Seattle Weekly, May 23, 2012

MAY 23–29, 2012 I VOLUME 37 I NUMBER 21

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inside» May 23-29, 2012 VOLUME 37 | NUMBER 21 » SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM

»25

»31

»10

up front 7

NEWS

THE DAILY WEEKLY | Reichert is vulnerable, Greyhound is sued, and more.

10 FEATURE

BY KEEGAN HAMILTON | Several

troubling developments, including a spike in suicides, have followed Pierce County’s decision to turn over their mental-health operations to a private company, OptumHealth—with some patients in dire need of long-term psychiatric care instead turned loose, held in jail, or even pawned off on King County.

in back SIFF picks, Folklife, and more.

20 ARTS

31 | LA BOUCHERIE | Pork rules at this Vashon Island locavore mecca.

33 | FIRST CALL | A swig of Argentina.

34 | A LITTLE RASKIN | Currying favor with a Mariner.

35 MUSIC

35 | LASER SHOWS | The quintessential

’70s event never went away.

No Clasp Bracelets Flex-it® Stretch-to-fit

36 | REVERB | fun. gets a hit on Glee,

and Detective Agency wants to be one.

38 | THE SHORT LIST | Black Bananas,

Xiu Xiu, and more.

other stuff

22 | PERFORMANCE 24 | VISUAL ARTS 30 | FILM CALENDAR 33 | FEATURED EATS 41 | SEVEN NIGHTS 43 | TOKE SIGNALS 44 | DATEGIRL

20 | STAGE | Accents versus actors

in a Joe Orton revival.

22 | EAR SUPPLY | Cage old and new.

24 | THE FUSSY EYE | Steel petals.

25 FILM

25 | SIFF PICKS & PANS | From French kitchen drama to Norwegian curling comedy.

28 | THIS WEEK’S ATTRACTIONS

Murder in Norway, aspiring dancers, and the end of Pinochet.

»cover credits

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Great Expectations Celebrates More Than 35 Years of Dating Service Experience

6

Dallas-The year was 1976, America was celebrating the bicentennial, gas was only 59 cents, the first Apple computer was created, Matsushita introduced VHS video to compliment Sony’s Beta Max, and the modern day matchmaker was born.

In February 1976, Great Expectations opened their doors for the first time. The idea for video dating came about when founder, Jeffrey Ullman, was at a dinner party and ran into an old college friend. As they spoke, she began telling him some of her recent blind-date horror stories, and how she was having a difficult time meeting single men in general.

Ullman, who started tinkering with videos as a journalism student in college, took the idea of a video dating service to his parents. A dating company that markets professional singles to the type of person they’re

looking for.

Great Expectations started out as a small family business, Ullman’s parents gave him the startup loan, has now grown into a multimarket dating service.

With more than 35 years of experience, Great Expectations has continued to not only set the standard in the dating world, but also the business model for all dating services. Constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve, Great Expectations was the first dating service to take old school matchmaking methods and mix them with modern technology to help singles meet the love of their life.

“When Great Expectations first started, members would come into their local center for their interview with the matchmakers, and they would then continue to come into the center each week to make their selections, or find out who selected them, but with the emerging of the internet and

online dating we decided a few changes needed to be made. In the late 90s we introduced GE Online. It’s a private and secure website accessible only to GE members to view profiles, watch video interviews, and make their selections from the privacy of their home, but all members are still required to have their initial interviews in person at the local center.”” said Jennifer, Seattle Center Director.

Great Expectations is one of the few dating services around today that offer background checks and emotional screenings of all potential members before allowing them to join. Great Expectations also does all of the photography that are found in the member profiles.

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GREENHOUSE & LIGHT

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n May 2009, Thurston County residents Michael and Shirley Williams purchased Greyhound bus tickets for a trip from Olympia to Detroit. “The Dirty Dog” is not exactly known for creature comforts, but the couple claims they were assured that Michael, confined to a wheelchair because of complications from a stroke, would have a handicap-friendly seat and other basic accommodations during the 25-day journey. But according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month in Western Washington federal court, Williams was treated like a second-class citizen in almost every conceivable away. The miseries he allegedly endured include: • Not being allowed to exit the bus with other passengers during scheduled stops.

• Getting “knocked over on the bus when There’s been a lot of fearmongering over the driver failed to secure [his] wheelchair” the U.S. Department of Justice’s proposed and drove unsafely. consent decree with the city over police • Being “reliant upon strangers to carry his reforms. The feds reportedly want an outside body up and down the bus stairs.” monitor, a role Mayor Mike McGinn has lik• Getting “repeatedly subjected to profanened to a “shadow mayor.” Similarly, a Seattle ity and blame” from bus drivers for slowing Times source referred to the proposed monidown the voyage. tor as a “shadow [police] chief.”

• Being refused access to a bathroom (the “It’s not true at all,” says Cincinnati Mayor onboard toilet was not handicap-friendly), Mark Mallory. “The mayor is still the mayor. and “forced to attempt to ‘pee in a cup.’ ” The chief is still the chief.”

Williams and his wife understandably Cincinnati had just such a DOJ-sanctioned ditched the bus and found another way monitor for six years after the feds investigated to Detroit and back. But when they called his city’s police force and worked out a consent Greyhound to complain, they allegedly decree. While Mallory came to office several were ignored. years into the process, the mayor says he never Last Monday, both Michael and Shirley observed the monitor trying to control police sued Greyhound under the Americans With or city decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Disabilities Act, claim“As I recall, he was ing they suffered “pubdealing mostly with prolic humiliation” and cesses and procedures,” Print is great, but if you “emotional distress” as a Mallory says of monitor want to see rex Velvet’s . . . result of the bus drivers’ latest dastardly, mustachioed video in his Saul Green, a Detroit ongoing war of words with Phoenix Jones, “extreme, callous, and lawyer and former U.S. you’ll have to check out The Daily Weekly. outrageous conduct.” attorney in Michigan SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM/DAILYWEEKLY They seek reimbursenamed by the Times as ment for travel expenses a possible monitor for (current price of two tickets from Seattle to Seattle. For instance, the mayor says, Green Detroit: $484) and medical costs, as well as was looking at how officers were trained and damages “in excess of $75,000.” whether they were following new procedures A Greyhound spokesperson declined such as filling out “contact cards,” which to comment on the pending litigation, but documented every officer interaction with a said in an e-mail that the company’s goal is member of the public. to “make sure every Greyhound passenger In fact, Green wasn’t even living in Cincinhas a safe and enjoyable travel experience.” nati, points out John Eck, a professor of crimAs for Greyhound’s handling of passengers inology at the University of Cincinnati. When with disabilities, they say that with 48 hours he periodically came to town, he tended to notice, they “can assist with boarding and pull a bunch of reports from the previous de-boarding buses, luggage, transfers, stowmonths and give feedback to the city. “It typiage, and retrieval of mobility devices,” during cally wasn’t all bad or good,” Eck says. transfers, meal and rest stops, and other times “The only time there were major blow“as reasonably requested.” ups—and there were damn few of them as There was no mention of whether the far as I can recall—was when there were pee cup is complimentary or comes with an ridiculous stances from the city,” Eck adds. added fee. KEEGAN HAMILTON » Continued on page 9

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news» The Daily Weekly » from page 7

Crazy Eighth

The perception is accepted as fact at this point: Washington’s recently redrawn 8th Congressional District was crafted into a Republican safe haven, an area impossible for Democrats to steal from the grips of Congressman Dave Reichert come November.

But little-known Democrat Karen Porterfield got her hands on some information that turned that perception on its head, which led her to formally announce her candidacy for Reichert’s seat two weeks ago.

Porterfield, who grew up in the Rainier Valley and touts a lengthy resume working for area nonprofits, was initially told to avoid the 8th like the plague. Once Reichert’s district was redrawn to stretch from South King County to Wenatchee, friends and political advisers consistently told Porterfield that a Democrat didn’t stand a chance. “I did receive condolence calls,” says Porterfield.

But since the district is basically new, Porterfield wanted more information. So she dropped $25,000 on a poll from McGuire Research Services, a Las Vegas–based company that conducts interviews in Spanish as well as English.

The poll, which surveyed 400 people in the 8th Congressional District from January 29–31, revealed some startling results. One question, standard in polls of this type, asked voters whether Reichert should be re-elected or replaced—with 43.8 percent responding that Reichert should be replaced and only 33.5 percent feeling that the sitting congressman deserved re-election. Porterfield’s political consultant, Tom Hujar, says that an incumbent considered “safe” typically polls in the neighborhood of 55 percent favoring re-election, with anything under that becoming “dicey.”

Information suggesting that the 8th has its issues with Reichert wasn’t the only surprising good news the Porterfield campaign received: Constituents polled responded that, “everything being equal,” they’d tend to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate 44 percent of the time as compared to 37.3 percent for a Republican, and that 31 percent identify as Democrats and 27.5 as Republicans—while 36.5 percent identify as independents.

“I thought it was going to be more Republican,” says Porterfield of her surprise over the poll results and what they say about the 8th District, a sentiment echoed by Hujar, who says he initially recommended that Porterfield stay out of the race.

Hujar notes there are still “plenty of hills to climb.” With Reichert certain to have a substantial financial advantage, Hujar says Porterfield’s campaign will rely on creativity and social media. And, says the candidate, “a lot of doorbelling.” MATT DRISCOLL E news@seattleweekly.com

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

The police department objected, for instance, when a member of Green’s team wanted to do a ride-along, according to Eck. He says the judge monitoring the consent decree “dropped a hammer” on the department for that one.

Whatever flashpoints there were seem to have dissipated in a rosy glow. Eck says that Cincinnati’s police union became an unexpected ally of reformers when the organization realized that many of the reforms—more transparent promotions, for example—were good for line officers. Green, in his final monitor’s report in December 2008, declared the effort he’d overseen “one of the most successful police reform efforts ever undertaken in this country.”

Maybe so, but it got off to a rocky start in 2002, says Mallory’s predecessor, Charlie Luken. Green did not try to take over either the police department or the city, the former mayor concedes. But he describes the first few years of Green’s oversight as “one hell of a battle” and “the toughest time of my life.” Given that the 60-yearold Luken served in Congress and as a newscaster as well as in City Hall for 12 years, that’s saying something.

He says a mutual contempt quickly developed between Green and the police command staff. Green may not have been physically present all that often, but Luken says members of Green’s team would descend upon police headquarters for a week or two at a time.

“They would expect full access and full attention,” Luken says. “The police chief threw them out. He said: ‘I can’t do my job. All I do is respond to their questions.’ ” (Green declined a request for an interview.)

According to Luken, Green would also tell police command staff how to handle certain things—not day-to-day crimes or hiring decisions, but, for instance, how to deal with mentally ill suspects. And in the early days, Green’s reports were sometimes brutally negative, according to Luken.

The former mayor says resentful police responded with a slowdown, and crime shot up. Luken heard calls for his resignation on right-wing and African-American radio stations alike. He says he was exhausted by 2005, when he decided not to run for office again.

Given all that, it makes perfect sense why our mayor would resist a monitor. McGinn’s approval ratings are already embarrassingly low, and ongoing confrontations at police headquarters won’t help him any.

Luken nevertheless says that, for Cincinnati, the ordeal “was worth it.” The city could not have gone on as it had been, with relations between the police department and the minority community so toxic that riots followed a police shooting in 2001. The former mayor says the DOJ brought needed reforms,

including mental-health training for all new officers.

But if anybody thinks the process is easy, Luken adds, “they’re nuts.” NINA SHAPIRO

9

Azadeh had to get away. The young Iranian-American was convinced that her phone was tapped. Someone, the CIA maybe, was eavesdropping. She felt anxious. It no longer seemed safe in her mom’s house. What she desperately needed was a long stroll alone to think her way out of this mess.

She walked for hours, pacing the streets of downtown Tacoma. She eventually slipped off her shoes and kept walking barefoot, lost in her mind, oblivious to the blisters forming as her soles rubbed the warm concrete. It was June 2010, and she had just disappeared for three days. Her mother had been so relieved to see her return, yet so worried she’d vanish again. She once tried to explain her behavior, but couldn’t quite find the words.

“They have chosen me for a special job,” Azadeh told her mom. “I can’t talk about it, but I’ll be safe. People can read my thoughts.”

Tall, with long black hair, bronze skin, and high cheekbones, the 24-year-old turned heads as she wandered into Tacoma’s gritty Hilltop neighborhood. Her solitary meandering stretched late into the evening, but she didn’t stop to consider that a pretty girl alone in a sketchy area after dark might be in danger.

The danger was that the aliens could snatch her up at any minute, she thought.

she’d met God—he was driving a pickup truck, he gave her a potion, and they had sex. Other times she became irritable, occasionally lashing out.

“One day she came in my bedroom and hit me,” Bowen recalls. “It was so out of character, it was frightening. We thought, ‘If she’s doing this, what wouldn’t she do?’ At that point we started hiding the knives, because she said to the police one time she was thinking about getting a knife.”

Azadeh’s descent into mental illness coincided with a tumultuous time in Pierce County health care. After the state legislature slashed millions of dollars in funding for mental-health services, the Tacoma region opted to become the first area in the state to put their local mental-health operations in the hands of private business.

OptumHealth, typically shortened to just Optum, was chosen in 2009 to coordinate the county’s crisis and psychiatric services.

As incentive to do the job well, Optum is allowed to keep for administration and profit 10 percent of the $54 million in state funds dispersed annually to Pierce County.

In an era when both public agencies and private companies are expected to do more with less, Optum consolidated and cut costs. The key component of the belt-tightening was a sweeping overhaul of the county’s approach to mentalhealth care. Under the old model, troubled patients like Azadeh

U

nwittingly caught up in this public-toprivate sector transition, Azadeh was constantly shuffled through the system, says her mother, never getting the help she desperately needed to get her life back on track. The family’s story is a shocking illustration of the fallout caused by budget cuts to mental-health services and the tactics employed by Optum in Pierce County to offset those cuts.

“They kept her in this kind of holding pattern where she didn’t get any real treatment,” Bowen says. “I said to one of the mental-health workers, ‘If you don’t treat her, she’s going to end up homeless.’ She said to me, ‘Well, there are lots of homeless people.’ I’m like, ‘Thank you, but this is my daughter.’ ” Cheri Dolezal, executive director and CEO of Optum’s Pierce County operation, couldn’t speak directly to Azadeh’s case, but she emphasizes that Optum’s goal is to stabilize patients in the least restrictive setting possible. “If you listen to a person, they’ll tell you what they need,” Dolezal says. “Sometimes they think they need to be hospitalized because that’s the way the system is, when in actuality there’s lots of things you can do in the community to help them feel safe, provide space for them to recover, and get them the support they need.”

But Bowen says waiting for Azadeh to ask for help was like waiting for someone in a coma to wake up and ask for medicine.

To improve her level of care, Azadeh’s family ultimately took an extraordinarily drastic measure: They sent her to live with her father in Iran.

Mad Medicine

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

BY PRIVATIZING ITS MENTAL-HEALTH SERVICES, PIERCE COUNTY HAS LED SOME FRUSTRATED PATIENTS TO TAKE EXTREME MEASURES. BY KEEGAN HAMILTON

10

J. Bowen, Azadeh’s mother, repeatedly called the police to report her youngest daughter missing. The cops picked her up eventually, but she refused to return home. They took her instead to a recovery response center operated by OptumHealth, the Minnesota-based corporation that manages Pierce County’s mental-health services. The facility offers 24-hour psychiatric crisis-intervention services, with room for 16 people to stay overnight in a medically supervised environment. But Azadeh didn’t want to stay. She wanted to keep walking.

After a few hours in Optum’s recovery center, Azadeh called a taxi to take her downtown, where she MORE resumed pounding the pavement.

ONLINE To browse documents, She eventually returned home, but data, and other source the sequence of events was repeated materials referenced the next day, and again the day after: in this story, visit Home. Wander. Police. Each time SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM/ she ended up in temporary treatDAILYWEEKLY ment, and each time she left abruptly, refusing to take her medication or make an appointment to see a therapist. Meanwhile, Bowen was worried sick that the next time her daughter walked out the door would be the last.

Azadeh began to show signs of paranoid schizophrenia— hallucinations, delusions, anger, anxiety, suicidal thoughts— shortly after she turned 19. She inherited her complexion from her Persian father, while her American mother’s side of the family handed down a history of mental illness, mainly bipolar disorder. Once an outgoing, creative type who apprenticed at an art gallery and helped produce an indie horror film, she would disappear for long periods with little recollection of where she went or what happened. She came back once in a daze, saying

a

»

were more often involuntarily committed to the state mental hospital, where they faced lengthy—and costly—stays. Optum, on the other hand, began preaching “recovery and reintegration into the community.” In other words, a stretch at the hospital is the absolute last resort.

“Their focus is supporting individuals in a manner that will allow them to continue on their road to recovery,” says Tim Holmes, the administrator for behavioral health at Puyallup’s MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital, an Optum contractor. “It’s a philosophical shift that’s at the core of these changes.”

On Optum’s watch, Pierce County has experienced a major decline in the number of involuntary commitments to the state mental hospital, and the average number of days spent by county residents in psychiatric facilities fell to nearly 40 percent below the state average. Those outcomes saved millions, and Optum was widely touted for its successes. With the state’s longterm budget outlook still bleak, Optum’s bottom-line-focused approach is enticing to some state and local officials, and the company is now working to expand its presence in Washington.

But while some of Optum’s results look good on paper, several troubling developments have coincided with the company’s brief reign in Pierce County. Both suicides and suicide attempts have steadily increased countywide since Optum took over in 2009. The number of mentally ill people booked into the Pierce County jail (formally, the Pierce County Detention and Correction Center) in downtown Tacoma has risen to the point that one official says it has become “a de facto psychiatric facility.”

And, although fewer people are being hospitalized for mental illness, sources say some patients in dire need of long-term psychiatric care are frequently turned loose or pawned off on King County so that Optum avoids footing the bill.

“We’d had enough of constantly calling the police and mental-health workers—months of hell not knowing where she was, or what she was doing, or why,” Bowen says, taking a long, exasperated pause (the family requested pseudonyms in order to protect their medical privacy, as well as the safety of individuals currently living in Iran). “It’s kind of backward. I had to take my daughter there to save her life.”

F

acing a massive budget shortfall in 2010, Washington governor Christine Gregoire issued an ultimatum to the state legislature: Slash spending by 6.3 percent—about $3 billion—across the board.

Lawmakers obliged, and, at least on the surface, it seemed as though the state’s business continued as usual. But two years down the road, a deeper look shows that some crucial agencies were hamstrung.

When it comes to mental-health services, Washington is divided into 13 autonomous Regional Service Networks, or RSNs. The bulk of their funding is federal, in the form of Medicaid, which the state matches dollar for dollar. In King County— and every RSN outside of Pierce County—the budgeting and mental-health services are managed by public agencies, not forprofit companies like Optum.

Amnon Schoenfeld, the director of King County’s Mental Health, Chemical Abuse and Dependency Services Division, says losing supplementary financial support from the state is especially painful because the RSNs have some leeway as to how that money can be spent. Medicaid cannot be used to pay for involuntary commitments, the mental-health professionals who evaluate people, or the legal costs associated with certain types of hospitalization. » CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

11

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

Mad Medicine » froM page 10

12

According to Rick Weaver, a consultant to the state’s Department of Social and Health Services’ (DSHS) Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, state dollars fund crisis response, residential treatment, and outpatient care (hospital or clinic visits that last fewer than 24 hours) for the most needy. Or at least that’s how it used to be. “In almost all parts of the state, there are no outpatient services left for people not on Medicaid,” Weaver says. “If you’re indigent and on the street and not on Medicaid, the ability to get outpatient mentalhealth services is essentially nonexistent.”

Washington is certainly not alone in its decision to shred the social safety net.

According to the National Alliance for Mental Illness, since 2009, states across the country have trimmed $1.8 billion from their budgets for spending on children and adults living with mental illness.

Of course, times aren’t so tough for everybody: OptumHealth generated $5 billion in revenue in 2011, according to an estimate from the business intelligence group GlobalData. In addition to managing public mental-health services in New Mexico, Utah, and other states, the company’s website says they offer “unique healthcare solutions to employers, health plans, public sector entities, and over 58 million individuals.”

A “unique healthcare solution” was exactly what the doctor ordered for Pierce County in 2007. Beset by costly lawsuits and bureaucracy, the Pierce County RSN was struggling even before the harshest wave of state budget cuts hit. Such was the situation when they took the unprecedented step (in Washington at least) of privatizing their mental-health system. The state managed the RSN for stretches of 2008 and 2009, but Optum beat out three other bidders for the contract and assumed control on July 1, 2009.

Optum Pierce County CEO Dolezal says she looked at the state cuts, about $6.2 million worth of which affected Pierce County’s mental-health services, as a chance to increase efficiency. “I don’t say, ‘We have a crisis, oh woe is me, there’s a budget shortfall,’ ” Dolezal says. “To me, I present it as an opportunity to really take this and figure out how we can do this and make sure people continue to get served.”

Dolezal, 64, is the former director of the Clark County RSN. One of her first moves was to meet with the public, administrators from Pierce County’s four mental-health clinics, and other stakeholders. The goodwill gesture paved the way for sweeping changes.

More than 130 employees from Pierce County Human Services were laid off, including case workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurses. Optum also compelled Tacoma’s four mental-health facilities to compete against each other for contract services.

“They talked to everybody and did interpersonal work before they made changes,” says Ginny Peterson, former president of the Pierce County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “Kudos to them on that; they made changes and are holding people’s feet to the fire. There is accountability now.”

Optum gave the 24-hour recovery response center a face-lift and revamped the county’s mobile outreach unit, outfitting a 38-foot van for a variety of on-the-spot medical services. They also established a “Peer

S

many individuals can be convinced to seek eated in a coffee shop a few blocks voluntary care through Optum’s new initiaaway from the family’s west tives, such as the 24-hour recovery response Tacoma home, Bowen and her center or the mobile outreach van. Not only eldest daughter warmly recall what are those options less restrictive, they are Azadeh was like before she got sick. She was also far less expensive. Medicaid will not pay kind and generous, they say—one Christmas for many of the costs associated with involshe bought everyone “gift card” donations to untary commitment, so the process tends to local charities instead of traditional presents. drain a disproportionate amount of the everShe worked as a babysitter, at a clothing dwindling state-only funds. store, and as a waitress at an Indian restauTechnically, Optum and other RSNs should rant, but her passions were poetry and art. have no influence over which people “She organized an art show that made over are involuntarily detained. Accord$3,000,” Bowen boasts, chuckling at the ing to the letter of the law, when memory. “It was based on sadomasochism.

REVOCATIONS someone is referred to the state I said, ‘Well, I’m not crazy about the theme, People committed to a mental-health facility for 90 days or more 250 mental-health system, a Desigbut if it sells . . . ’ ” NON-FATAL SUICIDE ATTEMPT nated Mental Health Professional 237 Azadeh’s older sister says the changes in 225 200 (DMHP) employed or contracted KING her younger sibling’s personality were subtle COUNTY 198 by the RSN evaluates the patient at first.

Then she became argumentative, 2006 — 41.6 150 and decides whether he or she anxious, 2007 — 40.3and paranoid, eventually losing 100 should be held for 72 hours. The touch with her longtime friends. Once she 2008 — 42.1 key criteria are whether the person was picked up for pounding on the door of 50 2009 — 42.1 58 poses “an imminent likelihood of an acquaintance from school, telling police 29 2010 41.4 serious harm” to themselves or she—thought there was a computer inside 13 0 others, or is “gravely disabled.” A the house controlling her thoughts. (The PIERCE COUNTY 2008 2009 2010 2006 — 66.1 superior court judge then decides acquaintance’s family didn’t follow through if the detainment should extend for on a restraining order, court records show, 2007 — 65 DETENTIONS another 14 or 90 days. and no criminal charges resulted.)

People detained for mental-health reasons for 72 hours or more 2008 — 62.8 2500 But, barring the “imminent “I empathize with the cops,” Azadeh’s sis2009 — 75.3 likelihood of serious harm,” the ter says. “They’re only allowed to do so much, 2000 2049 79.5 law also requires DMHPs to advise 2010 and—with some you could tell they wanted to 1743 SNOHOMISH COUNTY people of their right to be disdo more. They were called so many times for 1677 1500 — 46.7 charged if they agree to seek volun- 2006 such non-life-threatening things, but it was 1000 tary treatment. Dolezal says Optum 2007 42.7thing we could do.” the—only has made the voluntary aspect of the string of disappearances in June 2008After — 48.4 500 the law a point of emphasis, edu2010, Azadeh’s family finally convinced her to 587 2009 — 51.9 509 402 cating workers about “other diverresume taking medication. It was not easy. The 2010 — 47.4 0 sions to stabilize [individuals] in pills caused her to gain weight, and she com2008 2009 2010 WA Hospital Discharge Data, Comprehensive Hospitalization Abstract Reporting System (CHARS) 2006-20 that moment, and help reintegrate Source: plained that they leftCenter herforfeeling “numbed Washington State Department of Health, Health Statistics.

July 2011, Allout.”

Ages. them into the community.”

With dark red hair cropped short, oval-framed MENTAL-HEALTH Optum’s control of the purse glasses, and a lifetime’s worth of worry lines strings also gives them significant etched into her 59-year-old face, Bowen recalls EVALUATIONS influence over the way Pierce People detained for mental-health reasons for 72 hours or more waging “a daily battle of wills” with her daugh5000 County’s four mental-health treatter. “You can’t get mad,” she says. “You can’t 4000 ment centers do business. The get angry or she’ll just run away again. I got 4240 3987 3952 facilities must bid for contracts to her back on the meds, and she started getting 3000 work with patients from places a little well, and then she decides she doesn’t like the Pierce County jail. At want to take them anymore.”

2000 Good Samaritan Hospital, Holmes An incident in early 2011 changed every1000 says Optum “watches our trends thing. Azadeh left home early one evening 1142 963 736 and our rates” and reviews cases to planning to go shopping, but instead ended 0 see whether hospitalization could up aboard a bus to Seattle. After she vanished 2008 2009 2010 have been avoided, but ultimately, the first few times, Bowen figured out how to KING COUNTY PIERCE COUNTY when it comes to involuntary com- track down Azadeh using the GPS function Source: CY 2008~2010 Mental-Health Involuntary Treatment ACT (ITA) by Investigation County mitments, “they know that’s our on her cell phone. Dialing in the coordinates, independent authority.”

Bowen pinpointed her daughter’s location: a Optum’s strategy has succeeded in sharply Optum’s Peer Bridger program was singled seedy stretch of First Avenue South in Georgecutting costs, but has also raised concern. out for praise by the nonprofit Medicaid town, specifically La Hacienda Motel, made Schoenfeld worries that something tragic is Health Plans of America Center for Best Pracinfamous last year when Seattle police arrested bound to happen when people with serious tices. According to Optum, the program has the owner for allegedly selling guns and meth mental issues, who elsewhere in Washingserved 125 people since July 2010. Before Peer and allowing prostitution in the rooms. ton might be involuntarily committed, are Bridger, those 125 people accounted for 202 Bowen hopped in her car and sped up allowed to roam the streets. “If you make a hospitalization admissions, but only 42 afterI-5, arriving shortly after 11 p.m. The person mistake, it can have very real consequences,” ward—a 79.2 percent reduction that reportedly working La Hacienda’s front desk knew right he says. “But at the same time, they don’t want away which guest the panicked mother was resulted in savings of $550,215. to force someone into a hospital if outpatient But perhaps the most striking statistic from after. Azadeh had made a scene in the lobby [treatment] can work.”

Optum is the drastic reduction in the numa few hours earlier, bursting into tears upon Asked about the delicate balance between ber of individuals involuntarily detained in realizing she’d misplaced her ID card. public safety and patient needs, Dolezal says mental-health facilities. From 2008 to 2010, Bowen eventually got her foot in the door Optum errs on the side of freedom. “Are we nearly every other county in the state detained to Azadeh’s room and pleaded with her to perfect?” she says. “No. But I think we’re willroughly the same number of people per year come home. But Azadeh wasn’t going anying to take risks. We’re willing to take risks for as they had previously, according to the most where. As an adult, she was free to do as the sake of these individuals.” recent figures available from DSHS. But in she pleased, and she had more than enough Optum’s strategy sounds like a win-win: Pierce County, detentions per year dropped money to rent a room—about $3,000 that she Keeping people out of an insane asylum is not from 587 to 402, and “revocations”—people had been saving to buy a new video camera only more humane, it saves tax dollars. But committed for 90-day stays in the state mental and perhaps move to California to study digiwhen the messy unpredictability of mental hospital—plummeted from 58 per year to 13. tal media. Bowen left her name and number illness comes into play, things aren’t always so Dolezal says Pierce County was simply at the front desk with instructions to call in straightforward. detaining far too many people. In her view, » Continued on page 14 Bridger Program,” which connects patients with other individuals recovering from mental illness trained to work as counselors.

By some measures, Optum has been an improvement on the old system. It trumpets in press materials the fact that, despite the decrease in state funding, the RSN served 15,262 patients in 2010, a 25.9 percent increase over 2009. A Seattle Times article from August 2009 credits Optum’s mobile outreach van for “a 19.5 percent reduction in hospitalizations,” which saved more than $1 million.

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2009

2010

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2049

2010 — 79.5

SNOHOMISH COUNTY

1743

1677

2006 — 46.7 2007 — 42.7

1000

2008 — 48.4

587

509

402

0

2008

2009

MENTAL-HEALTH EVALUATIONS 5000

2010 — 41.4

PIERCE COUNTY 2007 — 65

People detained for mental-health reasons for 72 hours or more

2000

14

NON-FATAL SUICIDE ATTEMPTS Per 100,000 2007 — 40.3

50

500

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choenfeld is an outspoken critic of Optum. It rankles him that Optum keeps such a large cut of state funding for profit (the company netted $5.4 million in 2010) while publicly managed RSNs are obligated to keep administration costs to a minimum, using as much taxpayer money as possible for services.

To wit, King County keeps only 2.5 percent of public funds for management costs, versus 10 percent for administration and profit withheld

by Optum.

When the company submitted a proposal to DSHS last year suggesting the state downsize from 13 RSNs to three, with Optum controlling more of western Washington, Schoenfeld penned a response that called into question some of their supposedly positive outcomes.

2006 — 41.6

100

1500

case of emergency. Her phone rang the next morning.

“They said she was walking around halfnaked,” Bowen says. “She had been asking people to buy pot for her, and just throwing her money around.”

Bowen dialed King County’s crisis line, only to be informed that the local mentalhealth professionals were powerless to intervene unless Azadeh got arrested, failed to pay her bill, or threatened to harm herself or someone else. So when the motel called Bowen the next day to complain that Azadeh was having another episode, she summoned the police. “It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when you hope your daughter is arrested so she can get treatment,” Bowen says.

By the time police responded, Azadeh had left the hotel and was drifting around the Ave in the U District. Somehow she managed either to spend or lose all but $400 of her savings. King County mental-health workers took her out for a cup of coffee, talked about her situation, and, when she refused to check herself into a hospital, recommended she be involuntarily detained for 72 hours.

Although the circumstances of Azadeh’s Seattle misadventure are unique, several sources say she’s hardly the first Pierce County resident to end up detained in King County since Optum arrived on the scene.

(Although not explicitly stated in their proposal, the implication is that Optum would take over everything south of King County.) He noted that although Optum boasted that they served 15,000 people in 2010, nearly 26 percent more than the state-managed Pierce County RSN did in 2009, they neglected to mention that in 2008 the RSN provided services to more than 18,000 people—18 percent more than Optum’s total. Since 2008, King County has seen a corresponding 18 percent increase in its number of patients.

“We’ve definitely had people we’ve had to commit who were Pierce County residents and came up here,” Schoenfeld says. “There’s a profit incentive for Optum not to hospitalize people. It’s a natural area to look at to make sure that’s not driving decisions about what needs to happen when people with mental illness are presenting a danger to themselves or others.”

One Pierce County therapist, who requested anonymity in fear of a backlash for speaking out about Optum, says it has become so difficult to get detentions and involuntary commitments in Pierce County that patients are sometimes told to take a taxicab to King County so that they can get treatment. “It’s literally like we’re shipping them across the border,” the therapist says. “The length of [hospital] stay is down, but in five days they’re back in the community to attempt suicide again.”

The therapist also claims that, though the commitment process is supposed to be autonomous and objective, Optum has virtual control of who ends up in a respite bed, who gets turned away, and who gets recommended for an intensive stay at Western State Hospital in Lakewood. “We have to go to Optum for everything,” the therapist says. “Pretty much, Optum is God, and says what we can and cannot do.”

Optum’s track record in other states supports such claims. In New Mexico, where Optum manages $338 million worth of mentalhealth contracts statewide, the company was fined more than $1 million for failing to reimburse local providers in a timely manner, and reprimanded for ignoring psychiatrist recommendations to hospitalize certain high-risk mental patients. As punishment for the latter, part of Optum’s contract for juvenile forensic evaluations in New Mexico was altered last year.

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People detained for mental-health reasons for 72 hours or more

2009 — 51.9 2010 — 47.4 Source: WA Hospital Discharge Data, Comprehensive Hospitalization Abstract Reporting System (CHARS) 2006-2010.

Washington State Department of Health, Center for Health Statistics. July 2011, All Ages.

for 90 days, state law says that person must go “All the decisions are made based on the to a state mental hospital, typically Western profit motive,” says Susan Cave, the director of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department’s State. But getting in these days is easier said than done. forensic evaluation team. “People are denied Like nearly every other state entity, Westservices until they end up in jail or prison, ern State is strapped for cash. Although still where it’s really expensive. It’s a sad, sad Washington’s largest mental institution, its bed state of affairs.” capacity has dropped from 777 to 517 over the Santa Fe district court judge Michael Vigil past five years due to budget cuts. Making mattells of one case in which a child with a lengthy ters even more difficult, the hospital is shorthistory of violence attacked his mother. Optum staffed on psychiatrists, who struggle to handle wanted to send him back home to live with his even the reduced number of patients. family and younger siblings, while the judge When the legislature saw fit to cut spending and mental-health professionals familiar with and, consequently, reduce the number of beds his background felt he should be hospitalized for safety reasons. Optum relented in the face of a court order, but the youngster “People are denied services was stuck in juvenile detention while until they end up in jail or prison, the conflict was resolved. “It was almost like we were going to go through this where it’s really expensive. less-restrictive process just to have them It’s a sad, sad state of affairs.” fail, and then we could move to the next level,” Vigil says. “My position was, we at Western State, the state’s population did not can’t do that with children’s lives.”

And lives are certainly at stake: In 2008, there suddenly become more mentally stable. Now the lack of vacancies has created a logjam of were 508 attempted suicides—a rate of 62.8 per sorts: Patients waiting for space to open up at 100,000 residents—in Pierce County, according Western State are housed in smaller, less careto hospital admissions data from the Departintensive mental hospitals—such as Fairfax ment of Health. Those numbers increased to Hospital in Kirkland and Navos Mental Health 603 and 75.3 in 2009, and again to 636 and 79.5 Solutions in West Seattle—or, increasingly, in in 2010. With the exception of Skagit County, the emergency rooms of major hospitals like where suicide attempts also spiked over the Harborview. past two years, the suicide-attempt rates for Former King County Executive Randy western Washington counties have remained Revelle, now senior vice president of the comparatively constant. Even more unnerving, Washington State Hospital Association, says the number of successful suicide attempts in Washington ranks near the bottom nationPierce County steadily increased from 2008 to ally in number of mental-health beds per 2011, from 124 per year to 145, according to the capita. Revelle is leading a Task Force on Pierce County medical examiner.

Inpatient Mental Health, seeking solutions to Dolezal says the spate of suicides at Joint the dilemma. “We have a serious problem,” Base Lewis-McChord partially skewed the says Revelle, who recently announced he’d be data, and notes that Optum has erected billretiring by the end of the calendar year. “Peoboards to educate the public about the new ple can’t get into Western State, can’t get into crisis-hotline number. “We’re actively doing one of their local mental-health facilities, and something,” Dolezal says. “But there’s no end up waiting in the halls of our hospitals excuse for it.” without adequate support, without adequate care, and being put into rooms not really fter a brief stay in Seattle’s made for psychiatric care. It’s a real mess.”

Northwest Hospital and Medical The situation is so dismal that in 2010 the Center, Azadeh was sent back to state legislature unanimously passed a new law Pierce County, where she was (HB 3076) that allows mental-health workers placed in Telecare, an evaluation and treatto solicit input from family members, friends, ment center in Tacoma contracted by Optum. neighbors, etc., about whether a person should The facility is akin to a halfway house for mental be involuntarily detained. But because more patients, allowing stays of up to 17 days for peopeople would assuredly be sent to Western ple who fit the criteria for admission to Western State, the lawmakers delayed enacting many State Hospital—the largest and most careprovisions until 2015 to avoid the extra costs— intensive mental facility in the state—but might an estimated $12 million for a new ward, addibenefit from a somewhat less-restrictive envitional staff, and operating expenses. ronment. According to Telecare’s website, the At Harborview, Psychiatric Nurse Manager staff “strives to awaken the hopes and dreams of Darcy Jaffe says mental patients sometimes the individual” and teaches “self-responsibility wind up on stretchers in the hallways when in order to foster their recovery and successfully the hospital reaches capacity. There is a unit transition them back to lower levels of care.” devoted specifically to psychiatric care, but only But, according to Bowen, even though 10 beds are available, and the daily treatment Azadeh’s condition did not improve, her costs are nearly double that at Western State, daughter was relocated to a group home after two weeks, where she was free to come and go with the King County RSN forced to pick up the tab. “We’re taking people from five states for as she pleased.

“It got to the point where [the Telecare staff ] trauma,” Jaffe says. “That part of ER starts to fill up, and it turns into chaos. Everybody knows said, ‘She’s eligible to go to Western State, but that patients are not getting the care they’ve we’re not going to put her there,’ ” Bowen says. been ordered by the court to receive.”

“Then she starts getting worse, she’s more Most RSNs have continued to involuntarily paranoid, saying there’s aliens and CIA agents detain roughly the same number of people they living upstairs. But when I mention this to the had prior to 2010—with two key exceptions: social worker there, he says ‘Oh, it’s too late to King County’s detentions jumped 28 percent petition [for a transfer to Western State]; we over the past two years, while Optum’s detencan’t do a thing right now.’ ” tions in Pierce County fell 31 percent.

When a judge decides that a mentally ill individual needs to be involuntarily committed » Continued on page 16

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Schoenfeld notes that King County is unique because it is home to several large mental-health facilities, and has, by far, the largest homeless population in the state. He also says the county lost “well over $20 million” in mental-health funding over the past four years as a result of state cutbacks, leaving little left over for education, outreach, case management, and other preventative services.

“A lot of those programs helped get people out of the hospital or kept them from going there in the first place,” Schoenfeld says. “We have to cut, and we end up spending more and more on inpatient [services]. It’s really been a vicious cycle, and it’s not saving anybody any money at all.”

Yet Optum is facing similar challenges in Pierce County, and they seemingly have devised a solution. Dolezal says budget realities demand expanded use of treatment alternatives—less-rigid, less-expensive facilities like Telecare or the Recovery Response Center where Azadeh ended up. “This isn’t where the country is going—‘Let’s see how many people we can detain and put in the hospital,’ ” Dolezal says. “The country is going to the rights of the individual.”

That may be true, but Optum’s new costcutting model for mental health only works if their intermediary treatment facilities are absorbing all the patients who previously would have wound up at Western State. And judging by one critical measure—the number of mentally ill people being booked into the Pierce County jail—Optum’s alternatives have not picked up the slack.

16

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ne hundred and forty-one people were referred for involuntary commitment at the Pierce County jail last year, compared to 82 in 2008 before the Optum era began. Judy Snow, the jail’s mental-health manager, says she has seen “a marked increase” in the number of inmates with mental illness, and recidivism—mentally ill inmates released and rebooked for another offense—has also been on the rise.

“They’re pleased with the reduction in hospitalizations,” Snow says of Optum. “I agree, hospitalization is not the answer. But if you have a reduction without community support, they’re going to end up in jail, and that’s what’s happening. The jail is becoming a de facto psychiatric treatment facility.”

A 24-year veteran of the Pierce County mental-health system and the top mentalhealth official at the jail since 2000, Snow says Optum tried to address mental-health issues at the jail in 2009. Specifically, the company implemented a policy under which each new inmate is scanned through a database to see if they’ve previously come in contact with the mental-health system.

Three Tacoma mental-health centers have jail liaisons who work with Snow and her staff to transition qualifying inmates out of jail and into mental facilities. But, according to Snow, those measures have not met the rapidly increasing demand for psychiatric services at the jail.

Barely five feet tall, even counting her large poof of blonde hair, Snow leads a tour of the jail to illustrate the depth of Pierce County’s mental-health crisis. The psych ward is on the third floor, separated from the main hall-

way by two sliding gates with thick steel bars.

The portals clank heavily as they open, and, spectacles perched on the end of her nose, Snow shouts “Clear!” to the guard on duty, who promptly locks the doors shut behind her with the press of a button.

On the other side of a Plexiglas barrier, men in gray and pink smocks lounge glumly around a table in a common area. A younglooking white guy with a short, mullet-style haircut approaches the partition and stares at the unfamiliar visitors with an utterly blank expression. A concrete wall separates the open space from a higher-security area containing several intense-looking cells outfitted with wire-mesh-and-Plexiglas doors so that the occupants are never out of the guards’ line of sight.

“They’re just mainly extremely psychotic,” Snow casually says of the occupants. “Everybody in here is just unable to be around anyone else.”

“It’s a very noisy unit,” the guard chimes in.

“You get a lot of people kicking and screaming and that type of thing.”

“Can you imagine having a mental illness in this environment?” Snow asks. “The jail is not a treatment facility, nor should it be. It’s tragic. These are very sick individuals.”

According to Snow, the Pierce County jail has room for roughly 1,400 inmates, and on average about 20 percent of them have major mental-health issues. She says administrators are “looking at ways to increase our mentalhealth high-intensity cells” to alleviate overcrowding, and she is optimistic that Optum will follow up on its vow to make additional changes after a key jail service contract with local hospitals is awarded in October.

In the meantime, Snow says that while Optum has succeeded in sending fewer Pierce County residents to Western State Hospital, many of those gains are superficial.

For instance, Snow points out that since 2009 there’s been a roughly 25 percent increase in the number of mental-competency evaluations performed at the jail, indicating that many of the patients Optum claims are receiving treatment in the community are likely ending up behind bars instead.

“To paint a rosy picture of Pierce County is not accurate,” Snow says bluntly. “We need additional services.”

Toward the end of the tour, Snow stops at the offices of the jail’s mental-health team.

The facility has on staff eight certified mental-health professionals who are independent from Optum and the Pierce County RSN, but who work closely with the county DMHPs during the detainment process.

When asked about the policies implemented

by Optum and offered anonymity, staff members don’t hold back their opinions.

“I’ve been here a long time and this is a real low point,” one says.

“We had one person where [the DMHP] wouldn’t detain them, but then jail wouldn’t release them because they were so psychotic,” another recounts. “[Optum employees] don’t use clinical words like ‘depressed’ or ‘paranoid’ or ‘hallucinating,’ ” the conversation continues. “It’s all euphemisms—‘Oh, they’re just having a bad day.’ ” “Maybe I’ll put that on my next evaluation form,” a colleague jokes in response. “ ‘This person is having a very bad day and needs to be detained for 90 days.’ ”

T

crisis of the situation, but it might be like doing surgery on someone when all they need is a Band-Aid.” That is Optum’s ideology in a nutshell— appealing for both its ostensible compassion and inherent affordability. The state did not move on Optum’s recent proposal to consolidate 13 RSNs to three, but DSHS officials say they are considering a less-radical restructuring, and Dolezal says Optum is eager to capitalize. “I would love to expand,” Dolezal says. “I think what we’re doing in Pierce County should be done other places. There’s no doubt about it.”

But Pierce County officials are still on the fence about Optum. In light of the ongoing issues at the jail and the steadily rising suicide rate, Deputy Pierce County Executive Kevin Phelps says the county has

“been having discussion about going back to the state.

“They assured us when we went to the RSN private-sector model, we would not see negative impacts in the community,” Phelps says. “We are starting to see some negative impacts, and we need to re-engage in dialogue with the state and Optum to see if we can mitigate those.”

Phelps recounts a recent meeting with the Pierce County Sheriff ’s Department when he was told that deputies had resorted to picking up homeless people and the mentally ill and taking them to tent cities rather than to shelters or mentalhealth facilities. “In some cases,” Phelps says, “they are literally picking up patients who otherwise might be in facilities receiving treatment and taking them to various

encampments around the county and dropping them off there.”

Stories like this help ease Bowen’s lingering doubts about sending Azadeh to Iran.

“Over here, she would have ended up out on the street,” she says. “There, if the family says she’s sick and the doctor says she’s sick, she’ll have to take her medication.”

Both Bowen and her eldest daughter say Azadeh’s condition has improved in recent months. She is much more talkative and alert, they claim, based on phone conversations and their visit to Iran late last year.

Through her family, Azadeh declined to be interviewed for this story. She did, however, offer one succinct comment about the state of mental-health care in Washington.

“I wish it was better,” she said. E khamilton@seattleweekly.com

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

hroughout 2010 and 2011, as Azadeh continued to battle her inner demons, she could increasingly be found praying inside a mosque not far from her neighborhood. She would stay all day, on some occasions begging the staff to let her remain after closing and spend the night.

The mosque leaders helped the Bowen family by summoning a Muslim doctor to tell Azadeh that the Quran did not forbid her from taking pills.

Azadeh’s parents divorced when she was 9. She had been raised in Iran, but after the split she came to Tacoma with her older sister and Bowen, who eventually remarried. Though hardly a devout Muslim, Azadeh was drawn to Islam, and relished the infrequent trips to Tehran to visit her father. She called the Iranian government “a façade” on her MySpace blog, but also posted a Deepak Chopra article that praised progressive developments in the country, noting that “two-thirds of Iran’s population consists of people under 30.”

At the mosque, Azadeh tried to convince two fellow worshippers to drive her to the airport, telling them she was sick and that the cure to her illness could only be found somewhere in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. When she mentioned moving to Iran to stay with her father, Bowen was initially mortified.

“At first I said, ‘That’s a horrible idea!’ ” Bowen recalls. “If she starts acting out in Iran, she’s going to be in big trouble. If she doesn’t wear a scarf or even talks to guys in public, she’ll go to jail.”

But as time wore on, and Azadeh was repeatedly chewed up and spat out by the mental-health system, the idea began to seem less and less outlandish. Bowen lived in Iran during the ’80s and early ’90s, and says that despite the strict Islamic rule, the country has one of the best publichealth systems in the Middle East. After everything the family had been through, a change of scenery—however extreme— seemed like the best option.

“Having a person in a house with mental illness who’s not getting treatment just kind of sucks the life out of you,” Bowen says. “After six years of having my daughter in my house, I was ready for the loony bin.

It was so hard.”

“Mom had to hit rock bottom,” adds Azadeh’s older sister. “She knew there was no other way.”

Bowen liked that Azadeh would have support from extended family members, and, perhaps more important, that she would have no choice but to take her medication. Despite her numerous interactions with police and the mental-health system, Azadeh was never in a setting where taking anti-psychotics was mandatory.

While her mother firmly believes a trip to Western State would have stabilized Azadeh and served as a wake-up call, several mental-health officials interviewed for this story—including some not affiliated with Optum—cautioned that lengthy hospitalizations are not a panacea. Nor is Western State a particularly pleasant place to stay, as last month’s grisly murder of one patient by another showed.

“If we involuntarily commit someone, it doesn’t mean it will be helpful,” says Holmes, the Good Samaritan Hospital administrator. “It may help the immediate

17

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BASEBALL

Shat Albert

Sure, Chone Figgins was an awful free-agent signing, arguably the worst in Mariners history. But Mariner fans will only have to put up with him and his $8.75 million yearly salary for another year and a half (unless the club releases him sooner), whereas fans of the visiting Los Angeles Angels are saddled with Albert Pujols for the next decade, at an average annual cost of $23.7 million. Figgins is hitting below .200 with two home runs, a start that has understandably led to his benching.

Yet the Mariners’ chief rival for the AL West cellar keeps trotting out Pujols, who’s posted statistics nearly identical to Figgins’ (a former Angel), to first base every day. Having shunned a similarly lucrative offer from his employer of the previous decade, the St. Louis Cardinals, Pujols has always gotten a pass from the media because he’s been a noble stepdad to a specialneeds daughter and never lets an interview slip by without an overt Christian reference. But like many elite athletes, he’s a surly prick with a dozen cars he doesn’t need. Here’s hoping Cardinal Nation comes out in drunken force to remind Pujols what a traitor he is, and that St. Louis looks primed for another trip to the World Series without him. (Four-game series runs through Sun.) Safeco Field, 1250 First Ave. S., 346-4001, seattle.mariners.mlb.com. $20 and up. 7:10 p.m. MIKE SEELY BOOKS

History in Suspension

FESTIVALS

Might Makes It Alright

With last year’s attendance estimated at 275,000, the Northwest Folklife Festival is bigger than the ongoing SIFF (about 150,000), bigger than out-of-town rival Sasquatch!

(22,000), bigger than Bumbershoot (100,000).

The four-day festival, now in its 41st iteration, will feature 800 acts on 25 stages: music, dance, theater, storytelling, juggling—yes, there will always be juggling—and more. This year’s boldface names may be Shelby Earl and Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band, but Folklife is all about discovery—wandering, eating, and encountering the music; it’s a democracy of the ears. The things that make Folklife such an artless good time are exactly the kind of things hipster tastemakers tend to dislike.

Folklife is unexclusive, there’s not much sense of fashion, and the audience gets to do more than hand over money and adulation. It has become refreshingly out of step with many of the prevailing attitudes—and totally unlike the

*

WED: SIFF

other big music and arts festivals in town. And don’t call Folklife stodgy! It’s even got an app this year (for Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone) to help keep track of its huge schedule. Seattle Center, nwfolklifefestival.org. $10 suggested. 11 a.m.–10 p.m. (Through Mon.) DESMOND FLEEFER

mon/5/28 SIFF

Fatal Encounter

If you took the Ian Birk/John Williams shooting and moved it to an island off the coast of Australia, you’d get something akin to the situation explored in The Tall Man, Tony Krawitz’s superb documentary about the mysterious death of an Aboriginal drunk taken into custody by a white cop on Palm Island. Only here the cop isn’t a jacked-up novice to the badge, but rather a seasoned “gentle giant” who’s well-respected by Aboriginal leaders. While

Out of Time

“I love Aubrey Plaza,” a colleague recently told me about her desire to see Safety Not Guaranteed. Never having watched Parks and Recreation, I now agree. With her dead-

FILM DISTRICT

Plaza and Duplass venture back in time.

pan impatience/intelligence, Plaza plays Darius, an intern at Seattle magazine sent to the Olympic Peninsula to help write a snarky takedown of some poor schmuck who thinks he’s invented a time machine. Only the sad, lonely Kenneth (Mark Duplass) isn’t quite so pitiful as he first seems. Working as a grocery-store clerk, driving a rusty old Datsun, and possibly paranoid about government agents monitoring him, Kenneth turns out to be a melancholy, time-obsessed, kindred soul to Darius. She’s fixated on a family tragedy in her past, and Kenneth seems equally unhappy with the present. There’s something way back that he wants to fix (unless that something lies in his own head). Directed by Colin Trevorrow, who’ll attend tonight’s screening, Safety capers through the now with comic assurance, but it’s always weighted by history and memory. A bright young thing of the moment, Plaza possesses a gravity beyond her years. (The movie opens June 8.) SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $11. 7 p.m. (Repeats 4:30 p.m. Fri.) BRIAN MILLER

the filmmaker’s sympathies clearly lie with the natives, he shrewdly constructs a nuanced narrative that lets viewers draw their own conclusions, and the score and cinematography give The Tall Man an artistic depth not often found in documentaries. Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., 324-9996, siff.net. $11. 6:30 p.m.

(Also: SIFF Cinema Uptown, 3:30 p.m. Wed., May 30.) MIKE SEELY

tues/5/29 AVANT-CLASSICAL

Odd Company

A violinist of Hilary Hahn’s popularity and acclaim could easily be resting on her laurels— content with a very well-remunerated career playing Mendelssohn in Muncie and Sibelius in South Bend, never venturing further afield than, say, an album of Gershwin transcriptions. She didn’t have to team up with avantgarde German musician Volker Bertelmann, aka Hauschka, who conjures haunting, spacious, sometimes quirky soundscapes mixing electronica with all sorts of inside-the-piano experimenting. (Sometimes bouncing a pingpong ball on the strings is just the creepy touch a piece needs.) And she certainly didn’t need to fly to Iceland and make a totally improvised CD with him (Silfra, just out on Deutsche Grammophon). Here just last October with an unconventional recital program that offered a generous handful of commissioned works, Hahn returns—not to the Benny, but to the Neptune—for a concert of more improv with Hauschka, solidifying her status as the classical superstar friendliest to the odd and unusual.

The Neptune, 1303 N.E. 45th St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org. $35. 8 p.m. GAVIN BORCHERT

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

An Irishman living in New York, Colum McCann captured that city during a distant yet resonant era in his National Book Award– winning 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin.

He begins with the ragged, near-bankrupt metropolis of 1974, at the very moment when Philippe Petit is about to wire-walk between the towers of the World Trade Center. Packed with characters (including two rivalrous Irish brothers), the novel expands panoramically, as if viewed by the unnamed Petit himself, 110

fri/5/25

Hahn embraces her avant-garde side with Hauschka.

GLENN ROSS

thurs/5/24

stories above. Below lies a city of strivers and survivors. There are miserable addicts and compassionate priests, moments of kindness and rank stupidity. Things seem on the verge of collapse, despite the heroics overhead—and dozens of smaller instances of courage and love that go unreported on the ground. (The next year would bring the famous “Ford to City: Drop Dead” headline in the Daily News.)

But if Let the Great World Spin has a theme, it’s the connectedness of New Yorkers: All those flawed citizens have a collective strength, like the wires in the cables that support the Brooklyn Bridge. Twenty-seven years later, with McCann then a resident of Manhattan, that mutual support would be demonstrated on a September morning. McCann never mentions 9/11, but you can feel the jet engines riffle the pages of his remarkable novel. Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Benaroya Recital Hall, 200 University St., 621-2230, lectures.org. $15–$70. 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

19

arts»Stage »REVIEW

The Speed of Sound

An old English farce bogs down in American mispronunciation.

BY KEVIN PHINNEY

S

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

D. HASTINGS

ome people are primarily visual in the way they process incoming stimuli.

I’m likely more auditory.

I can carry a tune (with far-from-perfect pitch) after catching it a few times through. Accents come fairly easily, too, meaning that I can not only mimic them, but hear them in a show when they come and go like streetcars. Maybe that’s why it’s so crazymaking to sit through a play where the actors slip in and out of dialect; it’s like hearing a song you like on the radio but being unable to dial it in well enough to enjoy.

That’s the first setback for Entertaining Mr. Sloane, an otherwise well-performed 1964 black comedy by Joe Orton, the English playwright/provocateur famously bludgeoned to death by a jealous lover three years later. (It was a murder that, pain aside, Orton might have relished, since his entire canon was rife with killing, sexual adventurism, and disdain for propriety of any kind.)

Inconveniently for the cast at the Schmee, Orton was as unrepentantly British as Monty Python, Ricky Gervais, or Russell Brand. His work requires a firm grasp of English dialects, and for such a small plot of land, there are multitudes of them—all informed by class and locale. Only when these elements are solidly in place does a comedy about homicidal class warfare have enough foundation to support Orton’s vicious satire. Otherwise it’s an evening of three acts and the occasional can’t-miss joke. Those concerns were enough for director J.D. Lloyd to bring in dialect coach Michael Loggins, and it’s hard to know where things went awry from there.

Orton’s first hit play follows the abrupt implosion of a family, triggered by wouldbe boarder Sloane (Harry Todd Jamieson), who’s quickly fingered by elderly patriarch Kemp (Mark Fullerton) as the delinquent who murdered his boss two years earlier. His middle-aged daughter Kath (Lisa Viertel) has an altogether different appraisal of the strapping young Sloane; she smothers the lad with motherly affection while simultaneously using her fading wiles to seduce him. When her brother Ed (James Cowan) drops by, it becomes abundantly clear that his offer to hire Sloane as his private chauffeur carries its own not-so-hidden agenda as well.

What follows is a comedy of manners lampooning stuffy British mores that would play amusingly enough if the Schmee’s production moved at a gallop instead of a

20

Jamieson (flanked by Viertel and Cowan) as the disruptive visitor.

canter. Lloyd seems to think that if the show was taken up to tempo, Orton’s clever lines and plot twists might be lost on an audience straining to catch the accents. The sluggish staging only emphasizes the performers’ attempts to enunciate each working-class word. Suspension of disbelief dies one moment at a time. It’s like dancing with a partner who’s counting each step rather than moving to the music.

All this is a shame for the cast. Viertel’s performance as Kath finds that sweet spot between sympathetic and just plain pathetic, and she’ll pinch it until you squeal. Jamieson sketches out Sloane much as Orton might have intended: a lazy, licentious Lothario who puts his own decidedly sexual spin on situational ethics. Fullerton’s Kemp is a onenote dyspeptic grumbler whose silence about Sloane’s past is never explained. Cowan’s Ed is an effete social climber who ridicules the family that cast him out after a teenaged romantic indiscretion.

Technically, the show is on much firmer footing, with well-coordinated costumes, lights, and sound (the soundtrack offers a catchy assortment of early-’60s radio fare).

A remarkably open and versatile set from designer Michael Mowery is ideally suited to Orton’s spy-through-the-keyhole dissection of British family values.

In the last analysis, though, it’s about putting the script over in a way that engages the eyes and the ears. The lesson here: Just because a play is in English doesn’t make it English. E stage@seattleweekly.com ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Ave., 800-838-3006, schmeater.org. $15–$23.

8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends June 16.

May 31 – June 7 shearmadnessontour.com

Opens Next Week!

TICKETS AT STGPRESENTS.ORG, BY PHONE (877) 784-4849, THE PARAMOUNT THEATRE BOX OFFICE & 24-HOUR KIOSKS powered by GROUPS OF 10 OR MORE CALL (206) 315-8054

SEAT TLE THEATRE GRO UP I S A N O N - P R O F I T O R G A N I Z AT I O N WE WELCOME YOUR SUPPORT | Visit us at STGPRESENTS.ORG

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

The Moore Theatre

21 Weekly_HalfVert_ShearMadness_5.24.indd 1

5/14/12 11:15 AM

arts»Performance ENCHANTED TALES Gillian Jorgensen’s new take on

BY GAVIN BORCHERT

Stage OPENINGS & EVENTS

THE CURSE OF MALIBU TIDES Fantastic.Z’s

ensemble-created show is a murder mystery set backstage at a soap opera. JewelBox/Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave., jewelboxtheater.com. $15–$17.

Opens May 30. 7 p.m. Wed. Ends June 27.

DITA VON TEESE BURLESQUE The world-famous burlesque queen presents a new show. The Neptune, 1303 N.E. 45th St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org. $35–$60. 8 p.m. Thurs., May 24–Fri., May 25.

MY SON PINOCCHIO A musical version, with songs by Stephen Schwartz, of the Disney classic. Studio East, 11730 118th Ave. N.E., #100, Kirkland, 425-820-1800. $12–$15. Opens May 25.

Runs Fri.–Sun.; see studioeast.org for exact schedule.

Ends June 17.

STORMWATER: LIFE IN THE GUTTER Stokley

SCAN

T H I S CO D E

TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE

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IPHONE/ANDROID APP

Towles’ one-man show traces the travels of urban rainfall. Performed as part of Folklife, on the Narrative Stage in the Alki Room, Seattle Center. Free. 6 p.m.

Fri., May 25, 1 p.m. Sat., May 26.

WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE Mixing your

suggestions with Star Trek tropes in this improv comedy show. Ethnic Cultural Center/ Theatre, 3931 Brooklyn Ave. N.E., 800-838-3006, seattleexperimentaltheater.com. $12. 8 p.m. Thurs., May 24–Sat., May 26.

FOR MORE EVENTS OR VISIT

seattleweekly.com

CURRENT RUNS

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

• BED SNAKE Created by Washington Ensemble

22

Theatre’s Noah Benezra and Hannah Victoria Franklin, Bed Snake takes just 70 minutes to work its malevolent magic, all revolving around a slacker who sells his soul for mad microphone skillz and finds himself sucked into the underworld as if via pneumatic tube. Swirling at the center of the maelstrom is the love/hate dynamic between fanboy Wolf (Benezra) and the devilish rap goddess Kry$tal (Franklin), who has collected many souls before his. Starting as a hopeless dweeb, for Wolf to sell his soul like Robert Johnson seems like more than a fair bargain—though once he becomes her rap equal, Wolf finds it hard to win Kry$tal’s love.

Melody may creep in occasionally, but most of the soundtrack is a Satanic roar of energy, braggadocio, and violence, augmented by grainy film clips and bloody vidgames. Elissa Eskridge’s smoldering, stuttering choreography is executed with the precision of a Lady Gaga show. Amiya Brown’s spray-paint designs and lighting make good use of WET’s shoebox theater; the supporting cast dances their asses off (at one point, they’re undulating on the walls); and Benezra holds his own against Franklin, who commands a stage like few others. After seeing Bed Snake, you just may want to sell her your soul, too. KEVIN PHINNEY Washington Ensemble Theatre, 608 19th Ave. E., washingtonensemble.org. $10–$50. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.– Mon. Ends May 28.

THE BOOK OF LIZ STAGEright Theatre presents Amy & David Sedaris’ picaresque about the travels of a cheeseball-maker. Freehold Theatre, 2222 Second Ave. Suite 200, 800-838-3006, seattlestageright.org. $15.

8 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends May 26.

• CAFÉ NORDO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Tour “The World’s Most Elusive Culinary Museum” while savoring five courses plus wine. Washington Hall, 153 14th Ave., 800-838-3006, cafenordo.com. $60–$80.

Runs 7:30 p.m. Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri.–Sat., plus 7:30 p.m.

Sundays starting June 3. Ends June 17.

CAPTAIN SMARTYPANTS: A PANTY LINE A new Broadway-spoofing show from the Seattle Men’s Chorus’ comic small ensemble. Erickson Theatre Off Broadway, 1524 Harvard Ave., 388-1400, captainsmarty pants.org. $15–$25. 8 p.m. Fri., 8 & 11 p.m. Sat. Ends May 26.

Send events to stage@seattleweekly.com, dance@seattleweekly.com, or classical@seattleweekly.com See seattleweekly.com for full listings. = Recommended

•

fairy tales of foreign lands. Youth Theatre Northwest, 8805 S.E. 40th St., Mercer Island, 232-4145. See youth theatre.org for schedule and ticket info. Ends June 10.

ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE SEE REVIEW, PAGE 20.

THE FULL MONTY Blue-collar guys on hard times turn to stripping. Bainbridge Performing Arts, 200 Madison Ave. N., Bainbridge Island, 842-8569. Runs Thurs.–Sun.; see bainbridgeperformingarts.org for exact schedule.

Ends May 27.

IN TENTS Teatro ZinZanni’s kid-friendly spinoff cabaret.

Teatro ZinZanni, 222 Mercer St., 802-0015. $19–$22.

Runs 11 a.m. some Sat.–Sun. through July 15; see dreams.zinzanni.org for exact schedule.

LEAVING IOWA A typical American family road trip is packaged into comedy. Taproot Theatre, 204 N. 85th St., 781-9707, taproottheatre.org. $15–$37. 7:30 p.m. Wed.– Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 2 & 8 p.m. Sat. Ends June 16.

MENU Order whatever topics you like in Unexpected Productions’ “night of a la carte improv.” Market Theatre, 1428 Post Alley, 587-2414, unexpected productions.org. 8:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends June 8.

THE PRODUCERS Richard Gray and Brian Earp star in Mel Brooks’ blockbuster. Village Theatre, 303 Front St. N., Issaquah, 425-392-2202. $22–$62. See villagetheatre. org for exact schedule. Ends July 1.

SEX IN SEATTLE 20: HAPPILY EVER AFTER The long-running stage serial about Asian-American women winds up. West of Lenin, 203 N. 36th St., 323-9443, sexinseattle.org. $12–$16. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends May 26.

TEATRO ZINZANNI: CALIENTE! Mexico meets Moulin Rouge!. Leading the 3.5-hour spectacle are Tres (Christine Deaver) and Cinco (Robert Lopez), an overeager sister/brother act who sing, dance, and harass the audience. ERIKA HOBART Teatro ZinZanni, 222 Mercer St., 802-0015. $76 and up. Runs Wed.–Sun.; see zinzanni.org for exact schedule. Ends June 10.

THIS WIDE NIGHT Chloë Moss’ play about two former prison inmates trying to preserve their friendship on the outside. Seattle Public Theater at the Bathhouse, 7312 W. Green Lake Ave. N., 524-1300, seattlepublic theater.org. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends June 10.

•

THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR & OTHER ERIC CARLE FAVORITES Canada’s Mermaid Theatre

brings three favorites to life. Seattle Children’s Theatre, Seattle Center, 441-3322. $20–$36. See sct.org for schedule and availability. Ends June 14.

EarSupply

» by gavin borchert

Uncaged

John Cage’s 1992 score for FOUR 6 asks each player to choose 12 separate sounds, and then simply lists a series of start and stop times within a 30-minute frame (3’40” <–––> 4’55”, for example), leaving everything else up to the performer. On a recent quiet Sunday evening in a Laurelhurst living room, rehearsing for this Friday’s performance, harpist Melissa Walsh first establishes a bucolic mood—until Stuart Dempster rattles a xylophone mallet among the pipes of his trombone, Neal Kosaly-Meyer barks “Hah!”, and William O. Smith produces a similar high squeak on his clarinet. As the piece continues, even Walsh’s pretty harp starts to sound ominous surrounded by the sepulchral trombone, shrill clarinet, and, most creepily, Kosaly-Meyer’s throat-shredding vocal acrobatics—a sort of primal squall, something like what you might imagine the hideous fetus-thing from Eraserhead would sound like attempting an aria. Gradually it becomes clear he’s singing something, as

Dance CARMONA FLAMENCO Traditional music and dance. Cafe

Solstice, 4116 University Way N.E., 932-4067, carmona2@ comcast.net. $15–$20. 8 & 9:30 p.m. Sat., May 26.

Classical, Etc. UNIVERSITY CHORALE Music by Barber, Byrd, and

others. Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, music. washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Wed., May 23.

UW CONTEMPORARY GROUP Cage (First Construction), Crumb (Black Angels), and more.

Meany Studio Theater, UW campus, 543-4880, music. washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Wed., May 23.

UW BANDS Music by Bernstein, Copland, and more from four ensembles. Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, music.washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., May 24.

S. ERIC SCRIBNER Music from this local composer’s exploratory “Sound Scrolls” series, including a gorgeous quasi-improvisatory piece for bass clarinet, cello, and bass. Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., soundscroll.blogspot.com. $5–$15.

8 p.m. Thurs., May 24.

MUSIC BY JOHN CAGE SEE EAR SUPPLY, BELOW. JOHN CRANE Music by Bach, Handel, and their predecessors, played on piano and organ. All Pilgrims Christian Church, 500 Broadway E., 322-0487, allpilgrims.org. $20. 3:30 p.m. Sat., May 26.

UW GUITAR ENSEMBLE Directed by Michael Partington, they’ll play music by Britten, Takemitsu, and others. Brechemin Auditorium, School of Music, UW campus, 685-8384, music.washington.edu. $5.

7:30 p.m. Sat., May 26.

UW CHAMBER SINGERS Music by Bartok, Fauré, and UW composers Huck Hodge and Richard Karpen.

Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, music.washington. edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Tues., May 29.

UW WORLD PERCUSSION BASH Stirring sounds from the UW Husky Drum Line, the UW Steel Band, and more. Meany Studio Theater, UW campus, 543-4880, music.washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Tues., May 29.

HILARY HAHN & HAUSCHKA SEE THE WIRE, PAGE 19.

UW JAZZ ENSEMBLES Originals and standards from the Studio Jazz Ensemble and Modern Band. Meany Studio Theater, UW campus, 543-4880, music. washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Wed., May 30.

•

•

•

• • •

phonemes coalesce into words. They’re from Finnegans Wake—more precisely, from a textpiece Cage created out of extracts from Joyce’s novel. Much of the music of Cage, a Zen devotee, evokes a sort of serene quiescence, but not this realization of FOUR6—it’s stark and nightmarish, and the sudden sounds don’t so much interrupt the half-hour blank canvas of silence as rend it. Each of the four musicians will also contribute a solo to Friday’s concert. Walsh will play one of those serene pieces, the gently rippling In a Landscape (Cage for people who don’t think they like Cage); Smith offers the early-’30s Clarinet Sonata (including additional effects suggested by Smith to, and OK’d by, the composer himself); and Dempster will play a solo drawn from the boisterous Concert for Piano and Orchestra. The resourceful Cage similarly specified that Kosaly-Meyer’s part in FOUR6 could be played alone under the title ONE 7, so he will. It’s the first of a number of performances Kosaly-Meyer is organizing to mark Cage’s centennial (and the 20th anniversary of his death), carrying on the local legacy of the two years (1939–41) the composer spent as an accompanist and musical experimenter at Cornish College. Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. $5–$15. 8 p.m. Fri., May 25.

Find love in the forest

By William Shakespeare Directed by George Mount

May 30–June 24

Center House Theatre, Seattle Center

Low Priced Previews May 30 and 31 Tickets: 206-733-8222 www.seattleshakespeare.org

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

23

arts»Visual Arts

FareStart’s

20 th A nniversary B ash!

Exclusive tastes from over 40 restaurants and wineries Saturday, June 9, 2012, 6 to 9 p.m. at Fremont Studios

FareStart is celebrating 20 years of transforming lives! Please join us for a special anniversary celebration, featuring:  Tastes from more than 20 top Northwest chefs and restaurants.  Wine and beer from 20 local wineries and breweries.

BY GWENDOLYN ELLIOTT

Openings & Events BAINBRIDGE STUDENT ART SHOW Artwork from

promising young artists is featured. Reception Fri., May 25, 4–6 p.m. Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, 151 Winslow Way E., Bainbridge Island, 842-3132, bacart.org.

Wed.–Sat., 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sun., May 27, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

Through May 27.

MYTH & MURDER Artists collective New Mystics presents signage, hand-painted printed graphics, screen printing, paintings, and performance pieces. Extended through Sat., May 26 (closing reception 7 p.m.–midnight).

Vermillion, 1508 11th Ave., 709-9797, vermillionseattle. com. Tues.–Thurs. & Sun., 4 p.m.–midnight; Fri.–Sat., 4 p.m.–1:30 a.m. Through May 26.

• UW SCHOOL OF ART MASTER OF FINE ARTS

AND MASTER OF DESIGN ANNUAL EXHIBITION

Graduating students present their work. Featuring Caitlin Berndt, Byung Cho, Lyndsey Colburn, Tamblyn Gawley, Hilary Gray, Hannah O’Gorman, Amy Keeling, Sergei Larionov, Snehal Mantri, Adam Matthew, Dan Ostrowski, Shaun Roberts, Andrew Salituri, Steve Sewell, Anthony Sonnenberg, and Rodrigo Valenzuela. Note opening reception Fri., May 25, 7–9 p.m in the North Galleries.

RSVP required. Through June 17. Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave. N.E., 543-2280, henryart.org. $6–$10. Opens May 26. Sat.–Sun. & Wed., 11 a.m.–4 p.m.; Thurs.–Fri., 11 a.m.–9 p.m. Through June 17.

 Special cooking demonstrations, a raffle featuring a prize package of $100 gift cards from participating restaurants (valued at $2,000), live music, wine games, and much more!  Appearances by FareStart founder Chef David Lee, and other special guests!

Galleries

AFTER DINNER PARTY Sculptures, videos, digital

General Admission Tickets: $120 Tickets available online at www.farestart.org (21+ only). Proceeds benefit FareStart.

731 WESTLAKE AVE. N, SEATTLE • 206.223.0300

20 NW BEERS ON TAP! Thursday Nights

24

Just steps away from the Space Needle!

Monday - Friday 3-7PM

New $5 Happy Hour Menu!

Sliders, Tacos and more!

Vegetarian options also available $1 Off Well, Wine and Draft Beers

Send events to visualarts@seattleweekly.com See seattleweekly.com for full listings = Recommended

•

•

TheFussyeye » by brian miller

April Showers Bring Steel Flowers

Ginny Ruffner is, deservedly, a local art institution.

A breakout star during the ’80s, she suffered a debilitating car crash in 1991. Last year’s documentary A Not So Still Life chronicled her career and partial recovery, coinciding with the installation of her five-ton The Urban Garden near the Convention Center. After seeing that movie, which depicts a proud, lively, but clearly impaired woman (“I talk funny, I walk slow, but so what?”), I was in no hurry to visit the 27-foot-tall installation. You don’t want to confuse the pathos of the creator with the permanent creation.

What with Hammering Man and Waiting for the Interurban, Seattle has more than its share of mediocre public art. Once something bad is planted on the sidewalk (or plaza or park), it never goes away. With its giant red watering can that regularly tilts water onto a colorful daisy and sprig of bluebells, Urban Garden isn’t entirely bad. But it is certainly badly sited. Union is here basically a freeway off-ramp, flanked by the hideous Sheraton—which donated the site—and Convention Center. A few pedestrians may pass by to reach ACT (in the old Eagles Auditorium Building) or Two Union Square, but this is mainly a bleak

BRIAN MILLER

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

Trivia @ 7PM Karaoke @9PM

HAPPY HOUR

•

collages, installations, drawings, and paintings in this group show explore the role of the clitoris. Corridor Gallery, 306 S. Washington St., 856-7037, tklofts.com.

Fri.–Sat., noon–5 p.m. Through June 2.

THE ALLEY ART PROJECT In Nord Alley, which runs between S. Main St. and S. Jackson St., Patrick Maher, Christopher Sternberg-Powidzki, Christine Betow, Tyron Zane Hutcheson, Matthew Nelson, James Salay,

Kareem Tai, and Alair Wells install diverse new works in metal, glass, and other pigeon-resistant materials.

Pioneer Square, Yesler Way, 667-0687. Daily.

JENNIFER BEEDON SNOW She exhibits her paintings of suburban spaces. Linda Hodges Gallery, 316 First Ave. S., 624-3034, lindahodgesgallery.com. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Through June 2.

EVAN BLACKWELL Blackwell’s BOOM-BUST, Where Do We Go From Here? found and recycled materials that explore the natural environment and the constructed world. Typical materials include plastic forks, lawn chairs, and other consumer detritus. Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave. S., 622-2833, fosterwhite.com.

Tues.–Sat., 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Through May 26.

CARRIE BODLE Her Wavelines expands on two previous works, Sewing Sonification (2009) and Waveforms (2010), interpreting ecosystem-derived data from the Washington Coast through a video and sound installation. Seattle Design Center, 5701 Sixth Ave. S., 762-1200, seattledesigncenter.com. Mon.–Fri., 9 a.m.–5 p.m.

Through June 18.

PETER BOOME Salish Connections will showcase paintings and prints of Native American design. Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center, 4750 W. Marginal Way S.W., 431-1582, duwamishtribe.org. Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Through May 26.

CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE Themes on the impulse to create art—from ecstasy to aesthetics—and the attraction it holds for viewers are explored in this group show of photographs, gelatin prints, stop-motion animation, and video. With Hiroshi Sugimoto, Amanda Manitach, and others. Through June 30. Lawrimore Project, 117 S. Main St., 501-1231, lawrimoreproject.com.

Wed.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Through June 30.

CARTASONIC In this group installation, Perri Lynch, Lara Swimmer, and Robert Zimmer offer field recordings, projections, and photo montages to show the architecture of Civita di Bagnoregio, a remote Italian hill town.

Note artist talk 7 p.m. Fri., June 1. Jack Straw New Media Gallery, 4261 Roosevelt Way N.E., 634-0919, jack straw.org. Mon.–Fri., 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Through June 8.

CELEBRATING 40 YEARS This group show features the small paintings of the gallery’s most popular contributors, including Ann Rutter, Steve Mayo, Robert Kirsten-Daiensai, Fumiko Kimura, and more. On view through July 1. Kirsten Gallery, 5320 Roosevelt Way N.E., 522-2011, kirstengallery.com. Wed.–Sun., 11

street for taxis to queue. (If the Sheraton truly wanted to be generous, it would convert its south tower to a pocket park.) Something as aggressively whimsical and tourist-friendly as Urban Garden deserves better, deserves grass and families: near the Market perhaps, on the waterfront (though not in the Olympic Sculpture Park), or at Seattle Center—where kids could peer at the mechanical workings through a window in the pot.

Flowers need sun, and public art needs eyeballs to thrive. This corner provides neither. Seventh Avenue & Union Street, ginnyruffner.com.

siffweek2»Picks & Pans

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EVENT S NEW SLETTER A weekly calendar of the city’s best offerings.

W E E K LY

MUSIC

EVENTS

PROMOTIONS

SIFF

DI N I NG

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23

Unforgivable 6:30 P.M., HARVARD EXIT

P Bonsái

8:30 P.M., HARVARD EXIT

The bookish young lovers at the heart of Bonsái have cultivated an almost militant seriousness when it comes to literature and a dismissive attitude toward everything else—including, eventually, each other. Both are too terrified to admit they haven’t read Proust, and a short story by the Argentine writer Macedonio Fernández practically dooms the whole romance. “Blah blah blah,”

responds Emilia (Nathalia Galgani) early in the film when Julio (Diego Noguera) tells her she looks pretty. This is one of two formative relationships examined in Bonsái, adapted

by Chilean director Cristián Jiménez from a prize-winning 2006 novella. Both involve Julio, and both are mediated by the written word as Jiménez jumps between the present day, in which our protagonist has begun a placid romance of convenience with older neighbor Blanca (Trinidad González), and eight years prior, when he and Emilia were together at college. A story within the stories materializes. Stuck in what appears to be a protracted post-collegiate lull, Julio informs Blanca that he has been hired to type up a novelist’s latest opus. Meanwhile, the author, Gazmuri, chooses to hire another applicant for the job. Instead of confessing the truth to Blanca, Julio starts writing the Gazmuri novel himself, a text that evolves, despite the displaced credit, into something resolutely his own: a veiled account of his relationship with Emilia. A kind of poetry sprouts up even in some of the inevitable sad-twee flourishes here, and Jiménez transplants the meta material from novella to screen with surprising success. BENJAMIN MERCER

P King Curling 9:30 P.M., SIFF CINEMA UPTOWN

This Norwegian curling comedy . . . but why go on? You’ve already decided whether or not to see it. Actually, you already have, since Kingpin, Dodgeball, Blades of Glory, and related sports-movie parodies have replaced the actual sports movies that no one makes anymore. Truls Paulsen (Atle Antonsen) was a champ in the ’90s, but his mind snapped under the weight of his obsession with the sport. Released after a decade of institutionalization, he’s stuck in a drone job (and in his wife’s emasculating pink house) until his mentor falls ill and needs an expensive lung operation—and yes, Truls Gets the Team

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 26

EVENTS

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

Unforgivable? Interminable is more like it.

Veteran writer/director André Téchiné (The Witnesses, The Girl on the Train) employs a kitchen-sink approach to this overstuffed Venetian soap opera. He assembles a dozen characters around blocked French novelist Francis (André Dussollier), then has them enact every random scene that’s been cluttering his desk drawers for the past 30 years: suicide attempts, impulsive proposals, private detectives hired to spy on spouses, aristocrats turned to drug dealing, low-speed boat chases through the canals, a sex tape sent to Daddy, alcoholism, Schopenhauer citations, parents lamenting that they had kids, fatal disease, something about queer-bashing, and a colorful peasant wedding where everybody sings by the reeds on the beach. Also, Francis gets a book written by the end, so that he and Téchiné can feel that all this strife and melodrama have had a purpose. Trust me, they don’t. Venice is always scenic, but Unforgivable is such a frantic, busy picture that we’re never allowed to consider the cause of Francis’ jealous nature. His possessiveness alienates both his grown daughter and second wife (the cryogenically preserved Carole Bouquet), who snaps, “The more I know you, the less I know who you are.” Strangely, Téchiné is no better informed than she.

BRIAN MILLER (Also 3:30 p.m. Thurs., May 24.)

Cold as ice, baby! Some of the King Curling bad guys.

25

siffweek2»Picks & Pans » FROM PAGE 25

wounds), he sees everything upside-down, which puts him at a real disadvantage in a getaway but doesn’t affect his accuracy.

Headshot is designed to obfuscate, slipping back and forth through flashbacks and enigmatic visions, often shuffled out of order. This keeps us guessing about what’s really happening to the enigmatic, oddly passive Tul (Nopporn Chaiyanam). Filled with assassins, patsies, and contemplative detours, Headshot is either a very violent Buddhist parable or an almost-too-clever conspiracy tale. Perhaps confusion is the path to enlightenment. SEAN AXMAKER (Also Pacific Place, 4 p.m. Sun., May 27.)

Back Together for one last lucrative competition. The plot could not be more rote, but the film’s so saturated, scene by scene, line by line, with deadpan ridiculousness that you have to wonder if it’s only coincidence that Antonsen so resembles John C. Reilly and his archrival Stefan (Kåre Conradi) looks and acts a lot like Semi-Pro-vintage Will Ferrell. Is King Curling a deliberate premake intended to lure an American adaptation that could only pale in comparison? Is our stupid-comedy hegemony being threatened by Norway? GAVIN BORCHERT (Also 4:30 p.m. Wed., May 30, and Egyptian, 9:45 p.m. Sat., May 26.)

FRIDAY, MAY 25 LOCAL COLOR FILMS

THURSDAY, MAY 24

Bull Runners of Pamplona

Chaiyanam, the stoic hero of Headshot.

6:30 P.M., HARVARD EXIT

What a schizophrenic documentary from director Aubrey Powell. The interviews with over-testosterized Aussie and American Hemingway worshippers—all dudes—who get hammered and cheat death by running with bulls down the crowded streets of a small town in Spain are mundane and off-putting. Scenes that focus on bull-rearing and bullfighting protesters are as dry as BBC toast. But the depiction of the bull-running itself exists in what appears to be another film entirely, and a spectacular one at that. The cinematography is riveting. It’s tantamount to an ace sports film trapped in a stuffy library conference room, and should be required viewing for any loon who thinks there’s no chance he’ll get the guts gored out of him by the lethal beasts. MIKE SEELY (Also 11 a.m.

Sat., May 26.)

Headshot

9 P.M., SIFF CINEMA UPTOWN

Thailand’s Pen-ek Ratanaruang, a former SIFF “Emerging Master,” made his reputation with a series of stylish, violent, and oddly contemplative crime thrillers including 6ixtynin9 and Last Life in the Universe. He returns to his strengths with this self-styled “Buddhist film noir.”

Shuffling crime genre elements with philosophical musings (“Justice does not exist in nature,” ponders our tormented hero) and a quest for truth in a world of lies and manipulations, Ratanaruang comes up with a twisty, enigmatic tale about a contract killer with a complicated backstory and a unique perspective. Thanks to a bullet in the head ( just one of the film’s many head

P El Gusto:

The Good Mood 1:30 P.M., PACIFIC PLACE

Chaabi (from the Arabic chaab, “people”) was the indigenous popular music, intricate and passionate, of the Casbah, the crowded, crumbling old quarter of Algiers: “a cocktail,” as one musician describes it, “of Berber music, religious chants, and Andalusian music.” It was played by equally multiculti orchestras: lutes, guitars, and banjos en masse, plenty of percussion, and a few violins (played upright, resting on the lap) and other Western instruments—a rich musical stone soup of whatever was at hand. Huge after WWII, chaabi penetrated all reaches of society, played nonstop in cafes and brothels, on the radio, at family gatherings. But it was squeezed out as Algeria began to fight French rule, caught, ironically, between the colonizers who respected it and the revolutionaries who had no time for it: “No parties, weddings, circumcisions—nothing!” remembers one ex-star. The euphoria of independence, won at last in 1962, brought a brief final flowering, but the death blow was the resulting forced

exodus of Europeans, including the Jewish musicians in the Casbah who’d mixed with Muslims without friction. After decades of silence, director Safinez Bousbia, following a chance encounter with a cabinetmaker/ former bandleader, began to research chaabi history, arranging a reunion of elderly musicians to tour France and filming them. Yes, it’s pretty much a Saharan Buena Vista Social Club, but with a musical genre even more obscure over here and a story, therefore, that much more fascinating. Here’s hoping El Gusto’s rousing soundtrack also sells millions.

GAVIN BORCHERT (Also 6:30 p.m. Sun., May 27, and Everett, 6 p.m. Wed., May 30.)

The Last Man on Earth 3:30 P.M., HARVARD EXIT

Last fall, a video of Italian journalist Maria Cuffaro became a YouTube sensation. In the clip, the grave-faced Cuffaro reads from a news bulletin to warn of an imminent extraterrestrial invasion. Sadly for end-timers, the video was a clever publicity stunt for Gian Alfonso Pacinotti’s L’ultimo Terreste, a film about the world agog and preparing for an alien visitation. Who’s already getting abducted? Who’s afraid? Who’s excited?

Luca (the astonishingly fragile Gabriele Spinelli) is a painfully shy middle-aged bingo-hall waiter. His co-workers are buffoons who like to stick their camera phones under their customers’ skirts; his only friend is a stately transsexual prostitute named Roberta (Luca Marinelli); and he has a crush on his neighbor, Anna (Anna Bellato), whom he spies on with binoculars from his balcony.

Meanwhile, Luca’s widowed father (Roberto Herlitzka) has secretly started cohabiting with a bug-eyed, silver-breasted alien—he teaches her how to plant tomatoes, pats her cheek fondly, and calls her “sweetie.”

Awkward Luca’s tale would seem irrelevant compared to the momentous alien arrival,

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

granD opening party

26

JUNE 2 License to

DREAM

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The Pacific Northwest’s newest destination opens June 2.

Reserve your tickets today at LeMayMuseum.org.

next to the tacoma Dome

5030 Roosevelt Way NE Seattle, WA 98105 (206) 524-8554 www.scarecrow.com Sun.-Thurs. 11am-11pm Fri. & Sat. 11am-Midnight yet Pacinotti brings the two strands together with a surprisingly tender coda. ERIN K. THOMPSON (Also 6:30 p.m. Mon., May 28 and 4 p.m. Thurs., May 31.)

SATURDAY, MAY 26

Step Up to the Plate 1:30 P.M., EGYPTIAN

P The Snows

of Kilimanjaro

8:30 P.M., HARVARD EXIT

All of Criterion’s May new releases ON SALE during the Seattle International Film Festival

CERTIFIED COPY

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Includes Kiarostami’s rarely seen 1977 film The Report

9:15 P.M., PACIFIC PLACE

As they complain about HBO’s Girls today, as people have long complained about Woody Allen, New York isn’t a city comprising only neurotic white people whining about their relationship troubles on the sidewalk. Adam Leon once worked on Allen’s sets as a PA, and

DVD $22.95 Blu-ray $27.95

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ROBERT DOWNEY SR. Criterion’s Eclipse Series 33

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LARGEST SELECTION OF CRITERION TITLES IN SEATTLE Always 15% or more below suggested retail price

Anatomy of a Murder

DVD $24.95 Blu-ray $29.95

World on a Wire

DVD $24.95 Blu-ray $29.95

The War Room

DVD $24.95 Blu-ray $29.95

NEW THIS WEEK Intrepid taggers Washington and Hickson.

he clearly heard those complaints. His promising debut feature follows two teen graffiti artists from the Bronx to Manhattan and back during one long summer day. Malcolm (Ty Hickson) has a plan to “bomb” (paint, tag) Shea Stadium, home of the hated Mets. Sofia (Tashiana Washington) points out that they lack the $500 necessary to bribe the stadium groundskeeper. What follows is a charming, picaresque adventure to gather the loot—petty efforts at crime that invariably result in comic bungling and blame. (“Google how to pick a lock!”) During its course, Malcolm loses his sneakers and pot-courier job, Sofia loses her bike, and both begin to sense feelings stronger than their fellowship in Krylon. Although they can explode into mighty fits of trashtalking (to both each other and rivals), there’s no real heat to these tirades, their words as exaggerated and colorful as their graffiti lettering. Long walking-and-talking scenes with Malcolm and Sofia do recall Woody Allen, but this is Spike Lee’s city, with white privilege on the periphery. Leon doesn’t insist this is a life-changing day for his two teens, but it’s an odyssey of small, meaningful moments.

BRIAN MILLER (Also 4 p.m. Mon., May 28.)

MORE ONLINE » SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM

a

See 10 more SIFF picks & pans.

See the full list at scarecrow.com SHERLOCK: SEASON TWO Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman DVD $23.95 Blu-ray $29.95

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DOUBLE PUNCH MONDAYS

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

All Robert Guédiguian movies tend to blur together: the same working-class Marseilles setting; the same ensemble of acting talent (led by his wife, Ariane Ascaride); the same score, vintage American R&B; the same concern with defending one’s humanity against the socioeconomic tide. But Snows—which borrows its title from a French pop tune, not Hemingway—is something of a fairy tale, a more focused and affirmative work than Lady Jane or The Town Is Quiet. Union leader Michel (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) loses his job at the port, in a lottery where he draws his own name from a hat. These “voluntary” labor concessions also affect a young co-worker, who’ll later rob the house of Michel and his wife of 30 years, Marie-Claire (Ascaride).

The robbers wear masks, but Michel is clever: He spots a clue, investigates, and hopes to recover their stolen 5,000 euros. What he and Marie-Claire find, however, is that the robber

THE CRITERION COLLECTION

P Gimme the Loot

SIFF

In 2009, Michel Bras decided to gradually retire from his legendary restaurant in southern France, a decision that might doom many Michelin three-star restaurants. But Bras planned to bequeath the restaurant to his son, Sébastien, just as his mother had given it to him. The turnover marks a happy new start for the kitchen, as Step Up to the Plate’s many scenes of Sébastien contemplating sunrises make clear. “I think Sébastien will be at his best when Michel actually retires,” a longtime friend says in this French documentary chronicle of the year leading up to Sébastien’s assumption of the head chef’s toque.

Sébastien sometimes struggles to match his father’s innate artistry— “I don’t understand you,” he says when Bras outlines a seed-oil concoction—and headstrong attitude, but he harbors none of the unspoken resentment that pollutes the father/ son relationships in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, another recent doc about a great chef nearing the end of his career. Paul Lacoste’s film is a sweet, leisurely paced tribute to family. Answering a typically Gallic question from an unseen French reporter, Sébastien says, “As I was saying, it’s not a revolution.”

HANNA RASKIN (Also 6:45 p.m. Tues., May 29, and Kirkland, 6:30 p.m. Fri., June 1.)

is supporting two boys—his much younger half-brothers. So with all his talk of socialist solidarity, what is Michel to do? He has a reflexive horror of the middle class, but that’s the life he’s earned for his wife, kids, and grandchildren—in today’s Europe (or America, for that matter), a contented future the thief and his brothers may never have.

“He’s a worker like us,” Michel says of the robber. He reconsiders his anger over the crime, and the movie ends with an O. Henry twist that you don’t have to be a socialist to love. BRIAN MILLER (Also noon, Mon., May 28, and Egyptian, 4 p.m. Fri., June 1.)

27

First Position OPENS FRI., MAY 25 AT SEVEN GABLES. NOT RATED. 90 MINUTES.

The nonfiction formula pioneered by Spellbound leads to frustrating superficiality in this glossy documentary about a multicultural collection of young ballet dancers striving to secure awards, scholarships, and job contracts at the prestigious annual Youth America Grand Prix. Director Bess Kargman adheres to a now-familiar template in which glib portraits of various talented kids from around the world provide human-interest background for the central competition, which in this instance is a vital gateway to an adult artistic career. From adopted Sierra Leone orphan Michaela and Colombian-born Joan Sebastian to military-family prodigy Aran and brother/sister duo Jules and Miko, Kargman’s subjects are a uniformly gifted and engaging group. However, their home lives and struggles with a variety of relevant issues—racism, peer discrimination born of gender stereotypes, injuries, anorexia, and the personal and monetary sacrifices made by both children and their parents to chase this dream— are given little more than cursory lip service.

The result is a film that eschews in-depth insight in favor of easily digestible who’s-going-to-win suspense, a tack aided by Kargman’s rather poignant (and visually graceful) evocation of pre-performance anxiety but which ultimately leaves the material feeling deflated once the winners emerge. NICK SCHAGER

Headhunters OPENS FRI., MAY 25 AT VARSITY. NOT RATED. 99 MINUTES.

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

Arguably the strangest of the many recent Scandinavian movies to rifle through modern American-indie tropes and then cash in by getting bought up for an American remake (see: Let the Right One In), Morten Tyldum’s ironic-violent farce focuses on the spirit of the Coen brothers’ catalog, from Blood Simple to Burn After Reading. Our escort through the glossy mayhem is a diminutive executive recruiter (toadish Aksel Hennie), who keeps his Norse goddess wife in luxuries by stealing

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art on the side and eventually goes after the wrong Rubens, thus crossing the path of the wrong corporate cannibal (the preposterously handsome Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). This leads to our headhunter becoming the hunted, with bad guys chasing him across a good part of Norway’s picturesque fjords, highways, and forests. Which is the strange part—presumably the Hollywood reboot will establish a logical reason for the psychotic chase and blood spree, because Tyldum doesn’t quite, focusing instead on absurd set pieces and bottoming out, so to speak, deep in an outhouse shit pit.

Plenty of twisty scripting makes the queasy damage seem conceptually neat and tidy, as if that’s a good idea, but what we need here is a little more meat. MICHAEL ATKINSON

Hit So Hard RUNS FRI., MAY 25–THURS., MAY 31 AT NORTHWEST FILM FORUM. NOT RATED. 103 MINUTES.

In the drug-addicted annals of monster-rock band Hole’s lady legacy, there’s the one who died (bassist Kristen Pfaff ), the one whose husband died (screamer Courtney Love), and the one who stayed alive. That’s Patty Schemel, the overlooked redheaded drummer close enough to Kurt Cobain that even his Bozolipped widow acknowledges on camera, “She was probably more in Nirvana than I was.”

Fortunately, this means Hit So Hard offers Schemel’s lovely personal footage of a vulnerably scrawny Kurt nurturing baby Frances Bean, along with testimonies that Mr. Teen Spirit was privately a “bathroom-humor guy” (!?!); seminal grrrl-rager “Miss World” was recorded during a crystal-meth binge; and, according to one astutely hilarious observer, grunge “fashion” was just stolen from lesbian style (plaid buttondowns, jeans, Dr. Martens). Unfortunately for Schemel, director P. David Ebersole seems to think these pop-up video footnotes are a substitute for narrative development, and, more or less, forgets to edit down the rest of this tediously paced rockumentary. Schemel’s path from Dairy Queen parking-lot loiterer to Rolling Stone cover face to, well, back to the proverbial

AUTENTIKA FILMS/CANANA FILMS

film»This Week’s Attractions

parking lot, where a relapsed Schemel ended up stealing drugs while disastrously undermining Celebrity Skin recording sessions, could have been an amazingly told story. Instead, Hit So Hard is just amazing treatment-facility programming. CAMILLE DODERO

P Post Mortem

RUNS FRI., MAY 25–THURS., MAY 31 AT GRAND ILLUSION. NOT RATED. 98 MINUTES.

“Nobody can escape the wheel of history,” a physician says in Pablo Larraín’s devastating follow-up to Tony Manero (2008). That film, a black comedy about a disco-crazed sociopath, unfolds in late-’70s, Pinochet-ruled Chile. Post Mortem is set during the onset of the Pinochetled coup against the nation’s socialist government in 1973, and it’s filled not just with corpses but also the living dead. Pallid, skeletal Mario (Alfredo Castro), a coroner’s assistant at a hospital, seems to be little more than a spectral voyeur. He is obsessed with Nancy (Antonia Zegers), the cabaret performer who lives across the street. The obliviousness and complete lack of regard shown by Mario for anything other than the delusion that the showgirl will agree to be his bride is relayed when he fails to see

Living among the dead: Castro and Zegers in Post Mortem.

or hear the coup—gunshots, bombs—while in the shower. Bloodied bodies are piled up everywhere at Mario’s hospital, though one lies on a dissecting table: that of President Salvador Allende. The functionary, tasked with recording the official autopsy of the leader, would seem now to be a player in world history—a shortlived stint, as Mario has difficulty operating the electric typewriter. Often drolly, coolly morbid, Post Mortem also operates just as effectively in a more nakedly direct register. The crack-up of a colleague of Mario’s, breaking down at the sight of the endless cadavers at her feet, finds its malevolent opposite in Mario’s reaction to a perceived betrayal—in which he proves as barbarous as the regime he’s now living under.

MELISSA ANDERSON E

film@seattleweekly.com

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See reviews of Chernobyl Diaries, Goon, and Men in Black 3.

SIFF

TRIBUTE 2012 DIRECTOR

William Friedkin

He directed what's widely considered to be one of the scariest horror films of all time (The Exorcist) and filmed perhaps the best car chase sequence in history (The French Connection).

Director William Friedkin arrives at SIFF this year with the west coast premiere of his new, provocative black comedy, Killer Joe, where he will be presented with the Seattle International Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award. The evening will include an onstage interview and film clips from his career preceding the film, with a Q&A session to follow.

SATURDAY JUNE 9 7:00PM | EGYPTIAN MAY 26 6:30PM | UPTOWN WITH A PARTY TO FOLLOW AT KASPAR’S

As Luck Would Have It

Maverick filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia’s satire about a media feeding frenzy and one man’s insane bid to capitalize on a freak accident stars Salma Hayek and Spanish comedian José Mota in this high-concept melodrama.

ENCORE REPEAT SCREENINGS: THURSDAY MAY 24 6:30PM | RENTON IKEA PAC TUESDAY MAY 29, 4:00PM | EGYPTIAN

TickeTs available aT www.cinerama.com

US Premiere

Director

Travis Fine

scheduled to attend both screenings

12:00 • 3:30 • 7:00 • 10:30 SEATTLE’S WIDEST SCREEN SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY Fresh Chocolate Popcorn, Cupcake Royale, Theo Choc & so much more

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Any Day Now Winner of the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, this timely and relevant film deftly addresses gay adoption issues with humor and grace as two strong-willed men fight the system and prejudice to adopt a teenager that no one else wants in 1970s Los Angeles. A stellar performance by Alan Cumming.

SUNDAY MAY 27 9:30PM | EGYPTIAN MONDAY MAY 28 4:00PM | EGYPTIAN

SATURDAY MAY 26 6:00PM | HARVARD EXIT SUNDAY MAY 27 2:30PM | HARVARD EXIT

ELIMINATE: Archie Cookson

When burnt-out spy Archie Cookson mysteriously receives stolen secret tapes, he is targeted by assassins from both MI6 and the CIA in this sardonically witty espionage thriller.

How to Steal 2 Million

SATURDAY MAY 26 9:00PM | EVERETT MONDAY MAY 28 11:00AM | EGYPTIAN TUESDAY MAY 29 9:00PM | EGYPTIAN

SUNDAY MAY 27 8:30PM | UPTOWN TUESDAY MAY 29 3:30PM | UPTOWN THURSDAY MAY 31 8:30PM | HARVARD EXIT

The Invisible War

Lola Versus

SATURDAY MAY 26 6:30PM | PACIFIC PLACE SUNDAY MAY 27 1:30PM | EGYPTIAN

THURSDAY MAY 24 7:00PM | EVERETT (OPENING NIGHT) FRIDAY MAY 25 7:00PM | UPTOWN

This investigative and powerfully emotional documentary discusses the profound social consequences of the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the U.S. military, exposing the institutions that perpetuate and obscure the abuses.

In this modern crime thriller (ie– hard-bitten heroes, cold-hearted villains, deadly femme fatales) a freshly-paroled convict finds himself pulled back into the pursuit of one last lucrative heist.

This anti-romantic comedy tells the tale of Lola, a 29-year-old woman unwittingly dumped three weeks before her wedding sending her on a series of desperate encounters with her two best friends in an attempt to find her place in the world.

Tickets On Sale Now!

206.324.9996 | siff.net

Pick up your FREE Guide at participating Starbucks stores and other convenient locations around town.

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

NOW SHOWING

Logos

360 Arthur Schnitzler’s play “La Ronde” is the inspiration for this modern love story by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, City of God). Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, and Sir Anthony Hopkins star in a globe-spanning tale of interconnected fates. US Premiere.

Palette

Primary

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film»

BY BRIAN MILLER

Local Film BOXING HELENA Jennifer Lynch’s ill-conceived 1993

• •

•

shocker, in which Julian Sands chops up Sherilyn Fenn for some reason, is screened as part of the “Bad Movie Art” series. Bad it certainly is. (R) Central Cinema, $6-$8, Wed., May 23, 7 p.m.

A FISH CALLED WANDA One of the better comedies of 1988, this crime caper was co-written by John Cleese (also a star), with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin rounding out the very funny cast. Call for showtimes. (R) Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 25-29.

HARD BOILED John Woo’s 1992 masterpiece, about two cops (the overworked Chow Yun-Fat and the undercover Tony Leung) gunning for the Hong Kong Triads, is an essential action film—the best of the 1990s, if rewatchability’s any gauge. Everything before this looks flimsy; everything after, overheated. Woo fused Dirty Harry and Bullitt’s deadpan cool with Asian cinema’s almost comedic excitability, and nobody’s made a better shoot-’em-up since. Free for GI members. (R) ROBERT WILONSKY Grand Illusion, Thu., May 24, 9 p.m.

HOUSE Cult movies should be mistakes, not intentional. In his 1977 feature debut, there’s no indication that Nobuhiko Obayahshi meant for House to appear—three decades later, to non-Japanese viewers—completely insane.

But it is: batshit, Technicolor, fairy-tale-meets-softcoreporn insane. Seven teenage schoolgirls visit the creepy old mansion inhabited by the spinster aunt of heroine Gorgeous (all the girls are similarly type-named); there they begin to disappear Ten Little Indians-style. But who’s killing whom, and why, are the least interesting questions about this effects-saturated dreamscape. Gorgeous is in love with her dashing father and despises his evil fiancée (whose hair and dress are permanently aflutter with a

Send events to film@seattleweekly.com See seattleweekly.com for full listings = Recommended

•

wind machine). Her schoolmates have a crush on their teacher, and her aunt is still pining for a soldier who died in WWII. All that thwarted love leads to flying heads, flashbacks, severed limbs, a ravenous piano, demonic cat, and tidal wave of blood. Obayashi crams every scene of House with giddy, gaudy visual excess; it’s like Douglas Sirk on acid. Call for showtimes. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Central Cinema, $6-$8, May 25-30.

NEXT 50 FILM SERIES SIFF helps Seattle Center celebrate its 50th anniversary with a free Wednesday-night series touching upon topics like organic farming, music, beekeeping, clean water, Sputnik, and Woody Guthrie.

See the siff.net for full schedule and details. (NR) SIFF Film Center, Free, Wednesdays, 7 p.m. Through July 18.

STREET: THE BEST OF BRITISH FILM • SHADOW Jerzy Skolimowski directed Deep End, a blithe NOIR

but deceptive 1970 coming-of-age film about a teenager (John Moulder-Brown) crushing on his colleague at a municipal pool. Deep End starts as a comedy about the virginal kid’s puppy-dogging of the older, considerably more sexually experienced girl (Carnaby Street swan Jane Asher, a pal of the Beatles and supposed inspiration for “Here, There and Everywhere”). Some of the comic bits unfold almost in real time, like Jacques Tati gags, and there’s a hilarious Swedish sex-film-within-the-film that Michel Gondry would adore. But the off-kilter charm begins to darken as we see the kid from Asher’s perspective. She’s an ambivalent player in the sexual revolution, and he’s a grenade of pubescent frustration. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org, $53-$59 series, $8 individual, Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Continues through May 24.

Ongoing

undeniably charming homage to old • THE ARTISTTheAnArtist might be the first silent film many

Hollywood, of its viewers have ever seen. French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ film opens in 1927, when preening matinee idol George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is still the top draw at Kinograph Studios. George acts as a mentor to Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a chorine with big ambitions. Borrowing heavily from A Star Is Born, The Artist

tracks both Peppy’s ascent (through amusing montage) and George’s decline as he refuses to acknowledge synchronized sound as more than a passing fad. By 1932, Peppy’s attracting lines around the block for her latest, while George spends his afternoons passed out on a barroom floor, his Jack Russell terrier his sole remaining fan. Or so he thinks: Peppy has never forgotten him, and the film’s concluding act restores The Artist’s buoyancy. (PG-13) Melissa Anderson Admiral BERNIE In a 1997 murder trial in Carthage, Texas, Bernhardt “Bernie” Tiede, a closeted ex-mortician, confessed to the shooting of his benefactress, 81-year-old millionaire widow Marjorie Nugent. In Richard Linklater’s movie, Shirley MacLaine is Nugent, by almost all accounts a sour and unpleasant woman, clutching her purse like a floatation device. Matthew McConaughey is district attorney Danny Buck Davidson, and Jack Black plays Tiede, tackling his duties as church-choir soloist and community-theater impresario, in a performance remarkable for its ability to be at once flamboyant and remote.

Bernie is all about irreconcilable facts and foggy motives, not least the contrary demands of forgiveness written in the Bible and the stern punishment written in the law books. It is the rarest of rarities: a truly unexpected film.

(PG-13) Nick Pinkerton Lincoln Square, Meridian THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL Reliable middlebrow craftsman John Madden makes neat work of Deborah Moggach’s novel about a group of disparate British retirees lured—for cut-rate surgery, low-overhead living, or reasons they hope to keep private—to India.

The cast is led by Dame Judi Dench as a long-sheltered widow looking to stand on her own two feet. Marigold Hotel has that oh-so-tactful British touch, the seeming result of an industry-wide gentleman’s agreement never to go too far. The material is ribald but, of course, never crude and sewn with “Life begins at 60” affirmations.

With Tom Wilkinson as a retired high court judge who still goes fluttery over the memory of an affair; and Bill Nighy as a shy, ineffably decent man, quietly surprised by how nimble he becomes in this new atmosphere. (PG-13) Nick Pinkerton Alderwood 7, Big Picture Redmond, Guild 45th, Kirkland Parkplace, Lincoln Square, Lynwood Theater, Pacific Place, Thornton Place

• JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI Sukiyabashi Jiro seats only

•

•

a handful, boasts three Michelin stars, and is presided over by renowned 85-year-old sushi chef Jiro Ono. For tens of thousands of yen, you can get a taste of the craft he has been tirelessly honing since the age of 10. This is, of course, a calculus apt to explode the mind of even the most casual gourmand, and the foodie set is well taken care of in director David Gelb’s portrait. His appealing doc always comes back to its subject’s determination (sometimes overbearing) to leave the most meaningful possible legacy to his family and his craft. (PG) Benjamin Mercer Varsity MONSIEUR LAZHAR The Montreal schoolyard where Alice and Simon exchange their usual morning jabs is capped with snow, and their classroom is filled with bright winter light. Then that light is cut by an incongruous moment of darkness, and the rest of Philippe Falardeau’s understated, affecting Canadian drama charts the resulting wave of grief as it breaks across a school community.

Alice and Simon’s class gets a new coat of paint and a new teacher—the monsieur of the title (Mohamed Fellag), a mysterious Algerian emigrant. Falardeau meshes Lazhar’s secrets and the hidden turbulence of the situation he has stepped into with a sensitivity that lifts the story out of refugee cliché. (PG-13) Michelle Orange Crest

THEATERS: Admiral, 2343 California Ave. SW, 938-3456;

Big Picture, 2505 First Ave., 256-0566; Big Picture Redmond, 7411 166th Ave. NE, 425-556-0566; Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684; Cinebarre, 6009 SW 244th St., 425-672-7501; Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 4486680; Crest, 16505 Fifth Ave. NE, 781-5755; Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 781-5755; Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St., 523-3935; Guild 45, 2115 N. 45th St., 781-5755; Harvard Exit, 807 E. Roy St., 781-5755; Kirkland Parkplace, 404 Park Place, 425-827-9000; Lincoln Square, 700 Bellevue Way N, 425-454-7400; Majestic Bay, 2044 NW Market St., 781-2229; Meridian, 1501 Seventh Ave., 223-9600; Metro, 4500 Ninth Ave. NE, 781-5755; NW Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380; Pacific Place, 600 Pine St., 888-262-4386; Seven Gables, 911 NE 50th St., 781-5755; Thornton Place, 301 NE 103rd St., 517-9953; Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 781-5755.

Seattle Weekly

Events MAY 25 - MAY 28

NORTHWEST FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL

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Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

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30

Bring your heart and hands... we’ll show you the rest You can help wild songbirds in one of PAWS’ most unique wildlife volunteer positions. As a Bird Nursery Caretaker, we’ll teach you how to prepare food and hand feed orphaned baby birds until they’re ready to fly home.

Help us, help them. It’s an experience you’ll never forget.

Visit paws.org for details, or call 425.787.2500 x261

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food&drink»

Fine Swine

La Boucherie is the rare farm-to-table restaurant that lets its food do the talking.

By Hanna RaSkin

Since the pigs’ foraged diets change according to the seasons, Sea Breeze’s pork doesn’t taste the same in January as in June.

of modesty within it, the trustiest way of knowing that 95 percent of La Boucherie’s ingredients originate on Vashon is to eat there, which you really ought to do just as soon as you can get a reservation. Garaventa and chef Dustin Calery, who grew up on a Kentucky farm, are masterfully translating the island’s bounty into dishes that rival any served in Seattle for visceral deliciousness.

On the list of farmers’ favorites things, fussiness rates about as high as hailstorms, and La Boucherie’s ever-changing menu is free of highfalutin airs. A recent evening’s amuse-bouche consisted of a juicy chiogga beet pellet wigged with a cloud of wickedly spongy ricotta cheese and a split hazelnut.

The stem of a single kite-shaped leaf was wedged beneath the beet, making the tiny tripartite bite look very much like a lonely sloop adrift on a white supper plate. But the kitchen tempers its plainspoken streak with an aestheticism that results in such essential trifles as the sparkling rhubarb wine served alongside its welcome-mat snack.

Calery is willing to work in pink. In addition to the beets and wine, he serves a salad of apples with skins the shade of little-girl lipstick. The slivered fruit is drizzled with a honey vinaigrette that’s beckoned back from oversweetness by a sprinkling of black pepper. Here too are toasted hazelnuts and ricotta cheese, since a farm restaurant isn’t wont to waste. With ingredients this magnificent, though, syndication isn’t a problem.

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implicity and frugality aren’t the only values fresh from the farm.

The tables in the compact dining room aren’t so much arranged as herded, jammed in by someone accustomed

to driving stubborn beasts into a barn. When I George and daughter Adela on the farm, visited La Boucherie, I was seated at a brown Kristin at the meat counter, and a pork linen-draped table shoved into a back corner, chop on the plate. with one seat facing a window overlooking the parking lot and the other facing a wall.

Oddly, though, the restaurant’s pragmatic on the charcuterie plate are the most approach to interior design makes for a very jumbled and rustic preparations, such as romantic room. Cognizant of the proximity of the pâté de campagne, a deft meeting of other guests, diners here tend to speak softly. velvety fat and skill.

And candles are everywhere, if only because La Boucherie cuts its exceedingly great the Vashon-grown flowers that serve as sumpork chops from the blade end of the loin, mer centerpieces haven’t blossomed yet. picking up lots of luscious shoulder fat. But The bohemian charms of the room, its where Garaventa puts her cleaver may not walls hung with vintage black-and-white matter as much as where Sea Breeze puts photographs of carousing Serbian gypsies, its pigs: The farm’s Duroc-Berkshires might not square with some diners’ notions of spend their lives roaming a patch of Vashon the proper setting for a $99 six-course meal blanketed with blackberry bushes. They with wine pairings. And a few weaknesses return to the farm to spend the month are exposed when the restaurant messes with before slaughter feasting on discards from edibles that would be better left to practiced Sea Breeze’s dairy. “Raising pigs outside Europeans: The pasta, made is why pigs taste good,” with Washington wheat, Garaventa says. is gummy and damp, and a Since the pigs’ foraged » price guide CharCuterie ...........$9/$15 cloudy semillon from Sea diets change according to apple salad ................... $10 Breeze’s winery was awful. the seasons, Sea Breeze’s Bolognese ......................$23 pork Chop ...................... $26 Yet the rigatoni’s problems pork doesn’t taste the tasting menu .............. $69 are easily overcome by an same in January as in June. earthy Bolognese made with Because the pigs are now ground pork. Not every outstanding dish at La eating lots of just-sprouted greens, their meat Boucherie includes pork; a frothy cauliflower is marbled with extra-creamy fat. soup garnished with shreds of chicken confit “It’s a good time to eat pork,” Garaventa is a rich, flavorful romp, and a pile of blanched says. And although she’s too polite to say so, leeks topped by a fried egg has a bucolic vitalLa Boucherie is a very good place in which to ity that can’t be faked. But the dishes that will eat it. E linger on your palate as you ride the ferry hraskin@seattleweekly.com home, and on your mind as you eat in lesser restaurants, are the ones made with pig flesh.

La Boucherie Garaventa makes rilletes, terrines, and 17635 100th Ave. S.W., Vashon, 567-4628, pâtés from scraps of Sea Breeze sausages seabreezefarm.net. 5:30–10:30 p.m. Wed.–Fri., which don’t sell at market. The best selections 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. & 5:30–10:30 p.m. Sat.

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

“We can only make it so clear,” Sea Breeze butcher Lauren Garaventa says. “If you push certain things, it can be a little bit alienating, and we definitely don’t want to do that.”

Since the restaurant’s mission isn’t promiscuously advertised, diners are sometimes slow to intuit that every animal on the menu shares an alma mater. “A lot of people ask for fish,” Garaventa says. Their confusion is compounded by the restaurant’s distance from Sea Breeze: When the Pages four years ago wanted an additional outlet for their products, they opened La Boucherie in a former fish market that got its start as a malt shop. They toyed with the idea of building a restaurant on their farm, four miles north, but, as Garaventa points out, a chicken, cow, sheep, and pig farm is a considerably less pleasant place than one which specializes in miner’s lettuce and lavender. “It’s a muddy, dirty situation,” she says.

With a span of worn-down asphalt outside the restaurant and an unfashionable amount

Joshua huston

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omewhere there must be a chef and farmer who’ve agreed to keep their working relationship relatively discreet, but the vast majority of liaisons in the locavore era are kiss-andtell affairs. Once a restaurant hooks up with a grower, his or her name is splashed on every available surface: In the grand tradition of tree-trunk carvings and bathroom graffiti, the farm/fork romance is enshrined in press releases, appended to menus, scribbled on websites, and emblazoned on walls. And lest any customer dare question the depth of the restaurant’s affections, servers are primed to spill all the juicy details—“Would you like to hear about the time our sous-chef helped the farmer dismember her chickens?”

There’s none of that showboating at La Boucherie, however. The rare restaurant which actually would be entitled to brag on its sourcing, La Boucherie is the in-town extension of Vashon Island’s Sea Breeze Farm, where Travel Channel personality Andrew Zimmern last year snacked on bovine placenta and slurped cow colostrum.

Among Seattle eaters, Sea Breeze is probably better known for its meat, milk, and cheese, which it sells at the U District and Ballard farmers markets. Those items form the core of the menu at La Boucherie, but the only signal to diners that all the meat is homegrown is a butcher case in the restaurant’s front room and a sketch of a curly-tailed hog on its bookmark-sized menu. Otherwise, owners George and Kristin Page are content to let their extraordinary pork squeal for itself.

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These capsule reviews are written by editorial staff and have nothing to do with advertising. For hundreds more reviews, searchable by neighborhood and type of cuisine, go to seattleweekly.com/food.

CENTRAL DISTRICT

SABA ETHIOPIAN CUISINE 112 12th Ave., 328-

2290. Squeamishness about raw food is perfectly understandable. Most Seattleites have gotten past that when it comes to tuna or egg yolks (thank you, Japan), but now it’s time to let raw beef push you the rest of the way. Saba’s Gored Gored comprises tender, uncooked beef cubes covered in awaze, a red chile sauce. The combination of heat, sweet, and raw meat juices (aka “blood”) explode on your tongue, pushing away all thought of mad cow. By the end you’ll just be grateful for the injera, the pancakelike bread served with Ethiopian cuisine, to sop up anything left on your plate. That said, if you just can’t bring yourself to put chunks of raw cow in your mouth, Saba’s menu is filled with flavor-filled cooked lamb, lentils, and more. $

DOWNTOWN

DELAURENTI SPECIALTY FOOD & WINE 1435 First

Ave., 622-0141. Could you spend hours wandering the aisles here? You could. In addition to providing a glorious selection of imported foods, Delaurenti also caters to the gourmet in a hurry, with hot and cold

sandwiches, panini, and pizza. A great way to take advantage of the made-to-order items is to pick your dish, pay for it, then look around the fabulous selection of deli meats and cheeses for something to take home for dinner. $ HABESHA ETHIOPIAN RESTAURANT 1809 Minor Ave., 624-0801. Even though you can stuff yourself for $20 at Habesha, it’s probably the classiest place to try to upscale the Denny Triangle in years. Its exposed brick walls, full bar, and dozens of hand-decorated paper lamps blend traditional Ethiopian with modern Seattle. If not the most transcendent Ethiopian cuisine in town, Habesha’s food is still tasty. To the standard list of tibs (strips of beef or lamb stir-fried in spiced butter), doro wot (a rich, berbere-flavored chicken stew), and the ubiquitous veggie combo, owner Abiy Assefa has added a few tweaks, such as asa gulash, cubes of a tender white fish cooked with onions and peppers in bright, spicy awaze sauce. $ IL CORVO 1501 Western Ave. Ste. 300, 622-4280. There’s no shortage of great meals within walking distance of Seattle Weekly’s offices, and Il Corvo’s pasta is no exception. The spaghetti with briny cured tuna heart, crushed Calabrian chiles, olive oil and parsley leaves evokes the feverish, lascivious spring that many chefs forsake in favor of celebrating the season’s tender greens. The pasta preparations change daily, so check owner Mike Easton’s blog, ilcorvopasta.com, for a running roster. $ JAPONESSA 1400 First Ave., 971-7979. Japonessa is not really a Japanese/Spanish fusion restaurant. It

FirstCall

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Happy Hour Menu!

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3 - 6pm Monday - Friday

Jasonduilaw.com If you have a DUI or Traffic Infraction(s), you need representation immediately. My firm offers competitive rates and discounts for Veterans and their family members.

IF YOU ARE STOPPED FOR A DUI, HAND THIS CUTOUT TO THE OFFICER.

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Argentini

KEEGAN HAMILTON

Watch as Rafa’s powerful masseur forearms bulge.

a pretty orange hue. Though it’s all booze, it goes down smooth, with a flavor vaguely reminiscent of an orange Creamsicle. And there’s just enough bourbon to give it a buzz-inducing finishing kick.

The name Little Italy, Rafa explains, comes from the Aperol and the Fernet, the national drink of Argentina. “Fernet and Coke,” Rafa says wistfully, noting that his South American homeland is the only country other than Italy authorized to distill Fernet. “Italy says, ‘We cannot ship you any more.

You consume too much. You make it yourselves.’ ” The Verdict: Rafa’s Little Italy is an inspired take on a Manhattan, and something I would definitely order again. As for The Gerald, their gussied-up finger food is not something you’d find on the Draper family dinner table. And that’s probably for the best: Lest we forget, the ’50s and ’60s also spawned TV dinners, Cheez Whiz, and Tang. E khamilton@seattleweekly.com

15% OFF TOTAL BILL (Dine in Only. Not valid during Happy Hour) Sun-Thurs 11am-10pm • Fri & Sat 11am-midnight : Happy Hours: Everyday 3pm-6pm • Fri & Sat 10pm-midnight We do catering and delivery every day from 5pm-10pm.

4750 California Avenue SW West Seattle, Washington W W W. B A N G B A R T H A I . C O M

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

The Watering Hole: The Gerald, 5210 Ballard Ave. N.W., 432-9280, BALLARD The Atmosphere: It’s a shame that the fifth season of Mad Men has finished filming, because The Gerald would make a perfect set for it. Everything is meticulously furnished and fitted in the sort of 1960s retro-chic popularized by Don Draper and co. The only thing missing (though it’s certainly not missed) is a perpetual haze of tobacco smoke.

Located across the street from the Tractor on Ballard Avenue, The Gerald takes its name from the painfully punning business that preceded it, a T-shirt shop called Elephants Gerald. At the start of happy hour on a Tuesday afternoon, a medley of hip-hop and reggae plays on the stereo and the only customers are a couple of ladies sipping cocktails and snacking on appetizers.

The Barkeep: Rafael, or just Rafa, is a colorful character who originally hails from Argentina. A former surf bum, he says he’s “lived all over the planet” and traveled extensively in pursuit of the perfect wave before settling in Seattle. In addition to tending bar at The Gerald, he can also be found just up the street at Bastille and at Fremont’s 35th Street Bistro. Besides bartending, he works parttime as a masseur at Divine Spine, a chiropractic clinic above Ballard restaurant the Hi-Life.

“I love Seattle,” he says in splendidly accented English. “I just need to figure out how to get out in December, January, and February and come back.”

The Drink: “Hopefully you like bourbon,” Rafa says, setting out to make a drink he recently invented: the Little Italy. He grabs a bottle of Maker’s Mark, then Aperol, Fernet Branca, and some Angostura bitters. His powerful masseur forearms bulging, he vigorously shakes all the ingredients, strains the mixture into a cocktail glass, and garnishes it with a spiral of orange peel.

The drink has a nice foam ring around the top and

PATIO OPEN

33

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Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

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34

Huaraches Ceviche and More!

1514 Pike Place Market www.losagaves.net Call 206-504-0202 to place your order to go.

GREEN LEAF 418 Eighth Ave. S., 340-1388. Perched

next to the I-5 overpass that divides the International District, Green Leaf delivers a quick meal that will fill you up. Across the board, the dishes are presented beautifully, and there’s no scrimping on size. Regulars here are often fiercely loyal to their dish of choice, Rim. Mediterranean. Even South American influence. whether that’s the pho (with perfectly spiced broth The take-away is confusing, but delicious. $$ ORGANIC TO GO 701 Fifth Ave. #202 (Bank of America that some say is the city’s best), the remarkably large Tower), 748-9922. Organic to Go delivers complete vermicelli noodle bowls that teem with meat and “lunch bags” to downtown as long as you place veggies, or the Seven Special Courses of Beef for Two. your order by 9:30 a.m. Their contents: your entrée of I’m partial to the specialty fried-duck noodle soup, choice, apple slices, cheese crackers, chocolate, and which comes with fresh veggies and egg noodles. mineral water. Check out the Those in the know also revel in Green Leaf’s hole-invegetarian sandwich made the-wall anonymity, touting it as a Tamarind Tree withwith smoked mozzarella and out the hype. If you can, try to get a table upstairs; the olive tapenade, or the grilled natural light and kitschy wagon-wheel benches make chicken breast with mozfor a better environment than the dim, crowded-feeling zarella.

The Santa Fe-style dining room on the 5-9pm lower floor. $ Monday - Thursday 5-10pm, Friday - Saturday 5-12am, Sunday JADE GARDEN RESTAURANT 424 Seventh Ave. S., clam chowder is well seaBrunch Sat Sun 9am-2pm 622-8181. If you can stand the body crush in the lobby, soned, while the Thai vegthis Hong Kong-style restaurant is the place to go for etable curry is a good option • 206 789 5100 5411 Ballard Ave NW dim sum.

Dozens of delights, a good mix of tradition for a cold day. $ RED ROBIN 1101 Alaskan and novelty, circle the room: The pastry around the www.volterrarestaura nt.com Way (Pier 55), 623-1942. shrimp-and-onion balls crumples at the touch; the Situated on Pier 55 on the barbecued pork buns have the texture of clouds; T H I S CO D E Seattle waterfront, this is translucent shrimp-and-leek dumplings are plumped TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE the best-sited Red Robin out with juicy meat. And you’ll need to double up on SEATTLE WEEKLY in the city. Tourists and the custard buns (look for the crackly tops). $ IPHONE/ANDROID APP NORTHWEST TOFU 1913 S. Jackson St., 328-8320. This seagulls love it for the same FOR MORE RESTAURANTS OR VISIT wee, and far from impressive-looking, tofu factory on reasons: good food, amply seattleweekly.com the ID-CD border sells countless varieties of soy milk served, and French fries left and tofu products, all made in back. The customers sitover to feed to the hoverting at the tables are there for Northern Chinese small ing birds. Only one of the tasty burgers runs over 10 plates, not vegan delicacies: noodle soups, steamed bucks, making it a favorite affordable lunch-hour joint. dumplings, small plates like tofu strips with pickled Happy-hour specials also attract office workers after greens and soybeans, and congee (rice porridge) with 5 o’clock and beyond. During summer, if you can’t find thousand-year egg. Fresh soy products star in everyan open table (as is frequently the case), consider thing from sweet soy milk (order a Chinese doughnut to doing take-out for a picnic in nearby Waterfront Park dip in it) to a rich hotpot with fried tofu, tofu ham, and (just a few steps north at Pier 57). The seagulls will be tofu-skin strips tied in knots. $ waiting for you. $

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JAI THAI 3423 Fremont Ave. N., 632-7060. Thai pop con-

certs projected onto the wall, carvings and thatched fountains scattered around the room, tribes of Fremont singles sucking down cocktails with their phad kee mao—there’s a lot going on at Jai Thai. The curries and stir-fries are heavily pitched toward the sweet and gringo-friendly, but the vegetables are crisply fresh and the plates are exuberantly garnished with herbs and shredded vegetables. $

Post Alley at Pike Place Market

INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT

ALittLeRAskin » by hanna raskin

Thai Goes to the Runner

With the Seattle Mariners having lost more than half their games so far, it’s no wonder the club wants its fans to look at something other than batting averages and slugging percentages when scanning the scoreboard.

Hence, as a player steps up to the plate at Safeco, the center-field JumboTron displays his picture and a personal tidbit, so spectators learn which Mariners like Matt Damon or tomato soup.

Most of the food-themed facts flashed onscreen are fairly pedestrian: Not surprisingly, ballplayers are fond of chicken and steak. But Brendan Ryan’s favorite food is seemingly out of left field: The 30-year old shortstop really, really likes panang curry.

Ryan was born in Los Angeles, but didn’t grow up eating the milky curry. “I went to this Thai restaurant and had panang curry, and have never looked back,” he says. “It was awesome.

SEVEN STARS PEPPER SZECHUAN RESTAURANT

1207 S. Jackson St., 568-6446. Seven Stars, housed on the second floor of a cramped strip mall, has lost some of its luster since the founding chef moved to Bellevue, but this Szechuan restaurant still offers some intoxicatingly spicy fare. The hot pots, prawn and octopus with wild peppers, and boiled fish in spicy sauce will set your mouth a-steaming, and even vegetables like cucumber and potato come doused in chile oil. The Szechwan crab, hand-cut noodles, and house-special pancake have a devoted fan base. $

I mean, really awesome—and I get it every time now when I get Thai.”

Panang curry is milder than most Thai curries, but Ryan claims he isn’t shy about heat. “I like it pretty spicy,” he says. “I order three out of five— you know they do the numbers—and then I get extra on the side, you know, that chili paste.”

A trade with the St. Louis Cardinals brought Ryan to Seattle in 2010, and, though a dazzling fielder, he’s struggled at the plate in his second Mariner season.

“It’s time for him to figure out what he needs to do to be successful,” manager Eric Wedge recently told reporters after benching Ryan and his sleepy bat.

If the answer involves more curry, Ryan may need to find a local go-to takeout joint. He doesn’t yet have a favorite Thai restaurant in Seattle. “We’re still exploring,” he says. “My fiancee and I were talking about that last week, that we need to get out and try more places.” E hraskin@seattleweekly.com

aBLOG ON »FOOD VORACIOUS

SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM/VORACIOUS

music» »PROFILE

Don’t Fear the Laser

Why The Wall’s 30-year run at Pacific Science Center is more historic than Roger Waters’ anniversary tour.

Borcherding has performed The Wall in Seattle around 1,200 times, more than Roger Waters or Pink Floyd have— worldwide—combined.

in the suburbs. “They come from Bridgeport, Westport, Darien,” Chris Collingwood sings.

“Down to the Hayden Planetarium/We’re gonna space out to our favorite tunes/We’re going straight to the dark side of the moon.”

Laser shows also became tied to marijuana culture, another phenomenon mainstreamed in the ’70s. You could top off the latest Cheech & Chong flick with a midnight show of Dark Side of the Moon at the local laserium; the shows’ bright colors, abstract animations, and loud music were near-perfect entertainment for stoners. “The standard announcement ahead of our shows,” says Dryer, “was ‘There is no smoking of anything in the planetarium.’ ” He said it wasn’t uncommon to catch audience members toking up during a performance. In San Francisco, there was even a group called the Roach Patrol, who collected the remains of stamped-out joints on the auditorium floor after showings.

Borcherding, however, says the two cultures aren’t as linked as they once were. “We have definitely seen a lot less people coming in that either smell funny or that look like they’ve been drinking,” he says. “I don’t know what it is about society that has changed, but things are definitely different.” He should know: Borcherding has been performing live laser shows in Seattle for a dozen years, and bills himself as the most-performed laser artist in the world, having done more than 12,000 shows. To put that in perspective, Borcherding has performed The Wall in Seattle somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 times, substantially more than Roger Waters or Pink Floyd have done so— worldwide—combined.

T

oday, Seattle’s laser venue is one of the last to offer year-round laser programming. “Laser shows in planetariums have kind of dwindled,” Murphy says, adding that despite the lack of venues, lasers are still very popular in touring shows and on television at events like the Super Bowl or the finale of American Idol.

Laser loves this guy.

“There are more choices competing for kids’ entertainment dollars today,” adds Borcherding, who thinks the Internet, video games, and iTunes have taken a bite out of ticket sales. “A kid can go out and spend 50 or 60 bucks on a video game that’s going to keep them entertained for a month.”

Though The Wall has survived longer than any other show at the Laser Dome, it isn’t the venue’s most popular. More contemporary shows from Lady Gaga and Daft Punk pull in bigger numbers, but the power of Pink Floyd endures. “The Wall is a dark album and very intense,” says Borcherding. “And that midnight show is kind of a special crowd. We have not hit that low point where we need to say it’s time to pull it. Even Daft Punk has come out and gone back in.”

Murphy says the laser business is moving away from the kind of graphics seen at the Seattle Laser Dome and more toward beam patterns and shapes that can move around to the music and envelop you. “It’s like being in a fireworks display,” he said. “It’s like having the light come and touch you in a way that many other medias don’t do. It’s really stunning.”

Oh, as for those rumors about laser-damaged retinas at Blue Öyster Cult shows? It’s actually very difficult to be injured with a laser, and even the rare injuries are usually temporary. Murphy elaborates: “We’ve done an extensive study of 30 years of laser shows, and we have found eight suspected or probable eye injuries out of about 11 million people who have seen these shows.” In other words, don’t fear the laser. E music@seattleweekly.com LASER FLOYD: THE WALL pacificsciencecenter.org. $10.75. 11:59 p.m., Fri., 12:59 a.m. & 12:59 p.m. Sat., 12:59 a.m. Sun. ROGER WATERS: THE WALL KeyArena, Seattle Center, 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com. $70–$225. 8 p.m. Thurs., May 24.

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

When rumors swirled about concertgoers suffering eye injuries from lasers shone directly into the audience, the government dispatched OSHA representatives to hit the road with the band and study this new entertainment. The resulting scrutiny led to government regulation of the laser business, and continued operating expenses forced BÖC to sell off the gear just 18 months later.

But interest in the laser-light revolution and its connection to music had been solidified, a bond the art forms would share for the next three-and-a-half decades.

The year BÖC took their show on the road, a Los Angeles filmmaker named Ivan Dryer, who earlier in the decade had pioneered the first ongoing laser show at L.A.’s Griffith Observatory, brought his knowledge to Seattle to do the same for a fledgling section of the Pacific Science Center known as the Boeing Spacearium. Designed by American architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, the room, with a perforated-aluminum domed ceiling 80 feet

in diameter, had been used as a sort of Cinerama-style movie theater, with films projected onto the ceiling. But when the film stock began deteriorating in the mid-’70s, the PSC came up with a new idea: a laser show.

By the late ’70s, the laser business was booming, with shows popping up across the country in cities such as Denver, San Diego, San Francisco, and New York. The earliest shows featured an eclectic selection of music, from classical to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, accompanied by simple laser animations that danced across the ceiling in mesmerizing shapes and patterns. Growing interest led to themed shows, particularly ones based on popular artists of the era like Led Zeppelin and Rush.

The latter tapped Dryer to design the lasers for their 1977 tour; in fact, Rush’s 1982 album Signals was the first to get the full laser-show treatment.

But another band was Dryer’s favorite, and it would ultimately take the medium to new heights: Pink Floyd. “I was very taken with their music,” he recalls. “It was very dramatic, very programmatical—and still is.

There’s no band anywhere near them as far as I’m concerned in terms of the quality.”

Patrick Murphy, director of the International Laser Display Association, which promotes the art and technology of laser shows, agrees: “That’s a perennial because of the spacey music and lyrics. It goes perfectly with lasers, which tend to be a more abstract medium. You’re kind of filling in some of the void.”

According to the PSC’s best guess, sometime around 1982 the Spacearium also became enamored of the music of Pink Floyd, offering a late-night show featuring The Wall, the band’s landmark 1979 album, which has sold more than 30 million copies. Remarkably, The Wall’s laser show has played every Friday and Saturday at midnight ever since.

Despite its growing popularity, the laser business didn’t peak until the ’90s. Virtually every big city had a planetarium with some form of laser entertainment, fueled by the explosion of modern-rock radio. John Borcherding, Laser Theater Supervisor for what is now known as the Seattle Laser Dome, said that for years radio was the major factor in programming, inspiring shows featuring bands like U2, the Beastie Boys, and Sublime.

Going to the laser show became a rite of passage for teenagers, modern rock’s biggest demographic, and the Seattle Laser Dome was bombarded by young adults old enough to drive but too young to drink. Fountains of Wayne even wrote a song, “Laser Show,” about the experience on their 1999 album Utopia Parkway, a concept record about growing up COURTESY OF LIVE NATION

R

ed eyes and a smoker’s cough are a common denominator among the teens and 20-somethings congregated outside the Seattle Laser Dome’s box office for a recent midnight showing of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The live laser show has been running for a remarkable, historic 30 years. But it might surprise the enhanced patrons to know that the show is perhaps less indebted to Roger Waters— the former Floyd frontman who brings the album’s 30th-anniversary tour to KeyArena Thursday—than to the band behind the cowbell-driven hit “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”

When Blue Öyster Cult hit the road in 1976, riding high on the success of that nowubiquitous single, the band added a new component to its live show that would forever become entwined with its legacy: lasers.

Though frontman Eric Bloom had seen these high-tech lights used at Wings and Led Zeppelin concerts, he wanted to up the ante. So the band bought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cutting-edge laser equipment, which they hauled in a tractortrailer and which made the band’s stage show shine—literally. In turn, the light show made BÖC one of the era’s must-see rock acts. But the success came at a price.

BY DAVE LAKE

35

music»Reverb

»THROUGH @ 2

Dicks’ Picks

»TELL ME ABOUT THAT SONG

fun.’s “We Are Young”

Detective Agency keeps it very discreet, very professional.

COURTESY FUELED BY RAMEN

Lead singer Nate Ruess talks about the inescapable hit of 2012.

BY JOE WILLIAMS SW: Do you remember when and where you wrote “We Are Young”?

Ruess: For the most part I was just in my car

Who is the song about?

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

It’s just an amalgamation of all these different insecurities as well as things that happened, kind of making up this story in my head.

And also, just a night that I was so inebriated that I remember our bass player and my girlfriend had to take care of me that night. And I thought, “I feel pretty lucky that I have people in my life that are there.” Like, forget about all the bad stuff that we’ve all been through and let’s just have one good night, you know?

36

How was it watching something you wrote performed on Glee?

I didn’t see it until the day after. It just . . . it makes me really squeamish. I can’t watch myself, I can’t look at photos of myself and stuff like that, so hearing other people sing my song always makes me really squeamish, but Glee was very cool for us. It’s such a progressive show, and it introduces people to music. So that’s just something you could never even say no to. I have a hard time believing that people can say no to something that has a positive effect on people.

Did you approach them or did they approach you?

We gave them the song thinking, “Hey, it’s going to become a hit . . . keep us in mind!” and they were just like, “Well, we want to make it a hit.” Which is weird, because they had never done that before. E fun. plays the sold-out Sasquatch! Festival (May 27–30) at the Gorge on Mon., May 28. music@seattleweekly.com

THE SITUATION On a recent Tuesday evening, I’m at the Ballard Smoke Shop drinking beer with local garage-pop quartet Detective Agency: drummer Ulrika Larsson, guitarist/vocalist Nate Kruz, bassist Gwen Stubbs, and guitarist/vocalist Amy Tisdale. They all have really good hair—I’ll go ahead and call them Seattle’s Best Coiffed Band.

HOW THEY GOT HERE The ladies of Detective Agency are all career women. Tisdale is the coolest second-grade teacher at Mukilteo’s Challenger Elementary School. Larsson works at hip downtown Scandinavian fashion boutique Pirkko. Stubbs has her own clothing line, Lekkerlife, and plans to open a showroom this summer. Kruz is the only one currently enjoying a period of unemployment; he’s also several years younger than his bandmates. I ask him if they ever boss him around.

“Not all of them,” he says, shifting his eyes around the table. The girls laugh at him.

SHOP TALK Earlier this year, Detective Agency recorded five of their songs, called it the Daggers

GREG STONEBRAKER/COURTESY OF KEXP

driving to meet with another producer that I was really excited about. It felt like we were starting to make a little bit of progress from the songwriter’s standpoint of the album, and at that point my brain was kind of in songwriting mode and it just hit me in the middle of the car. I lived with it for a while. I really liked the lyrics, but I was unsure about the melody, and I tried to write the lyrics into a different song, but it really sucked.

BY ERIN K. THOMPSON

EP, and made it available on Bandcamp. “The songs have a lot of personality,” says Kruz. “One of them will sound like garage rock from the ’60s, another one will sound more like an ’80s pop song.”

Kruz and Tisdale write the breezy lyrics. Kruz quotes some lines from “Smoke a Cig,” on which he sings lead: “ ‘I want to smoke a cig on Friday night, I want to smoke a cig on Saturday night . . . ’ ” “ ‘ . . . You don’t want me to go out. I don’t want you to stay in. You’re gonna have to learn that you’re not my only friend,’ ” Tisdale finishes for him.

“Some of them are kind of serious!”

BTW: Detective Agency was originally a more literal title—“I wanted to solve some crime and have some fun with that,” says Larsson. They had a slogan—“Very Discreet, Very Professional”—and even some cases: who had a crush on whom, who was stealing bikes from Larsson’s house, how to befriend a cool-looking metal guy they saw walking around Ballard.

But then, says Larsson, “We decided we were going to play music and drink beers instead.”

Larsson did some research and found a course to earn a license in private investigation that only costs $100. “We could still do it,” says Tisdale.

“There’s still time,” agrees Larsson. E ethompson@seattleweekly.com DETECTIVE AGENCY With Unnatural Helpers. JewelBox/ Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave., 441-5823. $7. 9 p.m. Thurs., May 24.

18+ ONLY ~ LIMITED VIP TABLES AVAILABLE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT STGPRESENTS.ORG, BY PHONE (877) 784-4849, powered THE PARAMOUNT THEATRE BOX OFFICE & 24-HOUR KIOSKS by

PHOTO: Angus Young performing “Baby Please Don’t Go” on the floor of the Hard Rock Café, Melbourne, May 1975. ©Andrew Wittner

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6/1 Noise For The Needy presents JD McPHERSON, HENRY AT WAR, RATS IN THE GRASS 6/2 STAR ANNA & THE LAUGHING DOGS, KASEY ANDERSON & THE HONKIES, COBIRDS UNITE 6/3 GREG LASWELL, ELIZABETH ZIMAN of Elizabeth and the Catapult 6/5 THE FOGHORNS, SAM RUSSELL w/ THE HARBORRATS album release, NATHAN WADE 6/6 KLADRUBY GOLD, WINDOW VIEW, CERTAIN INERTIA 6/7 Noise For The Needy present DAVID J of Bauhaus/Love & Rockets, EMILY JANE WHITE, GRAIG MARKEL 6/8 TOMMY SIMMONS, CODY BEEBE & THE CROOKS, VAN EPS, BLAKE NOBLE 6/9 tribute to Neil Young feat. THE MINUS 5, LEWI LONGMIRE BAND, THE DON OF DIVISION STREET 6/11 MONDAY SQUARE DANCE with THE TALLBOYS 6/12 SARAH JAFFE 6/13 DOE BAY FEST ANNOUNCEMENT PARTY 6/14 NEON HYMNS, MAN WITHOUT WAX, FREIGHMS

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

QUINN

HIGH CEILING

MAY 29

SUN, MAY 27 • 9PM ~ $8 LOCAL ALT-ROCK

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music»TheShortList Ryan Purcell and The Last Round FRIDAY, MAY 25

Ryan Purcell writes songs evocative of the places Jason Aldean sings about in his selfexplanatory Middle American anthem “Fly Over States.” Yet Purcell is an artist based in very non-flyover Seattle whose tunes make you want to guzzle Oly and refurbish an abandoned Nalley Valley smelter for residential purposes. He glides effortlessly between slow-burning ballads and honky-tonk; bourbon sales should soar. With Jackrabbit, the Tripwires. Columbia City Theater, 4916 Rainier Ave. S., 722-3009. 9 p.m. $8 adv./ $10 DOS. MIKE SEELY

Black Bananas In the cult of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll, I think Royal Trux/RTX/Black Bananas frontwoman Jennifer Herrema is supposed to represent some sort of goddess ideal: the Dionysian wastrel, the magic junkie, the chick with a guitar-dick bigger than any dude’s.

I don’t really know, though, because for all Black Bananas’ emphasis on heavy fucking riffs and volume and badass attitude, the cult I’m blatantly straw-manning here doesn’t seem to care too much about, you know, tunes, songs, catchy bits—that sort of thing.

To me it’s one dumb chugging guitar wank after another, and I couldn’t give a shit about who’s on heroin or who’s not. Crypts are pretty cool live, though. With Turbo Fruits, Broken Nobles, Crypts. Comet Tavern, 922 E. Pike St., 322-9272. 9 p.m. $10. ERIC GRANDY

JEREMY LANGE

SATURDAY, MAY 26

animating tension, between the accessible and the unnerving, that marks the best of Xiu Xiu’s work. Don’t be surprised if they favor the latter live, though. With Yamantaka, Father Murphy.

Barboza, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9467. 8 p.m. $10.

ERIC GRANDY

Yo, Son! 10th Anniversary SUNDAY, MAY 27

Mixed-format DJ nights are a pillar of most any healthy hip-hop scene. The usually artistXiu Xiu SUNDAY, MAY 27 rich crowds create an environment that’s a haven not only for dancing but for networkXiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart sings in a nevering, collaborating, and educating. Locally, quite-breaking tremble—the sort of delivery current in-crowd hangouts like the Capitol that, say, early Bright Eyes used to telegraph Club’s Jet Set have folemotional distress. But lowed in the footsteps of Stewart takes things to the highly successful Yo, even more gut-wracking Tune in to 97.3 KIRO FM every Sunday at 3 p.m.

Son! DJ night, dreamt up and theatrically messy to hear music editor Chris Kornelis in 2002 by scene visionarextremes, plumbing on Seattle Sounds. ies like Stuck Under the depths of self-loathing Needle’s Marcus Lalario, oversharing that would make any emo cherub blush, or possibly vomit. DV-One, and DJ Scene. This Sunday, Yo, Son! is back with DJs DV-One and Fourcolorzack The group’s latest album Always is more of the and host Nightclubber Lang (of Boom Bap same, but also its most sharply focused and Project) to vamp up the Hill for a night. Chop weirdly poppy album in years, trading its often noisy and avant-garde stylings for relatively Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 324-8005. 9 p.m. straightforward electro-pop backings. It’s this $10/$5 before 11 p.m. TODD HAMM

38

* ADARSHA BENJAMIN

Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

e

Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart is in there somewhere.

Leighton Meester and Check in the Dark TUESDAY, MAY 29

Blair Waldorf’s wild adventures in romance in season 5 of Gossip Girl have finally wound down, but that doesn’t mean star Leighton Meester is taking any breaks. She’s dabbled in music for years, making pop songs a thousand times better than The Roommate but still not sufficiently noteworthy to win her enough attention as the Upper East Side’s Queen B. Meester does have a legitimately great voice, though, and she’s giving the music thing another try—this time not as a pop tart. For about a year now, she’s been collaborating with L.A. Americana band Check in the Dark, singing and playing guitar. She had some practice going country thanks to her role in 2010’s Country Strong, so here’s hoping it’s a smart switch. XOXO. With Dana Williams. Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Ave., 628-3151. 7 p.m. $18 adv./$20 DOS. All ages. ERIN K. THOMPSON

EDITOR’S PICK

THE PHARMACY SATURDAY, MAY 26

Vashon Island’s hottest rock band has already had a busy 2012, releasing the raucous Dig Your Grave EP in February, filming two music videos, touring the country, and having their groupie-loving, hard-partying ways touted by The New Yorker. And they’re just getting started: In July, Austrian label Seayou Records will release a Pharmacy full-length titled Stoned & Alone; as a precursor to that, the melodic four-song EP Josephine—Dig Your Grave’s much calmer sibling—came out earlier this month. New music means new tour—The Pharmacy will spend June opening a West Coast tour for Japanther and will be back in Seattle to play Bumbershoot. With Hussy, the Night Beats. JewelBox/Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave., 4415823. 10 p.m. $7. ERIN K. THOMPSON

WED 5/23

DEADSTRING BROTHER

JAMES APOLLO • VINCA MINOR 9PM • $7

TIM ROGERS (OF YOU AM I)

THUR 5/24

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GARTH REEVES • ANDREW MCKEAG KIM VIRANT • KASEY ANDERSON MAX GENEREAUX AND MANY MORE! 9PM • $10 ADVANCE / $12 DAY OF SHOW

FRI 5/25

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JACK WILSON

LOW LAND HIGH • THE LUSITANIA 10PM • $8

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Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Ave., 628-3151, showboxonline.com. 7 p.m. $20. All ages.

NARROWS Featuring members of These Arms are Snakes and Bullet Union, this five-piece specializes in raw, vicious hardcore. With Retox, Great Falls, Brokaw.

El Corazon, 109 Eastlake Ave. E., 381-3094, elcorazon seattle.com. 8 p.m. $10 adv./$12 DOS. All ages.

PONY TIME The party-rocking duo of Luke Beetham and Stacy Peck play this hometown show before embarking on a short June tour raging down the West Coast.

With Half Gift, Psychic Feline, Naomi Punk. JewelBox/ Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave., 441-5823, rendezvous seattle.com. 10 p.m. $5.

THE UNIBROZ This local joke-rap group comes off like a less-polished, less-self-aware version of Das Racist.

With Allium, They Rise We Die. The Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave., 441-7416, thecrocodile.com. 8 p.m. $10 adv./$12 DOS. All ages.

Thursday, May 24

Heads with an improvisational jam-band sensibility, and it might sound something like this funk-rock group.

With Quinn, High Ceiling. Tractor Tavern, 5231 Ballard Ave. N.W., 789-3599, tractortavern.com. 9 p.m. $7.

THE MANHATTANS This classic ’60s and ’70s R&B vocal group, set to play four nights at Jazz Alley, has a style that ranges from doo-wop to soul. Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave., 441-9729, jazzalley.com. 7:30 p.m.

Thurs. & Sun.; 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat. $30.50. All ages.

ROAMING HERDS OF BUFFALO This recently formed four-piece plays quirky folk-pop in the vein of Fruit Bats. With Something in the Trees, Carousel. High Dive, 513 N. 36th St., 632-0212, highdiveseattle.com. 9 p.m. $6.

THE SKINS These mood-rock purveyors bring their show from Tacoma for a night with loud rockers Ticktockman.

With GOD. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 324-8005, chopsuey.com. 8 p.m. $7.

THE TWELVES This Brazilian DJ duo has done remix work for the likes of M.I.A. and Asobi Seksu. With Victor Menegaux, James Ervin, Hanibal. Neumos, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9442, neumos.com. 8 p.m. $12.

AUTOMATIC THEORY The Tacoma power-pop three-piece recently released a six-song EP, Two Sides. With Merci; Kiliii Fish; JG, Cedric & Lula; Flying Tortugas; Denizen Seven; Callie Cash; Disruption. Nectar. 6:30 p.m. $10 adv./$13 DOS. All ages.

BAKA BEYOND This worldmusic collective fuses African rhythms and Celtic harmony singing. Triple Door. 8 p.m. $15 adv./$18 DOS. All ages.

Monday, May 28 ASCENSION TO THE SUN

Friday, May 25 THE DUSTY 45S This energetic jump-blues group

FELIPE FONTECILLA

recently served as rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson’s backing band. With Shane Tutmarc, the Whisky Swillers. Tractor Tavern. 9:30 p.m. $12 adv./$15 DOS. HEAVY T & THE BLUE NOTES OldThe Twelves are at Neumos school blues-rock led by veteran guitarist on May 24. and singer Tom “Heavy T” Bukowski.

With Jamestown Revival. High Dive.

9:30 p.m. $7.

MAHOGANY Baffling Web presence aside (“formulated as a response borne of multidisciplinary generational precedent”), Mahogany seems to be a clever little avant-garde orchestral-pop thing; hooking them up with go-to local audio wizard Erik Blood seems like a smart fit. With USF. Comet Tavern, 902 E. Pike St., 322-9272, comettavern.com. 9 p.m. $10.

NIGHTRAIN This all-female quartet’s self-dubbed “locomotive punk” has garnered rave reviews from the likes of SIMON KORNELIS The baby brother of Seattle Weekly’s Three Imaginary Girls. With Punk Funk Mob, Pony Time, music editor makes porch-swing folk music that will Orca Team. Skylark, 3803 Delridge Way S.W., 935-2111, compel you to tuck into a pint of pale ale and hit on skylarkcafe.com. 8 p.m. $5.

RAINFEST The hardcore scene’s answer to Sasquatch!, the brunette with the vintage eyeglasses and cryptic this annual three-day festival features acts like Bane, forearm tattoos. With Jon Dee Graham, Mike June.

H2O, and Trapped Under Ice. Neumos. $75 for a threeColumbia City Theater, 4916 Rainier Ave. S., 722-3009. day pass. Through May 27.

8 p.m. $7.

VOLTAIRE How could you resist a night full of the macabre “murder ballads” and other bawdy, upbeat Send events to music@seattleweekly.com songs that Cuba’s Voltaire is known for? Drop that prudSee seattleweekly.com for full listings ish veil and enjoy a night of the grotesque. With Jamie = Recommended, NC = no charge, AA = all ages.

Nova. El Corazon. 9 p.m. $15 adv./$20 DOS. All ages.

•

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NEFARIOUS JONES Cross the early work of Talking

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Wednesday, May 23

Mahogany plays the Comet on May 25.

Something of a goth-rock supergroup, this band is a collaboration between This Ascension and Trance to the Sun, two mainstays of the ’80s and ’90s darkwave scene. With Imaginary Daughter, Blackpool Astronomy. Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave. N.W., 784-4880, sunsettavern.com.

9 p.m. $7.

HUNDREDTH These South Carolinans play melodic hardcore with a Christian message. With Counterparts, Gideon, To the Wind, Prestige, Prepare the Bride. Studio Seven, 110 S. Horton St., 286-1312, studioseven.us. 5 p.m. $12 adv./$14 DOS. All ages.

Saturday, May 26

Tuesday, May 29

DUFFY BISHOP The Grammy-nominated singer will

MATT BISHOP The frontman of cabaret pop group Hey

perform the music of Etta James at this rhythm-andblues dance revue. Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333, thetripledoor.net. 7 p.m. $22 adv./$25 DOS. All ages.

DOWN NORTH Vintage soul that bears the influence of local legends Wheedle’s Groove. The Crocodile. 8 p.m. $8. All ages.

CLINTON FEARON & THE BOOGIE BROWN BAND

A mainstay of the local reggae scene, Fearon will release Heart and Soul, his 10th solo record, at this show. With Selecta Raiford. Nectar, 412 N. 36th St., 632-2020, nectarlounge.com. 8 p.m. $12 adv./$15 DOS. MXPX Bremerton’s finest pop-punk band is touring behind its ninth studio album, Plans Within Plans.

With Amber Pacific, Poorsport. El Corazon. 8 p.m. $15 adv./$20 DOS. All ages.

Marseilles leads a triple bill of singer/songwriters. With Brooke Parrott, Ritchie Young. Sunset Tavern. 9 p.m. $7.

PEARL DJANGO This gypsy-jazz quintet combines the influence of its namesake, jazz-guitar legend Django Reinhardt, with that of string bands and Balkan folk.

Jazz Alley. 7:30 p.m. $21.50. All ages.

SKELATOR One of the best local metal bands coalesces wailing vocals, killer guitar riffs, and monstrous drums and bass into one big eargasm. With Watcher’s Eye, Phalgeron, Tanagra. Chop Suey. 7 p.m. $10.

NICK WATERHOUSE This California musician makes vintage-style soul and R&B with appealingly rough edges—it should fit nicely with Emerald City Soul Club’s repertoire of rare 45s. Barboza, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9467, thebarboza.com. 8 p.m. $10.

Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

41

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cannabis news | views rumors | humor

column»Toke Signals

WTF? OMG!

H

eading east recently toward a concert at Snoqualmie Casino gave me the opportunity to try GreenLink, a medical-marijuana access point in Issaquah. GreenLink’s owners, Lydia and Jake George, beat the odds by getting the Issaquah City Council to approve collectives back in 2010, working with the city to create a medical-marijuana ordinance after an initial dispute had resulted in a moratorium on access points.

Their persistence paid off, and the collective had just moved into their new building on Gilman Road three days before my visit.

According to budtender Jeremy, the new digs—though slightly smaller than GreenLink’s previous headquarters—allow for a better use of space.

GreenLink’s tiny budroom was stocked with just seven or eight strains, with donation points ranging from $10 to $14 a gram. Also available was a “mix” at the bargain rate of $7 a gram, which, according to Jeremy, lots of patients use for cooking and extracting concentrates.

GreenLink’s owners, Lydia and Jake George, beat the odds by getting the Issaquah City Council to approve collectives back in 2010.

Looking over the small selection, I quickly noticed that two of the strains had names I hadn’t seen in Seattle shops: OMG and WTF. Jeremy said OMG is a good nighttime indica strain—very effective as a sleeping aid—and a high-CBD strain. He even said it “didn’t contain any THC,” which I very much doubt.

Only a lab analysis could conclusively prove which of us is right, but a toke test did bear

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him out on OMG’s dank sleepiness. The slightly skunky-smelling OMG is thus an appropriate bedtime smoke, but is also somewhat problematic because of the difficulty in keeping it lit. The presence of abundant black ash indicates a possible lack of adequate flushing at the end of the nutrient cycle. It also tastes rather harsh, which could speak to the same problem.

WTF, on the other hand, is, according to Jeremy, an indica/sativa hybrid resulting from the cross of the sativa Alaskan Thunderfuck (ATF) with the indica Afghani. Jeremy mentioned that the indica half of WTF’s heritage seemed dominant to him, but once I toked the stuff, the two halves of its genetics seemed pretty balanced. The Afghani moderates the Alaskan’s sativa energy, while the Alaskan perks up the Afghani’s somnambulant couchlock qualities, making the citrusysmelling WTF much more a party weed than the OMG, which is much more a “drooling while lost in your labyrinthine, convoluted thoughts” type of strain.

I also tried a third strain, Chocolope (Chocolate Thai crossed with Cannalope), which had a sweet bouquet leaning more to the Cannalope side of its heritage.

Its effects are pronouncedly sativa-like— pulse-pounding energy, accelerated thoughts, and silly grins. So despite the histrionic OMG and ATF strain names, both were outshone

by Chocolope in the toke test. E

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Dear Dategirl, I love my girlfriend. Until recently we had an epic sex life, but over the past month or so she’s developed this habit of signifying her sexual interest by using an awful cartoon-character voice. Normally she has a husky, Zooey Deschanel–type voice, so this creepy, babyish, Betty Boop weirdness is a big contrast. I’ve tried to pre-empt it by always making the first move, because she doesn’t do it during the act, just leading up to it. But I can’t always get there first. How do I tell her it’s crushing my lumber?

—Skeeved Flaccid

This will require a little legwork on your part, but let me assure you, the end result will be well worth it.

First, change your sheets to some you don’t really give a shit about. Those jizz-stained poly-blends you held onto from college should do the trick. Next, invest in a pair of snug cutoffs, a too-small thrift-store Oxford that you’ll rip the sleeves off of, and a tub of green body paint. Then the next time she’s out with the girls, transform yourself from mild-mannered Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.

When she gets home, jump on a table, howl and beat your chest, throw her over your shoulders, run into the bedroom with her, and do her Hulk style. (“Hulk style” will inevitably result in green body paint everywhere, hence the sheet recommendation.)

Please note that I’m not suggesting date rape here. If she objects, stop.

Or instead of making such an investment in costuming, you could, you know, take the unprecedented step of talking to her and cluing her in that the baby voice is causing your balls to beat a retreat. For all she knows,

tawking like a widdle girl is a big fat turn-on.

After all, you still seem to be banging her.

Mixed messages, mister.

Your problem isn’t uncommon. When people have been together a while, they can get lazy—regardless of gender or orientation— and lapse into bad habits. When once there were careful seductions, a few years in, sometimes all we get is “Hey, wanna doooo it?” (in a feigned Jersey Shore accent) during the commercials. NOT THAT I’M PROJECTING AT ALL. And neither baby nor thug voice are as bad as the tactic of one friend’s ex-husband, whose idea of foreplay consisted of sprinting across the house in a thong. Relationships are work, people!

She’s doing the chick equivalent of the air-hump, and when you fuck her afterwards, you’re letting her know that it’s acceptable. I’m not saying punish her by withholding the joystick, but make it clear that it’s only her extreme hotness that allows you to overcome such a dick-shriveler.

A good strategy for bringing this up is to figure out what you might have gotten lax about lately. Still as hygienic as when you first met? Did the morning kiss fall by the wayside? Are you now pooping with the door open? (Please say no especially to that one.)

By coming up with your own shortcomings and fixing them, you’ll help her feel less defensive when you bring it up.

Anal sex, for or against?

—Loudmouth

Your ass, your decision. Be safe and use lube. Lots of lube. That’s non-negotiable. E dategirl@seattleweekly.com WANT MORE? Listen to Judy on The Mike & Judy Show on the Heritage Radio Network, follow her tweets @DailyDategirl, or visit dategirl.net.

Rules for acceptance of adult entertainment ads in Seattle Weekly: * Seattle Weekly does not accept ads promoting or soliciting illegal conduct. * It is the responsibility of the advertiser to conform its business activity to applicable law. * Seattle Weekly will accept no adult entertainment ads from anyone other than the person being represented in the advertisement. * Seattle Weekly requires a valid photo ID from the person placing the ad confirming they are 18 years of age or older as well as a signed photo/model release form. * All first time advertisers must physically come to the SW offices to place their ad so visual comparison to ID can be confirmed.

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805 Licensed Massage 1hr-$45/1.5-$65/2hrs-$85

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Seattle weekly • M AY 23– 29, 2012

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Golden Spa Deep Tissue, Swedish, Combination of all Asian Massage.

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RENTALS & REAL ESTATE

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110 Computer/Technical CyberSource Corporation, a Visa Inc. company, currently has openings in our Bellevue, WA location for: Staff Software Engineers (121892) to participate in the design and develop and lead implementation of new software as well as enhancements, modifications and corrections to existing software. The successful candidate will develop mission critical Web and backend applications, and leverage payments acceptance and processing domain experience to interact with business units to define requirements in connection with the design of appropriate solutions.

Apply online at www.visa.com and reference Job#. EOE

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ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING MATERIAL SUPPLIER Indium Corp. has an opening for Regional Sales Specialist in Bellevue, WA. Responsible for selling products by maintaining and expanding customer base. Position required to travel to various unanticipated sites throughout the US and globally. Apply online at www.indium.com or send resume to jobs@indium.com.

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bulletin board 595 Volunteers University of Washington MAPP Research Study Are you a male over 18 years old? Do you experience chronic fatigue? Are you currently in a period of fatigue?

If so, you may be eligible to participate in a UW study! Contact the research coordinator at mapprc@uw.edu or 206.616.4497 for more information. Note we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of any information sent via email. Look up our study at www.ClinicalTrials.gov (search for NCT01098279).

APPOINTMENT SPECIALIST Generate Free Estimate Appointments for Tree Work, Landscaping & Home Improvement Services. We work year round helping home owners keep their Homes Safe and Beautiful!

PAID TRAINING & MARKETING MATERIALS PROVIDED GREAT EARNING POTENTIAL (Top reps are earning up to $60,000/ year) CELL PHONE, TRAVEL & MEDICAL ALLOWANCE AVAILABLE EXTRA INCENTIVES CAN BE EARNED • FLEXIBLE SCHEDULE * Work for a Company where you set your own Hours. * Work any day of the week during the hours of 9am-7pm. * Work Part-Time or Full-Time REQUIREMENTS: * Vehicle & Driver’s License * Cell Phone * Internet Access you can use on a daily basis * Ability to work a minimum of 25 hours a week *THIS IS NOT A CONTRACT or 1099 POSITION*

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Seat tle weekly • M AY 23–29, 2012

@WeeklyEvents

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BACK PAGE • 206.623.6231 SUMMER ®

BEAUTIFUL BRAND NEW AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Immediate occupancy. NON-Smoking building.

Studios $700 -$800/mo.

1 Bedrooms $750 - $900/mo.

Rent includes in-floor radiant heat, W, S, G, and internet.

Rooftop deck, onsite laundry and community room.

Applicant must meet income requirements at more than 30% and less than 60% AMI: http://tinyurl.com/7ehxuao

(206) 357-3133

dekkoplace@compasshousingalliance.org

JOBS!

to Protect Our Civil Liberties Work with Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. on behalf of the ACLU to stand up for our liberties and protect the right to vote!

Full Time and Career Opportunities Available Earn $5,695-$9,095 through the summer!

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DIVORCE from $229 BANKRUPTCY from $299

Get paid for giving infertile couples the chance to have a baby. Women 21-31 and in good health are encouraged to apply. Compensation up to $4,500.

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June 14-17, 2012

Leavenworth International Accordion Celebration

Come and enjoy lively accordion concerts/competitions in the Festhalle and FREE entertainment at the Gazebo and Grange by top local, national, and international accordionists in the Bavarian getaway town of Leavenworth. Also featured are FREE introductory accordion lessons, vendor exhibitions, workshops, and the annual Accordion Parade down Front Street!

Fun for all ages. 206-622-4786 AccordionCelebration.org

SHORELINE Starting at $645

Large 1bd, deck, Fireplace, quiet, parking, free storage. Also 2bd for $845. Must pass credit check. Larry 206-363-3356

GUITAR LESSONS

Experienced Patient Teacher.

BFA/MM Brian Oates (206) 434-1942

Participants will be compensated for time and travel, and will receive study related care at no cost.

Greenlake/West Seattle $400 & up

ANNA'S MED HEALTH SPA-

Utilities included! busline, some with private bathrooms Please call Anna between 10am & 8pm 206-790-5342

Deep tissue, Relaxing,Chinese healing massage. 425-747-2288 10Am-10Pm www.annamedicalhealthspa.com 1550 140th Avenue NE, Suite 200 Bellevue

WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201

FUN, FLIRTY, LOCAL WOMEN Call FREE! 206-576-2411 or 800-210-1010 18+ www.livelinks.com

WuHsing Tao School now open for enrollment!

WuHsing Tao School is now enrolling for our next class!

A new group of students will begin their journey to become licensed Five Element Acupuncturists on July 13th! This program fills quickly so enroll today!

If you would like more information about our school or the program please register for our open house on May 25th or call (206) 324-7188 for an appointment.

Please visit www.wuhsing.org

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Debris Removal • 206-784-0313 • Credit Cards Accepted!

Support Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound FREE PICK UP OF MOST USED VEHICLES Tax Deductible. (206) 248-5982

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• Are between the ages of 18 and 70 • Have been diagnosed with asthma before the age of 40, and have had it for at least 6 months • Are able to discontinue current asthma medication for the duration of the study, as well as aspirin, NSAIDs and warfarin • Weigh 111 to 249 pounds • Are available for morning appointments at our clinic

Opportunities to meet film agents, managers, and producers; Grace Ledding, Agile Entertainment; Zach Cox Circle of Confusion; Frankie Lindquist, Scooty Woop Entertainment; Golan Ramras Hero Pictures; George Mendeluk, MKM Entertainment; workshops with screenwriters Rima Greer, Randall Jahnson, Miguel Tejada-Flores and many others, including opportunities to meet literary agents; August 3-5th, Portland, Oregon.

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