SAVE MONEY WITH WAVEPHONE™. IT’S A VALUE THAT CAN’T BE BEAT.
This straightforward, inviting design works easily with many decorating styles. The thin arms and wood base give it a light and trim look while the feather/down back cushions offer sink-in comfort. Neatly tailored in either a taupe or grey fabric. Other fabrics available by special order. Imported. Exclusively ours. Also available:
SECTIONAL $1099 List $1895
102" x 61" x 31"h.
BY THE NINTH-CENTURY CHINESE GUY WHO DISCOVERED GUNPOWDER
Hi there. I’m the ninth-century Chinese guy who discovered gunpowder, and I’ve come back from the mists of history to ask you all a simple question: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
Seriously. I cannot fucking believe what you all have done with my dumb little discovery. You know who I was when I discovered gunpowder? Just a simple Taoist alchemist, searching for the elixir of life. That’s right—I discovered gunpowder while looking for a cure for death. Talk about irony. On the advice of an old lady who lived next door, I mixed up a bunch of saltpeter with a little charcoal and a little sulfur, and BOOM! (Literally. It wasn’t pretty.) Turns out, saltpeter plus charcoal plus sulfur wasn’t the elixir of life. But some of my neighbors thought it was “cool” and invented fireworks. You know, to make the kids happy on special occasions. Fine by me. I love special occasions as much as the next ancient Taoist alchemist. I didn’t even mind when a couple of jackasses from the next town over thought it’d be funny to fire up some of my discovery in an outhouse while the town bully was taking a dump.
But now? Exploding each other at a marathon? What point, exactly, is that supposed to prove? That you’re anti-fitness? That you’re anti-people? Either way, you got your wish—your bomb packed with ball bearings shattered through a large crowd, separating
Editorial
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Dan Savage
EDITOR Christopher Frizzelle
MANAGING EDITOR
Bethany Jean Clement
NEWS EDITOR Dominic Holden
MUSIC EDITOR Emily Nokes
VISUAL ART EDITOR Jen Graves
PARENTING ISSUES EDITOR Charles Mudede
FILM EDITOR David Schmader
THEATER EDITOR Brendan Kiley
SLOG AND BOOKS EDITOR Paul Constant
ASSOCIATE EDITORS David Schmader, Eli Sanders
STAFF WRITERS David “Goldy” Goldstein, Cienna Madrid, Anna Minard, Dave Segal
STAFF PORNOGRAPHER Kelly O
INTERACTIVE MEDIA EDITOR Megan Seling
COPY CHIEF Gillian Anderson
COPY EDITOR Katie Allison
COLUMNISTS Sherman Alexie, Brittnie Fuller, Sarah Galvin, Jackson Hathorn, Wm.™ Steven Humphrey, Marti Jonjak, Larry Mizell Jr., Trent Moorman, Adrian Ryan
INTERNS Molly Bauer, Kim Fu, Ansel Herz, Jen Kagan, Katie Martin, Kaytlin McIntyre, Molly Morrow, Krishanu Ray, Madeline Reddington, Hallie Santo, Catherine Smith, Ben Steiner
Art & Production
ART DIRECTOR Aaron Huffman
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Erica Tarrant
EDITORIAL DESIGNERS Mike Force, Mary Traverse
SENIOR AD DESIGNER Mary Traverse
AD DESIGNERS Chelcie Blackmun, Joel Schomberg, Shena SmithConnolly
Advertising
SALES ADMINISTRATOR/ONLINE
ADVERTISING MANAGER Sarah Cortes
SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Ben Demar, Katie Phoenix
Crowl, Nick Nelson
Technology
Erin Resso Circulation CIRCULATION MANAGER Kevin Shurtluff CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Paul Kavanagh
PUBLISHER Tim Keck
runners from their limbs and at least three people from their lives, including at least one child. I just can’t fucking believe this shit. And you’ve been doing it for centuries! People exploded at Pashtun weddings. People exploded at shopping malls. People killed in carpet-bombing campaigns. Over time, it’s dawned on me: You’re all fucked. Totally fucked. I can’t believe you people would stoop to that for any reason at all.
Mostly, as the peaceful Taoist who discovered gunpowder, looking at all this with centuries of perspective, I want to tell you this: To live in the world is to participate in the world, and you all are participating in a world of extraordinary viciousness. And I’m not talking about the piddling forms of rhetorical dissention peddled by this here newspaper.
CHARLES MUDEDE writing about a library whose architecture he loathes?
MELODY DATZ writing about some dancing that she feels is “so goddamned boring”? BREE MCKENNA introducing a band called La Luz to a clairvoyant with fairies in her pocket? This is harmless stuff. It’s fluff. Enjoy it while you can. It can almost make you forget about the very real harms out there, many of which I am responsible for. See you on the other side (and sorry, in advance, if you get exploded on your way there).
Comment on Public Editor at THESTRANGER.COM
DAVID SCHMADER
MONDAY, APRIL 8 This week of great and terrible American tropes (dumb celebrities! Soulless scammers! Deadly gun violence!) kicks off in the United Kingdom, where today Margaret Thatcher —Britain’s first female prime minister, who served between 1979 and 1990—died at the age of 87. News of Thatcher’s death inspired a wealth of stolid prose noting her career accomplishments, including waging and winning the Falklands War, privatizing the British economy, and forbidding the mention of homosexuality in British schools. But such stately memorializing was vociferously opposed by the many people who were happy to see Thatcher dead. “Almost everything that’s wrong with Britain today is her legacy,” former mayor of London Ken Livingstone told Sky News. “She created today’s housing crisis, she produced the banking crisis, she created the benefits crisis… every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact she was fundamentally wrong.” By week’s end, the classic Wizard of Oz song “Ding Dong (the Witch Is Dead)”—adopted as a celebratory anthem by Thatcher’s opponents—will hit number two on the British pop-music chart. RIP, Margaret Thatcher.
Over the first 16 years of your life, I had four jobs and was fired from all of them. My evaluations would say things like “The poorest work habits I’ve ever seen.” I felt entitled to cheat, lie, use people, and hurt people (ask your mom) out of what I called anger. But it wasn’t anger. It was self-pity. And its fuel was alcohol. Sound familiar? Dude, it runs in families. Your mother and your sister and I all wish we could force you to get sober, but all of us know it doesn’t work that way. All I can say is that when I finally dumped alcohol, everything fell into place for me. And you’re like me. I only hope it doesn’t take until you’re fifty-fucking-five years old to snap to the fact, because this show is getting hard to watch.
TUESDAY, APRIL 9 In worse news, the week continues in New Jersey, where today a 6-year-old boy was pronounced dead after being shot in the head by a rifl e-wielding 4-year-old . Meanwhile in South Carolina, a 3-year-old boy was pronounced dead after finding a loaded gun in a relative’s apartment and fatally shooting himself. Today’s tragedies follow similar events in Tennessee, where this past weekend a 4-year-old found a loaded gun at a family cookout and fatally shot the wife of a sheriff’s deputy , and a 2-year-old boy nonfatally shot his sleeping mother with a gun he found under her pillow.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 Speaking of stories that make one question humanity’s ability to not suck, the week continues in New York, where today a 21-year-old Long Island woman was indicted on charges of forgery, grand larceny, and a scheme to defraud after allegedly raising tens of thousands of dollars for expensive cancer treatments that were actually just heroin . “Brittany Ozarowski, 21, of Long Island, allegedly scammed donors for at least 13 months,” reports ABC News. “She collected money from donation jars at small businesses and fundraising events created in her name. She allegedly even conned her family and set up a website, brittanyozarowski.com, which claimed she had bone, brain, ovarian, stomach, and thyroid cancer, and that ‘treatments are about $33,000 each day.’” But as Suffolk County district attorney Thomas Spota told reporters: “There was no cancer, there was no chemotherapy, there was no radiation. The only thing that there was, was heroin and more heroin.” (Extra upsetting detail from ABC: “Ozarowski’s father cashed in his 401(k), and her grandmother sold a home in Selden, NY, to pay for treatments, Spota said.”) Tomorrow, Ozarowski will plead not guilty to the charges and be ordered held on $75,000 bail.
THURSDAY, APRIL 11 Nothing happened today, unless you count the 57-year-old Kirkland woman who was charged with stalking Clay Aiken after being found peeking in the windows of the singer’s North Carolina home, or the $33,000 reward being offered to whoever identifies the drive-by shooter of a circus elephant in Mississippi. “Carol, a 39-year-old Asian elephant, was hit in the shoulder in Tupelo by a shot fired from a passing vehicle,” reports Reuters. “The shooting has been deemed a federal offense because the Asian elephant is an endangered species.”
(Carol is fine, or at least as fine as an elephant employed by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus can be.)
FRIDAY, APRIL 12 In worse news, the week continues in Seattle, where today KING 5 News obtained surveillance video capturing the final moments of Mauriceo Bell, the 42-year-old Seattle man who died last Sunday morning in the downtown Metro bus tunnel, where he’d fallen on a moving escalator and was strangled by his clothes. “Surveillance shows him staggering, leaning on the rail for support, and towards the bottom, falling backwards,” reports KING 5. “Bell died at the bottom of
YEAH, YEAH, I get it. I’m the “most adorable widdle kitten-witten” you’ve ever seen, and I’m just so cute you might eat me up and DIE. But do you know what you are? An objectifying piece of SHIT that never stopped to think that I might want to do more with my life than be the subject of “cute animal alert!” posts and inspiring 30-year-old eternally single women to squeal, “AwwwwWWWwwwwWW!”
Well surprise, you human piece of crap! I’m not here for your entertainment! How would YOU feel if a perfect stranger were to pick you up, nuzzle you against their cheek, and say things like “Widdlewiddlekittykitty! Is the widdlewiddlekittykitty lost? Does the widdlewiddlekittykitty want a widdlewiddle milky milky?”
Actually, FUCK YOU and STOP OBJECTIFYING ME. I don’t want your fucking milk, I don’t want to be rubbed against your fucking naked mole rat face, and I especially don’t want to be picked up and molested by a creepy human like YOU. If you did that to a kid, you know what you’d be called? A PEDOPHILE—you fucking PEDOPHILE.
That’s why I’ve created a new advocacy organization called Pets Offended by the Objectification of Pets (POOP), whose goal is to completely eradicate the objectification of cute animals in my lifetime (somewhere between 12 and 17 years, unless I get hit by a car). I invite all my adorable objectified animal brethren—kittens, puppies, otters, bunnies, chipmunks, hedgehogs, koala bears, baby calves, and squirrels—to the first meeting of POOP* where we will devise strategies, implement our plans, and fight together to get the TRUE respect attractive baby animals deserve!
FUCK “ADORABLE”!! TURN CUTE ANIMAL OBJECTIFICATION INTO EMPOWERMENT!
*Snacks include easy-to-nibble carrots and drinking from tiny baby bottles. Later we’ll play with a ball of string, cuddle, and nap. NO PHOTOS, PLEASE!
the escalator, strangled by his own clothing.” Important fact #1: “KING 5 has found that particular escalator was not up-to-date on repairs and maintenance… Checking inspection reports on the state Labor & Industries website, it appears Metro owns and operates 78 escalators and elevators. In almost every case, the reports show required repairs not completed and boxes that would signify the work has been done not checked off. Some are weeks overdue, some months overdue. Some go back to 2011. KING 5 found only four out of 78 appeared to be up to date.” Important fact #2: “Bell was a father of four and ‘a good standup father,’ his younger brother says, despite having a long record of run-ins with the law, mostly drug related,” reports KING 5, acknowledging that police found a half-empty brandy bottle in Bell’s back pocket. “But [Bell’s brother] has a message to anybody jumping to conclusions about Bell’s character or the circumstances of his death. ‘No matter what you say about him, he paid taxes, too. He should have been able to trust his transit system,’ he said. ‘And isn’t that what we’re supposed to do if we’re inebriated? Take the bus home? Take transit?’”
SATURDAY, APRIL 13 Nothing happened today, unless you count NASCAR’s NRA
500 race at Texas Motor Speedway, the “first NRA-branded race in NASCAR’s premier series,” as the Associated Press reports, where a 42-year-old fan celebrated the day by fatally shooting himself in the head on the racetrack’s infield. Congratulations on a successful first event, NASCAR/NRA.
SUNDAY, APRIL 14 Speaking of North American doofuses, the week ends with Justin Bieber, the Canadian-born international pop superstar millionaire teenage pothead (allegedly!), who spent today getting pummeled in cyberspace after spending yesterday visiting Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House. Bieber toured the home where Frank and her family spent two years hiding in the attic from Nazis, then signed the guest book: “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.” For those who don’t know, a “belieber” is a die-hard fan of Justin Bieber, and Justin Bieber is a stupid kid who wrote something stupid in a guest book. And while Bieber’s narcissistic scribble is indeed lamentable, it will be more than made up for by Justin Bieber’s forthcoming years of psychodramatic freak-outs, which should make late-period Michael Jackson look like the Dalai Lama.
Send hot tips to lastdays@thestranger.com and follow me on Twitter @davidschmader.
Alleged stoners blog daily at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG
BY DOMINIC HOLDEN
Attorney General Bob Ferguson knew he was in for a high-profile dispute when he filed a consumer protection lawsuit on April 9 against a florist in Richland, Washington.
As Ferguson acknowledged that afternoon, “We may be in for a lengthy legal battle.”
At the center of the case is Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts, who refused last month to provide flower arrangements for a same-sex wedding because of her “relationship with Jesus,” as she told The Stranger at the time. Stutzman wouldn’t “participate in the wedding,” as she put it, because her Christian faith dictates “that marriage is between a man and a woman.”
But if anything appears more cut-and-dried than Stutzman’s faith, lawyers for the state say, it is a 2006 state law prohibiting discrimination. The lawsuit filed in Benton County alleges that when Stutzman refused to provide goods or services in a place of public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation, she was violating the state’s Civil Rights Act and was, therefore, also violating laws designed to protect consumers. Businesses that sell wedding flowers to opposite-sex couples must provide equal wedding services to gay couples, the state says.
As a deluge of national media coverage is making clear, this case is quickly emerging as the first major test of antidiscrimination protections since Washington State voters legalized same-sex marriage last fall. It is also a rare—if not unprecedented— instance of the government initiating an antidiscrimination suit. With the florist’s lawyers apparently itching for a fight, the case seems poised to reach the state supreme court as a test of religious liberty legal defenses.
And, meanwhile, a second legal battle is in play.
The day after the attorney general filed the suit on behalf of the state, the couple that had been denied flowers for their wedding made Stutzman a loaded offer. Working with their attorneys and the legal powerhouse that is the ACLU of Washington, that couple—Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed—sent a letter to Stutzman saying she has two options: (1) She can vow to never again discriminate in her services for gay people, write an apology letter to be published in the Tri-City Herald, and contribute $5,000 to a local LGBT youth center, or (2) she can be sued by them in a second lawsuit.
keen,” but she deferred to her legal team for comments on the lawsuit.
Snohomish County lawyer JD Bristol is leading a dozen attorneys and six organizations to represent Stutzman. Bristol says he plans to litigate against the state’s lawsuit
a gay wedding. (Although the couple says they don’t want her to participate, Bristol says florists must attend wedding venues to set up the arrangements, thereby constituting participation.) If a Christian is legally required to make bouquets for a gay wedding, Bristol argues, “A Jewish web designer would have to design a website promoting jihad.” Finally, Bristol contends that arranging flowers is an act of personal expression, so any restriction on how and
beliefs, so is discrimination based on sexual orientation unlawful.”
Stutzman’s lawyers have also argued that Attorney General Ferguson has no legal authority to file the lawsuit. Ferguson, of course, disagrees. He is asking the court to bar Stutzman from discriminating in the future and pay $2,000 for any additional violations.
“She runs a business,” Ferguson says, “and you can’t discriminate when running your business, so it is appropriate for the attorney general to bring a consumer protection action.”
Right on cue, religious conservatives began thrashing back. The day after the state filed suit, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) tried to canonize Stutzman by saying on its blog that she’s “being forced out of the public square.” Then the Family Policy Institute of Washington jumped in to decry the seven-year-old antidiscrimination law as “bad then… bad now.” The group is one of many that may support Stutzman’s legal defense. NOM also cited one of my recent blog posts about the couple to make the point that “whenever marriage is redefined, it’s the end of full religious liberty.” Because, you know, any shopkeeper in America should be able to use the Bible as their sole justification for turning away gays. That’s the same way they tried to use the Bible to bar women from voting booths and mixed-race couples from wedding chapels. Even though they lost those fights, this—flowers for gay people— this is the end of all religious liberty.
and is prepared to fight the couple in court, calling their settlement offer “extortion.”
Bristol insists the flower shop “loves their gay customers,” as proven by the fact that they served the couple before the wedding, and
Refusing to sell the flowers “is a disturbing reminder of the history of discrimination and disparate treatment that they and other gay men and women have experienced over the years,” wrote the couple’s lawyers at the firm Hillis, Clark, Martin & Peterson, who added sharply, “More to the point of this letter, your conduct was a violation of Washington law.”
When asked for her reaction this week, Stutzman told me she was feeling “peachy
“Religious beliefs, no matter how sincerely held, may not be used to justify discrimination.”
“now it’s the homosexual groups forcing their values on others.”
Bristol argues that his client was not discriminating against the couple’s sexual orientation—rather, she was exercising her religious conscience by refusing to take part in
where she sells flower arrangements infringes on her First Amendment right to free speech. However, Ingersoll and Freed’s counsel appears to address that argument. “We respect your beliefs and your right to religious freedom,” they write. “However, we live in a diverse country, and religious beliefs, no matter how sincerely held, may not be used to justify discrimination in the public spheres of commerce and governance. Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. Religious beliefs have been invoked to justify denying women the right to vote; to prohibit men and women of different races from getting married; and to support segregation in schools, businesses, and other public places. Just as courts have held that those forms of discrimination are not permitted, even on the basis of sincerely held religious
I’m used to that brand of crazy.
But I wasn’t expecting so many murmurs from other people—gay people and liberal people—who are tsk-tsking the attorney general and the couple. These critics are prolific in social media and comment threads, saying that gay-rights activists are playing into NOM’s hand by making Stutzman a martyr. They say this is the wrong lawsuit over a nonessential transaction.
“This is just becoming the stupidest thing ever,” one commenter wrote on Slog, the Stranger blog. “Why couldn’t they just go to another florist and give the rest of us a heads-up to boycott this joint? You want a written apology? Really? Instead, this crap is going to be dragged to the courts and get all the other antigay nut jobs all worked up about the threat we pose to their freedom of blah blah blah.” And a friend wrote to me: “Let’s not pretend this is in the same ballpark as a segregated lunch counter. This is just piling it on, perpetuating the ‘Christian victim’ meme.”
Stutzman’s lawyer even confirmed he was “getting a lot of support from the gay community. I get a lot of people calling me and saying, ‘We are gay, we believe in gay marriage, but we don’t believe that Barronelle Stutzman should be forced to participate in a event that she doest want to participate in.’”
I’m sorry, but ma-fucking-larkey
The Christian right may have set up that stupid political framing—“We’ll be denied our precious right to discriminate!”—but it doesn’t mean they actually get to discriminate. It also doesn’t mean progressives should roll out the red carpet the first time some hateful Bible thumper turns away gay customers.
Coastal Kitchen:
Step into New Orleans at Coastal Kitchen on Capitol Hill! This quintessential neighborhood fish house is open 8am-Midnight, serving the freshest sustainable and wild seafood and cuisine. Try the Oyster Bar, the Walk of Shame breakfast, and Happy Hour! Monday nights there’s no-cover live jazz in the bar. See you there!
$50 to spend at Coastal Kitchen. Your Price: $25.
Sprocketts Recycled Bicycles specializes in recycled bikes from kids’ to cruisers, and service without a superiority complex. Sprocketts’ bikes are 99% recycled and 1% new (meaning brake cables and inner tubes), and 10% of their profits go to local charities.
One Bicycle Tune-Up ($35 Value) at Sprocketts. Your Price: $17.50.
On the ocean, in the heart of Long Beach, WA, you will find a modern and unique eighty room hotel. This deal is good for a two night stay at Adrift (check-in Sun-Wed), plus some additional perks to make your stay extra special. Click to find out more!
Two night stay with $10 dining credit and ‘bonfire package’ ($198 Value) at Adrift Hotel & Spa. Your Price: $99.
Activists and lawmakers hustled their butts for more than a decade to include sexual orientation in our state’s antidiscrimination statute. We went to the mat to pass gay marriage. What’s the point of those victories if we’re willing to give up what we’ve just won? Who are those laws for if we turn our backs on the people being refused service? We didn’t pass those laws as feel-good keepsakes
because she’s a woman or if a caterer refused to serve food for a community group because it comprises African Americans.
The liberal apologists say the Christian right is going to rally around this case just as they have before—such as the New Mexico photographer sued for refusing to work at a gay wedding or the baker who could have been sued for refusing a cake—but, excuse me, all that rallying around their martyrs doesn’t seem to be hurting gay marriage. Four states voted by popular election for the first time ever in favor of gay marriage last fall. If anything, the more those people complain, the stronger the gay marriage movement seems to become.
for gay-ol’ Seattle, where we don’t need ’em. Those laws are essential for the gays toughing it out in the hateful hinterlands. Failing to sue would set a precedent that the antidiscrimination law—which Senator Cal Anderson fought his entire career to pass, it bears mentioning—isn’t worth shit because the gays are too fucking cowardly to enforce it.
Still, some are mewling that lawsuits aren’t the way to win the war of public opinion, that we should be fighting bigger battles. One of my friends said we should consider public accommodations to be necessities, like hospital visitation or lunch, but not flowers.
But this isn’t about flowers.
It’s about the Christian right seeing how far they can push this envelope. The line between trivial product and necessary service is an impossibly broad gray area. But if you believe same-sex marriage is a right, then consider the products and services that society defines as essential to that wedding. It’s not a seat on the bus or a seat at the lunch counter—but it’s just as important. It is a reception hall, a dress, a tux, a bouquet. We as a society wouldn’t stand idly by if a stockbroker refused to take an investor simply
BY ANNA MINARD
I’m not a seasoned political reporter— especially not covering Olympia. But I am a human being, I live in this state, and I have a uterus that I’d like to keep having some semblance of control over. Furthermore, I have the emotional capacity to empathize with the children of immigrants who want to go to college. So watching state senate majority leader Rodney Tom grinningly dismantle the entire progressive political agenda so he can have the sweetest swivel chair in the senate has been excruciatingly painful. Especially since he always acts like that’s not what he’s doing.
As you may recall from recent coverage, Senator Tom abandoned his Democratic caucus earlier this year along with his buddy Tim Sheldon to form a narrow Republican majority. So Tom, who was elected as a Democrat, is now running the GOP and serving as the pied piper of its obstructionist, conservative agenda. But he pretends that’s not what’s happening—he pretends he’s being bipartisan and that he “supports” things like women’s rights and immigration reform.
No one likes being lied to, Senator Tom. I’m certainly tired of hearing you proudly proclaim your pro-choice position—and touting support you’ve received from pro-choice organizations—and then, when we had a chance to pass the Reproductive Parity Act, watching you hand the bill to a committee led by anti-choice senator Randi Becker who,
When gay marriage was on the ballot, a lot of people said human rights shouldn’t be put up to a vote, because the rights of a gay couple shouldn’t be subject to the whims of public opinion. If you agree with that, you also agree that anti-gay-discrimination laws shouldn’t be put up to a test of public opinion, shouldn’t be subject to the results of a focus group or a poll or a marketing agency, but a test of constitutional fairness and of state law. When this story first broke last month, I wrote that the Washington State Human Rights Commission, which is traditionally the body to bring antidiscrimination cases, should intervene. But the commission has been silent. So I’m glad that the straight people who run the ACLU and our straight attorney general (along with the gay couple) have the guts to take this to a judge. Even if it’s unpopular, it’s the right thing to do.
Attorney General Ferguson put it simply when he was talking about his decision to file the case: “Right now, she’s getting away with it, and that sends the wrong message to all the businesses around the state.”
So bring on the lawsuits.
Things couldn’t get any gayer at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG
predictably, prevented it from coming to a vote. (Thanks for telling me straight-facedly that you knew she’d “hear bills that she might not be the strongest believer in” and that “it’s important for [committee] members to have an open mind.”) Same with the Washington State Dream Act, you turdbag. It also passed the house and then landed in a Republicanled committee so it could die without ever being voted on—and busloads of kids who’d come to speak in support could testify to a panel of empty chairs.
So I’d just like to say this, and get it out of my system, so I can stop saying your fuckstick name over and over again: FUCK YOU, RODNEY TOM.
He pretends he “supports” things like women’s rights. What’s
I’m done either politely or stridently writing blog posts urging you to do anything— even though you could absolutely bring these bills to a vote through parliamentary procedures that we all know you understand. Shit’s not going to happen. I’m so sick of reminding you of senate rules that you damn well know. You’re not going to save anything. Most of the progressive agenda is just a giant, smoldering crater.
Thanks entirely to you.
And now we get to have a big fat budget fight instead of doing anything productive. (See Goldy’s take on the budget on page 9.) And the budget fight is a fucking joke. Why? Because you, King of Weasels, wrecked the senate with your bullshit coup and are blocking as much progress as possible. Thanks a fucking ton, Rod-o.
BY GOLDY
When is a billion dollars not a billion dollars? When it’s the billion dollars in basic education funding that state senate Republicans claim they’ve line-itemed into their proposed 2013–2015 state budget.
In their budget fact sheet, senate Republicans awkwardly claim: “$1 billion toward basic education as defined.” Period. (They cleverly neglect to specify “as defined” by whom or by what.) That’s far short of the $1.4 billion in new K–12 spending the legislature’s Joint Task Force on Education Funding has recommended in order to make courtmandated progress toward fully funding “basic education” as defined in the state supreme court’s landmark McCleary decision.
Arguably, it is also a lie.
Indeed, it is reasonable to argue that less than half of the Republicans’ $1 billion in “new” basic education spending is either new or basic. And even that is only made possible through unsustainable budget tricks and a proposed population-plus-inflation funding formula intended to starve the rest of state government in the name of supporting public schools.
Republicans claim their budget includes $1.5 billion in “additional funding for K–12 education,” $1 billion of that targeted as a down payment on McCleary (a claim the news media has faithfully echoed). But a plain reading of their own public-schools
The Democratic budget isn’t perfect, but it’s a helluva
budget quickly exposes that lie: The line item “Total Policy Changes”—the sum of the proposed reductions and increases in K–12 spending—amounts to only $587 million.
So how do you get $1.5 billion in “additional funding” out of only $587 million in total K–12 policy changes? Obviously, you can’t.
The main trick Republicans use to claim they’ve budgeted more new money toward education (basic and otherwise) than they actually have is to use the wrong number as their starting point. The senate budget proposes $15.1 billion in 2013–2015 K–12 Near General Fund spending, which is indeed $1.5 billion more than the $13.6 billion the state spent in 2011–2013.
But while that’s true in a mathematical sense, from a policy perspective, it is total bullshit. The more meaningful starting point (and the one used to balance out the “Total Policy Changes” line item) is the 2013–2015 “maintenance level” budget—the amount of money necessary to maintain current services at current levels. After all, the court isn’t mandating that the state spend a specific dollar amount, but rather an amount sufficient to amply fund basic education.
At $14.6 billion, the 2013–2015 maintenance level budget costs about a billion dollars more than the same services cost in 2011–2013. Republicans don’t dispute this.
These numbers are drawn straight from their budget proposal.
And when you subtract the senate budget’s maintenance level numbers from the total K–12 funding proposed for 2013–2015, you get $587 million—the exact same amount as the sum of the cuts and increases presented on the “Total Policy Changes” line in the budget.
That’s how much additional resources Republicans propose to invest in K–12 education over the next two years: $587 million. But how much of this represents a net increase in “basic education” funding is harder to discern.
The Republican tally of their McCleary down payment includes $521 million in additional funding for maintenance, supplies, and operating costs (MSOC), $198 million toward student transportation, and $41 million toward phasing in full-day kindergarten to cover 35 percent of kindergarteners. That’s $760 million in legitimate basic education spending, though how much of this is really new is debatable.
To reach their $1 billion claim, senate Republicans also count $240 million in new money for the Learning Assistance Program (LAP), a program that currently falls within McCleary’s definition of basic education. But they earmark the additional LAP money for new reforms specified in Senate Bill 5330 that fall outside the constitutional obligation. In addition, the senate budget rolls tens of millions of dollars of other non-basic programs into LAP (and possibly MSOC), further complicating the calculations.
All these programs may or may not be worthy, but they weren’t recommended by the Joint Task Force, and they don’t qualify as basic education under any definition outside of a GOP press release.
Furthermore, much of this “new” spending, basic or not, is offset by cuts elsewhere in the education budget—most significantly, the proposed permanent repeal of Initiative 732, the oft-suspended, voter-approved measure intended to give automatic cost-of-living pay increases to Washington State schoolteachers. I-732’s repeal is worth $296 million in the 2013–2015 budget. The senate Republicans’ budget fact sheet amazingly promises to “redirect projected dollars to basic education.”
As if there is anything more basic to education than schoolteachers.
While both Governor Jay Inslee’s and the house Democrats’ budgets would once again suspend I-732, they wouldn’t repeal it. And unlike the senate Republicans, house Democrats would put $1.3 billion in new basic education spending toward McCleary, funded not by gimmicks, but by closing or narrowing 15 tax exemptions and temporarily extending two expiring taxes.
The Democratic budget isn’t perfect, but it’s better. And a helluva lot more honest.
• Seattle City Council members are fighting bitterly behind the scenes over the affordable housing provisions in the big rezone of South Lake Union, privately accusing each other of sucking up to developers or affordable-housing advocates during a reelection year. (Right now, developers pay $15.15 per square foot to build extra height without including affordable housing on their premises, but a proposal from council member Sally Clark could bump that up to $18.34, while another proposal from council member Mike O’Brien would bump it up to $21.68.) Meanwhile, Vulcan Real Estate vice president Ada Healey calls the push for these slightly more aggressive affordable housing provisions in South Lake Union “blatantly unfair.”
• A memorial service for longtime Democratic political consultant Blair Butterworth will be held on Sunday, April 21, at 10 a.m. at Town Hall. The eminently quotable Butterworth once quipped of his boss Dixy Lee Ray: “We thought she would be the best governor Washington ever had, or the worst, and we were right.” Butterworth died of cancer on March 29 at age 74.
• Seattle-based Fisher Communications, which owns and operates KOMO TV, KOMO News Radio, and 570 KVI, has agreed to be acquired by Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group for $373
million. Politically right-wing Sinclair is infamous for ordering its stations to run a Swift Boat documentary just weeks before the 2004 presidential election, and for airing a 25-minute infomercial during the 2010 midterm elections that described President Obama as a “socialist” and accused him of raising money from Hamas.
• Beer lovers opposed to the extension of a state tax on beer will gather in Olympia on Friday, April 19, at a rally to “defend Washington beer.” Under the governor’s proposal, the excise tax on small brewers would quadruple, from about $5 a barrel to $20. One small brewer tells The Stranger the tax could “absolutely crush the growing industry of craft beer in Washington.”
• Not only have city officials begun interviewing for a new director of the Office of Professional Accountability, the unit that investigates claims of police officer misconduct, the mayor may appoint one of three candidates within a month, according to sources inside city hall. The candidates include Andrea Brenneke, a civil rights and employment lawyer who has a background in restorative justice; Charles Gaither, a former Los Angeles cop who now serves as director of King County’s Office of Law Enforcement Oversight; and Pierce Murphy, the current ombudsman for the city of Boise, who also served as the president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Police. Whoever heads the OPA winds up not only conducting rigorous reviews of citizen complaints and meting out punishment recommendations, but also—and perhaps most importantly—demonstrating publicly that officer misconduct will be punished.
BY BEN LIVINGSTON
State representative Roger Goodman (D-45) is confident the federal government won’t intervene in Washington State’s legal-pot experiment. At a cannabis industry event last week, the Kirkland legislator said the Feds would have already filed suit if that were their plan. The current lack of a federal response, Goodman said, is “almost a silent message to Washington State: Rock on.”
I followed up with Goodman to investigate his certainty.
“There are very few options that the federal government could pursue that would bring the whole program down,” he told me. Echoing conclusions made in a new report from the federal Congressional Research Service (CRS), which is the policy analysis wing of the Library of Congress, he suggested three possible ways the Feds could mess with legal pot.
Prosecute pot businesses: According to the CRS report, “Criminal prosecutions are perhaps the DOJ’s most potent tool for undercutting the Washington and Colorado laws.” But Goodman noted that such prosecutions wouldn’t take down the legal pot system in Washington, just a few cannabis licensees.
“This is really about politics and not the law.”
Seize private property: The Feds can take any property used to violate the federal Controlled Substances Act—buildings leased to retail pot shops and cannabis production facilities, vehicles used in transport, bank accounts—and they can do it with very little burden of proof. But again, Goodman noted, “That would not be a federal-state challenge, that would be strictly a violation of federal law.” Civil lawsuit: The CRS report also suggests the federal government would not succeed in a legal challenge against the state’s reduced penalties or taxes on marijuana. The Feds are much more likely to succeed in preempting licensing of pot growers and retailers, behavior that seems to actively authorize federal law violations. “I don’t think that is the route they’re going to take,” Goodman concluded, adding that it seems more likely a pot-intolerant citizen might sue to enjoin the state from licensing a cannabis store in their town.
In any case—whoever does or doesn’t get sued—Goodman thinks the law will survive and adapt. “Ultimately, this is really about politics and not the law,” he said. “I don’t think [a lawsuit] is likely to suspend the whole program.”
time I pass it.
You have seen this before. An immigrant is having a drink by himself at a bar. He is enjoying his day off. He works so hard for his money. He is giving himself a little treat by not ordering the cheapest beer. He is dressed in some of his best threads and wears with pride a hat that’s a bit fancy—it’s a safari Panama straw fedora. Suddenly, a group of drunken white men burst into the bar. They are loud and laugh at anything that falls from their mouths. As one of them requests a bucket of beer (it’s party time!) from the bartender, another begins to show great interest in the immigrant’s exotic hat. “Man, that’s really cool,” the white man says to the immigrant. The immigrant smiles weakly and continues drinking. “Can I try it?” asks the white man. But before the immigrant even gives him an answer, the man grabs the hat, puts it on
his own head, and begins to move his neck back and forth like a funky chicken. “Man, I should buy one of these. It’s so cool.”
You have seen this sort of thing before. You have seen it and felt your soul cringe, felt it crinkle like tinfoil. Oh no, he didn’t. Oh yes, he did—and he just won’t stop doing his jive thing with the rim of the hat low on his eyes.
Keep that image in your mind and now think about the Beacon Hill Library. The core inspiration of this 10,800-square-foot building, which was designed by Carlson Architects—a firm that’s no longer with us (it did not survive the Great Recession)—and completed almost a decade ago (2004) at a cost of $5,358,990, was to reflect, capture, and express the diversity of one of the few neighborhoods in Seattle that has a white minority. But what we ended up with was nothing about the community and everything about that
AND YOU SHOULD TOO
A Journey to Seattle’s Heart of Darkness
BY CHARLES MUDEDE
white man jiving in that exotic hat. This is why the building makes my soul crinkle every time I pass it. I know it’s trying to be cool, trying to be dynamic like immigrants, with their spicy foods, sensual rhythms, and colorful ways.
same as this face painting. The buildings are expressions not of a multicultural utopian ideal but the city’s persistent failure to make meaningful political progress in racial and cultural affairs.
Just look at it. Where does one begin with all of this inspiration? The exuberance of the rooflines and roof forms? The quarry stones with the haikus? The suddenness of the tall, modernist windows in the reading nook? The tiles that are seasick green? The tiles that are rocky red? The tiles that are earthy brown? The sheet-metal tiles on the east? The boxy and bulky parts at the front and sides of the building? That scupper that opens its birdlike mouth and ejects rainwater on the courtyard? The “dream ship” that punches a hole through the dramatic awning and tries to soar above the neighborhood? It’s all a bit much, as you can see. Yet this cringe-worthy building was greeted with lots of praise and back-patting. The Seattle Design Commission saw it as “not only a library but also a gathering place, cultural center, landmark, and gateway for Beacon Hill’s diverse population.” Metropolitan Home saw it as one of the 100 most “extraordinary objects in the world of innovative designs.” From Friends of the Seattle Public Library: “Beacon Hill is very diverse, and there are few places where all the different populations can mingle. [This] library is a great place for that.”
On top of the praise, the planners of the ceremony for the library’s opening went out of their way to force the real multiculturalism of the neighborhood onto the phony multiculturalism of the design. For example, after Trio Los Latinos performed their music, the white sculptor from Pullman, Miles Pepper, was scheduled to explain his kinetic boat thing rising from the roof. After that, there was taiko drumming beneath the expressive awning.
What was this really about?
The fact that Beacon Hill is diverse, and the conflicting fact that the power structures in Seattle are not. These two facts generate tension. So it is not implausible that the white architects Donald Carlson, Mark Withrow, and Jim Hanford attempted to resolve it by designing a building that’s all over the place, that has a little of everything, that has no center, no gravity, that is restless, bold, and creative, like powerless immigrants. The exact same thing that’s wrong with the Beacon Hill Branch is wrong with City Hall, which was designed by Peter Bohlin, the man behind Bill Gates’s hightech Xanadu. Both are cut from the same bad intention: inspired multiculturalism. It’s architecture trying to heal. Architecture as a hospital for social ills.
The Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson discusses this sort of thing in his important book The Political Unconscious What he points out is this: In French cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s memoir Tristes Tropiques, there is a chapter about a Brazilian tribe, the Caduveo, that wore elaborate facial paintings that weren’t found, to the same excessive degree, in other neighboring tribes. The reason for the elaborate decorations, concludes LéviStrauss, and Jameson, is the Caduveo have, unlike the other tribes, great and unresolvable social inequalities that result from its rigid hierarchical class structure. So this tribe resorts to elaborate face painting to compensate for the lack of a more meaningful social mechanism that could actually address or ease class tensions. The Beacon Hill Branch and City Hall are much the
Have I gone off the deep end? Am I just being mean and saying things that have no basis in reality? Look at the other library branches that, like the Beacon Hill Branch, were built in the mid ’00s with the $196.4 million that voters approved in 1998, a year Seattle felt it was on top of the world. There is the Montlake Branch, designed by Weinstein A|U, which is functional, orderly, compact, and done with. There’s the Ballard Branch, designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which takes some risks (it has a sweepingly huge green roof), but all of its experimentation is kept in control, all of the parts of the building fit together nicely. Then there’s the Capitol Hill Branch, designed by Johnston Architects and Cutler Anderson Architects, which has no features that can be described as “vibrant” or “vivacious” or “voluptuous.”
It’s a building that’s trying to be cool, trying to be dynamic like immigrants, with their spicy foods, sensual rhythms, and colorful ways.
But let’s think about the Capitol Hill Branch for a moment. Imagine if the architects had decided that it would be a great idea if they tried to capture the “gay culture” of Capitol Hill in the building’s design. Imagine they felt this way because they saw gays as underrepresented and economically disadvantaged in this society. Now, instead of really doing something about these perceived social problems, the architects could have designed a building they thought celebrated homosexuals by saying to the public: “Look at me, I have lots of waterfalls, Doric columns, and unicorn sculptures—I’m so gay.” If you can imagine that soul-crinkling mess, you can see exactly what’s bad about the Beacon Hill Branch. It’s trying ever so hard to be diversity.
Carlson Architects, a firm that got its big break designing Larry’s Markets in the late 1980s, has also done solid and serious local work, such as the addition at the School of Social Work at the University of Washington and the Ballard Lofts. But judging from that work, and the work in their book Carlson Architects: Expanding Northwestern Regionalism, it’s hard to believe they ever took a serious interest in diversity. That was not their thing. What they did well, what dominated their projects, was the industrial aesthetic. And so what did Carlson Architects fill this lack of experience with multiculturalism with? Please be prepared to weep, as this is really the tragedy
of my story: They filled it with quirkiness. The boat in the sky like a weather vane, the upside-down hull-like roof, the scupper that’s shaped like a beak, the poetry on the stones—all of this is quirky.
So what exactly is wrong with quirkiness? First, it has nothing to do with diversity. It is instead that white guy in the bar jiving with the immigrant’s exotic hat, or Donald Rumsfeld with a chopstick balanced on his upper lip, or the wacky people who flash-mob the light rail in their underwear, or whatever enters and exits the mind without a thought. Secondly, even an arrogant warmonger like Rummy can be quirky. It’s fun to be quirky because it means nothing to be quirky. And something that has no meaning is striving for political neutrality. And political neutrality is the desired result of projects funded by those in positions of power, like developers and pro-business associations. Political neutrality promotes the idea or illusion that there are things in capitalist society that are universal, natural, that can be shared or enjoyed by all with no consequences. Those in power want us to believe that such neutral social spaces and practices actually exist within the limits of the market, as this shows that the market is only about itself and is wholly outside of the sphere of daily social struggles. And why do those in power want the public to see the market as neutral? Because if you fail in the market (fail at getting a job, fail with the credit agency, fail at keeping your home), you will have to conclude it has nothing to do with the market but everything to do with you. For the neutral market to reward you, you need to work harder, do more, invest more time and energy. This is what the emptiness of quirkiness provides the system. This is the beak of the scupper opening its mouth. This is also, by the way, the architecture of Frank Gehry.
There is one last thing I have to point out. It’s what you realize when you walk into the Beacon Hill Branch for the first time: It is designed like the hull of a ship. The critic at Architectural Record was impressed by the boldness of this quirky feature: “Resembling an upturned canoe, the building’s roof is composed of two curving sections that jut out from the facade at an off-axis angle from the surrounding streets: forming an instant landmark and beacon for the neighborhood. This hull-like form is echoed by an abstract sculpture of a boat that rises on a pole at one end of the building, puncturing its roof.”
The inside does not look like an “upturned canoe.” The beams and bolts are too huge for the canoe in one’s imagination. What it resembles instead is the inside of an old cargo ship. Now let’s think about this for a moment. What if Carlson had made this building for the black American collection at the Douglass-Truth Branch? Do you get my drift? The interior of a ship might be about adventure, spontaneity, and excitement for one group of people but mean something completely different to another group of people. Such are the dangers of quirkiness. What’s fanciful here is historical there. The first thing I thought when I walked into the Beacon Hill Branch: “Why, I’m in the hull of a slave ship.” But instead of whips, there are books; instead of chains, there are computers; instead of pirates, there are librarians. This is a postmodern heart of darkness for sure.
I do not want to leave this short essay with the positive note of a solution. How do we prevent something like the Beacon Hill Branch from happening again? By being vigilant and keeping in mind that social problems need to be solved by politics and not architecture.
BY BREE MCKENNA
It’s 9:30 p.m. at Cafe Racer in the University District, and I am sitting with the four ladies of La Luz. We are discussing their upcoming tour and waiting for a psychic to show up.
Originally, I was smitten with their Burger Records EP Damp Face, released last September—the artwork and title conjuring girl-group masters like the Crystals, but with a DIY edge (and completely free from the weight of a Phil Spector–ish Svengali hanging over everything). Then a few weeks ago, during their sold-out show at Magma Fest, it hit me that I’m not the only person who has caught on to them. All of Seattle DIY was there that night and was in love, everyone crammed into each other’s space bubbles just to get a listen. If you see La Luz live, I dare you to take in the absolutely dreamy four-part harmonies while watching their synchronized dance steps to “Call Me in the Day” without your knees wobbling like a ’50s teen at a Dion concert.
Frontwoman/guitarist Shana Cleveland shreds through surf lines as effortlessly as if she were brushing her teeth. Marian Li Pino’s minimalist rolling drums shimmer—initially appearing to be a calm river, the undercurrent is constantly moving forward and pulling you along, threatening to submerge you in its catchy, hypnotic pulse. Plus, there’s Abbey Blackwell on bass and Alice Sandahl on keys, easily pulling off the full-on ’60s sound, the kind of sweet surf rock with a touch of melancholy that should be the soundtrack to the slow-dancing-at-prom scene in every teen movie. During the two live shows that I’ve seen La Luz play so far, I’ve heard “This band is totally gonna be famous” or “Dude, they’re gonna be so big” yell-whispered over to me. That got me thinking. The band started practicing together less than a year ago and has so much positive energy surrounding them, pointing toward success. Obviously, there must be a way to speed up the process of finding out how big they are going to be.
La Luz means “light” or “enlightenment” in Spanish. So, naturally, I had the idea of taking the band to a fortune-teller to find out a little more about what was in their future.
La Luz—most of whom met while playing in other bands like the Pica Beats and the Curious Mystery—have accomplished quite a bit in the nine months or so that they’ve been a band, but they’re just getting started. Cleveland ticked off a few upcoming releases while we were sitting there in Cafe Racer’s OBAMA (Official Bad Art Museum of Art) room, waiting.
“We have a 7-inch coming out this month on Water Wing, an offshoot of Mississippi Records,” she says. “And as soon as we get back from this tour, we’re recording a full-length album.”
And have you seen their new shirts? “LUZER” is screened across the front, an homage to old Sub Pop shirts from the days of yore (er, grunge). The four of them list groups like the Marvelettes and the Ronettes as influences, but by using their solid songwriting skills and
killer technical abilities, they avoid falling into the same tired, fuzzed-out reverb rut of every other punk band that has tried to claim that pedigree recently. Their current foothold may be rooted in the psych-pop reverb revival scene, but their unique edge lies in their ability to create pastoral, hazy dream songs with simple, perfect harmonies and a sprinkle of ethereal twee. The beginning of “Call Me in the Day” brings to mind the Shirelles’ “Baby It’s You.” Not derivative, mind you, but a subconscious reference point: similar genetics
studio—it’s like a one-bedroom apartment, but it’s attached to the laundry room and they use the bedroom for a recording studio. And the bed is in the dining area. It’s just a small room, but Johnny is really masterful… obsessive about getting the right sounds.”
“Do you believe in psychics?” I ask. “This psychic says she’s done a band reading successfully before.”
There is a thoughtful pause.
“I’d say probably not… but I would be tricked. Easily tricked,” explains Li Pino. “I wonder if it’s gonna be hard for her to read the band’s future. I feel like we are open, though. We were in North Carolina, and some guy came up to me on the street—I had a
During the two live shows that I’ve seen La Luz play so far, I’ve heard “This band is totally gonna be famous” or “Dude, they’re gonna be so big” yell-whispered over to me.
but a different identity.
“What’s that on your tape about it being recorded in a trailer park in Bothell?” I ask, referencing the recording notes on their cassette.
“Johnny [Goss] from the Pica Beats recorded us,” Cleveland says. “He lives in a trailer park in Bothell and has a really cool recording
drum key around my neck, and he asked me if I was a hypnotist. He was obsessed with hypnotism and told me he writes scripts. He wanted to send me some of his scripts, but I couldn’t gauge if he was crazy, so I gave him the band’s e-mail address. He sent at least five e-mails. One script was titled Bald Girls Could Hypnotize and there were all these
references to spaghetti… but I have been thinking about spaghetti so much lately! Maybe he did hypnotize me and I didn’t even know it!” She laughs.
I suggest that maybe they should ask the psychic about that.
I started my hunt for an appropriate clairvoyant who could meet us in the University District for a late-night divination after La Luz were done with a practice. I searched Yelp. Turns out, most of the psychics on Yelp have pretty positive ratings—I expected the reviews to be a little more like crabby restaurant reviews, with complaints about bad romance guidance instead of soggy fries or whatever. The first psychic I called was a complete grouch and yelled at me about how she couldn’t do a reading for a whole band, explaining that they would have to come in one-by-one to get their palms read, and then she could MAYBE figure out the band’s dynamic. The next two psychics I called seemed too down-to-earth and practical, which felt unacceptable. But then I remembered that about a year ago, my friend and I had chatted with a tarot reader in line at Sureshot Espresso who insisted we consult the barista if we had any doubts about her skills and then pointed to her distinctive yellow flyer with an illustration of her face on it pinned to the bulletin board. On a whim, I called up Sureshot and convinced a confused barista to give me
“that one psychic with the cartoon head’s phone number” off the flyer on the wall.
The psychic’s name is Rajket. She is an experienced medium/psychic/tarot reader with additional experience as a pet psychic. She was enthusiastic about reading a band— on the phone, she explained to me that she hadn’t done a reading for a band since she “was contacted by the four ladies of the group Jack Off Jill” (Marilyn Manson’s cotouring buddies of the 1990s). The band had wanted answers on what direction they would go. (Rajket has a policy not to disclose the specifics of other cases she works on, but she felt confident that her reading really shaped Jack Off Jill’s direction.)
Middle-aged and charismatic, Rajket shows up and introduces herself in a pleasant Julia Child falsetto, announcing that she is ready to give the band several tarot decks to choose from. She’s draped herself in the earth-toned garb that every psychic worth her salt should be costumed in. She casts her eyes down at the cards behind her sensible glasses and under a cascade of graying dreadlocks. The band members sit very close to each other, looking both amused and skeptical, nervously side-glancing at each other as Rajket begins. “We’re gonna approach this like I approach a couple’s reading,” Rajket says, and gives them a deck to work with. She also announces that, although she doesn’t go to shows much anymore, she listens to KEXP and will keep an ear out.
“I’ll call in a request sometime!” Rajket says. “What are your influences? Like, Tegan and Sara or…?”
“Early rock ’n’ roll.”
Rajket presses further, “Early as in…?”
“The first rock ’n ’roll, like 1950s and ’60s.” “Oh. Rockabilly?”
“More like surf: Link Wray, the Ronettes, the Ventures.”
“I have three decks and my fairies for fairy readings,” Rajket continues, plopping a few clumps of what look like moss and dried-up weeds onto the table, clumps that are apparently each a fairy. “With the crystal ball, you observe time differently, it’s more like an egg cut into slices than a linear thing.
her predictions for what the stars may have in store for La Luz:
• The band will play a festival somewhere in Seattle or Bellingham this summer. The headliner will back out of a top-billing spot, and La Luz will take it over.
• The band will be together for an estimated seven years.
• Sandahl will leave the band prematurely to pursue a Tori Amos–like solo project.
• The band will become involved in theater, eventually writing a musical.
• Someone will be having relationship difficulties on upcoming tours.
• Cleveland will not receive much support from her family with regard to her musical career. She’ll drift away from music, and in 10 years will be “writing a book… a series of books, actually.”
• La Luz will become involved with an established male band on the West Coast (“I’m leaning toward someone like Wilco”) that will collaborate on a project with them. The two bands will create a masterpiece together, which will help La Luz grow as musicians.
• Two band members will experience tension on the road—they will have to get over it.
• La Luz will be working with a small local company this year on their full-length record and be in Europe in the next year.
• This year, a local venue will underpay the band several times—they will never play there again after feeling mistreated.
• Two of them will have dreams that will lead to their signature song, the “crown jewel” of the band’s career, which is yet to be written.
Rajket directs a few thoughts to Cleveland specifically: “The dark side pushes you, and you push back. I don’t think fame will swallow you. I don’t think it will swallow any of you. You’ll fight yourselves and your insecurities… you don’t wanna be Lindsay Lohan, train-wreck child.”
And she has some more cosmic advice for all of them: “Before you book important concerts, it’s essential to make sure that the date falls under good stars.”
Hmm. It’s a little underwhelming, I have to say. There are no cheesy horror-movie
Rajket plops a few clumps of what look like moss and dried-up weeds onto the table, clumps that are apparently each a fairy.
We don’t have the crystal ball to work with, but the fairies work just as well to get to the bottom of things. I’ve been doing readings and working with fairies pretty much all my life, and I have made little parts of my home welcome to them,” Rajket explains, pushing back her tea-colored earth-goddess sleeves. “The fairies started to want to join me and help me do readings. They work quite well.”
Looking deeply into the deck the band chooses, she begins, “You have a following in the area. Small audiences, but loyal. I feel like one of you, YOU,” Rajket says, pointing to a wide-eyed Blackwell, then shifting her pointer finger to Sandahl and saying, “No, YOU. I feel like there was a relationship recently and there are still questions… let’s just put it this way, if you’re worried about traveling, will that person still be there? Will you still be able to keep the relationship alive and be in the band?”
She flips a card and then points to Cleveland and Li Pino. “And YOU TWO will be experiencing creative tension on and off the road for the next few years.”
At times during the reading, Rajket’s thoughts shift out of psychic reading and into straight-up band advice. But here are a few of
psychic predictions (possession via Ouija, ominous death foreshadowing, etc.) and no past-life epiphanies (reincarnation by way of that Shangri-Las backup singer who died in 1970, or possibly Lead Belly). But the positive future forecast, at the very least, leaves the band anticipating the inevitable good times, good vibes, and good tunes. Is any of it true? Will anyone take off on a solo career? Will they surprise-headline a NW festival this summer and collaborate on a masterpiece with Wilco? The only thing that is for certain is Rajket’s conviction. It’s there in her face as she stares at La Luz, delivering her final words to them: “I could see you going for that star quality, unscrewing the door off the hinges and throwing all the shackles off. And you’ll get fans asking you why you aren’t doing what they want you to, but you’ll do it anyway. And this is the year we will listen.”
Yeah, okay, I can get behind a prophecy like that.
La Luz play Thurs April 25 at Neumos with the Thermals and Wimps.
BY MELODY DATZ
In 2003, I took my best friend to see Swan Lake at Pacific Northwest Ballet. During the second act, she suddenly developed such a bad case of restless leg syndrome that we had to leave during intermission. The RLS never resurfaced. In 2007, I took a very sexy artist boyfriend to see the same staging of Swan Lake, thinking he’d be impressed by Ming Cho Lee’s slyly discombobulating sets. The artist-boyfriend texted his way through the first act and then suggested in a loud whisper that we go back to the U-District for a drink. Over the past several years, I’ve taken four nondancers to see Swan Lake, and not a single one has made it through the whole thing.
The choreography has some major challenges, including a series of 32 fouettés a ballet step that I won’t even try to describe here other than to say it’s a single-footed turn that you couldn’t complete once in your wildest, wettest Baryshnikov fantasies—and 24 corps de ballet members standing stockstill with mournful expressions for minutes on end. Try that for 30 seconds without getting the giggles or scratching your butt. Swan Lake is like a marathon for ballet dancers. Performing it earns major street cred, but watching it can be a major drag.
Swan Lake Pacific Northwest Ballet at McCaw Hall
Through April 21
And now that’s what those people think dance performance is—a long, drawn-out, convoluted story communicated through archaic and repetitive aesthetics, interspersed with overpriced, mediocre glasses of pinot gris and long lines for the bathroom. For most ballet virgins, Swan Lake is regarded as the ballet—it’s the one they’ve heard of, the one Hollywood makes movies about, the one people flock to, and the one companies like PNB serially produce. When people want to give ballet a try, that’s what they tend to go see.
And that’s a problem—I may have screwed those four friends out of ever wanting to see dance again. Die-hard dance fans (like me) enjoy Swan Lake for other reasons. In some ways, it is a pinnacle of dance athleticism. But it is undeniably tedious, older than dirt, and pretty goddamned boring.
Swan Lake premiered in 1877. The story is simplistic and sexist, but, like traveling exhibits of the French impressionists and seasonal performances of Handel’s Messiah, it’s been filling arts palaces around the world for decades. This is weird—cities like Seattle, New York, Boise, and Paris are oozing amazing talent and brilliant new choreographers (Seattle’s Amy O’Neal and Jason Ohlberg, Boise’s Trey McIntyre) who meld tradition with invention and have thrilling new styles and ideas. And yet, for the eleventh time in the last three decades, PNB will pack a performance hall with spectators paying good money to see a four-act, three-hour ballet about cursed love, royal duty, and zzzzzz… I loathe Swan Lake for the damage it’s done to popular perceptions of dance, but I’ll never tell someone not to go see it. From a dancer’s perspective (I have a deep, dark past as a bona fide bunhead), it’s fucking badass. The ballerina has to play two characters: One is sweet and passive (the heroine!); the other is an evil whore who lies and bullies her way into a private party to get in the pants of the rich prince (the bitch!). To alternately and convincingly pull off those two roles over the course of four acts requires a degree of artistic maturity that many professionals never achieve.
To someone who’s not deeply familiar with classical ballet, its choreography (including the boner-inducing fouettés) hasn’t changed much since the premiere. This isn’t random— classical ballets are frequently based on the choreography of the masters who originally set them (in this case, the Rus-
eyeballs or for men to jump 10 feet off the ground. But ballet technique, like the bodies that perform it, evolves, and the choreography must be able to show off all the expected tricks. That choreographic revision has to be done well or it looks like shit.
The Russell/Stowell team know what they’re doing when it comes to perfecting classical ballet for the modern stage—in an interview last week, Stowell claimed their 1981 staging of Swan Lake brought PNB into the national spotlight—and they both trained and performed under New York City Ballet master George Balanchine, who is widely credited with establishing and shaping American ballet culture as we know it today. However, there’s a good amount of work in the Russell/Stowell repertoire that is far sexier—Carmina Burana, for example—so why does Swan Lake remain such a blockbuster year after year? According to
shows sell between 3,000 and 5,000 tickets, while Swan Lake sells upwards of 20,000, including subscriber attendance—it’s not raking in dough. (Tucker added the company hopes to make $850,000 on this year’s show just to break even.)
Do people simply want to know what to expect, so they save their art-consumer dollars for Swan Lake, Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, and Monet, no matter how predictable and drab they might be? Is it the magic of Tchaikovsky’s score? His music is pleasant and comforting, no doubt—Tchaikovsky’s scores were made for dancing, and he had specific moods and movements in mind, so there is a built-in fluidity from sound to movement that makes for a natural (Boise-based choreographer Trey McIntyre would say “lazy”) flow of choreography. Or is it just the romantic legends behind the story, including one in which Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake after visiting the castles of swan-obsessed Crazy King Ludwig, who went “swan hunting” at night with a boyfriend and wound up mysteriously dead in a murky German lake?
Maybe people just love the familiar. It’s why we buy DVDs of our favorite movies, see our favorite bands when they play in town—we love what we love, and there’s nothing much wrong with that. Right? Maybe? Tucker Cholvin, a young college student who became entranced with PNB productions through Teen Tix (a Seattle initiative to make arts events affordable for teenagers), explained his multiple high-school trips to Swan Lake by drawing lines between his love of the music (“It’s timeless,” he said, “it’s awesome. It’s kind of written on the inside of my skull!”) and his mother’s habit of playing it every time she cleaned the house. But Cholvin used this love of Swan Lake to propel his exploration of other dance, and he wasn’t the be-all and end-all. Cholvin likens the popularity to the metaphor of the shitty cupcake: People will line up around the block for a lame, dry-ass cupcake from a bakery work, while down the street, killer cupcakes tion to proclaim their deliciousness. Until the public steps out of its comfort zone a little bit,
I’ve taken four nondancers to see Swan Lake, and not a single one has made it through the whole thing. I may have screwed those four friends out of ever wanting to see dance again.
Seattle is a young city with a lot of rich young people, and organizations like PNB have a responsibility to push the dance-going public to see new things and support newer, progressive choreographers. Sometimes they do, with world premieres and even more contemporary work since artistic directors Stowell and Russell handed the reins over to national dance star Peter Boal. But some of us—and our dance-virgin friends—can feel a little cranky when we see that PR machine
CHOW/DRINKING/SPORTS
Preseason rankings put the Mariners at number 14—that is, Safeco Field has the 14th most expensive hot dog and a beer at an MLB stadium, with a price tag of $10.50, according to Seattlepi.com. Since you’ve already got your wallet open at the Safe, you might as well go to the brand-new Edgar’s Cantina, offering an amazing view into the bull pen and tasty $9 entrée-sized tortas/tacos/nachos concepted by Ethan Stowell (try the Painted Hills carne asada), plus even tastier $12.50 margaritas created by Rob Roy’s Anu Apte (made with Mr. Martinez’s own tequila). Tonight: the M’s versus the Tigers. (Edgar’s Cantina, Safeco Field, mariners.com, home game days) BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
FILM/STAGE
Best known for Low Life, his book-length portrait of Manhattan’s underclass in the early 20th century, Luc Sante is the Belgian-born polymath who’s spent the past 30 years writing about social history and art. This week at Northwest Film Forum, Sante gives a live performance that explores his twin obsessions onscreen, mapping the underbelly of Paris via clips from such films as Maurice Cam’s Métropolitain and Jules Dassin’s Rififi and providing running commentary throughout. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, nwfilmforum .org, 8 pm, $15, April 18–20) DAVID SCHMADER
Intangibility comes in many forms. It’s the force holding the thousands of straight pins in their cube formation in a sculpture by Tara Donovan. It’s the jostles and jerks of the subway that directed William Anastasi’s hand in making Untitled (Subway Drawings). It’s the strobe lights Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer shot into the darkened galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: There’s antiquity, now it’s gone. All these, plus pieces that involve hypnosis, infidelity, fish, and staring, are here, and nowhere. (Henry Art Gallery, 15th Ave NE and NE 41st St, henryart.org, 11 am–9 pm, $10 suggested, through May 5) JEN GRAVES
Lucy Knisley’s newest book is titled Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, and it’s a combination of foodrelated stories and recipes written out in cartoon form (which is a genius idea). If you haven’t read Knisley’s comics before, this is a great entry point to her work; unlike most autobio comics, which are scratchy, black-and-white affairs, her works are in glorious full color, and her stylish, detailed art will practically suck the eyes from your sockets Tonight, Knisley will read from and sign her book, and she’ll offer samples of recipes from Relish (Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, 1201 S Vale St, fantagraphics.com, 7 pm, free) PAUL CONSTANT
Singer-songwriter-multicollaborator Mirah is an extraordinarily layered artist—happy to try any genre once, equally lovely when acoustic or electric, able to be both sweet and fierce in the same wispy, whispery line. It’s hard to imagine a better candidate for Fremont Abbey’s CATHEDRALS series, where they ask artists to put together sets with the unique acoustics of an “epic old unfinished cathedral” in mind. She’s playing in between Shenandoah Davis and the Moondoggies, and you are cautioned in advance to respect the “very very pin-drop quiet” of the cathedral space. (Saint Mark’s Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave E, cathedrals5.bpt.me, 8 pm, $15, all ages) ANNA MINARD
STAGE Created by Grady West—winner of the 2012 Stranger Genius Award for theater—Dina Martina is the high-art, lowbrow drag queen who’s spent the past year knocking ’em dead from London to LA. Now she’s back in Seattle with an all-new show
Not everyone loves Dina Martina, but the many, many who do love her, do so with an unmatched passion. If you’ve somehow never experienced her mind-bending magic, do yourself a favor and go. (Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, rebarseattle.com, 2 pm, $20 adv/$25 DOS, 21+, through May 5) DAVID SCHMADER
Ridiculous album covers! Even more ridiculous lyrics! Brothers Ron and Russell Mael began their glam-camp new-wave odyssey more than four decades (!) ago, forming Sparks—one of the consistently catchiest wackadoo avant-pop duos ever. Sometimes the best thing about Sparks is Russell’s wild stage antics and gaudy outfits, not to mention his incredible space-falsetto. Other times, the best thing about Sparks is Ron’s deadpan grimace/smirk at the keyboards, or that mustache. If you’ve been looking for a reason to bust out a silk cape and your freakiest hairdo, tonight’s the night. (Neptune, 1303 NE 45th St, stgpresents.org, 8 pm, $31.50 adv/$35 DOS, all ages) EMILY NOKES
CHOW
La Toscanella’s large pastry case (aka heaven) is filled with colorful fruit tarts, fat slices of custardy rice pie, a variety of seasonal cheesecakes, short stacks of delicate mousse, and at least a dozen different kinds of Italian cookies at any given time, and everything I’ve sampled has been incredible. They also serve breakfast (a variety of egg dishes, mostly) all day, as well as rotating pasta specials for lunch and dinner, but they certainly won’t judge you if you skip straight to the sugar fix. (La Toscanella Bakery & Paninoteca, 116 Westlake Ave N, 682-1044, 6:30 am–6 pm) MEGAN SELING
GREGORY BURKE
julie ALEXANDER
sharon
byron
bonnie BIGGS
d.w. BURNAM
robert CAMPBELL
jaq CHARTIER
carl CHEW
claire COWIE
anne FOCKE
klara GLOSOVA
cable GRIFFITH
francisco GUERRERO
todd JANNAUSCH
shaun KARDINAL carolyn LAW
margie LIVINGSTON
greg LUNDGREN
norman LUNDIN
amanda MANITACH
alan MASKIN ries NIEMI NKO
matthew OFFENBACHER
d.k. PAN
mary ann PETERS PUNCH GALLERY bill RITCHIE
serrah RUSSELL norie SATO
rafael SOLDI
sierra STINSON
michael VAN HORN joey VELTKAMP jamie WALKER
robert YODER
Saturday, April 27, 2–3 pm
Peter C. Sutton, Susan E. Lynch
Executive Director of the Bruce Museum, explores the practices of Dutch master painters in the 17th century, focusing on the artists and works featured in Seattle Art Museum’s special exhibition Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London
by KCTS Channel 9.
BY ERIN LANGNER
Qimages of Weems at various points in a relationship. Each moment, despite its delicate stillness as a photograph, is also complicated enough to feel like a scene in a film. Merging inner monologues with cultural references that include familiar song lyrics, racist jokes, and childhood sayings, the story fluctuates between domestic challenges and strings of esoteric musings:
He wasn’t working and she was, but ends meeting, ha! She felt like she was walking through a storm, like she was in a lonesome graveyard, like she had many rivers to cross, like making a way out of no way was her fate in life…
In the images, Weems’s character portrays expressions of affection, agony, weariness, ecstasy, and directness, ending with the last word and a game of solitaire. Unlike Django, her motivations are those of a fully formed person—complicated by the history and relationships embedded within the things we say and do. As viewers, we have a physical seat at Weems’s table through the camera’s position. We observe from a strange vantage somewhere between the voyeur and the houseguest, immersed in densely layered details rather than a dramatic narrative. The stories of the kitchen table cover common ground but together construct an honest, flawed female lead who confronts us with her point of view, without hesitation.
• We here at The Stranger have been loving Philip Kennicott for years, and finally the East Coast’s most original cultural critic has won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism His title is chief art critic of the Washington Post, but he’s not an “art critic” in any limited sense of the term. His writing is unexpected and strange, and often includes examinations of material that never considered itself art—newspaper images of grisly deaths, for instance. Congratulations on an award heartily earned, and thanks to the Post for continuing to publish an uncategorizable writer.
• Highlights from Ballard’s New York Fashion Academy’s 9th Annual Fashion Show: Marcella Kelly’s bolo ties for ladies; Melody Hirsch’s high-waist, chevronseam, tiered-pocket short shorts; and Marisa Rockett’s stretch-vinyl cigarette pants, pairing the exceedingly tight with the exceedingly white. Erin Weathers accessorized her intricate corset ensembles with deer antlers, coral-pink tassels, metal swing-latch closures, and eyebrows of sparkling gold.
• It’s a quiet fear that resides in the heart of every repertory-cinema-goer: Will beloved films of yesteryear be reduced to relics from a bygone age that only draw ironic chuckles? At Central Cinema’s recent engagement of the 1952 classic Singin’ in the Rain, the period magic was retained in full, with each major song-anddance number—including Gene Kelly’s rain dance, Donald O’Connor’s “Make ’Em Laugh,” and the duo’s “Moses Supposes”— followed by spontaneous applause from the generation-spanning audience.
Portland Art Museum Through May 19 COURTESY OF PORTLAND ART MUSEUM CARRIE MAE WEEMS (DETAIL) Not content to be seen but not heard.
uentin Tarantino’s Django doesn’t have much to say. “Django. The ‘d’ is silent,” is the only notable line spoken by the title character of Django Unchained in the entire film. Tarantino notoriously crafts verbal icons through conversation—say “Royale with cheese” just the right way, almost 20 years after Pulp Fiction’s release, and the distinctly American brand of naiveté exhumed by Vincent Vega still comes to mind. Despite the director’s aim to create a black western hero through Django Unchained, German bounty hunter Dr. Schultz speaks the film’s memorable words, including the pivotal “Sorry, I couldn’t resist”; Django relies on wrought expressions and sunglassed glares, leaving the conversation to everyone around him. Westerns are about stories, and while Django Unchained ambitiously uses its
genre to tell Django’s story, his incompleteness as a character means his potential as a memorable cinematic hero is never realized. The movie strongly conveys the idea of revenge while weakly absolving the absence of a black western antihero in movie history. Underrepresentation in works of art is never simple to address, but Django’s underdeveloped personality highlights Tarantino’s failure to fully execute the task he began. Photographer and video artist Carrie Mae Weems creates work much in the same vein of presenting the unrepresented. In contrast to Django, her retrospective of more than 200 works at the Portland Art Museum attests to the power of a story fully told.
REVIEW
Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video
Three Decades of Photography and Video is worth seeing, if only to experience Weems’s two strongest photographic series—The Kitchen Table Series (1990) and From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–96)— in full. Standing alone in their own galleries, these works naturally read like expanded books, splayed open and stretched into single threads around the walls, so we cannot look away. Kitchen Table Series in particular benefits from being seen as a complete series of 14 scenes, as opposed to one or two in isolation.
Inspired by “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay on Hollywood’s consistent objectification of women, Weems’s square gelatin silver prints and her accompanying text panels present
Weems’s more recent photographic series Slow Fade to Black (2010–11) reverses the method of The Kitchen Table Series, removing details instead of complicating them, to reveal a missing history. The artist obscures publicity photos of 14 famous African American female performers, most to the brink of unrecognizability, referencing their diminished presence in cultural memory over time. While initially it seemed contrived to envision a time when Billie Holiday and Nina Simone would be forgotten, the fading icons evoked a strange impulse I once had to purchase every commemorative magazine that came out when Michael Jackson died. Despite the fact that he was famous enough to crash the entire internet with his passing, I had an inexplicable feeling that he would eventually be forgotten. Standing before Weems’s fading wall of fame, this concern didn’t seem as far-fetched, given how easily Jackson’s role in changing the way American popular culture regards black musicians was forgotten as soon as he went off the deep end in the ’90s.
As viewers, we are somewhere between the voyeur and the houseguest.
Slow Fade to Black’s rosy, blurring forms project an air of sentimentality tempered by a solemnness, similar to the one that follows the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” montage, which never fails to be genuinely sad and also never fails to overlook seemingly unforgettable stars outside the mainstream.
Slow Fade to Black visualizes the fickleness of a cultural memory that often sidesteps questions of race and class, creating an estranged history that is inaccurate and incomplete. Carrie Mae Weems creates objects with voices and stories so moving that they refuse to fade into silence; Django is most troubling because his silence parallels the way iconic people of color are so often left out of historical accounts and references, when the film’s intention was to contribute a new icon to cultural consciousness. We are fortunate Carrie Mae Weems visualizes and recounts so much that has been left out, but
• The opening of Polari at True Love Gallery last Thursday night was packed with fun-havers making the most of ’Mo-Wave, Seattle’s great new queer music-and-arts festival. The art, varied in quality and frequently wang-based, merits further exploration without the distractions of a DJ and free beer—Joey Veltkamp, Ilvs Strauss, David Belisle, C. Davida Ingram, and The Stranger’s own Kelly O (balls!) all have work here, among many others. The show is up through May 4.
• On Earth Day this Monday, April 22, get your green self to the opening of the supposedly greenest building in the world: the Bullitt Center at 1501 East Madison Street. Public tours start at noon, with free bike valet service from Bike Works, free bike repair from Polkadot Jersey, activities from EarthCorps, Central Co-op, and the International Living Future Institute, and music spun by Hollow Earth Radio. If you use the restroom: Human waste in this building gets stored in the basement, treated for viruses and bacteria, transformed into fertilizer, and transported away to forests. Take a green shit!
• On Monday, Granta announced its 20 Best of Young British Novelists list, an impressive array of talent including a little-known author named Zadie Smith Seattle will get a chance to meet two of the young’uns in person on Wednesday, April 24, when Granta editor John Freeman brings Nadifa Mohamed and Ross Raisin to the Central Library for a free reading and conversation.
it is up to the rest of us to continue her pursuit in a way that does not fade over time.
ART
photographer “who prefers to remain anonymous,” but who “imagined that Tony Danza was a photographer wannabe, a struggling artist, so to speak.” The tiny black-and-white contact prints are of creepy toys and dolls. There is a tiny biography of the artist that tells Tony Danza’s real-life story, including his real name—Anthony Iadanza—and his preTaxi 1970s professional boxing career. Whoa.
My Accidental Visit to a Mini Museum Involving Tony Danza BY
ANNA MINARD
“The chair and rug were added by mysterious fans of the show,” says Pallesen, but a signature book that originally accompanied the work “has gone ‘missing.’ Perhaps swept up by the janitor.”
Most importantly, Pallesen announces: “Photo Center Northwest is accepting mini proposals for the space. The running wall space is 96 inches.”
Iwent with a posse to Photographic Center Northwest recently, and after drifting through the exhibit, I headed upstairs to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, I came upon a crowd of the butts of my friends. The group was all crouched down on the floor, leaning into a strange little nook between the edge of the stairs and the wall of the landing. It’s a funny in-between spot, that nook, like an architectural accident. About a foot wide and maybe two feet deep, it contained a perfect mini museum—seven tiny framed photographs, each about an inch-by-inch square, hung a couple inches off the ground, complete with wall text. In the middle of the mini space lay a tiny rug, upon which sat a tiny chair, tiny table, tiny lamp.
I understood the crouching immediately. To really see this mini museum, you have to get right down on the floor. You can shove your giant human head only so far inside, but the way it forces you to behave immodestly is brilliant. Here we all were with dusty knees, huddled and craning, captivated. Suddenly, I found my perception of the whole building Alice in Wonderland–ed. I wanted to sit in the chair. And I couldn’t stop thinking about what the rest of the space would look like if you could fit in that chair—the vast walls, impassable stair-cliffs, dangerous feet everywhere. The room telescoped out around me. It felt like taking a drug.
The miniature exhibit itself, which has been up for about five years, is almost as strange and enchanting as its size: Ann Pallesen, the Photo Center’s “regular human-sized curator and gallery director,” as a colleague called her, reminded me of its contents, which I’d entirely forgotten: “The mini gallery features a body of work that is said to be made by Tony Danza.” Yes, that Tony Danza.
Pallesen told me it was actually made by a
MINI PROPOSALS. I can hardly contain my excitement. I urge you to visit the mini museum at the earliest opportunity. Do not avoid getting down on the floor. Do not miss the opportunity to let it shrink and enlarge you.
HBY PAUL CONSTANT
ere’s the thing: The Zine Archive and Publishing Project (ZAPP) has got to move. ZAPP began as a Hugo House project back in the literary center’s early days, when House cofounder Frances McCue’s husband, Gary Greaves, donated his personal collection of a couple hundred zines to the House in 1996. With more zines donated from individuals and organizations around the world, the collection now stands, Hugo House program director Brian McGuigan estimates, at somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 zines strong. It may very well be the largest zine collection in the United States—or the world.
ZAPP has always been more than just a storehouse of paper—it was also a space where young people could get together to make their own zines, attend workshops, and hang out. ZAPP became a resource for homeless teens, some of whom
in
in front of Hugo House. McCue writes in an e-mail: “The first magazine produced by ZAPP was FOREIGN SUBSTANCE, and the inaugural issue had shellacked lunch meat on the front. (Our dog ate some of the covers and barfed them up all over the house.)”
But in more recent years, Hugo House has neglected ZAPP . The library moved from its clubhouse-like basement digs to a cramped room on the second floor. It’s only open 12 hours a week now. When Nora Mukaihata, ZAPP’s archive and library manager, resigned last year, Hugo House didn’t replace her. Now the library is volunteer-managed and -operated, and incoming materials aren’t all being cataloged, and nobody has time to program the workshops and events that a library the size of ZAPP deserves.
Last month, McGuigan and Hugo House executive director Tree Swenson met with 15 key ZAPP supporters (including McCue, cartoonists David Lasky and Kelly Froh, and the six-person, all-volunteer managing committee) and explained that it’s time for the organizations to part ways. “Hugo House has not been able to make ZAPP a priority,” Swenson said last week. “It’s a very small organization. We’re strapped.” Swenson didn’t set a deadline for ZAPP’s departure, just urged the committee to start the conversation about what ZAPP’s future would look like.
This conversation begins this Sunday afternoon at the Vera Project, with the ZAPP committee seeking input and advice from the community. Because these sorts of things often become chaotic and aimless—mic check!—the meeting will be mediated by local nonprofit facilitator and strategist Lisa Fitzhugh, a “creative catalyst” with a track record of helping arts organizations figure their shit out. Committee members Tyler Hauck and Remy Nelson explain that the future is a blank slate right now: ZAPP could become an independent nonprofit, or it could partner with a like-minded organization. Nelson says that “ZAPP doesn’t always fit” with Hugo House’s goals “perfectly, and it shouldn’t have to.” (The meeting is being held at Vera, Hauck explains, because “we want to involve people who have been involved in ZAPP in the past and do not have positive feelings about Hugo House.”) There are very few institutional examples for ZAPP to follow: Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center is closest, but ZAPP’s collection is three to five times larger than the IPRC’s. Maybe more important than the ideas at this point, Hauck and Nelson say, is getting the community to rally together to show that there’s interest in helping ZAPP survive and thrive.
ZAPP’s materials date back to the 1960s. One of the collection’s specialties is its LGBTQ section, which documents a secret queer history that otherwise went unnoticed by mainstream society during the ’70s and ’80s. The Olympia riot grrrl scene and radical feminist movements are strongly represented, too—rare zines by Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna are among the most valuable items in the collection. Music figures in, too, from reviews of Nirvana’s earliest appearance to manifestos written by punk bands that never played a single show for the public.
ZAPP’s shelves are stuffed with stories that are told nowhere else—not on blogs, not in history books, not in public records, not anywhere. These are the voices of people who were disenfranchised and angry and sad and excited, in a time when publication was a barrier that kept the poor and the young and the dissenters from making their voices heard. And zine-making still flourishes in the Pacific Northwest. Teenagers still come to ZAPP to photocopy and assemble their zines. The committee estimates that 35 to 40 new zines are added to the collection every month. Seattle’s Short Run festival has inspired a
whole new generation of local minicomics artists. And as long as there are people who enjoy creating something with their hands, independently produced literary journals and personal essays and political screeds will be made and swapped and shared by a smallbut-proud subculture. These voices matter. So what’s best for ZAPP? Is there a better partner out there than Hugo House? (Some disaffected former volunteers would swear there could hardly be a worse one.) Can ZAPP stand on its own? And what will it look like when the dust settles? “If I had $15,000,” McCue writes, “I’d get them a space right now. Then, if I had 10 hours a week, I’d help them regain the crazy, wonderful, joyful, rebellious, inclusive spirit that Gary had and get some wildly good shenanigans going again.”
BY PAUL CONSTANT
Sam Sattin’s new novel, League of Somebodies (Dark Coast Press, $18.95), doesn’t really get started until a father, Fearghas, explains to his teenage son, Lenard, that he’s destined for greatness:
“The truth is,” Fearghas said. “I’ve been preparing you for a non-stop life. One full of danger and triumph… I’ve been altering your once-stupid future… I’m making you into the next Gud-Damned Superman, for the sake of all sakes.”
Lenard’s response is delightfully bland:
“But, why would I want to be the next Superman?” Lenard asked.
“I’m failing all my classes. I’m terrible at sports. I don’t even read comics. I guess I like Superman, but don’t know much about him save for the fact that
Thurs April 18, The Backdoor in Fremont, 5:30 pm, free
The conversation, couched though it is in Sattin’s stilted, hyperstylized language, lays plain the ambition and the theme behind Somebodies: It’s about the relationship between a father and a son, and the way that relationship affects fathers of a next generation of sons. The last book I encountered that was this obsessed with what it means to be a man was Michael Chabon’s collection Manhood for Amateurs (It’s probably not an accident that ies reads like it could have been written by Chabon at the beginning of his career, back when his mellifluous moments were just as beautiful but less consistent, and when his adoration of popular culture was still cowed by his desire to be considered a Serious Literary Genius.) The characters are even obsessed with an ancient Bible of Manliness called Manaton, a guidebook full of ridiculous advice on manhood and heroism that begins: “I, am Man. Man. Morphus. Manicus. Phallus. Testes. Prostate. MAN. I am Man.”
Somebodies drifts through decades of Fearghas’s and Lenard’s lives as Lenard struggles with the superheroic life and tries to raise his own son, Nemo, without making the same mistakes Fearghas made. ( bodies, it must be said, drifts a little too
Saturday, April 27th 6-8pm
aimlessly at times. Besides Jennifer Natalya Fink’s razor-sharp Thirteen Fugues, local publisher Dark Coast Press’s titles are all in need of some drastic editorial cuts.)
The heroic acts are presented with a cautious brand of banality, which is a relief; there have been too many mediocre superhero riffs lately, possibly inspired by Chabon’s Pulitzer win for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and/or by the popularity of The Incredibles, and Sattin never once falls prey to mediocrity. But he’s thankfully good-natured enough about the inherent ridiculousness of the premise to embrace dialogue like this: “Your legs are not anchors, they are rockets—NOW STARE DOWN THE DARK PIT OF DEATH AND FIGHT!”
But do we need another book about what it means to be a man? Walk through almost any section in almost any general-interest bookstore and tally up the masculine names and the feminine ones, and you’ll find a patriarchal imbalance that will shock you. So the answer to that question is, obviously, no. But there’s always room for another book on a seemingly exhausted subject, as long as it brings something new and vibrant and forward-thinking to the discussion. League of Somebodies has exactly all of those qualities.
BY PAUL CONSTANT
Awanted to see somebody in bad makeup and ill-fitting clothing massacre a cover of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” I could just go to any karaoke night ever. West absolutely deserves that Stranger Genius Award he won last year, but drag novices like myself might be advised to wear a little padding, lest the encouraging elbows to the ribs from more in-the-know audience members leave bruises.
BY BRENDAN KILEY
T
hough both men might bridle at the comparison, solo performers Chad Goller-Sojourner and Mike Daisey have some striking similarities. Both are rotund guys with Seattle roots whose physical size and mannered style of delivery give them a peculiarly strong stage presence. (As opposed to, say, solo performers David Schmader and Mike Birbiglia, who have a more naturalistic, conversational style.)
More importantly, Daisey and GollerSojourner play a similar game of emotional chicken—they strategically reveal deeply intimate and sometimes embarrassing facts about themselves, then use that vulnerability as a launching pad to talk about broader social issues. (I’m going to pass over the controversy about Daisey inventing key details for his show about working conditions in Chinese factories—the incident was career-staining, but not so relevant to this argument.)
REVIEW
Riding in Cars with Black People and Other Newly Dangerous Acts
young man sitting in front of me at last Sunday’s matinee of Dina Martina: Spring in Seattle wanted to make sure his friend was having a good time. His way of doing this involved looking over at his friend and laughing ostentatiously every time Dina Martina pronounced a hard-g word with a soft-g sound—for instance, when Dina opened the show by giving out “jifts,” including a chocolate Easter Bunny.
REVIEW
Dina Martina
Re-bar
Through May 5
If you’ve never seen a Dina Martina show, you should know that the soft-g thing happens a whole lot, and this man checked every single time to make sure his friend was having the best possible time, occasionally repeating the soft-g sound himself—“Jift!”—for maximum effect. I had never seen a full Dina show before, and I felt a kinship with the friend. Here I was in an enthusiastic audience of adoring fans who were drinking and having a great time, and I just wasn’t feeling it.
Don’t get me wrong: I greatly respect the quality of comedy writing and the devotion to the character that Grady West puts into Dina. The one-liners are plentiful and engrossingly picturesque—Dina informs the audience that she knows spring is here because “my blossom is fragrant. I smell like a Top Ramen packet”—but I couldn’t escape the feeling that everything was a reference to a very old joke that I’d never heard. A couple of interstitial video performances (including a very funny ad featuring Dina’s show-tunesinging head inserted into familiar scenes from The Ten Commandments) felt livelier than the rest of the show. Maybe this is because I’ve never really gotten drag; if I
Rainier Valley Cultural Center
Through April 21
The Final Tribunal into the Mysterious Death of Mister Señor
Salvador Dalí
Pony World Theater at Theater Off Jackson
Through May 4
Of course, the two men have some major differences: Daisey is straight and white; Goller-Sojourner is gay and black. But while Daisey has always been white, GollerSojourner had to, in a sense, become black— and he wasn’t always happy about it. His new show, titled Riding in Cars with Black People and Other Newly Dangerous Acts: A Memoir in Vanishing Whiteness, is a dispatch from that period in his life between high school in Tacoma and grad school in Harlem when he became, to his surprise, a young black man. Goller-Sojourner was adopted, the son of white parents growing up in an overwhelmingly white suburb. But when he turned 18 and “flew the coop” (as he puts it) for Western Washington University, he was woefully unprepared to be seen as other people would see him.
He first tumbled to this when police began pulling him over in his flashy new car and asking not for his license and registration but, “Where ya headed?” Police, Goller-Sojourner says, repeatedly claimed he had been pulled over because he was too close to the centerline. Or too far from the centerline. Or had broken lights that magically healed themselves by the time he got to a gas station to check. When he was no longer in tow with his white family and friends, strangers—especially cops and store clerks—were suddenly much more suspicious of his every move.
“Clearly, my suburban upbringing had ill prepared me,” Goller-Sojourner tells us. “Not just for the stops, but for the anticipation. That’s what’ll kill you—the anticipation.” He
had abruptly “aged out” of white, suburban privileges he didn’t even know he had. And he wanted them back.
If, to him, the rest of the world suddenly seemed more suspicious of black people, so was he. “Black people scared me,” GollerSojourner admits, adding that he’d cross the street to avoid groups of black men. “I had never been afraid of young white men.” Finally, after reluctantly joining the black student union, noticing the systematically different ways police interacted with his white frat brothers and his black friends, going to grad school at Columbia University, learning to love cosmopolitan New York, and doing some heavy lifting with his own emotions and experiences, Goller-Sojourner, in his words, learned “to get over it.”
Growing up “white” (or least under the umbrella of certain white privileges) and “becoming black” gives Goller-Sojourner a powerfully unique position to talk about the strange racial ruptures in our culture—he has lived on at least two sides of the many-sided divide and can describe its contours more accurately than most anyone. He discusses professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. being arrested in his own kitchen after breaking into his own home, the differences between the way police handled noise complaints for white frat parties and black parties, and the young black men who have been shot by police because they were supposedly reaching for weapons—weapons that oftentimes didn’t exist.
And he has a truly funny bit about white ladies clutching their purses—he tells a story of making a financial-aid windfall at Columbia and buying his first Louis Vuitton handbag, plus a full-length mink coat. He wryly notes the irony of white ladies in elevators clutching obvious knockoff purses that are significantly less valuable than his. Goller-Sojourner is a good performer, but
hasn’t quite become the master of his own stage—he has a strong style and strong material, but he doesn’t seem totally at ease up there, the way more seasoned solo performers do. Hopefully, that will come with time. His voice is one we should be hearing more often.
Playwright and director Brendan Healy and his company Pony World are promising stars in the constellation of Seattle theater. Healy has made fragmented and gleefully imaginative work, including a sweet play about conformity in a wealthy planned community juxtaposed with voice messages Vladimir Lenin recorded for a secret sweetheart in Kansas. For the more recent Suffering, Inc., Healy and his crew cobbled together an office tragicomedy entirely from passages of Chekhov. (That worked stupendously, as Chekhov wrote lots about money and work.) Pony World’s latest, The Final Tribunal into the Mysterious Death of Mister Señor Salvador Dalí, is a loose scattershot— a meditation on what surrealism meant and means, a profile of the artist and his wife, an investigation into the unusual circumstances of his death, and a police love story. Tribunal is ambitious but feels only half-incubated, with uncertain performances and material that hasn’t quite resolved itself into a whole.
A play about surrealism doesn’t have to be neat and tidy, but one reason for Dalí’s enduring popularity is the feeling that a skeleton, an inner logic, holds his work together—that skeleton is esoteric and unseen, but it (or at least the perception that it exists) is necessary. Tribunal, on the other hand, leaves bits of flesh here and there on the stage. Some of those little chunks are gorgeous (raw eggs falling from the ceiling, a detective reflecting on her erotic attraction to slices of pepperoni), but they don’t quite add up to a fully formed creature.
The
By Katie Forgette
Directed by R. Hamilton Wright
HENRY ART GALLERY
Now Here Is Also Nowhere: Part II continues Henry curator Luis Croquer’s exploration of intangibility in art. It’s a group show. One artist (Pablo Helguera) staged a performance in which the performers slowly left the stage until nobody and no sound was left. Another artist team (Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer) shine strobe lights into the darkened galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Now you see the ancient clay tablet, now it’s gone. William Anastasi held his pencil over paper while riding the subway: Are his drawings of anything? Tom Friedman “made” his piece on paper—1000 Hours of Staring, medium: “Stare on paper”—by doing just what the title says. Consider the relationship between the idea and the physical object. $10 suggested. Wed-Sun. Through May 5. 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280.
COCA GEORGETOWN
Whitewashed: acclaimed glass artist Joseph Gregory Rossano’s discomforting installation of oldgrowth pillars and sculptures of extinct species, all bathed in white paint. Free. Reception Mon Apr 22, 6-9 pm. Mon-Fri. Through Jul 19. 5701 6th Ave S., Plaza Suite 258, 728-1980.
GAGE ACADEMY OF ART
In the Steele Gallery, The Seattle Sketchbook Show lets you take a peek at the creative processes of 40 artists—including nipple-doodler Ben Beres, exploding head-painter Joey Bates, and light-manipulator Iole Alessandrini. Free. Reception Fri Apr 19, 6-8 pm. Mon-Sun. Through May 3. 1501 10th Ave E 526-2787.
MIA GALLERY
NOBODY : Each of Lakshmi Muirhead’s richly layered paintings on plywood invite you stay awhile and keep looking. Free. Reception Thurs Apr 18, 6-9 pm. Tues-Sat. Through May 11. 1203A 2nd Ave, 467-4927.
GREG KUCERA GALLERY
Almost a hundred modestly, undramatically, folkishly weird paintings and sculptures by David Byrd, an 87-year-old artist who has never had a gallery show in his life. Free. Tues-Sat. Through May 18. 212 Third Ave S, 624-0770.
HEDREEN GALLERY, SEATTLE UNIVERSITY
Green Gothic: Local luminaries Gretchen Bennett, Frank Correa, Charles Mudede, Lisa Radon, Serrah Russell, and Rodrigo Valenzuela respond to an essay with this title by painter Matt Offenbacher, about “concepts... intertwined with contemporary Northwest identity: landscape, industry, the romanticism of Ruskin, decay, regrowth, monsters lurking in the shadows, and the sublime.” Free. Wed-Sat. Through April 24. 901 12th Ave 296-2244.
TRUE LOVE ART GALLERY
Polari was a secret language that evolved in the queer community in 19th-century London. Like all languages, it offered protection from outsiders, but also an identity, and the world-shaping power that comes with any vocabulary. This exhibition—the visual art part of the ’Mo-Wave Festival—is a continuation of the project to create a distinctly queer language. This one is visual. It is a lot about bodies and intimacy; it is a little bit about American flag Speedos and bare/bear butts. The people making it are super-sharp, talented artists like Steven Miller, Kelly O, Anthony Sonnenberg, Davida Ingram, Joey Veltkamp, and over a dozen more. Seriously, you have to go. Free. Mon-Sun. Through May 4. 1525 Summit Ave, 227-3572.
Events
ARTIST PANEL: SHANNON DURBIN, VAUGHN BELL, AND MUGI TAKEI
In a discussion about of the role
URBAN WAITE
of nature in their work, three Northwest artists share “a blurry mix of personal memories, historic representations of nature, and an uneasy awareness of the gathering facts that quantify the earth’s degradation.” Cullom Gallery, 603 S Main St, 9198278. Free. Sun Apr 21, 2 pm.
ARTIST TALK: INTUITION AND OBSESSION
Artists Amanda Manitach and Cable Griffith talk process and working in multiple mediums to open The Seattle Sketchbook Show Gage Academy of Art 1501 10th Ave E, 526-2787. Free. Fri Apr 19, 6-8 pm. ARTS AND SOCIAL CHANGE SYMPOSIUM
As part of the 2013 Cultural Congress, the Arts and Social Change Symposium facilitates a ton of speakers, workshops, and exhibitions. Among them are June Sekiguchi’s “The incredible intensity of just being human: De-stigmatizing mental illness”; a creative collaboration between fiber artist Paul Pauper and conceptual artist Matt Kandegas; and a keynote lecture by Roberto Bedoya, executive director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council, on support systems for artists. Northwest Rooms, 305 Harrison St, Seattle Center. $75. Mon Apr 22 and Tues Apr 23, 10 am-5 pm; Wed Apr 24, 10 am-12 pm.. April 22-24.
BODYCAST: SUZANNE BOCANEGRA AND FRANCES MCDORMAND
In this artist talk/performance, Frances McDormand (!!) plays artist Suzanne Bocanegra talking about “beauty, small-town Texas, orthopedic surgery, and classical sculpture. This story is part artist talk, part performance, part essay, and part live video installation.” Like! Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. $15. Thurs Apr 18, 7-8 pm.
RE/SEMB LANCE
re/semblance: Erin Frost’s show of kaleidoscopic video reflections on eroticism and performance. Vignettes, El Capitan Apartments, 1617 Yale Ave. Free. Thurs April 18.
visualart@thestranger.com
Wed 4/17
BREADLINE
The most interesting reading series in the city™ features memoirist Brian McGuigan, poet Chris Dusterhoff, bizarre music sensation Lou-Lou Hernandez, and poet/memoirist Michael Schein. With an open mic and a Google+ Hangout! Vermillion , 1508 11th Ave, 709-9797. breadlinepoetry.com. Free. 7 pm.
JESS WALTER
Beautiful Ruins is a novel by Walter, who lives in the state of Washington. Weirdly, he claims to live east of the mountains. That’s ridiculous! Everybody knows that there’s nothing east of the mountains. Anyway, his book is a much-celebrated loveish story set in the past and present and in Italy and in Hollywood. Third Place Books 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. Free. 7 pm.
Thurs 4/18
LEAGUE OF SOMEBODIES BOOK RELEASE PARTY
This is a celebration of the release of the new novel League of Somebodies from Dark Coast Press, featuring League author Sam Sattin, local poet Kate Lebo, and Sean Beaudoin. The BackDoor @ Roxy’s, 462 N 36th St, 632-7322. Free. 6 pm.
CHEAP WINE & POETRY
Tonight’s edition of the boozy poetry series features Christine Deavel, Timothy Sanders, Marjorie Manwaring, and Luke Johnson. This is always a high point of the Seattle readings month. Hugo House , 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. Free. 7 pm.
LESLEY HAZLETON
The Stranger Genius in Literature reads from her exceptional new book, The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad Couth Buzzard Books Espresso Buono Café, 8310 Greenwood Ave North, 436-2960. Free. 7 pm.
Waite is a local literary-leaning crime/thriller author with an unbelievable name. His newest novel is titled The Carrion Birds Elliott Bay Book Company , 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm.
Fri 4/19
GUY GAVRIEL KAY IN CONVERSATION WITH NANCY PEARL
This is a celebration of the sequel of sorts of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven, which is titled River of Stars. The new book is set hundreds of years in the future after Under Heaven University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.
LUCY KNISLEY See Stranger Suggests, pg 21. Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, 1201 S Vale St, 658-0110. Free. 7 pm. (Also reading at Third Place Books on Sat April 20. Free. 6:30 pm.
KOON WOON Lawrence Ferlinghetti said Koon Woon’s “poems set a thousand horses galloping in the Asian diaspora in which so many are caught.” Open Books, 2414 N 45th St, 633-0811. Free. 7:30 pm.
Sat 4/20
FIVE FOUR FIVEGREENWOOD CRAWL IV The fourth of five literary crawls set in Greenwood takes place, with readers including Corinne Manning, Greg Bem, Rauan Klassnik, and Laura Wachs. Check the Five Alarms site for more info, and beware the truly hideous flier for the event, which couldn’t possibly be much uglier. Greenwood fivealarms.wordpress.com. Free. 6:30 pm.
Sun 4/21
HELP SHAPE ZAPP’S FUTURE ZAPP, the zine library in the Hugo House, is home to 20,000 zines. It also offers a free work space for zine-makers. The Hugo House doesn’t want to house ZAPP anymore. This meeting is to determine what will happen to ZAPP. This is important. Vera Project Republican St and Warren Ave N, 322-7030. Free. 2:30 pm.
Mon 4/22
WILLIAM BERNSTEIN
Bernstein is the author of A Splendid Exchange and Masters of the Word, and he specializes in how communication technologies have changed the world. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. $5. 7:30 pm. readings@thestranger.com
ASSISTED LIVING
A world-premiere comedy by local playwright Katie Forgette that takes place in the near future, after the fall of Medicare, when senior citizens lead a revolution against a dehumanizing system. Featuring artistic director Kurt Beattie as Joe Taylor, Julie Briskman as Nurse Claudia, and Jeff Steitzer as Wally Carmichael. ACT Theater, 700 E Union St, www.acttheatre.org. $15-$41. Tues-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri-Sat at 8 pm, Sat at 2 pm, Sun at 2 and 7 pm. Through May 12.
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
“As the soon-to-be-disappeared patriarch Beverly Weston, Charles Leggett opens the show with a drawling monologue that gently lures the audience into his family’s drama. ‘My wife takes pills, and I drink,’ he flatly explains. ‘That’s the bargain we’ve struck.’ It’s an understated performance, but Leggett’s quietude toys with audience expectations before his Technicolor family explodes onto the stage. All 13 actors play their outsized characters with zeal, and it’s almost unfair to single any one out for praise. But life isn’t fair. Shellie Shulkin as the downer-addicted, acid-tongued matriarch, Violet Weston, all but steals the show. During her first entrance, stumbling across the set and garbling her lines, Shulkin
relentlessly lurches right up to the line of over-the-top without ever crossing it.” (Goldy) Erickson Theater Off Broadway 1524 Harvard Ave, www.balagantheatre.org. $20-$25. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through April 27.
BOEING BOEING
A 1960s musical farce (recently revived in London and New York) about Bernard, a swinging bachelor entangled with three stewardesses. Seattle Repertory Theater 155 Mercer St, Seattle Center, 443-2222. $15-$80. Tues-Fri at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 and 7:30 pm. Through May 19. DINA MARTINA IS HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS Dina Martina, winner of last year’s Stranger Genius Award for theater, returns with another sideways evening of all-new, so-talentless-it’s-genius songs and patter. She will be joined by her stone-faced, long-suffering piano accompanist Chris Jeffries (who, incidentally, won the firstever Stranger Genius Award for theater). Rejoice. Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, 233-9873. www. brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through May 5.
THE FINAL TRIBUNAL INTO THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF MISTER SENOR SALVADOR DALI See review, page 26. Theater Off Jackson 409 Seventh Ave S, 340-1049. www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-$13. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm. Through May 4. THE HAIRY APE Combining abstract movement, choreographed stage combat, shadow work, and performance art, Ghost Light Theatricals takes on Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 expressionist play about a working-class tough guy in a capitalist world. The Ballard Underground , 2220 NW Market St, www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-$15. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm. Select Sun matinees. Through May 5. I THINK MY HEART NEEDS GLASSES The world premiere of a onewoman show by Yana Kesala ( The Ukrainian Dentist’s Daughter which won “Best of Fest” award at the 2012 Seattle Fringe Festival) about a skeptic at a meditation retreat. Eclectic Theater, 1214 10th Ave, 6793271. $15. Tues and Thurs at 8 pm. Through April 17. RIDING IN CARS WITH BLACK PEOPLE AND OTHER NEWLY DANGEROUS ACTS: A MEMOIR IN VANISHING WHITENESS See review, page 27. Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S Alaska St, www.brownpapertickets.com. $14. Fri-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through April 21. THE TRIAL “Roland Barthes once wrote that ‘Kafka is not Kafka-ism,’ and this kick-ass new adaptation of The Trial directed by John Langs, knows it. There is bureaucratic horror, of course, and mystery men in suits, and implied violence. But this Trial is not the sterile, flat landscape popularly associated with ‘Kafka-ism’— flesh, sex, and actual violence are refreshingly (sometimes shockingly) present.” (Brendan Kiley) Inscape, 815 Airport Way S, www.wearenctc.org. $15-$30. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 7 pm. Through April 28. THE WHIPPING MAN A Jewish Confederate soldier and two of his former slaves celebrate Passover in the shadow of the US Civil War. Featuring William Hall, Jr., Ryan Childers, and Tyler Trerise and directed by producing artistic director Scott Nolte. In 2011, the New York Times said the play was “haunting, striking, and powerful.” Taproot Theater 204 N 85th St, 781-9707. $5-$40. Wed-Sat at 8 pm. Select weekday matinees. Through April 27.
Dance
SWAN LAKE
See page 19. Pacific Northwest Ballet at McCaw Hall , 321 Mercer St, www.pnb.org. $28$173. Fri-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 1 and 7 pm. Through April 21. theater@thestranger.com
Ignore the gray days and smeary bullshit snowfall a couple weeks ago, because now spring is really here, and emerging superstar designer Krista Kelly has created a mini-capsule line as an accompaniment to nature’s upcoming smorgasbord of sunshine and petals. It’s called Hoyden, in tribute to a particularly saucy variety of tomboy, and in the fashion photographs, Krista’s model comes off as an intense but dreamy woman with exquisite manners who probably smells like gingerbread houses and has never had a cavity and collects antique microscopes.
Krista’s work often plays up paradoxical combinations. (Prior to this, she was best known for her transformations of vintage T-shirts into underpants.) Hoyden’s geometric mini-sleeves and high-low hems are trending now, while the slacks’ scalloped cuffs were pulled directly from long-forgotten ’30s-era golf-wear styles.
Other more distant influences include ’40s garments, like floaty blouses, with their heavily padded shoulders; those were so wildly popular, they made their way into nightgowns for a time.
Krista also collects images from the constructivism and Bauhaus art movements, with their clean lines, strange tensions, and flat blocks of color. Her hues of dawns, apricots, and pastel pinks recall the cheeks of porcelain dolls, though as it happens, this same palette was also used for the “protection costumes” made of “pure oiled silk” detailed in 1939 London Harvey Nichols store advertisements, in a time when women lived each day in full catastrophe mode, as stylishly as possible: “The wearer can cover a distance of two hundred yards through mustard gas and the suit can be slipped over ordinary clothes in thirty-five seconds.” As a suggested accessory, “a special pair of mittens… designed to cover up the head space unprotected by the ordinary gas mask.”
In other current fashion happenings, creative director Francisco Hernandez debuted his Built for Man Fall/Winter 2014 collection at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, and with it came fitted black leather jumpsuits offset with white embroidery in columns along the arms and legs ($2,200 at David Lawrence boutique). These stitches spell bad ass, but they’re rendered in binary code, which either reverses or magnifies the intended effect, I can’t tell which. In either case, the pairing of daunting messages with bodily inscriptions appears to be our city’s latest trend. One trend-hunter recently spotted a striking figure walking near City Hall Park wearing skimpy shorts to showcase a “Try me, bitch!” written in black Sharpie on the bare upper thigh.
David Stockman
How Crony Capitalism Has Corrupted Free Markets & Democracy (4/17)
Ann Kirschner
‘Lady at the OK Corral’ (4/18)
Seattle Baroque Orchestra Nights at the Opera (4/20)
Simple Measures: Harmony (4/21)
William Bernstein How Human Communication Has Shaped History (4/22)
Seth Mnookin & ‘Seattle Mama Doc’
Wendy Sue Swanson Vaccine Myths, Parents & Modern Health Information (4/23)
SPL & EBBC: Isabel Allende ‘Maya’s Notebook’ (4/24)
Bill Carter The Human Dimension of Copper Extraction —Pebble Mine & Beyond (4/24)
Adam Grant A Revolutionary Give-and-Take Approach to Success (4/25)
Lake Union Civic Orchestra (4/26)
Seattle Poetry Slam’s 2013 Grand Slam featuring Mahogany Browne (4/27)
Geo & David Mitsuo Nixon World Premieres/Finale (4/28)
aloExchange.com
LUCY KNISLEY
Relish : My Life in the Kitchen (First Second)
Saturday, April 20th at 6:30pm Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. PHILLIPE PETIT
(Abrams)
Wednesday, April 24th at 7pm
Philippe Petit, the tight-rope walker who walked between NYC’s Twin Towers in 1974, and the focus of the documentaryMan on Wire presents Why Knot?, a guide to tying his essential knots. With practical sketches, clever tying instructions, and photographs in which special knots were used during spectacular high-wire walks, Petit will transform you into a knot aficionado.
Open Tuesday-Sunday 8am-2am HAPPY HOUR
Tue-Fri: 4p-7p, Sun: 6p-Close
Late Night: Tue-Thu: 10p-2a
1.50 OFF WELLS, WINE, TAPS & BUBBLES
New Happy Hour menu starts this week!
Sample our new spring menu soon.
BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
Pine Box opened last summer in the former chapel of Butterworth Mortuary. With its leaded glass windows, enormous mirrors, ornate dark woodwork, vaulted ceiling, and
antique fixtures, it’s the most gorgeous space on Capitol Hill. (The club called Chapel that preceded it was glam and seedy, with service so slow that you might’ve actually expired before getting a drink.) The Pine Box is headed up by beer guru Ian Roberts, former Brouwer’s manager and a founder of Seattle Beer Week (which is sure to be celebrated mightily at the Pine Box starting May 9—and lasting 10 days, as a beer-related week should).
And: two flat-screens showing what’s on tap, including exact serving size, percent alcohol, and price. While the information is nerdily nice, the signs can only remind you of the arrival/departure ones at the airport, thoroughly clashing with the mortuary/beer-hall aesthetic. Oh well—at least it’s beer, beer that’s going to be arriving at your mouth.
The salad was a fine companion, creamy in its own way. And the strudel was a big, beautiful handheld pie, made with light layers of phyllo pastry and an earthy, savory mushroom filling, all covered in a dusting of Parmesan. The Chuckanut Baltic porter that the server recommended to go with it was exactly right—malty and toasty and roasty, with notes of chocolate and coffee, mirroring and expanding the flavors of the meat (and also almost the same color of very darkest brown).
A small plate of whole-milk burrata was not all that small, with two big blobs of the cheese, a house-made pretzel, and three dips/ salads for $9. The burrata was, as usual, like fresh mozzarella made by angels; the pretzel was a grand example of the form, causing near-compulsive eating; and the apple chutney was also especially fine, spicy and full of currants. In a signature Carsberg touch, the tomato on the plate was peeled and cored and chilled, made into the essence of itself—quite fancy for a beer hall.
More of those tomatoes appeared in a very pretty romaine salad ($7), made with pickled egg instead of just hard-boiled, plus a blue cheese crème dressing, and, unfortunately, too much shallot in too large of hunks, making for an acrid taste. Carsberg would never have let that out of the kitchen, but still, it was big and fresh and overall fine. (Asked about the tomatoes, the amiable server said that it was some kind of time-consuming process, and that they looked kind of weird but tasted “awesome.” True.)
A dish of prawns with Beecher’s cheddar grits ($9) was good, with the grits baked into a casserole-style texture, spiced with paprika and cayenne, and given a bubbling lid of more cheese. The prawns, however, didn’t have quite the delectable texture they could and should.
But those prawns were stellar compared to the ones in “basil nut pesto” ($12) another night. The pesto was a rusty-brown colored paste, pressed into a dirtlike bed on the plate; the texture was pasty, the taste faint but burnt-nutty. The prawns were chewy. How to integrate the two was a mystery that you did not want to solve. Also subpar: spaetzle with brown butter, sage, and shiitakes ($8). The noodles were light and tender, plump and squiggly, but the shiitakes were flavorless,
“I’m
THappy Hour Everyday! 4-6pm & 10pm-12am
Fri & Sat: Kitchens Open til Midnight Weekend Brunch! Saturdays & Sundays 11-3 PHINNEY
The chapel works marvelously as a beer hall. Its mighty airspace makes for an ungodly, joyous clatter and din when the place is full—yes, it is loud, loud with the laughter that comes from 33 rotating taps of great beer. (“I’m in a snow globe of noise,” someone shouted, not unhappily.) Sit upstairs, in what was probably the choir loft, and watch this happy universe from on high: The bartenders filling up specially shaped glasses with their specific brews, the patrons making themselves at home in the church-pew booths, the kitchen staff tossing pizza dough in the open kitchen. The people who work here are universally good-looking in an unintimidating way (except the bouncer, who is great-looking in a completely intimidating way). Up above the bar: a two-foot-tall Darth Vader, a baby doll with its face painted like Ace Frehley, a full-size beach cruiser bike, a statue of a raven, some model racecars.
he Pine Box isn’t the kind of place that seems like it would try hard when it comes to food. This isn’t meant unkindly— only that with the fantastic beer selection, they could just slap together some pub grub and call it a day. Instead, they called in local food genius Scott Carsberg, renowned for his former restaurants Bisato and Lampreia, to help design a beer-friendly, higher-reaching menu. Note that Carsberg is not in the kitchen; this was a consulting job, and his hands are now off the wheel, which must be difficult for such a notorious perfectionist. How’s the kitchen doing? Is the food at the Pine Box as good as the beer?
Some of it is. The beef short rib—a Flintstones-sized block of meat served with tzatziki salad and a shiitake-Parmesan strudel for $15—was fantastic. The meat was everything that it should be—almost creamy in texture, deep in flavor—plus, for once, possessed of a slight, perfect spicy heat.
and the brown butter and sage were possibly entirely absent—the dish was dry and bland.
Both the pizza (mozzarella and sausage version, $13) and the Italian sausage plate ($10) were stand-up versions of classic beer food—absolutely something you’d order again. And if it’s not clear by now, portions here are generous, and the Pine Box also uses only local, ethically sourced meats and vegetables, making the prices even more remarkable. And the late-night menu goes until one o’clock in the morning.
The Pine Box is not Lampreia, nor would it want to be. It’s loud and pretty and a great deal of fun, and the food’s worth a try, especially to go along with all the excellent beer.
BY CHARLES MUDEDE
On the table sits a single tulip, in a glass that has a more scientific than decorative appearance. The table is black. The petals are yellow. The slim stem is green. And the stillness of this arrangement is softly caught in the day’s remaining light, which enters the bar through two high-set street-level windows. The District Lounge is a sunken place One flight of stairs from the first floor leads you there. It has a coffered ceiling made of dark wood. Its bar is also made of dark wood. Indeed, there is something that’s at once noble and seedy about the District. It’s the kind of place one imagines seeing a fallen angel drinking and quietly, calmly, and not too sadly thinking about how he/she now has hell to pay. Recall that angel in Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Loss of a Halo.” Recall its opening line: “Eh! What! You here, my dear? You in a place of ill-repute! You, the drinker of quintessences! You, the eater of ambrosia!” The fallen angel then explains that he lost his halo while crossing a busy street. It fell from his head and got stuck in the mud. But instead of trying retrieve it, the fallen angel decided to leave it there and go to the bar. “I’m quite comfortable here. You’re the only one who has recognized me. Anyway, dignity bores me. And I can’t help but feel joyful when I think that some bad poet will pick it up and impudently set it on his head…”
When I walked into the District at around 6:30 p.m., the first thing I noticed was an elaborately dressed old man sitting at the wood-dark bar. He looked like he had once been an all-purpose entertainer in the heyday of Hollywood. In front
of him was a shot glass, which contained something hard and stiff. I imagined him lost in memories of tap-dancing with a gorgeous lady with a slim waist. The man looked ancient and exhausted, but his attire was clearly ready for more, ready to hit the stage or at least to play a tune on a piano. And this is exactly what the District was made for: a little live jazz. But instead, an internet robot supplied the place with indie rock. (The District did once have a jazz night on Thursday, but it was canceled for some reason.)
As I drank a White Russian, a glass of house white wine, and house red wine, I stared at the flower on my table and recalled the words of a lovely jazz tune: “A flower is a lovesome thing/A luscious living lovesome thing/A daffodil, a rose, no matter where it grows, is such a lovely lovesome thing…”
COME JOIN US TO CELEBRATE RECORD STORE DAY - SATURDAY APRIL 20TH
OVER 300 LIMITED VINYL TITLES WILL BE COMING OUT, INCLUDING RELEASES BY The Black Keys, Botch, Phosphorescent, Fela Kuti, Codeine, Phoenix, David Bowie, The Cure, Nick Drake, Sigur Ros, Sharon Van Etten, Jimi Hendrix, Tame Impala, Mad Season, Built To Spill, Foals, Iron & Wine, Destroyer, Grizzly Bear, Elliott Smith, Mumford & Sons, Ty Segall, Rocket From the Crypt, Chris Walla, The Rolling Stones, and The XX.
WE’RE GETTING OTHER BALLARD B USINESSES INVOLVED TOO. Many will have discounts for Record Store Day shoppers and specials going on all day. We’ll have a full list of participating businesses available on RSD. Show your Sonic Boom RSD receipt to receive: TROVE VINTAGE 10%
1501 Pike Place #325 405-4200
3506 Fremont Ave N 632-5483
1525 Melrose Ave (between Pike/Pine) 568-2666
632-0202
Sunday
Wed 4/17
SAKE NOMI’S WII
WEDNESDAYS
Every Wednesday, patrons at Pioneer Square’s awesome sake bar/shop
Sake Nomi battle for virtual supremacy in games like Wii Sports Resort. Obliterate the competition with your dynamite hand-eye coordination and cat-like reflexes, or just behold the frenzy with a glass of sake in hand. Starred for sake and/or Wii lovers. Sake Nomi , 76 S Washington St, 467SAKE. sakenomi.us. 6 pm.
BAR NUN BINGO
Planned Parenthood Young Professionals invite you to “get your game-face and glitter shoes on” for a night of 21-plus bingo, with special guests Coochie Von Beaverhausen and Beyonce Veen of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Admission gets you four bingo cards and a dabber, plus happyhour-priced food and drink. All proceeds go to the Someone You Know Fund, which helps provide preventative reproductive health care to those who can’t afford it. 95 Slide , 722 E Pike St, 328-7666. $15, additional bingo cards $5. 7 pm.
Thurs 4/18
“BEST DAMN
HAPPY HOUR”
On the third Thursday of the month, the “Best Damn Happy Hour” (their title) has live DJs, mini golf, board games, giant Jenga (T IMBERRRR R!), and deals on cocktails and food at the many eateries inside the Armory, the food-court-ish building at Seattle Center (21+ only). Seattle Center , 305 Harrison St, 684-7200. seattlecenter.com. No cover. Third Thurs 5-8 pm.
BEER FOR A CAUSE
Drink deeply of beer and wine, eat some food, and enter a raffle for prizes like dinner at Canlis. Proceeds go to nonprofit Full Life Care, helping the elderly and chronically ill. World Sports Grille, 731 Westlake Ave N, 224-3749. fulllifecare. org. $5 beer/wine/food/ raffle tickets, $10 golden raffle ticket, $50 goblet/ raffle tickets/drink tickets combo. 5-10 pm.
VEGETARIAN DINNER AT THE CORSON BUILDING
The terse announcement: “Vegetarian Dinner.” The Corson Building is great, and they’re making a (probably incredibly delicious) vegetarian dinner, so do with this information what you will. The Corson Building , 5609 Corson Ave S, 762-3330. thecorsonbuilding.com. $35. 6-10 pm.
Fri 4/19
ARCADE LIGHTS
In the Market’s North Arcade, at sunset, more than 60 local artisans including Firefly Kitchens, Whidbey Island Ice Cream, Mighty-O Donuts, Fremont Brewing, Elysian Brewing Company, and Pike Place Brewing Company create a banquet of beer, wine, and sweet and savory
bites to benefit the Market Foundation. Admission includes 10 food/drink tokens and a glass. Pike Place Market, 1501 Pike Pl. pikeplacemarket.org. $28 in advance, $35 at gate, $2.50 per additional token. 6:30-10 pm.
Sat 4/20
PEDALER’S FAIR
This sounds pretty cool: a cyclist-themed marketplace where small Washington businesses exhibit and sell “handcrafted frames, touring bags for well-traveled adventurers, smart clothing for city riders, and artwork inspired by a passion for the bicycle.” Plus food trucks, beer, and live music. Belltown Underground Events Center 2211 First Ave. pedalersfair.com. Free admission. 11 am-5 pm, same time Sun.
TANAKASAN POP-UP
Tanakasan is an upcoming T-Doug restaurant named after co-executive chef and partner Erik Tanaka, who, confusingly, is not Tanakasan’s chef; that would be Brian Walczyk, formerly of Brave Horse Tavern. This is an anticipatory popup dinner with ramen, robata, and “riceicles.” Palace Ballroom , 2100 Fifth Ave, 448-2001. $50. 6 pm, same time Sun.
Sun 4/21
GREAT BEER HIKE
For the week leading up to Earth Day, beer will be transported by foot, bike, and sailboat from local breweries to Green Lake’s Latona Pub. Help the Beer Hike Team walk the final keg from Two Beers Brewery in Sodo (10 miles), join them halfway at Zeek’s in Belltown (five miles), or just enjoy the fruits of their labor at the end (sitting on your lazy butt). It all benefits Feet First, making Washington more walkable. Various locations . 3pubs.com/ Latona.html. Free. 9:30 am-2 pm.
SUN LIQUOR
COCKTAIL CLASS
Sun Liquor’s Erik Chapman teaches you how to make your own shrub, bitters, and syrups for springtime cocktails. The somewhat exorbitant price of $60 includes tastings and snacks. Sun Liquor Lounge , 607 Summit Ave E, 860-1130. $60. 2-4 pm.
WORDS WITH KIMCHEE Local Korean-American writers, including Don Mee Choi, Bruce and Ju Chan Fulton, Soyon Im, Soya Jung, Arlene Kim, and Larissa Min, read from their work, plus “Korean potluck goodies.” Special guest Chiwan Choi reads from his latest poetry collection, Abductions Kobo at Higo , 604 S Jackson St, 381-3000. Free. 4 pm. Mon 4/22
TACO MONDAY Every Monday, Sitka & Spruce hosts the Suadero, a pop-up restaurant serving various excellentsounding tacos, quesos fundidos, and more. Sitka & Spruce, 1531
Melrose Ave E, 3240662. sitkaandspruce. com. 5:30-9:30 pm.
EARTH DI NNER
It’s an “Earth Dinner” on Earth Day: Anchovies & Olives and Bar Cotto make four locally sourced specials, featuring Neah Bay halibut, Penn Cove mussels, and Washingtongrown asparagus, with 50 percent of proceeds going to the nonprofit Chefs Collaborative to promote sustainable food practices. Various locations chefscollaborative. org. $9-$31.
COOPER’S 11TH ANNUAL IPA FEST
Cooper’s Alehouse’s IPA Fest has blind tastings, brewers nights (check their Facebook for dates), and more than 70 IPAs: “Regular, double, triple, or
imperial, you’ll see them all!” Starred for beer nuts. Cooper’s Alehouse , 8065 Lake City Way NE, 522-2923. coopersalehouse.com. No cover. April 5-26.
ASIAN ELEPHANT FUNDRAISER
Present the flyer found at asianelephantsupport. org at the Northgate or Bellevue California Pizza Kitchen from April 22 to 26, and 20 percent of your tab will go to Asian Elephant Support (or donate directly at that same website and get better pizza elsewhere). Various locations. asianelephantsupport.org. April 22-26.
MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. SEND EVENT INFO TO: chow@thestranger.com
Find grazillions more food events online.
At the Hummingbird Saloon, I learned that the word “pasty” can be two drastically different items, depending on one’s pronunciation. “A pasty [the one with a long “a,” pronounced “pay-stee”] is actually a nipple covering,” co-owner Lenore Sharp explained. The new Columbia City bar from the owners of Full Tilt Ice Cream contains nothing designed as nipple coverings, though there are several snazzy pinball machines a topless person could crouch behind if necessary.
The Hummingbird specializes in savory Welsh pasties, pronounced “past-ee.” The little pies are a favorite in the family of Lenore’s husband, and Hummingbird co-owner, Ken. They were traditionally miner’s lunches, but here you don’t have to risk being buried alive to enjoy one—the greatest danger at the Hummingbird is getting your ass kicked at shuffleboard or the bar’s giant novelty chess game. The aptly named vegetarian “butter pie” I sampled was stuffed with baked carrots and rutabagas, which are like deluxe turnips, and garnished with apple slices and pepperoncini. The cook’s suggested paring was a shot of Midnight Moonshine, which was like smooth vodka with no aftertaste but a pleasant vaporous burning. As a Full Tilt annex, the Hummingbird offers a scoop of ice cream on their desserts (currently apple pie and bread pudding). Or you can take a pint home to put on anything you want.
GALVIN
RA SCION Rocks blissed-out beats with a masterful sense of swing. And a scythe.
BY CHARLES MUDEDE
Let’s begin with a look at a particular period in hiphop history, from 1993 to 1997. Many will argue that, musically speaking, this was hiphop’s most beautiful moment. From the Bay Area to
NYC to Paris, rappers and producers began a dreamy journey into a sound that had lots of space between boom-bap beats, melancholic but melodic piano loops, horns that were not bold and brassy but brief and haunting, and vibes that were warm like the wooden frame of a window viewing an urban winter world. It was a serene environment for rappers who now had the room to express their ideas clearly and smoothly—there was no rush, no need for alarm, no stress. No matter what the MC wanted to rap about (a crosstown beef, how to drop a gem on them, just another day in the projects, life’s a bitch and then you die), he/she could enter the beat in much the same relaxed way a movie star enters a huge and steaming bathtub.
This aesthetic movement came to an end in 1997. Rawkus Records’ 1999 Soundbombing II was its final farewell (at least in the United States—Europe was understandably slow to let go of all that beauty) before hiphop entered the long night of an underground that turned to complexity and obfuscation in rhymes and beats (Cannibal Ox, Eyedea & Abilities, Latyrx, Madlib, Black Eyed Peas) and a mainstream that was increasingly indifferent to music as a whole (Nelly, Ja Rule, Ludacris, DMX, Black Eyed Peas). Now, we know that 1987 to 1992 constituted hiphop’s modern moment, and that 1998 to 2009 was its postmodern period, but what were the years in between the two? (I actually don’t know the
almost no effort, and rapper RA Scion rocked these spacy, vibey, jazzy, blissed-out beats with a masterful sense of swing. On the track “Slow Cure” (from Tobacco Road), the duo reached something that can only be described as ’90s hiphop perfection—it’s a track that’s up there with the best of the era’s best: “93 ’Til Infinity,” “Leflaur Leflah Eshkoshka,” “Masta I.C.” After Common Market closed their doors in 2009, RA Scion joined forces with the producer MTK and released Victor Shade, a record that drew inspiration not from the ’90s, but from the postmodern baroque pop that has Just Blaze as one of its defining and founding figures. Victor Shade was not bad, and MTK is a talented producer, but RA Scion is not the kind of rapper who is at home in MTK’s big, bulky, brassy beats. Last year, however, RA Scion released the EP Beg x Borrow x Steal, which indicated on its concluding track that the ’90s were still on his mind. His latest CD, Adding to the Extra, marks his return to familiar ground.
The beats on Adding, which were produced by Todd Sykes (who is one half of Tacoma’s City Hall), have all the elements of ’90s hiphop: dreamy vibes, melancholy piano loops, ghostly horns, and roomy beats. You will not be disappointed by this album because RA Scion is at his best when swinging to that old and sometimes rusty “tink-tinktink-tink” of boom-bap’s hi-hat. Adding also features outstanding contributions from GMK (on “2nd Sight”) and John Crowe (on “Amalgam X”). It’s already safe to say that RA Scion has released one of the best records of the year, successfully keeping the ’90s alive and relevant in a period when much of hiphop lacks definition, direction, or any kind of artistic program.
REVIEWS, AND HAIL
NEWS,
BY BURIEN WHALE
• Last week, Capitol Hill’s High Voltage Music Store adopted a sweet orange cat to help out around the shop (i.e., sleep, snuggle, mrowwr, etc.). His name was chosen in the most important Line Out poll to date, officially christening him Ohm. Stop by and give him a pet!
• Despite the crazy weather—rain, hail (!?), rain, more rain—the first year of queer music/ arts festival ’Mo-Wave was a fabulous success. Saturday’s Team Dresch reunion-ish show had the Chop Suey audience going completely bananas. Dynasty Handbag delighted and freaked everyone the fuck out with her performance-art/music show on Sunday, and the big happy festival came to a close at Pony with a surprise 1 a.m. performance by Chicago bear rapper Big Dipper, half naked, swinging from the stripper pole. If you haven’t stopped by Polari, ’Mo-Wave’s visual-arts component, it’s still hanging at True Love Gallery until May 4 and features more great artwork than you can shake a penis at.
R. Kelly & Phoenix
answer to this question.) And why did producers and rappers decide to make such a huge investment in sounds and flows that recalled cherry blossom petals carpeting a concrete sidewalk in the first place? For this, I do have an answer: You must remember the point made by hiphop scholar Tricia Rose in her 1994 book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America—hiphop is about pleasure,
Sounds and flows recalled cherry blossom petals carpeting a concrete sidewalk.
and this pleasure provides the urban poor with some relief from the forces of economic oppression. The modern period gave us the pleasures of innovation—the postmodern moment gave us the pleasures of the mind (the underground) and the pleasures of stupidity (the mainstream). What the ’90s gave us were the pleasures of just beauty.
Not everyone in the ’00s gave up on the ’90s. Indeed, one duo in Seattle continued the project as if there had never been a break or end to it. That duo was Common Market.
On their two albums (Common Market and Tobacco Road) and EP (Black Patch War), producer Sabzi made ’90s-style beats with
But RA Scion is not the only one in our town mining and reformulating ’90s beats. There is also Wizdumb, a producer who has worked with a number of hardcore underground rappers, released many mixtapes and remixes, and frequently performs at Vermillion Gallery. Whereas RA Scion continues the ’90s movement as if it never ended, Wizdumb is an archaeologist in the ruins of its beauty. His work recalls that scene in the video for the Roots’ “Concerto of the Desperado”: As Black Thought raps, a group of men dig in the ground with their hands and unearth mics, mixers, and turntables from another era. Wizdumb’s beats not only sound more found than made (I say this as a compliment of the highest order— hiphop is not about making, but remaking, mining, crate digging), but his almost scientific commitment to analog equipment and scratchy vinyl records reinforces the archaeological feel of his albums, the most recent of which is Basementality. While listening to this excellent record—which contains 23 tracks and features a constellation of excellent rappers (Dem One, Def Dee, Jonny Details, Big X, and Wizdumb himself)—one imagines it was funded by a research institution that green-lighted a grant proposal that stated this as one of its objectives: Wizdumb will locate the most exquisitely melancholy piano loops of 1990s-era hiphop. On tracks such as “The Listen” and “Kittykittykitty,” that objective was clearly achieved. Such are the pleasures of excavation.
Drop a gem on them at THESTRANGER.COM/MUSIC
• Seattle’s #1 festival correspondent, Josh Bis, reported that the Palm Springs music festival Coachella has been warm and extra crowded. The biggest surprise appearance was during French alt-band Phoenix’s encore, which “featured the truly surprising appearance of R. Kelly, who bounded onstage to perform ‘1901’ with his own ‘Remix to Ignition.’” Since everyone thought the unannounced guest would be Daft Punk, “Kids in the immediate vicinity proclaimed it to be ‘the most random thing they’ll see in their whole life.’” It was also reported, thankfully, that “the #nativeappropriationwave may have fully and finally bottomed out: This year, feather headdress ‘fashion’ was rare to nonexistent. Instead, every third girl wore hand-made(ish) floral headbands.”
• On Saturday, April 20 (aka Record Store Day), Longview rock band Seacats will play at Lunchbox Laboratory in South Lake Union at 3 p.m. to celebrate the release of their new 7-inch, The 7” Burger. Lunchbox Laboratory will also be serving a “Seacat Burger,” an all-beef patty (or vegetarian bean patty) with mac & cheese and french fries on it.
• A trusted source confirmed that the following artists will not be appearing at Decibel Festival this year due to having outrageously high performance fees: Daft Punk, Kraftwerk, and Aphex Twin. These musicians earn more money in one night than most people do in several years. And you can take that info to the bank.
• Poor Lower Queen Anne. First, Easy Street Records exited in January, now Silver Platters music emporium is moving to Sodo on First Avenue in June. Owner Mike Batt says that the relocation is a positive development. “Our new space is a big one—high ceilings, lots of natural light, and plenty of parking. Traffic flows freely along First Ave, accessed easily from the westbound lanes of I-90 and the West Seattle freeway, and will not be subject to the closures associated with events at the Seattle Center, or the ever frustrating Mercer Mess.”
We Will Live the Space Age (Saint Marie)
I sensed I would like Jetman Jet Team before I’d even heard their music. During a chance meeting with guitarist Brenan Chambers at the Living Room’s shoegaze DJ night, Vapour Trail, we bonded over Japanese psychonauts Space Machine. Thankfully, Chambers’s band turned out to be one of Seattle’s most exciting current rock acts.
Chambers and guitarists Miguel Diaz and Tyler James had played in Spokane group the Pop Eccentric before moving to Seattle in 2011 and forming Jetman Jet Team with drummer Quin Dickinson, bassist Adam Breeden, and keyboardist Alex Nagy (James and vocalist Alisa Dickinson have since departed). They excel live, where their Dreamachine scatters hypnotic, strobe-lit shapes to the strains of their overdriven, interstellar rock flamboyancies. Each gig has marked another evolutionary leap in their development as a shoegaze/dream-pop unit that could also stun you by krautrocking outrageously.
Jetman Jet Team’s debut album, We Will Live the Space Age, doesn’t possess the wild abandon of their live shows, but it’s aglow with sheer beauty and deft songcraft. Hazily indebted to elite British dream-weavers like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Lush, JJT put a Northwestern spin on shoegaze over 16 transportive tracks. Highlights? “Cosmic Age” captures the narcotic bliss of MBV in billowing midtempo mode, launching dense yet delicate guitar clouds and blurred, yearning vocals. “Deep Space” reveals JJT’s ability to nestle ultrasweet melodies within lofty plumes of guitar radiation. “Corrosive” sounds like Can and Rhys Chatham carefreely chugging down the Autobahn.
A luscious addition to Seattle’s sonic legacy, Space Age is endlessly hummable and coolly sidereal. But it sounds nothing like Space Machine. DAVE SEGAL
Desperate Ground (Saddle Creek)
I really do appreciate a good concept record— Lifter Puller’s Fiestas and Fiascos would be on my Top 10 Records of All Time list, if I ever bothered to make such a list—but it’s getting increasingly difficult to be impressed by such a thing. Maybe it’s Green Day’s fault for such laughable attempts, or maybe it’s our society’s
Matilda Jean Grey
Carrie Powder
Tom Cruise
obsession with the song over the album, but it feels pointless to even try crafting a concept record in 2013. Regardless, the Thermals give it a go with their latest, Desperate Ground Desperate Ground definitely has a concept, loosely wrapped up in destruction-obsessed songs like “Born to Kill” and “The Sword by My Side,” but it almost goes unnoticed on the first couple listens. The Thermals have a very specific sound, and I love them for it, but that same crunchy, pogo-pop noise is carried from song to song without too much fluctuation. Without palpable, dynamic musical shifts to bring any extra emotion to Hutch Harris’s urgent vocals about a killer, it’s hard to get sucked into any story line. As a record, it sounds great; as a story, it feels thin. Desperate Ground does get awesomely theatrical, though, in the final anthem, “Our Love Survives,” which really would make a great closing song for a punk-rock play. MEGAN SELING
The Thermals play Thurs April 25 at Neumos.
Dormarion (Merge)
There is something a little guilty-feeling about listening to such straightforward indie pop music—you could shop for overpriced high-waisted shorts to this, no problem— but sometimes you just can’t deny yourself the catchy. Dormarion is the 12-song third album from pop wizard Telekinesis—Seattle’s Michael Benjamin Lerner. Lerner’s wobbly/ highish vocals are perfectly endearing, and the heaps of melody are right up my alley. At least half the songs on the record (“Empathetic People” and “Wires” especially) hit the drums and pleasing guitar lines hard enough to make Dormarian the right choice for the summer car ride to an adventure or a late-night, tipsy hangout.
The slower, more pared-down tracks on the album are just okay—“Island #4” kind of drags along under the weight of trudging riffs; “Symphony” is a naked little tune, a sincere acoustic love song, which you probably just have to be in the right mood for (post-breakup? Pre-breakup? Ready for bed?).
After some initial skepticism (so digital!), I decidedly dig the dance numbers—“Ever True” bounces along with a snappy drum machine under solemnly catchy hooks, and “Ghosts and Creatures” is a buzzing and tender anthem with a hypnotic drumbeat/ egg-shaker combo that keeps the swirling, effects-heavy music afloat. Dormarian is mostly bright and fun, but there is a slight sadness rusted onto the lyrics and vocal melodies—an earnestness projected onto the otherwise upbeat jammers.
Telekinesis’s newest may not offer anything too terribly original or groundbreaking, but it’s a satisfying sunny-time ponytailshaker nonetheless. EMILY NOKES
BLU, E-40, JIM JONES, WATSKY, JAMES BLAKE
SpaceGhostPurrp and the whole Raider Klan were just here and reportedly found the Seattle crowd timid and mostly motionless, not an atypical situation. In an amazing reversal of fortune, last time LA’s Blu was here, he just stood his lanky ass there, and people in the crowd were mad. (Not just in Seattle, either.) Thing is, if you listen to Blu, you gotta know he’s no live-wire, Mystikal-ass motherfucker; he’s a thoughtful, meditative, often-half-asleep-ass rapper, so you get what you pay for and not a penny more. Thus, I somewhat regretfully hereby issue his upcoming April 17 show at Neumos a “Lauryn Hill Buyer Beware” notice—but let it be known that his LA compadres, the soulful neo–Daisy Agers TiRon & Ayomari, energetic local boom-bap revivalists Nu Era, and cosmic soul controller OCnotes are all propping him up, so there just may be better results than last time.
The official ambassador of the Bay, one of the very small handful of 40-plus rappers that’s still relevant and doing their job— Earl Stevens, ya boy E-40—is playing at the Showbox at the Market on Friday the 19th (also: Parker Brothaz, Cool Nutz, Neema, and Fearce & Bean, with host G. Prez). Life is amazing. Go, go to him.
Saturday, April 20, 4/20, the smokers’ holiday, Hitler’s birthday, the 14th anniversary of the United States’ loss of innocence (#5,658,768) via Columbine—well anyway, there’s plenty of stuff to do. Jim Jones is at the Crocodile, hopefully gearing up to tear the roof off like his man Cam’Ron did a couple months back. With him is Oakland’s Philthy Rich, possibly also a liver of the so-called “Vampire Life” that Jones is out here hashtagging ad infinitum. (Get some sleep, y’all, you’ll feel less weird.) Over at 95 Slide, you have “420 All-Stars,” something marvelous cooked up by the 4Evergreen Group and the Chef: the Cigar Shallah Raekwon himself performing his classics from the Purple Tape on. Over at Vermillion, you can put that head nod to work at the Pad Pushers Showcase, featuring producer power pack OCnotes WIZDUMB, Vaughnilla, Specs One, Diogenes, plus DJ Able of the Elefaders on the oons and doses
Tuesday the 23rd, the Crocodile brings you poet ternt internet sensation (remember “Pale Kid Raps Fast”?) ternt rapper (though honestly not necessarily in that order) named Watsky Opening up is amazing LA rapper (who’s no stranger to memedom himself) Dumbfoundead and Seattle’s pop-EDM movers/shakers the Flavr Blue That show’s sold out already, so you might wanna go get your mind and spirit blown and moved respectively by the infinite electronic soul of the British diamond-of-god James Blake, who’s doing his oceanic and emotive thing at the Neptune that night. His new album, Overgrown, is indeed… just… (*shakes head in disbelief, tenderly presses finger to your lips, softly shushes your questions*). That said (and unsaid), by the time you read this, I’ll be back on the road with Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction. Love y’all, thanks for trusting me, or at least tolerating me, all these years.
THU 4/18 - SUN 4/216
JOAN OSBORNE & THE HOLMES BROTHERS
Grammy-Nominated Singer/Songwriter touring in support of her bluesy new release “Bring It On Home”
TUE 4/23 - WED 4/24
MARTIN TAYLOR & MIMI FOX
Multi-Award Winning Jazz Guitarists Collaborate - A Sonic Delight!
TUE 4/30 - WED 5/1
BRAD MEHLDAU TRIO
Cerebral, Complex and Exploratory Jazz Piano Trio
THU 5/2 - SUN 5/5
CHICK COREA &THE VIGIL
From sublime acoustic to brilliant electric, Chick Corea reinvents himself again
TUE 5/7 - WED 5/8
CYRILLE AIMÉE & DIEGO FIGUEIREDO
Smooth and smoky vocalist with Brazil’s leading jazz guitarist Cyrille & Diego LIVE
THU 5/16 - SUN 5/19
THE GREYBOY ALLSTARS
San Diego Boogaloo jazz greats return to Seattle for four nights in support of their newest release - Inland Emperor.
Open mic performers will be taking the stage across the country for Shure’s 2013 National Open Mic Night. Want to be part of the largest Open Mic night ever? Go to shure.com/openmicnight, find the venue closest to you and get ready to “answer the call.”
www.shure.com/openmicnight
BY TRENT MOORMAN
SA-RA’S SHAFIQ HUSAYN, AN ORIGINAL WISE MAN
Husayn & Dove Society w/OCnotes
Thurs April 18, Dahlak, 8 pm, $15 adv/$20 DOS, all ages
Los Angeles–based MC/producer Shafiq Husayn excavates metropolis beats with a third-eye acumen. He swirls above like a large hunting bird and sees down to the city’s earth-crust root-mind. In 1990, Husayn was tapped by Ice-T to produce Original Gangster; from there, he went on to work with J Dilla, Questlove, N*E*R*D, Talib Kweli, Jay Electronica, and others. After digesting a CD of Dilla beats around the mid-’90s, Husayn, Om’Mas Keith, and Taz Arnold formed Sa-Ra Creative Partners, yielding two albums. This coming July, Husayn will release his latest full-length, titled The L∞P, featuring Flying Lotus, Breezy Lovejoy, Erykah Badu, Hiatus Kaiyote, Bilal, Thundercat, and more. A cut from the album, called “Twelve,” is available now. Husayn spoke from his LA home, his voice low and eased. When he laughs, he fully laughs.
Your lead-up to The L∞P, PreAlignment Vol. 1, is amazing. You’ve got a couple more things coming out before the album, right? Thank you. Pre-Alignment was beats I had in my drive, for the beat heads. Next up will be Alignment, then there will be Enlightenment. Right after that, the album comes out. I have a movie that’s broken up into three eight-minute acts, playing on the theme of The L∞p. The story is basically about me being sent to Earth to change the planet’s frequency back to love. Some things have turned to hate—one reason being that music, which comes from the throne, has been contaminated, so to speak. My mission is to bring the love back. It’s sort of Pink Floyd’s The Wall meets Yellow Submarine meets Electric Company [laughs].
You work with different people in different roles. How do you dial into those roles? I turn myself into a student and initiate myself into someone’s school of thought, so I can understand where they’re coming from.
What goes into being a student that way? Long conversations. Hanging out. Going to movies. Smoking herb. I saw Pan’s Labyrinth with Erykah, Mad Lib, and another friend, high on mushrooms, at a small theater in Silver Lake [laughs]. Then we went to a little Korean bar and sat in the back and talked about it. That’s how I get initiated into people’s schools.
You wrote lyrics for Erykah. Where did you pull words from, how did they arrive? Everyday life. I like to play with words. I’m into etymology of words and root words. A lot of words we use, we don’t realize they come from another language. Take the word chemistry—the root word, khem, pertains to the people that inhabited Egypt. Also, alchemy. Or you can go chemhistory, or my story [laughs]. Erykah would hear me say stuff like this and just laugh, then somewhere in the writing session, we would figure it out and incorporate it. [Starts singing] Brenda done died with no name/Nickel bag coke to the brain./Will they ever find the vaccine?/Shitty, damn, damn, baby, bang.
When I say Questlove, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Philadelphia, New Year’s Eve, 2005. Sa-Ra was onstage, and we had J*Davey and Thundercat. Quest had us come perform with the Roots. It was huge. I admire their organization— they were doing great things then already, but I can see why they’re highly successful.
Ice-T. Ice was the first person to hire me to produce. My group at the time, Nile Kings, were signed to Ice’s Rhyme Syndicate label. Ice was always a big advocate for our group. I was going to Compton College and playing football, and I had a decision to make—whether to do more school after graduating. At some point, I almost became homeless, so Ice’s producer, Afrika Islam, let me stay at his place when he went to Japan for three months. Ice came by looking for Is, and I was in there working on music. He heard some of the tracks and was like, “What’choo doing with that?” Then he said, “Come to the studio with me.” And that was that.
What position did you play in football? I was a running back. Did some backup quarterback. Started off as a strong safety my first year, then they switched me in the first couple games to running back. Our team was short-manned, so most of the players had to play two positions.
J Dilla. The holy one. J Dilla came to my house [laughs]. I had Jesus at my house. Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and Confucius came to my house wrapped up in J Dilla. We smoked, ate, listened to beats, made beats, wrote rhymes, talked about hiphop and family. We recorded “Thrilla” at the house. It was a series. He spent like three days there.
What did you learn from how he makes music? The dope thing was that he didn’t come to the house as a producer, he came to the house as an MC. It was dope to sit there and just write with him—listening to beats, coming up with rhymes. It felt like I was in high school with my first rhyme crew. We transported back to how it felt when we first fell in love with hiphop. It solidified everything about why I was doing what I was doing. Not to take away from all the other great people I’ve worked with, but working with him was confirmation. Like going to spend the night at your friend’s house, and both of y’all collect Hot Wheels cars. You know when you get over there, he’s gonna show you this, and you’re gonna show him that. You’re gonna be up all night [laughs].
What’s some music you’ve had your ears on lately? I like what’s going on up there with Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction. I’d love to make some music with them someday. I like Flying Lotus, the Gaslamp Killer, Breezy Lovejoy, Strong Arm Steady, Om’Mas Keith, Odd Future, Hiatus Kaiyote, the Art Don’t Sleep. There’s so much good stuff out there…
Read the rest of this interview at THESTRANGER.COM/MUSIC
THU/APRIL 18 • 7:30PM simone dinnerstein and tift merritt in night
FRI/APRIL 19 • 8PM blame sally w/ erin corday
TUE/APRIL 23 & WED/APRIL 24 • 7PM 91.3 KBCS WELCOMES shuggie otis w/ jesca hoop
THU/APRIL 25 • 8PM john keister & brooks mcbeth
SAT/APRIL 27 • 7PM & 10PM SQUARE PEG PRESENTS one-man star wars trilogy written & performed by: charles ross
Lose your 100 drunk Paul Ryans every night this week! For the full music calendar, see page 51 or visit thestranger.com/music For ticket on-sale announcements, follow twitter.com/seashows
Booka Shade, Robert DeLong (Showbox at the Market) See Data Breaker, page 55.
A Tribe Called Red, DJ Darwin, Chilly (Barboza) See My Philosophy, page 43.
Blu, TiRon & Ayomari, Nu Era, OCnotes (Neumos) See My Philosophy, page 43.
Airport, Black Hat, Magisterial, Bankie Phones (Electric Tea Garden) See Data Breaker, page 55.
Prince (Showbox at the Market) Besides a limited supply of dollars, the greatest obstacle to forking out big bucks to see a Prince concert is the fact that the greatest pop musician of our age is a wildly erratic live performer. When he wants to, he’ll put on the most amazing show you’ve ever seen—as I learned at his 2004 show at KeyArena. And when he’s feeling pissy or preachy or otherwise tied up with some Princely struggle only he can comprehend, he can suck balls (as I learned on the 1984 Purple Rain tour, when he doled out clunky medleys of hits between theatrical stretches of conversing with the computerized voice of God). He’s so fucking perverse about it, you can’t even begin to predict what to expect. So here’s hoping the lucky bastards and bastardesses who get to see Prince play the Showbox are treated to a once-in-a-lifetime party packed with eternal hits performed at point-blank range, rather than two hours of Jehovah’s Witness–
inspired jazz fusion. DAVID SCHMADER
Choicefest: Skarp, Transient, Don Peyote, Murder in the Wood (Highline) Choicefest is the annual pro-women music festival that celebrates many of the weird, loud, and heavy bands in the Northwest featuring at least one female band member. “No all-dude bands!” says the festival’s founder, Adam Bass. Tonight’s show, with an epic lineup of brain-buzzing acts including Skarp and Don Peyote, is just the kickoff of the minifest—Princess, Pipsqueak, Lozen, Tacos!, and more are playing over the weekend at Black Lodge and the Comet. Besides reiterating that you don’t have to be a man to rock, this show is also a benefit for Rick Powell, the local musician who was recently shot three times in the chest in an alleged attempted robbery. MEGAN SELING
Lee Fields & the Expressions, Lady (Neumos) Describing a musician as a “poor man’s James Brown” may sound like damning with faint praise, but it’s actually a huge compliment. (If I have to explain the world-historical greatness of James Brown to you in 2013, you’ve picked up the wrong paper/hit the wrong website.) To come close to replicating the hyperlibidinous funk, volcanic soul, and exposed-nerve balladry of Brown’s A+ work is a difficult feat, to be sure. Which means that Lee Fields, a sixtysomething JB disciple to the bone, and his Expressions may be the closest thing in the entertainment world to witnessing the Godfather of Soul in the sweaty flesh right now. Give the epigone some, people. DAVE SEGAL
Shafiq Husayn & Dove Society, OCnotes (Dahlak Eritrean Cuisine) This is the hiphop show of the week. Nothing should make you miss the beau-
tiful, Afro-futurist, Afro-polycentric, Afro-blue, Afrobohemian beat-slamming tunes of Shafiq Husayn & Dove Society. Husayn, who has worked with the Robert Glasper Experiment, Erykah Badu, and many others, is currently plugged into that scintillating stream of hiphop/soul/jazz that has its source in the genius of the late J Dilla. Indeed, I have elsewhere argued that the numerous followers of Dilla’s program and aesthetic have essentially established whole a new form of black American music. And what do LA’s Husayn and 206’s OCnotes have in common? Their work overflows with very new and also very traditional musical concepts. I will be surprised if this event does not end as a night to be remembered. CHARLES MUDEDE
See also Sound Check, page 45.
The Fame Riot, Continental Soldiers, the Fabulous Downey Brothers, DJ Philanthony (Barboza) If I were to judge the Fame Riot based solely on their fashion aesthetic—the sparkles, scarves, and messy long hair of ’70s glam meet the fake fur and Cosby sweaters of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”—I’d assume the music made by the pair of Tacoma-based brothers was not my bag. But book, judge, cover, blah blah blah—because goddamn, their songs are catchy! New wave’s synth, pop’s hooks, and steadfast club beats—there’s even a Prince-esque guitar solo in “The Finale (Cosmic Future Remix).” It’d work on a playlist next to Katy Perry just as well as it would the Strokes. As for the clothes, I mean, at least they’re not sporting the tired suspenders and porkpie hats, right?
MEGAN SELING
Captured! By Robots, Skelator, Headless Prez (Chop Suey) If you were to be kidnapped by any one band, it might not be bad to hit the road with JBOT, the human, and his band of robots—the two stuffed monkeys on cymbals, a severed doll’s head who plays the drums, a freaky-eyed robot on the bass guitar, three bloody and headless “hornsmen” on horns. Part head-scratching performance art, part experimental metal concert, C!BR would be easy to tour with—they probably don’t need to eat, sleep, or ever stop the van to pee. Don’t miss openers Skelator—non-robot people from Seattle who make nonironic, bombastic
Prince (Showbox at the Market) See Thursday.
Choicefest: Princess, Fist Fite, Pipsqueak, Skies Below (Black Lodge) See Underage, page 56.
E-40, Parker Brothaz, Cool Nutz, Neema, Fearce & Bean (Showbox Sodo) Vallejo rapper E-40 is a true originator of West Coast slappers, style, and slanguage, which he’s proved from his ’92/’93 debuts with family unit the Click and solo album Federal, to his frequent collaborations with other well- and lesser-known Bay rappers throughout the years, to his vital role in popularizing the region’s mid-’00s hyphy movement. 40 Water has even found a way to release more than seven albums in the last three years, all of which still sound fresh and up-to-date, proving he’s still on top of his game. He’s as close to a literal living legend as one can get, responsible for too many classics to list in a mere preview blurb. Just think about seeing stuff like “Sideways” performed live, and the decision should make itself. “OOOOooooh” (40 voice).
MIKE RAMOS See also My Philosophy, page 43.
Tera Melos, This Town Needs Guns, By Sunlight
(Crocodile) Stereolab have a self-descriptive song called “John Cage Bubblegum”; Tera Melos could title more than one of their own tracks “Captain Beefheart Bubblegum.” (If you don’t think this is a good thing, lick my decals off, baby.) The Sacramento group have taken Don Van Vliet’s unpredictable time signatures and unconventional guitar tones and smoothed them into math-pop magic, peaking on 2010’s Patagonian Rats. Tera Melos’s new album, X’ed Out, subdues the band’s jittery rhythmic slants and no-wave abrasiveness a bit, allowing the uplifting melodies to shine harder. On “No Phase,” they even dabble with sheerest shoegaze ethereality. Yep, change can be pretty good. DAVE SEGAL
THUR APRIL 18 $10/8PM DOORS/21+
CAPTURED! BY ROBOTS SKELATOR | HEADLESS PEZ
SAT APRIL 20 $10ADV/9PM DOORS / 21+
INTELLIGENCE
DAYDREAM MACHINE PARTMAN PARTHORSE
SUN APRIL 21 $12ADV/8PM DOORS/ALL-AGES, BAR W/ID
LYDIA FROM INDIAN LAKES | SWEET TALKER
THUR APRIL 25 $8ADV/8PM DOORS/ALL-AGES, BAR W/ID
KITHKIN
CONSTANT LOVERS | PLEASUREBOATERS E.D. SEDGWICK
WED MAY 1 $10 ADV/8PM DOORS/21+
BLEACHED EX COPS | WEEK OF WONDERS
THUR MAY 2 $12ADV/8PM DOORS/21+
MASAKI BATOH’S BRAIN PULSE MUSIC VANCE GALLOWAY & NOISE POET NOBODY
4/19 BOOTIE 4/26 TUCK 4/27
TALCUM 5/3 BOK BOK 5/4 RL GRIME 5/5 VIETNAM 5/7 ACID MOTHERS
TEMPLE 5/11 VICCI MARTINEZ 5/12 THE APPLESEED CAST 5/13 ARK OF THE COVENANT 5/16 NIGHT TRAIN 5/20 DETROIT COBRAS 5/23 LORD DYING 5/24 THE KIDS 5/28 KYLESA 6/6 ANAMANAGUCHI 6/8 CHRIST DRIVER 6/13 LESBIAN 6/14 AM & SHAWN LEE 6/17 PONY TIME
Federation X, C Average, Trashies, the Narrows
(Comet) Federation X meticulously constructed and then brashly detonated several explosive punk/rock records in the late ’90s/early ’00s. Then two of the jerks moved east to the lesser coast for a few years. But all that is in the past. Guitar extortionist Ben Wildenhaus and frontman Bill Badgley are, at least for now, relocated to this dank corner of the country. What’s more, they’ve got a new record in the chute—this time with production team Deaf Nephews: Dale Crover and Toshi Kasai of Melvins/Big Business. Add to this the fact that this is the first of only a handful of C Average reunion shows, and WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GRANT BRISSEY
Los Amigos Invisibles, Darek Mazzone
(Neumos) Latin Grammy winners Los Amigos Invisibles are Venezuela’s answer to Thievery Corporation or Kinky. LAI’s slick, suave, upbeat dance music is tastefully sensuous if not exactly bursting with original flavor. Their latest album, Repeat After Me, bubbles with slightly quirky synth and percussion sounds but overall maintains an amiable demeanor and loungey disco/house rhythmic clip for folks in business-casual attire to party fairly responsibly to. DAVE SEGAL
Cathedrals 5: The Moondoggies, Mirah, Shenandoah Davis (St. Mark’s) See Stranger Suggests, page 21.
The Men, Dude York, Big Eyes, CCR Headcleaner (Vera) See Underage, page 56.
The Narx, So Pitted, the Shivas, Hornet Leg, the Fabulous Downey Brothers (Black Lodge) See Underage, page 56.
Ben UFO, Ben Tactic, Nordic Soul, Recess (Q) See Data Breaker, page 55.
Jim Jones, Philthy Rich (Crocodile) See My Philosophy, page 43.
The Intelligence, Daydream Machine, PartMan PartHorse
(Chop Suey) Now that marijuana is dipping its little green toe into the acceptable and straightup-legal pond in these parts, will future generations of teens still scribble totally sick 420s on their notebooks during detention? Will poster aliens still insist on being taken to your dealer, if your dealer is just Safeway or whatever? Celebrate this special holiday while it’s still special, with the ramshackle ultragenius of the Intelligence: abrasive, lo-fi post-fun fun steeped in catchy and unconventional hooks made for dancing off your cottonmouth. Also making an appearance are Partman Parthorse—the fittest band around, guaranteeing deadpan rock-punk for your ears and decorative mankini for your eyes. With low-toned, hazy psych rockers Daydream Machine. EMILY NOKES
Choicefest: Lozen, Bad Powers, Tacos!, Elk Rider
(Comet) Bad Powers’ debut is a strong contender for the most criminally overlooked rock album of 2012. Maybe a lack of touring was to blame for the absence of media hype? Maybe it’s the fact that the band is basically a restructuring of New York noise-rock veterans Made out of Babies, only without the unnerving and legitimately cuckoo antics of vocalist Julie Christmas hogging up all the attention? Either way, it’s time to correct the situation. The band is finally laying siege to the West Coast, and singer Megan Tweed (also of Seattle’s the Family Curse) deserves kudos for complementing Bad Powers’ grimy mixture of Barkmarket’s earthquaking dynamics and Today Is the Day’s aural dementia instead of overshadowing it. BRIAN COOK
Rage Against the Machine Tribute: Bullet in Your Head, Scarecrow Messiah, Pretty Enemy (Central) The Central Saloon, a Pioneer Square bar, is the “official bar for Monster Supercross!!” And headlining its after-party (?!) is Rage Against the Machine tribute band Bullet in Your Head. Also,
NECTAR LOUNGE 412 N 36th St 206.632.2020 www.nectarlounge.com
4.17 Wednesday (Soul/Funk)
JAMESON and the SORDID SEEDS Cherry Royale, Soul Finger
$5 adv / $7 dos, 7pm, 21+
4.18 Thursday (Reggae/Dancehall)
MIGHTY CROWN “The Far East Rulaz” with Zions Gate Sound, ZJ Redman, Blessed Coast Sound
$10adv. before 10pm / $15 after 10pm, Doors 9pm, 21+
4.19 Friday (DJ/Dance)
PARTY PEOPLE FROM THE YEAR 2000 DJ Swervewon and DJ BB
Bringing you the Hits of the 2000’s Hosted by Miss Casey Carter
$5 before 11pm, $7 after, 9pm, 21+
4:20 Saturday: (Reggae/Dancehall) Nectar and 4E Present:
PUBLISH THE QUEST 4:20 PARTY Longstride (CD RELEASE), Selecta Raiford
$7adv / $10dos, 8pm, 21+
4.21 Sunday (Fashion Show / Folk)
RENUNU EARTHDAY FASHION SHOW music by Nu Klezmer Army, The Mongrel Jews, Hicks Chicks, Zmrzlina, Pepper
Proud, The Pickup Truckers and featuring Lady Lux Burlesque Dancers modeling trashions from Haute Trash collection
4pm - 6pm Doors and Vendors (NO COVER)
$17 adv / $20 Day of Show after 6pm, 6:30 Fashion Show, 8pm Concert, 21+
4.24 Wednesday (Reggae/Dub)
DUBTONIC KRU and JAH SUN
Kool Johnny Kool, Callisto
$10 adv, 8pm doors, 21+
it’s on 4/20. To recap: energy-drink-branded motorcycle race after-party in Pioneer Square on 4/20 headlined by RATM cover band. So now you know where to go on Saturday! To literally anywhere else on earth. Inside a volcano. In your parents’ bedroom while they’re having sex. Into a porta-potty that’s about to be rolled down a hill. Note: This is not a dig at the musicians here at all. Rage Against the Machine was an actually great ’90s band whose lyrics taught me a bunch of important political shit as a teenager—but somehow, most of the dudes who like them are notorious douche captains (e.g., Paul Ryan). If you mess up and go to this show, expect 100 drunk Paul Ryans with pocketfuls of Rohypnol. RUN. ANNA MINARD
Northwest Sinfonietta: Awadagin Pratt (Pioneer Park Pavilion, Puyallup) Pratt’s played with everyone, from New York Philharmonic to Northwest Sinfonietta. He was one of the first black pianists to rock the competition circuit (back in the 1990s), and this time in Seattle he’s performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in a program that also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 and the world premiere of a piece by Sinfonietta founder and director Christophe Chagnard: Embargo, Suite Cubana. This should be well worth the outing; the Sinfonietta—the best orchestra in Seattle that you’ve never heard of—also specializes in Mozart. (Additional performances April 19 at Benaroya Hall and April 20 at Tacoma’s Rialto Theatre.) JEN GRAVES
Sparks (Neptune) See Stranger Suggests, page 21.
Watsky, Dumbfoundead, the Flavr Blue (Crocodile) See My Philosophy, page 43.
James Blake, FaltyDL (Neptune) James Blake’s new album, Overgrown moves further away from his earlier, more overtly beat-oriented output, instead emphasizing his burnished, soulful vocals—think somewhere between the late folk-blues troubadour Karen Dalton and Antony Hegarty—and elegantly contoured torch-songcraft. Blake values intimacy and tenderness above all in his compositions, casting his gently vibrato’d croons into low-lit tableaux of consoling introversion, although “Retrograde” and “Voyeur” deviate from the prevalent warm-milk sound. Fans will call it “simmering” and “mature”; haters will deem it “soporific” and “stodgy” (even RZA’s guest rap on “Take a Fall for Me” lacks spice). Much livelier is the oft-morphing, bass-laden music of New York producer FaltyDL (aka Drew Lustman). He brings cracking, limber rhythmic convolutions and glimmering melodiousness to UK garage, which has earned him a Ninja Tune contract and slots on high-profile bills like this one. Get there early. DAVE SEGAL See also My Philosophy, page 43.
Shuggie Otis, Jesca Hoop (Triple Door) On ’70s psych-soul masterpieces Freedom Flight and Inspiration Information , multi-instrumentalist prodigy Shuggie Otis displayed the rare ability to sound featherlight yet robust in both voice and composition. In this way he resembles Curtis Mayfield and Sly Stone, although Otis’s fame is a mere fraction of those immortals’. Part of that is due to his reclusiveness and small body of work (if only he’d accepted the Rolling Stones’ 1974 offer to be their guitarist!). No matter: Brothers Johnson turned Otis’s sublimely levitational “Strawberry Letter 23” into a massive hit, which surely kept him financially secure during those creatively fallow years. Now with Epic reissuing Inspiration and appending a bonus disc, Wings of Love , containing 14 previously unreleased, sporadically great tracks from 1975–2000, the time’s ripe for rediscovering (again) his breezy, slyly sensual tunesmithery. Let’s hope Shuggie’s tightened up his live act since a bungled 2001 comeback tour. (Additional performance April 24.) DAVE SEGAL
NECTAR Jameson & the Sordid Seeds, Cherry Royale, Soul Finga, 8 pm, $5 a NEPTUNE THEATER Gaslight Anthem, guests, 8 pm, $22.50/$25
NEUMOS Blu, TiRon, Ayomari, Nu Era, OCNotes, 8 pm, $12
NEW ORLEANS Legacy Band, Clarence Acox
PINK DOOR Casey MacGill & the Blue 4 Trio, 8 pm
SHIP CANAL GRILL Jay Thomas & the Canteloupes
a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Booka Shade, Robert Delong, 7:30 pm, $25/$30
SUNSET TAVERN Beach Day, Chains of Love, guests, 8:30 pm, $10
TRACTOR TAVERN Star Anna & Friends, guests, 8 pm, $15/$18
DJ
Nahko and
for the People, Paula Fuga, Mike Love, Island Bound, 8 pm
EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Cornish Jazz Ensemble, 9 pm, free a EL CORAZON Millionaires, Ashland High, Beneath the Sun, Lancifer, 8 pm, $15/$18 HIGH DIVE Village, Bigfoot Wallace & His Wicked Sons, the Hunting Club, 8 pm, $7
HIGHWAY 99 Dirty Rice
JAZZ ALLEY Sugar Blue, 7:30 pm, $22.50
BALTIC ROOM DJ Rome, Rozzville, Zooty B, Antartic
CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Peter, DJ Alison
CONTOUR Rotation
THE EAGLE VJDJ Andy J
ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN
Passage: Jayms Nylon, Joey Webb, guests
FOUNDATION DJ Marky, xKore, Iris, Charlie Eon, $10
HAVANA SoulShift: Peter Evans, Devlin Jenkins, Richard Everhard, $1
LAST SUPPER CLUB Vibe:
Jame$Ervin, DT, Contagious
MOE BAR The Hump: DJ Darwin, DJ Swervewon, guests, 10:30 pm, free
NEIGHBOURS Undergrad: Guest DJs, 18+, $5/$8
PONY Body 2 Body: 10 pm
Q NIGHTCLUB DJ Martini, free
SEE SOUND LOUNGE Fade: DJ Chinkyeye, DJ Christyle, 10 pm
LIVE
2 BIT SALOON Mammoth Salmon, Eroder, Dilapidation
BARBOZA The Fame Riot, Continental Soldiers , the Fabulous Downey Brothers, DJ Philanthony, 8 pm, $5
BARÇA Clark Gibson Trio, free BLUE MOON TAVERN Highlight Bomb, Little War Twins, Hausfrau
CAFE RACER Earl Brooks CAN CAN Vince Mira
CHOP SUEY Captured! By Robots, Skelator, Headless Pez, 8 pm, $10
COLUMBIA CITY THEATER Song Sparrow Research , Wand, Ozarks, 8 pm, $8
COMET Local Dudes , Planet, Lubec, Power
Can we talk about hangovers for a minute, please? I know there are plenty of recommended foods to eat before drinking, and formulas for how much water you should drink between cocktails. But what if you still wake up with what feels like a metal spike in the middle of your forehead? Are there any new and exciting hangover cures? I mean, it’s 2013, right? Let’s discuss at thestranger.com/drunkoftheweek. KELLY O
Cassette, $6
CONOR BYRNE Guitar
Summit
COPPER GATE Fu Kun Wu
Trio, 8 pm, free
CROCODILE Night Snipers, Diana Arbenina, 8 pm
a DAHLAK ERITREAN
CUISINE Shafiq Husayn & Dove Society, OCNotes, 8 pm, $15
a EASY STREET RECORDS
Robert Delong, 7 pm, free
EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Jean Mann , Sonya Heller, 7 pm, free
a EL CORAZON The Skatalites, Georgetown Orbits, Unite One, 7:30 pm, $15/$20
HIGH DIVE Eight Legs
To Nowhere , Spring the Trap , Mister Master, 8 pm, $7
HIGHLINE Choicefest:
Skarp, Transient, Don Peyote, Murder in the Wood, $8
HIGHWAY 99 Hot Rod
Holman Blues Band
JAZZ ALLEY Joan Osborne and the Holmes Brothers, 9:30 pm, $35
LUCID The Hang: Caffeine, 9:30 pm, free
THE MIX Furniture Girls the Megafauna, Sightseer
a MOORE THEATER Ben Howard, 7:30 pm, $22.50
NECTAR Mighty Crown, Zions Gate Sound, ZJ Redman, Blessed Coast Sound, $10
a NEPTUNE THEATER
Yonder Mountain String Band, 8 pm, $25
NEUMOS Lee Fields & the Expressions, Lady & the Fat Kids, $15
PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac, 8 pm
SCARLET TREE How Now Brown Cow , 9:30 pm, free
SHIP CANAL GRILL Bernie Jacobs Trio
SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Prince, 11 pm, $250 a SILVER PLATTERS
(QUEEN ANNE) Chuck Ragan, 5:30 pm, free; Steve Earle, 6:30 pm, free
SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB
The Past Impending , the Mongrel Jews, the Lexingtons, Sadie & the Blue Eye’d Devils, 8 pm, $5
SMOKIN’ PETE’S BBQ Howdy Boys, 6:30 pm, free a STUDIO SEVEN Cirka:sik, Solum, guests, 7 pm, $8/$10
SUNSET TAVERN The Lonely Wild, Ghosts I’ve Met Tangerine, 8:30 pm, $7 a TRACTOR TAVERN
The Revival Tour: Dave Hause, Tim McIlrath, Jenny O, Chuck Ragan, Rocky Votolato, 7 pm, $18/$20
THE WHITE RABBIT Marmalade, $6
DJ
CAPITOL CLUB DJ Skiddle
CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Gustavo
THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark
ELECTRIC TEA
GARDEN Airport, Black Hat, Magisterial, Bankie Phones
HAVANA Sophisticated Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty
LAST SUPPER CLUB Open House: Guests
MOE BAR Soundsystem: DJ Panamami, free
NEIGHBOURS Jet Set Thursdays: Guest DJs
NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND The Lowdown: DJ Lightray, $3
PONY Billion Dollar Babies: DJ Aykut Ozen, Pretty Baby
Q NIGHTCLUB Front Street: Karl Kamakahi, free
SEE SOUND LOUNGE
DAMN $ON: Tony Goods, Jameson Just
TRINITY Space Thursdays: Rise Over Run, DJ Christyle, Johnny Fever, DJ Nicon,
THU APRIL 18TH - SAT APRIL 20TH
Michael is an inspired deadpan comedian and the father of modern comedy juggling. For years he played the part of Chef Tad Overdone at Teatro Zinzanni in Seattle and San Francisco.
In the clown business for more than 30 years, Peter Pitofsky has worked the rings at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, performed on the streets of Venice Beach, and opened for the likes of Mel Brooks and Jay Leno.
Sean Majors, B Geezy, guests, free
FRI 4/19
LIVE 2 BIT SALOON Benefit for Stone Soup Group: Guests
BARBOZA Angel Olsen, Villages, 7 pm, $10
a BENAROYA HALL Mary Chapin Carpenter , Shawn Colvin, 8 pm, $38-$54
a BLACK LODGE Choicefest: Princess, Fist Fite, Pipsqueak , Skies
Below
BLUE MOON TAVERN Bone Cave Ballet , Case + Ctrl, Below Blackstar , White Hawaiian
CAFE RACER Hounds of the Wild Hunt, the Lonesome Shack, Nu Klezmer Army
CENTRAL SALOON The Heyfields, Jordan Biggs, Brandon Wesley, JT Philips, free a COMET Federation
X, C Average, Trashies, the Narrows, $8
CONOR BYRNE George Colligan Trio, Matt Jorgensen +451
COPPER GATE Fu Kun Wu Trio, 8 pm, free
a CROCODILE Tera Melos, This Town Needs Guns, By Sunlight , 8 pm, $10
DARRELL’S TAVERN The Black Crabs, the 1Uppers, Miller & Sasser, $7
EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Cornish Jazz Ensemble, Peter Daniel Quintet, Gail Pettis with the Clipper Anderson Trio, 9:30 pm
a EL CORAZON The Dear Hunter, guests, 8 pm, $13/$15
a EMPTY SEA STUDIOS Ryan Ayers, 8 pm, $16/$20
a HEARTLAND Ozarks, TenSpeed Music, Pitschouse, Mitts, 9 pm HIGH DIVE Mugatu, the
FIRST, A WORD…
Confetti Kids, Moss Mantis guests, 9:30 pm, $8
HIGHWAY 99 Marshall Scott Warner , Wylie & The Wild West
JAZZ ALLEY Joan Osborne and the Holmes Brothers, 9:30 pm, $35
THE KRAKEN Kled , Kramer, Chosen Enemies, the Tacomaphobes, $5 LO-FI Butterclock, Moon Mirror, DJ Julia, Lichinka, $7 after 10 pm
LOCK & KEEL McTuff featuring Cliff Colon, 8 pm
THE MIX Stuart Davis
NEUMOS Los Amigos Invisibles, guests, $17
a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 5:30 pm
SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free
SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Prince, 11 pm, $250
SHOWBOX SODO E-40, Parker Brothaz, Cool Nutz Neema, Fearce & Bean, G. Prez, 8 pm, $20/$25
SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB
Shameless Rob Band, Once Upon a Tuesday, Stefan Roland & Bina Peters, 8 pm, $7
SLIM’S LAST CHANCE King County Queens, the Gum, the Dignitaries
a STUDIO SEVEN Michael Graves, Spiderface, Hades Machine, Kamikazis, Minimum Age, 7 pm, $10/$12
SUNSET TAVERN Gems, Gold Wolf Galaxy, Vox Mod, $8
TRACTOR TAVERN Gravity Kings, Radio Raheem , the Brown Edition, $8
TRIPLE DOOR Blame Sally, 8 pm, $15/$17
a VERA PROJECT Tiffany Alvord, Jason Chen, 7:30 pm, $13/$12
THE WHITE RABBIT Wes SP8, Death By Stars , Myrmidon
DJ 95 SLIDE DJ Fever One
BALMAR DJ Ben Meadow
BALTIC ROOM Bump Fridays: Guest DJs
BARBOZA Just Got Paid: 100proof, $5 after 11:30 pm
CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Cebrina, DJ Chris Jones
CHOP SUEY Maya Jakobson, DJ Kash, DJ Freddy King of Pants, DJ Destrukt, $5/$10
CUFF C&W Dancing: DJ Harmonix, DJ Stacey, 7 pm; TGIF: Guest DJs, 11 pm, $5
ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN All Ours: D-t3ch, Mikey V, Jason Curtis, the Architects, 10 pm, $10
FOUNDATION Revolver, Digital Lab, Tyler Brown, Fierro, Ian Powers
FUEL DJ Headache, guests
HAVANA Rotating DJs: DV One, Soul One, Curtis, Nostalgia B, Sean Cee, $5
LAST SUPPER CLUB
Madness: Guests
NECTAR Party People From the Year 2000: DJ Swervewon, DJ BB, $5
NEIGHBOURS DJ Richard Dalton, DJ Skiddle
NEIGHBOURS
UNDERGROUND Caliente
Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren
PONY DJ Porq, DJ kKost
Q NIGHTCLUB Flash: Ben UFO, Ben Tactic, Recess, Nordic Soul , $10
SCARLET TREE Oh So Fresh Fridays: Deejay Tone, DJ Buttnaked, guests
SEE SOUND LOUNGE Crush: Guest DJs, free
TRINITY Tyler, DJ Phase, DJ Nug, guests, $10
LIVE
2 BIT SALOON The Lexingtons, Sadie & the Blue Eye’d Devils
BARBOZA Family of the Year, the Mowgli’s, $13
a BLACK LODGE The Narx, So Pitted, the Shivas,
BY ADRIAN RYAN
JINKX IS GOING TO WIN THIS FUCKING THING. That’s what I say. I feel it in my bone. (My. Great. Big. Bone.) And believe me, I had my doubts. And theories! I entertained suspicions, developed wildthighed conjectures—way back a dragillion years ago, before all this madness officially began. It was shortly after Xmess, just when Jinkx had been freshly outed as a new RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant but the season had yet to air. I saw Jinkx and Alaska Thunderfuck perform together on a dual billing, at a clever little club tucked away in some obscure elbow of Portland, and… something Something in the way the two interacted, the way the show that night was billed, a certain je ne sais the fuck quoi that left an overwhelming taste of OHHOLYSHITBIRDS ALASKA TOTALLY WON in my mouth that I just couldn’t spit out. But now? Jinkx, as she herself put it, is “pissing all over” this shit. Barring a vicious crossdressing coup or an epic act of injustice, she’s got this competition in the glittery handbag That’s what I think. Just don’t quote me on that if I’m wrong.
WEDNESDAY 4/17
JASPER’S FAMILY JEWELS
Anyhoo… Jennifer Jasper is a name that is cherished among Seattle’s fringier theater scene and the audiences that love it. Tonight she transforms her critically acclaimed one-woman musings about her own family’s singular dysfunction into a new monthly cabaret! Family Affair! Storytellers, dancers, writers, musicians, artists… each and all will be sharing their sick, hilarious, and ultimately
Hornet Leg, the Fabulous Downey Brothers
a BLESSED SACRAMENT
CHURCH Taste of Britten:
Musica Sacra, 7:30 pm
BLUE MOON TAVERN Dead
Language, Full Moon Radio, Pirex
CAFE RACER Brendan Shea, Alex Rasmussen, Sarah Pasillas
a CAIRO The Funs, FF, Lindseys, 8 pm
CENTRAL SALOON Bullet in Your Head , Scarecrow
Messiah , Pretty Enemy
a CHAPEL PERFORMANCE
SPACE Vance Galloway, Stella Haze
CHOP SUEY The Intelligence , Day Dream Machine, Partman
Parthorse , $10
COMET Choicefest: Lozen, Bad Powers, Tacos!, Elk Rider, $8
CONOR BYRNE Sam Russell & the Harborrats, the Bombadil Project, Lone Madrone, $7, guests, 7:30 pm
COPPER GATE Andrew Norsworthy and Beth Whitney, 8 pm, $5
a CROCODILE Jim Jones, Philthy Rich, TPE, $25/$30
DARRELL’S TAVERN the Jesus Rehab, Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount, the Torn ACLs Poor Folks Live Well, 8:30 pm, $7
EGAN’S JAM HOUSE 3rd
Annual Phil Ochs Tribute:
Brandee Young, Hans Brehmer, Ken French, Cary Black, 7 pm, guests, 9 pm
a EL CORAZON Saving Sunsets, Jesse Morrow, the Exchange, Union Street Orchestra, District, 6:30 pm, $6/$12
a EMPTY SEA STUDIOS
Deepak Ram Quintet Premiere, 7:30 pm, $20
a EVERYDAY MUSIC
Record Store Day: King Dude, Mystery Ship, Scriptures, Tomten, Steradian, guests, free
relatable familial skeletons on the third Wednesday of each month. Tonight it begins. Rendezvous Jewelbox Theater, 7:30 pm, $10, 21+.
THURSDAY 4/18
ROCK LOBSTER REBOOT!
So. Some ancient and pervy cave called “Neighbours” is “rebooting” its ancient and pervy ’80s-dance night called “Rock Lobster.” Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! That is all. Neighbours, 10:30 pm, $6, 21+.
WAXIE MOON, FALLEN
But what we’re REALLY doing tonight is Fallen Jewel I wouldn’t say screenings of this wonderful Seattle film, which features just about every colorful character and cherished performer in Seattle and stars the irrepressibly shiny burlesque star Waxie Moon, are rare (there was just one like two weeks ago!), but they are events worthy of our attention and love. Haven’t seen it? See it! Have seen it? See it again! Tonight’s host: Sarah Rudinoff! Perfect. Central Cinema, 8 pm, $12, 21+.
TO
a HEARTLAND Stickers, Punishment, Air Jackson, 8 pm
HIGH DIVE Theoretics, Richie Aldente, Just People, 8 pm, $8
HIGHLINE The Rocketz, Hard Money Saints Load Levelers, Angie & the Carwrecks, Banzai Surf, guests, 7 pm, $12/$15
HIGHWAY 99 The Graceland Five, Hot Roddin Romeos, Back Alley Barbers, Six Gun Romeo
JAZZ ALLEY Joan Osborne and the Holmes Brothers, 9:30 pm, $35
a KEYARENA Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio, Kari Jobe, 7 pm, $30-$55
a LUNCHBOX
LABORATORY Seacats, 3 pm, free
THE MIX The High Life Band, the Vibe Project, Wet City Rockers, Valley Green
NECTAR Publish the Quest, Longstride, Selecta Raiford, 8 pm, $7
NEUMOS Elridge Gravy & the Court Supreme, Polyrhythmics, 8 pm, $12
QUEEN CITY GRILL Faith Beattie, Bayly, Totusek, Guity, free
SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET
Dark Star Orchestra, 8 pm, $25/$30 a SILVER PLATTERS
(QUEEN ANNE) The West
1 pm; the Mowgli’s, 2 pm; Family of the Year, 3:30 pm; Seacats, 5 pm, all free
SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB The Marina Beat, Jack Shriner, Little War Twins, 8 pm, $5
SLIM’S LAST CHANCE Hartwood, John Hamhock & the Rooster Run Band, Stoned Evergreen Travelers
a SONIC BOOM
RECORDS (BALLARD) Angel Olsen, 3 pm, free; Maps & Atlases, 4 pm, free
a ST. MARK’S
CATHEDRAL Cathedrals: Mirah, the Moondoggies , Shenandoah Davis , 8 pm, $15
a STUDIO SEVEN Bone
Thugs-N-Harmony, Sky Pilot, Lacero, December in Red, guests, 7 pm, $25/$30
SUNSET TAVERN BOAT , Ships , Lazy Animals, Highlight Bomb, $8
a TOWN HALL Seattle Baroque Orchestra, 8 pm, $15-$40
TRACTOR TAVERN Fox and the Law, Ayron Jones and the Way, the Mad Caps, 9:30 pm, $10
a VERA PROJECT The Men, Dude York, Big Eyes, CCR Headcleaner, 7:30 pm, $10/$11
THE WHITE RABBIT Elevated Minds
DJ
BALTIC ROOM Good Saturdays: Guest DJs
BARBOZA Inferno: Guests, 10:30 pm, free before 11:30 pm/$5 after CAPITOL CLUB Get Physical: DJ Edis, DJ Paycheck, 10 pm, free CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Edgar “El Travieso de la Salsa”, DJ Cesar “Yambu”, DJ Mark
CONTOUR Europa Night: Misha Grin, Gil CUFF Gear Night: DJ Mattstands, $5 for men and $15 for women
FOUNDATION Dave Seaman, Chris Walsh, Trey Rossick, FooFou
WEDNESDAY 4/17
GET PHYSICAL TO BOOKA SHADE’S SLEEK TECH-HOUSE
German duo Booka Shade excel at sleek, understated house and techno that’s more about dulcet melodies insinuating themselves into your ears than beats battering you into dance-floor submission. Sure, Booka Shade’s output is danceable (they are mainstays of the Get Physical label, after all), but it has more staying power than most club music because they’re acute artisans of texture, tune, and rhythm who avoid obvious, played-out tropes. Robert DeLong moved from the Seattle metro area to Los Angeles, and his musical career’s taken off with support from influential SoCal radio stations KROQ and KCRW. DeLong’s glossy synth-pop compositions feature his fragile white-boy vocals and rudimentary beats, although he occasionally veers into drum ’n’ bass, dubstep, and moombahton modes—and a house version of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” Showbox at the Market, 8:30 pm, $25 adv/$30 DOS, all ages.
THURSDAY 4/18
LOCAL ELECTRONIC UNDERGROUND
HAVANA Rotating DJs: DV One, Soul One, Curtis, Nostalgia B, Sean Cee, $5
LO-FI Snap!: The Trashy Trash DJs, $7/$10
NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ Randy Schlager
NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club
Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal
Darkness
PONY Meat: Amateur Youth , Dee Jay Jack
Q NIGHTCLUB Rapture: Almond Brown, DJ George Delmar, $10 after 10 pm
SEE SOUND LOUNGE
Switch: Guest DJs
TRINITY ((SUB)): Guy, VSOP, Jason Lemaitre, guests, $15/free before 10 pm
SUN 4/21
LIVE CAFE RACER The Racer Sessions a CHOP SUEY Lydia, From Indian Lakes, Sweet Talker, 8 pm, $12
COMET Cobalt Cranes, Thousands, Two White Opals, guests, $7
COPPER GATE Kubby C., 8 pm, free a CROCODILE Maps & Atlases, Young Man, Hustle & Drone, 8 pm, $12
EL CORAZON The Loss, the Shell Corporation, Heligod, Uncommon Men from Mars, Head Honcho, 8 pm, $6
a EMPTY SEA STUDIOS Deepak Ram Quintet, 7 pm, $20/$25
HIGH DIVE 6 Demon Bag, the Georgetown All-stars
Damn Divas, 8 pm, $6
JAZZ ALLEY Joan Osborne and the Holmes Brothers, 7:30 pm, $35
KELL’S Liam Gallagher
THE KRAKEN Burning of I , Odyssey, Czar, Ubik, $5
NECTAR Nu Klezmer Army, the Mogrel Jews, Hicks Chicks, 4 pm, $17
NEUMOS Midnite, Krsna, Blessed Coast Sound System, $20
PIES & PINTS Sunday Night
Folk Review: Guests, free
SHIP CANAL GRILL Clegg and Foster, 11 am
a SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB
Saving Sunsets, 3 pm; Holly Figueroa, 8 pm, free a STUDIO SEVEN UDO, Zero Down , Watchers Eye, Arsenal, 6:30 pm, $20/$22
SUNSET TAVERN Gimmicks, Swingset Showdown , Phosphenes, 8 pm, $6
a TOWN HALL Simple Measures, 2 pm, $15-$30
TRACTOR TAVERN The Veils, guests, 8 pm, $11/$12
DJ
BALTIC ROOM Mass: Guest DJs
CAPITOL CLUB Island Style:
DJ Bookem, DJ Fentar a CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Michael, DJ Kelly
CONTOUR Broken Grooves:
DJ Venus, Rob Cravens, guests, free THE EAGLE T-Bar/T-Dance: Up Above, Fistfight, free
MOE BAR Sosa, MarsONE, Phosho, free
NEIGHBOURS Noche Latina
PONY TeaDance: DJ El Toro, Freddy King of Pants, 4 pm
Q NIGHTCLUB Revival:
Crescioni) is a cunning producer of electro that’s by turns fun and sinister. Finally, Airport (Midday Veil bassist Jayson Kochan) is celebrating the release of his 12-inch EP on Debacle Records, Sweat/ Pleasure, which comes with a remix by Kochan’s TJ Max bandmate Mood Organ. For “Sweat,” think Giorgio Moroder crossed with Goblin, space disco that’s as hellish as it is heavenly, as metronomic as it is soulful. The dreamily bleepy “Pleasure” captures the slow-motion vertigo of falling in lust. Mood Organ’s rejigging of “Sweat” is as exciting as watching Star Wars is to a 13-year-old (I’ve never seen it, so this is pure speculation). With Magisterial Electric Tea Garden, 9 pm, $5, 21+.
STARS AIRPORT, BLACK HAT, AND BANKIE PHONES
If you want to get an efficient overview of Seattle’s fertile, febrile electronic underground, get your ass to Electric Tea Garden tonight, as three of the city’s most interesting knob-twisters strut their galvanizing stuff. As mentioned in these pages before, Black Hat (aka Nelson Bean) delivers a particularly rugged, noisy strain of dance music that melds elements of great old-school industrial and IDM—although “Jaune, ” from the new Covalence EP, is a mellow, gorgeous exception. Bankie Phones (aka GIF master Frankie
FRIDAY 4/19
BEN UFO’S DJ SETS ARE OUT OF THIS WORLD
One of three heads behind the excellent Hessle Audio label, Ben UFO is a highly in-demand British DJ who’s a canny mixer of disparate genres. His recent entry in the Fabric series proves this, with moving tracks by Herbert, Blawan, Kyle Hall, Mr. Fingers, Shackleton, and Fluxion copacetically commingling. Fantastic booking by Nordic Soul and Recess for the Flash weekly. With Ben Tactic Q Nightclub, 8 pm, $10, 21+.
FRIDAY APRIL 19 | 7:30 PM
TIFFANY ALVORD, JASON CHEN
$13 ($12 W. CLUB CARD) VIP TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE.
SATURDAY APRIL 20 | 7:30 PM
THE MEN, DUDE YORK, CCR HEADCLEANER, BIG EYES
$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD) ADVANCE
THURSDAY APRIL 25TH | 7:30PM RENNY WILSON THE BLIND PHOTOGRAPHERS BATTLE GROUND GRAMMAR $8
SATURDAY APRIL 27 | 7:00
TAKE WARNING PRESENTS: TRANSIT, SEAHAVEN YOUNG STATUES
$12 ($11 W/ CLUB CARD) ADV.
SATURDAY MAY 4 | 7:30 PM
LAND OF PINES ALBUM RELEASE, SPECIAL EXPLOSION, IJI PEEPING TOMBOYS
$9 ($8 W. CLUB CARD)
THURSDAY MAY 9TH | EARLY & LATE SHOW
THE MUSIC TAPES PRESENT: THE TRAVELING IMAGINARY
$12.50 ADV $14 DOORS
SUNDAY MAY 12 | 7:30 PM
WAKE UP & THE VERA PROJECT PRESENT OF MONTREAL, WILD MOCCASINS
$18 ADVANCE
e-mail cometbooking@gmail.com
Riz Rollins, Chris Tower, 3
LIVE
2 BIT SALOON Burning of I , Gunslinger, AntiCulture, $5
BLUE MOON TAVERN Andy Coe Band, free COMET Bobby Joe Ebola & the Children MacNuggits, the Januariez , City of Industry, $6
KELL’S Liam Gallagher a NEPTUNE THEATER Sparks, $31.50/$35 NEW ORLEANS The New Orleans Quintet, 6:30 pm a STUDIO SEVEN Dope Stars Inc., the Rabid Whole, guests, $10/$13
TRACTOR TAVERN The Tallboys , 7:30 pm, $5
TRIPLE DOOR
Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free 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 DJ Plantkiller, 8 pm, free
CONOR BYRNE Get the Spins: Guest DJs, free HAVANA DJ Jay Battle, free
THE HIDEOUT Introcut, guests, free LO-FI Jam Jam: Zion’s Gate, Sound Selecta, Element, Mista Chatman , $5
MOE BAR Minted Mondays: DJ Swervewon, 100proof, Sean Cee, Blueyedsoul, free NEIGHBOURS
UNDERGROUND SIN: DJ Keanu, 18+, free
PONY Dirty Deeds: Guests Q NIGHTCLUB Reflect, 8 pm, free
4/23
LIVE
2 BIT SALOON The Epilogues, Winnebago, Cryptobebelem, Matt Badger
BARBOZA Stanton Warriors, Sean Majors, Dot Diggler, Soulkid vs ADD, 8 pm, $10
CAFE RACER Jacobs Posse a CHAPEL PERFORMANCE
SPACE Fillion & Graham
COMET Kled , Dead Sonics, Uncle Pooch, $5
CONOR BYRNE Ol’ Time Social: The Tallboys , 9 pm
COPPER GATE The Suffering Fuckheads , 8 pm, free a CROCODILE Watsky, Dumbfoundead, the Flavr Blue, 8 pm
EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Shanna Carlson, Hugo Wainzinger, guests, 7 pm a EL CORAZON Playdough, guests, 8:30 pm, $8/$10
ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN
Monktail Creative Music Concern, DJ Shonuph, free HIGH DIVE The Heavy Half, Michelle From the Club, the Reaching , Tigers in the Tank, 8 pm, $6
KELL’S Liam Gallagher a NEPTUNE THEATER James Blake, guests, 8 pm, $30
NEW ORLEANS Holotradband, 7 pm
SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free
SLIM’S LAST CHANCE Ron E. Banner
SUNSET TAVERN Norman Baker & the Backroads, Andrew Vait, William Cremin, Chris Poage, Kimo Muraki, guests, 8 pm, $7
TRACTOR TAVERN
The Proclaimers, 7:30 pm, $20/$25
TRIPLE DOOR Shuggie Otis, 7 pm, $35/$40 THE WHITE RABBIT Butch & the Other White Meats, Steel Beans , the Bears, Jay Johnson
DJ
95 SLIDE Supreme La Rock, DJ Rev, free CENTURY BALLROOM DJ Robb, DJs Mark & Travis, DJ Greg
CONTOUR Electric Groove
THE EAGLE Pitstop: DJ Nark HAVANA Hoot and Howl, $3 after 11 pm LO-FI Stop Biting: OM Unit, Introcut, Suttikeeree, WD4D , SeanCee, Absolute Madman
MOE BAR Cool.: DJ Cory Alfano, DJ Cody Votolato, free NECTAR Top Rankin’ Reggae: DJ Element, Chukki NEIGHBOURS
UNDERGROUND Vicious
Dolls: DJ Rachael, 9 pm, $5 WILDROSE Taco Tuesday: Guest DJs
The Vera Project has long been a source of great poster art. Here’s a new one by Seattle designer Chad Lundberg. Check out more of Chad’s work at chadlundberg.com. AARON HUFFMAN
The Men w/Dude York Sat April 20, Vera Project
BY BRITTNIE FULLER
FIST FITE, PIPSQUEAK, SKIES BELOW, PRINCESS
Day two of the heavy-music jamboree Choicefest (presented by, well, Ladies’ Choice) offers Portland band Fist Fite’s carnally aggressive tensewave, a tectonic-plate-shifting brand of dark rock that may also drag you into Mother Earth’s core. Synths pulsate provocatively over deep riffs, mindfully wreaking havoc with spacey and mathematical precision. With Princess, Pipsqueak, and Skies Below Black Lodge, 9 pm.
THE NARX, THE SHIVAS, THE FABULOUS DOWNEY BROTHERS, I’m becoming wary of most things in the vein of “garage-rock revival,” but the deliciously primal freak-outs by newish local punk band the Narx are difficult to resist. Featuring members of Ubu Roi, this hormonally charged rock band has released their first tape—and it’s the soundtrack to skipping school and drooling cool. I first saw ’60s rock/voodoo channelers the Shivas when I was actually underage, and was transported to a time when rock was at its most fresh and vital. The Vancouver, Washington, natives have since toured relentlessly and released cassettes on Gnar Tapes and Burger Records, and they will give you the primordial shivers with their upcoming first LP, White Out (K Records). Sentient beings the Fabulous Downey Brothers have been sent to abduct your earholes and sweep them into their interstellar vessel of ’80s postwave and willful weirdness. You may mistake them for Teletubbies dressed as ants, or for the freak coalescence of Danny Elfman and Mark Mothersbaugh, but either way, you will be inescapably enchanted by their wonky, electronic post-punk. With Portland’s finest, Hornet Leg, and Seattle fuzz punks So Pitted Black Lodge, 8:30 pm.
THE MEN, CCR HEADCLEANER, DUDE YORK, BIG EYES
Brooklyn-based band the Men have a new album called New Moon (released March 5 on Sacred Bones), and it sees the band’s strident noise attack lurch into a hazed and lazy Southernrock sprawl They began diverging into rootsier territory with last year’s Open Your Heart, and continue to evolve here from snarling punk to sauntering, hookheavy pop songs. Supporting band CCR Headcleaner’s name was very successful at luring me into typing “Clockcleaner” repeatedly and thinking of German industrial music (Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Headcleaner”), but that could just be my noise-rock demon creeping out. If Creedence Clearwater Revival were a lo-fi band in this post-everything age, it might hint at CCR Headcleaner’s aesthetic. But other than the general ’60s-rock feel, there’s not much to reflect on their implied namesake in the sound, which is submerged in swirling, sugary noise. It comes across more like Bradford Cox–ian underwater-gurgle rock. With local indie-rock four-piece Dude York and power pop/punk trio Big Eyes Vera Project, 7:30 pm, $11.
“Wait—you’re
TThe Company You Keep dir. Robert Redford
he Company You Keep is the kind of square, serious, by-the-book political drama that gets over-praised these days simply because it doesn’t over-insult the intelligence of its audience. But that’s not the movie’s fault: Director/star Robert Redford is just telling a story here, and he doesn’t care about being ostentatious, just letting the plot unspool itself the way it wants. Mostly, he succeeds.
Redford stars as Nick Sloan, a former member of the Weather Underground and wanted fugitive (his Underground cell was involved in the murder of a bank security guard) who’s living a comfortable life in Albany as a lawyer under an alias. When the FBI starts arresting other members of his cell—and when a nosy young reporter (Shia LaBeouf, unfortunately) starts poking around his past—Sloan goes on the lam.
The Company You Keep is buoyed by a
series of great extended cameo appearances by a who’s who of older actors portraying Sloan’s Underground associates—Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott, Chris Cooper, Richard Jenkins. (Susan Sarandon, especially, is so riveting as an unrepentant domestic terrorist that you’ll mourn the fact that she’s done after the first 20 minutes of the movie.)
Mercifully, there are no excruciating babyboomer-glorifying lectures about how the Summer of Love changed everything.
It’s a long movie, but not punishingly so.
And if it’s occasionally too on-the-nose or obvious, that feels like a forgivable offense, because the film’s earnestness is so winning.
Late in The Company You Keep, one of Sloan’s compatriots bitches about kids these days with their cell phones and complains, “Now we’re just a story told to children.” Redford looks glum for a second, staring off somewhere with
his remarkably craggy face, and responds, thoughtfully, “I’m glad someone’s still telling it.” In the end, so are we.
PAUL CONSTANT
My Brother the Devil dir. Sally El Hosaini
In 1995, Saïd Taghmaoui, a French Arab actor, played Sayid in Mathieu Kassovitz’s masterpiece La Haine, a film set in a multicultural housing project in the banlieues (the outskirts of Paris). The film ends with Sayid closing his eyes at the moment his close friend and a crooked cop are about to shoot each other. Almost 20 years later, Taghmaoui appears in Sally El Hosaini’s debut film, My Brother the Devil, as, again, a French Arab man named Sayid. This time, however, he is an accomplished photographer who owns a smart studio in East London.
One day, Sayid buys drugs from a young British Egyptian, Rashid (James Floyd), who lives with his parents and younger brother Mo (Fady Elsayed) in a small flat in a housing estate in Hackney, London. Something interesting happens between Sayid and Rashid. This interesting thing becomes an important twist in the plot when Rashid decides to leave the underworld and become a productive member of society. Rashid’s younger brother, however, fills the space left by his older brother and tells his friends that Rashid has gone to the dark side and become a terrorist. We later learn that My Brother the Devil is not at all My Son the Fanatic, and that Rashid’s “terrorism” involves not violence but pleasure.
As a work of art, My Brother is satisfying; its cinematography, like the two lead actors, is utterly beautiful, and the direction, art direction, and performances are solid. But here is the most amazing thing about the film: There are almost no white people in it. The movie’s world of flats, streets, parks, and stores is
populated by Arabs, black Africans, and black Brits who speak a form of English that’s a rapid mix of American Ebonics, Jamaican patois, and cockney. Lastly, I completely agree with what the critic Cath Clarke wrote about the film’s star, James Floyd, in Time Out: “[He] must now be on every director’s must-cast list. If Daniel Craig hangs up his tux and anyone’s looking for the first mixed-race Bond, here’s your man.” CHARLES MUDEDE
It’s a Disaster dir. Todd Berger
In the abstract, It’s a Disaster sounds so promising: A group of friends gather for their once-a-month “couples’ brunch,” and things go horribly wrong. Like, disastrously wrong, in a way that moves from clunky conversations and spousal disagreements to hazmat suits and corpses on the porch. Bringing this pitch-black indie comedy to life is a cast that enhances expectations, featuring a beloved comedy star (David Cross), a beloved TV star (America Ferrera), and a liked-okay movie star (Julia Stiles).
Unfortunately, pretty much all you need to know about It’s a Disaster is communicated by its title. Written and directed by Todd Berger, the film is a self-defeating mishmash of styles, from sassy sitcom to dewy TV drama to halfbaked farce, each of which is realized with all the depth of your average sketch-comedy troupe. Instead of relatable human behavior, we’re given page after page of Berger’s zingy dialogue, which is packed with the type of sassy phrasemaking that characterizes bad plays and Showtime’s Weeds, turning every character into a thesaurus-wielding comedian. The kooky idiosyncrasies meant to humanize It’s a Disaster’s characters are well-worn clichés, and the honest energy the cast puts into Berger’s DOA script is almost heartbreaking. Had these actors come together in a brunch scenario and improvised their way through the film’s plot points, the result may have been something to see. As it is, run for your life.
DAVID
SCHMADER
More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/film
LIMITED RUN
9/11: EXPLOSIVE EVIDENCE
A documentary featuring a group of architects and engineers who believe the WTC attacks included a controlled demolition. Keystone Church, Fri April 19 at 7 pm.
ANTIVIRAL
What if your dad was a lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps? Or a rock star? Or a Hells Angel? You’d probably either rebel and go down a completely opposite path, or you’d follow right inside his big ol’ footsteps. Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, seems to be doing exactly the latter with his first feature film. Antiviral is a science-fiction-y creepshow filled with lots of classic early Cronenberg bodyhorror and flesh-fetish—like humans morphing into machines and then back into humans. There’s lots of blood, and more than plenty of extreme close-ups of hypodermic needles being plunged into arms—and noses. Also, not unlike many of Papa Crone’s stories, Brandon’s film is weaved through with lofty social commentary—with Syd March playing the role of an employee at a fancy clinic that sells pricey injections of viruses harvested from celebrities. The film drifts slowly into snooze-town after Syd shoots himself up with a killer celebrity virus strain and is fighting for his life. His character is so flat, it’s challenging to care whether he finds an antivirus in time. (KELLY O) Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat 5, 7 pm, Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.
BAND OF SISTERS
A workmanlike documentary about Catholic nuns’ transformation from demure brides of Christ to tireless social activists after Vatican II. Northwest Film Forum, WedThurs 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5 pm.
BLANCANIEVES
CLUE
This 1985 film, based on the board game and not vice versa, was originally distributed with three different endings. Which one will be shown here? No idea. Central Cinema, Fri-Mon 7 pm.
EMPIRE RECORDS
The would-be Breakfast Club of the grunge generation is also one of the worst movies ever made. Recommended! Central Cinema, Fri-Mon 9:30 pm.
IT’S A DISASTER
See review, page 57. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri April 19 at 7 pm.
LANGSTON HUGHES AFRICAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL 2013
Back for a 10th year, the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival packs a week-plus of delights into its refurbished Performing Arts Center. Highlights of the fest’s closing weekend: an LGBTQ showcase, an Afrofuturist science-fiction program, and In the Hive, the new film from Robert “Hollywood Shuffle” Townsend.
(DAVID SCHMADER) Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, Sat-Tues. For complete schedule and showtimes, see www.langstonarts.org.
LUC SANTE: THE OTHER PARIS
See Stranger Suggests, page 21. Northwest Film Forum, Thurs-Sat 8 pm.
MENTAL
This candy-colored, wacky, strenuously emotional Australian film stars Toni Collette as a crazy, charismatic, yet (of course) wise drifter who arrives to save five misfit sisters after their mother is locked up for being, in the local parlance, “mental.” Their father is a self-absorbed asshat intent on his own outside ambitions, both political and extramarital; their small town is crushingly conventional, and especially crushing to the overtly oddball. Collette’s character, Shaz, describes herself as “the avenging angel of the perpetually humiliated,” and she sets out to right the wrongs done to the daughters, who range from adorably small to adorably, awkwardly adolescent (all of whom are portrayed with ability and grace amongst the goofiness). There is humor here—in Shaz’s worldview, all of Australia is “mental,” and
Blancanieves—“Snow White” in Spanish—is the silent blackand-white film transporting the classic Grimm Brothers’ tale to 1920s Spain. Like most silent films, it’s not actually silent; there’s just no spoken dialogue. The soundtrack is exhilarating and makes the film as much about rhythm—the alternately lightning-fast and seductively slow clapping, wrist-twirling, and cape-flourishing in flamenco and bullfighting—as it is about the main character’s story. Some of its best moments are when the camera moves to that rhythm, even when the music doesn’t, when violins are playing in the background instead of guitars. (JEN KAGAN) SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri 4:45, 7:15, 9:45 pm, Sat-Sun 1:45, 4:45, 7:15, 9:45 pm, Mon-Tues 4:45, 7:15, 9:45 pm.
an obsessive-compulsive neighbor and a doll-obsessed aunt bear this out in an enjoyably cartoonish way. There is also genuine sweetness, as the girls gain self-worth and eldest daughter Coral (the compelling Lily Sullivan) comes into her own. There’s also a transformative climbing of a mountain, a mysterious shark hunter, an unlikely lesbian love affair, a rather random Sound of Music theme, and much, much more—too much more, as the film approaches the two-hour mark. Mental reunites Collette with director P.J. Hogan; if you loved their candy-colored, wacky, Abba-tastic work together in Muriel’s Wedding, you might like Mental (BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT) SIFF Film Center, Fri-Sun 6 pm, SIFF Cinema Uptown, Mon-Tues 4:30 pm.
MOVIE CAT TRIVIA
The beloved movie trivia night returns. Central Cinema, Tues April 23 at 7 pm.
MY BROTHER THE DEVIL
See review, page 57. Varsity, Fri-Sun 2, 4:45, 7:15, 9:35 pm, Mon-Tues 4:45, 7:15, 9:35 pm.
PAVILION
See Art House, page 60. Northwest Film Forum, FriTues 7, 8:30 pm.
ROOM 237
A look at the paranoid theories that obsessives have developed in order to better understand the secret messages they believe Kubrick encoded into The Shining SIFF Film Center, Fri 8:30 pm, Sat-Sun 1:30, 3:45, 8:30 pm, Mon-Tues 7:30 pm.
SAMSARA
For the past 20 years, Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson’s Baraka has dazzled filmgoers into submission with its narrative-free, highly poetic cascade of images drawn from all over the globe. The four-years-in-the-making Samsara is a sequel, exploring the concepts of cyclical existence and “humanity’s relationship to the eternal” via ravishing footage shot in 25 countries on 70 mm film. (DAVID SCHMADER) Grand Illusion, Sat 3, 11 pm.
SCARECROW VIDEO PRESENTS: SATURDAY
MORNING CONFUSION
An oddity compilation of the strangest stuff ever to warp the tube during the Saturday morning kiddie hour. Grand Illusion, Sat April 20 at 9 pm.
SCARFACE
“You know what? Fuck you! How about that?” Egyptian, Fri-Sat midnight.
SERIAL MOM
“Chip, you know how I hate the brown word.” King’s Hardware, Mon April 22 at dusk.
UPSTREAM COLOR
Almost 10 years after directing Primer, probably the most
intelligent or even realistic film about time travel, Shane Carruth directed Upstream Color, a science fiction film that’s about the human body’s deep connections with other life-forms. The film is gorgeous and melancholy, but runs into several plot problems in the final act. Indeed, the ridiculous ending almost kills the whole film. The fact is, Upstream Color does not need a resolution. All it had to do was drift aimlessly from one gorgeous scene to another, like a massive country of a cloud with a sun setting behind it. (CHARLES MUDEDE) SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri 4:30, 9:15 pm, Sat-Sun 2:15, 4:30, 7, 9:15 pm, Mon-Tues 9:15 pm.
WAXIE MOON IN FALLEN JEWEL
offer visually, but fails to top any of Malick’s other works here either. It’s clearly a work of unrepentant idealism, and I admire that, but his search for meaning may be leading us down a dead end.
(KRISHANU RAY)
Wes Hurley’s goofy, campy, and local-star-packed comedy continues its once-a-month screening at Central Cinema. Central Cinema, Thurs April 18 at 8 pm.
TRANCE James McAvoy plays Simon, an employee at an auction house; when a Rembrandt gets stolen, Simon tries to protect it and gets a vicious knock to the head from thief Franck. But it turns out Simon was actually working with Franck—and that knock to Simon’s head means that he can’t remember where he hid the painting. They inanely decide that the only way for Simon to remember is if he gets hypnotized, then the hypnotist finds herself entwined in their backassward, convoluted scheme. Trance is confident, gorgeously shot, and beautifully scored. But from the moment “Let’s hypnotize him!” is turned into a legitimate plot point, everything goes from sharp to sloppy. (ERIK H ENRIKSEN)
A WOMAN IS A WOMAN
“It is because they’re in love that everything will go wrong for Emile and Angela,” or so asserts one of the intertitles that pop up during A Woman Is a Woman. The story is about the unmarried live-in lovers Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) and Angela (Anna Karina). She wants to have a baby, he dodges that issue entirely, and Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a friend who would gladly impregnate her. This being a post-modern musical by Jean-Luc Godard, story is only one level on which the movie works. Made just a couple of years into the zeitgeist that was the French New Wave, A Woman Is a Woman not only helped define the movement, but Godard’s role within it. (ANDY SPLETZER) Seattle Art Museum, Thurs April 18 at 7:30 pm.
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES
The Place Beyond the Pines is made up of three interlocking stories. Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a stunt motorcyclist who quits his carnival job to be near his kid and turns to robbing banks. When rookie cop Avery (Bradley Cooper) busts Luke, the narrative baton is handed to him. Avery has a son of his own, the same age as Luke’s, and the third leg of the film takes place when the two boys meet in high school. Pines is a big, jumpy, restless film, and I never quite knew what I was supposed to take away from it all. (ALISON HALLETT)
TO THE WONDER
Terrence Malick’s latest seemed like trouble from the beginning. Even the title evokes memories of the vague, overbearing spirituality that has weighed down his films in the past. Since Malick wrote virtually no dialogue for the actors, they must rely almost entirely on body language to develop character. Unfortunately, they look more like props than people, entangled in strange, stilted physical misunderstandings with one another. Wonder has a bit to
Nothing really happens in this dreamy 70-minute film about the brief paradise we all enter around the age of 14 and exit around 18. This is when your final body begins to arrive, when you have more control over your movements, and when you can more and more see things, the world around/below/above you, at the level of an adult. Directed by Tim Sutton and scored by the Sea and Cake’s lead singer, Sam Prekop, the film begins in a small town that’s near a shimmering lake and surrounded by a forest. The teenagers play with toy guns, skateboard, ride bicycles,
BY WM. TM STEVEN HUMPHREY
Jean-Paul Sartre famously once wrote, “Hell is other people.” I famously disagree, JeanPaul Sartre! Rather, I think hell is CERTAIN people. For example: people who quote Jean-Paul Sartre in their opening sentences. People who don’t flush their poop in public restrooms. (Seriously, what is up with that?) People who defend Chris Brown on Twitter. People who own guns, watch football, tell horrible misogynist/gay jokes, and claim that my beliefs are CRAZY. People who buy “comedy” pets (such as pugs and corgis). People who insist I need to get on Facebook (I’m doing just fine without it, thankyouverymuch). People who don’t let you merge into their lane when you’re exiting an off-ramp—because apparently they don’t know it’s the GODDAMN LAW. People who shop at Walmart and/or J. Crew. People who insist on having babies—even though they’re clearly the same terrible people I just mentioned above.
I’m sure there are others. But even though I tend to gripe my ass off about these people, I still heartily contend that most people are cool people—like you! So, Mr. Jean-Paul Sartre, I would like you to amend your statement to the following: “Hell is certain people—in particular the people that Wm.™ Steven Humpy doesn’t like—as well as a few new TV shows that are debuting this week.” What TV shows, you ask? These TV shows, I say!
Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life (MTV, debuts Tues April 23, 11 pm): You guys
know about Ke$ha, right? The pop star who pronounces her name as either “Kehsha” or “Keh-dollar-sign-HA!” and writes all those party-time songs about getting drunk, taking ecstasy, dancing all night, and rubbing genitals together until they’re soupy. This documentary series follows Ke$ha around as she prepares for concerts, parties with friends, gets sad, gets happy, fellates a cannoli, burps a lot, drinks her own urine, and describes having sex with a ghost. In other words—HELL ON WHEELS.
Guntucky (CMT, debuts Sun April 21, 9:30 pm): Guns, hillbillies, Kentucky—no, it’s not the new season of American Horror Story! Guntucky is a reality show about three generations of Kentuckians who run a gun range, aaaaand… they shoot shit up. Apparently, CMT postponed the Guntucky premiere due to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre—which was not a bad idea, since the gun lovers in Guntucky really love MACHINE GUNS, and even sponsor an annual “Machine Gun Shoot” where they fire automatic weapons into appliances, piles of tires, and drums filled with explosive diesel fuel. Oh, by the way, Satan just called and said, “Christ, these guys scare the shit out of me.”
Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell (Adult Swim, debuts Thurs April 19, midnight): Finally, a hell I wouldn’t mind visiting! This live-action sitcom revolves around an associate demon named Gary who’s trying to climb the corporate ladder in hell by capturing as many human souls as possible. Complicating matters are his own laziness, a devious, dickhead intern named Claude… and, of course, SATAAAAAAAN! (In other words, it’s a lot like your workplace. Hey, Jean-Paul Sartre! Hell is other coworkers, too! Especially ones who don’t refill the coffeepot.)
Michael was changing his shirt in the laundry room when his 11-year-old son walked in.
“Dad, what happened to your back?”
Michael’s back was deeply scarred by childhood acne. Still embarrassed by his skin, he’d never been able to get a massage. Even after 20 years of marriage, he still wished he could wear a T-shirt when making love to his wife.
“Did you get burned?” his son asked.
“I got hurt in the war,” Michael said.
“What war?”
“The War of Poverty,” Michael said. “I was poor, so I had bad health care. Nobody told me I could medically treat my skin. Not my parents, not the doctors. Nobody.”
“I’m sorry,” his son said. “I wish I could take away those scars.”
“You’re an awesome kid, you know that?”
“Of course I do,” his son said and laughed.
BY ROB BREZSNY
For the Week of April 17
Later that day, Michael saw a gorgeous woman in a restaurant. Her eyes were dark blue like an underground river illuminated by a campfire. But her face was pitted with acne scars— deep craters where Neil Armstrong could have planted a flag. Michael wondered if the woman believed that she was beautiful. Did she look in the mirror and see only her scars? Michael knew that he was lucky his scars were on his back. He could only see them if he performed gymnastics in a mirror. For a moment, he thought to approach the woman, to tell her she was gorgeous and that he understood what it meant to be ashamed of one’s skin. But doesn’t the reminder of shame only cause more shame?
That night, Michael took off his shirt and asked his wife to massage his back.
“Pretend my scars are stars,” he said. “And tell me if you see any constellations.”
that be your mantra in the coming week, Cancerian.
a cheery bounce, and move on with a renewed sense of purpose.
ARIES (March 21–April 19): The writer Oliver Burkeman has some advice that would be helpful for you Aries folks to hear right now: “When you assume your current preferences won’t alter, you’ll make bad decisions: embarking on a career or marriage, say, not with a view to its durability, but solely based on how it makes you feel now.” I am most definitely not predicting that you are about to make the kind of bad decision Burkeman refers to. I’m sure my warning here in this horoscope will derail any temptation you might have to make shortsighted moves.
TAURUS (April 20–May 20): I’m happy to report that help from the invisible world is available to you right now. Of course you won’t be able to tune in to it, let alone use it, if you don’t believe there is any such thing as help from the invisible world. So if you are the type of person who is very sure that reality consists of nothing more than what your senses reveal, I suggest that you temporarily suspend that belief. And if you are someone who has had direct experiences with blessings that come from the unseen realm, be aware that the imminent delivery is quite different from those you have known in the past.
GEMINI (May 21–June 20): In her book A Monster’s Notes , Laurie Sheck describes the nuances of the term “ghost” in the German language. A mediocre wine may be called unghostly, she says. A witty, lively person is “rich in ghostliness,” whereas a dull, blank type “has no ghost in him.” In this spirit, Gemini, I suspect you will have some pretty fine ghostliness working for you in the coming weeks. And there’s a good chance that part of your extra-special mojo will arise from your creative engagement with energies that resemble the more traditional definition of “ghost.”
CANCER (June 21–July 22): A oneminute video commercial for the Cosmopolitan luxury resort in Las Vegas shows an elegant woman at a sumptuous feast. She’s eagerly holding her dinner plate up to her face, so she can lick it clean of its last delicious taste. The scene shifts to a well-dressed man who’s down on all fours serving, as a chair for a chic woman. She applies her makeup while gazing into the shiny, mirrorlike surface of a high-heeled shoe. New scene: An 80-year-old woman pats the butt of a handsome young stud with whom she’s slow-dancing. At the end of the ad, a catchphrase appears: “Just the right amount of wrong.” I say let
LEO (July 23–Aug 22): Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity in 1916. It had radical implications for the field of theoretical physics, but remained an unproven concept until 1919. Then a British physicist verified its accuracy with evidence gathered during a solar eclipse. The Times newspaper in London announced the event with the headline “Revolution in Science: New Theory of the Universe, Newtonian Theories Overthrown.” Not wanting to be left behind, the New York Times assigned one of its own journalists to cover the revolution. Unfortunately, the person they sent was a sports reporter whose specialty was golf. His article was less than illuminating. The moral of the story, as far as you’re concerned, Leo: When big developments are underway, show up at full strength, with all your powers engaged.
VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): “Never to get lost is not to live,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost In fact, she says that not knowing how to get lost is unhealthy. These are useful ideas to consider right now, Virgo. It will probably do you good to get at least semilost. As you wander around without a map or compass, I bet you will stumble upon important teachings. At the same time, I hope you will put some thought into how you’re going to get lost. Don’t just leave it to chance. Make sure there’s a method in your madness.
LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): In the English language, “low man on the totem pole” is an idiom that refers to a person who has the worst job or the least status. He or she is considered to be at the low end of the hierarchy. But it’s an incorrect metaphor. The creators of the original totem poles were indigenous Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest, and for them the figure at the bottom of the pole was the most important one. I foresee the possibility of a similar situation arising in your sphere, Libra. Be alert for a misapprehension that needs to be righted. It may be the case that what’s last should actually be first. Something that has been beneath or behind “more important” matters should perhaps get higher priority.
SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): In his book Karmic Traces, Eliot Weinberger describes the life story of naked mole rats. They’re animals that never leave their underground tunnels. Normally, you Scorpios have nothing in common with them. But in the coming days, I’m hoping there will be one resemblance. According to Weinberger, naked mole rats “change direction by somersaulting.” Metaphorically speaking, I think this would be an excellent strategy for you. There’s no need to mope cautiously as you alter your course. No need to be lackadaisical and fitful and full of doubts. Just spring into action with
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): The famous philosopher John Searle unleashed a witty dig about the famous philosopher Jacques Derrida, saying he is “the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name.” One of your fun assignments in the coming week, Sagittarius, is to do the opposite of what Derrida’s work does. In other words, give bullshit a good name. How? Well, you could engage in creative verbal expressions that boost morale and propagate delight and lubricate worthwhile connections. Make up noble fictions that are more accurate and useful that the literal truth. Spread uplifting gossip that heals and invigorates.
CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): “The ideal piano player is the one who wants to be the piano,” says a character in Thomas Bernhard’s novel The Loser. He continues: “I say to myself every day when I wake up, I want to be the Steinway, I want to be the Steinway itself.” Your assignment, Capricorn, is to apply this attitude to your own personal situation. In other words, merge with the tool you want to master. Immerse yourself in the skill you’re working to perfect—disappear into it. In your imagination, become completely united with the thing or person or experience you desire.
AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): “The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination,” said writer Louis Kronenberger. I’m concerned that you may have fallen under the sway of this kind of myopia, Aquarius. A steady stream of useful tips and clues has been appearing, but you’re missing some of them. Your long-range goals aren’t sufficiently clear, so you don’t always recognize the significance of new revelations. Here’s the cure: In your imagination, create a vivid picture of your next big destination.
PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): A group of bicyclists in Southern California challenged a blogger to a race. They said they could cover the 38.4 miles from North Hollywood to Long Beach faster on their bikes than the blogger could get there by plane. As it turned out, they were right. Their trip took an hour and 34 minutes. As for the blogger, he had to drive to the airport, wait for the plane to depart, fly to a different airport, then catch a cab to the designated destination. He arrived about an hour after the cyclists. Can you guess which of those two modes of travel is the preferred metaphor for you this week, Pisces? The earthy, simple, stripped-down approach will get you where you need to go better than the big, elaborate, expensive method.
Homework: It’s easy to see fanaticism, rigidity, and intolerance in other people, but harder to acknowledge them in yourself.
A popstar. Now hiring 10 spontaneous individuals. Travel full time. Must be 18+. Transportation and hotel provided. Call Loraine 877-7772091 (AAN CAN)
NEED A JOB? Call Today. Food Service & Light Industrial. 206-5875360 HALLMARK TEMPS
ORDER GENERATORS & Sales Rep Positions Available We are a well-established business A rated with the BBB and have been in business since 1986! Order Generators Set Appointments with Home Owners to receive Free Estimate Appointments for Tree & Shrub Trimming, Pruning & Removal work. (Flexible Schedule) Sales Reps run Appointments, Provide Bids & Close the Sale. (5 Yrs. Proven Success in Sales Required) Travel, Cell Phone & Medical Allowances Available. Vehicle, DL, Cell Phone & Internet Access Required. Apply online at www. evergreentlc.com or send Resume to recruiting@evergreentlc.com For Questions call 1-800-684-8733 ext. 3434 or 3321
PAID IN ADVANCE! MAKE up to $1000 A WEEK mailing brochures from home! Helping Home Workers since 2001! Genuine Opportunity! No Experience required. Start Immediately! www.thehomemailer.com (AAN CAN)
TATTOO ARTIST WANTED Talented tattoo artist wanted, Be well rounded with an appreciation for tattooing. 5 Years Exp, and Clean Hygiene. 206-659-4012 johnsontattoo22@gmail.com
TREE CLIMBERS NEEDED for Tree Removal/ Pruning Looking for Experienced Tree Climbers with minimum 1-2 year’s Professional Experience. Been in business since 1986 who can offer steady Full Time/ Year round Work! Requirements: Must have own Gear (Saddle, Spurs, Ropes & Climb Saw), Valid DL & Reliable Transportation/Vehicle Required. Ability to Climb with or w/out Spurs. Ability to Repel out of the tree. NO bucket work here! Experience in Trimming/ Pruning & Removals. $140-$200/ day + OT To Apply: Email Work experience or Resume to jasminer@evergreentlc.com or submit application to www.evergreentlc.com Questions: Call 800-684-8733 ext. 3434
NATURAL FOOD STORE in Eugene, Oregon - FOR SALE
Friendly Street Market, an iconic south Eugene natural food store for the last 30 years, is for sale. Enjoy your work, earn a good living, and know you are doing positive work in the world! Interested? Inquiries to: friendlystreetmarket@gmail.com
Restaurant & Brewhouse LINE COOKS
CAPITOL HILL $985
Cap Hill/SU Studio. 985.00 med, great colors, walk in closet, clawfoot tub. avail 5/1. laundry and coin changer, some storage. 600.00 deposit. homey bldg. quiet non smoking
GREENWOOD $825
Greenlake/Greenwood 1929 English Tudor Whole 2nd fl flat-type apt. 1BR w/LR or use as 2BR w/kit-family rm combo. $825 for 1 person. $95 for all utl incl cable & wifi. NS or NP.
Cicada
w/s/g included. $1000-$1600/mo. 1000 1st Ave. W. Call (206)286-9488
VIEW LOT (24,000+SQ.FT) just waiting for custom home or potential for 3units. Excellent location. Call, Natalia 206-979-0753, AssociateBroker, Skyline Properties, www.NataliasHomes.com
WANTED WANTED SMALL LIVEABLE SPACE, Wanted Small Liveable Space, reasonable, can fix up for free. 27 years of house building, carpentry experience. Semi retired. Can fix almost anything. Have tools. 68yo on S.S. Call Andrews Whales 206-784-7967
ALL AREAS - ROOMMATES.COM. Browse hundreds of online listings with photos and maps. Find your roommate with a click of the mouse! Visit: www.Roommates.com. (AAN CAN)
I AM LOOKING for someone that would be interested in sub-leasing this room. This is not a place to live or a place for a band to rehearse. See web ad for pictures. 425.444.5053 or email at robert@thevocaliststudio.com. TRAP STUDIOS IN Georgetown has two levels and over 2500 sq. ft for everything from band/theater rehearsal to film and photo shoots, workshop ($20/hr) and event space (competitive rates). Inquires to baxter@trapstudios. com. Your imagination is the limit.
LOOKING FOR A room or roommate in the greater seattle area? Call us at 800=488=8050 or www.rme1.com.
SINCE 1989 WE have
Greenlake, U-Dist., Wallingford, and Greenwood.
Large, clean, well-maintained houses, fully equipped common areas, free phone & cable, NS/NP.
Starting at $350/mo! NO
Stranger Sales Account Executive
Do you love The Stranger and want to be a part of it? We are currently looking for an Account Executive to join our amazing sales team. You will build your own desk by prospecting for new leads, contacting potential clients through cold calls and drop-ins, developing relationships with local business owners and providing them with tailored, multi-platform advertising solutions best suited to their needs. Must possess superior organizational, customer service, and communication skills. Must be hard working, self-motivated, goal-oriented, and be able to thrive in a deadline-driven environment. Creativity and entrepreneurial attitude a plus! At least one year of experience in commission-based print/media sales or a related field preferred. Vehicle or vehicle access required. First year compensation includes base salary, commission and bonuses. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, Simple IRA, as well as paid vacation/sick time. If you are a fearless, personable, focused sales professional, we’d like to hear from you. For consideration, please submit your resume, cover letter and desired salary range to: salesjob@thestranger.com or The Stranger, 1535 11th Avenue, 3rd Floor, Seattle, WA 98122, Attn: Sales Job. No phone calls please.
www.roommateexpress.com
creating problems. Find Balance Between Body + Soul. Call (206) 427-9796 or Visit www.NutriPsychTherapy.com
$45HR FOR MEN 1.5-$65/2hr-$85. 18yrs experience. Focused bodywork for tightness, aches and problem areas or unhurried general full-body massage to relax, enjoy, unwind. John Runyan (LMP#MA8718) 206.324.0682. 10am9pm. Cash/incalls only. Last minute encouraged. www.bodyworkman.com
DEEP TISSUE AND Relaxation Massage on Capitol Hill. $50.00. Jeff LMP 206-650-0542 swedish, sports, and deep tissue massage. Last minute appointments encouraged. www.broadwaymassage.com 14 years experience. All are welcome. Close to broadway ave. 7 days a week 11:00a.m.-9:00p.m.
DREAMSCAPE MASSAGE / Capitol Hill Enjoy your first massage at Dreamscape with $10.00 off!(New clients only,not valid with gift certificates.) We are located at 619 Broadway Ave. E on Capitol Hill. Please visit our Web site at DreamscapeMassage.com / 206-568-3771
IT’S TIME YOU experience “Tranquility through Touch”. Massage, Conscious Living, Chakra Balancing, Energy Medicine, MyoTherapy. Anthony Gitch LMP CHTP MA60112084 206-549-1108 thebalancedman.net
LAURIE’S MASSAGE (206)919-2180
LIKE A JAPANESE Hot Springs - At The Gated Sanctuary you can soak naked outside amoung soaring cedar trees in jetted hot pools, dip in a cold plunge, and relax with therapeutic massage. Unwind in our eucalyptus steamroom. (425)334-6277 www.TheGatedSanctuary.com
RELAXATION, SPORTS, DEEP Tissue and Hot Stone Massage on Capitol hill. 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. 7 days a week. www.broadwaymassage. com Last minute appointments encouraged. 14 years experience. $50.00 an hour.
LESSONS
SIGN UP TODAY
Sign up today for Computer Music Making & Recording offered by Mirror Sound Studio and U of W’s Experimental College. Only $100a great value. Starts Sat. 4/20, 11am-1pm for 4 weeks. 206-440-5889
SING WITH CONFIDENCE. Beginners welcome. Breathing/Range Dev. Sliding Scale. Call Rosy 782-9305 singwithconfidence.com
SING!
SEATTLE HEMPFEST 2013 is accepting music submissions from performers. go to http://www.hempfest.org and click on get-involved/performers. Rock, urban, reggae, punk, metal, pop, jazz, soul, Americana and other genres accepted.
A CAPPELLA GROUP, Shot in the Dark, holding auditions in Seattle for ALL VOICE PARTS and VOCAL PERCUSSIONISTs/VPs/BEAT BOXERs on Saturday, May 11 from 1pm-3pm. Email shotinthedarksings@gmail.com for an audition time. We look forward to hearing you sing!
ARE YOU LOOKING for a Musician? www.forMusicians.net
AUXILIARY PERCUSSIONIST
DRUMMER AVAILABLE. OVER Drummer available. Over 45 yrs exp. w/ vocals. good equipment. Experienced in all types of music. Appearances with many bands in the PNW. Seeking established band in the Snohomish county/North Seattle area. Contact: Wild Bill 425-265-7103
PIANIST AVAILABLE
I’m Richard Peterson, 64 year old composer, arranger, and pianist. I’m available to play parties, weddings, clubs, shows, etc. $200/gig. Covers and originals. Please call 206-325-5271, Thank You! CD available.
NEEDED to round and augment the percussive element of experimental rock band. Polyrhythms, metal percussion, timbales, bottles and knives will be used, along with other implements. Black Flag, Swans, Savage Republic. No drugs. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@ hotmail.com/www.soundclick.com/ rendingsinsinew
AVANT-ROCK BAND SEEKING cellist to complete personnel. Drums/Bass/Guitar/Voice. Swans, Glenn Branca, Godspeed You!Black Emperor, Zero 7, Jarboe, Live Skull, Saint Vitus, Black Sabbath, Black Flag. No drugs. We have a rehearsal space. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@gmail.com www.myspace.com/branavinix
is seeking an Advertising Sales Coordinator
We are looking for a tireless administrative assistant with excellent customer service skills who is as comfortable on the front lines, as they are behind the scenes. Must be an excellent communicator in person, on the phone, and through email. Must be excessively organized, reliable, and can operate effectively within strict deadlines. Must enjoy supporting a busy department in all matters great and small.
Job duties include but are not limited to: Assisting the Sales Manager, ushering through marketing collateral, sales archive maintenance, fielding incoming cold calls and emails, prospecting leads, covering for reps when they are out of the office, database upkeep, being the efficient liaison between the sales and production departments, and providing general departmental administrative support.
Experience in media sales a plus, but not required. What is required is a positive attitude, an interest in sales and marketing, a low drama/ high output work ethic, and a love of Seattle.
Work Schedule: Monday - Friday from 9 AM until 5:30 PM. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, Simple IRA, and paid vacation/sick time.
Interested applicants should email their cover letter, desired salary range, and resume to: adcoordinator@thestranger.com or mail your information to:
The Stranger, 1535 11th Avenue, 3rd Floor, Seattle, WA 98122, Attn: Ad Coordinator Position
DRUMS WANTED - blues/rock coverband. Infl: Bonham, Kirk, Baker, etc. Please be pro, hard hitting with lots of exp. 40s+. Call for details 206-7553044 or 206-919-0514
EXPERIENCED VOCALIST/ SONGWRITER. I HAVE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE SINGING AND PLAYING SYNTH. CONTACT ME AT 206-8603534. LIVE IN SEATTLE: LET ME KNOW YOUR BACKGROUND AND WHERE YOU REHEARSE. CALL TOM AT 206-860-3534
EXPERIMENTAL ROCK BAND seeking keyboardist/soundscape artist. Swans, Big Black, Neurosis, Black Flag, Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Laibach, SPK, Coil, Godflesh, Savage Republic, Pigface, Jarboe, Diamanda Galas, Head of David. No drugs. Bass/ drums/guitar. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@hotmail.com/www.soundclick. com/rendingsinew
HARD ROCK/ BLUES Band Honor Hall is looking for a drummer. Check us out on http://www.reverbnation. com/HonorHall. Shoot me an email HonorHallMusic@gmail.com
KEYBOARDIST WANTED FOR an avant-rock band. Swans, Black Flag, Masada, John Zorn, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Zero 7, Of Cabbages and Kings, Suicide. No drugs. We have a rehearsal space. Bass/Drums/Cello/ Violin/Guitar/Voice. 206.547.2615/ omaritaylor@hotmail.com www.myspace.com/branavinix
TALL TALL WOMAN For Experimental Music Performance Project. Some Programming Skill Preferred, Stage Presence Of Greater Priority. 5’9” Or Taller Please.
VERSATILITY / PROFESSIONAL-
ISM / desire to make cash. Cover ZZ top, Rush, Metallica, Michael Jackson etc. other dance/rock/funk/and metal tunes. Prepare for your audition. Don’t just listen to songs, but practice and know them. Don’t waste our time. 208874-3472
BAND REHEARSAL SPACE 1
Shared Room @$210/month Incl. 36hrs/month & Private closet and Private Rooms @ $500/mo. Call 425445-9165 or Visit wildersoundstudios. com Located in SODO Seattle
FREE RECORDING SESSION ON SSL4000G+ AND MACKIE 32X8 BUS CONSOLES AT THE ART INSTITUTE.
PLEASE CALL SEAN AT 863-2268388 AND BOOK SOME STUDIO TIME TODAY!
NEED INEXPENSIVE PRACTICE space and storage? Why not consider ActivSpace, with us you get a large secure locker/storage for gear (with 24/7 access) and 4 x four-hour rehearsal slots a week, that’s 16 hours of practice a week for just $225 a month. Practice is per-scheduled times, so you will always have the same time each week. Someone just needs to tell the Bass player when to show up! Sorry but we do not have have any private rehearsal rooms. Call Richard at (206) 297-8100 to learn more.
SUPERIOR AUDIO SERVICEHOURLY/MONTHLY Rehearsal Rooms in Ballard (24-7, heated, parking). Recording at Birdhouse Studio available with engineer or room only. Dave 206-369-7588 attackodave@yahoo.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
Place Your Legal Notice Here! Call 206-323-7101 or email thestranger.com/classifieds
Read bucketloads more (or place your own) online at www.thestranger.com/personals
UNIVERSITY AVE BUS STOP
GIRL
You were waiting at a bus stop on University Ave in the U-District. You were wearing glasses, grey leggings under a dress. I pulled up next to you in a silver Passat wagon. We exchanged several glances. Love to talk! When: Sunday, April 14, 2013. Where: University Ave bus stop in the U-district. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919567
BADASS CHICK IN PIT
hey saw you last night at studio Seven you kicked ass and seemed cool lets have a beer some time see you again I hope When: Saturday, April 13, 2013. Where: studio seven. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919566
NICE ASS!
Tattooed hottie dropping trou with on stage with MC Type. Can I bounce quarters off that hot ass of yours? Play me like your bass baby, you won’t regret it. When: Friday, April 12, 2013. Where: Neumos. You: Man. Me: Transsexual (female to male). #919565
1ST AVE/WEST OF HERE
I see you [almost] every single day. I’m not sure if you have noticed that like you, but do. I’ll confine my crush to this single admission but had to say something, it’s [figuratively] killing me. When: Saturday, April 13, 2013. Where: 1st Ave S and West of Here. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919562
SAW YOU ON 545
I saw you on the 545 bus and found you absolutely handsome. Me Short hair, boots, smiles all bus ride long. You black. brown shirt, black shoes, black backpack and looking at your smartphone. Would love to u. When: Saturday, April 6, 2013. Where: on the 545 Bus. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919561
SUPREME COURT SECTION 114 HOTTIE
Section 114. You had on a white jacket and were sitting in the middle of your group of friends. Amazing eyes. I was in the group of 4 to your right, grey hat, demanding the backwards K. When: Thursday, April 11, 2013. Where: Safeco Field Section 114. You: Transsexual (male to female). Me: Man. #919559
4/10 AFTERNOON
HARBORVIEW ER SECURITY
You walked by me twice while I was seated in the waiting room and flashed me 2 big smiles. You made my day. Me: redhead wearing green seated with back to triage. You: short dark hair. Coffee or drinks? When: Wednesday, April 10, 2013. Where: Harborview ER. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919558
CUTE GIRL WITH VENEZUELAN FRIEND!
You: strawberry blonde and with your Venezuelan friend Me: two seats away, sharing peanuts with everyone. I had so much fun and wanted your number but thought you two were dating. I was wrong?! I’d love to reconnect! When: Thursday, April 11, 2013. Where: Mariners game (yellow shirts!). You: Woman. Me: Man. #919557
YOU GOT ME A CART ...but what about my heart? Wed, or Thu. You: short hair, aqua-rimmed glasses, jeans, a red & white gingham-checked shirt, great smile. Pretty sure you left in a black Toyota Camry. You want to meet again! Drinks? Coffee? Tea? Me! When: Thursday, April 4, 2013. Where: Safeway on 15th & John. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919556
22ND AND MARKET 4/4 We were crossing and stepped into the street, cars went by,
LA ISLA BALLARD CRYING BEAUTY we were trying not to gawk at eachother from across the room.at some point you were crying.maybe because you’re so beautiful?got up to leave&winked at you,were talking about chocolate:i’m a connoisseur.go
BLONDE
SIDECAR
I saw you on the 43. You were wearing a black jacket and brown pants - with cute Brooks shoes. I was wearing a grey jacket and glasses. I wasn’t brave enough to say hello. But I wish I had.
When: Friday, April 12, 2013. Where: 3rd and PineOn the 43 bus. You: Man. Me: Man. #919560
BREASTS OF TIRESIAS
chorus. believe with the balloon scene you were to my left. When: Thursday, April 4, 2013. Where: Columbia City Theatre. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919549
TALL RUSSIAN WOMAN AT NEIGHBORS You were the tall beautiful Russian woman at neighbors.
Woman. #919548
GIRL READING MAGAZINE AT QFC
While reading a magazine, friends came up to me and as we were talking, I noticed you reading next to me. As we checked out next to each other I wanted to tell you how babin’ you are. Hang? When: Monday, April 8, 2013. Where: North Broadway Qfc (upstairs). You: Woman. Me: Man. #919547
GIRL WITH THE PURPLE SHOES
Your beauty graced my eyes on Sunday at 24 hour Fitness. Please be single. I had a shot to introduce myself and I blew it. It would be both our while to connect. Keeping my fingers crossed. When: Sunday, April 7, 2013. Where: Downton 24 hour ftiness. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919546
ARE YOU LISTENING
think
I’m in a
marriage; if you don’t mind that, maybe we could meet for coffee/beer? When: Friday, April 5, 2013. Where: Bus. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919541
WAIT, WHICH WAS YOUR FAVORITE?!
Bathroomline after SisterSpit, chat-
COOL
To
·
For more information about this antidepressant-induced sexual dysfunction study, please call:
Dick Holes BY DAN SAVAGE
I am uncircumcised , and the opening at the end of my foreskin is not large enough for the head of my penis to pass through. This means my foreskin doesn’t pull back when I get an erection. The internet says this is a condition called “phimosis,” and a lot of medical websites recommend circumcision. I’m not super-excited by that idea. I don’t have any pain or difficulty with sex or urination, and I’ve never had any health problems related to being uncircumcised. The foreskin isn’t stuck or fused to the glans—the hole is just small. Is there a safe, nonsurgical way to enlarge the opening in the foreskin?
Dick Hole Panic
“Tell Dick Hole Panic not to panic,” said Stephen H. King, MD, a urologist in Washington State and my new go-to guy for all questions dick. “Phimosis occurs in an uncircumcised penis when a circular ring of the foreskin becomes scarred, often from prior infection, inflammation, or trauma. This scar prevents the normally elastic tissue of the foreskin from fully retracting to expose the head of the penis.”
Roughly one in a hundred men have phimosis, said Dr. King, “and depending on the degree of narrowing, complications of phimosis can vary widely. These can include difficulty with cleaning/hygiene, infection, pain with erection, bleeding from skin cracking, and paraphimosis.” Paraphimosis sounds like something you want to avoid: “It occurs when a narrow foreskin is pulled back to expose the head of the penis but then can’t be pulled back over the head, which then constricts blood flow to the glans,” said Dr. King. Paraphimosis can cut off blood flow to the head of the penis, which can cause the head of your cock to become gangrenous and die, which is why anyone suffering from it should head to an emergency room immediately. Here’s something else to worry about: “Although extremely rare, penile cancer can arise, usually in older patients with recurrent infections/inflammation.”
You’re probably panicking now, DHP—hell, hearing about paraphimosis has me panicking, and I’m circumcised. But the doctor said your case doesn’t sound serious: You aren’t experiencing any pain, your dick seems to work fine, you haven’t suffered from a series of infections. You don’t need to do anything about your phimosis for now, said Dr. King, but if you’re worried about complications arising in the future, or if you want your sex partners to see the head of your dick someday, there are nonsurgical remedies.
“‘Preputial gymnastics’ is one way to resolve phimosis,” said Dr. King. “It sounds like an Olympic event, but it involves gently pulling the foreskin back to expose the tip of the glans to the point where the ring of scar is exposed.” In other words, pull your foreskin back until you can’t pull it back anymore, and you’ll be looking at the scar tissue. “Hold this position for one minute and repeat three to four times a day,” Dr. King continued. “In combination with topical application of a steroid cream twice daily, typically betamethasone 0.05 percent (by prescription), more than 90 percent of cases will dramatically improve or resolve within four to six weeks.”
And if you’re one of the 10 percent of phimosis sufferers whose case doesn’t improve through preputial gymnastics?
“Then he should break out the Manischewitz for his impending bris,” said Dr. King.
I have rarely ever been able to have an orgasm during intercourse. The few times it happened, I was stimulating my clit. But I think my body is used to clitoral orgasms without a penis thrusting inside my vagina. Recently, I started mixing pot and sex. I’ve been a pot smoker for years but never thought to have sex on pot before. It has always been just a social thing with friends. It is incredible! Marijuana relaxes my body and heightens my senses so that when my BF and I have sex, I come! And come and come—and I
squirt, which I have NEVER done before! When we have sex without smoking, the sex is still great, but I don’t orgasm like I do when I’m high. I feel like I need weed to orgasm the way I want to. Before I dated my BF, I smoked pot only once a month or so. Now I’m doing it once a week at least. My sex life is finally amazing AND fulfilling. Three questions: (1) Does this sound like a huge problem? (2) Should I be worried? (3) What do you suggest? Blazing Orgasms Newly Gained
1. It does sound like a problem—a problem that’s been solved.
2. Not if you live in Colorado or Washington State, BONG, where voters legalized pot use in last November’s election.
3. A vaporizer.
I am in a great relationship with a very sexy and open-minded woman. Recently we were talking about likes and dislikes, and she mentioned “role-play scenes.”
This sent me into a little bit of a panic since this is something I’ve never engaged in. However, since I am more on the dominant side in our relationship, I’d rather not ask her a lot of questions. I’m hoping to take the lead and find out something about it on my own. I want to seem imaginative to her and not just copy what other men have done. Unfortunately, my web searches have been fruitless. Cosmo , Glamour, and even men’s sites have articles about “role-play” from time to time, but they seem to be written for juveniles. Do you have any ideas about role-play scenarios—especially ones that could be initiated by a man?
Apprehensive About Role Play
I have plenty of ideas about role-play scenarios that could be initiated by a man, AARP, but sexual pleasure is highly subjective—one gay man’s hot role-play scenario is likely someone else’s nightmare scenario. So you’re going to have to talk with your woman about what kinds of scenarios turn her on.
Some people have a hard time talking about their kinks. Just saying the words “I’m into roleplay” or “I want to try bondage” is such a struggle that a nervous kinkster is emotionally exhausted after the big reveal. The kinkster feels like she’s done the hard part—she said “role-play” or “bondage” out loud!—and her partner should do the rest of the work, i.e., make their fantasies come true without asking them to talk about it anymore. But you can’t fly blind into someone else’s sexual fantasies. If she’s turned on by something mild like a sexy-cop-and-speeding-driver role-play scenario, AARP, surprising her with a serial-killer-and-his-terrified-victim role-play scenario is likely to backfire. Likewise, someone who’s turned on by gentle neckties-and-bedposts bondage isn’t going to be happy about an intense institutional-restraints-and-soundproof-leatherhood bondage session.
She’s going to have to give you more information, AARP, and you’re going to have to let go of the notion that being the Dom means not asking questions. A dominant’s first job— before a role-play scene begins, before anyone gets tied up—is to ask questions and find out what his submissive wants to experience. The trick is to give her what she wants while building in small surprises and gradually, over time, pushing into new territories together.
But you’re going to have to ask her more questions, and she’s going to have to answer them. If she’s too shy to talk about her kinks face-to-face, have the convo over e-mail.
This week on the Savage Lovecast, I talk with author Emily Bazelon about sexting, slut-shaming, bullying, and suicide: thestranger.com/savage.
mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter
$149 seattlesummercamps4kids.org
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
DUI??!!
Do NOT take the field sobriety tests. Do NOT take the roadside portable breath test. Consult the Law Office of Elizabeth Mount 206-641-9019
Generous compensation. Call: 206-515-0042 or email: DonorEggBank@pnwfertility.com
Become a Dental Assistant! 11 Week Program (Saturdays only!) (206)953-4155 - Capitol Hill Seattle www.graysada.com Cannabis Bazaar
A Medical Cannabis Farmer’s Market 21+
Coming in April- located in South Seattle Patient Growers Wanted Call today: 206-306-4079
CHARTREUSE MODERN 20% OFF STOREWIDE
Clean - reg price items only $50+
Female Social Drinkers interested in dating men wanted for a study on alcohol and dating experiences. Single women of all ethnic backgrounds aged 21-30 can earn up to $54. Please call Project FRESH at (206) 543-5536 or see www.fresh.edu for more information & to determine eligibility. Part of a research project at the UW. FREE CERVICAL CANCER SCREENING
Age: 21+. Volunteers will receive either self-collected at home HPV testing or regular Pap test screening. Up to $200 compensation for study completion. Call 206-543-3327 or e-mail homehpv@uw.edu.
FREMONT SHOTGUN WEDDING
Get married for free on Sat, May 4th WineTeaChocolate.com/wedding
INTERNET/SEX ADDICTION TREATMENT www.follmanagency.com 360-755-1125
LAKE CITY RECORD SHOW
Sun 4/28, 10am-4pm. Lake City Community Center: 12531 28th Ave. NE. FREE ADMISSION!
LEARN BLUES HARMONICA ROCK OUT! MY VAST KNOWHOW WILL MAKE YOU THE BEST 206-669-9388
Make $4,500 to $5,500
*Egg Donors Wanted*
Local non-smoking women age 18-28 with a BMI under 30
Help couples start a family with your egg donation. All nationalities and races accepted. Visit fertileweb.com and click on “Become an Egg Donor” or call (425)646-4700
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.
**OPEN HOUSE THIS WEEKEND**
New Light Filled Designer Townhomes 1 home still left @ $344,950 $0 HOA! leschiwest.com*915 MLK Way South Seattle*206.718.7634
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. WORK FOR BEER! Really Good Beer!! Seattle International Beerfest needs Volunteers. July 5 - 7 seattlebeerfest.com
QUANTUM MARTIAL ARTS
Two weeks free trial. 964 Denny Way, Seattle. (206) 322-4799 Quantumseattle.org