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Volume 22, Issue Number 27 March 6–12, 2013

EDITOR’S NOTE

S pring has sprung, and all kinds of new ideas are popping into our heads around the ofﬁces of The Stranger. It’s like the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, only instead of cherry blossoms, the air is full of the fruits of our brainstorming! This is our 1,066th issue of The Stranger, and it’s a testament to the journalistic diversity of our weekly offerings: From art reviews to music reviews, from historical pieces to thisjust-in news breaks, each of this issue’s winning articles represents its own particular slice of genre. From the down-and-dirty truth-telling of Savage Love to our exhaustively comprehensive (and exhausting to produce!) spring arts edition of our quarterly magazine A&P, I know you’ll ﬁnd something sweet in the pages ahead.

About four months ago, an infection resulting from a perforated eardrum started catching up with me, possibly caused by scratching the inside of my ear with an unclean pen cap. While my doctor, who happens to be one of Seattle’s 107 best otolaryngologists, was vacuuming out my ear one afternoon on First Hill, we were talking about the unceasingly critical Public Editor column that usually runs in this spot, and he said, “It’s like pouring negativity directly into readers’ minds.” That pretty much took all the credibility out of the Public Editor column for me (thanks, Dick!). Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about how I can help readers get their ﬁx of introductory text to a given issue without being so darn Gloomy-Gus-ish. Not that we’re averse to kicking up a little controversy now and then!

Of course, Seattle is well-known for its panoply of quality print publications—for a whiff of the way Seattle media is lighting up the literary map, just take a stroll through the Editor’s Notes that kick off the content in Seattle magazine, Seattle Metropolitan, City Arts, or D-List. That cutting-edge copy clicked on a lightbulb in my head: Every great publication has an Editor’s Note—except The Stranger! After running the idea up the ﬂagpole to see if it would stick, every member of my staff said that only an Editor’s Note would be able to stir the passions and challenge the cultural assumptions people make about The Stranger If you’re hungering for more of that “Stranger tone” you’re used to instead of my own upbeat take here, don’t worry: This issue, like every other issue of The Stranger, is a tantalizing journey into the lives and opinions of our writers. After all, our content creators are really what make this paper tick.

I hope you enjoy our new issue and this new side of The Stranger. Get ready for a great spring, and don’t forget to buy an extra pair of party pants. You’re going to need them.

The Stranger

Find podcasts, videos, blogs, MP3s, free classiﬁeds, personals, contests, sexy ads, and more on The Stranger’s website.

LAST DAYS

The Week in Review BY

DAVID SCHMADER

Dear readers: It has come to our attention that certain people found last week’s Last Days column—featuring spontaneously combusting 11-year-olds, sexually enticing pit bulls, and corpse-ﬂavored drinking water—to be excessively depressing. Let us remind you that Last Days doesn’t create the news, we just report it, and if you have a problem with what’s being allowed to occur on earth, you should take it up with God. Nevertheless, in the spirit of healing, this week’s Last Days contains nothing but good news. (Almost.)

meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork,” reports the Associated Press, adding that North Americans need not worry, as the meatballs in US and Canadian Ikea stores come from a US supplier. (Meanwhile, tomorrow the UK’s Telegraph will report that up to 68 percent of South Africa’s processed meat contains “irregular ingredients”—including donkey, goat, and water buffalo—while the USDA will announce that impending federal budget cuts [aka the sequester] will force the temporary layoff of 8,400 meat inspectors.)

Now Hiring: POPE

NEW COLUMN!

The Vatican, along with our subsidiary the Catholic Church, is currently seeking a pope with the skills, sales experience, and entrepreneurial energy to help our dynamic company continue its rapid growth in this exploding customer-service industry.

As the key member of our outreach team, your primary responsibilities will include:

• Acting as Bishop of Rome, leader of the Catholic Church, and head of state of the Vatican worldwide.

• Spreading the blessed word of God.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25 This week of almost nothing but good news kicks off in Sweden, where furniture giant Ikea has responded to Europe’s widening meat scandal (down with widening meat!) with the praiseworthy decision to withdraw its signature meatballs from stores across Europe, amid fears that the balls contain horsemeat

INTO BALLS

“Authorities in the Czech Republic said they had detected horse DNA in tests of 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) packs of frozen

LEARN HOW TO SEASON SOMETHING BEFORE YOU THROW MICROGREENS AND FENNEL POLLEN ON EVERYTHING

Oh, you have worked in kitchens for five years and you have been a souschef in two “fine dining” restaurants? THEN WHY CAN’T YOU MAKE FUCKING AIOLI??? You are not “classically trained,” and it is obvious that you don’t even know what that means. You are not worth training unless you are humble, respect food, love cooking, and, yes, are humble again. There is nothing worse than an overconfident cook. I will take someone who doesn’t know shit but has a good attitude over you any day. Fuck you, Seattle cook. You are not willing to put in the time and effort to be as good as you imagine you are. Learn how to season something before you throw micogreens and fennel pollen on everything.

—Anonymous

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 In better news, nothing happened today, unless you count the 73rd birthday of Walter Schmader, the hardworking and hilarious man Last Days is lucky enough to call Dad (as well as the man who paid our way through college, so quadruple win).

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27 Speaking of wonderful people we wish we could see more often, the week continues with Patti Smith, the punk poet/rock star/National Book Award–winning author, who tonight played a show with her band at Seattle’s Neptune Theater and was totally amazing. Full disclosure: Last Days did not go into a 2013 Patti Smith concert expecting to come out raving. We’ve seen too many 21st-century Bob Dylan shows to expect our legends to represent in full in the present moment; mostly we just want to be in the same room with someone whose art we love, even if the live iteration of this art is a limited pleasure. (Sometimes it seems like Dylan has a “the artist will use no consonants” clause in his tour rider.) But Smith and her band put on one of the best rock shows we’ve ever seen. Great care was taken with instrumentation and volume, and the sound at the Neptune was amazing. But what took things over the top was the theatrical attention to detail, with song after song inhabiting its own sonic world, many of them building to climaxes that felt truly cathartic. (That’s the thing about playing stretches of a show at mid-volume—it allows you to truly make a point when you crank shit up.) Patti Smith is still entertaining: She told a story about giving Ralph Nader a birthday present, and how he immediately recycled every bit of the wrapping paper. And she discussed her deep love for AMC’s The Killing . “It’s coming back for a third season!” Thanks for the amazing night, Patti Smith.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28 Last Days

Good News Week™ continues in the US House of Representatives, where today 87 Republicans joined 199 Democrats in voting to pass an expanded Violence Against Women Act “Originally passed in 1994 and reauthorized since, the act provides support for organizations that serve domestic violence victims,” reports CNN. “Supporters credit the act with sharply reducing the number of lives lost to domestic violence over the past two decades.”

The measure now goes to the president, who announced, “I look forward to signing it into law as soon as it hits my desk.”

• Making infallible pronouncements on matters of faith and/or morals—which may run counter to actual faith or morality.

• Holding the key to the Kingdom of Heaven as well as to the executive washroom.

• Punishing uppity nuns.

• Community outreach. (Working on Easter is required, as well as touching the occasional leper.)

The ideal candidate for this exciting position will be an experienced member of the Catholic Church, with the following skills and qualiﬁcations:

• Must be an adult Catholic male. (Sorry, we are no longer accepting applications from heretics, nor any candidate who invites schism, or is notorious for simony, or is in possession of whatever it is that women have down there.)

• Five-plus years as a bishop, archbishop, priest, saint, or full-time major-league sports mascot.

• Exceptional skill at rationalization and navigating cognitive dissonance.

• A proven track record in resisting sins of the ﬂesh—speciﬁcally in regards to coworkers and interns, but also extending to self-pleasure. (They don’t call it the sin of Onan for nothing.)

• Ability to defend and enforce unenforceable 1,000-year-old laws.

• Demonstrated experience in turning a blind eye and wagon-circling.

• Proﬁcient with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

• No sense of humor.

The Vatican offers competitive wages and beneﬁts, including medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as 401(k), ESOP, and eternal salvation.

To apply, send a cover letter and résumé to av@pccs.va (do not expect a response). Good luck, and in the name of Christ, we salute, exhort, and bless you.

*The Vatican is not an equal opportunity employer. We do not value diversity in the workplace.

FRIDAY, MARCH 1 And the good news hits keep coming (even if we have to repurpose news stories from yesterday into items for today)! The site of today’s good news: Boston’s Emerson College, where members of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity are warming hearts and exploding stereotypes with their quest to help pay for a transgender frat brother’s surgery As CNN reported yesterday, 20-year-old sophomore Donnie Collins had only recently joined Phi Alpha Tau—described on its website as a “professional communicative arts fraternity”— when he learned that his insurance company “declined to cover surgery to remove breast tissue to flatten his chest.” When Collins’s brothers at Phi Alpha Tau heard the news, they launched an online campaign to raise the $8,100 needed for the procedure. They brought in almost $16,000, with the surplus funds going to the trans-assisting Jim Collins Foundation.

SATURDAY, MARCH 2 In much worse news, the week continues in central Florida, where Last Days’ hopes of a week of all good news was suddenly sucked below the surface of the earth, never to be seen again. The scene: Seffner, Florida, where today rescue crews called off their search for the man swallowed by a sinkhole under his home. “Jeff Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner—a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa—when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room,” reports Newsday “Experts say thousands of sinkholes erupt yearly in Florida because of the state’s unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely

occur.” Still, rarely isn’t never, as the friends and family of Jeff Bush are learning in a most painful way. “At this point, it’s really not possible to recover the body,” said Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrill. “We’re dealing with a very unusual sinkhole.” Condolences to all.

SUNDAY, MARCH 3 In much better news, the week continues in Scotland, where today Cardinal Keith O’Brien—the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland and a notorious crusader against gay rights—ceased his lying denials and confessed that, yes, he did engage in “inappropriate acts” with male subordinates. “I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop, and cardinal,” wrote O’Brien in his ofﬁcial apology. “To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness. I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement.” Dear Catholic Church: Enough. Pick a pope that will burn the existing tower of evil to the ground. You bitches need a fresh start.

Send hot tips to lastdays@thestranger.com and follow me on Twitter @davidschmader. Fall into a sinkhole at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG

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The Good, the Bad, and the Fucking Nuts

Bills in Olympia That Actually Have Traction

This Year

BY GOLDY, DOMINIC HOLDEN, CIENNA MADRID, AND ANNA MINARD

The Good

Closing the “Gun Show Loophole”

Critics ridiculed Seattle’s recent gun buyback event, pointing to the open-air gun bazaar that spontaneously sprang up on the sidewalks surrounding it as evidence of the program’s futility. But the more appropriate target of ridicule is the gaping hole in state law that allows such unregulated private firearm sales in the first place. House Bill 1588 would close this so-called gun show loophole, finally requiring universal background checks on the sale of all firearms, not just those from licensed dealers. An estimated 40 percent of firearms are currently sold without a background check. That’s just crazy.

Keeping Lady Parts Free

Another year, another round of bills fighting to keep crosses out of our clams. Here’s the first no-brainer, ladies: Knocked-up women should have the freedom to decide whether they want to have a baby or have an abortion, and if their insurance carrier covers one option, it should goddamn well cover the other. That’s been the rule in Washington State for years—despite persistent Republican opposition to “reproductive parity” laws—and under Representative Eileen Cody’s (D-Seattle) bill, HB 1044, it would remain the law of the land. Still, accessing abortion care is harder now that almost half of the hospitals in Washington are Catholic-affiliated, which is why Senator Kevin Ranker (D-San Juan Island) has introduced a bill that would require hospitals and clinics that receive public money to provide for, or refer for, all legal services, including women’s reproductive rights and end-of-life care. “In rural areas, there aren’t many options,” Ranker says. “We shouldn’t allow the sole health-care provider to limit the legal medical choices you have available.”

Saving Bus Service

This bill isn’t just “good,” it’s essential for bus service as we know it. Metro is facing a 17 percent service cut next year, simply because King County lacks the authority to tax itself sufﬁciently to fund its own transit system. This bill would allow the county—if it so chooses—to charge $40 for car tabs and slap a 1.5 percent excise tax on vehicles. If Olympia fails to pass this bill, “You’ll be waiting for a bus, it will be full, and it will go by because there won’t be enough buses to serve the demand,” says bill sponsor Representative Jessyn Farrell, a Democrat from Northeast Seattle. But HB 1959 is facing opposition from outside the county. Fourteen Republicans, who mostly live in tiny towns, unsuccessfully tried to stop it from passing out of committee. Why the fuck should they care if city folk choose to tax ourselves to pay for our own bus service? Lawmakers “bring their ideologies to the table and there is deﬁnitely an anti-tax, anti-transit sentiment,” Farrell laments.

Ending the Dance Tax Bars with dance ﬂoors shouldn’t be taxed more than big venues, like the Paramount and the Moore, simply for having dance nights. But they are. In fact, an obscure 9.5 percent tax on tickets and cover charges (in addition to the business taxes the clubs already pay) has hurt at least three popular music venues in the past few years: Century Ballroom, Neighbours, and Tractor Tavern. Senator Ed Murray (D-Seattle) is sponsoring SB 5613 to repeal this duplicative, unevenly applied tax.

Taxing the Rich to Pay for Schools

There are lawmakers in both parties (yes, we’re looking at you, Governor Jay Inslee) who tell us that they can close the $900 million budget gap, while funding K–12 schools enough to meet the state’s constitutional obligations, without raising taxes. But, of course, they’re lying. That’s why we need SB 5738, which would raise more than $600 million a year for education, mostly by imposing a 5 percent tax on capital gains over $10,000 a year. It doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing, but we’d be assholes not to pimp it.

Keeping Voting Accessible

Even though Washington State doesn’t face the racial voting obstacles of, say, Florida or Mississippi, people of color here don’t always see their votes make a difference. For example,

(from the usual 25) without requiring a trafﬁc study, which can be prohibitively expensive. It has bipartisan support, and its backing outside Olympia is broad: the AARP (the olds!), AAA (the cars!), public-health organizations (the humans!). Just pass it, already.

The Bad

Gutting Rights for Workers Republicans hate working people. They just do. How else to explain these latest legislative assaults on working people? Senate Bill 5275 would establish a “training wage,” by which employers could pay workers 75 percent of the state minimum wage for the ﬁrst 680 hours of work. That’s $1,562 out of the pockets of a minimumwage worker. Another bill, SB 5728, would invalidate local sick-leave ordinances entirely (including in Seattle). Thanks, Republicans!

Punishing Kids Who Don’t Read Good

Republicans religiously oppose taxes to pay for schools, but they yammer about the need for innovative education reforms. So what’s their innovation this year? A bill to hold back kids who ﬂunk third-grade reading. “Students of color will be disproportionately retained,” argue opponents cited in a legislative report, and SB 5237 provides zero new money to actually help failing students. This isn’t reform; it’s putting a scarlet letter—an “F” grade— on disadvantaged kids by holding them back.

Grading Schools

This bill is designed to punish teachers for the students who fall through the cracks of our criminally underfunded, overcrowded schools. Senate Bill 5328, birthed from the tax-raisingaverse loins of Senator Steve Litzow (R-Mercer Island), would grade schools based on student achievement. Good schools would get an “A”; bad schools would get an “F.” That’s it. A stupid letter grade devoid of rewards or ramiﬁcations.

The Fucking Nuts

Making Shooting Easier

only 4 percent of elected ofﬁcials in Eastern Washington are Latino, even though Latinos represent more than 50 percent of the population in counties like Adams and Franklin. That’s because almost all local elections are conducted at-large, or citywide, rather than by district, which can mean minorities are consistently out-

It’s a special tax exemption for shooting clay pigeons.

voted by thin margins. House Bill 1413 would help fix that by letting cities and towns switch to district-based elections that finally give racial minorities a fair shot at winning office.

Other bills would make it easier for young people to vote. Representative Joe Fitzgibbon’s HB 1267 would allow people to register to vote on Election Day, while HB 1279 would allow teens to preregister to vote (then they could vote after turning 18).

Saving Cyclists

Here’s a popular bill that has died in past years for stupid procedural reasons. Representative Cindy Ryu (D-Shoreline) is once again sponsoring a safe-streets bill, HB 1045, that would allow cities to lower speed limits on side streets to a safe 20 miles per hour

Senate Bill 5831 would make clay pigeons bought by nonproﬁt gun clubs exempt from sales taxes. Even if they’re making money selling the opportunity to shoot at them. YUP! This is a real bill. Sponsored by the senate Republican whip, Ann Rivers, it’s a marriage of hating taxes and loving guns that makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

Keeping the State Poor Forever

A two-thirds requirement for tax increases, which was struck down last week, made raising taxes pretty much impossible. Fortunately, the same holds true for passing constitutional amendments like SJR 8205, Senator Pam Roach’s (R-Glock) resolution to impose the two-thirds requirement by constitutional amendment. Democrats would have to be fucking nuts to vote for this.

Honoring Reagan

Here’s what you pay Senators Don Benton (R-Vancouver), Pam Roach (R-Auburn), and Nathan Schlicher (D-Gig Harbor) 40 grand a year to do: adopt Senate Resolution 8614. It resolved that the state senate “honor and cherish the life and work” of Ronald Reagan, citing reasons such as “Ronald Reagan determined that one key to a prosperous economy was a low tax rate.” There’s no public record of how much we’re paying them to clean Reagan’s ghost-spooge off their mouths every day.

Gossip about the mayor’s race at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG

ROBERT ULLMAN

Some Balls Under Those Robes

The Supreme Court Ends Our State’s Unconstitutional Nightmare

BY GOLDY

Alaw requiring a two-thirds majority of the legislature to pass any tax increase, or even close a tax loophole, is dead. Good fucking riddance.

Nearly two decades after the supermajority provisions were ﬁrst enacted into law via 1993’s Initiative 601, and thrice renewed by initiative huckster Tim Eyman, the Washington State Supreme Court ﬁnally untied its ball sack and mustered up a ruling on the underlying issue. Three times before, the court had weaseled out of overturning this voter-approved requirement, rejecting cases as “nonjusticiable” because either the challengers lacked standing, or the issue wasn’t ripe, or some other legalistic bullshit.

But in a landmark 6–3 opinion issued February 28, the court ﬁnally did its job and pronounced what every unbiased reader with nominal command of the English language already knew to be true.

“Article II, section 22 states that ‘No bill shall become a law unless… a majority of the members elected to each house’ vote in its favor,” the majority explained in its opinion, before concluding, “The plain language, constitutional history, and weight of persuasive

Eyman’s favorite anti-tax law is dead.

authority support reading this provision as setting both a minimum and a maximum voting requirement.”

No shit, Sherlock: A “majority” is 50 percent plus one vote, not two-thirds.

Within hours of the court ruling, senate Republicans had pushed a two-thirds supermajority constitutional amendment through committee. But fat chance it will ever seeing the light of day in the house.

“It has to go through the house Finance Committee,” explains Representative Reuven Carlyle. “I happen to know the chair pretty well, and I would say it’s a heavy lift.” Carlyle, of course, is the chair of the house Finance Committee. So that’s pretty much that.

And that’s the thing about supermajority requirements: They’re supposed to be an awfully high hurdle. The framers of our state constitution understood that when they imposed a supermajority on some things—like passing constitutional amendments—while setting simple majority requirements for passing day-to-day legislation. For if you could amend the constitution by a simple majority, then it really wouldn’t be a constitution at all.

As for the ability of state government to deliver the services and infrastructure we need, the court decision means nothing and everything. Nothing, because the Republicancontrolled senate has the simple majority needed to block any substantive tax increase. But everything, because lawmakers from both parties can no longer use the two-thirds requirement as a convenient excuse for avoiding even a conversation about revenue.

Revenue is back on the table in Olympia. And while it may not amount to much in the short term, it at least offers the hope that lawmakers will eventually muddle their way

of our perpetual budget crisis.

TIGER HEALTH CLINIC

Learn How to Sell Pot

School Teaches You How to Make Money with a Marijuana Business

BY CIENNA MADRID

Every red-blooded, non-Mormon American male has dreamed of getting ﬁlthy rich by getting people high. The moment marijuana use became legal for Washington State’s adults last November was the moment hordes of half-baked marijuana enthusiasts began seriously contemplating opening their own legal grow operation, dispensary, delivery service, or circus-themed marijuana-laced-dessert parlor.

There are harsh realities with this line of work.

But launching a legitimate state business is more complicated than simply selling people weed—business owners must know about zoning regulations, federal and state tax laws, even how to get a bank loan to sell a federally prohibited substance. Basically, they need a crash course at marijuana school. Fortunately, Seattle now has such a school. “We get you ready from the ground

Let Cops Use Pot After Work

Petition

Seeks to Allow Seattle Police to Partake in Marijuana

BY BEN LIVINGSTON

After Washington voters legalized cannabis last fall, the Seattle Police Department relaxed new-hire policies related to pot. Instead of the old rule mandating rookie cops be toke-free for at least three years, the new rule reduced that timeframe so recruits need only abstain from pot for one year. According to the SPD, this was done to help ﬁnd ofﬁcers “who resemble the people we protect.”

But with 74 percent of Seattle voters supporting Initiative 502, it is clear that the people the SPD protects love pot. So why can’t our cops smoke a spliff after work?

up—including giving you access to four or ﬁve different lawyers who specialize in working with marijuana businesses,” explains George Boyadjian, the man behind the Washington Cannabis Institute. Boyadjian started a similar school four years ago in California, because he liked smoking weed and had a background in business. Since then, he’s expanded his marijuana school into Nevada, Arizona, and now Washington, where $300 buys you a seat in the two-day seminar. The next one scheduled for Seattle is on March 23 (details at washingtonmarijuanaschool.com). Boyadjian says the foundation of each class is teaching safe business practices. This includes presentations from lawyers specializing in tax, business, and criminal defense to educate students on what could happen if they “go beyond the law,” as Boyadjian delicately puts it. The school also explains the differences between medical marijuana businesses and those that will be newly legal under Initiative 502, timelines for I-502’s implementation, and what to do in the instance of a federal raid.

“We’re not talking about how great marijuana is or what it does for patients, we talk about the stuff that people don’t want to talk about: the dangers and practicalities of the business,” Boyadjian says. “People need to hear this type of stuff. It needs to sink in that there are harsh realities with this line of work. This isn’t a regular industry—there is a thin line between going home at night and going to jail. It’s a very thin line.”

and city council can change that policy.

Mayoral spokesperson Aaron Pickus calls the recently relaxed pot rules “a sign of the police department working to uphold the expectations of the city they’re policing.” He says changing that policy is primarily in the purview of the police chief. In other words, the mayor’s ofﬁce and the SPD brass seem content passing the buck back and forth.

Assistant Chief Jim Pugel is the person tasked with overseeing post-legalization changes in SPD employment policy. In a phone interview, he explains that disqualifying stoners from the force serves to “see if the person can follow rules set by society.” (Even though pot is legal in Washington State, federal rules say it’s still illegal.) Despite the SPD’s promise to “reevaluate other marijuana-related hiring policies over the next year,” Pugel says no plan is currently under consideration to further relax the department’s pot ban. He says the mayor, chief,

And so, hoping to build support for such a change, I started an online petition at LetCopsUsePot.com. Among the reasons to let cops use pot: Seattle could otherwise lose out on cannabis users who would be excellent, qualiﬁed ofﬁcers, and—quite seriously—pot after work could make for mellower cops.

To build campaign awareness, I designed a simple “Let Cops Use Pot” poster. Making an in-kind contribution, the folks at Poster Giant agreed to cover the city with 200 such prints. Entertained by the idea, an anonymous pothead contributed postage to inﬁltrate city hall with campaign postcards.

If our cops are to resemble us, they should be allowed to smoke pot, too. If you agree, join the campaign at LetCopsUsePot.com.

THE MADAM WHO TURNED TO STONE

Did Mother Damnable—aka Mary Ann Boyer, Seattle’s original hard-ass—really turn to stone after her death in 1873?

Mary Ann Boyer was a foul-mouthed woman of the sea. In the 1850s, she sailed with Captain David “Bull” Conklin on his whaling ship off Alaska, until he got tired of her

nagging and abandoned her in Port Townsend. She made her way to the tiny village of Seattle and began running the Felker House, Seattle’s ﬁrst hotel, a twostory structure at Jackson Street and First Avenue South whose pieces had been carried here in the hold of a ship. And after she died, Boyer’s bones soaked in the ﬂooded earth of the old Seattle Cemetery. When they dug her up, the undertaker discovered that her body had turned to stone.

That’s the legend, anyway.

BY BESS LOVEJOY

throw at people, and that she cursed constantly in ﬁve languages—English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, plus a smattering of German. That’s partly how she earned her nickname: Mother Damnable.

recently encamped in our front.”

The real Mary Ann Boyer exists only in the scrawls of old census records, scattered accounts from early historians, and the reminiscences of an old admiral. The woman peering out from the balcony of the Felker House in a photo taken around 1868—a small, stout figure in voluminous petticoats—might be her, but we don’t know for sure. The Felker House, which some say was also a brothel, burned down in the Great Fire of 1889. Today, the city’s only mark of her is a grave in Lake View Cemetery, a flat headstone placed close to a road, supposedly because the men couldn’t carry her petrified body any farther.

They say she kept rocks in her apron to

BESS LOVEJOY is a writer and researcher in Seattle. She reads from her new book, Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, on Tues March 12, Rendezvous JewelBox Theater, 2322 Second Ave, 7 pm, free, 21+.

There are two main stories told of her life, and both involve her yelling at men. In 1854, Seattle’s territorial government held a lynching trial at her hotel, transforming her rooms into a makeshift court. They racked up a large bill for food and lodging, but when the prosecuting attorney demanded a receipt, Boyer ﬂew into a rage. She ﬁlled her arms with wood for her stove and began hurling pieces of it at the lawyer, shouting, “You want a receipt, do you? Well, here it is!” As the pioneers told it, no one ever asked her for a receipt again.

The second story dates from the days when the US Navy’s Decatur was anchored in Elliott Bay, protecting settlers from hostile Native Americans. As part of their efforts to defend the settlement, the men of the Decatur tried to clear a new road through town. But every time they passed the Felker House, trouble met them in the form of Mother Damnable. (Some say the bushes they tried to chop down were essential for protecting the privacy of her establishment.) In his memoirs, the lieutenant of the Decatur, Thomas S. Phelps, called Boyer a “demon in petticoats” and “a terror to our people, who found her tongue more to be dreaded than the entire Indian army

Phelps describes his encounter with the “demon” this way: “The moment our men appeared upon the scene, with three dogs at her heels, and an apron filled with rocks, this termagant would come tearing from the house, and the way stones, oaths, and curses flew was something fearful to contemplate, and, charging like a fury, with the dogs wild to flesh their teeth in the detested invaders, the division invariably gave way before the storm, fleeing, officers and all, as if old Satan himself was after them.”

After several aborted attempts, the ship’s quartermaster, a man named Sam Silk and “a veritable old-time salt,” according to Phelps, confronted Boyer. When his speech about the necessity of the road was cut short by a torrent of abuse and a piece of wood aimed at his head, he changed his tack.

“What do you mean, you damned old harridan, raising hell this way? I know you, you

There are two main stories told of her life, and both involve her yelling at men.

old curmudgeon,” he said. “Many’s the time I’ve seen you howling thunder around Fell’s Point, Baltimore. You’re a damned pretty one, ain’t you?”

As Phelps tells it, “The effect was magical. With one glance of concentrated hatred at Silk, she turned and ﬂew like the wind, scattering sticks and rocks on all sides, and, with her yelping dogs, disappeared within

the house, never again to be seen by one of the Decatur’s crew.”

This anecdote is one of the better pieces of evidence that Boyer was indeed a madam (she didn’t exactly keep public records). An article in the Paciﬁc Northwest Quarterly by MOHAI’s public historian, Lorraine McConaghy, notes that Fell’s Point was then Baltimore’s red-light district. McConaghy also points out that Phelps compares Boyer to “a prototypical Madame Damnable, a Frenchwoman living at Callao, a seaport in Peru, who seems to have run a bordello there.”

In fact, while historians usually say Boyer’s nickname stemmed from her ﬁlthy language, the truth is more complex. The phrase “Mother Damnable” dates back at least to the mid-17th century in England; there’s a ballad called “Mother Damnable’s Ordinary” recorded by the London Stationers’ Registry in July 1656. According to the folklorist Steve Roud, a “ﬂurry of mentions” of Mother Damnables occur around that time, and the term always refers to a madam or a witch. (It’s worth noting that settlers referred to Boyer as “Mother” or “Madam.”) When the settlers of Seattle dubbed Mary Ann “Damnable,” they probably weren’t just making reference to her foul mouth, but placing her within a particular tradition of unpleasant women. Boyer’s unpleasantness, of course, is part of why everyone loves the story of her turning to stone. It seems like divine retribution, proof that God has a sense of humor. And yet the transformation also seems to prove that her stubbornness, her hard-as-nails attitude, carried on past the grave. While the rest of the city’s pioneer dead fell victim to worms, she grew ever more impenetrable.

DREW CHRISTIE

FELKER HOUSE That woman in the doorway on the second ﬂoor—a stout ﬁgure in voluminous petticoats—might be Mother Damnable, but we don’t know for sure.

And the tour guides, guidebooks, historians, and librarians who repeat this story aren’t making it up.

The tale goes back to undertaker Oliver C. Shorey, who founded what later became the funeral home Bonney-Watson, now the city’s oldest continually operating business. In 1884, Shorey got the contract to dig up the bodies from the old Seattle Cemetery, which was being turned into Denny Park. (The cemetery was known for ﬂooding, leading the cofﬁns to bob around in the ground and turning the bodies black.) In a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article from August 22, 1884, Shorey describes what happened when he dug up Boyer:

We discovered that the coffin was very heavy, weighing at least 400 pounds and it took six men to lift it out of the grave. On removing the lid to the coffin we found that she had turned to stone. Her form was full sized and perfect, the ears, finger nails and hair being all intact. Her features were, however, somewhat disfigured. Covering the body was a dark dust, but after that was removed the form was as white as marble and as hard as stone.

Shorey’s description makes no mention of the smile that some say beamed from Boyer’s face, and which makes her preserved body seem like that of an incorruptible saint. It’s also worth noting that he describes her cofﬁn as weighing at least 400 pounds, not the 2,000 that is sometimes recorded. But the real question is, could she really have turned to stone?

It seems highly unlikely, given that she was underground for only 11 years. It’s more probable that her body was coated with adipocere, a substance sometimes called “grave wax” that can develop when fat decomposes in wet soil. Adipocere is not uncommon, and is often described as gray or white, although it’s usually a bit softer than stone—more like clay, plastic, or cheese. Yes, corpse cheese.

Shorey’s description of what he saw might also have been inﬂuenced by a peculiar 19th-century craze. When his shovel bit into the dirt of the Seattle Cemetery in 1884, reports of petriﬁed corpses had been in the newspapers for years. The most famous case came in 1869, when two laborers discovered what appeared to be a 10-foot-tall stone giant buried on a farm in Cardiff, New York. (“I declare,” one of them yelled out, “some old Indian has been buried here!”)

The 3,000-pound “giant” was in fact a hoax perpetrated by a New York cigar maker named George Hull. An avowed atheist, Hull had recently gotten into an argument with a Methodist revivalist who claimed that giants had once walked the earth (hey, it’s in the Bible). Hull had decided to create his own giant out of gypsum, telling the men who cut the stone from a quarry near Fort Dodge that it was for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln. He swore everyone else involved to silence, and buried the ﬁgure on his cousin’s farm. Sure enough, after the discovery, the townspeople beat a path to the farm, and Hull

started charging admission. Before long, he’d sold the giant to a group of businessmen, who successfully fended off interest from P. T. Barnum. (When his offer was refused, Barnum made an exact copy and exhibited it in a New York museum. The new owner of the real fake giant, one David Hannum, supposedly coined the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute” in reference to those who paid to see Barnum’s copy.)

Supposedly, Barnum even eventually tried to buy Boyer’s body.

A rash of copycat petrified corpses followed, made of substances such as limestone, concrete, and hardened gelatin. Even Mark Twain got into the act. The October 4, 1862, issue of Nevada’s Territorial Enterprise carried an article by Twain (then Samuel Clemens) “reporting” the discovery of a petrified man in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford. Apparently, every limb and feature of the fossilized man was perfect, “not even excepting the left leg, which has evidently been a wooden one during the lifetime of the owner.” Even though the “stony mummy” was described as having his “right thumb resting against the side of the nose” (that is, thumbing his nose), most of the newspapers that reprinted the story gave no hint that it was a hoax, encouraging the discovery of other petrified people across the land.

Such tales may go back to an 1858 hoax in the Daily Alta California, in which a letter from a local doctor described the misadventures of a prospector named Ernest Flucterspiegel, who turned to stone after drinking the fluid inside a geode. (Apparently, the man’s heart resembled red jasper.) Even newspapers of the early 20th century described petrified corpses, although, strangely, it’s not something you hear much about today. The 1860s were a time of intense interest in human origins (Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in 1859), and many of the early petrified corpses were described as mind-bogglingly ancient. One, with the stub of a tail, was even briefly thought to be evolution’s “missing link.” Embalming also started in earnest in America only after the Civil War, and it’s possible that some undertakers weren’t used to seeing the condition of embalmed remains. In any case, Boyer’s petrifaction story reads vaguely like a fairy tale, and it secured her an immortality she might not otherwise have enjoyed.

Yet another story has it that Mary Ann Boyer was never moved at all, and she still rests beneath the grass at Denny Park. However, Shorey’s yellowed reburial register (kept at the Seattle Municipal Archives) records her removal in his careful cursive. Other records show that Boyer’s body was moved to the old Washelli Cemetery—which later became Volunteer Park—and then in 1887 to Lake View Cemetery, where she continues her slow decay today.

That is, unless she really did turn to stone.

Pirate’s Plunder

Seattle Pro Musica: Fleur: Songs of Spring (3/9) Northwest Girlchoir: ‘You Sing, Too!’ at 2 pm and ‘All Together Now!’ at 7 pm (3/10)

Mark Russ Federman with Tom Douglas: Reﬂections & Recipes from Russ & Daughters (3/11) Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier: Big Data: The Next Big Thing (3/11) UW Science Now: Derya Itir Dilmen: Revenge of the Corals (3/11)

Architecture Foundation: A Career of Small Spaces and Community Architecture with James Cutler (3/12) Ernest Freeberg: How Edison’s Light Bulb Changed Invention—and Us (3/13) Chavisa Woods: ‘The Albino Album’ (3/13) ParentMap: Dr. Denise Pope: The Resilient Student (3/14) Emily Anthes: ‘Frankenstein’s Cat’ & Biotech’s Other Brave New Beasts (3/14) Michael Moss: How the Food Industry Hooked Us on Salt, Sugar, & Fat (3/15)

theSTRANGER

Morrissey

MUSIC

The Pope of Mope sent us into a daffodil-ﬂinging tantrum when he canceled his Seattle show back in November, citing his sick mum back in England (she’s feeling better now), so we’re more than thrilled to get our hopes right back up to where they started when we word-purged about him those many months ago. There’s no real need to describe Morrissey’s music—at this point, you’re either with him or against him. Word is this is the last time he’ll ever play Seattle, and if he stands us up again, “beware, we hold more grudges than lonely high court judges.” (Moore Theater, 1932 Second Ave, stgpresents.org, 7:30 pm, $62.50–$82.50, all ages) EMILY NOKES

‘Everyone’s a Critic’

PERFORMANCE In 2011, the Hufﬁngton Post published an essay by Michael Kaiser, who lamented the “scary trend” of blogs, arguing that citizen-criticism was dumbing down the discourse and giving professional critics a run for their money (literally). Andy Horwitz and Jeremy Barker of Culturebot.org (pictured) strenuously disagree. Everyone’s a Critic launches their Citizen Critic Project, and a panel of Seattle culture people—including Tonya Lockyer, Matthew Richter, and myself—will show video clips and talk about the future of criticism. (On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, ontheboards.org, 8 pm, $12) BRENDAN KILEY

‘Catch and Release’ ART

‘My Brother’s Wedding’

FILM The greatest director in the history of black cinema is Charles Burnett. His greatness rests on two films: Killer of Sheep (1977) and To Sleep with Anger (1990). Between these films is My Brother’s Wedding (1983). The first is an urban poem imbued with the humanism of the blues; the third is a work of philosophy that draws from the cosmic hum of gospel. The middle film is the bridge from the first masterpiece to the second. It’s not, to be honest, an outstanding film, but it does bring us closer to the outstanding mind behind Sheep and Anger. Tonight’s screening is part of NWFF’s monthlong series LA Rebellion, and the director will be in attendance (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, nwfilmforum.org, 8 pm, $10) CHARLES MUDEDE

‘West of Memphis’

During Georgetown’s monthly Art Attack walk, the newish gallery LxWxH brings you a crew of four local lady metalsmiths, all making jewelry that could either protect or attack you. Dorothy Cheng has an interest in medieval mortiﬁcation of the ﬂesh—hair shirts and whatnot. Jana Brevick’s pieces often look like they are guilty of transmitting secret data across surveillance systems. Kimber Leblicq dips steel in beeswax and juxtaposes it with rolled-up paper that looks burned. Tara Brannigan’s ring has a duiker horn instead of a precious gem. Something’s gonna get stabbed. (LxWxH, 6007 12th Ave S, lengthbywidthbyheight.com, 6–9 pm, free) JEN GRAVES

Toss Like a Boss

CHOW Is there a more beautiful sight than pizza dough being tossed and caught, tossed and caught, until it achieves its optimal thinness and perfect diameter? No—no, there is not. Today, professionals from Piecora’s, Big Mario’s, Zayda Buddy’s, Elemental, Ballard Pizza Company, and more compete to become the Pizza Toss Boss. Your suggested $20 donation gets you two hours’ worth of pizza and salad, plus a scorecard. The winner gets a trophy, and the proceeds go to their charity of choice. Everyone gets all that beauty in the air. (Ballard Pizza Company, 5107 Ballard Ave NW, 659-6033, noon, $20) BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

FILM

The case of the West Memphis Three—wherein three teenage outcasts in Arkansas were convicted of child murders they had nothing to do with—has already inspired three amazing films: Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost trilogy, one of the great documentary works of American cinema. Amy J. Berg’s West of Memphis elegantly summarizes these previous films before breaking new ground, following the men of the West Memphis Three through their grossly imperfect plea deals and reentry into a world they were taken out of as kids. It’s a beautiful, infuriating film. (See Movie Times: thestranger.com/film) DAVID SCHMADER

‘Goldﬁnger’ FILM

Most people agree that Skyfall was one of the alltime best James Bond movies, but critics who’ve seen all the Bond films still tend to keep Goldfinger at the top of their list. How can a movie with an extended golfing sequence and a portly fake-tanned German villain top Sam Mendes’s sleek, stylish origin film? Three words: Sean fucking Connery. Also, the slow unveiling of a devious plot that sounds so crazy it just might work. Also: Oddjob’s razor-brimmed hat. And finally: Pussy Galore! Goldfinger may not have Javier Bardem, but it’s overflowing with old-school style. (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, grandillusioncinema.org, 6:45 and 9 pm, $8) PAUL CONSTANT

Bess Lovejoy BOOKS

Stranger contributor Bess Lovejoy wanted to do something special for the hometown launch party of her beautiful new book, Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses. Sure, she’ll be reading from her new collection of pieces detailing the afterlives of notorious dead bodies, and she’ll answer all your death-related questions, too. But rumor has it this reading will also feature a thereminist and a very special guest-skull or two, in addition to the Rendezvous’s usual stiff drinks (haw-haw!). Corpses have never been so exquisite. (Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave, 634-3400, 7 pm, free) PAUL CONSTANT

Images (from left to right): Photo by Robert Wade, © Erik Isakson/Corbis,

Heide Benser/Corbis

ARTS

Chinese Treasures

Shipped

Out of Tacoma

A Museum, a Family, a Horriﬁc History, and a Fight Right Now

BY JEN GRAVES

Connie Young Yu had no more than $11,000 to buy back her late mother’s favorite red robe. The robe came up early in the sale, rising like a flame at the front of a room at Bonhams auction house in San Francisco last December. Embroidered with sprays of peonies, patterned butterflies, and gold medallions, the robe dates back to the Qing dynasty, in the 19th century. Bidding started, and Connie jumped in, but buyers whizzed past Bonhams’s low estimate of $8,000, then past Connie’s budget. A Chinese businessman bid $15,000. Sold. Just like that, the robe was gone, a half-century after Connie’s parents rescued it and sent it to the Tacoma Art Museum to be enshrined as a symbol of reconciliation in the city where the mayor once called Chinese people a “curse” and a “filthy horde.”

Losing the robe was the last straw. The Young family—Connie, her brother Al, and her sister Janey—announced a lawsuit against TAM on February 28. The museum had sent the robe to auction along with 131 other robes and jades donated by the Youngs in the 1970s and ’80s.

The strands of that single robe stretch from the waning days of imperial China through the American civil rights movements, ending in that San Francisco auction room with the triumph of 21st-century Chinese wealth. The characters are vivid: Al broke the Asian color barrier in race-car driving. Connie is the granddaughter of a widow with bound feet who got locked up under the federal Chinese Exclusion Act. She’s also the mother of an Oscar winner and a historian who writes books about

the Chinatowns where her great-grandfather once raised money to fund the ﬁghters who tore down the Qing dynasty, scattering imperial cast-offs like the red robe all over the globe for Connie’s parents to later ﬁnd.

the auction did Connie and Al raise hell.

TAM director Stephanie Stebich says she was taken by surprise. Legally, it’s hard to imagine that the family has a leg to stand on in its quest to stop the next auction and force TAM to transfer what’s left of the collection to the Wing Luke or some other Northwest institution. TAM did not violate industry standards. This is an art museum, not a history museum, Stebich pointed out. TAM assessed the aesthetic value of the objects, found them expendable, and decided to sell.

overview, the exhibit was a triumph, a sort of sweet victory.”

So when you’re shipping a bunch of Chinese treasures out of Tacoma, you undervalue factors beyond aesthetics at your own peril.

TAM prides itself on standing up for historically abused communities—see the case of the LGBTQ exhibition Hide/Seek last year. Tacoma was its only West Coast venue. Again, amen. The Young collection, though, is a case of an art museum proceeding legitimately in the art world but stumbling in the wider world where cultural sensitivity matters. Stebich denies telling Connie and Al that the collection was not museum quality, but a screen grab of the museum’s own website from late last year describes the material as “not of museum quality” and “mostly tourist keepsakes and mementos.”

Stebich says TAM will use some of the money from the Young sales to fund purchases by contemporary artists telling the Chinese American story. Labels on the new pieces would mention the Youngs. But Connie and Al say that has only been proposed recently, and they no longer trust TAM.

Too little, too late is why there were 52 signatories, including prominent community leaders, on a February 26 letter that called for a public meeting at the Asia Paciﬁc Cultural Center in Tacoma. Kathryn Van Wagenen, a signatory who was president of TAM when it moved into its high-proﬁle new home in 2003, says she’d simply like the museum to try to be “gracious,” whether they’re legally bound or not.

Stebich, meanwhile, is giving statements that will almost certainly make things worse. She told the News Tribune in Tacoma, “We are selling these items to build a collection that helps tell the story about the Chinese in the Northwest through art. Help me understand how Chinese imperial robes do that.” But it’s easy to imagine how keeping a least a few of the objects donated by this remarkable family would indeed help “tell the story about the Chinese in the Northwest through art”— while honoring the reconciliation gesture.

The size and scope of the story—even more than the objects themselves—is what TAM underestimated when it set out to sell the Young collection. TAM either didn’t know the story’s value or didn’t carefully consider how to handle its specialness. While the Young material did extremely well at the December auction, yielding $229,466, and is expected to do well again when more of it goes on the block at Bonhams on March 12, that amount of money is not spectacular on the art market—and the one thing both sides agree on is that this isn’t about the money anyway. TAM spent two years deciding that building “the premier collection of Northwest art” is the smartest thing it can do with limited resources. The Youngs’ unrestricted gift of jades and robes had not even been on display since 1996. It is fair game to be “deaccessioned.” The museum did its due diligence, weighing options and contacting heirs—a courtesy, not a requirement, since an unrestricted gift is, legally, exactly that. The museum and family members had three face-to-face meetings and pleasant e-mail exchanges. Only after

Connie Wolf, director of Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center, to which the Youngs gave the other half of their collection, says, “A museum is not in the business of keeping [a work] just because it’s worth money.” Amen to that. It’s also true that privileged donors often mistake public institutions for their own private storehouses.

But do art museums have room to value factors beyond aesthetics? And are the Youngs really that kind of privileged donors?

Tacoma kicked out its entire Chinese population on a single rainy night in 1885.

This was not your typical local-scionsbequeathing-art situation. Connie’s parents never lived in Tacoma. They chose Tacoma, at the suggestion of a friend who happened to be afﬁliated with TAM, because it was the site of the single worst act of anti-Chinese persecution in American history. It was the place where their pride could defeat a legacy.

That legacy was “the Tacoma Method.” That’s the name other towns gave it afterward, towns that also dreamed of kicking out their entire Chinese populations on a single rainy night, 600 people marched at gunpoint onto outbound trains. It happened in Tacoma on November 3, 1885.

In 1977, when TAM ﬁrst exhibited the Youngs’ objects, Connie wrote her father: “When [Al and I] were milling among the many distinguished citizens of the Northwest at the exhibit, we exchanged comments on the irony of it all, descendants of the discriminatory communities who forced out the Chinese crowding in to see the collection of Imperial robes donated by descendants of long-suffering Chinese pioneers… From a historical

Stebich said the planned Asia Paciﬁc Cultural Center meeting “was scheduled not in consultation with my schedule, so I have to decline the meeting.” She said TAM’s board president didn’t plan to attend, either. The next auction is set for March 12. The same Chinese collector who bought the red robe has told Connie he’s coming back for more.

BOOKS

Nursery Rhymes for the Middle-Aged

Paul Muldoon and the Question of the Lyric

BY CATE MCGEHEE

The Word on the Street is a collection of song lyrics by the poet Paul Muldoon, many of which were put to music and recorded by his band, the Wayside Shrines (though, importantly, not all of them). As a piece of writing, The Word on the Street has all the ambition of a stapled booklet inside a CD jewel case, and the key to enjoying it is to expect nothing more. The lines are unchallenging and rhyme like a metronome—to

A MANCHU NOBLEWOMAN’S EMBROIDERED SILK ROBE Mary Young, Connie’s mother, in the early 1980s, wearing one of the objects she donated to Tacoma Art Museum. The man is Jon Kowalek, then-director of the museum.

The Tacoma Method ...below Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Leonard Cohen …20 Chicken Man …22

use Muldoon’s own word, they’re doggerel. An example might be from “Head In,” where, “One night at the CBGB/Would bring me back to earth/I met a girl named Phoebe/Who loved to bodysurf,” but it’s hard to choose a representational excerpt from text that all looks pretty much the same.

REVIEW

The Word on the Street by Paul Muldoon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $23)

During an interview with Muldoon before his reading at Town Hall last Thursday, it was fairly clear he understood that his new book cannot walk in stride with his poetry. He described it as “light verse,” saying, “The pressure per square inch in this kind of writing is a little lower than in a conventional poem.” He agreed that the book is best experienced in conjunction with music, though “it’s nice to think people would get something from reading them on the page also.” That’s a pretty weak expression of conﬁdence in the value of this volume, but the Town Hall crowd did get a kick out of Muldoon’s recitation of what felt like nursery rhymes for the middleaged. Maybe it was just a book that aimed low and hit its mark.

Except that Paul Muldoon is one of the ﬁnest poets alive, with a professional pedigree that makes you think he’d know better. While teaching at Oxford, Muldoon served as president of the UK’s Poetry Society, until he crossed the Atlantic to teach at Princeton and take over as the the poetry editor of the New Yorker. He’s published more than 30 collections and won a Pulitzer Prize. So much of his work is complicated, subtle, and rewarding, and he’s one of the most powerful tastemakers in contemporary poetics. Publishing The Word on the Street is either a goofy lapse of judgment or a bold-yet-reputation-shriveling decision meant to do more than amuse.

Muldoon is very interested in the gray and wavy line we use to conceptualize poetry, and The Word on the Street certainly challenges it. “Poetry could embrace much more and include much more under its rubric,” said Muldoon. He added, “I’m much more interested in what can be included than what can be excluded.” Muldoon spoke of songwriters he considers to be poets, including Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Leonard Cohen. During the reading, he even mentioned Gotye. But would posterity still consider them poets if they’d never put their words to music?

During the reading, Muldoon mentioned how Paul Simon, one of the greatest lyricists of all time, would always write the music ﬁrst, because he believed that if the music wasn’t interesting, the lyrics wouldn’t be. “The lyrics don’t really matter very much. So I don’t know why we’re here,” said Muldoon, right before he read some more lyrics.

BOOKS

Candy WhistleBlowers

Salt Sugar Fat Will Change the Way You Think About Junk Food

BY PAUL CONSTANT

It’s the stuff that young journalists dream of, and the sort of situation that usually unfolds only in idealistic movies about reporters: A powerful source from inside an industry provides proof of a cover-up so deep and so awful that it implicates entire corporations in corrupt and harmful practices. Michael Moss, the Pulitzer Prize–winning

PREVIEW

Michael Moss Fri March 15, Town Hall, 7:30 pm, $5

New York Times reporter whose investigations into the ground-beef industry made “pink slime” a household term, unveils those sorts of orgasmic revelations repeatedly in his new book, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (Random House, $28). Even before the book’s publication last week, when the New York Times ran an extended excerpt in its Sunday magazine, you could tell Moss was up to something special, a book that could stand with the other monoliths of industrial-food journalism—Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, and Sinclair’s The Jungle Turns out, Salt Sugar Fat is just that good. It’s the most scandalous book to be published this year—narrowly beating Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief—and it’s more compelling reading than any novel I’ve read in months. Taking information from an army of sources embedded deep inside the prepared-food industry, Moss alleges that the handful of corporations that dominate junk food have met on multiple occasions to discuss strategies to hoodwink the American public and keep us hooked on products that are poisoning us.

Moss structures Salt Sugar Fat in three sections. He opens with sugar, describing the long, weird evolution of breakfast cereal, from health food to candy (most of the popular brands of cereal, Moss explains, are now fully half sugar). These foods don’t wind up sugar-soaked by accident; they’re the result of years of scientiﬁc research to pinpoint what the industry refers to as the “bliss point,” in which each bite is as loaded with as much sugar as possible without tipping over into nausea.

But the human body has no such bliss point for fat. Moss documents an experiment with student tasters:

The tasters were able to taste and quantify the sugar content of each sample quite accurately, but not the fat content; the participants… found it difﬁcult to detect its presence with any precision at all. On top of that, when sugar was added to the fattier formulations, the students mistakenly thought the fat had been reduced

To illustrate our inability to determine what’s good for us, Moss explains the history of Lunchables, and of our increasing love affair with red meat and cheese (when Domino’s Pizza moved its product into Mexico, to the tune of 36 tons of cheese a week, Mexico quickly became the second-most obese nation in the world, after the United States).

But Moss doesn’t waste time on tuttutting; he’s too busy conducting a small symphony of whistle-blowers to prove malicious intent on behalf of the junk-food industry. He talks to a scion of the Coca-Cola Company, a son of a legendary Coke executive, who was himself in contention to run the entire company until his conscience broke when he witnessed ﬁrsthand the attempts to sell soda to impoverished children in Latin American countries. Moss introduces us to gut-churning cover-ups like the so-called Cancer Team, an internal group created by the USDA’s beef-marketing organization to discredit science that suggests red meat causes cancer. He publishes a secret “manifesto,” distributed at the highest echelons of the Kraft corporation soon after it was bought by cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, predicting that what happened to

Community Portrait Day

Saturday, March 16

11 am–2 pm

Get inspired by European Masters through a day of portrait activities. Create a self-portrait, join a family tour of the exhibition Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London , and work with Seattle artist Joe Park on a life-sized embellished masterpiece, during this afternoon full of art making for all ages.

Image: Photo by Robert Wade

Participants should be age 18-65 with no current drug or alcohol problems. Participants will be paid $15/hour for their time and provided lunch.

the tobacco industry in the 1980s would soon befall the junk-food industry:

If your opponents do enough shoveling—while you stand there shaking your head—some of the stuff they throw at you will stick. And before long, the public may not be able to see you through the muck.

Salt Sugar Fat is a brilliant work of muckraking, and from here it looks like the ﬁrst salvo in what could be a barrage of muck that might bury the immoral junk-food industry.

THEATER

Paradise Costs

Romance, Razors, and Pistols in an Indoor Forest

BY BRENDAN KILEY

The Satori Group has turned its International District studio into a forest glen. The ﬂoor is covered in dirt, the room is crowded with tree trunks, and tarps and blankets hang from wires and branches. Performers with ﬂashlights invite audience members into the nighttime scene one by one, leading them to benches and folding chairs, assuring them that the soup will be vegan and they’ll get some beer at intermission.

REVIEW

reWilding

Satori Group at Inscape Arts Through March 17

A collaboration between Satori and playwright Martyna Majok, reWilding is a collection of dramatic fragments, more like a Burroughs cut-up than a regular plot, that take place in a remote woodland community somewhere in contemporary America. Its residents are people who, for whatever reason, have decided they want to ditch their jobs and their lives to forage their own food, sew their own clothes, and reinvent the conditions of their lives. As one young resident (the lithe Greta Wilson) explains to “the new girl” (a wide-eyed LoraBeth Barr) as she guides her into the camp in the opening sc ene:

“They come from all over. Some were en route to ﬁnd work. Some were on road trips with nowhere to stop. Some were determined to get far away. Most were poor. Some see things differently, and that can be a terrible burden to bear… Some think the apocalypse is coming. Some think it’s here.”

Nobody in reWilding says the words “primitivism” or “anarchism,” but that’s the world these characters have created for themselves, and the play traces the contours of its benefits and drawbacks. On the upside, people share (including the cast sharing lentil soup, bread, and beer with the audience) and are left alone to live as they see fit. On the downside, a bearded, eccentric immigrant called Chicken Man (John Leith) might shoot out your car tires, or the kindly older woman who first took you in (Karen Jo Fairbrook) might turn you out, without much explanation, just before the season’s first serious downpour. The price of freedom is unpredictability.

Directed by Caitlin Sullivan, reWilding’s scenes are like shards thrown on the ground, creating more of a mood than a story. The strategy is entirely effective, and more satisfying than many traditional plays. Some characters change, of course: The new girl,

through her trials by ﬁre, transforms into a regular resident, and two young boys with conservative religious families (played with rambunctious glee by Quinn Franzen and Adam Standley) discover their desire for each other. Others just muddle along as we slowly discover who they are—why the troubled Chicken Man hates cars, or the frustration of one guy from Alaska who can’t quite master the technology. (“I wanted to work with my hands,” he says, in a moment of pathetic comedy. “This tent came out of a box. I see how people here look at me. My tent came out of a box.”)

With 14 performers, an indoor set, and lots of dim, nighttime scenes—for this project, Marnie Cumings is less a lighting designer than a designer of shadows—Satori has created a creepy, immersive experience. The show isn’t perfect (a few scenes could use some trimming), but it’s a successful experiment.

DANCE

Bodies Can Shine

KT Niehoff’s New Dance Films Defy Winter

BY MELODY DATZ

IPREVIEW Dream Brain Thurs March 7, Century Ballroom

t’s March, it’s our cold season, and even people who claim to love this weather are walking down the street with pinched expressions, like they’ve just smelled a fart. But look at us through the lens of KT Niehoff’s two new dance films, and something forgotten emerges: In this environment, our bodies can shine. In Rain Beats Down, the dozen or so darkly clad dancers are framed against a silver sky, coldly beautiful with flat expressions as they move in triangular unison on the precipice of an unused stretch of highway over Lake Washington. The film’s images are striking, with jump-cut cinematography, the muted colors of the natural setting, and fabulous costumes (including, scaly, reptilian creations by Ben DeLaCreme).

Niehoff and Collision Theory, her current project, will screen the ﬁlms at an event called Dream Brain this Thursday, March 7, at Odd Fellows Hall. The event should be an intimate experience, in “a cabaret-like setting,” with artists seated among the spectators. Collision Theory is a yearlong compilation of events exploring the boundaries of audience/artist interaction—retail-display-window dance theater, shows for one audience member at a time—that will climax with a performance at On the Boards this April.

Deeply embedded in Seattle dance culture for decades, Niehoff says she became disillusioned with live performance for its distance between artists and audience. Dance ﬁlm, she explains, felt like another way to play with proximity, to control precisely what the audience sees and seat the artists with the audience. On one hand, this seems counterintuitive: Film is an extra layer of mediation between the artists and the audience. But Niehoff hopes that making the artists and the audience one unit, sitting together to watch the work and talk about it afterward, will create a new bond between them.

This may work, or it may not. Seattle audiences don’t have a reputation for being the most interactive, and proximity alone does not guarantee a meaningful swap of ideas and reactions. And transforming audience input into creative dialogue requires a smaller, softer ego than most of us—artists or otherwise—possess.

ALICE WHEELER

ARTS CALENDAR Only the most noteworthy stuff.

ART Gallery Openings

AIA GALLERY

Family-Friendly Urbanism is about how kids fit (and don’t fit) into dense, inner-city developments. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 5-7 pm. Tues-Fri. Through April 26. 1911 First Ave, 448-4938.

BHERD STU DIOS

Telephone: More than 20 artists—Aaron Jasinski, Ego, Crystal Barbre, Parskid, Joe Vollan, Chris Sheridan, and others—play a game of visual telephone. Free. Reception Fri Mar 8, 6 pm. WedFri. Through April 4. 312 N 85th St, 234-8348.

CAIRO

Hanz/Haus : drawings and paintings by Shannon Perry and Lelah Maupin. Reception Fri Mar 8, 7-10 pm. Mon-Sun. Through April 9. 507 E Mercer St, 453-4077.

CORE 4 Yards: Recordings and Meditations features paintings, woodcuts, and video installations inspired by artist John Smither’s friend’s yard. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 6-9 pm. Wed-Sat. Through March 30. 117 Prefontaine Place S 467-4444.

CULLOM GALLERY

Eva Pietzcker, Yoonmi Nam, and Keiko Hara use techniques they picked up at the Moku Hanga Innovation Lab in Japan to push the boundaries of woodblock printing. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 6-8 pm. Wed-Sat. Through March 30. 603 S Main St, 919-8278.

FORM/SPACE ATELIER

The Posters: Guerrilla Girls on Tour: Guerrilla Girls formed in the 1980s as a crew of anonymous women artists in gorilla suits who fight for equity for women in the art world. “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” asks one of their most famous posters. Wonder what they would ask about the occasion for this exhibition, which opens on International Women’s Day Free. Reception Fri Mar 8, 6-8 pm. Wed-Sat. Through May 4. 2407 First Ave, 349-2509.

GALLERY4CULTURE

The latest from Mark Takamichi Miller, the longtime great maker of subversive paintings from other people’s photographs. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 6-8 pm. Mon-Fri. Through March 29. 101 Prefontaine Pl S 296-7580.

HEDREEN GALLERY, SEATTLE UNIVERSITY

Green Gothic: Not a smoothie or a Spider-Man character. Local luminaries Gretchen Bennett, Frank Correa, Charles Mudede, Lisa Radon, Serrah Russell, and Rodrigo Valenzuela respond to an essay with this title by the painter Matt Offenbacher, in which he “addresses concepts specifically intertwined with contemporary Northwest identity: landscape, industry, the romanticism of Ruskin, decay, regrowth, monsters lurking in the shadows, and the sublime.” Free. Reception Fri Mar 8, 6-8

pm. Wed-Sat. Through April 24. 901 12th Ave, 296-2244.

LXWXH (LENGTH,WIDTH,HEIGHT)

Catch and Release: What is jewelry for? Jana Brevick, Dorothy Cheng, Kimber Leblicq, and Tara Brannigan explore with a collection that includes sharp, hairy pieces, too small or too big to actually wear. Free. Reception Sat Mar 9, 6-9 pm. Mon-Sun. Through March 30. 6007 12th Ave S MIA GALLERY

Underworld : Wayne Levin’s confounding black-and-white photographs of the universe that exists underwater. Free. TuesSat. Through April 13. 1203A 2nd Ave 467-4927.

PAPER HAMMER Markings: Selected Work of

Tom Hausken : Big swaths of black and white invite you to take a closer a look at the cracks and layers and imperfections that happened along the way. Free. Mon-Sat. Through March 30. 1400 Second Ave, 682-3820.

A PROJECT SPACE

Erin Elyse Burns’ video installation, Litany, is a month-long collaboration with Seattle-based musician Jeremy Cawley. Free. Reception Sat Mar 9, 6-8 pm. Wed-Sat. Through April 5. 1941 First Avenue S. 2H 234-6831.

PUNCH GALLERY

Howard and Lorraine Barlow explore those big life milestones with, among other things, 1,000 ammunition shells filled with pieces of her wedding dress. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 5-8 pm. Thurs-Sat. Through March 30. 119 Prefontaine Pl S 621-1945.

SOI L

Marije Vermeulen and Guido Nieuwendijk’s floor-to-ceiling geometric color installations duke it out. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 6-8 pm. Wed-Sat. Through March 30. Pair/Pare: Seattle artists Serrah Russell and Jason Hirata’s multimedia exploration of food production and consumption. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 6-8 pm. Wed-Sat. Through March 30. 112 Third Ave S, 264-8061.

[STOREFRONT] OLSON

KUNDIG ARCHITECTS

I Want All of This. is what artist/engineer/mad genius Mark VonRosenstiel’s retractable wooden arm sticking out of the wall writes across the entire gallery space, over and over again. Free. Reception Thurs Mar 7, 5:30-8 pm. Mon-Fri. Through April 1. 406 Occidental Ave

Events

ADAM EKBERG: ARTIST LECTURE

Ekberg discusses his “minor spectacles”, which are currently hanging at Platform Gallery through March 23. Photographic Center Northwest 900 12th Ave, 7207222. $10. Fri Mar 8, 6:30 pm.

ARCADE LAUNCH PARTY

Celebrate the latest release of the quarterly art and architecture magazine, and get a sneak peek inside the rainwater-collecting, energy-generating organismbuilding that isn’t officially opening until April. Bullitt Center, 1501 Madison St. $20 suggested. Fri Mar 8, 5:30-7:30 pm.

ARTIST TALK: THE ART OF FASHION AND MANUFACTURING

WITH NIN TRUONG

Nin Truong is a local artist and recovered landscape architect who founded Manik Skateboards and designs menswear for Stussy International. Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. henryart. org/events/show/785. Free. Thurs Mar 7, 7 pm.

A CONVERSATION WITH OLIVER HERRING AND SUSAN ROBB

Visiting artist Oliver Herring’s most recent works are his TASK parties, where members of the public create art by following the artist’s instructions. Susan Robb is the Stranger Genius most recently behind the ONN/OF Festival and The Long Walk from Seattle to Snoqualmie. The two will talk as part of the annual Neddy at Cornish awards. Don’t miss this one. Intiman Playhouse 201 Mercer St. cornish.edu/ calendar/event/neddy_at_cornish_annual_lecture/. Free. Wed Mar 6, 7 pm.

DIALA KHASAWNIH AND OLA KHALIDI: ARTIST LECTURE Khalidi founded Makan Art Space in Amman, Jordan, in 2003. The New Foundation Seattle and the University of Washington invite her and Khasawnih to discuss their work and creative community for the Critical Issues in Contemporary Art series closing lecture. Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. henryart.org/events/ show/792. Free. Thurs Mar 7, 7 pm.

FIRST THURSDAY

The first and largest art walk in the city, held in Seattle’s oldest neighborhood. Pioneer Square , 667-0687.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

firstthursdayseattle.com. Free. Thurs Feb 7, 6-8 pm.

GEORGETOWN ART ATTACK

Sustained attacks by Fantagraphics, the Georgetown Trailer Park Mall, Krab Jab Studio, LxWxH Gallery, and dozens of other venues. Georgetown. georgetownartattack.com. Free. Every second Saturday, 6-9 pm.

JOANN VERBURG: ARTIST TALK

Verburg has been making intimate, unsettling photographs since the early 1980s, and was recognized with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art not long ago. This talk is in conjunction with her local show, at G. Gibson Gallery, which runs through March 23. Henry Art Gallery , 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. henryart.org/events/ show/722. Free. Fri Mar 8, 7-8 pm.

SAM REMIX

The quarterly party in the museum makes the Old Masters feel young again… maybe. Seattle Art Museum , 1300 First Ave, 625-8900. seattleartmuseum.org. $25. Fri Mar 8, 8 pm. visualart@thestranger.com

READINGS

Wednesday 3/6

GABRIELLA G UTIÉRREZ Y MUHS Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena Maria Viramontes Critical Reader is an anthology celebrating a beloved academic. Elliott Bay Book Company , 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 6 pm. THE SILENT READING PARTY

The rules are simple: Bring a book, sit down, order a drink, and then don’t talk. This monthly party (hosted by my boss, Christopher Frizzelle) is a fun get-together that always feels like an event. Fireside Room at Sorrento Hotel, 900 Madison Street, 6226400. Free. 7:30 pm.

Saturday 3/9

SEARCH FOR MEANING BOOK FESTIVAL

The annual festival at Seattle University continues this year with Michael Chabon in conversation with Sherman Alexie. Tickets are gone, but there may be overflow tickets available. Other speakers include Lesley Hazleton, Paul Elie, Howard Behar, Naseem Rakha, Holly J. Hughes, and more. Seattle University Piggott Auditorium 900 Broadway, 624-6600. Free. 9 am.

GENEVIÈVE CASTRÉE

Castrée, who is a musician, debuts her new comic book, Susceptible. It’s about a young girl who becomes a punk rock musician. Fantagraphics

Bookstore and Gallery 1201 S Vale St, 658-0110. Free. 6 pm.

Sunday 3/10

MARY JOHNSON

An Unquenchable Thirst is a memoir by Johnson, who was a nun for 20 years until she quit. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 3 pm.

BRUCE AND JU-CHAN FULTON

The Fultons are local translators. Tonight, they’re bringing their translation of a book called River of Fire and Other Stories by a South Koran author named O Chonghui to the library. Seattle Public Library, Montlake Branch, 2401 24th Ave E, 6246600. Free. 3:30 pm.

Monday 3/11

VIKTOR MAYERSCHÖNBERGER AND KENNETH CUKIER

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think is a book that explains what happens now that a staggering amount of information is available everywhere at once. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 634-3400. $5. 7:30 pm.

Tuesday 3/12

BESS LOVEJOY See Suggests, pg 17. Rendezvous 2320 Second Ave, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.

means we recommend it. Tons more listings at

The Accursed is the newest novel from Oates. It’s a historical novel, set at the turn of the century, and it deals with families and curses, which are often the same thing, basically. Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.

MARE NOSTRUM

READING & RELEASE PARTY

Mare Nostrum is a literary magazine. This event is hosted by Sierra Nelson and Johnny Horton and features Richard Kenney, Kevin Craft, and Carol Light. Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. Free. 7 pm.

readings@thestranger.com

THEATER

Opening and Current Runs

5 X TENN (OR SO)

Six rare one-acts by Tennessee Williams published after his death, including Chalky White Substance (about a post-apocalyptic dystopia) and Kingdom of Earth (about a flooded New Orleans). Stone Soup Theater at Downstage, 4029 Stone Way, 800-838-3006. $12.50-$25. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm with select Sunday matinees. Through March 9.

CLIFFHOUSE

Four guests arrive at the Cliffhouse resort to unwind.

But their host is an oddball, and they quickly discover they are not at an actual resort—so where are they? Produced by Macha Monkey Productions, written by Allison Gregory, directed by Meghan Arnette. Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-$20. Fri-Sat at 8 pm. Through March 30.

I WON’T BE IGNORED

Blood Squad improvises horror movies from audience title suggestions. This round is inspired by movies like Fatal Attraction and Single White Female Balagan Theater at Erickson Theater Off Broadway, 1524 Harvard Ave, www.balagantheatre.org. $10. Fri at 11 pm. Through March 8.

PAPER BULLETS

Hollywood sweethearts, tabloids, press agents, and sibling rivalry. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Ghostlight Theatricals at The Ballard Underground, 2220 NW Market St, www. brownpapertickets.com. $12$15. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun March 24 at 2 pm. Through March 24.

PHOTOGRAPH 51

“Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins worked together at King’s College London, just a train ride away from and a few steps behind James Watson and Francis Crick in the race to discover the structure of DNA.

But Franklin was a woman and, according to the play and some historians, the sexism at King’s alienated her. Photograph 51 argues that Franklin’s icy relationship with Wilkins, plus her obsessively slow and methodical working style, are the reason she and Wilkins lost the race.” (Brendan Kiley)

Seattle Repertory Theater 155 Mercer St, Seattle Center, 443-2222. $25-$55. Tues-Sun at 7:30 pm with select weekend matinees. Through March 10.

REWILDING

See review, page 22.

THEATER ANONYMOUS

“Nobody knows the cast, not even the cast.” More than 30 actors will perform Kaufman and Hart’s Once in a Lifetime, a satirical comedy about “talkies” in Hollywood. Produced by 14/48: The World’s Quickest Theater Festival Directed by Tim Moore. Erickson Theater Off Broadway, 1524 Harvard Ave, www.1448fest.com. $30. Sat March 9 at 8 pm.

DANCE

DREAM BRAIN

See preview, page 22.

theater@thestranger.com

CHOW

Shanik Is Not Vij’s

Will This Matter to Your Mouth?

BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

Last spring, Seattle food nerds completely freaked out.

The news: Vij’s in Vancouver, BC—the revered upscale Indian restaurant, home of the mind-melting lamb popsicles

(not actually frozen)—was going to open a restaurant in South Lake Union. One Stranger online commenter summarized the near-hysteria: “OMG! OMG! The best restaurant in the universe is coming to Seattle!” Maybe—just maybe—some initial letdown was inevitable. When Shanik opened at the beginning of December, disappointment was rampant. The room was different, more corporate than Vij’s. The waits were not as long as Vij’s, but still deﬁnitely too long (neither take reservations). The sauces were not as rich as Vij’s. The portions were small—maybe not smaller than Vij’s, but… The prices were as high as Vij’s. And there was no Vij (who, at Vij’s, famously circles the room greeting everyone). Shanik was not as good as Vij’s, and there was gnashing of teeth throughout the land. Shanik’s beginning was about as bumpy as it could get. Not only were there last-minute issues with vital equipment like the fridges, but, disastrously, some of the kitchen staff quit just before the scheduled opening. While Vikram Vij has been the name and the face of the operation, co-owner Meeru Dhalwala has been the guiding force behind the food, and Shanik

Shanik

500 Terry Ave N, 486-6884

Mon–Fri 11:30 am–2 pm, Mon–Sat 5:30–close

is her solo project. She makes a practice of hiring all women who are home cooks, and three members of her new Seattle team realized that their commute from south of Seattle was too arduous. Then a resolutely cheerful-sounding tweet from Dhalwala on December 25 said she was seeking day cooks, line cooks, and a head chef (merry Christmas). There were setbacks. I’ve never eaten at Vij’s. I realize this is an unconscionable personal and professional deﬁcit, but for one reason or another, it’s just never happened. How could I possibly review Shanik? I was glad to give the place a while to sort itself out. When I ﬁnally went recently, it was at the behest of my friend Annie, who is one of those Vij’s superfans. She’s waited for an hour in the freezing Canadian cold for Vij’s to open, so as to not have to wait even longer later. She’d heard the initial reports about Shanik, and she’d been biding her time, and she still had hope.

And so we went to Shanik. The room, Annie conﬁrmed, is not the same as Vij’s. (But then, even Vij’s is not the same as Vij’s; it started out with just 14 seats

The naan at Shanik is not tandoor-cooked, so it lacks the light, puffy joy of the best of its kind, but Vij’s doesn’t use a tandoor either (so there). We liked the chapati better: It had the nutty flavor of legume flour as well as whole wheat, and an almost al dente firmness to its middle, with a good exterior grease factor.

We ate the spicy Indian crepe (or pura) with bacon, onion, and tomatoes ($12); the crepe, with its chickpea ﬂour, was delicate in texture and lacy-browned, yet not greasy; the topping was like an Indian-spiced breakfast hash, the smoky taste a vivid complement to the earthy crepe. With it was a little salad of nearly raw beets, for color and crunch.

We ate the demerara-sugar-and-tamarindmarinated beef tenderloin with blackened cumin curry ($25), which was a big, inch-thick slab of grill-marked meat resting in a toasty, piney-tasting curry—it was a little sweet and a little sour, and assertive with a taste that nudged right up to almost acrid. The meat was tender, though it did have a bit of gnarly connective tissue (which, at these prices, you’d very much hope would be trimmed). The sauce had barley in it, and we asked for extra spoons; they should always give you spoons here.

before it changed Vancouver locations, don’t you know.) Shanik is in the ground ﬂoor of one of the shiny new windowed blocks of South Lake Union, and if the decor has the corporate feeling that this implies, it is also elegant, with a couple shimmery-gold pillars and an understated accent of a paisley-like pattern. It is comfortable, with upholstered banquettes, and when it is full, the noise level is indicative of a good time without making you have to shout.

But then here was a thing that was like Vij’s: They brought us complimentary cups of chai, smooth and thick, tasting of anise and raisins, and when we ﬁnished them quickly (it was a cold night out there), they offered us more. And they brought us each a complimentary pakora—hot and crisp and tender and spicy, two of them freshly made for us, instead of a herd of them cooling on a tray.

There

And we ate the lamb popsicles with splitpea-and-spinach mash and coconut curry ($27). There is a geek-out treasure trove of information about the lamb popsicles to be found online, both concerning the original recipe at Vij’s and the somewhat different treatment at Shanik; eating the Shanik ones, the memory of the others was pushed out of Annie’s mind enough that she was able to just be happy, for they are marvelous. “Popsicle” refers to the long-stemmed, lollipop-style cut, and they are fully spiceencrusted (coriander, sumac, turmeric, and more), and so tender, and so smoky… Their saffron-colored curry was creamy, piquant, glorious; the mash of vegetables almost submerged in the sauce was salty but nuanced, itself surprisingly great.

was near-hysteria:

“OMG! OMG! The

best restaurant in the universe is coming to Seattle!”

Then we ordered more food than god, and it was good. We ate the sautéed onions and tomatoes on layers of paneer ($13). The paneer cheese was ﬁrm, almost bouncy, and thinly sliced; its lack of salt was the right foil for the stewy onions and chunks of tomatoes, which tasted eerily, richly meaty. It all had just a bit of slowly building, mouth-coating spicy heat. We also ate the saag paneer with Punjabi daal and chapati ($24). The spinach of the saag was highly pureed, and it had no cloying creaminess or oiliness; it had almost a citrusy brightness, and it was garlic-rich and made the mouth tingle. It was like food for a very adventurous baby. Annie especially liked the daal, made in a soupy style, with a mix of lentils and kidney beans that were whole instead of blended. It was comforting but with nuanced spice, tasting both good and good for you.

There were a ton of leftovers, the kind that get even better overnight. We went on a Monday, and we didn’t have to wait at all. When I went back on a Thursday (and ate a lot more—the samosas and their trio of chutneys were outstanding, and so was a portobello mushroom green curry), the restaurant was full, but still, no wait. This will change as people realize Shanik is ﬁnding its footing, but the wait will probably never be as bad as at Vij’s (and there’s a lounge for a drink, or there’s always Monday, or weekday lunch). The service is team-style, but generally smooth; when you want that spoon, someone will be there before you know it. Is it too expensive?

The portions are medium to large, with three dishes probably enough for two people—and everything’s made with high-quality local and seasonal ingredients (unlike at your neighborhood Indian place, and just like at Vij’s).

The rice alone—delicate, dainty, cloudlike grains with a basmati scent so restrained, it’s like a whisper—is just fantastic. So, now, is Shanik as good as Vij’s? Or is it just the most reﬁned, well-sourced, and delicious Indian food in Seattle? Which is a better question?

Comment on this review at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

NOW IN SOUTH LAKE UNION A sister to Vij’s, including the world-famous lamb popsicles.

KELLY O

COMING SUMMER 2013!

NOW OPEN

New Places for Stufﬁng Faces

BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT AND KIM FU

• BAR SAJOR • Pioneer Square: Bar Sajor (pronounced SIGH-your) is brought to you by Matt Dillon (Sitka & Spruce and the Corson Building, one of Food & Wine’s 10 best new chefs in 2007, and James Beard Best Chef Northwest 2012). The lovely, high-ceilinged space is a bar in the Spanish or Portuguese sense of being a bar, Dillon says, “a casual place for simple food,” one where you stop by and have a conversation and a drink and a snack, or lunch, or supper, instead of, say, drinking until you can’t see straight at 2 a.m. (Pioneer Square’s already set for that.) It has a wood-fired oven and a wood-fired grill and rotisserie for lots of chicken— no stove and no range. Also: flatbread, simple roasted vegetables, house-made yogurt, a little raw or cured seafood, and “lots of naturally fermented goodness,” like whey-fermented pickles. Also-also, eventually: a to-go window. (323 Occidental Ave S, 682-1117, barsajor.com, $$–$$$)

• MIYABI 45TH • Wallingford: Mutsuko Soma, formerly of Harvest Vine, Chez Shea, and Saito’s, partnered with the wellregarded, Tukwila-based Miyabi Sushi to bring the world Miyabi 45th (in the former Rain Sushi space). Soma moved back to her native Japan to study making traditional buckwheat soba noodles, and

Mutsuko Soma of Miyabi 45th studied making soba noodles in Japan. Also on the menu: deer tataki, duck hearts.

in the process learned that Washington is the largest producer of buckwheat in the US (who knew?). Now she’s making her own soba using local grain at Miyabi 45th, along with assorted izakaya dishes (including deer tataki and a skewer of duck hearts). It all sounds really good. (2208 N 45th St, 632-4545, miyabi45th .com, $$)

• HUMMINGBIRD SALOON • Columbia City: Right near Full Tilt, the Hummingbird Saloon specializes in Cornish pasties (YUM). The name reportedly came from the owner admiringly watching a hummingbird attack a crow. (5101 Rainier Ave S #103, 349-1731, $–$$)

• BAR COTTO • Capitol Hill: Next door to his restaurant Anchovies & Olives, Ethan Stowell’s smallish, windowed Bar Cotto serves salumi (including culatello, porchetta, and three kinds of prosciutto), small plates, bruschetta, and pizzas with various fancy toppings—and, of course, cocktails (some barrel-aged). If it seems like it might add up quickly, there’s a great happy hour every day from 4 to 6 p.m. The name, they say, “basically just means ‘cooked’ in Italian.” (1546 15th Ave, 838-2878, ethanstowellrestaurants .com/barcotto, $$)

• SILVER TRAY • Wallingford: Superfriendly husband-and-wife team Apple and Lucky Buamanee, who emigrated from Thailand in 2001, bought Lotus Thai when the previous owners retired

2012 Stranger Genius Grady West

recently. After more than 10 years working in restaurants (including at West Seattle’s Buddha Ruksa), Silver Tray ﬁnally fulﬁlls their dream of “spreading Thai food to American people” on their own. (2101 N 45th St, 632-2300, $$)

• BARRIGA LLENA • Capitol Hill: Barriga Llena (which, happily, means “full belly”) makes tortas that people love—see Paul Constant’s review at thestranger.com/ chow. (219 Broadway E, 782-1220, labarrigallena.com, $)

• BILLY FRANK THE THIRD’S BOWL O’ RED • on the road: This awesomely named food truck serves Texas-style “Bunkerhouse” (that’s under the bunkhouse, maybe?) chili, made with beef chuck, fresh Anaheim chilies, and Mexican beer, plus cornbread, smoked pork shoulder, and veggie shish kebabs. Currently it’s roosting late-nights across from the Wildrose. (1021 E Pike St, 423-782-7613, facebook.com/BowloRed, $)

• WONDER COFFEE AND SPORTS BAR • Central District: At night, Wonder is a sports bar with both American and Ethiopian food, plus 50 beers on tap. In the daytime, the bar transforms into its mild-mannered alter ego: a coffee shop with lunch and free Wi-Fi. (1800 S Jackson St, 538-0044, wondersportsbar.com, $–$$)

• THE HOUSE SPORTS PUB • Greenwood: On the former site of Pillager’s Pub, the House Sports Pub is a pub that shows sports. It is not in a house. (8551 Greenwood Ave N, Suite 5, 403-1464, thehousesportspub.com, $)

• SLATE COFFEE ROASTERS • on the road: The Ballard cafe is still under construction, but the Airstream is open in the Piecora’s parking lot. (slatecoffee.com, $)

• TAILGATERS SPORTS BAR • Ballard: Tailgaters occupies the former location of Bad Albert’s, Ballard’s beloved dive bar (RIP, both the bar and its namesake cat). Presumably you’re welcome to sit in the parking lot and smash beer cans on your head. (5100 Ballard Ave NW, 789-2000, $)

• RELISH BURGER BISTRO • Downtown: It’s a burger bar in the Westin, where Coldwater Bar and Grill used to be. (1900 Fifth Ave, 256-7600, $$)

MOVED/RENAMED/REOPENED: MAI

THAIKU in Phinney Ridge: Finally relocated from Ballard, bringing its Fu Kun Wu bar with it • PORCHLIGHT COFFEE on Capitol Hill: Moved around the corner, next to Old School Frozen Custard • CAFE 56 on the waterfront: Part of Elliott’s Oyster House, renamed from Elliott’s Seafood Cafe • VON’S downtown: Moved eight blocks and became Von’s 1000 Spirits Gusto Bistro

NEW LOCATIONS OF EXISTING PLACES: EL CAMION ADENTRO in Ballard: It’s “the truck inside” at the former site of Zesto’s • THE LODGE SPORTS GRILLE in Pioneer Square: A Seattle edition of a Kirkland sports bar • D’AMBROSIO

GELATERIA ARTIGIANALE in Bellevue Square: Good gelato • BARKING FROG MOBILE KITCHEN in Woodinville: A truck from the very pricey Willows Lodge restaurant • CHIPOTLE on Broadway: Where Guaymas used to be before it moved one block north

MUSIC

In Through the Out Door

Led Zeppelin Drummer John Bonham Comes Clean

BY TRENT MOORMAN

John Bonham, of Redditch, Worcestershire, England, is the son of a carpenter and is undoubtedly one of the greatest drummers the earth has ever been pummeled by. Bonham grew up

swinging hammers and laying bricks, instilling heaviness into his hands and limbs. His friend Robert Plant recruited him to play in the band Led Zeppelin, and with them, his ancient futuristic meter was set into stone. Bonham’s playing is multidimensional—innovative with stamina and feel. His inhumanly hefty and fast right foot pounds out a two-ton stomp. You hear it and know it’s Bonzo Bonham. Live, his solos go on for 25 minutes, incorporating an effected orchestral timpani drum that hooks cables into hovering alien crafts outside the venue and brings them in for landing.

Led Zeppelin are rehearsing at guitarist Jimmy Page’s mansion in Windsor. I’m excited to hear new songs, like “Poor Tom,” off their forthcoming album Coda. John Bonham spoke. It took seven separate managers to connect the call. Bonham said he was outside, in a ﬁeld, and that the sun was out. The reception was surprisingly clear.

What have you been up to, John?

I’ve been playing lots. Feeling good. I had a rough time there for a bit, but everything’s under control now. This place where I’m staying is so far out here, it’s hard to get drum parts. The roads to get here are nuts. I discovered fro-yo a couple months ago, and it’s blowing my mind. The Reese’s/graham cracker combination is tops.

Who are your favorite drummers? Could you talk about how you get your sound?

introducing it into Jackie’s private parts. It was the snapper’s nose that was used on Jackie. I think someone ﬁlmed the whole thing. The girl loved it. She said she was up for anything. It wasn’t anything malicious or harmful.

Do you regret it?

Looking back, I’d say it wasn’t the wisest use of our time. We should have just kept ﬁshing. But the groupies were persistent. Jackie came in and said that she wanted sex, that she loved being tied up. She sort of instigated it.

“The prostate is, essentially, the male equivalent of a woman’s G-spot.”

Oh, so it’s okay. You were married—what did your wife think?

It wasn’t something we really talked about. It wasn’t like I came home from tour and said, “Honey, you should have seen her face.” [Laughs] You’re right, it was stupid. We’d be gone for so long. Long stretches out on the road. Drumming was the only thing I was ever any good at. [Pauses] I’ve never told anyone this before, but after everyone else left the room, Jackie said I might like the ﬁsh. I was so drunk, and no one was around. I thought, why not. So I took my pants off, got on the bed, and she put it in my bum. She put the snapper in my arse.

Whoa. How was it?

I loved it. I was surprised—none of us guys did that sort of thing. We were tough. I was supposed to be this great, burly drummer, but I learned something that day. Most men don’t know about their own G-spot. The prostate is, essentially, the male equivalent of a woman’s G-spot. If you’re open to it, it can lead to the best orgasms you could ever hope for.

Max Roach, Gene Krupa, and Buddy Rich. I think you gotta spend time with your drums. Learn to tune them. I use a 14-by-6.5inch Ludwig Chrome Supraphonic 402 snare. I keep the bottom heads tight. My kick drum is 26 by 14 inches, and I don’t like a hole in the front head. The large amount of air needed to move through the shell has to travel very quickly to properly excite the resonant head. Did you really record “When the Levee Breaks” in a cave?

No [laughs]. We were using the Rolling Stones’ mobile recording studio at Headley Grange in Hampshire. At one time, the grange was a three-story Victorian workhouse with a huge open hall and a staircase going up—that’s where we got the drums for “Levee Breaks.” We had the drums in the hall close-mic’d, but also had mics three stories up getting that echo sound.

What happened with the ﬁsh at the Edgewater here in Seattle? The famous mud shark incident. Rumor has it there was a groupie and a sexual act that involved a ﬁsh. What really happened, John?

We liked the Edgewater, you could ﬁsh right from the room—we’d caught about two dozen ﬁsh. There was a 17-year-old redhead named Jackie who wouldn’t leave us alone. She said she really liked being tied up. As gentlemen, we obliged, and ordered a rope from room service. Our road manager entertained us by taking a red snapper and

Got it. I’ll spread the word. So you guys are rehearsing, and I heard you drank 40 shots of alcohol. I could see ﬁve or six. But Jesus, your liver must look like a volcanic rock.

Well, the 40 shots were over the span of 12 hours. I’m a tank, what can I say, mate. Once I get going, it’s hard to stop. You’d think after 10 hours of drinking, someone would say, “Hey, Bonzo, that’s enough.”

I’m glad you were able to face your problem, though, and get some help. I think this next tour is going to be your best. The Paramount is the perfect venue to see y’all in. I’ve waited to see you my whole life. Will you be staying at the Edgewater again?

Wait, I didn’t face anything—I died. I’m dead. I passed out and choked on my own vomit on September 25, 1980.

What? But we’re speaking. I called. I was connected seven times by your seven managers.

Yeah. I have the iPhone 50. It lets you speak to the dead. I fucking hate the touch screen on it, though.

You can’t be dead. If the Stones can still do it, you can still do it. You guys have to play, my friend Joel bought mushrooms!

Sorry, laddie, I’m dead as a doorknob. The 40 shots did me in. I would if I could, believe me, but they haven’t ﬁgured out the technology for drumming from this dimension…

Read the rest of this interview at THESTRANGER.COM/MUSIC

WHAT'S CRAPPENING?

• Ever-proliﬁc Seattle synthesizer maestro Panabrite (Norm Chambers) has a cassette album coming out on Pittsburgh space-disco group Zombi’s VCO Recordings label in June. This is a huge deal in the world of cosmicsynth music; you just don’t realize it yet.

• It is with heavy hearts and tear-soaked soul patches that we announce the Mark McGrath & Friends Cruise has been canceled. The October-scheduled Sugar Ray-cation was to include such ’90s dreams as the Gin Blossoms, the Spin Doctors, and the Verve Pipe, and is rumored to have been canceled due to Carnival’s recent “poop cruise” ﬁasco (which we’re not getting into here, because Crappening has more selfrespect than that, THANK YOU). At least we have the New Kids on the Block/Boyz II Men/98 Degrees tour to look forward to…

• The Tractor and Sunset Taverns in Ballard have added a new booker! Nathan Chambers recently left his post as the Rendezvous talent buyer to make sure that Sunset shows have plenty of diverse bills with awesome local support. Other hot Sunset updates will include fresh lighting, a new PA system, and the “interesting” painting on the stage wall being asked to retire.

• On Saturday night, EMP’s annual battle-ofthe-underage-bands concluded by crowning Renton’s own Dave B as the 2013 Sound Off! champion. A wild-card pick, his hiphop stylings won the judges’ affections over the three other semiﬁnalists: electroglam the Fame Riot (Tacoma), post-rock SHEBEAR (Puyallup), and introspective indie As It Starts (Bothell).

• Patti Smith ruled the Neptune last Wednesday. The set list was a fan’s dream, including nearly every totemic Patti Smith song you could hope for (though there were no full reinterpretations, the songs ventured way beyond the recordings). Smith was every bit the hilarious mouthy crank you’d hope, rallying against tech gadgets (“We don’t need that shit!”) and shouting out to P-U-S-S-Y R-I-O-T (“They’re important, don’t forget about them”) in between songs. Amen, sister!

• Vancouver’s seething punks Nü Sensae tore into Chop Suey on Sunday, leaving eardrums ringing for days. Olympia’s noise-pop outﬁt Broken Water also played (their bass player for the evening was recent Arizona transplant Stephen Steinbrink of French Quarter!), with excellent art-racket-makers Haunted Horses

• Saturday night at the Comet, Blues Control, Dull Knife, and Brain Fruit put on one of the most profound displays of psychedelic music heard on a stage this year. Brain Fruit offered a preview of their forthcoming album, which they recorded with renowned studio savant Randall Dunn at Avast! Recording Co. Also, Brain Fruit will be repping Seattle strongly with fellow locals Master Musicians of Bukkake and Midday Veil at LA Psych Fest on April 7.

JOHN BONHAM “We should have just kept ﬁshing.”

EMILY NOKES

JOSH BIS

Dave B

Trust the Naturebot Pleasure Boat Records Puts Weird Things in Your Ears

BY DAVE SEGAL

Ian Scot Price arrives at our interview in his Thermaline hoodie. The 31-year-old musician/label boss works for that Auburn food-manufacturing-equipment company, which makes tube heat exchangers and pasteurizers. (I know, right?) Price’s boss hired him to experiment with ways of helping the ﬁrm. “We built a tiny laboratory, and now I’m programming engineering applications and building electronics to test for leaks in these machines,” Price says in his characteristically modest tone.

Price isn’t one to dwell on the negative, though, and PBR’s proﬁle began to rise ever so perceptibly in 2009 when he started throwing the Bonkers! monthly events

(ﬁrst at Club Sugar, then at Re-bar), which served as showcases for his roster and international luminaries like Cylob and Jega.

Hanssen w/J.Alvarez, Nordic Soul Fri March 8, Q Nightclub, 9 pm, $7 adv/$10 DOS, 21+

“In the beginning, there was a push to bridge the visual art and the dance world with the electronic-music world,” Price says.

This is the sort of mind Price possesses— genius problem-solving skills for tasks that most people can’t even begin to fathom. Before this, he worked four years with the Census Bureau, and he’s spent the last two years attending UW grad school for geography—all of which makes Price unique in Seattle’s electronic-music community. And all of which wouldn’t mean squat if he didn’t also own some of the most highly reﬁned ears for unconventional electronic music in the region.

That distinctiveness bleeds into his music (he records absurdly cheerful, melodically sophisticated, and rhythmically complex dance music as the Naturebot) and his label, Pleasure Boat Records. Unjustly overlooked by most in the local scene, PBR is now in its ﬁfth year of championing underdogs whose varied and quirky output is worth stretching your brain around.

Guided by the twin elements of surprise and confusion, PBR has ranged far and deep over the electronic soundscape in its 25 releases: PotatoFinger’s freewheeling jungle refurbishments; Relcad’s deep-space minimal techno; Crown Hill Repeater’s abstract rhythm and ooze; the Algebra of Need’s super-brainy, microtonal meditations; and much more. PBR has added two new artists to the roster this year: recent Laptop Battle champ Miniature Airlines (Dylan Abbott) and tech-house savant Hanssen (also of Jacob London). Plus, a new project featuring the Naturebot, Crown Hill Repeater, and Hanssen promises to be, in Price’s words, “raved out and slightly uncomfortable.” After years of going the CD-R route, PBR now is a digital label; you can listen to all of the label’s releases at pleasureboatrecords. bandcamp.com.

Many of PBR’s artists rank highly in Seattle’s thriving electronic-music gene pool, yet they’ve gone largely unheralded outside of the sub-underground that’s PBR’s domain. Given the high level of talent here, it’s mystifying why Decibel Festival has failed to book anyone from its stable.

“There have been three Pleasure Boat showcases booked for Decibel, three separate years,” Price says. “Each time we were told it was happening, but then nothing happened. We weren’t in the brochures and we couldn’t get in contact with whoever makes decisions. Other times, it was canceled.” At press time, Decibel had not responded to an e-mail about this matter.

“You have to try not to take things personally in adult life. You lose friends and people are weird and you’re weird—you can’t communicate with everyone and that’s that.”

“The ﬁrst time I saw Relcad I thought, ‘Holy shit! He’s going to be huge!’ Then we had him play two months later, and 10 people [showed up]—and half of them were his friends who’d just come from a wedding and they were all in formal wear. I was blown away by the music, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of support or interest for it.”

Nonetheless, Price has persevered, even as the pressures of adult life and the trend of vanishing paying music consumers have conspired to make running a tiny indie label a quixotic endeavor.

PBR’s mission statement has varied over the years. “The ﬁrst idea was to support unique local music,” Price says. “Over time, it developed into wanting to support people who made electronic music as an introverted form of outward expression that was divorced from social trends in music. Later on, it became trying to support electronic music as a form of folk music.”

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Pleasure Boat, though. “Trying to push electronic music, it feels like we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the feet.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine Price giving up his aesthetically advanced and altruistic project. “I would love to become the sort of label where people go to us no matter what and trust our judgment in bringing them new music,” Price says. “One of my goals in the beginning was to treat electronic music as advanced a form of communication as it could be. I want to support people who are doing things on their own.”

MOLLY BAUER

IAN SCOT PRICE Hears underdogs.

Autechre Exai

Shout Out Louds Optica

Josh Ritter The Beast In It’s Tracks

NEVER HEARD OF ’EM

BY ANNA MINARD

Anna Minard claims to “know nothing about music.” For this column, we force her to listen to random records by artists considered to be important by music nerds.

Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Warp)

It turns out I can’t write about Aphex Twin without writing about Dave Segal. It just couldn’t be done. So here are some things about Mr. Segal, our staff music writer:

1. He is a committed vegan and yet somehow never annoying about it.

2. At 50 years young, he is also by many miles the healthiest of our ofﬁce dwellers, likely only one-third of the way through his life span.

3. He likes music that seems like it was made by aliens A LOT.

4. He seems to be a fan of mind alteration. He’s the one who assigned me Aphex Twin, and after I listened to it a little half-assedly, rushed, in some in-between spaces —in the car, while doing chores— I found that insufﬁcient. So I decided

MY PHILOSOPHY

NACHO PICASSO, SIR MICHAEL ROCKS, VINCE STAPLES, WAX

Nacho Picasso is headlining an all-ages show at Neumos on Friday, March 8, and he’s bringing the whole Moor Gang which includes Jarv Dee, Gift Uh Gab, Thaddeus David, Steezie Nasa, Cam the Mac, Chief, J Bird (and I’m sure I’m forgetting hella others). Very simpatico to their movement are Key Nyata and Keyboard Kid, both also performing. I know that Nacho is not for everybody, just like Macklemore ain’t, THEESatisfaction ain’t, and so forth— and peace to everybody who feels the need to tell me as much at length. But for those who do appreciate the chamber he’s carved out with Blue Sky Black Death, Raised by Wolves, and Eric G, this will be a very sanctified church function. How did Sir Michael Rocks, FKA one of the Cool Kids (playing Neumos), and LA’s Vince Staples (playing Vera Project) end up in town on the same night (Sunday, March 10) and not be on the same bill? You got a lot of kids eating their snapbacks out of frustration right now, creasing the toe boxes of their 90s all up and everything. I’m just saying, there are a lot of anguished emoticons flying through the ether right now, a lot of kids drawing fat tears on their Snapchat selfies, and it could’ve been pre-

to fully Segal-out. I’m sure he would’ve recommended I ﬁnd a nice dark room with an excellent sound system, drop some acid, and then listen to this double album while mainlining quinoa . But I got as close as I could, out of respect. I went home, cooked some brussels sprouts and spinach (green vegetables, man!) for dinner, poured myself a great big glass or three of wine, and put Aphex Twin on some real speakers.

Here is what came out, in no particular order:

1. Elﬁn wedding music.

2. A bell choir playing underwater.

3. The sound of an elbow laid across the high notes of a keyboard set on “organ.”

4. A ghost whale drum circle.

Segal told me the songs were supposed to be textures. Audio textures! Very Segal. The track names are pictures, like ’s name. The vegetables didn’t help me understand anything any better, though. I don’t know if that’s really related.

My roommate came home while I was munching sprouts and listening to Aphex Twin in a wine-altered state, and she had heard all about him. She asked if I had seen any of his music videos. I had not. So then I did—you know, THE ONE. I regret this decision.

I’m glad I listened to the album I did, because I am down with the alien beautyparlor music of Selected Ambient Works waaaay more than the weird child-faced screaming demons of the other stuff I heard. This one is more Brian Eno-y, and let’s all take a second to high-ﬁve me for the reference, huh?!

I give this a “Segal Segal Segal Segal Segal Segal” out of 10. [Yo, you left out a Segal. —Segal]

vented. If you see a gaggle of high schoolers equidistant from Seattle Center and Capitol Hill, straight looking like Tumblr, not sure which way to go, just know that y’all shoulda stopped, collaborated, and listened… to your heart.

Tuesday, March 12, LA-based MC Wax is playing a sold-out show at the Crocodile. (Fellow monosyllabic rappers MC Type and Portland’s Tope open up.) Wax’s publicist hit me up; he asked me to picture Eminem meets Beastie Boys meets Sublime— I guess he really wanted me to know that the guy is white—but it’s only really the last one that ﬁts, as he does kind of try to rap and sing like Brad Nowell. He sure likes those spicy Latina girls—like on the mariachi-tinged “Rosana”—and hates his ex, an “Asian slut” who (on “She Used to Be Mine”) he imagines fucking an entire mariachi band (this guy has a real fetish for charro suits). Basically, the bros who used to rap in college-town funk/rap bands and stan for Atmosphere are coming for theirs—meanwhile, the blues people are just making a run for The Trap. This is the part where “we used to switch it up,” like the big homie said once, so where are we with all that?

The bro-rap wave really is upon us, and with the popular support ($$$) it enjoys, there will be no stopping it. Once rap is fully Bieberized, what’s BET going to play? (A: Mac Miller videos—and you’re gonna fucking love it.) It is what it is, and good for those good folks who do beneﬁt from it. It just ain’t for me, and not just because I graduated high school the same year Pac died. (And for what?) TLDR: I can’t shake the feeling that the voice of the have-nots has ofﬁcially been had. Have a nice day.

The Can Can is a unique phenomenon in Seattle, and maybe in the country - Brendan Kiley, The Stranger

Jill Cohn will be releasing her first studio effort in nearly 5 years. “Beautiful I Love You” is an ambient collection of song that takes a whimsically bittersweet look inside long distance loves, relocation, and a traveling girls’ solo adventures. This show will feature Seattle Consummate Bassist, Brady Millard-Kish, and Bay Area Guitarist, Dave Sampson who both recorded the “Beautiful I Love You” CD. Brady and Dave’s sonic stylings create an engaging signature sound-backdrop for Cohn’s heart-felt songs.

APHEX TWIN

HIPHOP YA DON'T STOP BY LARRY MIZELL JR.

Nacho Picasso

kitchen, cocktails & cabaret

Friday, March 8th - Sunday, March 10th

KRISTIN KEY

Kristin Key started her comedy career at the tender age of 19 in the small west Texas town of Amarillo. As soon as her feet hit the stage, she took off running and never looked back. Small shows in the Texas panhandle turned into 35 states worth of comedy over the next 5 years as she climbed the comedy ladder one rung at a time. Audiences couldn’t help but love the rapid-ﬁre style of comedy coming from the “Preacher’s Kid”, and though female comics struggled to ﬁnd work she was booked not for being a woman, but for simply being funny.

UP&COMING

Lose your instincts for sonorous tone clusters every night this week!

For the full music calendar, see page 39 or visit thestranger.com/music

For ticket on-sale announcements, follow twitter.com/seashows

Wednesday 3/6

Morrissey (Moore) See Stranger Suggests, page 17.

Daniel Bachman (Wall of Sound) See Underage, page 44.

Don’t Talk to the Cops!, Everybody Weekend, Punishment (Heartland) See Underage, page 44.

Thursday 3/7

Alicia Keys, Miguel (WaMu Theater) Alicia Keys is beautiful, talented, and, to my ears, boring as hell. But opener Miguel is beautiful, talented, and a veritable one-man thrill ride. Where Frank Ocean comes off cold and brainy, Miguel is pure heat. His voice can easily go anywhere it wants, so the man saves his energy for sex, which he celebrates with every cell in his being (especially those in his brain). The instructional “Use Me” will leave a wet spot under any listener with a pulse, while “Do You (Like Drugs)” seems like a question until the chorus, when Miguel drops “I’m gonna…” in front of the title. Swoon. DAVID SCHMADER

Benoît Pioulard, Tiny Vipers, Ghosts I’ve Met (Columbia City Theater) Benoît Pioulard and Tiny Vipers rank as two of the city’s preeminent makers of quiet, highest uncommon denominator music. The former (who also plays in Orcas with Rafael Anton Irisarri) sings like a Paciﬁc Northwest David

Sylvian—all rich, introspective, and hushed crooning—over spare yet baroque pastoral pop. His new album on Kranky, Hymnal, was inspired by religious iconography and European cathedrals, and it sounds like Pioulard’s most vibrant work yet. Seattle mainstay Tiny Vipers (Jesy Fortino) strums stark, timeless folk songs that chill the blood with pitiless loner incisiveness. Her newest song on the web, “Another Day’s Sun,” is perhaps her most stirring yet. DAVE SEGAL

Distortions: Fungal Abyss, Explorateur, Veins

(Electric Tea Garden) Disclosure: I host the roaming psychedelic-music night Distortions with DJ Explorateur. But even if I had no connection to this show, I’d recommend you go, as Seattle mystics Fungal Abyss rarely play out: They’re often too busy handling the heavy responsibility of creating powerful, highbrow metal as Lesbian. Under the apt Fungal Abyss name, these disciplined improvisers forge serpentine jams that swing open the doors of perception, revealing Boschian/Dalíesque vistas. Check out “Arc of the Covenant” off their Bardo Abgrund Temple album for optimal proof. DAVE SEGAL

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside

(Neumos) These are some fantastic female voices coming at you here, with these two “Lead Singer’s Name and the Weird Phrases That Aren’t Plural Nouns Like Usual” bands. Thao Nguyen, who has made music with Mirah and Andrew Bird and these Get Down Stay Down people, is pretty fuckin’ rad. I don’t want to go thesaurus no adjectives for y’all—you’ve already heard of her, she’s been singing since she was like 12. More importantly: On the newest TATGDSD album, We the Common, they

have a duet with Joanna Newsom, and it is supersweet and fast-paced and snappy, and I dig it so hard. Seek it out on those interwebs. Sallie Ford’s voice is also great, scrappier and smokier, earthier and less ethereally pretty. I am forgiving her band for the suspenders and bow tie, but JUST THIS ONCE, GUYS. This is a good show if you want noisy loveliness, because that is what you’re going to get.

ANNA MINARD

Tafelmusik’s House of Dreams (Meany Hall) Euromania! This is music, words, and images together: a concert by Toronto’s period orchestra Tafelmusik, narrated by an actor and accompanied by video projections. The projections are from actual private rooms across Europe where these pieces of music were originally heard in the 17th and 18th centuries, and where the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and Marais would have been presided over by paintings by Vermeer, Canaletto, Watteau, and the like. Hear the music, feel the environments, gaze at the paintings. JEN GRAVES

Friday 3/8

Flash: J. Alvarez, Hanssen, Nordic Soul (Q) See Data Breaker, page 43.

Redmond’s Got Talent (Old Fire House) Redmond has got more than just computers and a Claim Jumper restaurant—it’s got talented kids and the area’s longest-running all-ages space for them to be talented in! The Old Fire House Teen Center is hosting a competition in which tweens ’n’ teens (ages 11 to 18) will sing, dance, magic trick, bucket drum, breakdance, monologue, beat box, and baton twirl their way to more than $400 in prizes and the chance to perform at Derby Days this summer. A panel of three celebrity judges (!?) will be rating each act on “originality, poise, creativity, overall impression, and talent.” BTW, one of the ﬁrst YouTube videos that pops up if you internet search this event on the internet is a 2009 youth rendition of “Enter Sandman.” EMILY NOKES

Magma Fest: La Luz, Dude York, Detective Agency, Weird Bug

(Black Lodge) You’ll come for La Luz and Dude York (I love you, Dude York!), but be sure to get to tonight’s show in time for Weird Bug, too. The Seattle duo of Lilly Morlock and David Plell is one part unassuming sweet pop, one part experimental bedroom recordings, and one part (the best part) bursts of vocal spasms. On their Stuck in Beads EP, they sing about David Bowie, they cover ELO, and they’re the kind of band you want to invite to your house to bake a cake and play music and have a dance party with. But don’t do that, because it’s creepy. So just see them at the Black Lodge tonight instead. MEGAN SELING

Helms Alee, Sandrider, Lowmen Markos

(Columbia City Theater) If you’re going to open a show for Helms Alee and Sandrider, you had better be ready to fucking BRING IT. It being the storm, the noise, the ear-blasting slaughter capable of drowning 1,000 men with one riff. And Lowmen Markos do! But without being so obvious about it. The instrumental foursome creeps up on you slowly, with songs that stretch out for seven or nine minutes, and stalk you like the prey that you are. Check out their fairly new EP Flames at lowmenmarkos. bandcamp.com. You’ll really dig it if you’re into bands like Russian Circles or Pelican, or wandering through dark woods alone, during a full moon, on an autumn night. MEGAN SELING

Black Weirdo, the Party: Riz Rollins, THEESatisfaction, Chocolate Chuck, StasTHEEBoss, SassyBlack (Lo-Fi) Seattle’s THEESatisfaction have a new section on their website, updated weekly, called “Black Weirdo of the Week.” Here, the ladies of THEESat interview other musicians, plus artists, jewelry- and ﬁlmmakers—asking each, “What makes you a black weirdo?” Musician OCnotes starts his response by saying, “I’m black and there’s no one like me. I pull off crazy shit.” Crazy shit is what the dance ﬂoor should look like at this party at Lo-Fi—a night of DJs and dance music, rather than any set by a full band. Keep Seattle weird (and dancing), Stas and Cat! KELLY O

Nacho Picasso, Jarv Dee, Moor Gang, Key Nyata + Keyboard Kid

(Neumos) First name junk food, last name asshole/ genius artist—that pretty much sums up Seattle’s laid-back antagonist, Nacho Picasso. For the record, I like junk food, and there’s certainly something guilty pleasure–ish about Nacho’s unhurried, drippy hiphop ride through a stony haunted house. I could stand to hear the word “bitch” less often, or never (tall order, I know), but his depravity is hardly threatening when it’s delivered in a lax bratitone amid bongloads of weird wordplay—the uneasy enjoyment of eating frozen pot brownies iced with green cough syrup and cobwebs. EMILY NOKES See also My Philosophy, page 33.

Hillstomp, Hobosexual, Country Lips (Tractor) Members of ramshackle country-music horde Country Lips can often be found roaming the streets and bars of Roosevelt and the University District. Stickers featuring the band’s name and farm animals with human-ish bodies smoking and drinking are commonplace in the area. Word on the street is that many in this gaggle—agreeable drinkers themselves—live in the same house, possibly the one pictured on the cover of their longplayer Touched by the Country Lips. Thinking man’s hard rockers Hobosexual were last seen injecting considerable brawn into some Smashing Pumpkins material while opening for Seattle Rock Orchestra’s night dedicated to Billy Corgan et al. Tonight, proceed with abandon and a BAC. GRANT BRISSEY

Saturday 3/9

Magma Fest: Nudes, Walter & Perry, Black Magic Noize, Dil Withers, Korvus Blackbird, Carrion Spring, PSupremo (Hollow Earth Radio) See Underage, page 44.

Emancipator, Little People, Odesza (Neumos) See Data Breaker, page 43.

Holy Balm, the Numbs, Punishment (Cairo) Coming all the way from Sydney, Australia,

Holy Balm play springy disco-house with nonchalantdiva vocals, embellished by a panoply of trashily warped textures (think ancient, cheaply made video games sputtering to noisy deaths) over steadfast 4/4 beats. They resemble the Miracles Club, if that Portland act cared less about glamour and more about strange tones. Speaking of which, the Numbs (Seattle producer Jeff Johnson) has gathered countless bizarre sounds in his various boxes, whose buttons he pushes to make them move in unlikely patterns. It’s bracingly post-everything and will make you feel like Earth’s axis has shifted. DAVE SEGAL

Carver Audain, Rafael Anton Irisarri (Chapel Performance Space) There’s not a lot of Carver Audain music on the web at the moment, but what can be discerned from a couple of YouTube clips is that he’s a rigorous minimalist-drone composer whose instincts for glorious, sonorous tone clusters are unimpeachable. Seattle producer/multi-instrumentalist Rafael Anton Irisarri (the Sight Below, Orcas) knows a thing or ﬁve about minimalism, drones, and sonorous tones himself. Under his own name, he wrings exquisitely poignant melodies that come to life like aural Monet paintings. He’s a master of intimate grandeur. Both artists’ music should sound amazing in the Chapel, Seattle’s premier space for the sacred act of appreciating rigorous drones. DAVE SEGAL

Seattle Rock Lottery

(Crocodile) The premise: 25 mega-talented musicians meet at 10 a.m., randomly get split up into bands via a lottery, and then the new groups get 12 hours to come up with a band name and write three to ﬁve songs that they’ll perform in front of a packed house at the Crocodile that same night. The list of participants is pretty insane: Derek Fudesco of the Murder City Devils and the Cave Singers, Chris Brokaw of Codeine and the New Year, Bill Rieﬂin (who’s worked with everyone from R.E.M. to Ministry), Lesli Wood of the Redwood Plan, Irene Barber of Eighteen Individual Eyes… and so many more. Find out what happens when musicians stop being nice and start getting… oh, wait, no. That’s a different show. But this’ll be awesome! MEGAN SELING

Sunday 3/10

Sir Michael Rocks (Neumos) See My Philosophy, page 33.

Trust, ERAAS, Nightmare Fortress, Dr. Troy (Barboza) See Data Breaker, page 43.

Vince Staples (Vera) Long Beach, California’s Vince Staples excels at gritty, nihilistic dopeboy raps, which he delivers in a barely interested deadpan that becomes almost disturbing considering the songs’ sinister content. Staples talks about lots of guns and drugs—as he puts it, “If you want some positivity, go listen to some Common”—and gives very few fucks. Staples’s lyrics often seem bleak, unsettling, or depressing, but when combined with the hazy, futuristic production evident on his album Shyne Coldchain Vol. 1 (which features contributions from Seattle’s Key Nyata and Snubnose Frankenstein, son of Jurassic 5 member Akil) and recent Winter in Prague collaboration with Long Beach producer Michael Uzowuru, it’s a distinct product of both Staples’s environment and the current state of “internet rap” (which is almost the same as “normal rap” by now). MIKE RAMOS See also My Philosophy, page 33.

Monday 3/11

Maroon 5, Neon Trees, Owl City (KeyArena) In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg writes, “Consider ‘Here Without You,’ by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category—Bath Rock—to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they came on the radio, almost no one changed the station.” He said this while discussing the initial rejection of OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” by radio audiences. It seems an overwhelming number of listeners turned the dial when stations played the song, despite the fact that hit-prediction algorithms had indicated it would be a runaway success. Having sunk a lot of money into promoting the song, the record industry enacted a radio strategy to spoon-feed “Hey Ya!” to the public. By sandwiching the song between bath-rock staples by bands like tonight’s headliners and similarly unchallenging compositions, radio DJs successfully embedded it into listeners’ subconscious, after which it went on to win a Grammy and top charts worldwide in 2003 and 2004. I made it exactly 29 seconds into a Neon Trees song, and we’ve already been down the Owl City road in this publication, so let’s just never go there again. GRANT BRISSEY

Tuesday 3/12

Wax

(Crocodile) See My Philosophy, page 33.

Leo Kottke

(Jazz Alley) Leo Kottke is a phenomenally fluent acoustic guitarist, a more antic John Fahey, you could say, with the bonus of being a hilarious raconteur between songs. Now 67, Kottke can play in folk, jazz, rock, and blues idioms with flamboyant virtuosity. His 1969 LP 6- and 12-String Guitar remains one of the most impressive displays of mercurial playing of those instruments in the history of recordings. Not sure if he’s still as fleet of finger these days, but his large, great catalog and eccentric sense of humor should make you err on the side of attending. DAVE SEGAL

3.7 Thursday (Funk/Jazz/Dance/Pop)

Nectar Presents: DIEGO’S UMBRELLA SKERIK’S BANDALABRA

Richie Aldente

$7 adv / $10 dos, 8pm, 21+

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

$8 / 8pm doors / 21+

3.9 Saturday (Reggae)

Nectar Presents CLINTON FEARON & The Boogie Brown Band

Sarah Christine CD Release show

Selecta Raiford

$12 adv $15 dos / 8pm / 21+

3.12 Tuesday

Nectar presents: THE JESUS REHAB

The Saturday Giant Black Tommy Device Grips

$5 adv / 8pm / 21+

3.13 Wednesday (Funk/Blues/Surf)

Nectar Presents: TODD CLOUSER’S A LOVE ELECTRIC

Scott Pemberton Trio

The Pornadoes

$6 adv / $8 dos / 8pm / 21+

EMOTIONAL HARDCORE

DRUNK OF THE WEEK …BELOW THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA …41

DATA BREAKER …42 UNDERAGE…44

Band, Clarence Acox

OHANA Live Island Music

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

RENDEZVOUS Monarchies, Night Nurse, Horsegrinder

SEAMONSTER Jacques Willis

SERAFINA Passarim, 8 pm

free CHAPEL PERFORMANCE

SPACE Noriega/Burns COMET Ephrata, Snowdrift, Circuit Vine, guests, $6 CONOR BYRNE Broomdust Blues Jam, free COPPER GATE Country Dave and Jesse, 8 pm, $5 a EL CORAZON Axe Murder Boyz, Mindshot, Dirty D, ConCrete, Enasnimi, DezLooca, guests, 7:30 pm, $12/$15; Bend Sinister, guests, 7:30 pm, $8/$10

a HEARTLAND Don’t

Talk to the Cops, Everybody Weekend, Punishment, 8 pm

HIGHLINE Addaura, Batillus, Atriarch, Old Iron, 8 pm, $10

HIGHWAY 99 Billy Stoops, Kevin Suggs, 8 pm, $7

JAZZ ALLEY Oz Noy, Anthony Jackson, Dave Weckl, 7:30 pm, $20.50

a MOORE THEATER Morrissey, 6:30 pm, $62.50$82.50

NECTAR King Bishop Bars, Just C.O.S., Brilliance, Parnell Johnson, Jae.Oh.B, 8 pm, free NEUMOS Electric Six, Fox and the Law, $15 NEW ORLEANS Legacy

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET

G. Love & Special Sauce, John Fullbright, $25

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Open Mic: Guests

a STUDIO SEVEN Marduk, Moonspell, Inquisition, the Foreshadowing, Deathwolf, Reficul , 5:45 pm, $17/$19

SUNSET TAVERN The Boom Booms, Picoso, 8:30 pm, $7

TRACTOR TAVERN Cotton Jones, Tiny Messengers, Thee Midnight Creep, $10

TRIPLE DOOR

Musicquarium: Jargon, 8:30 pm, free

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Jason Parker Trio a WALL OF SOUND Daniel Bachman, 7 pm, free DJ

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

CAPITOL CLUB Roll

Bounce: Dash EXP, 10 pm, free a CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Alison CONTOUR Launch: Guest

DJs, free THE EAGLE VJDJ Andy J

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN Passage: Jayms Nylon, Joey Webb, guests FOUNDATION Terravita, Diamond Pistols & Headie, Mixed up Mike, Nefarious 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

Q NIGHTCLUB Shelter: Guest DJs, free

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

THURS 3/7

LIVE BARÇA Clark Gibson Trio, free BLUE MOON TAVERN

Amsterdam, guests CAN CAN Vince Mira

CHOP SUEY Shout Out Out Out Out, the Fame Riot, Glass Notes, 8 pm, $8 COLUMBIA CITY

LORI LA-DI-DA-DI L a-di-da-di, Lori likes to party, she don’t cause no trouble, she don’t bother nobody… Spring is in the air, no? And the party people are in the house. KELLY O

THEATER Benoit Pioulard, Tiny Vipers , Ghosts I’ve Met , 8 pm, $10/$12

COMET Knathan Ryan, Bret Phillips & the Working Class Disease, Other Desert Cities, $6

COPPER GATE Fu Kun Wu Trio, 8 pm, free

DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia

DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free a EL CORAZON Hear About Nancy, Camotaraus, Bacon Grenade, Hang, Aether Kid , 7:30 pm, $8; OtherWise, Girl on Fire , guests, 8 pm, $10/$12

GALLERY 1412 Kurly Something, Gang Cult, ValuPak, 9:30 pm, $5

a GUAYMAS CANTINA

Oleaje Flamenco, 8 pm, free HARD ROCK CAFE Hard Rock Rising Battle #1: Guests, 8 pm, free

HIGH DIVE Dots Are Circles, the Neon Wilderness, Rebelmart, $6

HIGHWAY 99 Brian Lee & the Orbiters, 8 pm, $7

JAZZ ALLEY Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, 7:30 pm, $20.50

LITTLE RED HEN

Jukehouse Hounds, $3

LUCID The Hang: Caffeine, 9:30 pm, free; The Nefos Jam, 10 pm

NECTAR Diego’s Umbrella, Skerik’s Bandalabra, Richie Aldente, 8 pm, $10

NEUMOS Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Sally Ford & the Sound Outside, $15

OWL N’ THISTLE Danny Godinez

a PARNASSUS CAFE AND ART GALLERY Open Mic: Guests, free PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac, 8 pm

RE-BAR Grudge Rock: Valis vs. Argonaut, $8

THE ROYAL ROOM Rick Bass and Stellarondo, 8 pm, free

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

SEAMONSTER First Thursday Sessions: Charlie Akeley

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB

Sound of Speed, 8 pm a SMOKIN’ PETE’S BBQ Gumbo Twins, 6:30 pm, free a STUDIO SEVEN Mike Starr Memorial Show: Blacklist Union, Grind, Garden of Eden, Sin Circus, Mister Master, Steal Beans, guests, 7 pm, $10/$12

SUNSET TAVERN Landford Black, Crown Hill, Justin Froese, $6

TRACTOR TAVERN Richard Buckner, Kevin Murphy, $15 a TRIPLE DOOR Mason Jennings, Friendly Gomez, 7:30 pm, $25; Musicquarium: In Cahoots , the Hoot Hoots, 9 pm, free

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Grace Love

a WAMU THEATER

Alicia Keys, Miguel, 7:30 pm, $46-$107

THE WHITE RABBIT Marmalade, $6

BALLROOM DJ Rob, free

BALTIC ROOM Hissy Fit: Guests, $2

BARBOZA JK Pop: DJ Bishie, DJ Hio, DJ Initial P, $3

CAPITOL CLUB Citrus: DJ Skiddle

CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Gustavo

THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN

Distortions: Fungal Abyss, Explorateur, Veins

HAVANA Sophisticated

Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

LAST SUPPER CLUB Open

House: Guests

LAVA LOUNGE Rock DJs: Guests

LO-FI NOCTUM CARO

KELLY O

WEDNESDAY MARCH 6TH

(ALL AGES/BAR W/ID) AXE MURDER BOYZ

MINDSHOT, DIRTY D, CON-CRETE, ENASNIMI, DEZLOOCA, KST BLUNT TRAUMA, CHANCELOR K. HOODRICH

$12 ADV / $15 DOS Doors at 7:00pm, Show at 7:30pm

WEDNESDAY MARCH 6TH

(ALL AGES/BAR W/ID) LOUNGE SHOW BEND SINISTER

AMELIA CIRCLE, THE DUKE EVERS BAND, SCINITE

$8 ADV / $10 DOS Doors at 7:00pm, Show at 7:30pm

THURSDAY MARCH 7TH

(ALL AGES/BAR W/ID) OTHERWISE GIRL ON FIRE, JASON KERTSON & THE IMMORTALS, RIOT IN RHYTHM, THE HEYFIELDS

$10 ADV / $12 DOS Doors at 7:30pm, Show at 8:00pm

THURSDAY MARCH 7TH

(ALL AGES/BAR W/ID) LOUNGE SHOW HEAR ABOUT NANCY CAMOTARAUS, BACON GRENADE, HANG, AETHER KID

$8 Doors at 7:00pm, Show at 7:30pm JUST ANNOUNCED: UP & COMING:

FRIDAY MARCH 8TH

(ALL AGES/BAR W/ID) IDOLS (EP RELEASE/ TOUR KICKOFF SHOW PRESTIGE (TOUR KICKOFF SHOW), INTO THE FLOOD, NAVIGATOR, WE THE AUDIENCE, MOTION, FROM

free

NEIGHBOURS Jet Set Thursdays: Guest DJs

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND The Lowdown: DJ Lightray, $3 OHANA Chill: DJ MS Q NIGHTCLUB Front Street: Karl Kamakahi, free SEE SOUND LOUNGE

DMN $ON: Tony Goods, Jameson Just

TRINITY Cobra Crew, DJ Tre, Chinky Eye, Guy, MC McClarron, free FRI 3/8

LIVE 2 BIT SALOON Krystos, Last Bastion, guests

BARBOZA Autre Ne Veut, Majical Cloudz, 7 pm, $10

a BLACK LODGE Magma Fest: La Luz, Dude York, Detective Agency, Weird Bug

BLUE MOON TAVERN Pacific Nomadic , the Requisite, All You All, guests a CHAPEL PERFORMANCE SPACE Noisegasm + Distorrent

CHOP SUEY Irukandji Physics of Fusion, Staxx Brothers, C-Leb & the Kettle Black $10

COLUMBIA CITY

THEATER Helms Alee, Sandrider, Lowmen Markos, $10

COMET Day Laborers & Petty Intellectuals, Tango

Alpha Tango, the Foghorns Friends & Family

COPPER GATE Margaux

LeSourd, Steve and Kristy Smith, Kaley Harmon, $5

CROCODILE Cody

Beebe & the Crooks, Van Eps , Patrick Foster & the Locomotive, Wicks and Bradford Loomis, 8 pm, $10

DARRELL’S TAVERN Lowland High, Whiting

Tennis, the King County Queens, $6

a EL CORAZON Idols, Prestige, Into the Flood, Navigator, We the Audience Motion From Heroes to Legends, 7 pm, $8/$10; Junis, Silver Snakes, Lo’ There Do I See My Brother, X Suns, Chasma, 8 pm, $8/$10

HARD ROCK CAFE Trainwreck, Crawford & James, $10/$13

HIGH DIVE The Slants, Johnny Hi-Fi, Born of Ghosts, $8

HIGHWAY 99 Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder, 8 pm, $15

JAZZ ALLEY Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, 9:30 pm, $20.50

LITTLE RED HEN Bucking Horse, $5

LUCID Ravenna Jazz Quartet, 6 pm, Soul Family, 9 pm

THE MIX Alex’s Hand, Jaded

Mary SpaceWaster

MOORE THEATER Great Big Sea, 8 pm, $22.50-$32.50

NEPTUNE THEATER Greensky Bluegrass, $16.50

NEUMOS Nacho Picasso, Jarv Dee, Moor Gang, Key Nyata, Keyboard Kid, 8 pm, $12

a OLD FIRE HOUSE

Redmond’s Got Talent: Guests, 7 pm, $8

OWL N’ THISTLE Jukehouse Hounds

RENDEZVOUS The Torn ACLs , Horace Pickett, the Gems, Friends and Family , 10 pm

a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 5:30 pm; Denbaya, Spirit of Ojah, 8:30 pm, free

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free

SERAFINA Tim Kennedy Trio

a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Frightened Rabbit, 7 pm, $17/$20

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB

Teeter Totter, Fey Moth, I Will Keep Your Ghost, 8 pm

SLIM’S LAST CHANCE

Andrea Peterman, Glass Notes, Los Caba Los Loco

SUNSET TAVERN Ben

Miller Band, Bear Cove, JD Hobson , $8/$10

TRACTOR TAVERN

Hillstomp, Hobosexual , Country Lips, 9:30 pm, $8

TRIPLE DOOR Roy Rogers & the Delta Rhythm Kings, 8 pm, $20/$30: Musicquarium: Vunt Foom, 9 pm, free a VERA PROJECT Marcus Foster, Sean Rowe, Ruston Kelly, 7:30 pm, $15/$16

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Casey MacGill

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

CENTURY BALLROOM

Century Tango: DJ Cebrina, DJ Mike McCarrell, DJ Anton, 9 pm, $10

CONTOUR Afterhours, 2 am

CUFF TGIF: C&W Dancing: DJ Harmonix, DJ Stacey, 7 pm, Guest DJs, 11 pm, $5

THE EAGLE Bareback: DJ

Kingofpants

FOUNDATION Sex Panther, Candyland

FUEL DJ Headache, guests

GOOFY’S SPORTS BAR Ladies Night: DJ Fehrone

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

LAST SUPPER CLUB

Madness: Guests

LAVA LOUNGE DJ David James

LIMELIGHT Free Hiphop Fridays: DJ Zeta!, Boombox League, Todd Sykes, Ifthen, 10 pm, free

LO-FI Black Weirdo Party:

Riz Rollins, THEESatisfaction, Chocolate Chuck, StasTHEEBoss, Sassy Black

LUCID Island Friday: DJ

Fresh1, DJ Matsui, guests, 11 pm

NECTAR The Prince & Michael Experience: DJ Dave Paul, 8 pm

NEIGHBOURS The Ultimate

BY ADRIAN RYAN

WEDNESDAY 3/6

MORRISSEY DEPRESSES THE MOORE BUT FIRST! This week’s new drag names: Snatcha Wallet. Tess Tosterona. Imma Butthurt. Erma Gherd. Thank you! I really needed to get that shit off my chest. Jesus. So why the hell are we talking about Morrissey in a, like, TOTALLY GAY nightlife column, anyway? Huh? I mean, IT’S TOTALLY GAY. A mystery. Moore, 7:30 pm, $62.50–$82.50, all ages.

THURSDAY 3/7

SHOWGIRLS 2: PENNY’S FROM HEAVEN Okay, so anyway, Showgirls 2. Yes, you effing read that effing correctly: effing SHOWGIRLS effing 2! Yes, I know. You didn’t think it was possible. You thought it couldn’t be! We all did. We were all so very foolish.

Let me get you up to speed (if you’re, like, dim or whatever): There is this guy called David Schmader. He’s a Mr. Funnypants is what! And never is he funnypantsier than when he is doing what the good lord Shesus put him on this earth to do: “advanced noticing.” It’s a formidable talent. Rather scary, really. And he takes these very advanced “advanced noticing” skills and aims them mercilessly at something completely ridiculous. Like a movie. He looks at it, guts it, rips it limb from bloody limb, and sucks every scrumptious morsel of unintentionally hilarious marrow from its quivering corpse for your pleasure. Like the movie Showgirls an epic ﬁlm about a slut, her dog-food habit, and spastic pool sex.

Dance Party: DJ Richard Dalton, DJ Skiddle

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Caliente

Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren

OHANA Back to the Day: DJ Estylz

PONY Hussler: Guests, free Q NIGHTCLUB Flash: Recess, Nordic Soul , Chris Roman, $10 after 10 pm

SCARLET TREE Oh So Fresh

Fridays: Deejay Tone, DJ

Buttnaked, guests

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Crush: Gigamesh, Sean Majors, Jame$Ervin, Bryan J Furious

TRINITY Tyler, DJ Phase, Jerry Wang, Mikey McClarron, Kippy, $10

WILDROSE Lezbro: L.A.

Kendall, Tony Burns, 9 pm, $3

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

SAT

3/9

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON The Valley , Warning: Danger, Conniption Fits, West Coast Improvement Company

BARBOZA Red Jacket Mine , the Great Um, Julia Massey, 7 pm, $8

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Townes Van Zandt Tribute Night: Jake Hemming, Ryan Devlin, Courtney Marie Andrews, guests, $8

a CAIRO Holy Balm, the Numbs, Punishment

CENTRAL SALOON Fire Vs. Time, free a CHAPEL

PERFORMANCE SPACE

Audain + Irisarri

CHOP SUEY Panama Gold, Kinski , Display, Mass Games, $8

COLUMBIA CITY

THEATER Ball of Wax: The Foghorns , Led to Sea, Brad Dunn Emiko Blalock, Shenandoah Davis , Colin J. Nelson, Alicia Amiri, Robb Benson, guests, $8/$10

COMET Wilt, Eye of Nix, Wounded Giant, Brain

And what a wondrous thing it is! (David is regarded as “the foremost authority” on the subject, which I am sure is worth more than a PhD in Obama’s economy.) His side-along commentary to that towering piece of cinematic horseshit is a towering pile of fabulous—it’s so good, it’s even featured on the Showgirls 15th Anniversary Sinsational Edition. And, for utterly bafﬂing reasons, THEY MADE AN EFFING SEQUEL. I personally choose to believe that they did it just to give David more fodder, a goal which I wholeheartedly support. And so! Tonight, David will walk us through the boob-rich, casino-y world of Penny Slot (speaking of new drag names…), a slut who dreams of dancing on TV. (And I don’t know if Gina Gershon or Puppy Chow will be making an appearance, please don’t ask.) Central Cinema, 8 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages.

LAKE CITY RECORD SHOW

Sunday April 28th - 10am-4pm

Albums, 45's, 78's, Sheet Music, Memorabilia, 8-tracks, Posters, etc.

FREE ADMISSION!

LAKE CITY COMMUNITY CENTER

12531 28TH AVE NE, SEATTLE, WA CONTACT US AT 206-850-1588 US ON FACEBOOK

FRIDAY MARCH 8 | 7:30 PM

MARCUS FOSTER, SEAN ROWE, RUSTON KELLY

$16 ($15 W. CLUB CARD)

SUNDAY MARCH 10 | 7:30 PM

VINCE STAPLES W/ SPECIAL GUESTS

$1O ADV $12 D0S

FRIDAY MARCH 22 | 7:30 PM

TED LEO, DEATHFIX

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

SATURDAY MARCH 30 | 7:30 PM

MAGMA FEST: THE NEED, BEHEAD THE PROPHET NO LORD SHALL LIVE

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

WEDNESDAY APRIL 10 | 7:30 PM

AN EVENING WITH TORI KELLY

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

FRIDAY APRIL 12 | 7:30 PM

JAYMAY

KYE ALFRED HILLIG, KAYOKO

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

FRIDAY APRIL 19 | 7:30 PM

TIFFANY ALVORD, JASON CHEN

$13 ($12 W. CLUB CARD) VIP TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE.

ALWAYS ALL AGES

Scraper, $7

CONOR BYRNE Harley

Bourbon Boxcar, Blue Tracks, $7

COPPER GATE

Wynne C Blue and Her Troublefakers , Jeff Greer, $5

CROCODILE Seattle

Rock Lottery: Bill Rieflin, Derek Fudesco, Irene Barber, Cristina Buatista, Jacob James, Benjamin ThomasKennedy, Chris Brokaw, and many more, 10 pm, $10/$15

DARRELL’S TAVERN

Jellyneck , the Villains of Yesterday, Perfume, $6

a EL CORAZON Avatar, guests, 8 pm, $8/$10; the Dread Crew of Oddwood, the Bog Hoppers, the Fun Police, 9 pm, $10/$12

a FREMONT ABBEY

Dearborn, Hannah Glavor & Family Band, Before the Brave, 6:30 pm, $6-$10

HIGH DIVE Good For You, $8

HIGHWAY 99 Kevin Selfe & the Tornadoes, 8 pm, $14

a HOLLOW EARTH

RADIO Magma Fest: Dil Withers, Carrion Spring, Walter & Perry, P Supremo, Korvus Blackbird, Black Magic Noize, Nudes, DJ

Bob Catt & DJ Sonic Titan, 6:30 pm

JAZZ ALLEY Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, 9:30 pm, $20.50

THE KRAKEN BAR & LOUNGE Ol’ Doris, Pageripper, the Deep Wile, Smokejumper, $5

LITTLE RED HEN Bucking Horse, $5

LUCID Hopscotch, 6 pm, Sidewinder, 9 pm

THE MIX Hekate, Partman

Parthorse the Stevedore NECTAR Clinton Fearon & the Boogie Brown Band, Sarah Christine Band, Selecta Raiford, 8 pm, $12

NEUMOS emancipator, Little People, Odesza, $15

a OLD FIRE HOUSE Redmond’s Got Talent:

Guests, 7 pm, $8

OWL N’ THISTLE Owl N’ Thistle Band

QUEEN CITY GRILL Faith Beattie, Bayly, Totusek, Guity, free a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 6 pm; Hope Wechkin, 7:30 pm, $12/$15

SEAMONSTER Felas Kooties

SERAFINA Jose “Juicy” Gonzales

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Superedge , 8 pm, $5

SLIM’S LAST CHANCE Devilwood, Baby Gramps

a ST. MARK’S CATHEDRAL Choir of the Sound, 7 pm, $11-$22

a STUDIO SEVEN Island Trybe, 508 Disturbance, Faraca, MW Choppers, Pme, guests, 8 pm, $10

SUNSET TAVERN Get Lucky 3: Tamara Power-Drutis, Aaron Daniels, the Good Luck Number, $10/$15

TIM’S TAVERN Industry People, Stafford & the Bentz Bros, $5 a TOWN HALL Fleur: Songs of Spring, 7:30 pm, $12/$35

TRACTOR TAVERN Assembly of Dust, guests, 9:30 pm, $15

TRIPLE DOOR Masters Of Tradition, 9:30 pm, $30/$40; Musicquarium: 4 outta 5, 9 pm, free VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Josephine Howell, Ruby Bishop, 6 pm

THE WHITE RABBIT Vigilante Santos, Elbow Coulee , the Ames, $6

BALLROOM DJ Warren BALTIC ROOM Good Saturdays: Guest DJs

BARBOZA Inferno: The Flavr Blue, DJ Swervewon, DJ WD4D, 10:30 pm, free before 11:30 pm/$5 after CAPITOL CLUB Get Physical: DJ Edis, DJ Paycheck, 10 pm, free CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Howard

FRIDAY 3/8

CONTOUR Europa Night, 9 pm CUFF Sensorium: DJ Almond

Brown

FOUNDATION Tritonal, Johnny Monsoon, Chris Herrera, Ian Powers

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

HEARTLAND CAFE & BENBOW ROOM Candylandia: DJ Cotton Candy, DJ Christophett, DJ Deep Parris, free

LAVA LOUNGE DJ Matt

LO-FI Emerald City Soul Club: Kenny Mac, Gene Balk, Marc Muller, Alvin Mangosing, Mike Chrietzberg, Brian Everett, George Gell, Mike “GFY” Nipper, 9 pm, $10

MOE BAR Panther Down: DJ N8, Anthony Diamond, free NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ Randy Schlager

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club

Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal Darkness

OHANA Funk House: DJ Bean One

PONY Glitoris: Queen Mookie, Devil Eyes: Q NIGHTCLUB Rapture: Almond Brown, DJ George Delmar, $10 after 10 pm

RE-BAR Pisces Party: Queen Lucky, DJ Scott, DJ Evan, DJ Kerry, 10 pm SEE SOUND LOUNGE Switch: Guest DJs

TRINITY ((SUB)): Guy, VSOP, Jason Lemaitre, guests, $15/free before 10 pm

VERMILLION Flux: Dj Res , guests, free THE WOODS Hiphop/R&B/ Funk/Soul/Disco: Guest DJs SUN 3/10

LIVE BARBOZA Trust, Eraas, Nightmare Fortress, $12 CAFE RACER The Racer

BY DAVE SEGAL

HANSSEN’S KOSMISCHE HOUSE EPICS, J.ALVAREZ’S ELECTRO MASTERPIECES

Tonight marks the release party for Seattle producer Hanssen’s Programme EP on the excellent local label Pleasure Boat (see my feature on it on page 31). Best known for his slanted and elegant house and techno productions with the duo Jacob London and in his solo guise of Hanssen (real name: Bob Hansen), he’s gone off on a tangent with Programme. The emphasis here is less on booming beats to keep asses moving and more on kosmische and küte synth melodies and arpeggios soaring handsomely over chugging rhythms. The whole thing’s delightfully light on its feet and unbombastically epic, like Lindstrøm, but without the Norwegian bling. Bonus: Revered Ghostly International artist Lusine adds a sweet remix of “Azur” that beefs up the bass and funk. Seattle’s J.Alvarez (aka 214, aka Chris Roman) is one of the country’s ﬁnest creators of electro music, with the inventively, robotically funky tracks and international discography to prove it. With Nordic Soul Q Nightclub, 9 pm–3 am, $7 adv/$10 DOS, 21+.

SATURDAY 3/9

EMANCIPATOR’S BLAND TRIPHOP, ODESZA’S CHEERY NIGHT BUS

Portland producer Emancipator creates middling, orchestral, down-tempo electronic music that seems tailor-made for TV movies (do they still make those?). His tracks skew predominantly melancholy and blandly funky, like a smooth-jazz version of Thievery Corporation. Seattle duo Odesza (Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight) put out their debut album, Summer’s Gone,

Sessions COMET 17Squared, Fattay, Leigh Solemn, Krazy J, Peyday, DJ Remi, $5

CONOR BYRNE Open Mic, 8 pm

COPPER GATE Lindee Hoshikawa, Debbie Miller, 7 pm, $5 a CROCODILE

Road Home, Mike Scheidt, Ardent Vein, $10

JAI THAI BROADWAY Rock Bottom Soundsystem, free JAZZ ALLEY Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, 7:30 pm, $20.50

KELL’S Liam Gallagher LITTLE RED HEN

last September (you can download it at odesza.com). It’s more of a beat-centric and extroverted take on the lush, intricately detailed night-bus style that Kid Smpl has burnished to a golden glow. With Little People Neumos, 8 pm, $15 adv, 21+.

SUNDAY 3/10

TRUST’S CANADIAN GOTH HOUSE, ERAAS’ SUBLIME BUMMER VIBES

Toronto duo Trust (Maya Postepski and Robert Alfons) have accumulated a rabid following with exquisitely wrought tracks that garland house music’s cocksure 4/4 pulse with eerie atmospheric ectoplasm and artfully cobwebbed melodies. Alfons has a distinctive, slightly anguished voice, less stentorian than most goth-inﬂected types and more brittle and wreathed in subtle reverb. Trust make the goths dance and sweat till their mascara runs in patterns that resemble poor Alice Cooper impersonators. Brooklyn’s ERAAS—featuring former Apse members Robert Toher and Austin Stawiarz—exude a similar spookiness, albeit in a less overtly danceable context. Their self-titled album is full of gorgeous loping and moping tracks, melding Section 25 and early Low’s subdued bummer vibes and Toro Y Moi’s chilled bubble funk. With Nightmare Fortress and Dr. Troy Barboza, 8 pm, $12, 21+.

SHERVIN LAINEZ

ERAAS

Brings Fire, Numbers, Repave the Skies, Among The Mayans, Watchers Eye, Love the Lost, Devils of Loudon, guests, 5 pm, $10/$15

SUNSET TAVERN The Family Crest, Br’er Rabbit, guests, $6

a TOWN HALL Northwest Girlchoir, 7 pm, $8/$13

TRACTOR TAVERN Joe Ely Duo, Joe Pug, 8 pm, $20/$25

TRIPLE DOOR

Musicquarium: Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, 8 pm, free

a VERA PROJECT Vince Staples, guests, 7:30 pm, $10/$12

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Ruby Bishop, 6 pm, the Ron Weinstein Trio, 9:30 pm

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

MON 3/11

LIVE 2 BIT SALOON Metal

Monday: Toxic Reign, Headless Pez, Blood of Kings, Inebriator, $5

BLUE MOON TAVERN Andy Coe Band, free COMET Black Plastic Clouds, Amelia Circle, Topless, $5 JAZZ ALLEY Jackie Ryan, 7:30 pm, $18.50

KELL’S Liam Gallagher a KEYARENA Maroon 5, Neon Trees, Owl City, $29.50/$79.50

MAC’S TRIANGLE PUB Jazz and Blues Night: Guests, free MOLLY MAGUIRES Open Mic, free

NEW ORLEANS The New Orleans Quintet, 6:30 pm

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

$29.25 THE ROYAL ROOM The Novus Project, 8 pm, $8/$10 SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free SLIM’S LAST CHANCE Troubadour Tuesday: Darren Eldridge THE STEPPING STONE PUB Open Mic:

TUES 3/12

LIVE COMET AM Interstate, Past Impending, City Bear, $6

CONOR BYRNE Ol’ Time

Social: The Tallboys , 9 pm

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

THE ROYAL ROOM Ben Thomas & the Tangent Quintet, 8 pm, free a STUDIO SEVEN Articles of War, From the Waters of Chaos, the Further, Ashes of Existence, Thou Shall Kill, Never Met a Deadman, guests, 5:30 pm, $10/$15 TRACTOR TAVERN The Tallboys , 7:30 pm, $5 TRIPLE DOOR Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free, James Hunter, 7:30 pm, $26/$32

THE WHITE RABBIT Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder, $6

DJ 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 CHOP SUEY Tigerbeat, 10 pm, free COMPANY BAR Rock and Roll Chess Night: DJ Plantkiller, 8 pm, free

COPPER GATE The Suffering Fuckheads , 8 pm, free a CROCODILE Wax, guests, 8 pm

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN Monktail Creative Music Concern, DJ Shonuph, free a FREMONT ABBEY The Round: Star Anna , Jason Dodson, Kevin Barrans, Erin Rae, guests, 8 pm HIGH DIVE The Lindseys, Glitter Dick, Regional Faction , 8 pm, $6 a JAZZ ALLEY Leo Kottke, 7:30 pm,

WEDNESDAY 3/6

DON’T TALK TO THE COPS!, EVERYBODY WEEKEND, PUNISHMENT

If there ever were a night to get down, this would be it. Seattle party slingers Don’t Talk to the Cops! serve up positive vibes and wired beats with a punk attitude. Their frenzied electronic hiphop will be joined by the makeshift “slip-hop” beats of Everybody Weekend, alias of Seattle-based Heddie Leonne. Her music is whimsical and cheeky, stumbling but self-aware, and for undeniable plus points, she even covers power-pop princess Josie Cotton’s “He Could Be the One.” Also on this boogie-packed bill, Punishment’s highly caffeinated, ’80skeyboard freak-outs are coupled with an awesomely self-deprecating stage act, which makes for crash-free fun for the whole sugared-up family. With a postshow dance party from DJ Mitchell Bell curator of Hanged Man Recordings and also a possessor of ﬁne musical taste. Heartland, 7 pm.

DANIEL BACHMAN

If you couldn’t make his show at the Rendezvous last month (or weren’t legally able to attend), don’t miss this in-store with acoustic guitarist Daniel Bachman, who winds the instrument into dense

layers with the projected ease of high technical proficiency. His sensational fingerpicking is even deserving of overextended nods to American Primitivist (country blues–inspired avant-garde) forepickers like Jack Rose and John Fahey. The Philadelphia-by-way-of-Virginia native’s releases for Seattle label Debacle Records, Grey-Black-Green and Oh Be Joyful, are naturally flowing ruminations shifting from low drones to brisk fingerpicking. The result is both heavy and serene, with an extrasensory pulse sometimes drifting into the wonderfully eerie territories of psychedelic folk. Wall of Sound, 7 pm, free.

SATURDAY 3/9

NUDES, WALTER & PERRY, BLACK MAGIC NOIZE, DIL WITHERS

Part of Hollow Earth Radio’s monthlong Magma Festival, Rad Rains is a collaborative night of local punk rock and hiphop. Walter & Perry’s ﬁnger-tapping ’90s emotional hardcore—what the band refers to as #sadpunk—should inspire some moshing in place. Also upping the punx will be Nudes (members of White Wards and Grimace), a hardcore band out of the U-District. On tracks like the appropriately titled “Fukwila, WA,” they keep it abrasive, fast, and highly decibeled Keep an eye peeled for their upcoming Skin EP! The night also sees Dil Withers’s chill instrumental beats, and psychoactive hiphop from Black Magic Noize, who on his Mushroom Militia EP wants to “spray some psilocybin on you,” so watch out. With PSupremo, Carrion Spring, Korvus Blackbird, DJ Bob Catt, and DJ Sonic Titan

Don’t Talk to the Cops!

BY BRITTNIE FULLER

The Brainy Rebellion

Black American Filmmakers of LA

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

Omanipulating a family’s weaknesses. Where did this ﬁlm and its new vision come from? It had its roots in a school of black American ﬁlmmakers called the LA Rebellion. A name like that leads one to imagine a group of artists churning out one Do the Right Thing after

The ﬁlms of the LA Rebellion were not at all like Spike Lee’s.

another and calling for the destruction of the government. But this group, which ﬂourished from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, was not at all like Spike Lee; the men and women of the LA Rebellion were intellectuals and had a much richer and more global perspective on the black condition.

LA Rebellion

Through March 24 at Northwest Film Forum

holding a party, hiking in a park), there is almost no mention of racism, race relations, or even white people. Only at the end does a black man complain about how the county’s morgue (yes, morgue) doesn’t service the black parts of town as efﬁciently as it does the white ones. That’s it.

You must remember that a year before To Sleep with Anger’s 1990 release, Spike Lee hit the screens hard with Do the Right Thing, a ﬁlm that ends with a bang—a total race apocalypse. On top of that, Public Enemy was selling millions of copies of an album that threatened the whole planet with black power. This was not the kind of political atmosphere in which one expected to see a ﬁlm about middle-class blacks whose problems had little to do with discrimination, police oppression, and economic dispossession, but a bad man (“a colored gentleman”) who was

ne day in 1990, I walked into the Harvard Exit Theater, took a seat, and watched a movie that transformed my life. It was about an old man who arrives in Los Angeles by Greyhound bus and pays some old friends a surprise visit. He is welcomed into their home, introduced to the younger members of the family, given a room in which he can stay for as long as he likes, and fed and entertained. After settling in, the old man—the old friend, the old fox—starts disrupting and dismantling his hosts’ family life piece by piece. This movie, which stars Danny Glover, has the oddest title (To Sleep with Anger), a beautiful but nightmarish opening shot (a bowl of fruit, a chair, a man sitting in the chair as a growing ﬁre consumes his shoes), and a story that progresses with the conﬁdence of a great American novel. But the thing that impressed me most about Anger was this: the absence of race. Though directed by a black man (Charles Burnett), set in a black neighborhood, and involving the social world of a black family (going to work, going to church,

Hitler Youth

Coming of Age in the Horrible Rubble

BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

Lore is the nightmare version of The Sound of Music. In this alternate universe, the parents of the numerous lovely, hale children are Nazis. The scenes leading up to them carrying their suitcases across a gorgeous meadow in 1945 include their father burning his stacks and stacks of SS ﬁles (“Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring: CONFIDENTIAL ”), then shooting the family German shepherd in the head. He’s told eldest daughter Lore that the neighbor, Mrs. Richter, will be looking after the dog, but he barely waits for her to get

back in the house before the gunshot. Lore knows what her father has done, and this is only the very beginning of the end of the world as she knows it.

Lore dir. Cate Shortland Harvard Exit

Her mother and father are not around for long, and then the ﬁlm follows Lore and her four younger siblings slowly slogging through an increasingly nightmarish landscape of burnedout buildings, rubble, refugees, begging, stealing, rape, death. They’re trying to get to their grandmother’s house, located across newly divided and almost uncrossable 1945 Germany, and the Black Forest

The LA Rebellion was a small number of black American filmmakers (many are now professors) who attended film school at UCLA and made films that were often experimental, often realistic, often beautiful, and often challenging. The main directors of this movement were Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima, Larry Clark, and Billy Woodberry—and its most famous films are Killer of Sheep, Bush Mama, and Daughters of the Dust. Though these film are political and do address black American poverty and other social issues, they never explode into the masculine black rage of Spike Lee’s cinema or lose sight of the deeper, far more complicated and human side of the black experience. The characters in Daughters of the Dust, for example, are rich and vivid and have interests in science, history, and nature. My Brother’s Wedding, an obscure film by Charles Burnett, is set in the inner city during the rise of the crack epidemic, but it’s about a young man who is struggling to make sense of a world filled with contradictions. Like jazz in the modern moment, or mid-20th-century black American novels, the LA Rebellion is above all an intellectual movement.

Though To Sleep with Anger is not being screened in Northwest Film Forum’s LA Rebellion series (through March 24), it’s consistent with the aesthetics and mode of many of the ﬁlms that are: Bush Mama, Daughters of the Dust, Passing Through, Bless Their Hearts, and My Brother’s Wedding. Charles Burnett will be in attendance at events on March 8 and 9.

here is from the darkest possible version of a Grimm’s fairy tale. The cinematography is lush with saturated greens; the vivid yet dreamy lens of childhood makes even corpses crawling with ants almost beautiful. Even the mud, and there is a lot of it, is rich and deep and draws you in.

Lore’s coming-of-age is dragged through this mud. She is traveling from shiny-eyed, golden-braided Hitler Youth to a young woman with cracked lips and a heart that may become stone before it can be broken. She sometimes seems to age by the frame. Australian director Cate Shortland has captured marvelous performances in Lore, especially Saskia Rosendahl in the title role and the rest of the children. The horror of their world is exquisitely—somehow lovingly—rendered. And nothing here is simple.

Comment on these reviews at THESTRANGER.COM/FILM

CHALLENGING Haile Gerima’s Child of Resistance.

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/ﬁlm

LIMITED RUN

007: SIX CLASSIC JAMES BOND FILMS

The first two films from this three-week, all-35-mm series screen this week: From Russia with Love and Goldfinger Grand Illusion, Fri-Tues. For complete schedule and showtimes, see grandillusioncinema.org.

ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI

ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION

“May I pass along my congratulations for your great interdimensional breakthrough. I am sure, in the miserable annals of the Earth, you will be duly enshrined.” King’s Hardware,

Mon March 11 at dusk.

DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’: EVERYMAN’S

JOURNEY

A documentary on none other than arena-rock band Journey, specifically on Arnel Pineda, the replacement frontman sourced from a Filipino cover band. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri 5, 7:15, 9:30 pm, Sat-Sun 2:30, 5, 7:15, 9:30 pm, Mon 5, 7:15, 9:30 pm, Tues 7:15, 9:30 pm.

JOEL HODGSON: RIFFING MYSELF

Creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Joel Hodgson, in the flesh for his one-man show of stories from the MST3K

days as well as a look at what’s next. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri March 8 at 8 pm.

LA REBELLION

See review, page 45. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Sun. For complete schedule and showtimes, see nwfilmforum.org.

ONLY THE YOUNG

A documentary about emotionally sensitive skateboardriding teens reflecting on current and future relationships and on life in general. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues 7, 9 pm.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIMBERLAKE

Professional dreamboat Justin Timberlake will be hosting AND singing on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live (NBC, Sat March 9, 11:30 pm), so you may now commence squee-ing. SQUEEEEEEEEE!! However! Don’t you dare forget that I’ve loved Justin Timberlake FARRRRR longer than anyone. What follows is a brief history of Justin Timberlake, as told by someone who’s loved him FARRRR longer than you—which is ME.

1981—Justin Randall Timberlake (did you know his middle name is Randall? I do) is born. Admittedly, I’m too busy trying to make my hair look like that guy in A Flock of Seagulls to notice.

1993—For the next 11 years, Justin Timberlake does nothing of interest… UNTIL! He appears on the talent competition Star Search (dressed in an idiotic cowboy outﬁt) and later joins the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club along with Britney Spears (SQUEE!), Christina Aguilera (SQUEE!), soon-to-be-bandmate JC Chasez (squee), and the future’s most desirable man, Ryan Gosling (SQUEE! SQUEE! SQUEEEEEEE!!).

1995—Justin Timberlake frosts the tips of his hair, and—along with JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone, and Lance Bass— forms the greatest band to ever make the Beatles look like a tub of crap, *NSYNC. In response, I freak the fawk OUT, and my eternal love for JT—that began soooo long before yours—is sealed.

1999—Justin Timberlake begins dating Britney Spears—which I tell him (via numerous and lengthy handwritten letters) is a terrible idea. I also explain he’s far too good for *NSYNC and he should begin a solo career that might also include acting, which could

eventually lead to a possible nude scene with Mila Kunis. He ignores my advice.

2002—Justin finally takes my advice! While a nude scene may still be years away, JT quits both *NSYNC and Britney Spears and records his solo album, Justified (featuring the hit “Cry Me a River”)—which I correctly realize is AH-MAY-ZING, even though you don’t seem to care very much. (I’m confident you will eventually come around to the truth.)

2003—Justin begins dating Cameron Diaz. Not my idea.

2004—Justin exposes Janet Jackson’s booby at the Super Bowl. Not my idea.

2006—Justin releases FutureSex/ LoveSounds (featuring the hit “SexyBack”), and you ﬁnally realize that you are in love with him. Welcome to the party, snoozers! (He also ﬁnally breaks up with Cameron Diaz. Buenas noches, Diaz!)

2007–2012 (aka “the dark ages”)—Justin stops making music and concentrates on an acting career that’s mostly disappointing

THE SCARLET LETTER

Lillian Gish plays the “fallen woman” of Hawthorne’s classic in this 35 mm restoration of the silent-era film. Live organ accompaniment. Paramount, Mon March 11 at 7 pm.

SHIFT CHANGE

This documentary heralds the achievements of employeeowned businesses, arguing that this model results in more innovation as well as fairer labor practices. Keystone Church, Fri March 8 at 7 pm.

TRIPLE FISHER: THE LETHAL LOLITAS OF LONG ISLAND

At long last, someone finally made a supercut of all three television movies—one starring Drew Barrymore, one starring Alyssa Milano, one starring Noelle Parker—devoted to the criminal saga of Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita” who fucked a skeezy married guy and then shot his wife in the face. And here it is. Grand Illusion, Wed March 6 at 9 pm.

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE

This animated classic from France tells the surreal tale of an elderly woman who enlists a trio of music-hall singers and one obese dog to help her rescue her kidnapped grandson. Central Cinema, Fri-Mon 7 pm.

except for The Social Network and Friends with Beneﬁts (featuring [I told him so!] Mila Kunis and his naked bottom). He dates, breaks up with, and then inexplicably marries Jessica Biel, who is unmemorable in every conceivable way other than resembling a bar of soap. (These are indeed dark times.)

2013—And now? Seemingly out of nowhere? Justin ﬁnally returns to the limelight with his newest album, The 20/20 Experience, due out on March 19! SQUEEEEEE!! He’s still happily married to Jessica Biel, however. Squee.

2014—Justin’s fame continues to rocket skyward—but more importantly, YOU ﬁnally realize that you were late to the game, and it was ME who was the true Justin Timberlake fan all along. No big deal, though—I’m through with Justin, anyway, and dumping him for Ryan Gosling! SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Comment on I Love Television at THESTRANGER.COM

BY WM. TM STEVEN HUMPHREY

BRIEF STRONG LANGUAGE

YOSSI

In 2002, director Eytan Fox released Yossi & Jagger, an acclaimed romantic drama about two men in the Israeli Army who find themselves in a deeply passionate, deeply closeted love affair before the war claims one of their lives. Ten years later, here’s Yossi, Fox’s sequel to Yossi & Jagger, which finds the 10-years-older-and-still-shell-shocked Yossi going through the motions of his closeted life as a doctor while attempting to find some resolution for his secret lost love. It’s a small film that might not resonate fully with those who haven’t seen its predecessor, but it’s full of tough and lovely details about heartbreak-induced stasis, and it features a wonderful central performance by a sad, out of shape, and sexy Ohad Knoller. (DAVID SCHMADER)

Egyptian, Fri 5:20, 7:30, 9:40 pm, Sat-Sun 1, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30, 9:40 pm, Mon-Tues 5:20, 7:30, 9:40 pm.

NOW PLAYING

56 UP

Michael Apted’s series began in 1964 as a portrait of a group of 7-year-olds from all over England, selected to represent the extremes of a classist society, and it returns every seven years. 56 Up is maybe the most satisfying of all the films so far. Its tone is calm. The subjects are comfortable with themselves. “As time has passed, they’ve become much less interested in what I want them to do,” Apted told Radio Times last year. The eloquence of their defiance is finally up to Apted’s challenge: They are his equals now, and the series has become fully a dialogue. (JEN GRAVES)

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

Beautiful Creatures is passably entertaining, but like many movies geared toward teen girls, it smacks of sexism and reinforces the troubling myth that true love strikes before the SATs. It tells the story of Lena Duchannes, a beautiful orphan about to turn 16. But unlike most teenagers, she’s a supernatural caster—a witch. This basically means that on her birthday, her “true nature” will decide whether she is good, evil, or worse than evil: a man-eating succubus. The good moments are not enough to save the movie, or even worth stomaching another plot that revolves around teenage codependency and the inherent evilness of women.

(CIENNA MADRID)

BLESS ME, ULTIMA

Ultima is an old curandera in a Chicano farm community in 1940s New Mexico. Most people hold her at a distance out of fear and respect, but little Antonio becomes her pupil, ward, and friend. She teaches him how to harvest herbs, “listen to the land,” and other folk-healer stuff. Ultima is packed with stock themes from Latino literature of the 1970s and ‘80s: magic, family blood feuds, coming-ofage paroxysms, characters who are more symbols than personalities, and the three-way moral tension between the Catholic Church, the town sinners, and the folk healing/ witchiness that rotates on its own axis of good and evil.

(BRENDAN KILEY)

EMPEROR

The idea of a film set during the American occupation of Japan at the very end of World War II is rife with drama, and the fact that Emperor tells a true story makes it even more of a shame that the movie turned out to be so mediocre. General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) is essentially the sleuth at the heart of a drawing-room mystery; the

demanded it, then the emperor—who many Japanese citizens believe is a god on earth—will hang and the war will resume. The problem here is primarily Fox, whose inability to present any emotion at all hobbles Emperor’s many flashback sequences, which depict his prewar courtship of a Japanese woman. (These are the coldest wooing scenes since Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman made the cardboard beast with two backs in the second Star Wars prequel.) Only Tommy Lee Jones is at all interesting as the fame-hungry General Douglas MacArthur, and his scenes are far too few to make a difference. (PAUL CONSTANT)

GREEDY LYING BASTARDS

The evidence of climate change has been overwhelmingly convincing for years—so why has climate-change denial been such a big part of the public debate for so long? Because science needs better PR. Or industry needs worse PR. Or both. Greedy Lying Bastards , a thoroughly researched, clearly presented agit-doc by Craig Scott Rosebraugh, outlines the way petroleum and coal interests, by spending lots of money and saying the same thing over and over again, have manipulated Americans into thinking there’s some “debate” on the science of climate change. There isn’t. On one side, we have science. On the other side, we have money. The money goes to politicians who make decisions favorable to the oil and coal industries. But politicians need plausible cover to get away with that (otherwise, voters would be outraged), and the denial industry is born. Greedy Lying Bastards demonstrates that if you say something often enough, and say it while wearing a suit, some people will start to believe it. ( BRENDAN KI LEY)

IDENTITY THIEF

A schlubby guy named Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) has his identity stolen by a woman named Diana (Melissa McCarthy), and he heads out to bring her to justice. While Identity Thief isn’t a very good movie, it’s got a couple of moments where you’d have to be dead not to burst out with a little surprised laughter, and it has one glorious thing going for it, and that is McCarthy. Her Diana is a manic clown, but McCarthy fills her giant eyes with a desperate neediness that makes all the humor she finds in her character feel a little bit dangerous. (PAUL CONSTANT)

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Sam Raimi has a lot of fun playing with the limits of digital 3-D, tossing things directly into the camera and testing depth of field with his limitless digital canvas. James Franco plays a nicely sleazy small-time Kansas magician with big dreams who gets swept off to a land that is expecting him to be heroic. There, he encounters three witchy sisters (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and, most delightfully, Michelle Williams as Glinda the Good Witch) and gets swept into a power struggle that sends him all across Oz. Even though he’s awash in CGI most of the time, Franco holds the soul of the movie together capably, even as he interacts with winged monkeys and little girls made of china. Does The Wizard of Oz need a prequel? Definitely not. And Raimi would be the first to insist that he’s not going to match the original film’s impact. In fact, Oz is at its worst when it tries to ape directly from The Wizard of Oz, especially in the movie’s closing scenes. But it’s charming and sweet and funny and mostly amenable to the source material. If only Danny Elfman’s score weren’t such a warmed-over piece of shit.

SHERMAN ALEXIE

Walking home at 4 a.m. from my bartending job, I heard a man scream from the dark little park near my apartment building. He was in serious trouble. My ﬁrst instinct was to run away, but he screamed again, in more terror and pain this time, so I charged into the park babble-screaming and swatting the air like it was ﬁlled with nocturnal yellow jackets. A New York friend once told me that if he ever felt threatened in the city, then he acted like a homeless schizophrenic.

“Crazy cancels crazy,” he said.

I doubt that’s true, but what other options did I have? So I crashed through a hedge into the clearing, where one man was punching another man bloody. Jumping up and down, I cursed nonsense at the assaulter. Clearly unafraid, he pulled a pistol from somewhere and pointed it at me. I dove back into the hedge, had to ﬁght again the instinct to ﬂee, and then

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of March 6

rose out of the hedge and pretended my cell phone was a gun.

In the dark, in a half-assed shooting stance, I suppose I resembled a predawn vigilante. And maybe I would have scared the asshole away, but, for some truly insane reason, I shouted, “Bam, bam, bam, bam,” like a kid playing war. And then, to make it worse, I started laughing.

I ﬁgured I was soon to be part of a double homicide, but the pistol-packing dude smiled and ran off in one direction, while his victim ran off in another.

Shaking with fear and elation, I kept laughing. Then I blew imaginary smoke from the barrel of my imaginary gun and tucked it back into my pocket.

“Ma’am, I’m no hero,” I said to the moon. “I’m just doing my job.”

Then I went home, masturbated, and fell back in love with this magical world.

little wild and fuzzy. Don’t overdo it, of course, but explore the smart fun you can have by breaking some of your own rules and transgressing some of the usual limits.

LEO (July 23–Aug 22): In the course of formulating his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin read many books. He developed a rather ruthless approach to getting what he needed out of them. If there was a particular part of a book that he didn’t find useful, he simply tore it out, cast it aside, and kept the rest. I recommend this as a general strategy for you in the coming week, Leo. In every situation you’re in, figure out what’s most valuable to you and home in on that. For now, forget the irrelevant and extraneous stuff.

about where you are located. So let me ask you: Do you know which direction north is? Where does the water you drink come from? What phase of the moon is it today? What was the indigenous culture that once lived where you live now? Where is the power plant that generates the electricity you use? Can you name any constellations that are currently in the night sky? What species of trees do you see every day? Use these questions as a starting point as you deepen your connection with your specific neighborhood on planet Earth. Get yourself grounded!

ARIES (March 21–April 19): Maybe you’re not literally in exile. You haven’t been forced to abandon your home and you haven’t been driven from your power spot against your will. But you may nevertheless be feeling banished or displaced. It could be due to one of the conditions that storyteller Michael Meade names: “We may experience exile as a lack of recognition, a period of transition, an identity crisis, a place of stuckness, or else having a gift and no place to give it.” Do any of those describe your current predicament, Aries? The good news, Meade says, is that exile can shock you awake to the truth about where you belong. It can rouse your irrepressible motivation to get back to your rightful place.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): Do you have a recurring nightmare that has plagued you? If so, I suspect it will recur again soon. Only this time, Taurus, you will beat it. You will trick or escape or defeat the monster that’s chasing you. Or else you will outrun the molten lava or disperse the tornado or fly up off the ground until the earth stops shaking. Congratulations on this epic shift, Taurus. Forever after, you will have more power over the scary thing that has had so much power over you.

VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): Here’s a passage from Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations: “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade.” Judging from the astrological omens, Virgo, I suspect your life may be like that in the coming days. The emotional tone could be sharply mixed, with high contrasts between vivid sensations. The nature of your opportunities may seem warm and bright one moment, cool and dark the next. If you regard this as interesting rather than difficult, it won’t be a problem but rather an adventure.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): There’s a writer I know whose work is brilliant. Her ideas are fascinating. She’s a champion of political issues I hold dear. She’s well-read and smarter than me. Yet her speech is careless and sloppy. She rambles and interrupts herself. She says “uh,” “you know,” and “I mean” so frequently that I find it hard to listen, even when she’s saying things I admire. I considered telling her about this, but decided against it. She’s an acquaintance, not a friend. Instead, I resolved to clean up my own speech—to make sure I don’t do anything close to what she does. This is a strategy I suggest for you, Capricorn: Identify interesting people who are not fully living up to their potential, and change yourself in the exact ways you wish they would change.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): The following request for advice appeared on Reddit.com: “My identical twin is stuck in an alternate dimension and she can only communicate with me by appearing as my own reflection in mirrors and windows. How can I tell her I don’t like what she’s done to her hair?” This question is a variant of a type of dilemma that many of you Geminis are experiencing right now, so I’ll respond to it here. I’m happy to say that you will soon get an unprecedented chance to commune directly with your alter egos. Your evil twin will be more available than usual to engage in meaningful dialog. So will your doppelgänger, your shadow, your mirror self, and your stuntperson.

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): “I worked as a hair stylist in Chicago’s Gold Coast for 20 years with some of the most gorgeous women and men in the world,” writes sculptor Rich Thomson. “Once I asked a photographer who shot for the big magazines how he picked out the very best models from among all these greatlooking people. His response: ‘Flaws. Our flaws are what make us interesting, special, and exotic. They define us.’” My challenge to you, Libra, is to meditate on how your supposed imperfections and oddities are essential to your unique beauty. It’s a perfect moment to celebrate—and make good use of—your idiosyncrasies.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): The German word Verschlimmbesserung refers to an attempted improvement that actually makes things worse. Be on guard against this, Aquarius. I fear that as you tinker, you may try too hard. I’m worried you’ll be led astray by neurotic perfectionism. To make sure that your enhancements and enrichments will indeed be successful, keep these guidelines in mind: (1) Think about how to make things work better, not how to make things look better. (2) Be humble and relaxed. Don’t worry about saving face and don’t overwork yourself. (3) Forget about short-term fixes, serve long-range goals.

CANCER (June 21–July 22): Usually I advise Cancerians to draw up precise borders and maintain clear boundaries. As a Crab myself, I know how important it is for our well-being that we neither leak our life force all over everything nor allow others to leak their life force all over us. We thrive on making definitive choices and strong commitments. We get into trouble when we’re wishy-washy about what we want. Okay. Having said all that fatherly stuff, I now want to grant you a partial and temporary license to get a

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): The genius of Leonardo da Vinci was in part fueled by his buoyant curiosity. In his work as an artist, musician, inventor, engineer, and writer, he drew inspiration from pretty much everything. He’s your role model for the coming week, Scorpio. Just assume that you will find useful cues and clues wherever you go. Act as if the world is full of teachers who have revelations and guidance specifically meant for you. Here’s some advice from da Vinci himself: “It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud, or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas.”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): Ready for a reality check? It’s time to assess how well you know the fundamental facts

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): “Telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen,” says musician and businessman Derek Sivers. Numerous studies demonstrate that when you talk about your great new idea before you actually do it, your brain chemistry does an unexpected thing. It gives you the feeling that you have already accomplished the great new idea—thereby sapping your willpower to make the effort necessary to accomplish it! The moral of the story: Don’t brag about what you’re going to do someday. Don’t entertain people at parties with your fabulous plans. Shut up and get to work. This is especially important advice for you right now.

Homework: Describe how you plan to shake off some of your tame and overly civilized behavior. Testify at freewill astrology.com

interview. No e-mails or calls please.

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Read bucketloads more (or place your own) online at www.thestranger.com/personals

STARVING ARTIST OR HOMELESS?

Saw U @ woodenville winery. You: b/w striped scarf & carried a guitar, you went home w/ Maureen. Shoulda went w/ me, woulda made you sheriff of bedtown, coulda deputized me. U said my shoes were ‘badass.’ Betty. When: Saturday, March 2, 2013. Where: Woodenville Winery. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919454

I WAS ROBIN AT COMICON

Your name is Mark and we stood in line together outside ECCC until you lost your ticket. We never exchanged numbers but I told you where work. I’m sure you will know how to get in touch with me. When: Friday, March 1, 2013. Where: Emerald City Comicon. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919453

SUNDAY MORNING, BALLARD MCDONALDS

NIKITA ON THE D-LINE You: Reading “Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet.” Me: Reading about Pike Place Market history. You got off the bus before I could get your number. Weekends, reading room, DT library, noon. Read with me? When: Wednesday, February 27, 2013. Where: Lower Queen Anne. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919442

TATTOO’D CAMERA GUY AT KING5 let my friends drag me to a morning show because of Zoe Keating, but mostly I was watching you. You: tattoo on right arm, blue polo, hilarious expressions. Me: Short red hair, grey cap and hoodie. Let’s hang out. When: Thursday, January 24, 2013. Where: King 5. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919441

CAMO JACKET WHOLE FOODS WESTLAKE Sat afternoon at Whole Foods market. I was inside eating with my mom and you sat down across us at one of the outdoor tables. You chatted with a litttle boy and gave him a high five, adorable. Drinks? When: Saturday, February 23, 2013. Where: whole foods market westlake. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919435

DEAD BATTERY AM/PM I saw you at the AM/PM 105th& Aurora jumped your truck but you jumped my interest. Who are you? Did you find a new storage? Can I help? Stopped by the bank but lost you. Contact me, please ! When: Thursday, February 21, 2013. Where: 105th and Aurora. You: Man. Me: Man. #919434

TRADER JOES IN CAP-HILL THURSDAY

CHLOE

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“DANCA BRASIL” FORMING new band. Percussionist, vocalist and instrumentalist get deep into the groove and explore and feed into the delicious world of Brazilian music. www.dancewithdora.com 206-686-1010/dick@dickcarlton.com

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

For Breakfast. You: Tall, Handsome Guy, silver hair, ball cap, light blue jeans. You had pancakes, forgot syrup, went back for it. You left, sat in truck. Like to meet, talk. Same time next Sunday, same place, Breakfast on Me? When: Sunday, March 3, 2013. Where: Ballard McDonalds. You: Man. Me: Man. #919453

HIGH AT THE WHY? (CONCERT)

We met while smoking a cigarette between Astronautilis and Why?’s set. We smoked a bowl on a the bumper of a red pick-up truck and talked.

Your name: Erica. My name: David. I lost you into the crowd. When: Friday, March 1, 2013. Where: Neumo’s. You: Man. Me: Man. #919451

BIKER AT LAND MANAGEMENT OPENING

Helmet in hand, you locked eyes with mine You asked for a cig and said menthol was fine Me:blonde, perched on stoop You:brown haired and charming Coffee sometime? Your smile is disarming When: Friday, March 1, 2013. Where: Land Management Art Space. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919449

CHAIRLIFT LAWYER

We found ourselves playing, “Chairlifthookie,” and relieving a little student stress. See you next time on Elevator. When: Friday, February 22, 2013. Where: Alpental. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919448

R-PLACE 2.28.13

Beautiful girl at the Plum

You: girl with red curly hair, eating at the counter by yourself Me: guy in white shirt and glasses with company I neglected, just too stunned by your beauty worthy of a Boticelli model. How about a second chance?

When: Sunday, March 3, 2013. Where: Plum restaurant. You: Woman. Me: Man.

#919455

AMTRAK FROM SHELBY MT

You: Dark braided hair held around your crown, olive skin, brown eyes, dancing up a storm. Me: Honky with red beard, glasses, Ethiopian posse. You were a great dancer, look-likeyou-could-beat up-any-chick, and had a je-ne-sais-quoi that makes you memorable. Missed-my-chanceto-dance-with-you,-I-want-it-back! When: Thursday, February 28, 2013. Where: R Place. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919447

TEMPORARILY DISTRACTED

Sitting next to you near back door. You reading Kindle, me a book. You alerted me that you were getting off at next stop, same as mine. Wished later that I’d been more attentive. When: Friday, March 1, 2013. Where: #16 bus, around 10:00 a.m.. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919446

HALF PRICE FINGER LINGER

You: coral beret, trenchcoat. Me: burgundy beanie, denim vest. Gave you receipt, transaction complete? Cuz think your fingers lingered... When: Thursday, February 28, 2013. Where: Half Price Cap Hill. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #919445

WE WAVED ACROSS BROADWAY

Not sure if you were looking at me, or a friend, but you caught my eye. You had a red coat, and an incredible smile. We passed at Cherry and Broadway; waved when saw you looking back. Coffee? When: Wednesday, February 27, 2013. Where: Cherry & Broadway. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919443

Pretty girl. Shelby Montana. Youleftyourglovesonthetrain!! I was the smelly drunk hitting on you while you were sleeping. Jk, Im the ugly guy in front of you. 2/25 amtrak. You know this girl in Everett? Tell’r saved her gloves!!! When: Tuesday, February 26, 2013. Where: Amtrak. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919440

COSTCO FLOWER GIRL was checking out flowers when you asked if I needed help. needed help from falling instantly in love with you. Love at first sight may be a myth, but I need a second sighting of you. Dinner? Coffee? When: Sunday, February 24, 2013. Where: Seattle Costco Store. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919438

WE DANCED AT CHERRY you:femmey,brown hair,28yo,school teacher named Christine(?) me:short brown hair,purple tank top,named Dana.We danced for quite a while but you disappeared before I could get your number.Would love to meet up and replace the G&T you spilled ;) When: Saturday, February 23, 2013. Where: Re Bar (Cherry). You: Woman. Me: Woman. #919437

PIKE PLACE FISH FRY Justin, I’m kicking myself for not giving you my number while giving you your spam sliders. Let’s hang and listen to MSTRKRFT together! When: Thursday, November 1, 2012. Where: marination. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919436

#44 LOOKING DAZED & CONFUSED

I stepped off at 8th & Market in a puffy red coat. We smiled as I walked away. You were leaning against the window like you’d had a hard day. Why so tired, beautiful? When: Thursday, February 21, 2013. Where: #44 bus. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919433

OMELETTE GODDESS A goddess delivered my omelette au choix this morning! ‚ÄúRight choice,‚Äù you said, ‚Äúnixing the ketchup and Tabasco.‚Äù If you’re not a goddess, you’re close enough for me. May I treat you to a night out sometime? Goddesses deserve fun! When: Friday, February 22, 2013. Where: Caf © Presse. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919432

VIVIAN MAIER OPENING ON 12TH

I was leaving and you were coming in . You looked familiar but i couldn’t place you, i still can’t place you.We paused and smiled,I was wearing a green coat, you had a beard. How do I know you? When: Friday, February 15, 2013. Where: Vivian maier photo exhibit on 12th. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919431

BIG LITTLE BABY I think you should give me another shot. You, me, a flask of whiskey and the fire at Snoqualmie Pass....what do you say? *wink*

Willie’s Taste of Soul:

A native of Louisiana, restaurant owner Willie Turner brought traditional southern cuisine to the Northwest. For over 15 years, Willie’s Taste of Soul has been serving Seattle fantastic barb-que with all the ﬁxins. Succulent ribs, beef, chicken, and homemade hotlinks are all slow smoked right in back of the restaurant. Try their latest offering; Heaven Sent fried chicken from the original founder of Ezzell’s!

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Paragon Bar and Grill:

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$25 to spend at Paragon Bar and Grill. Your price: $12.50.

SAVAGE LOVE

Lockup BY DAN SAVAGE

My girlfriend and I read your column religiously, and I have you to thank for being comfortable enough with my kinks to tell her about my interest in BDSM. She is very GGG and has indulged all my fantasies and discovered some of her own. Our latest adventure has her locking up my dick in a CB-6000 male chastity device. We want to be aware of any health and safety concerns. There is no shortage of information on hygiene while locked and the effects of infrequent ejaculation. But we’re most concerned about whether restricting erections with a chastity device can cause nerve damage, erectile dysfunction, or other issues. Should I be concerned about having my erections constricted while being teased or wearing it overnight?

(My research tells me that in REM sleep, the typical male will get three to five erections.) We plan on taking off the device for sexual play, which we do about five times a week. Besides worrying about limiting erections, is there any issue with having the device on long-term while soft, in regards to the cock ring that serves as the back end of the device? Are there any negative effects to having this on for a day? A week? A month? I find it odd that there isn’t more information about this provided by manufacturers. From what I’ve read online, a lot of guys stay locked way more long-term than I’m planning, and I hope they have had questions like mine answered before engaging in that.

being both safer and impossible for the wearer to remove without the key.

So let’s say you invest in a hardcore, expensive chastity device that doesn’t rely on potentially tissue-compressing rings to be held in place. What does Dr. King say now? “With no compression from the cock ring, it might be safe for somewhat longer use,” said Dr. King. “Overnight use may still be problematic. Nocturnal/spontaneous erections are hypothesized to exist to encourage blood flow and stretching of the vascular and erectile tissue to keep it healthy and prevent atrophy. Like any other tendon, ligament, or muscle in the body—use it or lose it. I can’t see how preventing these spontaneous nocturnal erections can be healthy. But I can’t prove any long-term damage.”

Of course, if we only listened to doctors, no one would ever eat sugar, smoke cigarettes, or let his girlfriend lock up his cock in “The Grinder,” because something “bad” might happen. (Diabetes, cancer, impotence, respectively.) So I got a second and a third opinion for you, LOCKED.

Dancing Bare

Lock On Cock Kausing Erectile Dysfunction?

There are more sub guys out there blogging about their locked-up cocks than there are sub guys out there whose cocks are locked up. By which I mean to say…

Whether you’re talking about food, politics, or locking a dude’s cock in a male chastity device, LOCKED, you’ll find more anonymous liars online pretending to be experts than you’ll find actual experts. Of course, there are kinky guys out there who’ve had their cocks locked up for extended periods. Male chastity play is a real kink, not some freaky bullshit made up by a high-school kid to gross people out, e.g., “Dirty Sanchez,” “Donkey Punch,” “Michelle Malkin.” But the number of men who enjoy this kind of play is relatively small, and the number of chastity players blogging about their experience is smaller still. So it’s probably best not to take health-and-safety advice from the anonymous chastity players you run across online. How about some health-and-safety advice from an actual board-certified urologist instead?

“I’ve never had a patient ask me about using, or admit to using, a male chastity device,” said Stephen H. King, MD, a urologist in Washington State. “And I cannot find a single reference in the medical/urological literature.”

What would Dr. King advise a patient?

“As a urologist, my primary concern is long-term health and preservation of erectile function ‘down the road,’ so I tend to err on the cautious side, especially in someone young with many good erections ahead of him,” said Dr. King. “So if LOCKED came to my clinic with this question, I’d caution against any long-term or continuous use of such a device, anything more than four to six hours, if it places any significant compression on the tissue directly.”

Some guys who wear male chastity devices for extended periods invest in custom-fitted devices, LOCKED, as a custom device is less likely to put “significant compression on the tissue” than a semi-adjustable, one-size-fitsall, easy-to-break-out-of CB-6000. The device you’ve got is fine for newbies and short-term play, but the expensive chastity devices they sell at steelwerksextreme.com—devices with names like “The Exoskeleton,” “The Torture Puzzle,” and “The Grinder”—have the benefit of

The second opinion is mine: The manufacturers of CB-6000s and other male chastity devices don’t provide information about risks because they’re not required to. Male chastity devices, like all sex toys, are sold as “novelty items.” They’re not medical devices, and the FDA doesn’t regulate them. But so long as your CB-6000 isn’t so tight that it’s cutting off circulation, pinching nerves, or rubbing you raw, and so long as you’re not wearing it for extended periods of time (I wouldn’t wear one overnight, myself), you’ll be fine. There are, after all, thousands of CB-6000s in circulation—it is the most popular male chastity device on the market—and if they were injuring men or rendering them impotent, LOCKED, we’d be hearing from unhappy chastity players and their lawyers. Dr. King backs me up on this. He consulted another doctor, whose specialty is “urology trauma,” and his colleague hadn’t heard of any issues related to chastity devices. “Perhaps that speaks to the relative safety of them,” said Dr. King. “If they were messing up lots of penises, surely we urologists would be the first ones to know.”

The third opinion is from a kinky blogger. Metal served for six years on the board of Gay Male S/M Activists, an organization dedicated to promoting safe, sane, and consensual BDSM, and now runs the popular BDSM site metalbondnyc.com. He’s also a keyholder to several men locked long-term in chastity devices.

“I’m not a doctor,” Metal said, “so I can’t speak to potential long-term physical effects. But I can tell you that many, many men use chastity to enhance their sex lives and some of the most popular entries on my site are about chastity.”

None of the men Metal has locked up—some for months at a time—have had any trouble getting hard once their chastity devices were removed. “When guys are first locked up, they often complain of waking up in the middle of the night with painful erections,” said Metal. “But that usually passes in a week or so. What I would suggest to this couple is to go ahead and experiment. Lock him up for a day or two initially, then a few days, and then maybe work up to a week or more. Rules are good. Maybe he gets unlocked only when he’s chained to the bed. Then right after he comes—if he’s allowed to come—his dick gets locked back up before he’s unchained.” Metal urges you to be cautious, to take it slow, but not to fear chastity play. “Think of chastity as a really, really long form of foreplay,” said Metal.

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter

JOE NEWTON

ACCORDION LESSONS

LauraPaulaWolfe@aol.com (206)328-6552

ANGER MANAGEMENT

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(360)766-6944

Carpet Cleaning Special!

$29.99 per room, min. of 3 areas/rooms. We use the state of the art Rotovac Wand. Visit us online at www.

DoneRiteCarpetCleaning.com or call 24 hours/7 days per week. 206-715-4685

Cannabis Bazaar

A Medical Cannabis Farmer’s Market 21+

Coming in April- located in South Seattle Patient Growers Wanted

Call today: 206-306-4079 thecannabisbazaar@gmail.com

Criminal Appeals & Defense

Former Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Years of Practical Experience (206)390-4140 eplseattlelaw.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

Green Buddha Patient Co-Op now accepting new qualified patients and providers (206) 297-9640 www.greenbuddha.us

Learn how to become a MONEY magnet!

To get your FREE CD, please call: (425) 243-4076

MEN NEEDED FOR PAID UW RESEARCH STUDY

Male social drinkers wanted for a study on male-female interactions. Single men of all ethnic backgrounds aged 21-30 can receive $15/hour for 2-8 hours (up to $120) during an office visit, and up to $75 more for completing two online follow-up surveys. Please call (206) 685-MAST(6278) for more information. Part of a research study at the University of Washington.

Macklemore & Ryan’s old studio recording & sound engineer space.

500sqft all utilities included. North Seattle. $850 per month.

206-718-6974 or trittj@msn.com

New! Increased Compensation for Egg Donors!

Get paid for giving infertile couples the chance to have a baby. Women 21-31 and in good health are encouraged to apply. $5,000 compensation. Email Amy.Smith@integramed.com or call (206)301-5000.

Opportunity! Open-minded? Interested in new inventions? www.insaneinvestments.com

PIANIST AVAILABLE

Clubs, Weddings, Parties 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.

QUANTUM MARTIAL ARTS

2 weeks free trial 964 Denny Way, Seattle. (206) 322-4799

Quantumseattle.org

Reasonable Attorney Representation Divorce,Criminal,DUI and Immigration!! 206-774-0907

www.anuattorney.com

Seattle Cleaning Service is looking for experienced housecleaning (and small commercial) contractors looking for more jobs to slowly fill their schedule. Must have car, cell phone, and pass a conviction background check. Call (206) 782-8220.

No drug addicts please!

may be able to help to remove that requirement. The Meryhew Law Group, PLLC (206)264-1590 www.meryhewlaw.com

Trees Collective / Greenwood

Gred meds, great prices, and a welcoming environment 206-953-9935 1052 Greenwood Ave N

University of Washington Research Study

Department of Medicine Testosterone & Prostate Study Men are needed to participate in a study looking at the effects of testosterone on the prostate gland. This study will be conducted at the University of Washington, Seattle. It involves the use of two investigational drugs and a prostate biopsy. The study involves 9 visits over a period of 5 months.To be eligible you must be: 25-55 years of age, Male, In good health, Not taking medications on a daily basis. Volunteers will be reimbursed for their time and inconvenience for each study visit completed and may be compensated up to $1,000. If interested, call 206-616-1818 (volunteer line) and ask for more information about the PROS-2 study. Stephanie Page, MD, PhD; William Bremner, MD, PhD; John Amory, MD, MPH; Daniel Lin, MD Urban Roots MMJ University District Call Today (206) 527-5154 or www.mygreennow.org