The Stranger Vol. 22, No. 50

STUDY GUIDE

Questions for The Stranger, Volume 22, Issue 50

1a. Write a 750-word essay on whether boredom is underutilized as a persuasive force, employing either of the features in this week’s Stranger, by JEN GRAVES or CIENNA MADRID. Graves has written nearly two thousand words about a canoe trip, and Madrid expects us to be interested in the completion of a mural.

1b. For extra credit, compare and contrast the work of Graves and Madrid: Which essay is more dull? Can two pieces be equally boring in different ways? If you decide to express yourself via a bar graph of boredom, which shade of gray would best exemplify the lack of narrative drive behind each piece? Or would you go with a nice, unassuming beige instead? Why?

2. TRENT MOORMAN writes about Black Sabbath. Using your knowledge of world history, please make a persuasive argument that best demonstrates when the world stopped caring about Black Sabbath. Remember to stay awake until the end of your argument!

3. Write a satire of a book review, employing all of the clichés and conventional wisdom of literary criticism. Now compare your satire to PAUL CONSTANT’s review of This Town and Very Recent History, which is laden with a lame this-versus-that structure, references to tired literary figures like Kurt Vonnegut, and other embarrassments that an editor should have caught before publication. Is there any discernable difference between the parody you wrote and Constant’s writing? Is your parody a more viable example of a book review?

4. For weeks now, Russian officials have been stoking the flames of homophobia by promising to punish anyone who “promotes” homosexuality during the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. How depressing is it that The Stranger has yet to publish any serious thinking on this developing gay-rights crisis? Where is the advocacy journalism The Stranger pretends to practice? There are articles in this issue touching on fetal cats suspended in liquid, art that lights up from within, and an underwhelming restaurant in Ballard, but there is absolutely no information about the humanitarian nightmare being visited upon Russian men and women. Do you think this is an oversight on The Stranger’s part? Negligence? Or a clearcut admission from the staff that if injustice doesn’t happen directly to them (i.e., if it isn’t Dominic Holden being mistreated by local police), they simply don’t care?

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LAST DAYS

The Week in Review

BY DAVID SCHMADER

Imbecile Parade! Frank Cassano’s

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE RYAN GOSLING MOVIE?

MONDAY, AUGUST 5 This week of scurrying vermin, airborne sodomy, and deeply inappropriate Facebook usage kicks off with a nightmare story out of Canada, where early this morning in Campbellton, New Brunswick, two young brothers—4-year-old Noah Barthe and 6-year-old Connor Barthe—were found dead in an apartment above a pet store. A terrifying explanatory sentence comes from ABC News: “An investigation is under way into how a python was able to escape from an exotic pet store, slither through the ventilation system into an apartment, and strangle two young boys as they slept.” According to investigators, the snake was a 100-pound, 15-foot African rock python that was likely driven to its deadly deed by hunger and has since been put down by a veterinarian. “The owner of Reptile Ocean Inc., the exotic pet store where the incident took place, told the Global News television station that he has no idea how the snake escaped and is horrified,” reports ABC.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 In sexier news, the week continues in San Diego, with a politician whose allegedly widespread inappropriate sexual exertions make Anthony Weiner look like a lazy, bashful paraplegic. Details come from Reuters, which supplies this amazing sentence: “The number of women to publicly accuse San Diego mayor Bob Filner of inappropriate behavior increased to 11 on Tuesday when a vocational nurse said she had been propositioned by Filner while seeking his help on behalf of a disabled US war veteran.” By tomorrow, the number of Filner accusers will rise to 13, along with allegations that the 70-year-old Filner (a Democrat and former

RACISM HURTS EVERYONE

To the sexy barista boy: When I came into the shop, you were the only one there. You made me a soy latte. And while you did, we chatted about your turkey/Christmas tree/pterodactyl tattoo. You are incredibly cute, especially with all the freckles. Everything was great, and I wasn’t sure if you were flirting with me or not. After I talked about working with English Language Learning students, you brought up racism in sports in America… and the conversation died. Racism turned the awkward flirting into just awkwardness. Sad day.

congressman) targeted survivors of military rape for his alleged gropings and advances. “At least eight female veterans and members of the National Women’s Veterans Association of America in San Diego have made accusations against the mayor,” CNN will report tomorrow. “Almost all of the women say they were victims of sexual assault while they were in the military. The women say the former chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee used his significant power and credentials to access military sexual assault survivors, who they say are less likely to complain.” As the week continues, everyone in the world will call on Bob Filner to step down as mayor of San Diego, including many residents of San Diego, who’ll launch a recall campaign to unseat him. As for Filner: He’ll continue to wave off the allegations of sexual harassment while undergoing intense inpatient behavioral counseling and filing legal papers asking the city of San Diego to pay for his defense. Meanwhile, his lawyer will argue that the city is liable because Filner was never given proper mayoral workplace behavior training. Stay tuned for updates on a man who may actually be a total bag of shit.

My favorite Ryan Gosling movie is definitely Drive Gosling is so freaking cool!

Oh, I absolutely fell in love with Ryan Gosling in The Notebook! He’s the textbook definition of “dreamboat.”

YOU FUCKING IMBECILE. That’s what’s on your mind right now? Ryan Gosling in Drive? News flash, dicknose! Al Qaeda is MURDERING people! North Korea is STARVING its citizens! But YOU, you feckless, frantically masturbating shit monkey? YOU’RE swooning over RYAN FUCKING GOSLING? Why don’t you do the goddamn planet a favor and eat a garbage can full of cyanide, pay a hobo to slice open your throat with a rusty knife, and then jump into a vat of toxic waste, you penis-chafed, Gosling-slobbering IMBECILE.

How interesting! Do you know who I fall in love with?

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7 In rattier news, the week continues in Seattle, where KIRO reports “the construction of the Highway 99 tunnel is resulting in a ‘ratpocalypse.’” For supporting evidence, KIRO turns to the professional rat-killers at Sprague Pest Solutions, which reports a 60 to 80 percent jump in calls since preliminary tunnel work began. “As we shake the ground they live in, they have to go relocate to a better home, and that next better home is really the buildings of Seattle,” said Sprague district manager Mark Schmidt, whose company is running bicycle billboards encouraging downtown building managers to seal up their cracks to keep out the rats. Good luck, downtown building managers, and confidential to everyone: Whatever you do, don’t google “rat king.”

THURSDAY, AUGUST 8 Speaking of loathsome vermin and things you shouldn’t google, the week continues with Derek Medina, the heroic genius superhuman who this morning announced he’d murdered his wife in Miami and then posted a photo of her bloody corpse on Facebook. The attendant status update, as captured by Miami New Times (sic throughout): “Im going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife love you guys miss you guys takecare Facebook people you will see me in the news my wife was punching me and I am not going to stand anymore with the abuse so I did what I did I hope u understand me.”

After posting the photo and confession, Medina took himself to a police station and confessed. Charged with first-degree murder, Medina remains held without bond. (Early next week, the International Business Times will publish this sentence: “The argument that Mr. Medina was defending himself is diffused by his near professional skills in martial [arts] and he has made videos of himself making strikes with precision and accuracy.” Stay tuned.)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9 In lighter news, the week continues with an impressive criminal

Actually, I think I was pretty good in the TV series Young Hercules, but I’m open to discussion.

Anybody who isn’t a FUCKING IMBECILE! Listen up, you desperate, barren schoolmarm: In case you haven’t heard, the NSA is snooping around my porn stash, militias are burning villages in Darfur, and the polar fucking ice caps just snapped in fucking half. The good news? Global warming will eventually drown all of you simpering, slack-jawed, eHarmony-humping halfwits. Make a note of it, you man-repelling, Gosling-ass-sniffing, moron-idiot-JACKASS.

Look, fucknuts. I’m so sick of… wait. Ryan Gosling??? THE Ryan Gosling??? Oh sweet Jesus… umm… well, you’re right, of course! Young Hercules IS totally awesome! And you were so incredible in it, and… damn I’m acting like a fucking imbecile schoolgirl, but… oh, Mr. Gosling! I LOVE YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!

complaint reported by the Smoking Gun, involving two passengers on a flight to Las Vegas who allegedly refused to stop having sex “According to a complaint filed this week in US District Court, Jessica Stroble and Christopher Martin began getting frisky after an Allegiant Airlines flight departed Medford, Oregon, for Nevada in late June,” reports the Smoking Gun, citing the federal complaint. “A passenger sitting across from the duo on the 90-minute flight observed Stroble ‘perform oral sex and manually stimulate the genitalia of a male passenger sitting in the window seat next to her. After the act was completed, the witness watched as Stroble ‘wiped off her mouth while the male put his penis back inside his pants.’” But wait, there’s more! According to witnesses, the couple’s insistent sex show extended to include another round of lap-based head-bobbing along with the groping and suckling of exposed breasts. “Upon landing, Stroble and Martin were escorted off the plane and questioned by Las Vegas police,” reports the Smoking Gun. “In a complaint filed Tuesday in US District Court in Las Vegas, they were charged with engaging in ‘lewd, indecent, and obscene acts on an airplane.’ If convicted, Stroble and Martin each face up to 90 days in jail and a fine.” Contacted yesterday by the Smoking Gun, Stroble said she was unaware of any charges and “none of that happened.”

SATURDAY, AUGUST 10 Nothing happened today, unless you count the thousands of Seattleites pulled away from sleep/sex/Netflixbinge-watching by the amazing lightning storm that blew up the sky not long after midnight this morning.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 11 The week ends with a cruddy story out of Bothell, where a hypnotherapist is facing a rape charge after allegedly sexually assaulting a patient. Details come from Seattlepi.com, which identifies the hypnotherapist as 58-year-old Ayhan Yavuz, who reportedly began treating an 18-yearold man for depression and anxiety late last year. “According to charging papers, Yavuz was conducting what he called ‘energy therapy,’” reports Seattlepi. com. “During one session, Yavuz told the young man to remove his pants and underwear, a Bothell detective told the court. In another, Yavuz is alleged to have shoved his thumb into the teen’s mouth before grabbing the young man’s genitals, unbuckling his own pants, and forcing the teen to touch him sexually.” Charged with second-degree rape, Yavuz is currently free on a $50,000 bond.

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

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Wait, They Want More Density?

Neighborhood Groups Are Outraged by Proposals for Squat Chain Stores on Busy Blocks

BY ANNA MINARD

Vince Lyons of the Wallingford Community Council is the first to admit that his neighborhood’s newest tussle with a developer is “kind of ironic.” Usually, he says, “we’re trying

to look at larger projects and get them to cut back on their bulk.” But Lyons is involved in a new kind of neighborhood fight over a proposed development on North 45th Street, a project that would replace a one-story building and its adjoining parking lot with—well, a one-and-a-half-story building. With an adjoining parking lot.

So instead of fighting more density, the neighborhood is saying, “Hey, we want density,” says Lyons.

The battle under way in Wallingford is similar to those brewing simultaneously in Queen Anne and West Seattle, where the same developer is planning squat, car-oriented chain stores on busy corners in the heart of pedestrian neighborhoods—places the city and neighbors have designated for larger, mixeduse buildings that promote street activity.

“They’re doing just the opposite of what we would anticipate,” says the director of the city’s Department of Planning and Development, Diane Sugimura. Likewise, a member of a city design board, Joe Hurley, called it “ludicrous” to claim that this proposal comports with the growth anticipated in the neighborhood.

The site that would be razed on North 45th Street currently has three different storefronts—including the beloved Chinese restaurant/dive bar Moon Temple, a former cafe, and a former clinic.

The developer, Michigan-based Velmeir Companies, has submitted designs to replace the entire building with a retail pharmacy, including a partial second story providing room for storage and bathrooms. Velmeir won’t comment on who the pharmacy client is, but the designs appear to suggest it will be a CVS. CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis says, “We have no announcement at this time for store

Taxi Magic?

Cabbies Hope a New App Will Help Fight Off Competition

BY GOLDY

For a brief moment, downtown Seattle had a distinctly New York City feel to it: Dozens of cheerful yellow and orange taxicabs clogged Fourth Avenue on the afternoon of August 2, before turning up Cherry Street to encircle City Hall. But rather than demonstrating a sudden resurgence of Seattle’s taxi industry, a hundred or so cabbies were protesting a surge of competition they say is stealing their fares and destroying their livelihoods. Whether they’ll get the relief they demand

openings in Seattle.”

Velmeir isn’t proposing under-building just a little. The city allows buildings up to 40 feet tall and with more than 61,000 square feet on that lot—this pharmacy would be less than 10,000 square feet. Velmeir project manager Wayne Shores says what happens to the site is the “client’s decision”; they’re still “very early” in the process and “discussing all options.”

When asked about neighborhood complaints that the proposal is at odds with the city’s goal for concentrated activity on the busy block, Shores said the company is “taking all the comments into consideration.”

On August 5, in a sweltering community center, dozens of Wallingford residents swarmed an early meeting of the design review board to testify on the project. Versions of the questions “Why can’t it be taller?” and “Why does it need so much parking?” were brought up repeatedly; people pointed out that many businesses on the strip do just fine without parking. Other neighbors mocked the corporate architecture that ignores the surrounding neighborhood, calling it an “obvious… copy/paste job,” “a California strip-mall knockoff,” and “a cruel joke.”

That last comment came from Wallingford resident Doug Nellis, who points out that Capitol Hill residents faced a similar problem with a pharmacy—and won.

In 2003, at Broadway and Pine Street, Walgreens had proposed a one-story pharmacy with a surface parking lot. After the neighborhood protested, Nellis says, “Walgreens took back their original design and built what is a fairly decent building.” That “fairly decent building” is the Broadway Crossing, a mixed-use building with 44 units of affordable housing, developed in conjunction with

is another question.

Seattle’s heavily regulated taxi industry is under assault from new competition. Hundreds of new limos and for-hire vehicles (those two-tone cars that kinda look like cabs) have been added to city streets in recent years—with “no planning, no impact statements, no nothing,” complains longtime cabbie Joe Blondo. Cabbies accuse this competition of encroaching on the taxi industry’s exclusive right to pick up hailing passengers (or “bingos,” in cabbie parlance). Under state and city regulations, limos and for-hires are allowed to pick up passengers only by prearrangement. So if you’ve ever been solicited by a town car or a for-hire outside a bar, it seems to me that driver was breaking the law.

Chris Van Dyk, a taxi industry lobbyist,

NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTERS Vince Lyons, center, and Wallingford residents in front of a beloved bar that will be demolished for a chain store.

Capitol Hill Housing, that has won numerous local and national awards.

Meanwhile, on Queen Anne Avenue North and West Mercer Street, the same developer, building for what appears to be the same client, has proposed a similar single-tenant development far below the allowed height and usage of the lot.

“It’s almost unheard of that people would want to underutilize such valuable real estate,” says Queen Anne resident and architect

A neighbor called

the

proposed building “a California stripmall knockoff.”

Matt Roewe. Another proposal would do the same thing in West Seattle at Fauntleroy Way Southwest and Southwest Alaska Street.

But can the city help?

They’re limited, says Sugimura, by city rules—and right now, there’s no minimumdensity requirement.

Which is why city council member Richard Conlin wants to add new rules on minimum density in certain places, as a way

says the competition has “flooded the market. They have to pick up bingos just to stay alive.”

At an April 4 Seattle City Council hearing, for-hire drivers didn’t dispute the allegations; they mostly pleaded for “the same rights as taxis.” The city council has commissioned a taxi-demand study, due next month. Meanwhile, increasingly popular app-based “ride-share” and dispatching services such as Sidecar, Lyft, and Uber are operating entirely outside the regulatory framework. The Seattle

For-hire cars are encroaching on the taxi business.

of preventing under-building. “To me, this is the perfect example of why we need minimum density [requirements],” says Conlin. But the Wallingford and Queen Anne locations have already had their first design review meetings, and as long as they proceed through the application process, they’ll be held only to the standards that were in place when they first applied—new legislation won’t affect them. Neighborhood activists have suggested delaying the projects long enough that they will face new regulations. But Sugimura cautions that if the city forces the developer through too many review meetings “just to delay [the project]… that’s just a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

So Conlin says he’s asked DPD to research ways the city council can legally affect the outcomes of these projects. Both Conlin and Sugimura name-check the Broadway Crossing building as a model for what these projects should become. And though he doesn’t know what that legislation may look like, Conlin seems confident he can pass some sort of minimum-density legislation this fall. After speaking with colleagues, he says, “I can pretty much guarantee you that I’ll have a majority on this, and possibly unanimous.”

We’re really dense at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG

City Attorney’s Office has determined that these services are subject to the same licensing and regulation requirements as for-hire vehicles, yet none of their drivers or vehicles are certified, licensed, or inspected. Ironically, similar app-based technology may prove to be the cabbies’ salvation. “The taxi industry needs to raise its game,” argues Sanders Partee, the president and cofounder of RideCharge, creator of Taxi Magic, a phone app that can already be used to hail Orange Cabs in Seattle. Taxi Magic integrates with the taxi associations’ dispatch services, adding not just smartphone hailing but GPS tracking, meter integration, and automatic payments in most markets. “Our user experience is virtually identical with these competitors,” Partee says of Sidecar and Lyft.

Partee, Blondo, and Van Dyk all agree that technology is key to fending off the challenge from app-based upstarts. Blondo has high hopes for a custom app he says is being developed for Yellow Cab, Seattle’s largest dispatcher. And Van Dyk goes so far as to suggest that widespread adoption of these taxi apps could defuse the current tension between cabbies and for-hires by changing consumer behavior. “To some extent, the apps will make the bingo a thing of the past,” says Van Dyk, who predicts that Seattle passengers will prefer the certainty of hailing a cab from their phone rather than from a street corner. And that, says Partee, would play into Taxi Magic’s strength: “moving from a ride request to a ride promise.”

But the other thing on which they all agree is that there needs to be a level playing field: “ride shares” need to be regulated, and violators need to be fined and suspended. “We want enforcement,” says Blondo, who warns that

Mayor of a Different City

Ed Murray Says He’s “Not Running to Be a Progressive Mayor.” Why Not?

BY PAUL CONSTANT

On August 6, in a halting, stiff primary victory speech at the Crocodile, mayoral candidate and state senator Ed Murray said two things that I found to be very troubling. First, he announced that to make Seattle work, “we need to bring liberals and moderates together.” Second, his speech’s big money shot was this line: “I am not running to be a gay mayor of Seattle. I am not running to be a progressive mayor of Seattle. I am running to be an effective mayor of Seattle.” (At press time, Murray held a 1.5-point lead over Mike McGinn, sending the two to face off in November.)

I want to be perfectly clear, right up front, that what I’m about to write has nothing to do with McGinn. This is about the fact that I feel that Murray seemed to be running for the mayor of a Seattle that no longer exists.

You can argue that the rhetorical staging of Murray’s quotes indicate that Murray considers himself a progressive—he is, after all, gayer than a unicorn at a glitter party— but the speech itself was packed with supporting evidence that refuted Murray’s theoretical progressivism, including an assurance that in order to achieve “integrated transit,” Seattle had to compromise. That basically means we’d have to kowtow to carloving parts of Washington State that do not have Seattle’s best interests in mind.

Seattle is the liberal heart of a state that last year led the nation by voting to legalize marijuana and same-sex marriage. Could anyone seriously claim that those are not progressive causes? Last week, just shy of 35 percent of all primary voters—traditionally a more conservative bunch than general election voters—decided to send Kshama Sawant, a socialist, to the ballot against incumbent council member Richard Conlin this November; Conlin couldn’t even clear 50 percent of the vote. Do you really think this is a moderate city?

We don’t live in Old Seattle anymore; this is not a city for NPR tote-bag liberals who put Clinton/Gore bumper stickers on their cars and then quietly vote down every property tax that crosses their ballots. This is not a city that can

cabbies will file a lawsuit against the city to recoup lost earnings if regulators and police fail to crack down on the limos and for-hires. Van Dyk says “the lack of enforcement is no different from deregulation,” adding that “deregulation will destroy this industry once again.”

Seattle deregulated its taxi industry in 1979, with disastrous results: service declined, rates rose, and drivers struggled to make a living, according to a 2001 report from Seattle’s Consumer Affairs division. As in nearly every other city that attempted deregulation, Seattle’s taxi industry was reregulated five years later.

“Deregulation is a word that comes up now and again,” says city council president Sally Clark, “but it’s not something we’re considering at this time.”

But Clark also says that “in Seattle, we are hesitant to get heavy-handed all at once.” So a quick truce in Seattle’s war on cabs may not yet be in reach.

continue to wait patiently for conservatives to come around to our way of thinking on transit.

After the speech, I asked Murray consultant Sandeep Kaushik if the win meant that the ugliest race in Seattle history had just begun.

(Murray said recently that if he and Mayor McGinn both made it through the primary, “I think this is going to be the ugliest campaign Seattle has ever seen.”) Kaushik, who’s already been part of the Murray campaign’s ugly tactics of smearing the mayor while dodging issues, shrugged: “I don’t know. Ask the mayor… Ask The Stranger.” After that, I ran into Washington State Democratic Party head Dwight Pelz, a big Murray supporter, and asked him if he thought we were about to see the ugliest mayoral race Seattle has ever seen. “Top three,” he said. Mayor McGinn, Pelz went on, will be like a “Mama Grizzly [protecting] her cubs.” When I asked if the grizzly bear imagery was meant to compare Mayor McGinn to Sarah Palin, Pelz replied “maybe.” Then he laughed, and said “yes.”

Establishment Democrats can lay out all the self-fulfilling prophecies they want, but I don’t think Murray even necessarily believes what he said on Tuesday. Murray didn’t push for same-

Murray uses the words “progressive” and “liberal” as if they’re pejoratives.

sex marriage for all those years in Olympia because it was a moderate idea. It was a progressive idea that he had to sell and sell until the moderates had no choice but to cave, sometimes out of sheer shame. I’m disappointed that Murray would now use the words “progressive” and “liberal” as if they’re pejoratives.

This isn’t the Seattle of the past. We start debates on the minimum wage and fast food workers’ rights and pot and gay marriage here in Seattle that inspire conversations around the rest of the country. We are the bluest of blues. We’re tired of having to wait for the dumbest kid in the class to catch up to us so that we can move on to the next lesson. We want to write our own goddamned lesson plans. We want to make our own world. And to do that, we need a mayor who doesn’t shy away from the word “progressive,” and we definitely don’t need a mayor who insists that liberals have to capitulate to “moderates” in order to get stuff done. That may have been Seattle 15 years ago. It’s not Seattle now. It’s not the city that Seattle’s going to be. We want to be the torchbearers for the great, weird, beautiful American progressive movement. We’ve got the voters, and we’ve got the enthusiasm. Why is Murray so ashamed of us? Doesn’t he see what’s right in front of him? What, after all, is he so fucking afraid of?

ED MURRAY

KELLY O

SOURCES SAY

• A man shot a 64-year-old Metro bus driver on August 12 in an altercation that started with a dispute over paying the fare. The suspect, shot by police after fleeing the scene, has died. The bus driver is reportedly alive and “in good spirits.” We’d like to propose a Bus Driver Appreciation Week a full seven days to show our gratitude for drivers who take us to work, take us home, and deal with the criminally insane.

• The Seattle Parks Department is considering banning cigarettes and dogs in Westlake Park and Occidental Park at the insistence of neighbors who argue the rules could help remove unsavory people. “These aren’t homeless people or people that live in the Mission we are talking about,” former Seattle mayor Charlie Royer testified during a recent meeting of the Board of Park Commissioners. “They are not the problem here. The problem is the young thugs smoking not only cigarettes who just

turn people away from the park.” Discounting the undercurrents of racism and classism in his statement, there are many glaring flaws to this reasoning: Smoking within 25 feet of certain park spaces with kids is already prohibited, and parks officials have warned a ban may be disproportionately enforced—like, you know, applied only to anyone cops consider a “young thug.” Same goes for a dog ban. The parks department is slated to address the issue by September 26.

• Seattle City Council member Nick Licata is hosting a fundraiser on August 19 for Fair Elections Seattle, a PAC helping to pass Proposition 1, which would bring back public financing of city council elections. Meanwhile, Fair Elections Seattle’s endorsements page lists all the city council members as supporters—except for Sally Bagshaw.

• If Seattle’s August 6 primary election is any indication, the November mayor’s race is slated to be a real pants-pooping nail-biter. As of press time, state senator Ed Murray leads Mayor Mike McGinn by only 29.89 to 28.45 percent—a margin of 2,018 votes.

Cops to Distribute Bags of Chips at Hempfest (Really!)

Labels Will Educate Potheads About Limits of Legalization Law

BY BEN LIVINGSTON

As thousands of stoners prepare to convene at the world’s largest pot rally this weekend, the Seattle Police Department is planning to distribute information to Hempfest attendees about the state’s new legalization law—on stickers attached to bags of chips. Seriously.

Because while stoners have no problem ignoring a leaflet, police recognize that it’s nearly impossible to turn down a bag of Doritos.

“Distributing salty snacks at a festival celebrating hemp, I think, is deliberately ironic enough that people will accept them in good humor,” says police department spokesman Sergeant Sean Whitcomb. “We want to make sure people learn the rules and that they respect the vote.”

The labels on the snack-sized bags will direct festival attendees to the SPD’s postlegalization FAQ titled “Marijwhatnow?” which went viral last November, reminding citizens that possessing up to an ounce of pot is allowed, but selling and growing the stuff remains illegal (until licenses are issued later this year by the state).

With funding for the project coming entirely from the privately run Seattle Police Foundation, police say they plan to distribute

about 1,000 bags of Doritos over the weekend.

The SPD isn’t just being progressive by national political standards—the cops in Seattle are more progressive than the rest of city government. The city council and city attorney are currently focused on crafting a new municipal citation for public pot smoking, despite the fact that cops can already cite people for public consumption under state law. But instead of issuing tickets, the SPD has been warning people getting high in public that they can be ticketed—the state has a form officers can use—but has only been asking violators to extinguish their pot. Police say this has remedied the situation without handing out citations.

In that vein, Whitcomb confirms that the “spirit of Initiative 502” will govern enforce-

Police say they don’t plan to issue tickets for public pot smoking.

ment at Hempfest this year, and police will not issue tickets for public toking.

“We’ve said all along that this is a momentous period in our history. We only get to do it once,” says Whitcomb. “Our department has taken a leadership role in public education, and it’s a responsibility we are taking very seriously. We are not looking to have a heavy hand when it comes to enforcement. That said, the rules are the rules, and we want people to voluntarily comply with them.”

Will cops give out tickets instead of snacks at next year’s Hempfest? Whitcomb doubts it, saying the department is guided by a voter-enacted city ordinance from 2003 that deprioritized marijuana enforcement, adding, “It’s not as if we get a lot of complaints about it.”

Hempfest is August 16–18 on the downtown waterfront, admission is free, more information at hempfest.org.

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Stunning Seattle

Meet the Greatest Mural Project That Seattle Might Never See

BY CIENNA MADRID

Behind the preserved brick and expansive glass windows at Poquitos Mexican restaurant is a bland, windowless, 90-footwide-by-45-foot-tall puce wall. Given its location on Capitol Hill, hundreds of pedestrians pass the wall daily, its raw puceyness inspiring vague thoughts of gum disease.

This summer, that wall has come achingly close to receiving a makeover. A small group of street artists known as Graffiti Defense Coalition (GDC) embarked on a project to paint a 4,050-square-foot mural on this unmemorably ugly wall, with help from the local nonprofit The World Is Fun.

The project, which was to also include three other walls around the city, was designed to be a stunner. “Picture entire sides of buildings enveloped in thematic murals,” says GDC founder Justin Hart. He imagines something on the scale of the UK’s iconic hog-tied wolf painted on the side of a five-story brick apartment building. “We felt that Seattle was at the perfect stage for that type of presentation—not just one but several murals that are so huge, so unmistakable, that everyone would be talking about them.”

They dubbed the project Stunning Seattle.

The owners of the Pike Building (at 1100 East Pike Street) loved the idea. They gave their blessing to repaint the puce wall, as did the owners of the nearby Union Art Cooperative (1100 East Union Street), the Olive Terrace Apartments (430 East Howell Street), and Shop Rite Drugs (426 15th Avenue East). Better yet, the city loved the idea. Last October, it awarded a $49,251 matching grant to fund mural projects on all four buildings, with work slated to begin this summer. But instead of fresh paint, puce perseveres at 1100 East Pike. The project has ground to a halt amid a potential legal battle between its onetime collaborators. Now GDC has until August 31 to settle its fight with TWIF or face losing its grant altogether.

“I didn’t step into this looking to battle,” Hart says, his words clipped with emotion. “I just want to paint murals.”

The 33-year-old street artist founded GDC in 2011 in response to a city report that reached the dubious conclusion that while graffiti was flourishing in Seattle, there were “no instances of what could be called artistic tagging.”

Over a year of monthly meetings in bars and basements, GDC’s 50-odd members decided that their mission would be to create murals in Seattle. Not to paint them, but to secure properties, find funding, and connect artists to expansive urban canvases in need of a little color. “We wanted to stick up for street artists and facilitate dialogue with the city, with business owners, with residents, that street artists don’t usually participate in,” Hart explains. To find the Pike Building and others like it, Hart combed hundreds of blocks around the city, taking photographs of mural-worthy walls.

Then he went home, looked up the owners in county property records, and mailed each a pitch. “We spent a lot of time and money on postage,” Hart says. But it was worth it. “We got about a 30 percent positive response from people expressing an interest.”

There was just one problem: “We realized that we were just an unincorporated group of residents without the resources to apply for and collect grants,” Hart says.

But the celebration was short-lived, says Hart. Within weeks, he says, TWIF tried to take over the project when it presented a formal partnership agreement. “It was a five-year contract entitling them to 50 percent of programmatic control over the Graffiti Defense Coalition,” Hart explains. “Most importantly, it would give them equal brand ownership over Stunning Seattle. It would forbid the GDC from organizing another [mural project] of similar nature for five years.”

The proposed partnership agreement would also expand TWIF’s one-off fiscal partnership to “produce an annual 10-day art event that brings large scale murals and art festivities to the Seattle area” on a seemingly ongoing basis. Furthermore, it states, “Each partner shall have equal rights to manage and control the partnership and its business.”

Members of GDC felt that signing such an agreement would cost them not only control of the grant but creative control of the art. They’d been attempting to elevate typically bland public art into something stunning, and

Lawyers were called. Letters were sent. People called other people “dicks” in long, rambling e-mail chains.

Enter The World Is Fun (TWIF), a volunteer-run nonprofit whose mission is to support other Seattle nonprofits and promote volunteerism. Hart asked TWIF to be GDC’s fiscal sponsor—a common umbrella-type role wherein a nonprofit extends its 501(c)3 tax status to another group for financial purposes, in exchange for a small fee (in this case, 5 percent of the grant).

At first blush, the pairing seemed perfect. Amy Faulkner, executive director of TWIF, says her group had been “talking about” a mural-painting event. “We moved into a partnership with GDC because we were doing a lot of planning alongside them.” The groups signed a fiscal sponsorship contract in May 2012. And last November, they received word that they’d received nearly $50,000 in funding.

they didn’t want to give up control of that vision just as they’d acquired the resources to make it happen.

Hart and the GDC refused to sign the partnership agreement, equating it with a takeover.

But Faulkner denies it’s a takeover. She says the agreement was insurance that, if there were leftover mural funds, they’d be put toward future projects.

Since November 13, 2012, lawyers have been called. Letters have been sent. People have called other people “dicks” in long, rambling e-mail chains. After GDC refused to sign the agreement, TWIF even argued that the name Stunning Seattle was part of TWIF’s brand—not GDC’s.

“We requested that they not use the name,” Faulkner says. “It was reached after the partnership was entered into. We don’t

want them to move forward using anything we’ve done in the partnership.”

Of course, GDC disputes that claim. Several members confirmed that the name was created in one of the group’s winter basement meetings a year before any agreement with TWIF. The groups severed ties before any money was awarded. Both groups currently claim ownership of Stunning Seattle, however, and the grant money is in limbo. They both seem eager to launch a mural project under that name—but despite their common goal, neither group seems willing to speak with, let alone work alongside, the other. In fact, TWIF allegedly threatened to sue GDC if it went forward with its city grant while using the name Stunning Seattle. In our interview, Faulkner denied this. “We’ve made no threats to sue them,” she stated.

But Department of Neighborhoods project manager Allynn Ruth, who is responsible for meting out the mural grant, says that TWIF has, in fact, been willing to litigate. “It was very clear that Amy was ready to defend ownership of the name in court,” Ruth says. That threat was enough to scare the city away from awarding the grant to GDC, despite Hart’s assurances that he owned the state trademark to Stunning Seattle. “We can’t risk using city resources in a fight that doesn’t involve us,” Ruth explains. Instead, on advice from the city’s law department, Ruth outlined three options for Hart and GDC: forfeit the name Stunning Seattle, purchase intellectual property insurance to safeguard against a lawsuit (which could cost as much as $30,000, Hart says), or table the grant for a year while submitting to the city “a meaningful plan” on how GDC and TWIF will resolve their issues.

GDC must decide by August 31 or risk forfeiting its grant. The easiest solution would be for GDC to simply change its project name, but Hart and his cohort adamantly refuse. He says more than 200 artists from across the globe responded to Stunning Seattle’s call for mural artists. Changing the name would require starting over and losing two years’ worth of outreach to artists and local businesses.

“Our intent wasn’t just to do this one project and stop,” he says. “It was about building momentum, building a social presence, and hopefully doing more murals in the future. Starting all over would be detrimental.”

KELLY O

JUSTIN HART In front of a 4,050-square-foot canvas.

This Is Not a Tourist Event

Ten Thousand People, a Dangerous Canoe Journey, and the Spectacular Endurance of the Tribes the American Government Has Tried to Kill | By Jen Graves

“S

eattle—I always say it’s the epicenter of the Indian movement right now,” says Caleb Dunlap. “I can’t remember where I heard that. Maybe it was just inside of me. But it said, ‘Go to Seattle if you want to be part of change in what we call Indian Country.’”

It’s Friday, August 2, 2013, and Dunlap is sitting on the bumper of a red pickup truck parked on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He’s Ojibwe, of the Minnesota Chippewa, but today he’s in Quinault country, in the town of Taholah in Grays County, 150 miles west of Seattle. He moved to Seattle last year from Los Angeles, and he manages the programs at the Chief Seattle Club downtown. Dunlap dresses preppy. He wears stylish eyeglasses. He’s queer and out. All these same traits apply to his twin brother—they jokingly refer to themselves as the Nerdy Natives. They’re two of the thousands of people who have pitched tents on this cliff and in these forests for the first week of August. All these people are here to celebrate the endurance of the tribes the American government has tried to kill.

“The change,” Caleb explains, “is to acknowledge that we are a people still.”

I’ve come not knowing what I’m getting into. I’m ostensibly following Matika Wilbur, an artist of Swinomish and Tulalip descent who has shown at Seattle Art Museum, among other places. She recently gave a TEDx talk about her crowdfunded Project 562: her solo journey visiting and photographing all of the 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States. This has included, among many other adventures into Native America, a trip by Natives-only helicopter to visit the Havasupai on a remote outcropping in the Grand Canyon. (Tourists are forbidden to take photographs of the Havasupai people.) Wilbur deserves, and will soon get, her own story in this newspaper. But through her, I witnessed an entire world that rises up every summer in the form of the Tribal Canoe Journey. If you are not Native, this display is not for you. This

is not a tourist event. But if you are a respectful guest, you’ll be honored and welcomed no matter who you are—even if you have no idea what you’re about to see.

This is the biggest event of the local Native year. If you had visited every reservation between Vancouver Island and Olympia during the first week of August, you’d basically have found them empty: Folks were in Quinault. Each year, a different tribe hosts the journey. And each year, the journey—a variant on ancient traditions, revived in 1989—grows bigger. This year, there were nearly 100 canoes pulled by representatives from more than 75 tribes. Almost all the tribes are from the Salish Sea, but some came from as far away as Hawaii, New Zealand, and New York. An estimated 10,000 people celebrated.

Golf carts and shuttle school buses ran up and down between the coast towns of Ocean Shores and Moclips and Seabrook to bring guests. The gas station in Kurt Cobain’s hometown of Aberdeen was so unprepared for the onslaught of travelers that by Friday night, when the celebration wasn’t even halfway through, the regular-grade gas had already run out. You had to buy premium if you wanted gas. Likewise, the staff of the little visitors’ center for the Olympic National Forest in the town of Quinault—which

The gas station in Kurt Cobain’s hometown of Aberdeen was unprepared for the onslaught of travelers.

is not, incidentally, where the reservation is located—was bewildered. “People just keep asking me where the canoe journey is, and I don’t really know,” says the older white woman working the desk. “I think it’s in Taholah. At least that’s what I heard, and I keep sending people there, and nobody’s coming back.”

I arrive on the Thursday afternoon the canoes are scheduled to land. They were supposed to come in at 11 a.m., but the waters were so choppy that they were turned away, some capsizing. It’s a dangerous journey. The Salish Sea is not for amateurs. In 2006, a hereditary chief of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht tribe of Vancouver Island drowned and three people had to be hurried to the hospital when their canoe capsized in a storm west of Dungeness Spit during the journey. “Look at each leg of

the journey as a journey in itself,” warned this year’s tip sheet for canoe families, as the teams are called. It’s easy to get thirsty, sunburned, hungry, cold, and separated from your support boat. “A good rule to follow is to plan on being out 18 hours with only what you carry.”

The canoe landing at Quinault could not have been more gorgeous. “Just look at our rez,” a Quinault spokesman says. The beach is a long curve of stark, fog-coated shore shielded entirely by the high cliffs topped by green forest. Out among the breaking waves, monumental rocks hold their ground. The water stretches to the horizon line. Nothing besides nature is visible—usually. This is private land. No one is allowed here without express permission from the Quinault. On this particular Thursday, though, there’s a crush of car and foot traffic on the beach.

Sometime in the late afternoon, the canoes begin coming in off the open water, escorted by two big old European-based ships meant to signify cooperation. Each canoe emerges from the fog like a spaceship reentering the atmosphere, passes by the tall ships, and approaches the beach, where a row of young female dancers wearing red and black regalia prepares the way. The travelers stop before they get to shore. One representative comes onto the beach to request permission to come

PHOTOS BY MATIKA WILBUR

TRIBAL CANOE JOURNEY The Salish Sea is not for amateurs.

ashore. Over a booming loudspeaker that sends the words all the way up into the trees on the cliffs, the words of response are given: “Welcome ashore. Welcome to the Great Quinault Nation.” At this, the rest of the team steps out of the wooden canoe as one synchronized force. They bend down, hoist the canoe over their heads, and walk onto the land.

This is their final destination, and here they’ll celebrate for five days straight, all through the nights and days, with breaks only

through the whole dance. The elders sitting on the floor closest to the stage area shared stories with me that are sacred in their horror: of Joe Washington, a Lummi boy who was sent to a white boarding school and forbidden to speak Salish but who couldn’t speak anything else. He was punished for his muteness by having his tongue pressed to a frozen pole and the flesh of it torn off, and then he was sent home anyway. He stopped speaking at all for years. “So when they say, ‘Oh, you don’t speak your language?’ I go, ‘No, my grandmother was too afraid to teach it to her son that he would be punished, so excuse me that I don’t speak my language.’”

for breakfasts and dinners provided by the Quinault. Lunches will be delivered in brown bags handed out to the assembled crowd inside the performance, or “protocol,” tent, and all the elders will receive their lunch bags before anyone else is offered anything. Throughout the ceremonies, Wilbur will continuously ask her mother, her aunties, and any other women and men older than her whether they want a blanket, or some water, or a meal. Respect for elders happens simply and ubiquitously here.

“Protocol isn’t going to start tonight,” somebody says, and everybody begins passing around the word. Because the canoes had to arrive late, protocol will start Friday morning, after everyone has had one good night of rest. When Friday morning comes, hundreds and hundreds of people file into the white tent that’s large enough to house a football field, and the dancing, drumming, singing, and storytelling begin. This tent is situated right next to another identical tent with endless rows inside it of white-plastic-covered tables for eating—hot breakfasts with eggs and fruit and breads, and feast dinners with crab and chicken and ribs and corn on the cob. These meals are free of charge for every comer.

I cannot pretend to have understood what I witnessed in those hours and hours of singing, dancing, and drumming. I was invited to dance by an old woman in a long braid and dress who grabbed my hand and held me

Therapy for the People

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That’s the voice of Nancy Wilbur, Matika’s mother, whose life is a book waiting to be written. She marched as part of the American Indian Movement (one of the founder’s teenage sons is here, sitting next to her), and she participated in the successful occupation of Discovery Park in Seattle in 1970. She was a Native history and culture college professor, then a lobbyist in Olympia. Her tribe, Swinomish, is 800 or 900 people today, on a reservation of five by seven miles in the Skagit Valley. She remembers a sign on a tavern in La Conner: “No dogs or Indians allowed.”

The elders on the sidelines gave gifts freely. After I accidentally insulted another of Matika’s relatives, Heather Gobin, by sitting down on a handwoven cedar headpiece that she’d made and that I didn’t see there, a few hours later she handed me a cedar rose. She’d woven it by hand; she is known as a master weaver. Her son, who couldn’t have been more than 15 years old, was sitting behind us. He tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a tiny, perfect version of the same rose that he’d twisted together in his lap. He hadn’t said anything to me up until then, but he witnessed the whole thing. When his mother was leaning away, he said to me, “Hold on to these as long as you can. They are special.”

Down on the beach, the tide comes up so high that it’s a gamble to car-camp even right up against the cliff, so when night falls, I find myself running across the beach in driving rain to rescue my minivan before it washes away. As I’m running, I have a mental picture of the van riding out into the water, this dumblooking machine bobbing off, taking some of the unwanted conditions of my life with it. I think of another vessel, too: the Spanish boat that arrived here in 1775, carrying the first documented foreigners into what was later called Washington State. Rather than lose the van, I move it up to the cliff and sleep in it that night, and in the morning I return to the beach on foot. The Quinault allow me to dunk my naked self into this 50-degree water for as long as I can stand, which is not very long at all, and then I drive the van back to Seattle.

DANCING, DRUMMING, STORYTELLING The tent is large enough to house a football field.

theSTRANGER SUGGESTS

Night of Genius: Literature

BOOKS

Meet this year’s literature Genius finalists: Neal Stephenson is a brilliant novelist of big ideas who’s been criminally underappreciated by Seattle’s literary community. Maged Zaher is one of Seattle’s funniest, smartest poets, and he effortlessly shuttles back and forth between the banality of tech work and the life-or-death situation unfolding in Cairo. And the APRIL Festival is an up-and-coming organization that exuberantly proves Seattle’s best literary days are yet to come. Tonight at the Frye Art Museum, the finalists present—SORRY, right at press time, this event sold out! Please join us and all the finalists at the Genius Awards on September 28. (strangertickets.com, $10) PAUL CONSTANT

THU

AUG 15

Harryhausen Memorial Double Bill

FILM

Don’t get me wrong—this year’s Pacific Rim is great special-effects fun. But nothing in even the best computer-generated monster movie can come close to the glory of a special effect crafted by the late, great Ray Harryhausen. Two of his stop-motion creature features—The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts—are showing all week long at the Grand Illusion, and tonight’s double feature of two mystery Harryhausen flicks will send literal shivers down your literal spine. CGI looks lighter than air in comparison to Harryhausen’s skeleton armies, vicious dinosaurs, and giant octopuses. (Grand Illusion Cinema, 1403 NE 50th St, grandillusioncinema.org, 7 and 9 pm, $8–$12) PAUL CONSTANT

Jim Naughten & Fabrice Monteiro

This show featuring photographers Jim Naughten of London and Fabrice Monteiro of Dakar is called Signares and Hereros. Take Hereros, the people of the Namib Desert. In 1904, they rose up against their German colonizers and badly lost. But they adopted a battle tradition: donning German uniforms for the few Germans they killed. They continue the costuming today, as Naughten’s portraits depict. Nothing happens in the pictures, except the reactivation of the past. As Obama suggested in his Trayvon Martin speech, some Americans prefer to see present crimes divorced from past ones. (M.I.A. Gallery, 1203A Second Ave, m-i-a-gallery.com, 11 am–6 pm, free, through Aug 30) JEN GRAVES

‘Trouble in Mind’

Though it was written in 1955, Trouble in Mind, Alice Childress’s play about backstage racial tensions on Broadway, feels startlingly—and depressingly—contemporary. The play happens in a red brick rehearsal room where the (mostly black) actors and (white) director/producer simultaneously navigate the silly theater politics of making a new play, plus the much more serious cultural politics of black people deciding whether and how they want to reenact what white people think they’re supposed to do and say onstage. It’s a bumpy ride. (Intiman at Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, 201 Mercer St, intiman.org, 8 pm, $20–$50, through Sept 15) BRENDAN KILEY

‘Wild at Heart’

Erik Blood MUSIC

Besides being a fantastic local producer who’s worked with the likes of THEESatisfaction, Shabazz Palaces, and the Moondoggies, Erik Blood is also a talented musician. Last year, his super-sexy (literally, it’s about porn) solo release Touch Screens was one of the few albums everyone at The Stranger could agree was great. That doesn’t happen often! And strangely, when it does, it’s often regarding albums Blood has had something to do with—THEESatisfaction and Shabazz Palaces are Stranger Genius finalists and award winners, respectively. Don’t miss your chance to see a man who makes sonic magic (Vera Project, Seattle Center, theveraproject.org, 7:30 pm, $11, all ages) MEGAN SELING

Arriving in the summer of 1990 after a blisteringly divisive premiere at Cannes (where it won the Palme d’Or), David Lynch’s Wild at Heart was a big mythic mind-fuck that swapped the relative subtlety of Blue Velvet and the forthcoming Twin Peaks for a blood-soaked cartoon spoofing love, The Wizard of Oz, and human decency. Making it work as well as it does are the harmoniously bonkers leads, Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, who infuse their cartoons with intoxicating passion. (Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave, central-cinema.com, 9:30 pm, $6 adv/$8 DOS, all ages) DAVID SCHMADER

Peaches CHOW

Not the dirty-talking pop star—the fruit! I’ve already had a few spectacular peaches from Metropolitan Market, where they take their peach business so seriously that they post daily Brix readings. Brix is a scale that measures sugar levels so you know just how sweet and ripe the current crop is— if the Brix is at 16 or higher, BUY THAT PEACH. Of course, peaches are great untainted, but don’t stop there. Slice ’em in half, throw them on the grill, and serve them with a drizzle of honey and some vanilla ice cream! Pickle them with some cinnamon and cloves! Chop them up and add them to a salad of fresh greens! Just get that peach into your mouth, ASAP. (Anywhere good fruit is sold) MEGAN SELING

No Age is the two-man band that puts the art in art-punk. When they’re not releasing critically adored recordings on Sub Pop, they’re collaborating with Chloë Sevigny at some Greek art festival or installing a piece at LA MOCA. At tonight’s Vera Project–sponsored show at Washington Hall, No Age will be celebrating the release of their brand-new album, An Object, along with opening acts Devin Gary & Ross, Sun Foot, and Naomi Punk. (Washington Hall, 153 14th Ave, theveraproject.org, 7:30 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages) DAVID SCHMADER

CHRIS BENNION

Photo by Mark Kitaoka

ARTS

The Folksy Internet

S’mores,

Mail-Order

Retail, and

Hashtag

Enthusiasm at UW’s Art Gallery

BY JEN GRAVES

What kind of art comes out of a “research university”? Art may not be systematic or quantifiable, but it is not the unmoored free-for-all that hippies, mystics, and marketers want it to be, either. Artists are geeks, too. And the 17 artists and artist teams at the University of Washington’s Jacob Lawrence Gallery this month are geeks both in and outside of art. Each has a non-art obsession, and Parallel Processing features the idiosyncratic products of their self-directed geek-outs, in video, collage, photography, performance, sculpture, web-page printouts, and one shadowy sponsorship.

Parallel Processing

Jacob Lawrence Gallery Through Aug 23

Co-curator Michael Van Horn explains that the exhibition (also curated by artists Sol Hashemi and Elizabeth Abrahamson) was meant to demonstrate to art students how to be focused but loosen up. Each of these artists is very focused, both on “the turf of art” and on some other discipline—design, business, advertising, gardening, music, poetry. This isn’t the same thing as transmedia, says Van Horn. It’s the transculturalism of recent contemporary art, a magpie discipline grabbing at shiny bits of other realms, as Seattle painter Matthew Offenbacher (a 2013 Stranger Genius Award finalist) describes it. What really gets exchanged, rather than the conditions of various art mediums, are the rules and conditions of different games.

Though the artists range from underemployed fresh grads to long-ago-tenured professors, with plenty of thirtysomethings in between, Parallel Processing is a product of the internet age with a vengeance. The shadowy sponsor of the exhibition, listed on promotional materials, is a social-media marketer. BH Ideas has a Facebook page and a pseudonymous Chief Visionary Officer, Bill Hitchert. In the gallery, he deposited a few promotional logos and Coke Zeros on a folding table. Hitchert once wrote a piece for The

Stranger. It was snappy and enthusiastic, and involved the saying of “namaste” and the dropping of a great number of hashtags. His regular Facebook postings are a hilarious satire of social-media marketing, which basically means the marketing of nothing more than the premise that social mediation is good. On his Facebook page, there are kittens, percentages of increased traffic, and “connections between idea people.” No ideas but in connections, William Carlos Williams might have said. You wish you didn’t get the joke. The sponsorship of Parallel Processing, like the “company” itself, is nothing but a linkage. Likewise, the tone of the whole show is amusing, smart, and sometimes eerily twodimensional, like a skim off the surface of the web. That, or folksy. Two artists from Oregon, working under the name Rose Curea Partners, set up a Sterno fire on the steps of the art building to serve you s’mores and chat, and this chat may include ostensibly researched facts such as that graham crackers were originally marketed as digestive aids. This being art, the “research” is a savvy stumbling about as much as a pursuit of innovation. There are beautiful moments in and among the ugly nuggets, and appeal in both what’s fresh and what’s been predigested. No style or substance commitments are made. The effect can be irritating and off-putting, or pleasing. Jason Hirata summons the sublime with an instructional video. He set two large screens on the floor, so close that the video in the back requires effort to see. The two play together like a person and her dreams, parallel processing. Two speakers sit on the floor in front of the screens, also one in front of the other.

Claude Zervas’s chain-sawcarved wood bears have flashing lights for eyes.

The video footage alternates between Hirata Vanna-White-ing how he’s hacked his camera, and scenes shot with the new machine (special lenses, odd focus, what appears to be a constant faint rainfall). He’s shooting in his house, where the light and architecture are dusty and lovely, and in a foresty outdoor environment. The scenes are classic Northwest, the technology back-end-ish—Microsoft, not Apple. Out of the speakers come what seem like nature noises. It’s a local landscape painting, of course Wi-Fi-connected.

An earlier era in computing resonates with an earlier era in sculpture in Parallel Processing. Claude Zervas’s chain-saw-carved wood bears have lights for eyes. The lights are rainbow colors. They flash and change color, Zervas’s website says, “according to the words found in a story about a boy, his father, and small animals that steal camp food.” Matt Browning also works with wood. He’s been known to whittle tiny, painstakingly timeconsuming sculptures. This time, he took a single block of wood. Using a box cutter and a scroll saw, he cut several chain links out of that single block, making sure they stayed connected at their corners. Then he spread apart the chain links and hung the corners on nails in the gallery wall—expanding the original block into a large puzzle, a spatial riddle that looks like a tic-tac-toe board. It’s a trick and a game, a magical fabrication of something out of nothing. It’s also a gorgeous piece of minimalist sculpture. The value is derived from a labor-driven, slow-living quality that feels rare and reassuring. That’s the sculptural equivalent of finding work in taking a break.

BOOKS

How to Destroy a City

Two Books Try to Upend Familiar Systems; One Succeeds

BY PAUL CONSTANT

Mark Leibovich’s This Town is the sort of book that attracts more attention before its publication than after. The idea of a tell-all about the back-scratching, selfobsessed behavior of Washington insiders, written by no less an expert than the New York Times Washington, DC, correspondent, sounds pretty salacious. But while This Town begins promisingly enough, with a prologue set at Tim Russert’s funeral that indignantly gapes at all the politicians and commentators who are using the occasion of a beloved journalist’s death to preen and be seen, it soon fades into monotony.

REVIEW

This Town by Mark Leibovich (Blue Rider Press, $27.95)

Very Recent History by Choire Sicha (Harper, $24.99)

Here’s what we learn in This Town: Politicians are vain. Journalists are lazy and will publish whatever you want, as long as you give them access. The relationship between lobbyists and politicians is uncomfortably close. Retired politicians get big paydays from industries they favored while in office. Everyone sucks up to those in power, then stabs those same people in the back the moment a weakness becomes visible.

Leibovich is an excellent writer, but there’s little here that qualifies as news. Occasionally, a sarcastic observation will demonstrate the absurdity of the life of a Washington reporter, but the book winds up feeling too middleof-the-road. While Leibovich scorches a few acres of ground, This Town still eventually feels like a backhanded love letter to the culture he’s unveiling. A book like this should either be ripe with the acrid stench of gossip, like Halperin and Heilemann’s Game Change and Dan Balz’s Collision 2012, or it should be a progressive call to arms, with suggestions about how to change the harmful culture of vanity and pettiness.

Blogger Choire Sicha (you probably know his name from Gawker, back when it was cool, or from his site, the Awl)

LOOSE LIPS

• Seattle performer and 2004 Genius Award winner Sarah Rudinoff appeared in her underwear in a Dutch newspaper earlier this week, under a headline that looked like “A Bizarre Shit Party” but in fact translated to “A Bizarre Shooting Party.” Rudinoff is performing in Clay Duke, a reenactment of a school-board shooting directed by Dayna Hanson that premiered at Holland’s Noorderzon Festival. Rudinoff looks great in underwear.

• First Date is the new original musical that had its world premiere in early 2012 at Seattle’s ACT Theater (in a coproduction with the 5th Avenue Theater). Last week, First Date officially opened on Broadway. After a meaner-than-usual review in the New York Times, the show might not be long for this world. The distinguishing characteristics of Charles Isherwood’s first date with First Date: “An instant lack of rapport; a growing aversion as the minutes pass; a mysterious sense that time has suddenly stopped; a desperate hope that the apocalypse will arrive, preferably right this minute.” Condolences to all.

• This isn’t arts gossip, it’s just reality: There is a Jimi Hendrix chalk/pastel drawing, framed and showing on the walls of Cupcake Royale on Pike. Nonironically, brand-new, in the style of what every single Jimi Hendrix drawing has looked like for the last 45 years.

• Last week’s Night of Genius visual art showcase at the Frye Art Museum was standing room only, with latecomers relegated to drinking in the Frye’s lovely courtyard instead. Nights of Genius involve the finalists for The Stranger’s 2013 Genius Awards showing their stuff and taking questions, followed by drinking and more questioning at Vito’s; however, the remaining two Nights (literature and performance) are sold out (yay! Boo!). Meet us at Vito’s around 8 p.m. on August 14 and 21, or we’ll see you at the 11th annual Genius Awards at the Moore on September 28 ($10 at strangertickets.com)!

• Author Ryan Boudinot will hold two informational sessions about applying to make Seattle a UNESCO City of Literature, where he’ll seek help from interested parties. The sessions are September 9 at 7 p.m. at Hugo House and September 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library. If you care about Seattle’s literary scene, you should pledge right now to attend one of those meetings.

• Prepping for a new generation of happy, nonimprisoned pipe smokers who also appreciate art, the Center on Contemporary Art is calling flamework artists to submit works for a group show this fall. The show will be titled Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe: Northwest Flameworking on the Brink of Legalization (the Magritte reference suggests you need a slight conceptual bent). Visit cocaseattle.org/ submission.php.

At Cupcake Royale

dissects the culture of a very different East Coast city to much greater success in his new book, Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City. His target is New York in the throes of the Great Recession, with the very poor bearing the brunt of decisions taken by the very wealthy. Sicha’s book wins the reader’s affection through a ludicrous—and highly effective—gimmick. It’s written as though it’s being told in the distant future, when the specificity of our everyday world has faded and our customs appear quaint to future generations. As a result, our mores are examined with embarrassing clarity:

For instance, it was illegal to exchange money for sex, and it was illegal for men to marry men and women to marry women. It had also, until quite recently, been illegal for people of some different ancestries to marry. As well, it had been illegal for two people to have kinds of sex that couldn’t result in the conception of another human being.

Or, more simply: “Most people at this time ate meat.” This viewing modern life through the wrong end of a telescope is a good, Vonnegutstyle joke, and there’s more than enough fodder with which to fill a short book like this. Everything gets equal weight: relationships; one-night stands; heartbreak; economic inequality; Mayor Bloomberg’s reelection campaign; the way trees in New York

Choire Sicha screws a new pair of eyes into your sockets.

were “always invisible” until spring, when “they began to emit a tiny green mist of new leaves.” In interviews, Sicha is calling Very Recent History an entirely truthful book, and that is a truthful description, but it’s a beautiful book, too. Here’s more from the passage about the dawn of spring, when the winter clothes slowly came off: “Chest hair! Again! The backs of knees were shining everywhere. There was maybe no good evolutionary or biological reason for everyone to want to touch someone’s skin on that first warm day

train full of corn), and their old-timey, baritone-and-brilliantine radio host (Tim Moore) reads off ads for biscuit mix, hangover cures, and other self-consciously podunk products. During these early segments, actor Troy Mink—best known in Seattle for his Southern-drag matron character Carlotta—plays a befuddled and increasingly irritated housewife ineptly trying to cook the Half Brothers’ recipes, turning her corner of the stage into a gloppy, doughy mess.

But things get more interesting as the show progresses. The announcer cheerfully reads off increasingly sinister corporate sponsors and slogans—“Where results are only part of our business”—and the songs take a hard left turn from goofball throwbacks to addressing harrowing contemporary subjects. Nixon and his banjo, for example, lead a haunting bluegrass ballad about home ownership: “I’ve never felt more American than when my debt keeps me up at night… It’s too late for my ship, I just hope that this shit doesn’t stick to my son/Will he even want college when honestly paying off loans might never get done?” Nixon and the rest of the cast come alive— with a sharp, mournful, Chaplin-esque comedy—when they quit making fun of old-timey clichés and start wrestling with what actually scares them. BRENDAN KILEY

of spring, but there it was.”

Reading Very Recent History is often like one of those framing sequences in a movie that is used to demonstrate the passage of time, where a long shot of a public space is sped up so the blurry humans skitter about, running to and fro, looking silly and alien and unknowable. Sometimes you latch onto a single figure making a unique pattern in the spill of humanity, and sometimes you just watch everyone go by, wondering if you could find yourself somewhere in the shot. At those moments, you look up from the book to find that Sicha took the opportunity to screw a new pair of eyes into your sockets. With his distance and his wit, he’s showed you the ridiculousness, and the impossibly high value, of everything you take for granted.

THEATER

Theater

Review Revue

A Sexy Mess and a Gloppy, Doughy Mess

The Half Brothers Brand Old-Time Variety Show Annex Theater Through Aug 30

The Half Brothers are a neo-bluegrass trio with deep roots in Seattle’s fringetheater scene. David Nixon (banjo), John Ackermann (mandolin and guitar), and Rick Miller (guitar and a sweet and slightly ragged voice that sounds like the kind of angel who’d be singing backup for Townes Van Zandt in heaven) have loaned their talents to Annex Theater, On the Boards, and the performance art/rock band “Awesome,” to name a few. (Full disclosure: Miller recently began working in The Stranger’s tech department.)

The Half Brothers Brand Old-Time Variety Show is the Brothers’ first full-length theater project, which begins as a mild parody of old-fashioned, advertiser-sponsored radio shows. The Brothers sing gee-whiz bluegrass throwbacks (“Corn Train,” for example, concerns a hungry person fantasizing about a

The Wild Party Sound Theater Company at Center Theater Through Aug 25

The greatness of this musical—set in the twilight of the decadent Jazz Age (the late 1920s), based on a Jazz Age poem by Joseph Moncure March, and written and composed by Andrew Lippa at the end of the decadent dot-com Clinton years (the late 1990s)—is that it’s so messy. The music is a mess, the writing is a mess, the plot is a mess. But a director who tries to clean up any part of this sexy show, put its music onto sounder historical ground, delete the extra words in the writing, put the rambling story in order, and cut out the digressions would be making a huge fucking mistake. Thankfully, director Corey McDaniel, musical director Carl Petrillo, and choreographer Jessica Low did not make this mistake. They let this animal be an animal. The music goes from sweetly impressionistic to gospel-like enthusiasm, the writing rises to poetry and falls into cheesiness, and the plot refuses to add up or pretend that it has a goal other than to keep us entertained with stuff that comes, as one character sings, “Out of the Blue.”

The strong performances in this production are by Allison Standley, who plays a whore with a serious coke habit, and Tori Spero, the star of the show who plays Queenie, a voluptuous vaudeville dame who spends much of her life in bed and is stuck in a dying relationship with a clown named Burrs (Troy Wageman). Much of the actors’ successes have to do with the raw power of their voices and bodies. The Wild Party, which concerns a wild party thrown by two unhappy lovers, could never be about great acting (it wasn’t written that way), but instead is about the sheer expenditure of erotic energies in a variety of modes and combinations—man/man, man/woman, woman/woman. Other things to note: Jesse Smith, who plays Mr. Black, brings a delightful dose of R&B style to his sentimental jazz pieces, and Wageman’s Burrs has about him the ghost of the beastly bulk that made Marlon Brando’s performance in A Streetcar Named Desire a permanent part of the American imagination. I have only one wish for this production: Booze must be served to the audience during the long party scene. Getting drunker and drunker as the party on the stage gets wilder and wilder would make this beautifully messy play even messier. CHARLES MUDEDE

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THE WILD PARTY Not a huge fucking mistake—not at all.

Magic: the Gathering Mondays and Fridays from 6 p m to midnight.

WETHINKCAPITOLHILLCOULDUSEMORE

MAGIC. PHOENIX

COMICS & GAMES 113 Broadway E, Seattle

GET TICKETS TO THE GENIUS AWARDS CEREMONY ON SEPTEMBER 28TH NOW AT STRANGERTICKETS.COM, BEFORE THEY’RE GONE, TOO!

ARTS CALENDAR Only the most noteworthy stuff.

ART Museums

BELLEVUE ARTS

MUSEUM

Rick Araluce: The Minutes, the Hours, the Days: Araluce constructs teeny, tiny, immaculately detailed spaces that look to have been abandoned five minutes ago or five years ago. In either case, there will be feelings of invasion and loneliness. $10. Tues-Sun. Through Jan 5. 510 Bellevue Way NE, 425-519-0770.

FRYE ART MUSEUM

Buster Simpson // Surveyor : We can already thank Buster Simpson, elder of public art, for making bearable the Sea-Tac rental car garage with his new and luminous Carbon Veil and now he’s working on the seawall renovation that will not only look good but also keep the city from falling into the Salish Sea. This exhibition is a retrospective for Simpson, detailing his immense contribution to public art and good citizenship. Free. Tues-Sun. Through Oct 6. 704 Terry Ave, 622-9250.

HENRY ART GALLERY

Industrial Effects: A survey of how photographers’ attitudes towards industry have changed over time. Through Sept 1. The Ghost of Architecture : Selections from the permanent collection that reference architecture and/or architectural dimension. $10 suggested. Wed-Sun. Through Sept 29. 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280.

NORTHWEST AFRICAN

AMERICAN MUSEUM

Northwest artist Marita Dingus improvises garments, drawing inspiration from French high fashion as well as traditional African textiles. $6. Wed-Sun. Through Jan 6. 2300 S Massachusetts St, 518-6000.

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

by the inimitable Rebecca Brown, who will read along with two other presenting artists, Stranger Genius Susie J. Lee and musician Mike Katell, at the gallery Thurs Aug 15, 7 pm. With drinks! Free. Tues-Sat. Through Aug 31. 901 12th Ave 296-2244.

LXWXH

Zwischerliecht: Zwischerliecht literally means “tweenlight,” which sounds more like a Christian boyband than a word for dusk. If there were ever a group that could capture the non-light of Pacific Northwest twilight, this is it. Six artists present work on the witching hour, including Whiting Tennis, Shaw Osha, and Susanna Bluhm. Free. Through Aug 31. 6007 12th Ave S

MIA GALLERY

The photographs of Fabrice Monteiro (based in Dakar) and Jim Naughten (working in southern Africa) show Africans responding to the forces of colonialization through clothing, brightly. Tues-Sun. Through Aug 30. 1203A 2nd Ave 467-4927.

TRAVER GALLERY

Teeny rooms by Rick Araluce, also a scenic designer for Seattle Opera (and also showing at Bellevue Arts Museum), leave you haunted and fascinated, while glass screens by Dick Weiss are transparent even where they’re not—it’s all on the surface. With glass sculptures by John Kiley. Tues-Sun. Through Sept 1. 110 Union St #200 587-6501.

Events

ARTIST SPEAKS: GEORGE JENNINGS Jennings discusses his life, work, technique, and influences, as well as his use of ethnicity in his work. James and Janie Washington Cultural Center 1816 26th Ave, 709-4241. Free. Fri Aug 16, 6-8 pm.

ART@SDC

Thurs 8/15

PETE ORNER

Orner is a well-respected writer of short stories. His newest collection is Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 6246600. Free. 7 pm.

ROB SHEFFIELD Sheffield’s new memoir is about karaoke. It’s titled Turn Around Bright Eyes University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.

Fri 8/16

MATTHEW AMSTER BURTON, SHAUNA AHERN Ahern is the author, most recently, of Gluten Free Girl Every Day . Amster Burton wrote Pretty Good, Number 1: An American Family Eats Tokyo There will be snacks. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 6 pm. GEORGE KATSIAFICAS The author of The Subversion of Politics and The Imagination of the New Left looks at the uprisings that happened throughout Asia in the 1980s, and compares those uprisings to the Arab Spring. Left Bank Books, 92 Pike St, 622-0195. Free. 7:30 pm.

Mon 8/19

JEFF GUINN Guinn is the author of Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson He reportedly had access to new materials for the creation of this biography. Elliott Bay Book Company 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm.

Tues 8/20

Books! Everybody loves them, but not everyone makes them. Three of Seattle’s hottest literary forces will talk with your host Paul Constant about what makes someone a genius in the field of LITERATURE.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14 | 5:30-8 PM | 21+

WILL MAGED ZAHER SHARE HIS SEXIEST PICK UP LINES?

HOW MUCH OF THE APRIL FESTIVAL’S SUCCESS IS BASED ON SMART FASHION SENSE? HOW MUCH OF IT IS ALCOHOL-BASED?

IS NEAL STEPHENSON A ROBOT-ALIEN HYBRID REFUGEE FROM THE DISTANT FUTURE?

Fashion blockbuster! Future Beauty is three decades of design from the country that’s had the single greatest influence on experimental world fashion during that period: Japan. You’ll see 80 gowns, by creators from Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto to Junya Watanabe. $17. Wed-Sun. Through Sept 8. 1300 First Ave 625-8900.

WING LUKE MUSEUM

War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art is a traveling exhibition of 19 artists across the spans of their careers—some famous, some not—working in traditional media as well as video, installation, and “other approaches,” considering everything from US wars in Asia to transracial adoption and, more generally, the racialization of humans. $12.95. Tues-Sun. Through Jan 19. 719 S King St, 623-5124.

Gallery Openings

C ART GALLERY

Artists Under 40, featuring 40 works of art. Free. Reception and discussion Thus Aug 15, 5-8 pm. Tues-Thurs. Through Aug 25. 855 Hiawatha Pl 322-9374.

Continuing Exhibitions

COCA GEORGETOWN

CoCA Collision: Past, Present, and Future : Over 150 artists (you heard us, one-five-oh) from across the country and also Switzerland. Free. Reception Thurs Aug 15, 5-9 pm. Mon-Fri. 5701 Sixth Ave S, Plaza Ste 258, 728-1980.

GHOST GALLERY

Jennifer Zwick: Symmetry, An Ongoing Obsession : Photographs from one woman’s desire to see things line up properly. Free. Mon-Wed-Sun. Through Sept 9. 504 E Denny Way, #1, 832-6063.

GREG KUCERA GALLERY

SuttonBeresCuller: The Genius Award-winning art collaborative/ band of troublemakers present perma-sculptures. Free. TuesSat. Through Aug 17. 212 Third Ave S, 624-0770.

HEDREEN GALLERY, SEATTLE UNIVERSITY

Devotion: A group show examining devotees of all stripes—secular, religious, whatever! Curated

Monthly art walk, this time featuring Center on Contemporary Art and Evergreen Association of Fine Arts. With free margaritas! Seattle Design Center, 5701 Sixth Ave S. Free. Thurs Aug 15, 5-9 pm.

DOWN TIME

Alina Frank workshops Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFTs), in which negative energies are released by tapping the body’s “meridian points.” Henry Art Gallery , 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. Free with admission. Fri Aug 16, 4-6 pm.

THE SALON IN THE FIELD

In one corner of a gorgeous 300 acres of wetland habitat in Kent, the artists Sarah Kavage and Adria Garcia will be creating an installation that includes huge swaths of braiding the wild grasses into woven sculpture. You’re invited to watch them make it, and hear them talk about and host their influences over the course of several events. Check the website for details. Green River Natural Resources Area, south of 212th Street, east of the Green River. studiokabuya. com. Free. Through Sept 8. visualart@thestranger.com

READINGS

Wed 8/14

A NIGHT OF GENIUS

See Stranger Suggests, page 19. Frye Art Museum , 704 Terry Ave, 622-9250. $10, 21+. 5:30 pm.

JAMIESON WEBSTER, SIMON CRITCHLEY Critchley, a philosopher, and Webster, a psychoanalyst, will do a presentation based on their book Stay Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine , which posits that Hamlet has much to reveal about the human condition. Central Library 1000 Fourth Ave, 6246600. Free. 7 pm.

J.M. SIDOROVA Sidorova is a local biomedical research scientist, and her novel The Age of Ice is a sweeping story that travels around the globe and, according to author Téa Obreht, “reduces you to a primal state of readership.” Elliott Bay Book Company 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm.

ALFREDO CORCHADO, MARC RAMIREZ The Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News is the author of a book about how difficult it is to be a Mexico-born journalist who tells the truth about the country in Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness. Corchado will be interviewed onstage by Seattle Times reporter Marc Ramirez about the most recent developments in Mexico-US relations. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm.

readings@thestranger.com

THEATER

Opening and Current Runs

BIOGRAPHY A reading of the 1932 play by S.N. Behrman about an American expatriate returning home between the wars. Endangered Species Project at North Seattle Community College , 9600 College Way N, 526-7791. Free. Mon Aug 19 at 7 pm.

THE BIRDMANN A traveling, one-man murdermystery romance that has toured the fringe/cirque circuits. Can Can 93 Pike St, Suite 307, 6520832. thecancan.com. $15$20. Sun Aug 18 at 7:30 pm.

THE HALF BROTHERS BRAND BAKING PRODUCTS OLD-TIME VARIETY SHOW See review, page 23. Annex Theater, 1100 E Pike St, annextheatre.org. $5-$10. Fri-Sat at 11 pm. Through Aug 30.

ILLYRIA A musical adaptation of Twelfth Night directed by Karen Lund. Taproot Theater, 204 N 85th St, 781-9707. taproottheatre.org. $20-$40. Wed-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Aug 17. INTIMAN SUMMER THEATER FESTIVAL Intiman Theater’s second summer festival. This year’s four plays are: Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton; Stu for Silverton, a world-premiere musical directed by Andrew Russell; Lysistrata by Aristophanes, directed by Sheila Daniels; and We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! by Dario Fo, directed by Jane Nichols. This summer’s acting company—which will perform in all four plays—includes Charles Leggett, Adam Standley, Tracy Michelle Hughes, Marty Mukhalian, and others. Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, 201 Mercer St. intiman.org. $20$50 for single tickets, $70-$250 for festival passes. Tues-Sun at various times. See website for details. Through Sept 15. MANOS: THE HANDS OF FELT Vox Fabuli Puppets revives their puppet satire of the cult favorite “worst movie of all time,” Manos: The Hands of Fate. The film— about a family vacation gone wrong—plays alongside a musical about making the film. Hugo House 1634 11th Ave, brownpapertickets.com. $15-$25. FriSat at 8 pm. Through Aug 17. PRECIOUS LITTLE “Precious Little, a play written by Madeleine George and directed by Katherine Karaus, has one unambiguous destination: the core of human vocal language. It travels to this point by four means. The first is a research project conducted by a 42-yearold professor who studies dying Eastern European languages. (She also happens to be a lesbian, pregnant, and having an affair with one of her graduate students.) Second is the subject of this research project, Cleva, a babushka who is one of the last remaining speakers of a dying language. Third is a gorilla in a zoo, which was trained by scientists to speak or at least communicate with human beings. Fourth is the thing becoming a languagespeaking animal—a human—in the professor’s womb.” (Charles Mudede) Annex Theater, 1100 E Pike St, www.annextheatre. org. $5-$20. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm. Through Aug 31. THE RAFT Two video-store clerks, adrift at sea, plan an epic disaster movie they hope to make. Theater 4 Seattle Center House, 4th Floor, 305 Harrison St. rockpapertheater.com. $10. Fri-Sat at 8 pm. Through Sept 14. SISTER ACT Based on the Whoopi Goldbergdisguised-as-a-nun movie. Paramount Theater, 911 Pine St, 292-2787. stgpresents.org. $25-$85. Tues-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri at 8 pm, Sat at 2 and 8 pm, Sun at 1 and 6:30 pm. Through Aug 25. WAITING FOR GODOT A young company called Arts on the Waterfront takes on the Beckett classic. When Arts on the Waterfront performed a twoactor Romeo and Juliet last year, Anna Minard wrote that it was “ridiculous but wickedly entertaining, as when Laurie Roberts plays Tybalt and kills herself as Mercutio (it sounds confusing, but it works).” Waterfront Park 1301 Alaskan Way.

NECK BEARDS FOR SALE AT THE BELFRY

Open in Pioneer Square for just over a year, The Belfry is a lean but airy space with bright windows, deep gray walls, and a tidy stock of natural oddities, religious artifacts, and Victorian-era collectibles. They’ve got an old grave marker ($22); an antique portable children’s embalming table ($425); and loads of vintage taxidermy (bear rug with full head mount, $625; teeny piglets with fawn-striped fur, $650). The curiosities in jars are either stacked into neat, dry piles (miscellaneous animal vertebrae and jawbones, $5–$10 each) or suspended in clear liquid (fetal cat, $62; monkey’s paw, $68). And there are chain necklaces strung with replicas of bird skulls, including owls, kingfishers, and quails ($18–$26). “We try to have crows too, but they always sell out right away,” says co-owner Christian Harding

and pale, and they seem to brace for their own early death in a time of endless human devastations. Some of the subjects look brave, some are sweetly gloomy, some are matter-of-fact. The women wear voluminous black gowns with high collars trimmed in lace and floppy silk bows. Their hair is carefully scraped back, then topped with a mound of tight-curled bangs, recalling highschool cheerleader styles of the early 1990s. Meanwhile, on the far wall, a Victorian mourning wreath ($1,600) is made from dead people’s hair. To build it, the hair was boiled, altering its texture, and then shaped into intricately swirled patterns, for an effect both delicate and crude.

The cabinet cards ($8 each) are fun to flip through. These show portraits of the wellto-do in their best funereal attire, partly because it was trending, and partly because they’re in mourning. Their eyes are flat

WEDDING CRASHER

EXTRAVAGANZA OF WEDDING ELEGANZA

Welbourne and Ricki Mason

From the moment it began, Susanna Raphael Welbourne and Ricki Mason’s wedding at the Stables in Georgetown was, as their invitation promised, an “extravaganza of eleganza.” The brick building, rumored to have the oldest standing wall in Georgetown, was bedazzled with plastic clowns, ceramic cats, and balloons of all sizes. A silver fountain poured ice water, and multicolored miniature cupcakes were stacked in pyramids. All the guests had decorated themselves for the event just as impressively—silk and rhinestones abounded. I experienced intense suit envy at least three times. One drag queen wore a glorious three-foot-tall hat shaped like two diamond rings. The glamour was to be expected— Susanna and Ricki are performers who you may know by their stage names, Kitten LaRue and Lou Henry Hoover. The brides emerged from a secret room in matching cream-and-teal leopard print, accompanied by their beaming parents. Bridespeople in gold lamé carried Susanna’s enormous tulle train like a floating cloud of fabulousness. The ceremony was officiated by performer Waxie Moon, who announced he was “Reverend Moon” for the evening. When the couple kissed, a

Also on display, an 1880s–90s charcoal portrait of a Victorian man ($180) features a young gent with a blandly elegant expression, a short and kempt hairdo, and a traditional black jacket and tie. He has a neck beard, which was acceptable for the era, but to you and me, the look triggers an innate repulsion. It’s interesting to explore why. Perhaps it’s the distortion of the human shape, suggesting the bloat of iodine deficiency. Maybe infectious agents can cling to whiskers, exposing us to pathogens. Maybe it’s because neck beards have since come to symbolize a particular type of guy, such as a sunburned meth-cook carnie in dirty leather overalls.

Send fashion tips to marti@thestranger.com

confetti cannon showered the assembly with white crepe paper, and everyone cried their mascara off.

Jinkx Monsoon sang “Origin of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, then everyone sang “It’s Only a Paper Moon”—to sing the old love song with the couple’s friends and family was a celebration not just of their relationship, but of one of the best things about being human. A bubble machine accompanied the migration of the guests into the courtyard to play in a horse-shaped bouncy castle (fittingly, for the Stables). The gleeful whacking of several piñatas yielded plastic jewel rings, condoms, and airplane bottles of blue raspberry vodka. Then the newlyweds’ loved ones danced with them in a cloud of bubbles as the stars came out. I stood in the dark parking lot for a moment before I left, listening to

the sounds of laughter and Harry Belafonte, and I thought of how sweet life can be, and how I’d just met two people who know how to enjoy it to the very fullest.

Comment on Wedding Crasher at THESTRANGER.COM

MARTI JONJAK

BY SARAH GALVIN

CHOW

Déjà Vu in Ballard Weimann

and Maclise Do It Again

BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

If you keep up with Seattle restaurants, Stoneburner is going to give you déjà vu. It is the latest concept from the restaurant-concepters (and, presumably, rakers-in-of-money)

James Weimann and Deming Maclise, who’ve been concepting since 2009, with Bastille (French), Poquitos (Mexican), Macleod’s Scottish Pub (aye), and Von Trapp’s (giant Germanic beer hall with indoor bocce named after the family from The Sound of Music).

Stoneburner 5214 Ballard Ave NW, 695-2051 stoneburnerseattle.com

Weimann and Maclise are known for outfitting their restaurants’ interiors with stuff pillaged, er, reclaimed, from around the world. Sometimes the details get lost in translation. According to press materials, Stoneburner’s got “warm wood from the decommissioned Italian Embassy in Buenos Aires,” but a server said it was the impressive mirrors in another room that came from that embassy. The handsome barrel-style vaulted wooden ceiling in one area was previously flooring from an Amish school in Pennsylvania, another server said; in reality, it’s fir salvaged from an unspecified building on Ballard Avenue, while the school gave up its pressed-tin ceiling for the bar. In any case, Stoneburner feels a good deal like Bastille—the same reproduction-Euro-bistro allure, with soaring riveted metal archways, lovely marble, and pretty tile. If, with Bastille just one block down the street, it feels like meta-reproduction, it is all highquality and looks great, especially the timely Gatsby-style glam lighting flourishes in the bar. Stoneburner’s menu is familiar, too, but not

Seattle summer in. (If you got a sunburn sitting inside Stoneburner early on: They now have awnings.) The seating is comfortable (though the booths under the central barreled ceiling of uncertain provenance can get very, very loud). Multiple tables one evening were laughing giddily at things their servers said. Stoneburner’s open kitchen—with Stoneburner himself for now omnipresent—looks calm, spacious, and old-fashionedy stylish, with its tile walls, opaque glass panels, and vintage fan. It also has the currently upscale-Seattlerestaurant compulsory stone-hearth fireplace (though it’s gas, rather than the more au courant and time-consuming wood). And the food is good—not great, but good.

Almost everybody seemed to order the deep-fried Castelvetrano olives ($6). The preparation brings out their meatiness, and they aren’t too greasy, though fans might miss the freshness, firmness, and gimlet green that makes them a favorite in the first place. Softboiled eggs topped with mayonnaise-rich tuna tonnato and tiny bits of bright-red pickled Fresno peppers ($5) were the even better surf version of the deviled egg. Two dishes had a lot of olive oil, like Roman orgiastic amounts of olive oil (which, actually, has been known to happen at Ethan Stowell’s places, too): A grass-fed beef crudo ($13) lost flavor under the onslaught, while roasted beets with peppery purslane, assertive sweet onion, and lots of oregano ($8) stood up to it and then some. Another night, heirloom tomatoes with spicy arugula and sweet-and-sour bits of pickled watermelon ($9) was perfectly, appropriately underdressed, letting the tomatoes be.

Seafoodwise, a nice piece of tuna ($25; they’d run out of the menu’s promised halibut, sadly) was plated with highly pureed artichoke that tasted bitter, almost metallic, along with wincingly vinegary marinated tomatoes. In a grilled octopus salad with cucumbers, olives, and mint ($16), the octopus seemed to have barely touched the grill, lacking any char and still gelatinous in parts; less stalwart seafood-eaters might have been grossed out.

NOW OPEN

New Places for Stuffing Faces

BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT AND EMILY KLEIN

• LOTUS ASIAN KITCHEN & LOUNGE • First Hill: Across from Vito’s—where the First Hill Bar & Grill finally retired after 34 glorious, divey years—Lotus is brought to us by Ridgley Kuang, owner of Green Leaf in Belltown and the ID. Some of Green Leaf’s massive and massively delicious Vietnamese menu has migrated, and they’re also serving Chinese dishes. The interior looks pleasant, and the prices look low, and there’s a bar, too. YES! (901 Madison St, 623-6333, $–$$)

• THE OLD SAGE • Capitol Hill: The Old Sage Smoked Meats and Malts is the conception of Brian McCracken and Dana Tough, the duo behind Spur, the Coterie Room, and Tavern Law, and it’s on the same block as the latter, joining the Capitol Hill party-time circuit. Per the website, the place’s “shadowy allure” offers the neighborhood “an urban hearth, celebrating humble meats and vegetables, paired with all varieties of malted beverages for sipping. Under the muralled gaze of a teetotal-ling City pioneer, guests of The Old Sage enjoy skillfully smoked meats and seafood… The incandescently lit bar hosts a library of scotch and a rotating selection of artisanal craft beers… which satisfy those less moderate in this city of pioneers.” The teetotaler is Arthur Denny, the look is postindustrial men’s club, and while the prose leaves something to be desired, the food and drink will probably be very good. (1410 12th Ave, 557-7430, theoldsageseattle.com, $$$)

from the Weimann/Maclise empire. Namesake executive chef Jason Stoneburner—who also remains the executive chef of Bastille—used to work for Ethan Stowell, first at Union and then at How to Cook a Wolf, and the Stoneburner menu is, in the context of Seattle, unmistakably Stowellian. It’s rustic Italian with seasonal Northwest ingredients, with a familiar list of snacks, simple vegetables/ salads, housemade pasta, Neapolitan-style pizza, and a few large plates with hunks of protein, including a shareable extra-big one. A twin of Stowell’s puffy zeppole was also on the dessert menu recently. Of course, Stowell cannot claim this ages-old approach to Italian food—which he has replicated at his own halfdozen local restaurants, including Staple & Fancy, just down Ballard Avenue—any more than Bastille can claim its classic Parisian look. It’s just that the mash-up of the two, however pleasant, feels far from inventive.

STheir restaurants are outfitted with stuff pillaged—er, reclaimed— from around the world.

It was so loud under the vaulted ceiling one night, our server misheard “cavatelli” as “spaccatelli,” a more than acceptable accident considering the spicy-goodness of the latter with its capers, anchovy, chili, bits of broccoli, and Parmesan ($14). Another pasta dish, bedsheet ravioli ($14), was a wonderful, eggy cloud, so light that without its creamy cauliflower filling and fragments of caramelized cauliflower on top, it might have floated away. The pizza I tried, with sopressata and mozzarella ($14), didn’t have the blackened bubbles of the best of them, but the salt content was right in both the crust and the herby sauce, and the sauce and the mozzarella tasted fresh, and it was all quite tasty. Wine storage at Stoneburner is used to decorative advantage, with a wall of bottles creating a sense of plenty. Why wouldn’t you have another glass? There’s so much! It’s canny and it’s pretty, like Stoneburner itself. You’d never guess that the whole building was new, with this classiclooking and -tasting restaurant reproducing already proven results.

• THE LONDON PLANE • Pioneer Square: Katherine Anderson (Marigold and Mint) and Matt Dillon (of the great Sitka & Spruce, the Corson Building, and Bar Sajor) run the wine bar/flower stand the London Plane, across the cobblestones from Bar Sajor. A London plane is a tree, Platanus acerifolia; a sycamore hybrid, it is said to be especially tolerant of urban conditions, and these are the lovely trees that shade Occidental Park. You can pretty much bet that this will be an excellent place to get a glass (or bottle) of wine and a snack. Coming soon: a bakery adjunct (hooray!). (322 Occidental Ave S, 624-1374, thelondonplaneseattle.com, $$)

• FREDDY JUNIOR’S • Capitol Hill: Does Capitol Hill need more hamburgers? It’s getting some in the form of this no-frills burger place where (also no-frills) Grubwich used to be on Broadway, brought to you by the owner of the beloved Rancho Bravo. (His name is Freddy.) (1513 Broadway, no phone, $)

• RGB MARKET • Pike Place Market: People who love Rachel’s Ginger Beer and/or ice cream and/or alcohol (or ALL THREE TOGETHER), commence freaking out: This is the combo soda fountain/ bar you’ve been waiting for. The ice cream comes from Cupcake Royale. YAY. (1530 Post Alley, rachelsgingerbeer.com, $)

• BLIND PIG AT EASTLAKE TERIYAKI

toneburner is very pleasant. Right now, the huge windows on tranquil, leafy Ballard Avenue are rolled away to let the glorious

Comment on this review at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

• Eastlake: Run by the (great) Blind Pig’s (awesome) GM, Rene Gutierrez, the BPET serves sandwiches (like falafel or catfish or pork belly banh mi), salads (like quinoa or beets or panzanella), and a couple daily soups, all out of the former teriyaki spot next door (hence the name). It’s all

CANNY AND PRETTY Sticking with what works.

BETH CROOK

probably really good. (2236 Eastlake Ave E, 329-2744, blindpigbistro.com, $$)

• VIF • Fremont: Vif is a sleek-looking, community-minded, and carefully sourced Fremont cafe/wine bar/restaurant, located where its polar opposite, Herfy’s, used to be. It’s brought to you by Lauren Feldman and Shawn Mead, both formerly of Campagne/Cafe Campagne and also of much wine experience. Vif means alive/ bright/vibrant/etc. in French. This place could be great. (4401 Fremont Ave N, 5577357, vifseattle.com, $–$$)

• TIN UMBRELLA COFFEE • Hillman City: Tin Umbrella Coffee has “transformed a long-abandoned, old building in South Seattle’s historic Hillman City into an inviting coffee house featuring exotic single-origin espressos and our artisan coffee blends that

Brand-new Tiny Ninja in Wallingford wants to “make your life better.”

we roast ourselves, in South Seattle’s very first coffee roastery (that’s us!).” Our friend Jill (the editor of Edible Seattle) says: “(a) It’s a very nice, sunny space with friendly owners, and (b) they have pretty great little pies from a pie company called It’s Pie Life.” (5600 Rainier Ave S, Unit A, 743-8802, facebook.com/TinUmbrellaCoffee, $)

• TINY NINJA • Wallingford: Tiny Ninja founder Becky says: “Tiny Ninja is about doing good. It is about evolving as humans… Tiny Ninja Cafe will do that through food, coffee, art, and music… we will do our best to make your life better.” Tiny Ninja serves sandwiches (like the Brick House, with Gouda, pears, bacon, and horseradish mustard), salads, breakfast items, smoothies, and beer and wine. (3510 Stone Way N, 4204435, tinyninjacafe.com, $)

• HUMBLE PIE • Central District: Humble Pie, located in a humble building on Rainier, serves wood-fired pizzas with promisingly evocative names like Mushroom Egg, Apple Beecher’s Flagship, Smoked Eggplant, and Whole Hog. (525 Rainier Ave S, 329-5133, humblepieseattle. com, $–$$)

• 14 CARROT TACO STAND • Eastlake: It’s cash-only, all-over-the-place tacos—like bulgogi, chicken tikka masala, falafel, baby back rib—sold out of Eastlake’s 14 Carrot Cafe on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. People in the neighborhood really like it. Note: The last (great) iteration of this taco stand, Tako Truk, went on to become the (great) Madison Park Conservatory (which still makes Tako Truk tacos on Fridays and Saturdays at lunchtime in the summer). (2305 Eastlake Ave E, facebook.com/14CarrotTacoStand, $)

• GUSTA SANDWICHES • on the road: Owner Clare McCormic was studying accounting when she realized she hated it. She went to culinary school, worked in restaurants, and now brings Seattle her food truck with its awesome-sounding sandwiches, like porchetta (pork belly, garlic/parsley spread, ciabatta). And right now on Friday nights and Saturday/Sunday lunchtimes, GUSTA is doing a pop-up at American Pie in Georgetown. (Traveling, 415-680-0753, facebook. com/gustaseattle, $)

• ASGARD TAVERN • Fremont: From local Odin Brewing (which, somewhat alarmingly, “embraces the exploratory spirit

of the ancient Vikings”), Asgard Tavern is a tasting room/bar on the border of Fremont and Wallingford. Sacking and pillaging are presumably permitted. (1300 N Northlake Way, 402-4704, odinbrewing. wordpress.com/tasting-room, $)

• ROCKCREEK • Fremont: “Named after the body of water Chef Donnelly has a nostalgic fly-fishing relationship with,” RockCreek serves sustainably sourced seafood in a high-ceilinged warehousetype space (which looks nice, if potentially LOUD) next to Uneeda Burger in Fremont. Eric Donnelly was formerly at Toulouse Petit. (4300 Fremont Ave N, 5577532, rockcreekseattle.com, $$$)

• WESTCITY KITCHEN • West Seattle: Chef Kym Goheen, formerly of Frank’s Oyster House and Pair, runs this “simple neighborhood dinnerhouse.” (3405 California Ave SW, 937-0155, facebook.com/wcsardinekitchen, $$–$$$)

• OUTSIDE THE BOX • on the road: The Outside the Box food truck parks outside CrossFit gyms and sells paleo-friendly meals, because steak salad is closer to what our hunter-gatherer forefathers ate than cheesecake. (Traveling, 425-2725361, eat-otb.com, $$)

• SOME RANDOM BAR • Belltown: The nice-looking Some Random Bar, in the former C.S. Finnegan’s spot, promises “local, fresh, seasonal ‘farm to table’ cuisine, perfectly poured pints, and classically prepared cocktails served up with a smile.” Chef Eric Sakai was most recently at the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole. (2604 First Ave, 745-2185, somerandombar.com, $$)

• CEDERBERG TEA HOUSE • Queen Anne: Named for the Cederberg mountain area of South Africa, it’s a family-run tea house serving South African favorites like koeksister (syrup-soaked doughnuts) (1417 Queen Anne Ave N, Ste 101-B, 2851352, cederbergteahouse.com, $)

• ZOUAVE • Ravenna: Sharing a name with the French army regiments that served in colonial North Africa, Zouave offers an all-over-the-Mediterranean-map menu (2615 NE 65th St, 525-7747, zouaverestaurant.com, $$)

• THE COMMONS • Woodinville: The Heavy Restaurant Group (Barrio, Purple, etc.) says: “Located in the heart of the Woodinville Wine District, The Commons is a neighborhood gathering place serving a wide range of seasonal comfort food and drinks in an inviting and informal setting.” (14481 Woodinville-Redmond Rd NE, 425-892-7012, thecommonscafe.com, $$)

REOPENED: EMERALD CITY FISH & CHIPS • Rainier: After an SUV ran into it last month!

RENAMED: WINE TEA CHOCOLATE • Fremont: Now known as the Barrel Thief.

NEW LOCATIONS OF EXISTING PLACES: THE ALIBI ROOM • Greenwood: A second edition of the longtime hidden-away Pike Place Market spot • AMERICAN PIE

• Wallingford: The great Georgetown bakery, now also in Wallingford Center • FUJI BAKERY • Interbay: At last, more Fuji deliciousness! • HOMEGROWN SUSTAINABLE SANDWICH SHOP • downtown: A fourth location, on Second and Marion

More, more, MORE at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

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MUSIC

The Holy Unholy

Black Sabbath Returns

BY TRENT MOORMAN

August 13, 2013, Hades: Ozzy Osbourne sits in a dark, cylindrical room. He sticks a needle into his arm, drawing blood into a rubber tube that’s connected to a pen. He’s writing, with his

own blood transfused as ink, a postscript to Black Sabbath’s new album, 13. “Wake up!” his scrawl screams. “The masses aren’t mindless anymore!” This isn’t the reality-show Ozzy; this is the doomsday jester Ozzy—the Blotto Devil-Bard—and he’s back, singing on a Sabbath album for the first time in 35 years. Black Sabbath’s slowness—decelerated intervals of sludge and pain—can’t be replicated. Guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward sling tar-covered riffs. It’s doom. The doom is coming. They drain the transition on a downbeat into a blues-based, hidden-chamber jam. If you think heavy metal, you have to think Black Sabbath. And now they’re back—three-quarters of them, anyway. Ward is absent due to business disagreements and an “un-signable contract.” (Drummer Tommy Clufetos currently mans the live kit.) Another obstacle: Iommi’s diagnosis with lymphoma, which he’s successfully battled. Thus, their Rick Rubin–produced 13 is the first Ozzy-sung Sabbath album in 35 years, and the first number-one album of their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career. Geezer Butler spoke from New York. His Birmingham, England, accent is regal. When he says the word “singer,” he says sing-ah

Group. Has Own PA.” And those were the magic words: “Has Own PA.” ’Cause none of us had any money. If you found a singer, none of them could afford their own PAs, but Ozzy actually had one, and had a mic to sing through.

And right away, Ozzy was the guy? You knew he was the singer? Yeah. The whole thing just seemed to gel. Plus, we all lived around the corner from each other, so we were able to walk to each other’s houses. And the four of us were really into blues at the time. That’s what started it off.

Black Sabbath w/Andrew W.K. Sat Aug 24, Gorge Amphitheater, 7:30 pm, $45–$125, all ages

So from then to now, to the new album, what has Black Sabbath maintained? The fact that we can jam together. It’s almost like we’re psychic with one another, knowing what’s going to come next. Rick Rubin said we’re the only band he’s ever produced that can do that. It’s this feeling that comes about when we jam; it all works straightaway. If we have to work on a song for more than a couple of days, we know it’s not happening.

album. Whereas this time, they wanted like 16 songs out of us. For us, when we get to the ninth or tenth song, that’s kind of the natural end to an album. But we kept writing and writing, and recording, and eventually there were 16. That was hard for us, to come up with that many songs for one album.

Bill Ward was not happy with the business side of things? I don’t get involved with the business side of things, but something happened on the business side with Bill. It’s just a shame it didn’t work out. We had wanted this album and tour to be the four of us. And it just didn’t work out. Musically, it’s great with him— he just didn’t accept the business side of it.

How is Tony doing on tour, after his treatment? How’s he feeling? He’s doing really good. I think he’s feeling better than any of us [laughs]. His treatments have gone great, he’s responded incredibly well. He gets them about every eight weeks. We tour for about six weeks, then take time out for him to have his treatment, then back on the road.

Let’s touch on darkness. Sabbath has a darkness. With some bands, it’s fake. With y’all, it seems real. Where does that come from? What made you all able to represent this so well? I think it’s just our way of expressing our darker feelings. We don’t go around shooting or beating people. We get our aggressiveness out through the music. And we know if it’s going to work or not. We tried to do an album in 2001, and that feeling just wasn’t there, so we didn’t follow through with it. Whereas this time around, that feeling was back with the music. It’s something you can’t force or fake. It either is there or it’s gone.

What about when y’all are at a mall shopping for face lotion, or getting a snow cone? What’s Black Sabbath like when you’re not being dark and evil? We’re always doing the non-dark stuff. Every night, Ozzy tries to make us laugh onstage. Every gig. He’ll do something to crack us up. He makes stupid faces. The dumbest face he can possibly come up with, sometimes with his back to the audience. So the crowd can’t see him, but we can. It’s harder to play when you’re laughing.

Have there been times when fans have taken things too far? We were playing in Memphis one time, and a guy jumped onstage with a massive knife. He ran at Tony, but just before he got there, Tony’s amp blew up. So Tony turned around and walked offstage. He didn’t see the guy with the knife at all. If his amp hadn’t blown up, the guy would have stabbed him.

What happened to the guy? That’s a hardcore fan. He got arrested. He was a complete lunatic. It was back in the ’70s.

Black Sabbath are about as holy as it gets. How does it feel to be holy? [Laughs] Or unholy. You know, we never expected it to last this long. When we first started, all we wanted to do was get a record deal, and that was it. Something to show our parents. And here we are, more than 40 years later.

How’d you meet that guy, what’s his name? Your singer? We picked Ozzy to be in the band because he had his own PA. We didn’t care what he sounded like [laughs]. I’d been looking for a singer for my band called Rare Breed, and Tony and Bill were looking for a singer for their band. We all used to go to the same music shop in Birmingham, and at separate times, we saw the same advert that said, “Singer, Looking for

What was it like working with Rick Rubin? Great! When we first met him, he sat us all down and played us the first album. He said, “We want the spirit of this album.” And we wanted to go into the studio and play live, and not do it mechanically. Because the way a lot of bands do it now is to put the drum tracks down first, then the guitars, then bass. But we did it live, in the studio—all the tracks, playing live together. A couple of the songs came from jams in the studio. It felt really natural. Rick said, “Forget heavy metal. Because this is before heavy metal.” He wanted us to go back in our minds and remember the way it used to be, before everything happened.

This is the first album with Ozzy in 35 years. Where did y’all struggle making the album? We’ve always been used to writing eight or nine songs, and that would be an

How old does it get when people ask if Black Sabbath is satanic? When someone thinks that, they’re completely missing the point. We’re more political than anything else. But it’s heavy music, and we have a heavy name. The best way to respond to the closedminded people is to ignore them. It doesn’t matter what you say to them; they’ll still have their belief, and you’ll never change it.

I was gonna ask if you wanted to camp after your show at the Gorge? My friend Kevin has a sweet tent and a grill. We won’t stab you. Do you snore? Kevin can grill like a mofo. Ah, that’s tempting. Let me think about it. Especially if he grills that well. Does Kevin snore?…

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

TINA S

• Highline, Capitol Hill’s most beloved vegan bar, has closed down its kitchen. Starting this week, it will be focusing on being a bar and music venue. But don’t cry! It will still have vegan cake and Cakearoke every Tuesday night. A mistake in a real estate listing also fueled rumors that Highline would soon be vacating its Broadway space, but the bar’s owner, Dylan Desmond, assures us that it has more than a year left on the lease, with the option of renewing for up to 10 years after that.

• Playing to a criminally sparse crowd Sunday night at Chop Suey, Jetman Jet Team climaxed their beautifully clamorous set with a 10-minute freakadelic psych-out On the Lord’s Day. Before 29 people. In the distant future, you’ll look back on your godforsaken life and regret missing this show.

• Seattle musician/producer Erik Blood is playing one last show with his current band, on August 17 at the Vera Project, and then dissolving it. Following that, he plans to focus on his next solo full-length and is also currently working on Shabazz Palaces’ and THEESatisfaction’s new albums. Of Shabazz’s music, he says, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing; it’s incredible.” In other Blood news, construction on his new studio, Black Space Labs, is nearing completion in Sodo.

• Speaking of Shabazz Palaces, Sub Pop just announced the signing of Ishmael Butler to its A&R team, where he’ll help add new and no doubt intriguing acts to the label’s stable of artists. Congrats, Ish!

• A video of a fight that took place in front of Q nightclub early Sunday morning has made the rounds, showing a crowd spilled out onto Broadway, people on the ground, people screaming, and other grainy

Jake Shears sang Billy Idol at Pony’s I Hate Karaoke party.

chaos. The video ends with a statement reading, “The night before, we had witnessed another fight outside the club,” and suggesting that perhaps the surge in violence could be correlated to the club’s recent shift away from LGBT programming after a change in ownership. But Q owner Andy Rampl insists the programming has always “catered to everyone,” straight and gay clientele alike. As for the incident the night before, Rampl says it “was an altercation, but not a full fight. There are not issues with violence.”

• Last week’s I Hate Karaoke party at Pony got a point-blank blast of star power when Jake Shears—former Seattleite, forever Scissor Sister—was spotted in the crowd. After one bold patron rocked the mic with the Scissor Sisters’ “Shady Love,” Shears took the stage, billing himself as “Butch” (while wearing acid-washed parachute pants!) and busting out Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love.” It was delightful.

Erik Blood

BLACK SABBATH “We picked Ozzy to be in the band because he had his own PA.”

Get Sad, Get Weird

Jeff Rosenstock Makes Depression Feel Less Terrible

BY MEGAN SELING

Serotonin is an asshole. Or maybe it’s my brain, and its inability to correctly distribute the serotonin, that’s the asshole. Either way, if I don’t take a small pink pill every morning, I—like more than 25 percent of the American population—can be quickly swallowed up by a thick, heavy fog of depression. And that fucking sucks.

Depression has affected my schoolwork, my job, and my relationships— and even when I’m feeling good, I know it’s in there somewhere. There’s always an elephant in my brain, a sad devil on my shoulder; I rarely feel 100 percent free of its grasp, and just one bad day can make me start to worry that it’s coming back again.

you just run out of cities, states, and countries you can blame/So you just keep running away/Running away.”

I think my absolute favorite, right now anyway, is the song “Everybody That Loves You,” which reminds us that everyone is vulnerable, and that doesn’t make us weak or bad: “Even nerves of steel deserve a breather/Weight wears down the infrastructure/ And hearts of gold can still feel lonely/If they don’t know they’re not the only ones.”

Jeff Rosenstock w/Sean Nelson Sun Aug 18, Porchlight, 8:30 pm, $6, all ages

Jeff Rosenstock, singer with the (for now) defunct band Bomb the Music Industry!, seems to know how this feels—he’s addressed depression over and over again in both BtMI! and his solo songs. And while I don’t personally know him (save for a couple interviews we’ve had over the years), his music and lyrics have done me more good than just about every therapist I’ve ever spent awkward, tearfilled hours with.

A lot of songwriters are inspired by sadness and depression, and there are a lot of amazing sad and/ or depressing songs in the world, but there’s something about Rosenstock’s ability to address the familiar misery without wallowing in it, through high-energy (and sometimes bittersweet) punk rock songs, that brings me more comfort than most.

I’ve found comfort in many more—“Saddr Weirdr,” “Struggler,” and one of his new solo tracks, “Go On, Get!,” with its chorus that tempts us with living out the absolute fantasy of dramatically blowing everything off: “You’re expendable/So be expendable/Burn the building down and/Quit your job and go outside/ Quit your job and get outside!”

There have been literally hundreds of times in my life when it felt like the only escape was to burn everything down and start over again (figuratively, of course— thankfully, my low spirits aren’t paired with pyromania).

His lyrics have done me more good than just about every therapist I’ve ever spent awkward, tear-filled hours with.

In the jittery “Felt Just Like Vacation” track on Bomb the Music Industry!’s last album, Vacation, Rosenstock rattles off exactly what happens to me every winter here in the Pacific Northwest: “In truth, December destroyed me/January crushed me/By February I was not myself/March rolled in like beatings and rolled out like a bear hug/ In April I stared out the window for a fucking month/I don’t want October/I don’t want November/I don’t want to feel those crippling blows/That I can’t explain to myself, my friends, or you.”

In the aptly titled “Depression Is No Fun,” a playful pop song with ska leanings, Rosenstock sings, “Even when locations change, the imbalance stays the same/And

Outside the context of his prolific song catalog, it may sound like Rosenstock is a weepy, whiny pessimist, but that’s hardly the case—next to all the songs that hit my depression nail on its depression head, Rosenstock has, in both Bomb the Music Industry! and his solo material, made fun of bro metal, laughed at way-too-serious vegan straightedge kids, and mocked trust-fund babies who stand in line for hours to snort coke in the bathroom. I make fun of those people, too!

He—like me, like anyone who lives with depression—has good days, full of a sense of humor, fun, and optimism, and sometimes that’s the hardest thing to remember when darkness has ripped a hole in my head.

All this LiveJournal-like gushing is to say that this Sunday, Rosenstock will perform a solo show at Porchlight Coffee & Records with Seattle’s own Sean Nelson, who just released a lyrically impressive solo album of his own on Rosenstock’s record label, Really Records. It’s going to be great.

Thank the musicians who get you through your shittiest life moments at THESTRANGER.COM/MUSIC

JEFF ROSENSTOCK “Quit your job and get outside!”

#FITZYFANCLUB

NEVER HEARD OF ’EM

BY ANNA MINARD

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

BUILT

TO SPILL

There’s Nothing Wrong with Love (Up Records)

I get to do Built to Spill because someone (hey, Scotty!) joked about my column, “What’s next? Built to Spill? Hahahahaha…” and then his face realized that I really had never heard those guys. He marveled for a second, laughed again, and said I had to put ’em on the list. So here I am!

I’m sitting in a public place, listening to There’s Nothing Wrong with Love. I have one hour to tell you about it—I’m setting a timer. Ready, set, go!

one you made up in your head. Short little “Fling” has a sweet violin, and “Cleo” starts with seconds of cymbals and lazes into lyrics about “wiggly days, wiggly nights,” which you understand implicitly. Each note and word is on purpose.

This music is young, and in a style I don’t really hear anymore—so straightforward and hopeful and simple, but well constructed. Like smart suburban kids rocking out, like having a good relationship with your parents and still being cool, like hot toast with jam and cartoons on a day you’re off from school. I forgot that this was what a lot of rock sounded like back when I was a baby teenager—Weezer and crying and short flowered dresses and Doc Martens and writing on your skin with Sharpies It’s complex in its simplicity, the rhythm of the songs and of the whole album, too. Its momentum takes you through it in a clean way.

First off is “In the Morning.” It sounds like the ’90s love you back, like the weather right before good weather, like a bunch of friends in one bedroom laughing. The song ends abruptly, as if someone tripped over the power cord and unplugged the music.

Next comes “Reasons,” which is slower but still golden; you can languish inside of it, smiling. I like these subtler rock harmonies—these days, harmonies are always full-throated and five-part and backed by a string band in a forest, which is all fine and good but not the only way to layer voices.

“Big Dipper” loves dinosaurs and stars. “Car” is a love whine, a date with some-

MY PHILOSOPHY

ROYCE THE CHOICE, NEW RELEASES, TOPE Royce the Choice—whose trajectory has officially caught up to his stylish boasts—just dropped a very, well, choice five-track tape called Talk Ain’t Cheap. Royce’s effortless level of cool never betrays the work he’s put into achieving it, and he has a way of spooling off lines about obscure colognes and rare game like he just woke up yawning on a pile of foreign currency. This is his best collection of music to date, so now is a perfect time to get into Royce if you haven’t yet. Guests on this tape include names I don’t know (A8Yes and DSkizz) as well as ones I do (Royce’s Skymen cohort GMK, Peta Tosh, and Seattle’s illmatic Porter Ray). The Choice can be made on Sunday, August 18, over at Neumos, where he plays with Spac3man, Cam the Mac, Porter Ray, and Ye’D. Spac3man has been promising his Beyond the Stars EP for quite a few minutes now—check his Bandcamp page for two singles, the Justo-produced, Sonny Bonoho–featuring “She Don’t Care” and the Marissa-featuring “Procrastination.” If you missed it, Cam the Mac released his We$t Shit EP and the Moors stay dropping product, as Steezie Nasa also has had his Moor Militia release out for a sec, and newest member, West Seattle’s skater/producer/MC MackNed, has his Ned’s World release on Bandcamp. Ned has been busy producing vibey vocal/ trap/cloud-laced tracks for his dudes Steezie

Closer to the end, “Distopian Dream Girl” is a jam. A Ferris wheel of David Bowie love and hating your stepdad and an offer of dying to save the girl you love. I hadn’t realized it until this song, but the fantasy of sacrificing yourself to save your teenage crush must be universal—I died a thousand times at 12 or 13, at the hands of imagined robbers, Nazis, bad guys at night. (This was before “terrorists.”) “Take me instead,” teen me cried in anguish.

Love closes with a song called “Preview,” a fake sneak preview of “the next Built to Spill album!” It’s a minute or so of 10second snippets, a bunch of jokes.

Built to Spill are a bunch of white guys in dorky shoes. But they’re my white guys in dorky shoes, y’know?

I give this a “teenage bedrooms and lazy days” out of 10.

(he’s all over that Militia) and Thaddeus David (“Love Shit” off Thad’s upcoming joint), as well as the entire Suicide Capitol release from his partner SneakGuapo. All of the above (sans Space’s stuff and Thad’s song) are focused on glamorous/dangerous living, drug abuse, and zero-trust/100-percent predation on the entire female half of the planet’s population. There’s only so much room for truly groundbreaking content within those strict parameters, but none of these releases are without their enjoyable moments. Chief among them are those emotive MackNed beats and the serotonin-low bipolarity found particularly in Guapo’s work, full of what he describes well as “pain.”

On Monday, August 19, the Crocodile Back Bar hosts Scarub of Living Legends. Rocking with him on these NW dates is Portland’s MC/producer Tope—who has been grinding it out in the 503 for more than a minute as part of the groups Living Proof and TxE, and also dolo, ’cause YOLO. His newest release, TROUBLEMAN, is a thoroughly soulful suite of world-weary smooth shit, speaking on love, money, and music in a self-assured style reminiscent of a young but less awkward Evidence. Tope, no punk on the beats, raps with zero haste and a comfy-cozy cushion of chill that’s way more smoke and leather interior than beer pong and tank tops. If you’re keeping score in the NW, Tope is part of a vanguard of ill young PDX voices like, but not limited to, the ice-cold hustler music of Cassow and the indefatigable righteousness of the veteran Luck-One. Northwest, we all come up together, so salute and support your neighbors for best results. Stay stuck on yourself, and you’ll be by yourself when you inevitably land on your face.

HIPHOP YA DON'T STOP

BY LARRY MIZELL JR.

UP&COMING

Lose your sulking mildew rag every night this week! For the full music calendar, see page 43 or visit thestranger.com/music

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

Wednesday 8/14

Ulrich Schnauss, Secret Colors (Neumos) See Data Breaker, page 45.

Crazy Eyes, Cigarette Bums, Lindseys (Comet) You know who wins the “crazy eyes” award of the century? That orange-haired nutjob James Eagan Holmes, the guy who shot up that movie theater full of people in Aurora, Colorado. I doubt this newish dreamy, druggy Seattle garage-rock band named themselves after Holmes, but I want to humbly suggest that they consider using one of Holmes’s now-infamous courtroom photos on the cover of a 7-inch sleeve for their song “WWIII Songs in Hi Fi.” It would be perfect since Crazy Eyes also have a song named “Close to Death,” and another called just plain ol’ “Death”—but that might just be morbid. KELLY O

Thursday 8/15

Filastine, Truckasauras, BizZaRa, Penny Wide Pupils (Barboza) See Data Breaker, page 45.

Slum Village, Fly Moon Royalty, Johnny Polygon (Nectar) One of the greatest hiphop groups of the ’90s, Slum Village were formed by three brilliant cats, two of whom—rapper Baatin and producer J Dilla—are dead (the sole survivor is rapper T3). And exactly what did this Detroit trio contribute to the rich history of hiphop—besides some of the best beats Dilla ever produced? An erotics of hiphop. As I have said before, sex in Slum Village’s music is not

represented pornographically but erotically. Track after track (and, like great sex, none of the tracks is too long) on the masterpiece Fan-Tas-Tic, Vol. 1, we feel and hear the delights of receiving and giving head, of masturbating and watching someone masturbating, of the fluids that are exchanged during intercourse. Listening to Slum Village’s early stuff is hiphop’s equivalent to reading Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text CHARLES MUDEDE

Steely Dan

(Marymoor Park) Here’s where you’ll find the coolest, wealthiest people in the Seattle area tonight. A scourge to many misguided souls, Steely Dan are the BMW of AOR. The Dan’s precise, complex jazz rock gives fellow musicians jealousy boners, but beneath the coked-out perfectionism slither tunes and sardonic lyrics engineered to stimulate pleasure zones forever. With a catalog piled high with indelible hits and stellar deep cuts, Steely Dan are one of the better values on the live nostalgia circuit. DAVE SEGAL

The Polyphonic Spree, Harper Simon, Friends and Family (Neumos) I will always adore Polyphonic Spree’s The Beginning Stages Of…, it’s filled with explosive, unrelenting optimism, and I can’t not get goose bumps when dozens of voices sing, “Hey, it’s the sun/And it makes me shine.” Comparatively, the band’s newest album, Yes, It’s True, feels a bit… lacking. There’s still a choir of voices, but they’re incorporated more as an afterthought than as the star of the show. And there’s still inspiring optimism—consider the song “Hold Yourself Up” for mile 25 of whatever metaphorical marathon you’re currently running— but other songs, like “You Don’t Know Me” and “Heart Talk,” fall flat (though I do like the tuba in the latter). If you’re on the fence about attending

tonight’s show, consider this: Recent set lists show they’ve also been performing their infamous cover of “Lithium.” That’ll surely sway your decision.

MEGAN SELING

Stanley Clarke Band (Jazz Alley) Well, this is bad timing. Stanley Clarke will surely be distraught after the recent death of his friend, frequent collaborator, and keyboard legend George Duke. Nevertheless, one suspects Clarke will soldier through his sadness and deliver a technically dazzling show. A deity of melody on the standup and electric bass, Clarke has plucked those four heavy strings for the fiery, rococo Return to Forever, the third greatest-jazz-fusion band ever (after Mahavishnu Orchestra and Miles Davis’s ‘70s groups), and in a long, distinguished solo career that includes the classic LP School Days. Come witness Clarke’s astonishing technique, with accompaniment by pianist Mahesh Balasooriya and drummer Michael Mitchell. DAVE SEGAL

Friday 8/16

It’s a Shit Show: Willam Belli, Detox Icunt, Vicky Vox (Neighbours) See The Homosexual Agenda, page 47.

Smith Westerns (Sonic Boom Records) See Underage, page 48.

Smith Westerns, Wampire, the Hoot Hoots (Crocodile) See Underage, page 48.

Stanley Clarke Band (Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Mudhoney, the Grizzled Mighty, Dude York (Mural Amphitheater) It’s August already, y’all—

THE COOKERS

TUE, AUG 13 - WED, AUG 14

91.3 KBCS welcomes - Heavy hitting, pyrotechnic, post-bop jazz super group with a mid-60’s spirit

STANLEY CLARKE BAND

THU, AUG 15-SUN, AUG 18

Grammy-Winning double bass and electric bass virtuoso

LEE RITENOUR, LARRY GOLDINGS and PETER ERSKINE

TUE, AUG 20-SUN, AUG 25

Distinguished crossover music masters

MARCIA BALL

TUE, AUG 27 - WED, AUG 28

“A sensational, saucy singer and superb pianist… where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet.” -USA Today

KEIKO MATSUI

THU, AUG 29 - SUN, SEP 1

Leading innovator of contemporary fusion jazz celebrates 25th Anniversary Tour with new release Soul Quest

JON CLEARY

TUE, SEP 3 - WED, SEP 4

New Orleans based funk and soul singer, songwriter and pianist

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

Cloud Control Friday 8/16 at Barboza

Seattle’s got some summer cramming to do. Our weather-challenged corner is nearing the end of its brief annual transition from sulking mildew rag to glorious, shorts-wearing, vitamin-D-powered sun freak. Have you gone outside enough? Have you seen enough music? How about FREE, ALL-AGES MUSIC on a lawn with the Space Needle in the background?? The Seattle Center and KEXP have teamed up to bring you a handful of outdoor music shows this month at the Mural Amphitheatre. This week, get wild with scathing garage gods Mudhoney, hardened blues-rock twosome the Grizzled Mighty, and pleasing popsmiths Dude York. Man, I hope it’s not raining when you read this. EMILY NOKES

Melvins, Honky

(Neumos) Heavy-music stalwarts the Melvins have been at it for 30 years. For perspective, it’s helpful to take in Mangled Demos from 1983. Released in 2005, Demos starts with a hilarious “Elks Lodge Christmas Broadcast,” in which the radio announcer interviews Buzz Osborne, then–bass player Matt Lukin (who would later go on to Mudhoney), and then-drummer Mike Dillard (who recently went into the studio with Osborne and Dale Crover on bass to cut Tres Cabrones), all 18 or 19 years old. The following songs demonstrate the blueprints for how the Melvins would influence Nirvana and a whole slew of other bands that went on to more notoriety. Of course, now the Melvins are an entirely different beast than they were in 1983, having folded in Jared Warren and Coady Willis from Big Business, but 30 years later, they’re still innovating and cutting quality records, and they’re still heavy. Respect.

GRANT BRISSEY

Black Weirdo Party: OCnotes, Chocolate Chuck

(Lo-Fi) Word is that the Black Weirdo parties—created and curated by Catherine Harris-White and Stasia Irons, aka THEESatisfaction—have gone down, at last count, in the Bay Area, New York, and Toronto to packed rooms of rapturous, colorful souls. Tonight will be the second hometown installment, featuring THEE’s psychedelic brother-in-arms OCnotes and Cat’s literal brother, the beat scientist/ visual enhanceer Chocolate Chuck. I just got word that this party will also feature one of the newest,

lights

our own

FYI, you don’t have to be black to attend—the rest is on you to prove.

LARRY MIZELL JR.

Cloud Control, Tomten, Mal de Mer (Barboza) No, Tomten aren’t a psychedelic band, but there is something about their music that causes a psychedelic reaction within my brain. As soon as my ears get a whiff of the Seattle trio’s organ-laced pop that sounds straight out of the ’60s, my synapses start to sparkle, and suddenly everything is paisley—colors swirl, the streets turn into fields of flowers swaying in the wind, and brightly colored bunnies hop around, delicately chomping on dandelion leaves. Tonight they’ll open for Cloud Control, who will bring you back to a less-colorful reality. Since their 2010 release, Bliss Release, these

Aussies have turned down the folk and turned up the dance, making them appeal to fans of Matt & Kim. It’s not bad! It just doesn’t make me imagine rainbow bunnies, is all. MEGAN SELING

USF, Hibou, Cashpony, Frozen Folk, Bone Cave Ballet

(Comet) Sometimes you crave music that just Astroglides through your earspace with no friction at all. Sometimes you desire pastel melodies to sugar up your brain with a jaunty insouciance— even if you’re not sure what “insouciance” means. That’s where Seattle quartet Hibou—led by Peter Michel—flounce in. The band (whose name is pronounced “eee-booo”) sound like ultrasensitive devotees of British new wave and shoegaze. Their songs are as lithe and beautiful as supermodels. If they get the right manager and some key breaks, Hibou could be very big. You heard it here first (or

maybe second—I’m too busy to google at the moment). DAVE SEGAL

The Moondoggies, Country Lips, the Quiet Ones (Tractor) Whether it’s the Beach Boys, the Everly Brothers, the Carter Family, or the Jackson 5: everyone’s a sucker for a family band, and the Totten brothers’ project, the Quiet Ones, is no exception. Subtle, off-kilter, and well-crafted songs prove that, in the words of the band, there is indeed power in the blood. Next, pulling out your finest party bolo ties and dancing boots is in order for the nonstop fun of Country Lips, although this country party is way more akin to the Flying Burrito Brothers than Kenny Chesney. But most importantly, the night will belong to the Moondoggies, whose somber, beautifully melodic NW folk makes a perfect soundtrack to stroke your beard and ponder the nighttime beach bonfire. They will be playing the first of two release shows at the Tractor for Adiós I’m a Ghost, their freshly minted release on Hardly Art. BREE MCKENNA

Saturday 8/17

Stanley Clarke Band (Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Robert Blatt (Jack Straw New Media Gallery) In what may result in shenanigans, Robert Blatt and friends perform scores from his Text Score a Day Twitter feed experiment. A few examples: “#291: Entertain me.” “#290: 4+ performers obstruct each other’s movement and sound-making ability as much as possible.” “#282: An orchestra plays a piece on a slowly submerging boat.” “#281: Scare an audience and performers.” “#289: (for Cobain, Zizek, Lacan, and Fanon) a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido, a denial.” Blatt also has a sonic sculptural installation at Jack Straw New Media Gallery this month. JEN GRAVES

Erik Blood, Western Haunts, Jason Dodson (Vera) Western Haunts radiate a twangish harmo-

brightest

on the darkest side of town—dapper young Porter Ray, whose genius debut BLK GLD marked him as

Illmatic-era Nasir Jones.

THURSDAY

AUGUST

GOOD MEN AND THOROUGH (ALBUM RELEASE) Metameric, Honeybear All Ages

SMITH WESTERNS Wampire The Hoot Hoots All Ages

The Crocodile & Da808 Music Presents THE ROLL UP: HEMPFEST AFTERPARTY W/ ONE DROP Island Bound, The Hookys 21+ SUNDAY

AUGUST PIANO PIANO (ALBUM RELEASE SHOW!) Slow Bird, Tokyoidaho, Badwater Fire Company All Ages MONDAY

Trouble Season Tour SCARUB OF LIVING LEGENDS @ THE BACK BAR Tope, Turtle T, DJ Andrew Savoie All Ages

Selah Sue Bushwalla 21+

MOTHER FALCON 1939 Ensemble All Ages

GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV 9/3 MURDER BY DEATH 9/5 POOLSIDE 9/7 PREFUSE 73, THEORETICS 9/8 THE RED EYE TOUR 9/9 GROUPLOVE 9/10 TYPHOON 9/11 DJ YADDIYA 9/12 SOUND REMEDY 9/13 CAMPFIRE OK, SEAN NELSON 9/14 SCHOOL OF ROCK 9/15 TRAVIS GARLAND 9/17 BOSNIAN RAINBOWS 9/18 THE CHICHARONES, SHELTON HARRIS & TYLER DOPPS 9/21 WILD BELLE 9/22 TODD BARRY 9/23 ODDISEE 9/25 DB FEST: HYPERDUB FEAT KODE9 9/26 DB FEST: RESIDENT ADVISOR FT. ACTRESS 9/27 DB FEST: GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL FT. SHIGETO 9/28 DB FEST: HUSH HUST FT. CYRIL HAHN 9/29 DB FEST: TIMETABLE FT. NOSAJ THING 9/30 LONDON GRAMMER 10/5 TOM ODELL 10/6 HALF MOON RUN

niousness that skews Fleet Foxy on the beard scale, but theirs is a folk soaked in deep, shiny reverb and possessing a galloping emotion that I believe some would refer to as shoegaze. Speaking of music that is both deep and shining with reverb, local melody wizard Erik Blood will be playing a final show with his band tonight, and then moving forward to focus his magic on a new solo album and other exciting, sure-to-be-wonderful-with-his-thumbprint-onthem projects (new albums from Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction! Eeeeh!). With Jason Dodson of the Maldives. Go and get your feelings swirled! EMILY NOKES

A Midsummer’s Night with the Monkees (Benaroya) It was the Monkees who taught me the most important lesson in regards to being a music fan—people, including (perhaps especially) musicians, are complex creatures. When I first fell in love with the Monkees, I was still in the single digits, so I didn’t realize how important that was until several years later, but growing up watching Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork be goofy TV stars while simultaneously playing sincere and great pop songs planted the fact in my little brain that music can be fun and funny, and that sincerity and silliness can coexist. I will always be thankful for that. Tonight’s performance won’t be the same without Davy Jones, of course, but it’ll still be something magical. MEGAN SELING

Sunday 8/18

Royce the Choice, Spac3man, Cam the Mac, Porter Ray, Ye’D (Neumos) See My Philosophy, page 37.

Stanley Clarke Band (Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Hempfest: DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill, Black Magic Noize, (Hed)p.e., Lisa Dank (Myrtle Edwards Park) Back for a 22nd year, Hempfest is the world’s largest annual cannabis protest

rally, and Seattle is one of the few spots in America where recreational marijuana use is legal, so what’s the point now? A big, skunky party, that’s what, featuring tons of food booths and bong booths and music, including such herb-enhanced acts as Lisa Dank, Black Magic Noize, and DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill. (Here’s hoping there’s a booth serving Mexican desserts, because I would love to see how DJ Muggs could just kill a flan.) At the unbeautifully named Myrtle Edwards Park. DAVID SCHMADER

Monday 8/19

Scarub, Tope, Turtle T, DJ Andrew Savoie (Crocodile) See My Philosophy, page 37.

The Dillinger Escape Plan, Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Norma Jean (Showbox Sodo) The Dillinger Escape Plan won my attention and respect for the title of their 1999 album, Calculating Infinity. How could any other math-rock group ever hope to surpass that for greatness and appropriateness? Game over. Thankfully, that release had the music to match its mind-boggling title. Combining white-guy-withblood-spurting-from-his-jugular vocals with incomprehensibly complex rhythms and scalding, mercurial guitar blare, Calculating Infinity is a pinnacle of a particular kind of avant-metal. This year’s One of Us Is the Killer is relatively accessible for DEP (and even conventionally pretty in parts), although there’s still a caustic truculence to the songs. But, yeah, it’s no Calculating Infinity DAVE SEGAL

Tuesday 8/20

No Age, Devin Gary & Ross, Sun Foot, Naomi Punk (Washington Hall) See Underage, page 48.

Radius Etc., Introcut, DJ Fishboogie, WD4D (Lo-Fi) See Data Breaker, page 45.

Tool drummer Danny Carey, a side project with John Ziegler and Lance Morrison of jazzy, proggy guitars and complex drum textures.

WED 8/14

LIVE BARBOZA Grum, Jameson Just, Blacklist, 8 pm, $10

CHOP SUEY Ethan J Perry, Hundred Visions, guests, 8 pm, $7/$10

COMET Crazy Eyes, Cigarette Bums, Lindseys, $6 a CROCODILE Glenn Cannon, Intisaar Jubran, Jondus Beckman, 8 pm, $5

a EL CORAZON Kady Z, Amanda Markley, Lover Fighter, 8 pm, $8/$10

HIGH DIVE Bugs, Space Waster, Skullbot , 8 pm, $6

HIGHWAY 99 High and Lonesome, 8 pm, $7

JAZZ ALLEY The Cookers, 7:30 pm, $24.50

THE KRAKEN Fatality, Zombie Holocaust, Skelator, $5

NEUMOS Ulrich Schnauss, Secret Colors, 8 pm, $20

THE ROYAL ROOM En Canto, Alessandro Penezzi, 8 pm, $13/$15

SEAMONSTER LOUNGE Eric Hullander Jazz, 10 pm, free

SUNSET TAVERN Not a Real Flag, Corespondents , Gadjes Gringas, $6

TRACTOR TAVERN Rafe Pearlman, guests, $10

VITO’S RESTAURANT &

LOUNGE Jerry Zimmerman, 8 pm, free

DJ

BALTIC ROOM Crunk: DJ

Henski, Marty Mar, Blue Eyed Soul, Bgeezy, guests

CAPITOL CLUB Roll

Bounce: OCNotes, Spirit Fingaz, EverGrimeState, free

CONTOUR Rotation: Guests, 10 pm, $5

THE EAGLE VJDJ Andy J

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN

Passage: Jayms Nylon, Joey Webb, guests

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

Q NIGHTCLUB Four Color Zack, McClarron, $10/$15

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

WILDROSE 2nd Hand: Mother Church, Pavone, free

THURS 8/15

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Don’t, the

Snap AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BALTIC ROOM Total Science, Quadrant, Kid Hops, Iris, Nicfit, $8

BARBOZA Filastine , Truckasauras, BizZaRa, Penny Wide Pupils, 8 pm, $10

BLUE MOON TAVERN The Dirty Deals, Sundog, the Po’Brothers, $5 CAFE RACER Earl Brooks CAN CAN Vince Mira

CENTRAL SALOON Suzanne Monroe, 9:30 pm, free

CHOP SUEY Hidden Towers, Aseethe, Crag Dweller, Havania Whaal, 8 pm, $6/$8

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER Body Parts, Heatwarmer, Lures, 8 pm, $6/$8

COMET Beneath Oblivion, Crawlin, Witchripper, Portents, $6

CONOR BYRNE Be Honest, Ruth Bryan, Brenda Xu, $7

a CROCODILE Good Men and Thorough, Metameric, Honeybear, 8 pm, $10/$12

DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia

DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free

a GUAYMAS CANTINA Oleaje Flamenco, 8 pm, free

HIGHLINE Blood and Thunder, Fallen is Babylon, Deathmocracy, Devils of Loudon, 8 pm, $6

JAZZ ALLEY Stanley Clarke Band

SUBMISSION OF THE WEEK: NICKI AND KENDRA

This photo was submitted without comment, so I’m simply going to say: WHERE MAH LADIES AT EVERY WEEK?!?

There really ought to be more ladies in this column. So, with this, lady beer-chuggers and fun-havers, watch out. I’m commm-ming for YOU! KELLY O

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

a MARYMOOR PARK

Steely Dan, 5:30 pm, $55-

$115

NECTAR Fly Moon

Royalty, Johnny Polygon, the Action Figures, Terrai Safadi, 8 pm, $12

a NEPTUNE THEATER

Call Me Ladro, Dice, Ayron Jones, King Pulse, Porter Ray, 8 pm, free

NEUMOS The Polyphonic Spree, Harper Simon, Friends and Family , 8 pm, $19

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB

Regional Faction , Poorsport , Ritual Addict, 8 pm, $6

SMOKIN’ PETE’S BBQ Dysfunction Junction, 7 pm

SNOQUALMIE CASINO Whitesnake, 7 pm

SUNSET TAVERN Goodnight, Texas, the Vaudeville Etiquette, $6

THERAPY LOUNGE

The Jesus Rehab , In Cahoots , Sundries, $5

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Casey MacGill, 5:30 pm, free; Grace Love, 9 pm, free,

THE WHITE RABBIT Marmalade, $6

a WOODLAND PARK ZOO

NORTH MEADOW Loreena McKennitt, 6 pm, $32.50

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Rob, free

BALTIC ROOM Revolution:

DonnaTella Howe, Olivia LaGarce, guests

CAPITOL CLUB Citrus: DJ Skiddle

THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark

HAVANA Sophisticated

Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

LO-FI Noctum Caro: 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

SEE SOUND LOUNGE

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

THERAPY LOUNGE

DUH.: DJ Omar, guests

TRINITY Space Thursdays: Rise Over Run, DJ Christyle, Johnny Fever, DJ Nicon, Sean Majors, B Geezy, guests, free

FRI

8/16

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Sacrament

Ov Impurity, Blood Etchings, Baal Beryth

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Cloud Control, Tomten, 7 pm, $8

BLUE MOON TAVERN Nu Klezmer Army, the Resonant Rogues, 9:30 pm, $6

CAFE RACER The Josh Farmer Band, Bejoty, Sarah Alyse Shay, Mariko Ruhle

CENTRAL SALOON The Of, Privatized Air, Red Sea a CHAPEL

PERFORMANCE SPACE

Peck + Johnson

COLUMBIA CITY

THEATER D. G. Harmann & the Trouble Starts, Kladruby Gold, Keaton Collective, 8 pm, $8/$10

COMET USF, Hibou, Cashpony, Frozen Folk, Bone Cave Ballet , 9 pm, $7; Ando Ehlers, Bad Habit, Jipsea Party , 6 pm, $6

CONOR BYRNE Exohxo , Peeping Tomboys, L’Anarchiste, $8

CROCODILE Smith

IT’S LIKE THE CHERRY ON TOP OF YOUR SEATTLE SUMMER SUNDAE

Westerns, Wampire, the Hoot Hoots , 8 pm, $13

DARRELL’S TAVERN Hard

Money Saints , Baby & the Nobody’s, the Done Goners, 8 pm, $8

HIGHLINE VHOL, UZALA, Bone Sickness, Brain Scraper, 8 pm, $10

HIGHWAY 99 Liam

O’Maonlai, 8 pm, $15

JAZZ ALLEY Stanley Clarke Band

THE KRAKEN Generation Decline, Yo Adrian!, Infected, Head Honcho, $5

LO-FI Black Weirdo Party: OCNotes, Chocolate Chuck

a MURAL

AMPHITHEATRE Mudhoney, the Grizzled Mighty, Dude York, 5:30 pm, free

a MYRTLE EDWARDS PARK Hempfest: The Herbivores, the Toyes, Indoobious, Junior Toots, guests, noon, free NECTAR Gift of Gab, the Good Husbands, guests, 8 pm, $10

a NEUMOS Melvins, Honky, 9:30 pm, $22/$25

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Moneta , $13.50

a SONIC BOOM

RECORDS (BALLARD) Smith Westerns, 6 pm, free

SUNSET TAVERN Peter Bradley Adams, Kate Lynn Logan, 10 pm, $12/$15

TIM’S TAVERN The Struggles, Dragontail

TRACTOR TAVERN The Moondoggies Country Lips, the Quiet Ones , 9:30 pm, $15

TRIPLE DOOR Dudley Manlove Quartet, 8 pm, $20

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Rat City Brass, free

DJ

95 SLIDE DJ Fever One

BALLROOM DJ Tamm

BALMAR DJ Ben Meadow

BALTIC ROOM Dirty Work: Rotating DJs

BARBOZA Just Got Paid:

100proof, $5 after 11:30 pm

CAPITOL CLUB Marcus G, Jay Battle, DJ Shorthand, free CHOP SUEY A Plus D, DJ

Freddy King of Pants, guests, $5 before 10 pm/$10 after CUFF C&W Dancing: DJ

Harmonix, DJ Stacey, 7 pm; TGIF: Guest DJs, 11 pm, $5

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN

D-t3ch, Mikey V, Jason Curtis, the Architects, 10 pm, $10 FUEL DJ Headache, guests

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

LAST SUPPER CLUB Madness: Guests

NEIGHBOURS It’s a Shit

Show: Willam Belli, Detox Icunt, Vicky Vox

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Caliente

Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren

PONY DJ Porq, DJ kKost

Q NIGHTCLUB Ashley

Wallbridge, Kryspin, Web, AudiOh, Rubin Sarafinchan, $15 after 10 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Crush

THERAPY LOUNGE Rapture: Guests, $3 after 11 pm

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

SAT 8/17

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Destroyer, Wild Mohicans, Dying Off AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Real Don Music, Hustle & Drone, 7 pm, $8

a BENAROYA HALL The Monkees

BLUE MOON TAVERN Crazy

Eyes, Entmoot, the Dark Blue

CENTRAL SALOON

Ranchero, Tyranny Theory, Stillstand

a CHAPEL PERFORMANCE SPACE John Teske

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER

Thee Midnight Creep, Wayfinders, Serotiny, 8 pm, $8/$10

COMET Night Cadet, Noddy , $7

CONOR BYRNE Mongrel Jews, Summer Januaries, the Resonant Rogues, $7

CROCODILE Hempfest

Afterparty: One Drop, Island Bound, the Hooky’s, 8 pm, $13

DARRELL’S TAVERN Bigfoot Accelerator, Hurry Up and Die, Head Honcho, $7

JACK STRAW NEW MEDIA GALLERY Robert Blatt

JAZZ ALLEY Stanley Clarke Band THE KRAKEN Acoustic Punk Night: Guests, free a MYRTLE EDWARDS PARK Hempfest: Windowpane, Everlast, Zoolect, Jack Endino’s Earthworm, Lacero, guests, 11 am, free

NECTAR Richie Aldente’s Big Summer Blowout!: Theoretics, Continental Soldiers $8

NEUMOS Melvins, Honky, 9:30 pm, $22/$25

QUEEN CITY GRILL Faith Beattie, Bayly, Totusek, Guity, free a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 6 pm

SEAMONSTER Porkchop Express, 10 pm, free SUNSET TAVERN Truth and Salvage Co., Legendary Oaks , Wes Crawford, $10/$12

TIM’S TAVERN The Lillies, the Faradays , Logan Vincent

TRACTOR TAVERN The

BY DAVE SEGAL

WEDNESDAY 8/14

THE RETURN OF GERMAN

SHOEGAZETRONICA ICON

ULRICH SCHNAUSS

Better than most in the world, Germany’s Ulrich Schnauss has fused the diaphanous textures and oneiric atmospheres of shoegaze rock with the chilled-out funkiness of (shhhh…) triphop. Given those elements, Schnauss might seem to come off as a ’90s throwback artist, but his tracks somehow avoid sounding trapped in Clinton-era amber. Rather, they breathe with a kind of timeless, cinematic grandeur, urged on by countless variations on James Brown/Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer” beat. Schnauss’s new album, A Long Way to Fall, may not be his best, but it does capture a swoon-worthy, pastel beauty that’s tremendously hypnotic and tranquilizing. With Secret Colors Neumos, 8 pm, $20 adv, 21+.

THURSDAY 8/15

FILASTINE’S FAR-FLUNG BEAT AGITATION

Globe-trotting sonic muckraker Filastine returns to his former romping grounds. Now agitating with radical rhythms from Barcelona, Filastine—a former percussive storm trooper with Infernal Noise Brigade and ¡Tchkung!—has dropped some interesting polyglot albums for DJ /rupture’s Soot label: Burn It and Dirty Bomb His most recent album, 2012’s Loot, further develops Filastine’s humid, extreme hybrids from the global beat banquet. The man has myriad ways to disorient you in all senses of the word. Plus, bonus Noam Chomsky sound bites! Reliable local quartet Truckasauras are perhaps the smartest party-centric electronic act in the city, and they improve with every

Moondoggies , Gold Leaves, Quiet Life, 9:30 pm, $15

a VERA PROJECT Erik Blood, Western Haunts, 7:30 pm, $11

VITO’S RESTAURANT &

LOUNGE The Satellite Four, 9:30 pm, free

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Warren

BALTIC ROOM Good Saturdays: Guest DJs

BARBOZA Inferno: Guests

CAPITOL CLUB Get Physical: DJ Edis, DJ Paycheck, 10 pm, free

CHOP SUEY Jai Ho!:

Prashant, Naseem, Bella, guests, $10

CONTOUR Europa Night:

Misha Grin, Gil

CUFF Gear Night: DJ

Mattstands, no cover if wearing fetish gear, otherwise $5 for men and $15 for women

HAVANA Rotating DJs:

DV One, Soul One, Curtis, Nostalgia B, Sean Cee, $5

HAZLEWOOD Gayzlewood:

DJ Tanner, guests, free

NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ Randy Schlager

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club

Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal

Darkness

PONY Meat: Amateur Youth , Dee Jay Jack

RE-BAR Ceremony: DJ Evan Blackstone, guests, 10 pm, $5

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

SUN

8/18

LIVE

BARBOZA Filligar, Torches,

show (I’ve been keeping tabs). Have you scored their majestically melodic electro opus 2012 yet? What are you waiting for? Seattle DJ BizZaRa brings that stadiumtrembling dubstep biz with which the kids are annoying you. It’s the soundtrack for oldsters railing futilely against the folly of youth and the quaking of bass. AIRHORN. With Penny Wide Pupils Barboza, 9 pm, $10 adv, 21+.

TUESDAY

8/20

RADIUS ETC. = BOARDS OF CANADA + FLYLO

When the savvy heads who run the avanthiphop weekly Stop Biting bring in an outof-town headliner, the results are usually crucial. Such is the case with Radius Etc., a Chicago producer who’s new to me—and maybe to you, too. Submersion in Radius’s Soundcloud page has revealed a musician who sounds like the golden mean between Boards of Canada and Flying Lotus. Uhhuh, on that level. A sublimely mellow yet intricately jazz-funky style prevails in Radius’s output; it’s a classic approach, exquisitely executed by the Windy City wiz. If you’re an MC looking for beats, hit up Radius, as his new Minimal Chops & Loops in Dub EP Vol. 1 offers a bounty of ear-snagging cuts over which to spit. With Introcut, DJ Fishboogie, and WD4D Lo-Fi Performance Gallery, 9 pm, $5, 21+.

WEDNESDAY 8/14 NOT A REAL FLAG CORESPONDENTS

EURO DANCE PARTY USA

$6 • 9PM

THURSDAY 8/15

GOODNIGHT, TEXAS THE VAUDEVILLE ETIQUETTE MARTHA! MOTHER

$6 • 9PM

FRIDAY 8/16 TAKE WARNING PRESENTS: PETER BRADLEY ADAMS

KATE LYNNE LOGAN

$12 ADV / $15 DOS • 10PM

SATURDAY 8/17 TRACTOR PRESENTS: TRUTH AND SALVAGE CO LEGENDARY OAKS • WES CRAWFORD

$10 ADV / $12 DOS • 10PM

MONDAY 8/19 KUNG FU GRINDHOUSE FREE • 7PM

TUESDAY 8/20

GHOST PAINS

JOHNNY NORDSTRUM & THE RETAILERS TIMBRE BARONS $6 • 8PM

AND BOOKING

PERFORMANCE GENIUS SHOWCASE

AT THE FRYE ART MUSEUM

Be moved by Genius Award finalists in our last event of this 5-part series. This year’s Performance category is all about dance! Exclusive use of the museum, snacks, and cocktails. Presentations by the finalists followed by an audience Q&A. Hosted by Brendan Kiley.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21 | 5:30-8 PM | 21+

IF AMY O’ NEAL IS FROM NOWHERE, WHY IS HER WORK SO INCREDIBLY GROUNDED?

HOW DOES PAT GRANEY COMBINE CHOREOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE INTO SOMETHING PRACTICALLY COZY?

DO ZOE SCOFIELD & JUNIPER SHUEY HAVE ACTUAL SCORPIONS IN THEIR SKULLS?

CHOP SUEY Buildings, Hawks, Klaw, Red Liquid, 8 pm, $5/$7 COMET Ephrata, Stranded Sullivan, Muscle and

Hed(pe), Lisa Dank, guests, 11 am, free NECTAR The Healthy Dose, Quinn, guests, 8 pm NEUMOS Royce the Choice, Spac3man, Cam the Mac, Porter Ray, Ye’D, $10 a PORCHLIGHT COFFEE Jeff Rosenstock, Sean Nelson, 8:30 pm, $6

SNOQUALMIE CASINO Tower of Power, 7 pm

TRIPLE DOOR Coco Montoya, 7:30 pm, $20/$23/$30 VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Ron Weinstein Trio, 9:30 pm

BY ADRIAN RYAN

FRIDAY 8/16

WILLAM AND DETOX, VICKY AND SCRUFF

You know? All y’all bitches need to CALM the eff DOWN. Shooo. I KNOW! That anxious, sweaty, where-the-helldid-that-raging-boner-just-comefrom? feeling. But it’s important to maintain some dignity in this here queer life, correct? Correct. So let’s all just take a few deep, healthy, calming breaths (and I am certainly not ruling out the presence of a gigantic iced bong in this scenario, please to note), and try to compose ourselves. Because when the foul-mouthed human snarkasm generator Willam Belli shows up (watch her YouTube show, Willam’s Beatdown, which is now your new everything) to perform live and in person for you with none other than (brace yourself) the world-famous RuPaul’s Draggyhooozy Season Whateverblahblah almost-thirdplace winner, Detox Icunt (whom you adore, as do I), and the amazing Lady Vicky Vox (and somehow these events are all bound up with the super-hot guy who invented Scruff), well. The impulse to screech and jump up and down and claw your face off like a spastic tween who’s been sprayed with a jigger of Justin Bieber juice becomes not only understandable—it’s a fait accompli.

So! Our night is split between two thrilling halves. We begin early at Neighbours, and lady, It’s a Shit Show—and not just the usual kind. “It’s a Shit Show” is what they are calling the aforementioned once-in-a-lifetime triumvirate performance by Diva Detox, Willam, and Vicky Vox, known collectively as DWV. They are to perform their video smash hits (“Boy Is a Bottom,” “The Vagina Song,” etc.), dazzle you with their wit, and hit us with a few solo performance surprises. Did I mention ONCE IN A LIFETIME? Shooo. Neighbours, 7 pm, $18/$30 VIP, 21+.

AND FOR THE AFTER-PARTY:

JOHNNY SCRUFF SLAPS HIS DICK

After It’s a Shit Show, we shall amble as soberly as possible on down to the Eagle for Dickslap. But not just any old Adriangoes-on-about-it-constantly Dickslap!

This is the official It’s a Shit Show after-party, featuring the patron saint of beards and geospatial hookups: Johnny Scruff! (Bless.) Johnny’ll be twerking it alongside buff TV stud Shawn Morales and the ever-delightful Faggedy Randy and Brendan Zincavage. Do it, you filthy beast! For Johnny. The Eagle, 10 pm, 21+.

THURSDAY AUGUST 22ND

No Sleep Seattle Presents THE KNAST HARD ROLLER (Members of Presidents of USA) // TALL SMOKE FRIDAY AUGUST 23RD

PIXIES COVER NIGHT

featuring members of: ONONOS // MIDDAY VEIL // KITHKIN // LEMOLO // TEA COZIES // CHARMS & MORE!

SATURDAY AUGUST 24TH

SEATTLE WEEKLY BEST OF FEATURING VOX MOD // WEEK OF WONDERS // AND MORE!

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 28TH

O’BROTHER

NATIVE // DAYLIGHT // DARTO LO’ THERE DO I SEE MY BROTHER

THURSDAY AUGUST 29TH

CALI GIRAFFES

(Kim Warnick of the Fastbacks) SPACENEEDLES // SILLY GOOSE (Blink 182 Cover Band)

FRIDAY AUGUST 30TH

TUCK GOES TO HOLLYWOOD!

BENDELACREME // ALEXA MANILLA // JACKIE HELL // MAMA TITS, // ADE // ROBBIE TURNER // & MORE!

9/3 GOLD FIELDS 9/6 YOB 9/9 QUEEN KWONG 9/13 BLUE SKY BLACK DEATH // KID SMPL 9/14 MONOGAMY PARTY 9/16 OCTOPUS PROJECT 9/19 GLITTERBANG // DOUBLE

COCKTAILS •

SWAMP MEAT

CRAZY EYES, THE CIGARETTE BUMS, LINDSEYS $6

BENEATH OBLIVION

CRAWLIN, WITCHRIPPER, PORTENTS $6

HAPPY HOUR: 6-7:30

ANDO EHLERS

BAD HABIT AND JIPSEA PARTY $5

USF (SEA)

HIBOU (SEA), CASHPONY (OAK), FROZEN FOLK (OAK), BONE CAVE BALLET (SEA) $7 NIGHT CADET

NODDY, GUESTS $6 MATINEE: CIRCUIT VINE

THE FUNERAL AND THE TWILIGHT, LIGHTENING KILLS EAGLE $5

GOODBYE HEART

MUSCLE AND MARROW, STRANDED SULLIVAN $6 SUPPLY AND THE MAN

ZIGTEBRA, LAKE FIGHT, ZANDER YATES $6 AT THE SPINE MAYONKEE (MILAN, ITALY), MARMOT VS. MAMMOTH (SEATTLE) $5 SEAS TO SKYLINES YOYA, SYMMETRY/SYMMETRY $6 BRAIN FRUIT

YOUR YOUNG BODY, AIPORT, LOU LOU HERNANDEZ, GUEST $8

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

DJ

BALTIC ROOM Mass

CAPITOL CLUB Island Style:

DJ Bookem, DJ Fentar

CONTOUR Broken Grooves:

DJ Venus, Rob Cravens, guests, free

SATURDAY AUGUST 17 | 7:30 PM ERIK BLOOD, WESTERN HAUNTS (ALBUM RELEASE PARTY)

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

TUESDAY AUGUST 20 | 7:30 PM AT WASHINGTON HALL NO AGE,DEVIN GARY & ROSS

SUN FOOT, NAOMI PUNK

$10 ADV.

FRIDAY AUGUST 23 | 8:00 PM

LITTLE COMETS, PLUS GUESTS

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD) ADV.

SATURDAY AUGUST 24 | 7:30 PM

WAXWING REUNION SHOW

$13 ($12 W. CLUB CARD) ADV.

SUNDAY AUGUST 25 | 7:30 PM

PLOW UNITED, SMOKEJUMPER

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

MONDAY AUGUST 26 | 7:30 PM

WHIRR, NOTHING

$8 ADVANCE $10 DOORS

WEDNESDAY SEPT. 4 | 7:30 PM

TITUS ANDRONICUS AND AND AND

$11 ($10 W. CLUB CARD)

Friday, August 16th - Sunday, August 18th

BRIAN MOOTE

Brian Moote is a super funny comedian based out of Hollywood, CA. He was recently featured on MTV’s “Money From Strangers” and was featured as a stand up comedian on the USA Network’s “Characters Welcome.” In 2011, he was part of the prestigious Johnny Carson Comedy Festival and is a regular at all of the major clubs in Hollywood. He also has a master’s degree in social work so he is a really good person despite what you might infer from his comedy. us y

THE EAGLE T-Bar/T-Dance:

Up Above, Fistfight, free MOE BAR Sosa, MarsONE, Phosho, free

NEIGHBOURS Noche Latina

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

Q NIGHTCLUB Riz Rollins, Chris Tower, 3 pm, free RE-BAR Flammable: DJ Wesley Holmes, 9 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Salsa:

DJ Nick

MON

8/19

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Burning of I , Viking Funeral, guests, $3 AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Jerry Frank

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Red Forman, Mercury Tree, Reverter, 8 pm, $5

CHOP SUEY Dead, Towers, the Funeral and the Twilight, the Loathsome Couple, $5/$7

COASTAL KITCHEN Pork Chop Trio, 9:30 pm, free COMET Supply and the Man, ZIGTEBRA, Zander Yates, $6

a CROCODILE In the Back Bar: Scarub, Tope, Kruse, 8 pm, $6 HIGHLINE Electric Revival, Deadman, 9:30 pm, $6 a SHOWBOX SODO

The Dillinger Escape Plan, Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Norma Jean, guests, 3:30 pm, $29.50/$34 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: Icon Mondays: Sean Majors, guests, free

CAPITOL CLUB The Jet Set: DJ Swervewon, 100 Proof COMPANY BAR Rock and Roll Chess Night: DJ Plantkiller, 8 pm, free

CONOR BYRNE Get the Spins: Guest DJs, free HAVANA 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 Q NIGHTCLUB Reflect, 8 pm, free

TUE 8/20

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Majical Cloudz, Moon King, 8 pm, $10 CAFE RACER Jacobs Posse COMET At the Spine , Mayonkee, Marmot Vs. Mammoth, $5

CROCODILE Mother Falcon, 8 pm, $8

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN Monktail Creative Music Concern, DJ Shonuph, free JAZZ ALLEY Lee Ritenour with Larry Goldings and Peter Erskine

NECTAR Indigitize, Stay Grounded, Comfort Food, Dubchamp, 7 pm, $5

SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free a SONIC BOOM

RECORDS (BALLARD) Telekinesis, 6 pm, free SUNSET TAVERN Ghost Pains Johnny Nordstrum, the Retailers, Timbre Barons TRACTOR TAVERN Bobby Long , guests, $15 a WASHINGTON HALL No Age, Devin Gary & Ross, Sun Foot, Naomi Punk

DJ

95 SLIDE Chicken & Waffles: Supreme La Rock, DJ Rev, free BALTIC ROOM Drum & Bass Tuesdays: Guests

BLUE MOON TAVERN Blue Moon Vinyl Revival Tuesdays: DJ Country Mike, A.D.M., guests, 8 pm, free THE EAGLE Pitstop: DJ Nark

HAVANA Word Is Bond: Hoot and Howl, $3 after 11 pm LINDA’S TAVERN

FRIDAY 8/16

This week, we have another poster by a legendary Seattle artist/designer/musician, Lisa Orth (formerly of Sub Pop, the Rocket, and The Stranger). Check out more of her stuff, including her amazing work at Alleged Tattoo, at lisaorth.com. AARON HUFFMAN

Wishbeard w/Golden Space, L’Orth Sun Aug 18, Hard L

Distortions: DJ Explorateur, DJ Veins LO-FI Radius Etc., Introcut, DJ Fishboogie, WD4D

MERCURY Die: Black Maru, Major Tom, $5

BY JACKSON HATHORN

WILDROSE Taco Tuesday: Guest DJs

SMITH WESTERNS, WAMPIRE, THE HOOT HOOTS

steadily perfected their own glammedout pop formula. Sonic Boom, 6 pm, free; Crocodile, 8 pm, $13.

TUESDAY 8/20

NO AGE, DEVIN GARY & ROSS, SUN FOOT, NAOMI PUNK

From the first seconds of this year’s Soft Will, you know that something is different with Smith Westerns. Compared to earlier albums, where singer-guitarist Cullen Omori’s obliquely lover-boy lyrics were hidden behind ramshackle, lo-fi caterwauls or clots of reverb (depending upon the production values), Soft Will has a sharper focus; Omori now appears to be singing to himself, repeating aphorisms, and grasping for resolve, as he does on the stunning album opener, “3AM Spiritual.” A song supposedly written in his parents’ kitchen after coming home from a long tour, “Spiritual” makes quick work of some gentle verses, followed by a brisk piano jaunt and shimmery guitar solo, before unfurling into a subtle, dreamy, and downright beautiful conclusion. An unfair reputation has dogged the Chicago band during their brief existence—mostly that their members are too young and borrow too heavily from their influences. As the rest of the songs on the record further reinforce, Soft Will is a starry-eyed gobstopper that finds Smith Westerns at their most confident, having

Before tearing up Washington Hall tonight, No Age will also release a new album today. While listening to a few teasers from An Object, their latest for Sub Pop, I’m struck by the clear fact that these songs simply couldn’t come from anyone else. On the lead single, “C’mon Stimmung,” Dean Spunt’s vocals are dialed back enough to recall the artful punk duo’s earliest recordings, while Randy Randall has once again tapped into an increasingly strange and resilient wellspring of sounds to get out of his guitar. Additional album preview “An Impression” is a rumbling, gorgeous, and surprising collage of textures (I couldn’t have predicted the click track or string section to come in), with lyrics that describe a painting coming to life, but can easily be used to characterize my thoughts on the band as well: “Oh I can’t believe/ The brush moving perfectly/Richness, symmetry/Perspective harmony.” Washington Hall, 7:30 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS.

NECTAR Top Rankin’ Reggae: DJ Element, Chukki, free NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Vicious Dolls: DJ Rachael, 9 pm, $5

FILM

Film Review Revue

Premature History, Kids with Skin Problems, and a Ship of Dreams

Lee Daniels’ The Butler is based on the life of a real African American man who was a domestic worker at the White House for eight presidential terms. The movie seems to take plenty of liberties in fleshing out the story originally told in a surprisingly short front-page article in the Washington Post The opening scene of the movie is a brutal series of crimes that happen in the span of five minutes to the future butler and his parents in a Southern cotton field where they’re still functionally enslaved decades after abolition. “In act one, Negroes are mistreated,” said a black activist friend I ran into at the entrance to the movie theater, predicting what she was about to see before the movie even started. “In act two, white people rise up to help. Act three, Negro grows old and tells the story.”

Here’s what I saw: Act two lionized the civil rights era, of black folks rising up to help themselves. Meanwhile, the presidents had isolated moments of awareness followed by abusive acts of entrenched white power. While the struggles of the butler, played by (genius) Forest Whitaker, are changing JFK’s heart, JFK’s White House perpetuates racist pay/promotion policies.

The butler’s son is a Freedom Rider/Black Panther played by (genius) David Oyelowo.

Justice isn’t done at that forward-back pace, which makes the movie’s ending horrifyingly everything’s-all-right-nowy. It ends with President Barack Obama’s 2008 election. Not, say, his recent Trayvon speech. Then, as credits are about to roll, an epigraph dedicates the movie to those who “fought” for equal rights. Not fight: fought.

Here’s an idea: Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a pretty good Hollywood movie. Oprah Winfrey is great. Who knew John Cusack would pull off Nixon? It’s probably worth seeing. But you could make it better by finding and writing down the name of a contemporary

The Spectacular Now is a coming-ofage story about Sutter Keely (played by Miles Teller), a high-school senior who resembles a charming, chubby-faced Elvis. Keely is a popular burnout who medicates everything in his life—breakups, questions about his estranged dad, even his job as a tie salesman in his nondescript little town—with an unending fountain of alcohol. But his motto “Live in the now!” becomes harder to live by as the teen begins to realize that his “now” is a continuous, delusional, drunken state of being. Graduation is approaching. Will Keely become another town deadbeat or manage to pull his shit together and do something with his life?

Keely’s love interest, Aimee Finicky (Shailene Woodley), plays the devoted good girl with cringing perfection—the kind of softhearted teen who apologizes for her abusers. As the movie progresses, Finicky matures and her personality takes on the quiet strength of a woman with a purpose: college. In contrast to Finicky’s growing autonomy, Keely’s confidence begins to unravel as his “now” is engulfed by his hazy future and his parents’ ugly past.

If you enjoyed 500 Days of Summer, you will probably enjoy The Spectacular Now, which was adapted from a Tim Tharp novel by screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. All of the teens in the film look and act like real teenagers. They’re smart kids with skin problems who drink too much in a sloppy, unglorified way. In the absence of caring adults, they’re raising themselves, which means they’re often cruel. They drunkdrive every damn place. Their sex is so very awkward. They resent their parents, who deserve resenting (especially Keely’s deadbeat dad, magnificently played by Kyle Chandler). In the end, it’s Now’s attention to detail and determination not to become another comingof-age caricature that makes the film so good.

CIENNA MADRID

The Pirogue dir. Moussa Touré Northwest Film Forum

Let’s begin with the plot: A young and strong Senegalese fisherman, Baye Laye (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye), is hired by some Dakar businessmen to transport 30 black Africans to Europe. The trip takes seven days. The ship is big but is by no means big enough to guarantee anything like a safe journey across a major body of water. One of the passengers has a mental breakdown almost immediately after the ship leaves the coast of Africa. Another passenger has dreams of becoming a musician in Paris. Another passenger hopes to get a new leg in Spain (he lost his real one in a boat accident). Another passenger wants to be just like his brother, who has his papers in order and is doing well as a mechanic in Spain. This is a ship filled with dreams that can be easily dashed by the powerful waves and storms of the Atlantic Ocean. The film’s ending, like much of its plot, will not surprise anyone. Dreams like these are meant to be broken.

But if the plot is unoriginal, what makes Moussa Touré’s The Pirogue such a great movie? The details. One such detail: Near the beginning of the film, just before the fisherman leaves his compound, his wife, and his world for a journey into the unknown, he takes an egg out of his bag, throws it on the

dusty ground, it smashes, and he carefully walks over the little mess, turns, looks back at his wife, gives her the eyes of fate, and leaves. Another detail: The sexual foreplay of the fisherman and his wife is all about hands (hands caressing shoulders, face, head, hair). There is no kissing, no fingering, no jabbing, but the kind of sensitive hands a blind person uses to get an impression of a person’s face. These and many other details (the content of conversations, the preparation of foods, the linguistic and religious differences of the passengers) provide the surface that we always find in newspapers and TV reports (poor black bodies) with a depth that’s rarely appreciated (black bodies that are rich in

tural information).

Lee Daniels’ The Butler dir. Lee Daniels Wide release

activist to dedicate the movie to before you go. Mine is my friend in line, because history isn’t a movie. JEN GRAVES

The Spectacular Now dir. James Ponsoldt Harvard Exit

LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER Better than Lou Gehrig’s disease, worse than Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

SATURDAY,

Monster Attack! Japanese Creature Feature Classics

By Director Shusuke Kaneko • FREE admission

Presented by: BRING

FRIDAY, AUG 23

8:30 pm DJ Bishie of JK POP!

9:15 pm Gamera 3: The Awakening of Irys

The monster Irys vs. Gamera, the fire-breathing giant turtle… In case of rain, see the show inside at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

FRIDAY, AUG 30

8:30 pm Afrobeat! Paul Kikuchi and friends play Fela Kuti

9:15 pm Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

A giant moth and dragon combat Godzilla, creature with the atomic breath! Cancelled in case of rain.

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/film

LIMITED RUN

ADJUST YOUR TRACKING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE VHS COLLECTOR

As a once-ubiquitous/now-defunct media format, VHS is naturally the next big thing, and this documentary charts the culture that surrounds the medium. Director in attendance. Grand Illusion, Tues Aug 20 at 9 pm.

ANACONDA

A one-night screening of the greatest movie starring Ice Cube, J-Lo, and a CGI snake ever made. Before the film, an actual expert on reptiles and amphibians will explain why you’ll probably never be eaten by a snake. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Thurs Aug 15 at 7 pm.

ANCHORMAN A 21+ screening of the 2004 Will Ferrell comedy that some people claim to enjoy immensely. Fremont Outdoor Cinema, Sat Aug 17 at dusk.

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

Starring Audrey Hepburn in her iconic turn as Holly Golightly and Mickey Rooney as a horrendous Asian stereotype. Harvard Exit, Sat Aug 17 at midnight.

CONAN THE DESTROYER The fate of the Hyborian kingdom hangs in the balance. Conan has destroyed FAR too many Hybors (which are like regular Bors, but much Hy-er). Cal Anderson Park, Fri Aug 16 at dusk.

on an older woman who has sex with a younger man WHILE DRESSED IN CIVIL WAR UNIFORMS EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

TLC? YOU ARE THE WORST.

Dear “Television”: How are you? Fine, I hope. HEY. I noticed you are showing absolutely NOTHING of interest this week. What’s up with that? In case you need a refresher course on what your job entails, here it is: You provide entertaining shows for me to watch, and I turn around and write abusive, smart-assy comments about them. THIS IS HOW THE WORLD WORKS. And yet? This week, other than a new episode of Breaking Bad, you have virtually NOTHING to offer me. What am I supposed to do with the rest of my time? And don’t you DARE say, “It’s summer, why not go outside and get some fresh air?” FUCK SUNSHINE AND FUCK FRESH AIR. If I wanted either of those things, I’d buy ’em off the internet.

And don’t you ALSO dare say, “Well, TLC is broadcasting some interesting shows this week,” because while these “shows” you’re talking about could be technically described as “interesting,” they’re “interesting” in the way a bloody-faced clown devouring the entrails of a camel is “interesting.”

EXAMPLES:

Extreme Cougar Wives (TLC, Wed Aug 14, 9:30 pm): Originally known as “The Learning Channel,” TLC is now famous for their schedule of freaky people shows— or at least people who are portrayed as freaks. For example, take this week’s second-ever installment of Extreme Cougar Wives, who are actually just older women who have sex with younger men. No problem there, right? Except when TLC focuses

Seriously, when I saw a clip of these WAYtoo-horny Civil War reenactors trading lascivious sexual puns while slowly slipping out of their uniform and corset? The entirety of my genitalia crawled up inside my anus and into my lower intestines. STOP DOING THAT, TLC!!

The Man with the 132-Pound Scrotum (TLC, Mon Aug 19, 9 pm): A lot of readers think I lie. I can live with that— however, I cannot live with you thinking I’m lying about this. The Man with the 132-Pound Scrotum is an ACTUAL TV SHOW being broadcast on your ACTUAL TV. By who else? TLC. Here are the deets: 49-yearold Las Vegas resident Wesley Warren Jr. suffers from “scrotal lymphedema”—an obviously rare condition that results in a scrotum the size of… well, you know that really big yoga ball your idiot coworker sits on all day? Like, TWO of those. Naturally, dragging around two yoga balls filled with cement makes most normal activities very difficult (though I’d love to play this guy in tennis, because I’d MURDER him), and this special documents Wesley’s daily routine and quest for medical relief.

My question to TLC is: “Doesn’t this poor guy have ENOUGH problems?” Is it really necessary to produce a worldwide television broadcast whose only message is “WOW, this guy really has an impossibly huge scrotum. Let’s make a lot of testicle jokes on Twitter!” SO DON’T FEED THE FREAKING MONSTER.

Guys… this isn’t Sharknado. This is an actual person TLC is horribly exploiting. Do something—anything—other than watching TLC this week, because if this is the best TV can offer? You’re better off buying sunshine and oxygen off the internet.

THE HELP

Great actors can’t save this shit pie. Free screening! Mural Amphitheater, Sat Aug 17 at dusk.

PERSISTENCE OF VISION

Successful animator Richard Williams—you probably know his work best from Who Framed Roger Rabbit—wanted to make a film that would elevate the art of animation to the next level. After nearly three decades of continuous work, that film was never finished. Filmmaker Kevin Schreck tells the story of the project through a series of interviews with animators who worked on the film over its long life, with one notable exception: Williams, presumably heartbroken over the death of the movie he openly referred to as his masterpiece, refused to be interviewed for the documentary. Vision doesn’t get too maudlin, and it doesn’t glorify its subject, either. While Williams is portrayed as a genius—and plenty of examples of his commercial and artistic work pepper the documentary to support that claim—he’s also a difficult man to work with, seemingly willing to sacrifice an unending supply of his workers in the name of perfection. The real stars of Vision are the clips from Williams’s doomed project, which really are beautiful and unlike anything you’ve ever seen in an animated film; a clever blend of optical illusions, formal constraints, and pure, unfettered talent. Vision documents a sad chapter in movie history, but it leaves you glad that, at least, someone finally managed to tell the story behind the story. (PAUL CONSTANT) Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon 7, 9 pm, Tues 7 pm.

THE PIROGUE

UN FLIC

Jean-Pierre Melville’s last film has gangsters, drug smugglers, fedoras, and bank robbers. Apparently, the title translates to “A Cop,” not “A Flick,” as I had previously assumed. Presented on a new 35 mm print. Northwest Film Forum, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7, 9 pm.

THE WALL

Tons more reviews online! thestranger.com/film

In this Austrian fantasy tale, a woman visiting a rural hunting lodge inexplicably becomes trapped behind an invisible and impenetrable wall. She is unable to move beyond the countryside surrounding the house. There is no explanation of what the wall is, how it got there, or if it is permanent. It’s unclear if the woman is being imprisoned or protected. She is now alone in the world, and her only companions are animals. She is not sure if anyone from the outside will come get her, or even if there is anyone out there. The woman works hard to survive—hunting, planting, taking care of the animals—and her voice-over expresses her internal existential musings. There are gorgeous scenes of the mountains, the forests, the night sky, the seasons. Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others) is mesmerizing to watch; she’s almost completely silent, expressing everything through her expressions and actions. The contemplative film follows her in her solitude as she struggles to carry on, a woman completely alone. (GILLIAN ANDERSON) SIFF Cinema

Uptown, Fri 4:30, 7 pm, Sat-Sun 2, 4:30, 7 pm, Mon-Tues 4:30, 7 pm.

WILD AT HEART

See review, page 49. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues 7, 9 pm.

SIGN PAINTERS

A documentary about the artisan painters who used to make beautiful signs before computers and neon and cheap gross vinyl took over. Northwest Film Forum, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.

TERRAFERMA

Here is the crucial scene in this excellent drama: Three Italian fishermen spot a large number of blacks Africans stranded on a flimsy lifeboat in the open sea. The black Africans wave and yell for help. The owner of the fishing boat, Ernesto (Mimmo Cuticchio), radios the Coast Guard and gives them information about the situation. The Coast Guard orders the fisherman not to go near the Africans but also not to leave the area until their patrol boat arrives. Suddenly, one by one, some of the desperate Africans jump into the sea and attempt to swim toward the fishing boat. Ernesto then decides to move closer to the Africans and help them out of the dangerous sea. But another fisherman reminds him that it is against the law to help illegal immigrants. The owner of the boat responds: “I’ve never left people on the sea...” It is that moral code, that moral certainty that is at the heart of Terraferma: These are not Africans, stateless illegals, or whatever; these are humans. Interestingly, there is another movie playing this week at Northwest Film Forum, The Pirogue, that has the exact same situation: sea-stranded black Africans calling for help from a passing boat. But this time, the captain of the passing boat is a black African who is transporting black Africans to Europe. But this captain does not make the same decision as Ernesto and so empties his entire trip and trade of all moral substance. This week, try to watch both (Terraferma and The Pirogue) movies back-to-back. Your understanding of Europe’s immigration crisis will be improved considerably.

(CHARLES MUDEDE) Varsity, Fri-Sun 12:20, 2:40, 4:45, 7, 9:10 pm, Mon-Tues 4:45, 7, 9:10 pm.

David Lynch’s Cannes-winning gore cartoon stars Nicolas Cage as an Elvis emulator with blood on his hands and Laura Dern as the horniest girl in America. Central Cinema, Fri-Tues 9:30 pm.

NOW PLAYING

BLUE JASMINE

The title character, played by Cate Blanchett, is (or was) a wealthy Manhattanite. When her ex-husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) turns out to be a Madoff-like crook, she loses everything, so she relocates to San Francisco to stay with her working-class sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Everyone is lying to themselves—about who they are, what they want, and what they feel they deserve. Blanchett is amazing as this supremely deluded neurotic. It’s a showy performance, and it’s refreshing to see Allen’s jangly, sometimes unpleasant protagonists channel that energy toward masking something potentially more sinister: a measure of complicity in their personal disasters. (MATT LYNCH)

THE HUNT

The latest from Thomas “ The Celebration ” Vinterberg tracks the fate of a good-natured kindergarten teacher who’s falsely accused of child sex abuse and suffers the consequences. It’s a stark and harrowing case study in collective insanity, filled with revelatory moments and amazing performances (especially from kids). (DAVID SCHMADER)

PRINCE AVALANCHE

David Gordon Green’s latest is a minor-key character study that trades in low-key desperation and knowing chuckles and a welcome return to his sleepy-indie roots. Paul Rudd’s Alvin is as listless as he is contemplative. Emile Hirsch is the dim-witted brother of his long-term girlfriend. The two clash and, inevitably, bond while repainting yellow lines along fire-ravaged backwoods roads in West Texas. It’s a haunted, lonely landscape that yields quiet, reluctant epiphanies. It won’t change your life but it will take you someplace special. (JEFF MEYERS)

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of Aug 14

Baldwin

Cate Blanchett

Louis C.K.

Bobby Cannavale

Andrew Dice Clay

Sally Hawkins

Peter Sarsgaard

Michael Stuhlbarg

ARIES (March 21–April 19): Normally, International CAPS LOCK DAY happens only once a year, on June 28. But in alignment with your current astrological omens, you have been granted the right to observe the next seven days as your own personal International CAPS LOCK DAYS. That means you will probably be forgiven and tolerated if use OVERHEATED ORATORY and leap to THUNDEROUS CONCLUSIONS and engage in MELODRAMATIC GESTURES. You may even be thanked—although it’s important to note that the gratitude you receive may only come later, AFTER THE DUST HAS SETTLED.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): William Turner was a 19th-century English landscape painter born under the sign of Taurus. His aim was not to capture scenes in realistic detail but rather to convey the emotional impact they made on him. He testified that on one occasion, he had himself tied to the mast of a ship during a snowstorm so that he could experience its full effects firsthand. The result was Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbor’s Mouth, a painting composed mostly of tempestuous swirls. What would be the equivalent for you, Taurus? I’m trying to think of a way you could be perfectly safe as you treated yourself to an up-close encounter with elemental energies.

change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” When I came across that quote while surfing the web, I felt that it jibed perfectly with the astrological omens that are currently in play for you. Every website I consulted agreed that the speaker of this wisdom was Socrates, but I thought the language sounded too contemporary to have been uttered by a Greek philosopher who died 2,400 years ago. After a bit of research, I found the real source: a character named Socrates in Way of the Peaceful Warrior, a new age self-help book by Dan Millman. I hope this doesn’t dilute the impact of the quote for you, Leo. For now, it is crucial that you not get bogged down in quarreling and brawling. You need to devote all your energy to creating the future.

VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): Do you know that you are a host for more than 10,000 different species of microorganisms? Many of them are bacteria that perform functions essential to your health. So the stunning fact of the matter is that a large number of life forms share your body and constantly help you in ways about which you have no conscious awareness. Might there be other examples of you collecting benefits from unknown sources? Well, do you know who is responsible for providing you with the water and electricity you use? Who sewed your clothes and made your medicine? Who built the roads and buildings you use? This is an excellent time to take inventory of all the assistance, much of it anonymous, that you are so fortunate to receive.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): “All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.” So said French writer André Breton. I suspect that many of us feel the same way, which is kind of depressing. But the good news for you, Sagittarius, is that there will be times in the coming months when you will get as close to naming that mysterious thing as you have ever gotten. On more than a few occasions, you may be able to get a clear glimpse of its true nature. Now and then, you might even be fully united with it. One of those moments could come soon.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): The Paris Review did a story on novelist William Gass. The interviewer asked him why he wrote his books. That was “a very dumb question,” he sneered. Nevertheless, he answered it, saying, “I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.” In other words, his primary motivations for expressing himself creatively were loathing, malice, and hostility. I beg you not to use him as your role model, Capricorn. Not now. Not ever. But especially now. It is essential to your longterm health and wealth that you not be driven by hate in the coming weeks. Just the opposite, in fact: The more you are driven by love and generosity, the better chance you will have of launching a lucky streak that will last quite a while.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): Some years back, the Greek government launched a huge antismoking campaign. In response, cigarette sales spiked dramatically. When my daughter was 6 years old, I initiated a crusade to ban Barbie dolls from our home forever. Soon she was ripping out pictures of the accursed antifeminist icon from toy catalogs and leaving them on my desk. With these events in mind, I’m feeling cautious about trying to talk you into formulating a five-year master plan. Maybe instead I should encourage you to think small and obsess on transitory wishes.

CANCER (June 21–July 22): “Wings are a constraint that makes it possible to fly,” the Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst reminds us. That will be a good principle for you to keep in mind during your own adventures during the coming weeks. I suspect that any liberation you are able to achieve will come as the result of intense discipline. To the degree that you cultivate the very finest limitations, you will earn the right and the power to transcend inhibitions that have been holding you down. LEO (July 23–Aug 22): “The secret of

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): More often than not, your fine mind does a competent job of defining the problems that need solving. It comes up with concise questions that lead you in the right direction to find useful clues. It gathers evidence crisply and it makes smart adjustments as the situation evolves. But after studying the astrological factors currently at work, I’m a little concerned that your usually fine mind might temporarily be prone to suffering from the dreaded malady known as paralysis through overanalysis. To steer yourself away from that possibility, keep checking in with your body and your feelings to see what alternate truths they may have to tell you.

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): By the standards of people who don’t know you well, the triumph you achieve in the coming days might seem modest. But I think it will actually be pretty dramatic. Here’s my only concern: There’s a slight danger you will get grandiose or even a bit arrogant in the aftermath of your victory. You could also get peeved at those who don’t see it for the major achievement it is. Now that I’ve given you this warning, though, I’m hoping you will avoid that fate. Instead you will celebrate your win with humble grace, feeling gratitude for all the help you got long the way.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): “Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are,” said author Marianne Williamson. “Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is.” Your assignment, Aquarius, is to seek out the deepest possible understanding of these truths. To do that, you will have to identify the unripe, shadowy qualities of the people who are most important to you. And then you will have to find it in your smart heart to love them for their unripe, shadowy qualities almost as much as you do for their shiny, beautiful qualities.

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): Aldous Huxley was the renowned 20th-century intellectual who wrote the book Brave New World, a dystopian vision of the future. Later in his life, he came to regret one thing: how “preposterously serious” he had been when he was younger. “There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,” he ruminated, “trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s

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CURLY HAIR, BLACK PICK UP

driver. I’ve seen you around with your dog, wearing glasses and a black sabbath shirt. I was browsing records next to you once and should have introduced myself...being that you’re a total babe. Joints and volume 4? When: Tuesday, January 29, 2013. Where: Captitol Hill. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919882

WHEN THE SCHNECKEN BECKONS!

Besalu.Me, a drowsy brunette waiting in an endless line.You, a fine ass man in

door to Starbuck’s... When: Friday, August 9, 2013. Where: Georgetown License Agency. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919898

EL CHUPACABRA BARTENDER

You, attractive tattooed guy with mohawk who works at El Chupacabra, are you single? If so, let’s have a date. It’ll be fun. Promise. When: Saturday, August 10, 2013. Where: El Chupacabra. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919897

S LAKE UNION NEAR DANIELS

You were eating lunch on a bench at the small park to the East of Daniels. I was walking my dog, you said hi and asked about my dog’s breed (German Shorthaired Pointer). Coffee, drinks? When: Wednesday, August 7, 2013. Where: Near Daniels Broiler. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919896

ELEVATOR RIDE SWEDISH

OPA

We rode the elevator to the 7th floor Monday. Made eye contact, started a chat. I thought you were dreamy and very polite, letting me into the line first. Me: girl in the dress. You: boy with the buff arms. When: Monday, August 5, 2013. Where: Swedish Hospital Elevator. You: Man. Me: Woman. #919895

MYSTICAL CONNECTION

We made eye contact on the street near Black Coffee. I could tell instantly from your eyes that you were a mystic. Your energy was so powerful and knew immediately we connected. Did you feel it too? You did. When: Saturday, August 3, 2013. Where: Summit & Pine. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919894

CUTIE ON THE 48

We each had a six-pack next to us. An old fruit can or something rolled by my foot and you threw it away for me. We smiled at each other as you stepped off the bus. Lets grab a beer;) When: Monday, August 5, 2013.

Ballard Health Club

Librarian hot pig-tailed brunette with glasses on stairmaster. Seen you a couple times, always steal glances. I was in a Grails t-shirt, trying to subtly dance to my tunes while working out.

When: Monday, August 5, 2013. Where: Ballard Health Club. You: Woman. Me: Man.

August 3, 2013. Where: Albertson’s Magnolia. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919884

DEXTER BUS STOP

You were waiting for a bus, stripped slacks, cute blouse, freckles. Me stopped (GMC SUV) at the bus stop because of traffic, we were checking each other out. Yes, I saw you looking! ;) Meet for coffee or drinks? When: Tuesday, July 30, 2013. Where: Dexter bus stop, near Aloha ST. You: Woman. Me: Man. #919883

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SAVAGE LOVE

Vacated BY DANIEL BERGNER AND CHRIS SAVAGE

Dear readers: Two excellent writers stepped in to answer the Savage Love Letter of the Day while I was on vacation, and I wanted to share two of their responses in the column this week. (The SLLOTD appears daily— cough, cough—on Slog, The Stranger ’s blog, and is blasted out to folks who have the Savage Love app.) First up is Daniel Bergner. He’s the award-winning author of four books of nonfiction. His newest book is What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, which Salon said “should be read by every woman on earth.”

I came out as gay during my marriage five years ago. (I’m a woman who doesn’t like the word “lesbian.”) I want to be in relationships with women, get married, etc., but I haven’t dated since my divorce. But I’m ready to start. I started on Craigslist in the w4w section and then moved to the m4w section, looking to fulfill a pegging fantasy. In working up the courage to respond to one guy’s ad—and then e-mailing/texting a total stranger that I was masturbating—I thought of asking for my own fantasy: intruder sex with a stranger. I asked if we could first “meet” without meeting: go to a coffee shop, sit across the room from each other, and flirt via text. If that went well, I wanted him to follow me to my place (stalk me), break in, rough me up a little, fuck me, and leave. That was too intense for him. Which is fine. There are other guys. I don’t consider this a rape fantasy. I am NOT turned on by rape. I’ve been raped, and it was the worst experience of my life. This is consensual sex. I don’t want to meet directly because I want him to remain a stranger. I want to be safe. I’ll have a safe word. I would also like to discuss this with my therapist, who I’ve been seeing for years, because I was sexually abused by my father, my cousin, and my mom’s boyfriend. I feel so hung up all the time by the fear of being raped that it has restricted my ability to enjoy anything. Maybe by doing this I can face that fear and no longer be controlled by it. I’m also completely turned on by it. My questions: Can I do this safely? Is this healthy? Am I still a gay girl if I fulfill some kinky fantasies with men? Not Wanting Rape

and texted and asked to get rough with you.

I am sounding like a prude and a killjoy. I’m not. I’m pretty sure you can pull off some version of what you wish—with a measure of safety— when you’re thinking a little more clearly. I’m all for seizing ecstasy in the present while exorcising the horrors of your past. I’m just saying, know thyself a tad better. When you’re thinking more clearly, you’ll be a better judge of the right not-rapist, one who will respect your script.

As for your last question— “Am I still a gay girl?”—let go of categories. Our human complexity outdoes the divides. If you’re turned on by both genders—and almost every bit of research I’ve encountered over the last eight years of writing about desire suggests that women often are—count yourself lucky. Your options are enviably wide. —DANIEL

BERGNER

Next up is Chris Savage, Michigan’s most widely read progressive political blogger. Rachel Maddow calls Chris’s blog—Eclectablog.com—“the indispensable Michigan politics source.” In addition to his writing, he is an organizer for the Michigan Democratic Party, where work is already under way to return control of Michigan’s state government to Democrats in 2014. You can (and should) follow Chris on Twitter @Eclectablog.

I am a 21-year-old straight male. I am in love but miserable. My girlfriend has a bad temper and is extremely needy. She is rude to my 7-year-old brother and gets angry when I spend time with him. She won’t allow me to see family or other friends because I have to spend all of my free time with her. Sometimes she hits me when she’s angry. She reads all my texts, but when I ask to read hers, she won’t let me. The problem is, I love her. She says she can’t live without me, and I’m worried that if I break up with her, she’ll do something drastic. What can I do? Please help! Manipulated Man

So you haven’t talked to your therapist about this but you’re reaching out for advice online, you’re declaring yourself a gay woman but you’re starting your post-divorce erotic life hunting for sex with men, you’d like that sex to commence with a “meeting” that is a nonmeeting, and you want to be stalked, roughed up a bit, and fucked by an intruder in a way that bears only a minimal (and constructive) relationship to your having been raped and, before that, sexually abused by an assault squad of family members. Since your letter is full of paradox, can I tell you something paradoxical? Your fantasies are utterly hot and are absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, but they scream out Slow down and seek serious counsel! Do you see the pattern, NWR? Everything you want, everything you lust for, is at the same time somehow avoided or semi-denied. And it’s not that you’re unwise about yourself. You do draw connections. Father, cousin, mom’s boyfriend performed some work on the core of your psyche, where eros lives, and probably laid down some of the wiring for your current yearnings. This does not mean your fantasies are weird (rape fantasies—I’m going to call them that—are among the most common sexual scenarios women imagine while masturbating or having sex), but it does mean you’ve got some deeper thinking to do before you take real risks. Because what I’m sensing is searing heat, a swirl of confusion, and a deluded hope that you can reliably control the forces you’re about to unleash. “I have a safe word.” Not necessarily, NWR. Words aren’t always going to be heeded by total strangers you’ve only glimpsed

Let’s take a look at a few of the descriptors you used for this hideous person you say you’re in love with: bad temper, needy, rude, angry, violent. Based on your description, I’d throw in manipulative and controlling, too. Where are all the positive words people in love normally use?

In other words, why do you love her? Because the person you have described is decidedly unlovable.

Here in Michigan, the right-wingers that have taken over our state have demonized our teachers and made “union member” into a slanderous phrase. They’ve worked overtime to take away women’s reproductive rights, and raised taxes on the poor and the elderly. They’ve been complete assholes to everyone but their business pals. But every now and then, they do something nice. When they do, people fall all over themselves to thank them. Then these assholes turn around and do the same stuff all over again.

That’s the position you’re in. You have a choice to make—continue to be treated like a doormat by this abusive woman, or recognize that you’re being abused and kick her to the curb. You’ll soon find out that she can live just fine without having you to wipe her feet on. You’re fortunate, MM: You can do this now. In Michigan, we have to wait until Election Day 2014. —CHRIS SAVAGE

A big thank-you to Daniel Bergner and Chris Savage for filling in for me over the last two weeks. To read all of their SLLOTD responses, go to slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/ savage-love.

On the Savage Lovecast: Brazilian waxes for men, from the waxer’s perspective, at savagelovecast.com

mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter

JOE NEWTON

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SHOE LIQUIDATION SALE! 8/23, 8/24, 8/25 $50 & under 912 Alaskan Way Seattle Trees Collective / Greenwood $30 off coupon Inside. Incredible selection, flowers, concentrates, edibles, clones, and more! 206-257-4407/ 1052 Greenwood Ave N

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