going concern, one of the only reliable growth industries in America: drugs. At the age of 15, he started making $100 an hour.

How to Make Money Selling Drugs

dir. Matthew Cooke Northwest Film Forum

And meet Brian O’Dea, a toplevel international smuggler who once got a tip that the police were on their way to intercept a 50-ton shipment of marijuana, so he whisked away his product and left the cops some freshmade doughnuts and coffee instead.

And meet Neill Franklin, a thoughtful

and earnest police ofﬁcer who oversaw more than 17 drug task forces during his 33-year career before he fully realized the racism and destructiveness of the laws he was so successfully enforcing. After he retired, he became the executive director of the pro-legalization/regulation nonproﬁt Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. These guys—and many others—are the real-life cast of How to Make Money Selling Drugs, part satire, part exposé, and part howto guide about one of the last rags-to-riches business opportunities in America.

The Vampire Strikes Back

Mother and Daughter Bloodsuckers

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

orgive me for beginning my review of Byzantium with this almost irrelevant fact: The only time the Guardian Fiction Prize was shared by two writers was in 1979—Dambudzo Marechera (for The House of Hunger) and Neil Jordan (for Night in Tunisia). If you have never lived in Southern Africa, or studied postcolonial literature, the name Marechera will produce a blank page in your mind. As for Jordan, he is a very famous and productive Irish movie director who has been immortalized by three works: Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, and Interview with the Vampire Jordan mainly makes two types of ﬁlms: smart thrillers and slick horror ﬂicks. Byzantium, his latest production, is in the latter

Selling Drugs isn’t another dreary-butimportant documentary about the selfdestructiveness of the drug war. (Destructive to everyone, that is, except the prison industry and the law-enforcement agencies that get dump trucks full of taxpayer money to keep playing their useless game of whack-a-mole.)

Selling Drugs is, as director Matthew Cooke said in an interview last week, “a thrill ride, a movie-movie” that aims to bring long-established facts to a new audience.

Like millions of teenagers in the United States, Cooke experimented with marijuana and had the vague notion that keeping it illegal was stupid, but he didn’t think much more about it until a college microeconomics course. That was his road-to-Damascus moment. “My mouth dropped open when I saw the numbers,” he said, “and what this is doing for the prisonindustrial complex, and the people who are going to be unemployed no matter what, who are basically being harvested to supply cheap labor for prisons.”

But that’s not the kind of presentation that would have helped his teenage self make the leap from “weed should totally be legal” to “drug prohibition is a massive, not to mention racist, structural problem that is ruining lives across the western hemisphere.”

So he made Selling Drugs as a kind of video game with ascending “levels,” from small-time street slinger to international drug kingpin, and populated by colorful characters. There are current and former dealers, from a subsistence cocaine dealer in Detroit to “Freeway” Rick Ross, who basically invented the Los Angeles crack trade and was pulling down $1 million a day before he was 30. Cooke also roped in celebrities: former drug dealer 50 Cent, recovering drug addict Eminem, and Susan Sarandon, who advocates for people like Hamedah Hasan, who was sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 27 years because she happened to be at her cousin’s house when the cousin was arrested for drug activity. (Hasan is an iconic example of injustice in drug sentencing: She received a longer sentence than the leaders of the drug ring because she was so peripheral to the business that she had no useful information to trade for a lighter sentence.)

Selling Drugs is important, and it covers a lot of ground, but it’s also slick and entertaining. Go see it, and bring along a friend who might think “weed should totally be legal” but hasn’t necessarily thought through the drug war as a whole. Those kinds of friends are the ones who need to see How to Make Money Selling Drugs

category. The story: Two vampires light their flat on fire and flee to a seaside town. The older vampire, Clara (Gemma Arterton), is the mother of the younger one, Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan). The older vampire has been a whore for more than 200 years. She has seen everything, done everything, fucked everything. The younger vampire, however, is not curvy, aggressive, and animalistic like her mother, but instead a melancholy, sensitive, eternally 16-year-old girl who just wants to date a nice boy and prefers killing old and almost dead people for the blood that sustains her.

When the two vampires arrive at the seaside town, the mother meets a broken man who has inherited a rundown hotel,

Byzantium, from his recently buried mother. The old whore picks up the pieces of the broken man and transforms him into a pimp and his hotel into a brothel. This is the best part of the ﬁlm. The so-so part of the ﬁlm involves some ancient secret society that wants to catch the vampires and punish them for some crime they committed 200 years ago. Altogether, Byzantium is not bad, not memorable, and certainly no Mona Lisa

Byzantium dir. Neil Jordan Harvard Exit

BYZANTIUM Bloodsucking whores!

HOW TO MAKE MONEY SELLING DRUGS Starring this guy!

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/ﬁlm

LIMITED RUN

A BAND CALLED DEATH

Much like the surprisingly incredible 2011 music doc Last Days Here—which chronicled the life and times of Bobby Liebling, frontman of doom metal band Pentagram—A Band Called Death outshines most all other documentaries about musicians. Similar to Last Days, it matters not if you like the music of Death—a proto-punk band born in the mean streets of Detroit in 1974, a band that should have, three decades ago, soared to fame right alongside the Stooges and MC5.

post-collegiate poetry used to paint a garishly entertaining portrait of one of the ugliest Ugly Americans ever. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll gape in horror. (DAVID SCHMADER) Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY SELLING DRUGS

See review, page 79. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues 7, 9 pm.

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME

The Tina Turner–est film in the Mad Max trilogy. Central Cinema, Fri-Tues 9:30 pm.

A Band Called Death isn’t a film that tries to convince you to suddenly fall in love with Death’s unearthed collection of music, dusty old demo tapes from the ‘70s found rotting in an attic and recently rereleased on Drag City Records. Instead, the film is an epic family story about brotherhood, loyalty, and artistic integrity. What you will fall in love with is the journey of three brothers—three teenage boys, who made a tough-as-shit rock record together a gazillion years ago, and are now being rediscovered and credited as the world’s first black punk band. Again, you don’t have to even have to like rock music to love this film. You just have to have a heart beating in your chest. (KELLY O) SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri-Tues 9:15 pm.

DIRTY WARS

NATIONAL THEATER LIVE: THE AUDIENCE Helen Mirren, once again, goes full-QEII in this rebroadcast of a stage production by London’s National Theater. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri 6 pm, Sat-Sun 12:30, 6 pm, Mon-Tues 6 pm.

THE PAINTING

This massively unsettling documentary follows reporter Jeremy Scahill as he investigates secret American military operations all over the Middle East—part of our endless War on Terror—and the unbelievable number of civilian lives they have claimed with zero accountability from our government. Some of Scahill’s claims are dubiously sourced (lots of unidentified witnesses), and for a doc, this is far too reliant on scary, staged scenes of Scahill being followed and photographed. But ultimately, the subject matter is vitally important and his conclusions are credible. Yet one can’t quite shake the feeling that this would make a much better installment of Frontline than a theatrical documentary. (MATT LYNCH) SIFF Film Center, Fri 5, 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.

EVOCATEUR: THE MORTON DOWNEY JR.

MOVIE

In the late ‘80s, Morton Downey Jr. skyrocketed to infamy as the star of a ludicrously combative talk show on which our host smoked incessantly, got in screaming fights with guests, and made his points in the filthiest way possible. The flatteringly titled documentary Evocateur tells the Morton Downey Jr. story in all its repulsive glory, with jaw-dropping clips, sharply drawn animation, and even cruel “celebrity” readings of the man’s

The characters in this French animated film live inside the world of a painting. They are divided into three classes: Alldunns (completely painted), Halfies (painted but unfinished), and Sketchies (only drawn). The snooty Alldunns live in the palace and have all the power, and they discriminate against the other groups (“There is no shame in being superior, are we not the most beautiful?”). The lower castes hold out hope that the painter is going to come back and finish the painting, ending their less-happy existence. As for the plot: An Alldunn who is in love with a Halfie (causing much discord) goes with a Halfie and a Sketchie in search of the painter. They want to meet their maker and convince him to complete his work. Their journey takes them into the far reaches of their painting, then outside into the painter’s studio, and into other canvases, where they encounter different painted worlds. It’s for kids, so the lessons on the evils of prejudice are pretty heavy-handed, and the message that they would all be happier if they were more the same is a bit odd, but the animation is pretty cool, and it’s neat the way the characters move between the worlds. Because it’s French, there is some (painting) nudity and some sadness, and overall it is somewhat more interesting than the stuff usually offered to children. (GILLIAN ANDERSON) Varsity, Fri-Sun 1, 3, 5, 7:10, 9:10 pm, Mon-Tues 5, 7:10, 9:10 pm.

PARIS IS BURNING

Jennie Livingston’s enthralling and heartbreaking portrait of drag ball culture in late-‘80s New York is one of the best documentaries ever made, and the opportunity to see it on the big screen should not be wasted. Central Cinema, Wed 7, 9:30 pm.

READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP

Oh, sure—I could’ve been a reality TV star. In fact, there have been no less than three thwarted attempts to turn my life into a reality series… but here’s what went horribly wrong: I WAS WAY TOO REEEEAL! While most reality show participants do whatever they can to portray themselves as “nice, redeemable characters,” I prefer the opposite. I demand extreme close-ups of me clipping my toenails, squeezing blackheads, and giving self-administered prostate exams. When I have poopy squirts, I drag the cameraperson along to the can—just so YOU’LL have a “ringside” seat for all the action! And I absolutely insist on a “saddle cam” during my annual Fourth of July Nude Donkey Races. (I’m nude… not the donkey. He’s wearing a nice jacket.)

Frankly speaking, after three failed attempts, not a single camera operator in the world will agree to work with me. And to them I say, “BAWK! BAWK! BAWK! BUH-CAWWWW!! BAWK! BAWK! BAAAAWWWWK!!”

(That was my impersonation of a chicken… did you pick up on that?)

I thought videographers were supposed to be the most fearless people on the planet! What about all those war journalists? What about the nature photogs who climb the highest, most dangerous peaks? What about the Real World camerapeople who’ve survived 28 years of herpes?

Apparently, the only good cinematographers are ﬁctional cinematographers—like

the ones who would never put the camera down in movies like The Blair Witch Project Cloverﬁeld, or Paranormal Activity—even when they’re being disemboweled by witches and monsters and stuff! Well, now there’s a new TV series we add to that list debuting this week, called Siberia (NBC, Mon July 1, 10 pm).

At ﬁrst glance, Siberia is just another average, boring reality show that shamelessly rips off Survivor. Sixteen contestants are dumped in the Siberian wilderness of Tunguska—where a giant explosion took place (possibly caused by a meteoroid) back in 1908. The contestants must survive a harsh winter in order to claim a huge cash prize… aaaaand now’s when things get WEIRD. When one of the contestants is seriously injured, the cast realizes—well—nobody’s around to help them. No producers, no network, no NOBODY. They’re completely stranded… aaaand now’s when things get REALLY WEIRD, because winter’s coming, there’s no food or shelter, strange howling noises are coming from the woods, bizarre supernaturalish shit (possibly radiating from the meteor crater) occurs, one by one the contestants start to disappear, and EEEEEEEEEE!!! PLEASE TELL ME YOU CAMERAPEOPLE ARE FILMING THIS!!

And yep, because this reality series is a ﬁctional series, the entire show is shot in shaky-cam Survivor style, presumably by ﬁctional camera operators who would NEVER drop their equipment—even when the ass is being eaten out of them by an alien tiger. (I’m not saying there are ass-eating alien tigers on this show… but I am saying there should be.)

So take a note, real-life camerapeople! Watch Siberia this Monday on NBC, and learn how REAL ﬁctional cinematographers do it! (BTW, my prostate is ready for its close-up.)

PSYWAR

A documentary that looks at the ways which America uses propaganda to influence how its citizens perceive military conflict. Keystone Church, Fri June 28 at 7 pm.

THE RAMBLER

A lone wanderer takes to the American road in search of his brother after being released from prison in this gory, trippy mystery. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues 7, 9 pm.

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

The James Dean/Sal Mineo/Natalie Wood classic about kids being kids. Screenwriter Stewart Stern will be in attendance on Friday night. Central Cinema, Fri-Tues 7 pm.

NOW PLAYING

20 FEET FROM STARDOM

A documentary about those mostly anonymous folks who sing backing vocals for filthy rich, famous musicians, 20 Feet from Stardom spotlights the golden-piped Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill, who’ve augmented recordings by Springsteen, Midler, and others. The film also documents backup singing’s decline from its 1960s peak to its current moribund state.

THE BLING RING

A brash group of affluent SoCal teenagers pinched cash, clothes, and jewelry from the homes of celebrities. With its monotonous succession of nightclubs and fancy closets, Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring is a disappointingly unambitious retelling of the crimes. Which isn’t to suggest that The Bling Ring need be an indictment of celebrity culture, or millennials, or whatever—it would have been just as satisfying as an exhilarating crime caper, or even as hedonistic eye candy à la Marie Antoinette. The real drag about The Bling Ring is that it’s neither fun nor thoughtful—it’s totally ambivalent. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

FILL THE VOID

Jane Austen meets ultra-orthodox Jews in this quiet, revealing look at arranged marriages in one tight-knit Tel Aviv community. Eighteen-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) is eager to be married; but when she’s pressured to consider marrying her dead sister’s husband, she’s caught between her own expectations of marriage, the demands of her family, and her feelings for her former brother-in-law, handsome Yochay (Yiftach Klein). Fill the Void is a decidedly slow film, but those with the patience for it will find Shira’s deliberations—and the dynamics of the cloistered culture she lives in—completely compelling. (ALISON HALLETT)

FRANCES HA

Frances (a fantastic Greta Gerwig) is 27 and decidedly does not have her shit together. She bounces from job to job and apartment to apartment, barely scraping by while trying to make it as a dancer. Her friends are either better at life or just luckier, she’s not sure which. Her feelings of alienation and failure don’t stop her from making impulsive decisions, and she probably drinks too much. To some this may feel like another entry in the cringe-inducing comedy subgenre, but this new film by Noah Baumbach is closer to late-’70s Woody Allen classics. It’s hilarious and touching, and you definitely know someone like Frances. (MATT LYNCH)

MAN OF STEEL

Henry Cavill gives great Superman: He smiles a lot and moves like he doesn’t fear stubbing a toe but is worried about accidentally breaking something. Amy Adams is a wonderful Lois Lane, a reporter guided by a sense of justice. Michael Shannon is a good, creepy General Zod. But Man of Steel takes too long to retell a story we all know. We open on Krypton, followed by Kansas’s amber waves of grain. We briefly meet the Daily Planet staff before Zod makes the movie a straight-on conflict. There’s none of the fun that should figure into a Superman movie, only good-guy-versus-bad-guy schematics that play out just about the way you figure they will. (PAUL CONSTANT)

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY

Pixar still has a solid-enough record that such frothy, light entertainment feels like a miss, but I’d stack Monsters University up

positively against just about every other animated movie that’s come out this year. (Hell, come to think of it, it’s way funnier than The Hangover, Part III.) If you temper your expectations, it’s a harmless enough diversion. (PAUL CONSTANT)

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Set in an opulent modern-day estate (the director’s own house), Joss Whedon’s Much Ado is a cozy affair, and the actors are all practically flirting with Shakespeare’s language. There’s some silly physical comedy, willful deception on a large scale, and, because Much Ado is arguably the world’s first rom-com, every major player makes one asshole move that seems totally out of character. Everybody sure does look like they’re having fun, to the point where you want to forgive the film’s flaws—the amateurish soundtrack, some hammy acting—because you feel like you’re an invited guest at an intimate dinner party. (PAUL CONSTANT)

THE SECRET DISCO REVOLUTION

Jamie Kastner’s spirited documentary wittily recasts the disco era as a revolutionary political movement aimed at liberating blacks, women, and gays, with fanciful scenes of revolutionary superheros in action bracketing a(nother) retelling of the rise and fall of disco, complete with talking-head interviews with major players. It is, of course, a great, culturally revealing story, packed with sex and drugs and incredible music. Kastner’s revisionist history doesn’t bring much new to the table (beyond a tight focus on Casablanca Records), but disco lovers (and the disco-curious) will find much to enjoy. (DAVID SCHMADER)

SOMM

SOMM follows four men hoping to earn their Master Sommelier diplomas. The famously difficult exam includes a test in which the aspirants must not only prove themselves as poets and historians of wine, they must identify specific wines—through taste and smell and vision alone—by varietal, country, region, and, to score most highly, vintner and year. Unfortunately, the amazement found here is diluted by too-slick, poorly paced filmmaking. Moreover, the men come off more as a bunch of bros who happen to have a weird (and potentially lucrative) obsession than as people seeking to perpetuate an arcane, amazing body of knowledge about a beautiful human accomplishment. (BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT)

THIS IS THE END

The setup for This Is the End isn’t terribly original, but it’s every Christian’s wet dream: James Franco is having a house party when the apocalypse hits. The survivors, including Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jay Baruchel, must fight over the last scraps of food and water. What makes the film work is its reliance on the comedians’ improvisation skills. When your mind wanders, Satan’s cock appears on-screen or Channing Tatum makes the greatest cameo of all time and snaps you back into the moment. In the end, it succeeds as a dude-centric but really fucking funny buddy film. (CIENNA MADRID)

WHITE HOUSE DOWN

Of the incalculable number of films that have ripped off Die Hard (including Die Hards 2, 3, 4, and 5), perhaps no film has captured its tone so well as White House Down (even Channing Tatum’s shirt looks as if it’s from the John McClane Collection). The banter-crammed script not only riffs on everything great and stupid about action movies, but also, believe it or not, features at least one strong, capable, independent character who also happens to be a woman. I should also note that director Roland Emmerich is as endearingly/annoyingly disaster-prone as ever; here, at least, he balances that scale better than he has since, I don’t know, Independence Day? Ranking Emmerich’s filmography as it veers from Stargate to Godzilla to The Day After Tomorrow is a dangerous game; I shall not play it. But I will say this: White House Down is both funnier and better than you expect. The fact that we all love Channing Tatum now is one of our society’s better decisions. Jamie Foxx has the foresight to put on a pair of Jordans before going off to kill bad guys. This is a film about decisions like that. And freedom. And family. And BFFs. (ERIK HENRIKSEN)

SET YOUR INTERVIEW today!

Simply offer Home Owners FREE, NO OBLIGATION Estimate Appointments for Trimming, Pruning or Removals of Trees and Shrubs. *Set your own Schedule (Part Time or Full Time)

*Work Outdoors *Training/ Marketing Materials/ Company Apparel provided *Cell/ Travel/ Medical Allowances Available *Reps average $30-$60k/ year. Requirements: Valid DriverÕs License, Reliable Transportation, Cell Phone & Internet Access. Apply 1 of 3 ways: 1. Complete the Order Generator Application at www.tlc4homesnw.com

2. Submit a Resume to recruiting@ tlc4homesnw.com 3. Call or Recruiting Team: 1-800-684-8733 Jasmine Ext. 3434 or Heather Ext. 3321

RESTAURANT/HOTELS/CLUBS

MARRAKESH MOROCCAN RESTAURANT in Belltown now hiring exp. Servers and kitchen helper. Evening/ weekends. For more info call (206)9560500, or apply at 2334 2nd Ave.

RESTAURANT OPEN CALL!

Cinebarre is HIRING all positions, must be 21+ to apply in person. 6009 244th Street Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043

SALES

ADVERTISE YOUR

3 Weeks, Get 1 Free” www.altweeklies.com/ads (AAN CAN)

VOLUNTEERS

$DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

OUTREACH http://1.usa. gov/13Zp61Y $1125/mo stipend, full time service, great benefits. Get work experience that matters. Ages 18-25. Serve 9/16-7/14 in downtown Renton.

ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY

STUDENTS/EXPERTISE. Calling volunteers with knowledge of Abnormal Psychology Disorders to record interviews for a Dance Film project. If interested, email movedancecenterseattle@gmail.com.

COMMUNITY FOR YOUTH, a community supported/one-on-one mentoring program needs mentors for ‘13-’14 school year. Interested in becoming a mentor? Contact us today at info@ communityforyouth.org

DO YOU LIKE SODA POP? See our web post for details. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

DO YOU LOVE automobiles?

Volunteer at Lemay Americas Car Museum! For information visit our web site: www.LemayMuseum.org or email Volunteer@LeMayMuseum.org.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

CASH

CARS/TRUCKS

COUNSELING

ANXIETY SUCKS! YOU can live without it. Hypnosis works! Ryan Larsen, MSW, AChT 206-227-7338

NEED SUPPORT AND encouragement to build the life you want? Compassionate, nonjudgmental adult counseling. Depression, anxiety, self esteem, life transitions, trauma, grief, domestic violence, illness. Build strengths and life skills. Sliding fee, free phone consultations. Available weekends. Call 206-734-7998.

PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR ARTISTS!

Artists are a unique population with special needs. Psychologist with MFA, MA psychology, certificate psychology of creativity, specializing in artists of all media, highly creative individuals, gifted & talented. 1st session free. Free parking. See http://www.denitabenyshekphd.com/artistscreators.html.

MASSAGE

$45HR FOR MEN 1.5-$65/2hr-$85. 18yrs masseur. Bodywork for tightness and aches or a more general relaxing full-body massage to enjoy yourself and unwind. Www.bodyworkman.com. John Runyan (LMP#MA8718) 206.324.0682. 10am-8pm. Cash/incalls only. Lastminute encouraged.

DEEP TISSUE AND Relaxation Massage on Capitol Hill. $50.00. Jeff LMP 206-650-0542 swedish, sports, and deep tissue massage. Last minute appointments encouraged. www.broadwaymassage.com 14 years experience. All are welcome. Close to broadway ave. 7 days a week 11:00a.m.-9:00p.m.

LAURIE’S MASSAGE (206)919-2180 LIKE A JAPANESE

STUDIES

MUSIC INSTRUCTION & SERVICES

welsh@mac.com For more info and music go to: www.dannywelsh.com or www.myspace.com/dannywelshjazz

PIANIST AVAILABLE

I’m Richard Peterson, 64 year old composer, arranger, and pianist. I’m available to play parties, weddings, clubs, shows, etc. $200/gig. Covers and originals. Please call 206-325-5271, Thank You! CD available. Must have a piano.

VERSATILE BASS PLAYER looking for established/working band. Part-time jobs, serious inquiries only.NO hardrock, heavy metal! www.myspace.com/ basstibi

MUSICIANS WANTED

LOOKING FOR BASS player with backup or lead vocals - Lighthouse Xplozion. Contact Gary 425-268-7850 or Joe 206-407-7876

SINGER WANTED FOR groove / doom metal band. We like High On Fire, Tool, Melvins, Rage, Machine Head, Sabbath, etc... Looking for a singer that loves rocking out and having freedom to be creative within songs. Contact us at brianstan@gmail.com.

SINGER-SONGWRITER LOOKING FOR musicians to add texture, length, and complexity to my songs, and to enable me to play shows with a new band! I am not looking to fit in any one genre. :). Elbesolobos@gmail.com

RECORDING/REHEARSAL

BAND REHEARSAL SPACE 1

Shared Room @$210/month Incl.

36hrs/month & Private closet and Private Rooms @ $500/mo. Call 425445-9165 or Visit wildersoundstudios. com Located in SODO Seattle

THE HIVE RECORDING Studio: 206-249-8942 band and vocal recording, editing, mixing, and mastering. Work with experienced credited engineers/producers! Check us out at /www.TheHiveRecordingStudio.com

Starting at $350/mo! NO

I’m Richard Peterson, 64 year old composer, arranger, and pianist. I’m available to play parties, weddings, clubs, shows, etc. $200/gig. Covers and originals. PLEASE CALL 206-325-5271 Thank You! CD available. Must have piano! ,

,/.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of June 26

1 Shared Room @$220/month Incl. 36hrs/month & Private closet Visit wildersoundstudios.com Located in SODO Seattle. Contact Samantha 425.445.9165 s.wilder@wildersoundstudios.com

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON IN AND FOR KING COUNTY

SAMMY WOONHA LEE, an individual, Plaintiff. v. TOMMIE FRANKLIN REGISTER AND TINA REGISTER, as individuals and a marital community, JOHN L. BOWERS AND ARLA BOWERS, as individuals and a marital community, BEN WATSON, and DARYL AND JUDY JOHNSON, as individuals and a marital community. Defendants.

Case no. 12-2-39208-1 SEA SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION TO TOMMIE FRANKLIN REGISTER (60 days)

The State of Washington to the said TOMMIE FRANKLIN REGISTER:

You are

Woonha Lee, and serve a copy of your answer upon the undersigned attorneys for plaintiff Lee, at their ofﬁce below stated. In case of your

ARIES (March 21–April 19): “To know when to stop is of the same importance as to know when to begin,” said the painter Paul Klee. Take that to heart, Aries! You are pretty adept at getting things launched, but you’ve got more to learn about the art of stopping. Sometimes you finish prematurely. Other times you sort of disappear without officially bringing things to a close. Now would be an excellent time to refine your skills.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): “The problem with quotes on the internet is that it’s hard to determine whether or not they are genuine.” So said Joan of Arc back in 1429, right before she helped lead French troops in the battle of Patay. JUST KIDDING! Joan of Arc never had the pleasure of surfing the web, of course, since it didn’t exist until long after she died. But I was trying to make a point that will be useful for you to keep in mind, Taurus, which is: Be skeptical of both wild claims and mild claims. Stay alert for seemingly interesting leads that are really time-wasting half-truths. Be wary of unreliable gossip that would cause an unnecessary ruckus.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): French impressionist painter Claude Monet loved to paint water lilies, and he did so over and over again for many years. Eventually he created about 250 canvases that portrayed these floating flowers. Should we conclude that he repeated himself too much? Should we declare that he was boringly repetitive? Or might we wonder if he kept finding new delights in his comfortable subject? Would we have enough patience to notice that each of the 250 paintings shows the water lilies in a different kind of light, depending on the weather and the season and the time of day? I vote for the latter view, and suggest that you adopt a similar approach to the familiar things in your life during the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21–July 22): “In order to swim one takes off all one’s clothes,” said 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. “In order to aspire to the truth, one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one’s inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness, etc., before one is sufficiently naked.” Your assignment in the coming week, Cancerian, is to get au naturel like that. It’s time for you to make yourself available for as much of the raw, pure, wild truth as you can stand.

LEO (July 23–Aug 22): Gertrude Stein was an innovative writer. Many illustrious

artists were her friends. But she had an overly elevated conception of her own worth. “Think of the Bible and Homer,” she said, “think of Shakespeare and think of me.” On another occasion, she proclaimed, “Einstein was the creative philosophic mind of the century, and I have been the creative literary mind of the century.” Do you know anyone like Stein, Leo? Here’s the truth, in my opinion: To some degree, we are all like Stein. Every one of us has at least one inflated idea about ourselves—a conceited self-conception that doesn’t match reality. It was my turn to confront my egotistical delusions a few weeks ago. Now would be an excellent time for you to deal with yours. Don’t be too hard on yourself, though. Just recognize the inflation, laugh about it, and move on.

VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): When I close my eyes, I get a psychic vision of you as a kid playing outside on a warm summer day. You’re with friends, immersed in a game that commands your full attention. Suddenly, you hear a jingling tune wafting your way from a distance. It’s the ice cream truck. You stop what you’re doing and run inside your home to beg your mom for some money. A few minutes later, you’re in a state of bliss, communing with your Fudgsicle or ice cream cone or strawberry-lime fruit bar. I have a feeling that you will soon experience an adult version of this scene, Virgo. Metaphorically speaking, either the ice cream man or the ice cream woman will be coming to your neighborhood.

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): During the past 10 months, you have been unusually adventurous. The last time you summoned so much courage and expansiveness may have been 2001. I’m impressed! Please accept my respect and appreciation. You’ve had a sixth sense about knowing when it’s wise to push beyond your limitations and boundaries. You have also had a seventh sense about intuiting when to be crafty and cautious as you wander through the frontiers. Now here’s one of your assignments for the next 12 months: Distill all you’ve learned out there in the borderlands, and decide how you will use your wisdom to build an unshakable power spot back here in the heart of the action.

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was one of the most influential scientists in history. He produced major breakthroughs in both chemistry and physics. Have you ever used devices that run on electricity? You can thank him for playing a major role in developing that wonderful convenience. And yet unlike most scientists, he had only the most elementary grasp of mathematics. In fact, his formal education was negligible. I propose that we name him your role model of the week. He’s a striking example of the fact that you can arrive at your chosen goal by many different paths. Keep that in mind if you’re ever

tempted to believe that there’s just one right way to fulfill your dreams.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): “The only thing that we learn from history,” said the German philosopher Georg Hegel, “is that we never learn anything from history.” I’m urging you to refute that statement in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. I’m pleading with you to search your memory for every possible clue that might help you be brilliant in dealing with your immediate future. What have you done in the past that you shouldn’t do now? What haven’t you done in the past that you should do now?

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): According to my analysis of the astrological omens, now would be a pretty good time to talk about things that are hard to talk about. I don’t necessarily mean that you’ll find it easy to do. But I suspect it would be relatively free of pain and karmic repercussions. There may even be a touch of pleasure once the catharsis kicks in. So try it if you dare, Capricorn. Summon the courage to express truths that have previously been hard to pin down. Articulate feelings that have been murky or hidden. For best results, encourage those you trust to do the same.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): Are you familiar with Quidditch? It’s a rough sport played by wizards in the fictional world of Harry Potter. All seven books in the series mention it, so it’s an important element. Author J. K. Rowling says she dreamed up the sport after having a quarrel with her boyfriend. “In my deepest, darkest soul,” she reports, “I would quite like to see him hit by a Bludger.” (In Quidditch, a Bludger is a big black ball made of iron.) I bring this up, Aquarius, because I suspect that you, too, are in a position to use anger in a creative and constructive way. Take advantage of your raw emotion to make a lasting improvement in your life.

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): In his erotic poem “Your Sex,” Joe Bolton exults: “My heart simplified … I touch the bud/Of happiness—it’s in season./And whatever grief I might have felt before/simply dies inside me.” You might want to write that down on a slip of paper and carry it around with you this week, Pisces. According to my understanding of the astrological omens, the bud of happiness is now in season for you. You have good reason to shed the undertones of sadness and fear you carry around with you. I’ll tell you the last lines of Bolton’s poem, because they also apply: “Sometimes I think it’s best just to take pleasure/Wherever we want and can./Look: the twilight is alive with wild honey.” (The full poem: tinyurl.com/JoeBolton.)

Homework: Each of us has a secret ignorance. Can you guess what yours is? What will you do about it? Freewill astrology.com.

SAVAGE LOVE

Enema Kits and Missing Clits

BY DAN SAVAGE

I am a married 54-year-old postmenopausal woman. My libido has diminished significantly, and it takes me much longer to climax. My husband gets tired sooner and is unable to maintain an erection as long as he used to; this makes it even more difficult for me to climax. I have taken up an activity I did in my 20s when I was single: giving myself enemas. The enema-induced orgasms are fantastic. It’s not an obsessive habit. I’ll sometimes do it four times in one week and then go a month without one. Am I doing any harm to my body by doing frequent quart-size soapy enemas using a retention balloon nozzle and holding it as long as possible and then masturbating as I expel? Will a doctor be able to tell what I’ve been up to when it’s time for a colonoscopy? I would die if a doctor figured it out.

women recognize the ‘clitoral glans’ as the clitoris. This may become smaller with age, making it seem as though the clitoris has disappeared. But let me be clear: The clitoris never goes away.”

So your mom isn’t clitless, HMMFHC. Her clit is down there somewhere. It’s just smaller and grayer than it used to be—just like your mom.

Frustrated Lady Earnestly Enquires Today

“Women need to understand that our sexualities change throughout life,” says Dr. Leah Torres, a general obstetrician/gynecologist with a special focus on family planning. “What once was will not always be. That said, menopause can be tricky, but one can adapt to changes that may occur. There are medications and lubricants and all sorts of tricks.”

Yeah, yeah—but what about the freakin’ enemas, doc? “The enemas are not harmful as long as they are not painful, though this practice may change the balance of bacteria that normally live in the colon and may make one more susceptible to changes in bowel movements,” says Dr. Torres.

As for your fear of being discovered, FLEET, Dr. Torres says you should be able to rely on your doc’s professionalism. “I have not seen many colonoscopies, so I would not know a physician’s ability to determine a person’s level of enema activity,” says Dr. Torres. “But as a physician who prides herself in building trust with patients, I would never disclose my knowledge of sexual activities that may make my patient uncomfortable or embarrassed unless there is a concern for her health or it directly affects her care.”

If it would really and truly kill you if your doc figured it out, FLEET, how about a faceand-rump-saving white lie? Mention the fact that you’re administering enemas to yourself, leaving the masturbate-as-you-expel bit out, and ask your doc if that’s a problem. “She can ask her doctor an ‘innocent’ question such as ‘When I feel constipated, I give myself an enema. Is that dangerous?’” says Dr. Torres. “No need to mention masturbation, and the doctor’s answer may allay her other concerns.”

My mother cannot find her clit. I’m serious. She’s 80 years old, quite fit, and otherwise anatomically correct, but she noticed about a week back that she couldn’t find her clit. She went to her gyno and told him, and he didn’t seem shocked. She isn’t sexually active, but she’d like to keep as many of her original parts as she can. I searched online and couldn’t find much. I’ve told her that no news is good news, but you try living with a clitless mother! Help My Mother Find Her Clit

“It is normal for the vagina, and the parts within and around the vagina, to atrophy with age,” says Dr. Torres. “And women who have gone through menopause have very little estrogen. For the lady parts, estrogen is crucial in upkeeping the healthy, youthful appearance of vaginal and labial tissues as well as for the laxity of the vagina.”

But there’s one thing that doesn’t happen during menopause. “Women do not ‘lose’ their clitorises,” says Dr. Torres. “The majority of the clitoris is located inside the body, but

My husband and I both hit 40 this year. We are one of those straight couples that have been together since high school. We were kinky right from the start, became involved in the BDSM community in our 20s, and found ourselves in a poly relationship before we even knew that was an option. After years of struggling with polycystic ovary syndrome, I had a hysterectomy a couple of years ago, and I’ve had a hard time getting regulated with hormone replacement. There was a lot of extra bodily trauma with my surgery, and I’ve been trying to be patient in getting back into my sexual self, but it’s been a struggle. I’m mostly happy with other parts of my life, but I have no interest anymore in kink, especially D/s, and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how I could go from being a pain slut to not even liking to have my hair pulled. I wouldn’t say that I’ve totally lost interest in sex, but I don’t have the driving need for it that I used to. I haven’t had luck talking to my ob-gyns. If I’m not having hot flashes, in their opinion, I shouldn’t mess with it. My boyfriend has been supportive, but I’m having a hard time talking to my husband, since his girlfriend is menopause age and as much of a nympho as ever. He sees my lack of interest in sex as a lack of interest in him.

Too Young To Be Old

“Society makes talking about sex taboo, and that taboo can invade the clinic room and adversely affect the doctor-patient relationship,” says Dr. Torres.

Dr. Torres is a professional and she’s being polite—professional courtesy and like that. Allow me to translate: The doctor is saying that your current ob-gyns suck santorum-smeared donkey balls, TYTBO. If your docs are unwilling to discuss and prioritize your sex life—and your sexual fulfillment and your sexual relationships— you need to get new ob-gyns

“If a patient comes to me with changes in sexual function that concern her and she wants addressed,” Dr. Torres continues, “it is the same as if she came to me with ‘it hurts right here, doc.’ It is something that needs investigating. Having a hysterectomy often includes removing the ovaries, which is equivalent to inducing menopause. No ovaries = no estrogen = menopause. Even if you still have your ovaries, their function may be affected by a hysterectomy. This can affect the libido or it may have no effect whatsoever. Everyone is different. Also, after major surgery, particularly after a difficult and prolonged recovery, people may not enjoy sex the same way they used to for a variety of reasons. For this woman, pain may now be associated with the struggle to recover, as opposed to what it used to be associated with: orgasm.”

So what does the doctor recommend? “There are options other than female hormone replacement therapy for treating hypoactive sexual desire,” says Dr. Torres, “and it may be a good idea to consult a specialist in sexual health.”

Dr. Torres is a superstar on Twitter, where she regularly posts about women’s health issues and smacks down anti-choice trolls @LeahNTorres. She also blogs at Leahtorres.com.

mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter

JOE NEWTON

A NEW LGBTQ HEALTH PROGRAM

Safe, Culturally Responsive Care

Sliding Fee Scale

*Private Insurance* State Assistance Info/Appointments: 800-572-4223 www.cedarriverclinics.org/lgbtqwellness

Ahh! Time to get *Ahh-thorized* 24/7 Patient Verification

Doctor-Nurse Owned Holistic Center 425.449.9393 or 888.508.5428 AdvancedHolisticHealth.org

Be an Egg Donor

Are you a healthy woman in your 20’s who loves to help others, or know someone who is?

We would love to talk with you! Generous compensation. Call: 206-515-0042 or email: DonorEggBank@pnwfertility.com

Donate Your Car, Truck or Motorcycle

Support Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound.

We offer free pickup of used vehicles in most cases running or not. Tax deductible. (206) 248-5982

FREE CERVICAL CANCER SCREENING

Age: 21+. Volunteers will receive either self-collected at home HPV testing or regular Pap test screening. Up to $200 compensation for study completion. Call 206-543-3327 or e-mail homehpv@uw.edu.

Get Strong and Live Long, Quantum Martial Arts! 964 Denny Way, Seattle. (206) 322-4799 Quantumseattle.org

Late Nights begin June 22nd, 11pm at Teatro Zinzanni

Let’s Hear it for The Boys, All Male Cabaret www.dreams.zinzanni.org for tickets & info

LIVE/WORK SPACE AVAILABLE http://is.gd/REMAXCentraliaArts

LEGENDARY PIANIST AVAILABLE

Opened for Jeff Bridges! Clubs, Weddings, Parties

RAD DYKE PLUMBER, ZAN (206)723-2641

SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION

GOT YOU DOWN?

We may be able to help to remove that requirement. The Meryhew Law Group, PLLC (206)264-1590 www.meryhewlaw.com

Shena Lee Photography

Specializing in Burlesque + Pin-up Portraits www.shenalee.com for portfolio + pricing information

Thinking about a career in Massage Therapy? www.massagecareerinfo.com

Northwest Academy for the Healing Arts 206-932-5950

WORLD’S LARGEST RUMMAGE SALE SAT 6/30

Young