The Stranger Vol. 23, No. 4

STUDY GUIDE

QUESTIONS FOR THE STRANGER , VOLUME 23, ISSUE 4

1a. Four years ago, The Stranger published a cover photo of a little-known mayoral candidate named Michael McGinn. That cover photo effectively served as a campaign poster for a candidate who was struggling for attention. Many people— rightly or wrongly—attribute McGinn’s eventual win to The Stranger. Now The Stranger is doing the exact same thing with city council candidate Kshama Sawant. Given Mayor McGinn’s embarrassing polling numbers—30 percent to challenger Ed Murray’s 52 percent in a recent KING 5 poll—and poor public image, do you believe it is smart for The Stranger to “throw” all their “eggs” into one untested “basket” like this all over again? Considering how the first time played out, why do you think The Stranger would decide to pull the exact same stunt?

1b. Using your colored pencils, please illustrate The Stranger’s credibility in whatever form you consider to be appropriate. Does The Stranger’s credibility look like a ramshackle trailer in the middle of the woods? A tiny, misshapen third nipple on the City of Seattle’s chest? Does it resemble a mangy, unloved dog? Be creative!

1c. Alternately, if you are not confident in your drawing skills, write a short story about The Stranger’s credibility. Does it end well, or is it more like an ambiguous, Raymond Carver–esque

story about a drunken man who stares out the window a lot?

2. SPIKE FRIEDMAN contributes a story about baseball players. Why?

3. In the books section, PAUL CONSTANT, who is a white, ostensibly straight male, writes a review of a book by Peter Bagge, a white male cartoonist who has been in a heterosexual marriage for years. The book in question is about Margaret Sanger, a feminist pioneer. Were no women around The Stranger’s offices to review the book? Wouldn’t a female perspective be valuable here? Or did Constant review the book because it is in the form of a graphic novel (colloquially, a “funny book”) and women do not read graphic novels? How much sexism do you believe is on display in this piece and the thinking behind this piece?

A. A little.

B. A lot.

C. More than a little, less than a lot.

D. Comic book reviews in a book review section are a waste of everyone’s time anyway.

4. DAVE SEGAL writes about the Decibel Festival. Again. Has Segal written about the Decibel Festival in the pages of The Stranger more or fewer times than Dan Savage has written about gay sex? Remember to show your work!

CIRCULATION MANAGER Kevin Shurtluff

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Paul Kavanagh

PUBLISHER Tim Keck

LAST DAYS

The Week in Review BY

DAVID SCHMADER

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 This week of guns, knives, guns, popes, and guns kicks off in Michigan City, Indiana, where a 24-yearold man has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a 3-year-old boy, in what investigators say was a game with a gun gone Details come from the Northwest In, which identifies the playful gunman as 24-year-old Zachariah Grisham, and the dead boy as his girlfriend’s son. As Grisham told investigators, he and the boy regularly “played a game” in which the boy would point his finger at Grisham and say “bang, bang,” and Grisham would respond by pointing his gun at the boy and pulling the trigger. But during yesterday’s round of the game, Grisham forgot the gun was loaded, and 3-year-old Lance Wilson was fatally shot in the head. Grisham remains held in the LaPorte County Jail on charges of reckless homicide and felony neglect of a dependent.

•• Meanwhile in Washington, DC, Aaron Alexis , a 34-year-old former navy reservist and current military contractor with a history of mental problems, reported to his job at the Washington Navy Yard and fatally shot 12 people before being killed by police.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 In quainter news, the week continues with a little old attempted stabbing, made more delightful by its

DEAR SLEAZY BARTENDER

Did you really think that my brother and I were so drunk that we wouldn’t notice you padding our bill? Perhaps it was your greed that got the best of you? Greed is a sin, you know. I could excuse you for charging us for an extra drink, but to increase our consumption by 40 percent seems a bit absurd. My $17 glass of Lagavulin rang up as $25. Nice way to pad the bottom line. Lucky for you and your establishment, overcharging is apparently not against the law (according to the Washington State Liquor Control Board). Fair warning to all drinkers in the state of Washington and particularly at the popular Queen Anne establishment of… you don’t think I’d actually name names on that small place do you?

alleged connection to the music of the endlessly stab-worthy soft-rockers the Eagles. As ABC News reports, the scene went down last night in North Charleston, Virginia, where 54-yearold Vernett Bader lives with an unnamed male roommate whom she reportedly used to date. Last night, the ex-boyfriend roommate was enjoying the music of the Eagles when Bader told him she did not want to hear the music of the Eagles. According to the police report, the Eagles-loving man told Bader to shut up, after which she allegedly came after him with a 14-inch serrated bread knife. Responding to a call about an alleged assault with a knife, officers arrived to find the man locked in the bathroom with cuts on his hands and arms, and left with Bader, arrested on charges of criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature. “Officers noted in the report that everyone involved in the altercation was intoxicated at the time of the assault,” reports ABC. “The report did not detail which Eagles songs were being played.”

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 The week continues with more deadly gun violence, but if it’s any consolation, today’s idiots totally got what they deserved. Our setting: Ionia County, Michigan, where tonight two drivers involved in some sort of “road rage” dispute pulled into a parking lot, exited their vehicles, drew their handguns, and fatally shot each other. “Ionia residents James Pullum, 43, and Robert Taylor, 56, were pronounced dead at Sparrow Ionia Hospital,” reports the Grand Rapids Press . “They both held permits to carry concealed weapons.”

•• Speaking of concealed weapons, today Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz went public with his desire to keep his coffee chain gun-free . As KIRO reports, “Over the last few years, Starbucks’ policy allowing people to openly carry guns in their stores, where it’s legal, has been celebrated by gun advocates. But Schultz said they have ‘disingenuously’ portrayed the company as ‘pro-gun.’” To remedy this pro-gun perception, Schulz wrote an open letter asking gun owners to refrain from visiting Starbucks while armed, which will be published in a variety of US newspapers tomorrow.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 In better news, the week continues with the presumably gun-free Pope Francis, who today blew millions of minds by denouncing the Catholic Church’s obsession with abortion and gay marriage. “His surprising comments came in a lengthy interview in which he criticized the church for putting dogma before love, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over serving the poor and marginalized,” reports the New York Times. “He articulated his vision of an inclusive church, a ‘home for all’—which is a striking contrast with his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, the doctrinal defender who envisioned a smaller, purer church.” As Pope Francis told

NEW COLUMN!

PSAY “NYET” TO GLUTEN! BY VLADIMIR PUTIN

rivet, Americans! Or should I call you “exceptional” Americans? That’s what your American president calls you! Ooooooh, look at all of the “exceptional” Americans, acting all “exceptional.” Well, you are not so “exceptional” to me! Right now, I’m looking at picture of 39-year-old John Martin from Sparta, Missouri. He is fat, stupid, and unemployed. Is that your American definition of “exceptional”? Is that what your American president means? If so, maybe he need to buy new dictionary!! HA-HA-HAAAAA.

I am Russian president Vladimir Putin—and while I may not be as “exceptional” as you filthy Americans, I still have lot going for me, yes? Here are the examples:

• I am all man. I pose for the pictures—holding big fish, or half naked, riding the horse. Russians, they appreciate a half-naked manly president.

• I’m nice—to people who are nice to me. Syria? She’s nice. When Syria say, “We have proof that it was the rebels using chemical gas—not us!” I say, “Don’t even show proof to me, Syria! I believe you! I trust you! We are friends, nyet?” You “exceptional” Americans? Nyet so friendly. Guess you’re too busy being “exceptional.”

• I support equal rights. Stupid “exceptional” Americans. You condemn ME for the way I treat the gomoseksual’nyy—who you call the gay? I treat the gay with the same respect I treat all Russians and members of Syrian Parliament. If the gay want to be gay—let him! If the true virile Russian male want to beat up the gay—let him! See? Equal rights all around.

• And finally, I say “nyet” to gluten. You Americans are “exceptional,” all right. Exceptionally FAT HA-HA-HAAAAA! That’s because you cram your fat American faces with the gluten! I have not touched the gluten since 2007—and look at me! I’m half naked on a horse! That is my definition of “exceptional.” You all should be as lucky as my horse!

HA-HA-HAAAAA “EXCEPTIONAL AMERICANS”? MY LUCKY HORSE’S ASS!

his interviewer, “It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” Good work, pope.

•• Meanwhile in the District of Columbia, today Floyd Corkins —the gun-toting loon who attempted a mass shooting at the headquarters of the conservative Christian lobbying group the Family Research Council—was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 In somethinger news, the week continues with a story out of Northern California, where early yesterday morning a 10-year-old girl awoke with blood in her underpants, leading her parents to believe their young daughter had begun her journey to womanhood—but actushe’d just been . “The girl was sleeping in her Hayward home when a

stray bullet from drive-by shooting wounded her in the buttocks,” reports the Associated Press. “The girl’s doctor told investigators the

bullet’s entry wound was small and could have been easily overlooked if the family thought she was menstruating. The girl remained hospitalized in stable condition Friday.”

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 Speaking of everything we’ve been speaking about, the week continues in the media—specifically, the UK-based Guardian, which today published an editorial by Henry Porter calling for international intervention in America’s gun-fueled “quasi civil war”: “The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980),” writes Porter. “If this perennial slaughter doesn’t qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.”

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

Nothing happened today, unless you count the continuation of the deadly hostage situation at a mall in Nairobi, where armed terrorists killed a bunch of people, made a lot of demands, and shit’s probably still going down as you read this.

Send hot tips to lastdays@thestranger.com, and follow me on Twitter @davidschmader. Crazy news all day every day at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG

Party Crasher

How One Man’s Gambling Addiction May Have Cost Democrats Control of the State Senate

BY GOLDY

Michael King’s gambling and alcohol addictions cost him everything: his career, his home, his marriage, his friends, and likely his freedom. But that’s not all that King gambled

away at the blackjack tables.

The quarter of a million dollars King allegedly embezzled from the Washington State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (SDCC) to feed his gambling habit arguably cost Democrats control of the state senate, and with it, the opportunity to pass major legislation, including the Reproductive Parity Act, the State Dream Act, and a multi-billiondollar transportation funding package that included desperately needed local taxing authority for King County Metro. While millions of Americans suffer from alcohol, gambling,

King had the authority to write checks and reimburse himself from two campaign accounts.

and other addictions, their personal tragedies tend to remain personal. But thanks to his pivotal role as the SDCC’s executive director, King’s illness, and the actions it allegedly drove him to, ended up touching the lives of all Washingtonians.

How King’s actions could cost you your Metro bus route next June is a complicated story—one made all the more difficult to tell by the fact that nobody remotely close to the case is willing to be named in this article. Charges have yet to be filed, so the results of the criminal investigation are not yet public, and with both criminal proceedings and an anticipated plea deal still pending, King declined to comment for this story (King’s attorney is understandably reluctant to let his client talk to the press). A possible civil suit

against another individual, the SDCC’s former treasurer—and the party infighting that finger-pointing engenders—has further tightened insiders’ lips. But through conversations with sources close to King, all of whom declined to be named, plus information gleaned from public records, it is possible to piece together a broad picture of King’s alleged embezzlement, the lack of oversight that made it possible, and the political consequences.

According to a February 27 complaint filed by the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), the SDCC notified commissioners that it had referred to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office “evidence of misappropriation of SDCC campaign funds by Michael King.” The PDC conducted its own preliminary review of campaign finance filings through 2012 and early 2013. “These reports disclose numerous expenditures made by the SDCC and the Roosevelt Fund to Michael King as reimbursements for goods and services which, if provided, appear to substantially exceed the reasonable costs of such goods and services,” concludes the PDC complaint.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office is currently investigating the case. Charges are expected to be filed by the end of September.

Friends and associates interviewed for this article say that King does not dispute the broad allegation, and sources close to the case

sought treatment. According to these associates, King, 32, claims to have a family history of alcoholism and to have struggled with the disease during his teens. King has told sources that he was clean for most of his 20s, but once he fell off the wagon, he fell hard.

King was hired to run the campaign organization that helps elect Democrats to the state senate. Senators raise money to funnel into candidate and independent expenditure campaigns. It was King’s job, in theory, to manage fundraising and expenditures in an effort to retain or expand the Democrats’ narrow control of the state senate.

He was selected by the SDCC’s former cochairs—then state senators Derek Kilmer, Scott White, and Majority Leader Lisa Brown—in March 2011, at a time when all the financial controls and procedures (or lack thereof) that eventually enabled King’s embezzlement were already in place. The SDCC’s offices were shared with Argo Strategies, the Seattle-based

believe that he has cooperated with prosecutors. Sources say King has also confided that he has a drinking and gambling problem—one called it a “serious problem”—for which he has

accounts. As executive

director, King had the authority to write checks without a cosigner, just like his predecessor. And the existing policy by which the executive director would put thousands of dollars of committee business on his personal credit card, before reimbursing himself from two SDCC accounts, was not altered. This was all standard practice at the SDCC, as it was at other committees.

Multiple sources suggest that King’s alleged “misappropriation of funds” started as early as the fall of 2011, possibly sooner, but the practice gradually accelerated as King plunged more deeply off the wagon, peaking in a frenzy of questionable reimbursements during the months leading up to and immediately following the 2012 election. According to PDC reports, King wrote himself dozens of checks during this time—$1,500, $3,000, even $5,000 at a time—supposedly to purchase bulk polling minutes (hence the round numbers) from SurveyMonkey, CallFire, MoreMargin, and other automated dialing firms.

During his tenure, King wrote himself more than $300,000 in reimbursement checks, according to records filed with the state, and some of those were surely legitimate. However, sources suggest the alleged embezzlement may have approached $250,000.

But it was King’s method that proved doubly devastating: Multiple sources allege that King would cut himself a check, gamble it away at Goldie’s Shoreline Casino, and then conjure up polling numbers to justify the expense.

So not only would such an embezzlement deny the SDCC precious funds that might have been used to swing close elections—for example, Democrat Tim Probst lost his 17th Legislative District race to Republican Don Benton by only 74 votes—it seems clear that senate Democrats were sometimes allocating their diminished war chest based on fabricated polling data.

Sources aren’t quite sure which polls were real and which were not, but they have their suspicions. One insider recalls an instance in which King allegedly insisted he had a gut feeling about a race, and then produced polling numbers that confirmed his optimistic instincts. Additional money was spent in that race, but the Democratic candidate went on to lose by a wide margin.

f course, hindsight is hindsight, and there are many factors that influence the outcome of an election, so one can only speculate on how the results might have been different. But there is no question that the combination of King’s impaired judgment, his alleged “misappropriation of funds,” and the dubious polling data he provided all left senate Democrats operating at a competitive disadvantage during a crucial election cycle: The SDCC was desperate to shore up its fragile majority after three conservative members crossed the aisle on budget issues the previous session.

Some Democratic insiders are also pointing their fingers at Jason Bennett, the principal partner at Argo Strategies. There are conflicting accounts of how King’s actions were uncovered, but it was Bennett, as the SDCC’s treasurer, who brought the allegations to the SDCC’s attention in February 2013. Critics charge that Bennett was responsible for verifying King’s expenses—but that seems to be based on a misreading of the treasurer’s role. Argo was contracted to do “treasury and compliance,” a campaign job that normally consists of opening and managing bank accounts, and accurately filing all necessary reports and paperwork with government agencies. But Argo’s standard contract specifically states that “client will be responsible for the accuracy of all data submitted” to them.

Bennett’s accusers also argue that he and his staff should have grown suspicious sooner. But if so, the same could be said of the SDCC’s 2012 cochairs: Senators Ed Murray, David Frockt, and Sharon Nelson. In the heat of the campaign, as the SDCC was running low on cash, did they pay zero attention to how King was spending their money? Did they never question his apparent decision to dedicate such a large chunk of their resources to robo-polling?

In an interview with PubliCola, Murray absolved himself of all responsibility, insisting that he “inherited” both King and the existing lax procedures from the previous committee

Everybody liked, respected, and trusted him. Everybody.

cochairs. “I’m not trying to dump on Derek [Kilmer],” Murray said before dumping on Kilmer and the late Senator White. “Someone gave this guy check-writing authority,” accused Murray. “I didn’t do that.”

You know—the buck stops elsewhere. Murray later sent his caucus an e-mail apologizing for throwing Kilmer under a bus: “I handled the call miserably,” Murray admitted. But he still didn’t admit any responsibility for the lack of SDCC oversight. Of course it is King who deserves most of the blame, but there was also an institutional failure. Within a year of hiring King, White passed away, Kilmer stepped aside to run for Congress, and Brown unexpectedly retired, leaving the SDCC entirely in the inexperienced hands of Frockt, Nelson, and Murray, all of whom presumed their primary function to be fundraising. They may have believed that Bennett was responsible for auditing King, but they don’t appear to have read Argo’s contract, nor given the matter much thought. And their apparent hands-off approach to the SDCC’s expenses only made embezzlement easier.

And the consequences of the SDCC’s failure were swift.

Shortly after Probst conceded, leaving Democrats with a bare 26–23 majority, conservative Democrats Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon announced that they would caucus with the Republicans, flipping control of the state senate by a one-vote margin. Tom seized the senate majority leader post from Ed Murray and subsequently used it to block votes on key legislation. And so when Group Health announced that it would not cover abortion coverage in its new insurance plans (Reproductive Parity Act), or when undocumented immigrant students are denied a college education (State Dream Act), or when Metro starts cutting 600,000 hours of bus service next June (transportation funding package)—at least part of the blame can arguably be placed at King’s feet.

But the biggest enabler of King’s alleged fraud was that everybody liked, respected, and trusted him. Everybody. King and Bennett attended each other’s weddings and shared office space—a social and working relationship that likely established problematic boundaries. King had worked for the state Democratic Party, served on the board of the Washington Bus, and helped elect Senator Frockt to office as a political consultant. He was part of the team. And nobody anticipated that he could possibly betray their trust. But neither did anybody suspect that King is addicted to alcohol and gambling. And you just can’t trust a person in the depths of addiction.

Sources say that King is now living in a sober house and busing tables at a local restaurant as he awaits a sentence that will almost certainly include a term in prison. And state Democrats are left wondering what might have been.

TRAIN DIFFERENT

Never Mind, Sally The

City Missed Its Chance to Speak Up for Persecuted LGBT Russians—Thanks to You

BY DAN SAVAGE

After Seattle mayor Mike McGinn attended a demonstration at the Russian consular residence in Madison Park earlier this month—where the mayor mingled with protesters

and waved a sign that said “Stop Putin!”—Andrey Yushmanov, the Russian diplomat who lives in the mansion where the demonstration took place, sent an angry letter to the mayor.

“I would appreciate it if you could clarify whether your support of the protesters reflects the official position of the authorities of Seattle,” Yushmanov wrote.

The protesters were at Yushmanov’s mansion to call for the repeal of a series of antigay laws that recently passed in Russia and to condemn the wave of antigay violence that has swept through Russia since.

The mayor went to Sally J. Clark, the president of the Seattle City Council (herself a lesbian), and asked if the council would join the mayor in sponsoring a resolution that said, in effect, that the city officially stood with the protesters.

Clark declined. Russian queers are living in fear, going into hiding, being abducted and assaulted, fleeing the country—and our supposedly gay-friendly city council (and its two gay members) can’t be bothered to answer a direct yes-or-no question about their plight.

Appalling.

four other council members endorsed McGinn’s election opponent, Ed Murray, and Clark has been at loggerheads with McGinn for years. This latest episode is more of the same childish game-playing obstructionism we’ve seen from Clark and the rest of the city council since McGinn took office.

So what is she proposing now? That if we’re going to do a resolution, we “do it right.” That means holding hearings, taking testimony, and instead of answering a direct yes-or-no question about the abuse of LGBT people in Russia, crafting a resolution that looks at the abuse of LGBT people in the 76 other countries where LGBT people are persecuted. (Do you know who else is out there deflecting questions about antigay violence in Russia by pointing out that other countries are as bad or worse for LGBT people? Vladimir Putin.)

Russian activists, gays, and lesbians have been asking Americans to exert what political pressure we can here because it makes them somewhat safer there. “The Russian Embassy cares about what happens in Seattle,” Russian author and activist Masha Gessen said last week. She added that the Russian consul in Seattle is one of just four Russian consuls living in the United States. “You may think that this [resolution] is useless, but actually it matters to us.”

But the moment has passed. Russia’s top diplomat in Seattle can report to Moscow that Seattle is divided on this issue. While hundreds showed up at his residence to protest, and while the current mayor and his challenger were both at the demonstration, when he sent a letter to the city demanding to know if this was the city’s official position, he heard back from the mayor that, no, he was at the demonstration expressing his personal position. The City of Seattle refused to take a position one way or the other on Russia’s unfolding antigay pogrom.

Why did the council refuse to take a position now? What goes on in Russia was “perceived as being off-topic” by the council and did not “directly relate to city work,” according to Clark’s spokeswoman. But it turns out the council has taken positions on anti-immigration laws in Arizona (a resolution sponsored by Clark), apartheid in South Africa, and genetically engineered salmon. It should be noted that all of those resolutions were narrowly focused. There was no grousing that a resolution about Arizona’s “papers, please” law was illegitimate because it didn’t focus on immigration abuses in other states, or that the apartheid-era resolutions were a waste of time because they neglected to mention systemic racism in other countries (including our own).

Targeted, specific resolutions were the norm—until the mayor sought one about the plight of Russia’s LGBT community.

This is more of the same childish game-playing obstructionism we’ve seen from Clark and the rest of the city council.

This was a straightforward question— does the City of Seattle have a position on discriminatory laws and anti-LGBT violence?—and the only reasonable answer was yes, the city does have a position on that: The City of Seattle stands in opposition. (And again, it was the Russian consul general who asked the city to take a position, not the mayor.)

Clark refused because… well, that’s open for debate. But it looks like she refused because that would have meant working with the mayor on a joint resolution. Clark and

But, like I said, it’s too late now. The divisiveness on display—all of it Clark’s fault—is the story that the Russian consul general gets to report back to Moscow. Even if the city council were to pass the resolution that Clark envisions, it will be watered down and come out months after these antigay laws passed and the antigay hate crimes swept Russia— and it will most likely come too late to give Russia pause before passing a newly proposed law that would take children from the homes of gay and lesbian parents and place them in notoriously awful Russian orphanages. The hesitation is the answer now, at least as far as the Russian consul general is concerned. (He must think, “How bad could our antigay laws really be if the liberal Seattle City Council had to think about them for six months before denouncing them?”)

So it’s too late, Sally. Drop it. There’s no unscrewing this pooch. Your actions were shameful, your rationalizations are lame, and your suggestions for “moving forward” are a joke.

SOURCES SAY

• Mayor Mike McGinn unveiled his proposed 2014 budget on September 23, which raises millions more dollars for everything from senior centers to homeless shelters to traffic signal retiming. City council budget chair Tim Burgess (who’s endorsed McGinn’s opponent, Ed Murray) immediately declared that while McGinn has “proposed some significant increases in spending,” he “has yet to provide evidence that those increases would be an effective use of taxpayer dollars.” Asked three times to clarify what items in the mayor’s budget aren’t adequately evidence-based, Burgess couldn’t name a thing. Huh. What a divisive clown.

• Mayoral spokesman Aaron Pickus notes that in the mayor’s proposed budget, they’ve set aside $250,000 to purchase and install a toilet in pissy, shitty Pioneer Square as backup in case city negotiations with a developer to install a public toilet in the area falls through. (Here’s praying that Burgess demands fresh evidence that the toilet is an effective use of taxpayer dollars.)

• We’re number one at taxing the poor, according to a new report from the DCbased Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which found that “Washington’s poor families pay 16.9 percent of their total income in state and local taxes,” the highest rate in the nation. By comparison, Washington’s wealthiest households pay only 2.8 percent, because we totally fucking suck.

• Reversing a years-long open-carry policy, last week Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz issued an open letter “respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores.” Schultz went on to note that it’s just a request, not a ban, “because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers,” which of course just highlights the whole purpose of open carry: to intimidate other people.

• In early September, Subway worker Carlos Hernandez was fired from a franchise on Capitol Hill, ostensibly because he gave away a 66-cent cookie to a 3-year-old, according to Hernandez and Good Jobs Seattle. However, Hernandez claims he was actually fired for joining fast-food strikes campaigning for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. On September 24, strike organizers with Good Jobs Seattle announced that they filed a lawsuit in federal court against the national chain and a local Seattle Subway franchisee, alleging illegal retaliation against Hernandez for helping organize fast-food strikes throughout the city. Subway didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time. As for Hernandez, “I know I was fired ’cause I stood up for what is right,” he says. “I went on strike, and Subway fired me.”

• Sources say that a man hefting two buckets of coal into the Cowlitz Expo Center on September 17—to use as props for Longview’s first hearing on a proposed coal export terminal—was turned away at the door. Longview police had apparently prohibited coal from the premises because they deemed it too dirty and difficult to clean up. Of course, the question of whether trainloads of daily coal shipments are too dirty for the city of Longview and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is still up for debate.

Go Animal!

Did Diego Pellicer Actually Grow Marijuana?

Namesake of Brand for “Starbucks of Pot” Likely Sold Banana Plants, Not Cannabis

BY BEN LIVINGSTON

Several times within the last year, Jamen Shively announced plans to create a legal pot empire on the scale of Starbucks. Liberally peppering his language with references to well-known companies—Coca-Cola, Neiman Marcus, and Microsoft, where the former marketing manager worked for six years—Shively focused on building a brand, saying it was more important to be “first to mind” than first to market.

Shively said his grandpa was “the

world’s largest marijuana producer.”

The brand’s namesake, Shively said, was his great-great-grandfather Diego Pellicer, a Spanish colonial governor who grew hemp in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. Of his grandpa’s mustachioed mug, he told financial site Forex TV, “We want it to become the iconic image representing marijuana legalization.”

The story went viral for its trifecta of irresistible components: Shively’s plans to dominate the legal pot market, his exMicrosoftie status and Bill Gates pantomime routine, and the amazing story about his ganja-growing forebear. In an interview with KIRO 7 News, Shively displayed a picture of Pellicer with the claim that he was “the world’s largest marijuana producer” in the late 1800s. “He was supplying hemp rope made from the marijuana tree for the Spanish fleet,” Shively told reporter Amy Clancy. “I’ve got marijuana in my blood, so to speak.”

But there’s a potential problem with that story. According to Ed Saukooja, who lobbies the state legislature to legalize industrial hemp and lives in Pe Ell, cannabis wasn’t grown in the Philippines back then. What was commonly called Manila hemp is actually produced from the abaca plant. “If you know what a banana tree is, it’s a mini banana tree,” says Saukooja. “They used the bark as bast fiber.”

Basically, any plant from which rope could be made was historically called hemp, Saukooja tells me. “Jute is hemp, sisal is hemp, kenaf is hemp.”

Shively wasn’t aware that the “marijuana trees” his ancestor grew were likely banana trees. “My understanding is that Manila rope was made from hemp, but now you’ve got me curious,” he says. Will the banana tree revelation affect the Diego Pellicer marketing plan? “I’m looking into it,” he says.

The case for KSHAMA SAWANT

A PROUD, BRILLIANT, UNAPOLOGETIC SOCIALIST IS EXACTLY WHAT OUR CITY COUNCIL NEEDS BY GOLDY

Third-party candidates are a joke, right?

I mean, have you met a third-party candidate? They range from harmless goofballs like Goodspaceguy, who wants to colonize space, to angry, conspiracyfueled antifluoride crusaders like James Robert Deal. And the socialists? They can be the worst—for example, there’s the stereotypically dour, rhetoric-spewing Socialist Workers Party candidate like Mary Martin, who ran for mayor this year on a vision of transforming Seattle into a new Havana. Viva la revolución!

But if you are still laughing at the electoral prospects of Socialist Alternative Party city council candidate Kshama Sawant, the joke is on you. Sawant is the real deal. She kicks ass. And she could actually win in November.

An immigrant woman of color, an Occupy Seattle organizer, and an economics instructor at Seattle Central Community College, Sawant offers voters a detailed policy agenda, backed up by a coherent economic critique and a sound strategy for moving the political debate in a leftward direction. She is passionate but thoughtful. She speaks comfortably on noneconomic issues. She is likable. And most important, she’s winning over voters.

Despite being far outspent by both her opponents in August’s three-way primary, Sawant grabbed 35 percent of the vote, leaving city council member Richard Conlin at less than 48 percent—a shocking rebuke for a four-term incumbent. It was not only proof that Sawant’s aggressive ground game could get her message out—her volunteers plastered the city with posters and flyers—but that her lefty message was striking a chord with voters. Compare that to the primary fizzle between well-funded establishment favorite Albert Shen and supposedly vulnerable first-term incumbent city council member Mike O’Brien. Shen won only 34 percent of the vote to O’Brien’s 59 percent, despite outspending both O’Brien and Sawant combined.

The November electorate will be younger and even more progressive than the primary electorate. And in a two-way race, with her growing name recognition, even Conlin admits that Sawant is giving him a run for his money: “We need to ramp up our efforts and get our message out,” Conlin urged supporters in a recent fundraising e-mail.

So no, Kshama Sawant is no joke. She’s an underdog, sure, but she’s got Conlin running scared. Unlike most third-party candidates, she’s got dozens of enthusiastic volunteers campaigning on her behalf. She’s even raising a little bit of money ($40,000 to Conlin’s $183,000). And as more voters understand what she stands for—and, more importantly, what she would bring to the council—Conlin has every reason to be worried.

KELLY O A SENSE OF URGENCY Making Seattle’s “progressive” politicians look ridiculous.

Sawant is the real deal. She kicks ass. And she could actually win in November.

The truth is, despite her “Socialist Alternative” label and her unapologetically lefty perspective, there is nothing particularly radical when it comes to the core of Sawant’s councilmanic agenda. Sawant was advocating for a $15-an-hour minimum wage a year ago, back before it was cool, before it was widely embraced by mainstream Democrats like US representative Adam Smith. As for the rest of her platform, at the risk of offending her, it is reasonable to say that on transit expansion, on building more affordable housing, on taxing the rich, on blocking coal trains, on expanding paid sick leave, on increasing civilian oversight of the police, and on many other issues, most of Sawant’s policy positions fit comfortably within the mainstream of Seattle’s progressive values. Sure, if you really push her on the subject, she’ll make a cogent economic argument for, say, collectivizing Amazon, so I guess there’s that. But she’s not running on it, and she freely acknowledges that it’s not going to happen, so it’s not like “seizing control of the means of production” makes Sawant’s list of legislative priorities. And when it comes to the issues that might actually come before the council, Sawant can be

That’s the sort of savvy realpolitik Seattle could use more of.

Which brings us to the strongest argument for electing Sawant—an argument perhaps best illustrated, ironically, by the Seattle Times, a paper that has accused Council Member O’Brien of “stray[ing] beyond the leftward boundary of the reasonable too many times,” and that has denigrated Mayor Mike McGinn’s opposition to a West Seattle Whole Foods Market as “vaguely communistic.” Really.

Absent an actual socialist like Sawant to anchor the left, it is progressives like O’Brien and McGinn who are ridiculed as extremists. And for what? Phone book opt-out, deep bore tunnel opposition, and defending the livelihoods of unionized grocery workers from low-wage competitors? But by widening the ideological spectrum, Sawant’s election would make this sort of absurdist red-baiting impossible, creating room for traditional progressives like O’Brien and Nick Licata to operate more effectively. No, we wouldn’t want a council filled with Sawants. But we wouldn’t want a council filled with Richard Conlins, either— which is pretty much what we have now.

downright wonky: On the campaign trail, she has advocated for universal preschool, citysanctioned homeless encampments, principal reduction for foreclosure victims, and higher “in lieu of” fees to incentivize affordable housing in South Lake Union. Sawant supports a joint resolution condemning Russia’s anti-LGBTQ policies (Socialist Alternative’s Russian sister party, CWI, has been at the forefront of opposing its nation’s antigay laws), and she opposes tougher panhandling ordinances. Some of her positions might place Sawant in the minority on the council, but rarely in a minority of one person.

And even on Sawant’s signature issues, the policy demands that have some establishment types rolling their eyes—a $15-anhour citywide minimum wage, a millionaire tax, and rent control—there is a deep-seated political pragmatism. Sawant says she’s in these battles for the long haul, citing samesex marriage as an example of a policy that seemed outrageously unobtainable 30 years ago, but that has finally been achieved after decades of struggle. And she emphasizes that her focus is on the underlying problems that her policies are intended to address— poverty wages, regressive taxation, lack of revenue, and unaffordable housing—not some rigidly ideological agenda.

“I would consider any improvement in people’s standard of living a victory,” said Sawant when asked if she could accept, say, a $12-an-hour minimum wage. But “starting out from a weak position, that’s not good strategy” she explains. “Any chess player will tell you that.”

“There is nobody in the political leadership in Seattle right now who comes into work every day with a sense of urgency to really fight for people’s standard of living,” argues Sawant. “That’s why voters are engaged in our campaign, because they are hearing a voice that they have been wanting to hear for years.”

The argument for Sawant is an argument for balance, for putting just one member on the council who feels no need to pander to the interests of developers and other business “leaders” who would still have eight other sets of ears on the council eager to hear out their concerns. It is an argument for electing just one council member who is dedicated to bringing working people to the table—just one council member who is willing to question our nation’s fundamental economic assumptions.

“The roots of homelessness are in the roots of our capitalist economy,” proclaimed Sawant at a recent candidate forum. Smirk at her if you want for her Marxist language, but it’s an uncomfortable assertion with which even the famed free-market economist Adam Smith wouldn’t disagree. Unless we are willing to acknowledge that the same economic system that generates our city’s awesome wealth is also responsible for our awful poverty, we can never effectively address the latter. That is the sort of balance that Sawant promises to bring to the council. And that is why progressives ought to support Sawant—not just because she can be an effective advocate for working-class Seattleites, but because her very presence on the council would help make other council members more effective, simply by adding a little goddamn context to the public debate.

For more on the case against Richard Conlin, turn the page.

The Case Against RICHARD CONLIN

JUST LOOK AT HIS BIGGEST DONORS—AND HIS RECORD BY DOMINIC HOLDEN

Richard Conlin was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1997 as the sort of environmentalist who might inspire you to bury your car. He was a Green Party member, and he cofounded a wholesome group called Sustainable Seattle. Early on, Conlin was instrumental in furthering progressive social causes (opposing laws against underage dance events and putting posters on utility poles). But over the arc of his 16-year term, Conlin’s base became the wealthy figures that lobby city hall, and Conlin himself became among the council’s most bullish advocates to build more freeways, scuttle transit spending, and impose laws that penalize the poor.

Because I am shamelessly fair, we’ll start with Conlin’s recent progressive accomplishments. Six years ago, he passed a bill that legalized pygmy goats in the city—a victory for locavores who own enough property for a novelty backyard goat farm. More importantly, this year Conlin opposed a kneejerk moratorium to freeze micro-apartment construction, and he banned low-density strip malls in dense neighborhoods. And he also, uh, sponsored a campaign to “make Seattle happy,” which involved a meeting at City Hall festooned with sticky notes listing things that made people happy (“Crab Pot,” “Starbucks,” “Fuzzy Feelings”).

only council member to vote against a paid sick leave bill.

In short, Conlin has some good marks on his record, but after 16 years, his agenda largely reflects the city’s wealthiest interests.

Fuzzy feelings aside, the rest of Conlin’s record crushes those gestures.

Take his relationship with the right of citizens to run a petition of grievances— a basic tenet of democracy. Conlin used city resources in 2011 to sue citizens who had gathered enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot regarding the controversial deep-bore tunnel. A judge found Conlin had no authority to sue the citizens, and the city later found Conlin “went too far” when he used the city’s website to advocate against that referendum. While Conlin was campaigning to build that $4.2 billion freeway project, which included no transit funding, he thwarted citywide transit planning. And when he was the city council president, he twice voted to freeze money for the Transit Master Plan, and funding for the Bicycle Master Plan also dried up, receiving just one quarter of the money the plan required.

On human rights issues, Conlin has been miserable. In 2010, he voted to create an additional fine for aggressive panhandlers, which the city’s Human Rights Commission unanimously opposed as violating the city’s human rights standards. The city already had a criminal law against aggressive begging. Still, Conlin fought for the bill, which was the top priority of the Downtown Seattle Association (a business lobby whose members donate heavily to Conlin’s campaigns).

Conlin also opposed a homeless shelter at the Sunny Jim peanut butter factory site, voted to oppose regulations that would make homeless encampments safer, and was the

Consider Conlin’s top donors this year, who have each given the maximum $700 allowed by law. They include Richard and Elizabeth Hedreen, who own the luxuryhotel-building Hedreen Company (their hotels are members of the Seattle Hotel Association, which is interested in banning people sleeping on public property and restricting low-income housing downtown), Roger Nyhus (a consultant who is promoting coal shipments out of Washington State), Burlington Northern Santa Fe (the railroad company that would carry those coal shipments), Comcast, CleanScapes, CenturyLink PAC, the Mariners, Parsons Brinckerhoff (which had a contract to help design the tunnel that Conlin backed), and scads of developers and real-estate giants (including Matt Griffin, Clise Properties, Unico Properties, and Seneca Group). Then there is the archconservative Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, which has used its newspaper to joke about shooting members of the Urban League (an African American advocacy group). Again, all those people and groups maxed out their donations to Conlin.

Even Conlin’s progressive support is suspect.

Consider the Sierra Club. Its executive board voted over e-mail to endorse Conlin in July, and that internal conversation was leaked to The Stranger by an anonymous source. Sierra Club Cascade Chapter chair Dan Schwartz wrote that when it comes to Conlin, “We can’t count on him to necessarily take hard votes or hard stances for the sake of the environment. He’s a careerist more than anything, which is quite different than being an environmental champion. His tunnel advocacy was the most glaring example of this.” Another member, Drew Paxton, chimed in to vote for Conlin like this:

“Yes (begrudgingly).”

Asked why the environmental group endorsed a candidate who caves on important environmental votes, Schwartz said the group’s policy is to endorse incumbents with “good environmental records.” When I pointed out that by Schwartz’s own admission, Conlin doesn’t have a good environmental record, Schwartz didn’t answer.

But I’ll suggest an answer: Conlin can make things easy for those who help him get reelected. After 16 years, his reelection seems so inevitable that he typically scares off good challengers. Not this year. This year, Kshama Sawant is giving Conlin a run for his money. And while she may not have coal money, police money, and freeway money behind her—or the endorsement of a wishy-washy environmental group—she does have a shot at beating Conlin. And in this city, that’s progress. Comment on this story at

Baseball5 History? Secret Stoners in

Uncovering a Pastime Within a Pastime

BY SPIKE FRIEDMAN

Last week, Mariners prospect, Seattle native, and University of Washington alumnus Forrest Snow was suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball for violating its substanceabuse policy by testing positive for—wait a second—marijuana? Really? That seems a bit harsh for pot.

Stricter testing for so-called “drugs of abuse” was part of the most recent MLB collective bargaining agreement, which was mostly noted for implementing harsher penalties for the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Considering that we’ve decided that the baseball record book is a sacred tome to be protected at all costs, the crackdown on performance-enhancing drugs makes sense in a draconian sort of way. But 50 games for pot in Washington State? Where pot is legal? Come on. And why crack down now? How many of baseball’s greats were secret stoners? There’s only way to figure this out—by applying a very scientific combination of supposition, intuition, and bullshit. Plus grass, obviously.

Cool Papa Bell

Baseball bona fides: A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Cool Papa Bell was considered the fastest player in Negro League history. While stats for the Negro League were not meticulously well kept, it is said that he once stole two bases on a single pitch.

Pot bona fides: His name is Cool Papa Bell. Cool Papa Bell! If someone selling you pot in the days before legalization said their name was Cool Papa Bell, you would assume they were a narc. If a dispensary sold a strain called Cool Papa Bell, you’d tell them to can it with the tourist shit, but then you’d buy it anyway, because Cool Papa Bell. If you were starting a “glassware” company called Cool Papa’s Bells… actually… that’s a good idea… forget I said anything.

Dock Ellis

Baseball bona fides: Dock Ellis had a solid career as a starting pitcher, stretching over 12 seasons with six teams. Highlights included a no-hitter and a 19-win season in Pittsburgh when he was both an All-Star and Cy Young candidate.

Pot bona fides: Did I mention that he pitched that no-hitter while tripping on acid? No? Because Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter while tripping on acid. He thought it was his day off, dropped acid, then remembered he had to pitch, and threw a no-hitter. How many people do you know who spend their days off from work tripping on acid who don’t smoke weed? Maybe one? Now show me the Venn diagram of those people and people named Dock. You just showed me two circles.

Bill “Spaceman” Lee

Baseball bona fides: An All-Star who played most of his career with the Boston Red Sox, Bill Lee is best remembered for his unusual personality, but he was an above average pitcher for the bulk of his 14-year career.

I don’t want to sound paranoid here, but I think I see what’s going on.

Pot bona fides: His nickname is Spaceman. Also, since he has spoken frequently about smoking weed, this is too easy. Let’s move on.

Yuniesky Betancourt

Baseball bona fides: A top Mariners prospect, Yuniesky Betancourt entered the league in 2005 a defensive whiz with a powerful bat, a rare combination.

Pot bona fides: You know that feeling when you smoke a bowl, and then the remote is really far away, like all the way on the end table, and you’re in the middle of the couch, and suddenly infomercials are on, and it’s for some way to get cash for gold, and you really need cash, but you don’t have any gold, but if you did have gold, this would be really important for your life, but you already checked last time this was on, and again you don’t have any gold, so you know you should change the channel, or maybe turn off the TV, or use the remote to order some Cheez-Its, if only remotes could do that, and why can’t they, and why is the remote so far away, and fuck, you are never getting that remote, ever, or at least not until you wake up tomorrow? You know that feeling? That feeling is Yuniesky Betancourt trying to get to any ground ball going to his left. I’m not saying Betancourt

smokes pot, I’m just saying that’s the feeling.

Tim Lincecum

Baseball bona fides: A two-time Cy Young winner and two-time World Series champion, Tim Lincecum, despite a recent decline in effectiveness, has haunted his hometown Seattle Mariners, who passed on him in the 2006 MLB draft, by becoming one of the best pitchers of a generation.

Pot bona fides: Lincecum, a Seattle-area native and University of Washington alumnus, faced misdemeanor charges for possession of marijuana here in Seattle back in 2009. Additionally, Lincecum spent his lackluster 2012 season dogged by the Bay Area press for losing his mental edge and much of his velocity due to marijuana use. While Lincecum was never suspended… hey, wait a second? Faced no suspension? At all?

Look, I don’t want to sound paranoid here, but I think I see what’s going on. Forrest Snow is only the tip of a much larger conspiracy. When the Seattle Mariners have a guy who didn’t even commit a crime, Major League Baseball has to step in and ruin everything. And when they have the worst defensive shortstop in the league, no one bats an eye. But when a great player is getting high in Boston or California, nothing happens. I don’t want to sound crazy, but baseball has been screwing Seattle over since day one, and it’s high time we woke up and saw what’s going on: How else can you explain the Mariners’ persistent failures? Come up with one other explanation. I didn’t think so. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a glassmaking company to get off the ground.

STRANGER SUGGESTS

Hyperdub Records Showcase

MUSIC

Britain’s Hyperdub has been charting dubstep’s mercurial evolution and diaspora since 2004. Label boss Kode9 has guided and overseen the bass-centric genre’s smartest and most interesting moves (e.g., he discovered Burial). Kode9’s DJ sets seamlessly blend cuts by dubstep’s avant-garde with forward-thinking house, grime, garage, techno, and footwork tracks. The latter genre is where DJ Spinn excels, as he laces soul and R&B vocal samples into hyperkinetic OCD jams for dancers blessed with methy reflexes. With Ikonika. (Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave, thecrocodile.com, 9 pm, $20/free with Decibel pass, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Mavis Staples MUSIC

At 74, Mavis Staples is still a tiny dynamo of gospel-soul-blues vocalizing. Best known for her righteous emoting on motivational Staple Singers classics like “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself,” and “Freedom Highway,” Mavis has enjoyed a late-career resurgence with production help from Jeff Tweedy, who guided the rock-oriented You Are Not Alone and the new One True Vine. The years have given Staples a deeper, more intimate tone, and live, she remains one of music’s most endearing, uplifting characters. (Moore Theatre, 1932 Second Ave, stgpresents.org, 8 pm, $37.50, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Peter Bagge BOOKS

Cartoonist Peter Bagge, creator of the fantastic comic , comes to Town Hall to promote his new ambitious project: an illustrated biography of Margaret Sanger, the early-20th-century sex educator who founded Planned Parenthood, popularized the term “birth control,” and was arrested after opening the first birth-control clinic in the United States. Bagge’s dramatic illustrations, wryness, and humanity shine through this work, which deftly pays tribute to the feminist visionary while also addressing her not-so-heroic side, like her purported support of eugenics. I’ll be on hand to interview Bagge about comics and feminism. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, townhallseattle.org, 7:30 pm, $5) CIENNA MADRID

Amanda Valdez ART

Seattle-born, New York–based artist Amanda Valdez’s new painting show at Prole Drift includes a room transformed into an imaginary sky, the walls dotted with small round canvases in the formation of the Gemini constellation. Each canvas was hand sun-dyed; there are no rough edges, only blue bleeds. On another wall, seven glimmery, drippy paintings on paper look like wet monster mouths. Embroidered paintings on canvas suggest wet openings, too. Valdez explains that she’s always had the sense of colored shapes floating around inside her body, dislodged, ready to be put down in two dimensions. (Prole Drift, 523 S Main St, proledrift.com, 1–7 pm, free, through Sept 28) JEN GRAVES

Stranger Genius Awards

GENIUS

Tonight’s the night. The annual blowout crowning a new batch of Stranger Genius Award winners—five artists in five genres, each of whom will receive $5,000. Contenders include choreographer Pat Graney, cinematographer Ben Kasulke, artists Rodrigo Valenzuela and Sherry Markovitz, authors Neal Stephenson and Maged Zaher, hiphop artist Katie Kate, composer Jherek Bischoff, and many others. Some will wear fancy outfits, some will get super-drunk, most will dance their asses off, and all will be treated to a set by Seattle Rock Orchestra. (Moore Theatre, 1932 Second Ave, stgpresents .org, 8 pm, $12, 21+) BRENDAN KILEY

‘Middletown’ THEATER

Middletown, especially its first act, is one of the best things that’s happened to Seattle theater in years: deadpan wit synthesized with emotional pyrotechnics as small-town people actually say what most of us can barely articulate, even to ourselves. Will Eno’s play is a loose riff on Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, but seen through the eyes of an astronaut, a cheerfully morbid librarian, a confused young housewife, a drunk mechanic, a poetically minded but brutal cop, and others. Go, go, go. (ACT Theatre, 700 Union St, acttheatre.org, 2 pm, $44) BRENDAN KILEY

‘Our Nixon’ FILM

Eric Schlosser

Winner of the SIFF 2013 Grand Jury Prize for best documentary, Penny Lane’s Our Nixon tells the story of the rise and fall of the Nixon presidency in a ridiculously entertaining new way. Fueling her triumph: the hundreds of hours of home movies shot perpetually by not one, not two, but THREE high-ranking Nixon staffers, which are overlaid with audio from the taped recordings that would land two of these camera-happy staffers in prison after Watergate. The result is a rich, complicated Americana parade that contains multitudes. (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, grandillusioncinema.org, 7 and 9 pm, $8, Sept 27–Oct 3) DAVID SCHMADER

BOOKS

With his stomach-churning debut, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser proved he has the muckraking chops to make Upton Sinclair and Jessica Mitford proud. In the years since, he’s written great longer pieces about pot, porn, and prisons, but he’s been quietly working on his new book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, for more than a decade. Tonight, Schlosser will discuss some of the many times our own nuclear arsenal has come close to accidentally destroying the world. Bring clean underwear; you’ll need it. (Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, spl.org, 7 pm, free) PAUL CONSTANT

ARTS

BOOKS

A Liberated Woman

A New Cartoon Biography Reinvestigates a Birth Control Pioneer

BY PAUL CONSTANT

If there were any justice in this world, Margaret Sanger would be the face on our $20 bill. In the first few decades of the 20th century, Sanger was a vocal advocate for birth control at a time when books and magazines could be seized and banned by the government for even mentioning birth control. She met Emma Goldman, Eleanor Roosevelt, H. G. Wells, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Gandhi. She was a free-love revolutionary, a nurse, a feminist leader before the word “feminism” was commonly known, and an outspoken advocate for the poor and forgotten.

But Margaret Sanger hasn’t been immortalized in any notable way, and that’s thanks to two things: America’s lazy approach to history and a dedicated smear campaign to erase strong female role models from the history books. If she’s remembered at all, Sanger is now remembered as a creepy proponent of eugenics. (Family planning isn’t eugenics, and Sanger argued with pro-eugenics thinkers at

Sanger Story (Drawn and Quarterly, $21.95), is the best work of his career.

Bagge novitiates may require a few pages to get used to the art in Woman Rebel. He’s still working in the same loose-limbed, cartoony style that he’s always used, and for whatever reason, people tend to expect a more photorealistic rendering in their comics biographies. The double takes, flapping lips, and little halos of sweat flying off the brows of stressed-out people might be off-putting at first. But as Scott McCloud argued in his excellent Understanding Comics, the thing about cartoony comics is that they disarm the reader and make it easy for them to get inside the characters’ heads. Within a few pages, if you still find the art to be difficult, you’re probably actively fighting the book’s charms.

Woman Rebel moves quickly, establishing Sanger as a contrarian figure even in her

Turns out, Sanger’s greatest advocate may just be a male libertarian cartoonist from Seattle.

childhood, and then demonstrating exactly how rotten women had it at the turn of the last century by presenting a sequence in which a young Sanger works as a nurse for a woman whose frequent pregnancies are literally threatening her life. “I can’t go through [a pregnancy] again!” the woman pleads with Sanger. “Tell me how I can prevent it!… Rich women know how to prevent it! Prostitutes know how! Why can’t I know how?” The doctor Sanger is assisting replies coolly, “Advice you want, eh? Very well… tell your husband to sleep on the roof.” They leave the woman, presumably to her death.

every opportunity.) And, sure, she had her flaws—she wasn’t a particularly good mother, it could be argued—but how many portraits of slave owners do you have sitting in your wallet right now? Sanger has been marginalized and diminished, cheating generations of young women out of an important role model. This is a terrible injustice. How it hasn’t been addressed before now is a mystery, but the happy truth is that Sanger’s historical exile may finally be at an end.

And you couldn’t guess the person who’s decided to clear her good name if you tried. Turns out, her greatest advocate may just be a middle-aged white male libertarian cartoonist from Seattle.

ILOOSE LIPS

• On Friday night, nine bodies were laid out on mirrors on the floor of the Frye Art Museum for the “processional”/opening of Mark Mitchell’s Burial collection—a collection of clothes for the dead. “I just keep wondering what’s going through their minds,” Roq La Rue Gallery’s Kirsten Anderson said, looking down at a waxy, still model. The models would occasionally jerk and twist with discomfort, their eyes remaining closed. It looked like they were having nightmares. Above them, the museum’s old paintings were packed together on the walls. People were crying. The crowd eventually hit nearly 1,000, and people who hadn’t RSVP’d had to be turned away. The haute funeral parlor was fraught in about a hundred ways. Someone said that in the presence of all this death, those old paintings never felt more alive. Transferred to mannequins, the clothing will be on display through October 20.

• The latest victim in the story of the inevitable death of film is a service provided by local film lab Alpha Cine. At the end of September, the lab will no longer make prints for motion picture films. Alpha Cine had provided this service for trashy films like The Postman and local indie films like Police Beat. It will not be long before film becomes a cultural fossil like cassette tapes.

The next three panels, showing a devastated Sanger standing in the street, slowly fuming over the doctor’s outright refusal to help a patient in need, and then kicking a trash can out of sheer rage at her impotence, are pretty much your standard comic-book origin sequence. You could put the panels side by side with a 1939 sequence of Bruce Wayne moping in his gloomy study—“A bat! That’s it! It’s an omen. I shall become a BAT!”—and you’d swear you were watching two superheroes being born.

PREVIEW

Peter Bagge in conversation with Cienna Madrid

Thurs Sept 26, Town Hall, 7:30 pm, $5

’ve been reading Peter Bagge’s comics since I was 13 years old. In my early 20s, I was an avid reader of his ongoing comic Hate; his slacker alter ego Buddy Bradley was always about 10 years older than me, serving as a kind of road map, or more often a warning flare, from my future. I’ve enjoyed Bagge’s recent short-form comics like Sweatshop and Other Lives, though I’ve missed his affinity for pacing a story out to the length and breadth of a whole life. All of which goes to say that I’m a fan. (And I’m not the only one; local poet Ed Skoog once remarked with great happiness at the beginning of a beer-fueled reading in a parking garage that he finally felt like a character in a Peter Bagge comic.) So I do not say this lightly: I think Bagge’s new biography of Sanger, Woman Rebel: The Margaret

It’s a short biography, but it covers a lot of ground, following Sanger as she travels the world, preaching the gospel of birth control that would eventually give women the agency to fight for suffrage and equal rights. Bagge has a clear fondness for his subject, and though he doesn’t shy away from Sanger’s follies, his affection shines down on every page. His hard work goes a long way toward rehabilitating Sanger for future generations.

In case you think that a comic-book biography somehow requires less research than a “real” biography, Bagge also includes an extensive prose notes section in the back of Woman Rebel. There was very little material available that was directly about Sanger— Bagge notes with a little exasperation that one of the best places to find Sanger’s writings online is a “pro-life website, of all places”—so Bagge explains his methodology and his sources in great detail. (It’s also one of the chattiest, most readable notes sections I’ve ever encountered in a biography.)

Woman Rebel represents a remarkable

• Seattle’s annual festival of original sketch comedy, SketchFest, includes performers from NYC, LA, Chicago, Portland, Spokane, and Grand Rapids, along with a ton of local talent this year. This past Saturday brought the SketchFest Comedy Film Challenge to Central Cinema, where the screen lit up with a dozen short blasts of good filmy comedy. Best in show: More Rock, Less Talk, created and performed by the ridiculously good Seattle duo Charles. Also great: the performance of Drop the Root Beer & Run’s Caitlyn Obom in the Seattle group’s short Giant Baby, and the totality of Travis Vogt’s Alone, a highly accomplished short film that just happened to be funny as shit. SketchFest continues through September 28—for a full schedule, see sketchfest.org.

• Arcade, a local architectural journal that’s been around since 1981, is to switch from a quarterly to a triannual, in order to, rumors say, make the operation of the journal easier and cheaper. Whether this is a bad thing will only be known at the end of 2014.

• Leo Berk won the Betty Bowen Award last week. He’ll receive $15,000 and a small exhibition at Seattle Art Museum opening November 7, with a free public celebration at the museum at 5:30 p.m. that day. Jack Daws and Sol Hashemi, also interesting artists for very different reasons with very different attitudes, won the two smaller $2,500 recognition awards. All dudes? All dudes. Meanwhile, Artist Trust announced its shortlist for this year’s $25,000 Arts Innovator Awards this week— and of the eight artists, seven are male. It’s hard to even know what to say about that.

• In a tangential violation of the Monroe Doctrine and several subsequent accords, corollaries, and memorandums, the University Audi and Volkswagen dealership has expanded its borders to include the University of Washington and parts of Wallingford.

1300 S. DEARBORN ST. SEATTLE • Boroderby.com

Tickets available at all Piece of Mind locations.

second act for Bagge. He’s done nonfiction reportage before, but never anything so dense, or so rewarding. It’s the sort of complex endeavor that you can imagine Buddy Bradley flirting with during a drunken monologue in one of Bagge’s 1990s comics. Buddy never would have actually gone through with something like this—too much work—but let’s hope Bagge continues down this path. The best of his career may be yet to come.

ART

Facing Painting

New Installations by Kimberly Trowbridge and Julie Alpert Want to Immerse You

BY JEN GRAVES

AREVIEW

Kimberly Trowbridge Blindfold Gallery Through Oct 5

Julie Alpert Cornish College of the Arts Through Oct 19

13-foot-long boast appeared at Roq La Rue Gallery last March. It was a hot, red painting called Arcadia, of three figures ensconced on a bed in a forest. The woodsy idyll was rendered silly by the curtained bed, appearing out of place Bedknobs and Broomsticks–style, but a certain seriousness still governed the painting because it was rendered in brushstrokes that themselves were serious, studied, worked. One corner visually quoted Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the famous painting of a row of prostitutes on display. The whole silly/serious tradition of European painting tumbled to mind—Manet’s picnicking men in suits with naked ladies, Titian’s comehither recliners, Fragonard’s frothy girls with teeny feet swinging from trees.

Arcadia, notably, is by a young Seattle artist named Kimberly Trowbridge. She lived her early life in Everett, then moved to Indiana, then to New York for a bit, then back to Seattle for graduate school at the University of Washington. Now she teaches at Gage Academy and other places, and privately, out of her own studio. She spends hours every single week, still, painting from a live model. She’s a highly trained, highly experienced, and very prolific artist who shows often, and her latest solo, at Blindfold Gallery, is what comes after the bluster of Arcadia

I first noticed her bluster in 2011, when she made a painting called I Am Nature It was a fractured view of a woman and a forest intertwined. “I am nature” is what Jackson Pollock said when somebody asked him to describe his work’s relationship to nature. Well, then, so am I, Trowbridge seemed to say, airing her anxiety of influence—the homage, the resistance, the adaptational moves. I could admire her chutzpah, but could I really relate to another fractured-plane, aftermodernist painting of women and woods, no matter who made it? Not really.

She’s mocking her drama. The altar surrounding Tantrum is made of wood scraps, off-cuts from her own handmade stretcher bars. Across the top of the altar, where there might be an ornate carving if this were an actual Italian altarpiece, there’s instead a discarded plank bearing the shipping imprint “FRAGILE” with the arrows pointing down at the tantrum.

She’s also framing her drama in historical context. On the shelves that run down the side of that central oil painting, there are black-and-white ink paintings, each depicting a Xeroxed copy of a page from an art history book. The specifics don’t matter—all you can make out is an old-timey painting in the midst of text rendered as illegible scratches. This is how people who grow up in Everett and Indiana first learn about art. Which is sort of sad and very familiar to me, and, I imagine, not so uncommon.

Trowbridge’s entire show at Blindfold is a struggle to bring together painting and furniture. She transformed the entire gallery. She spray-painted patterns on fabric, hung them as curtains and draped them over chairs. You were tempted, but not actually moved, to interact, to slide the curtains and sit on the chairs.

Painting is intimate but not entirely close, still an object separate from you, something you face with your body but can’t meld with, maybe like a dresser with a mirror. On one wall of the gallery, a pair of paintings, of a naked woman and an evergreen wood, hangs beneath the ornately carved wood beam that topped Trowbridge’s childhood bedroom dresser.

Coincidentally, a bunch of Seattle artists who’ve formed a reading group (Trowbridge is not one of them) chose an essay this month about installational painting, Anne Ring Petersen’s 2010 “Painting Spaces.” Artists of the 1990s and 2000s, Petersen writes, have rethought painting, making paintings not as pictures but as 3-D objects, as sites or places in themselves—paintings as installations. They connect beyond their frames. You see them in museums and galleries hung as flags or robes, leaned like protest signs, used to demarcate parts of a room, worn on the body,

KIMBERLY TROWBRIDGE Her Tantrum installation takes over the front room at Blindfold Gallery.

The new show at Blindfold, Story Tell Her, is still blustery (yeah), but something new has blown open. Walking in, you’re greeted by a giant altarpiece Trowbridge built, with a very large oil painting in the center and shelves down one side. The oil painting depicts, again, an allegorical subject lifted from “high” European painting: a rider on a rearing-up horse, triumphing over a trampled victim below (both are naked, and the overall palette, throughout the show, is forest/fire). It’s a war painting. But Trowbridge calls it Tantrum

draped to form architecture or furniture. Among many examples seen locally: Rashid Johnson, Roy McMakin, Mika Tajima. Trowbridge lives and breathes painting. With this new spillage of painting into furniture and decor, it feels like she’s looking for some ecstatic union with this eccentric thing, painting—to be immersed in it, to immerse you in it. You can feel her fantasy pushing on you, abstract and intense. It does feel like a force of nature.

There’s another young Seattle artist showing a dazzling new installational painting right now: Julie Alpert, whose Shape

Bimbo’s Cantina & The Cha Cha Lounge

At some point in their residency, every Seattle resident will find themselves at Bimbo’s Cantina and at the Cha Cha Lounge. With StrangerPerks, it just got a little easier to get there.

The Barrel Thief is a wine & whiskey bar in Fremont, offering cocktails with unique botanicals, a selection of fine spirits, a fantastic wine selection, beer, cider and a small plate food & dessert menu. Happy hour is 4:00 to 6:00pm, and all day Tuesday. We also offer a weekend brunch, featuring waffles and tasty brunch libations.

Bar & Grill

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

Shifters looks as if a painting exploded, its parts and pieces scattered across an 8-by-8by-10-foot space in one corner of the gallery at Cornish College of the Arts. Some of the shrapnel became shadowy and flat, some popped up into three dimensions.

A painted pool of black oozes onto the floor from a table with a lamp on it. A ring of cardboard keys sits on the table, its shadow painted rather than cast. (Sources of light are all confused, which is a major mental pleasure.) That same cluster-of-keys shape reappears on a wall, twice, but rotated to look newly menacing, like a mushroom cloud. A painted wallpaper pattern travels off the wall and spills into an actual bowl on a shelf, covering over rose patterns incised into bowl like a mudslide might coat a shrub. The roses get emphasized by such obvious hiding.

There’s one whole area of the installation involving climbing flames, proliferating shadows, and traced outlines that shouldn’t be talked about, just seen

In a video interview at the entrance to the gallery, Alpert alludes to her interest in industrial patterns as concealment or protection devices, used to hide filth or underlying forms, like the carpeting in hotel lobbies or at cheap restaurants. Shape Shifters, as bright and fluorescent and playful as it is, ultimately has the feeling of a noir mystery, where a series of mind-bending clues leads to more clues and nothing more.

THEATER

Theater Review Revue

Two Blowjob Terrorists and a Talking Ghost Tiger

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo Washington Ensemble Theatre Through Oct 7

Ghosts can be a storyteller’s best friends. They’re spooky, they can defy the laws of physics, they’re less predictably predatory than vampires, and they’re better conversationalists than zombies. Best of all, we never know exactly what they want. Ghosts resemble us—they used to be us— but their allegiances are unpredictable. Some want to torment us (The Woman in Black, The Shining). Some want us to do them a favor (Hamlet). Still others want to do us a favor (A Christmas Carol). But the ghosts in Rajiv Joseph’s 2009 Iraq war drama Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo are a special mystery—even they aren’t sure what they want. The story begins with the titular tiger in the titular zoo, guarded by two bored and not terribly bright US marines (Ryan Higgins and Jonathan Crimeni). One of them shows the other a gold-plated gun he says he looted from the palace of Uday Hussein, along with a gold toilet seat he’s stashed somewhere in the war zone. While they prattle on, we get to know the tiger, a ruminating and depressive creature played by Mike Dooly—not in any kind of tiger costume, but with frizzedup hair, a frizzed-out beard, and a necklace of beads.

“The lions escaped two days ago,” he tells us flatly, “liberated” by an American bomb that broke open their enclosure. “Predictably,” he says, “they got killed in about two hours,” shot by the same military that freed them. (Liberation has its price.) Partway through the tiger’s monologue, one of the dumb soldiers sticks his hand into the cage. The tiger impulsively bites it off and is shot to death with the gold gun. Now the talking tiger is a talking ghost tiger, achieving a dif-

ferent kind of liberation with a different kind of price—he’s free to wander through the carnage, walk down streets in flames, meet other newly minted ghosts, and haunt the jangled marine who shot him. But, he tells us, “tigers are atheists.” So why is he stuck in an afterlife?

The play follows the tiger, the soldiers, the gold gun, and a jumpy gardener named Musa who used to work for Uday Hussein and now works as a translator for the US military, trading one brutal, capricious boss for another. (Liberation, price, rinse, repeat.) The performances all achieve moments of excellence: Higgins plays the tiger-haunted marine like a raw wound, Erwin Galan plays the translator with a scorchingly earnest intensity, and Ali el-Gasseir portrays the ghost of Uday (by the end of the play, there are more ghosts than people) with a diabolical, unctuous glee. But the pacing of the production itself, directed by Michael Place, has some swampy patches—a play that heaps ambiguity upon ambiguity also has its price. Still, there are enough sharp lines from the mouths of sharply drawn characters to make Bengal Tiger a rewarding float through the hellish side of purgatory. BRENDAN KILEY

Soft Click of a Switch MAP Theatre at West of Lenin Through Sept 28

On the stage, there are three sets: a bar, an office, and an apartment. The play, Soft Click of a Switch by Carter W. Lewis, opens with light thrown on the bar—the other sets are in the dark. Standard American rock music flows out of a jukebox. A bartender barks at drunks. Two men sit next to each other. Ed (Brandon Ryan) is young; Earl (Mark Fullerton) is in the late part of his middle years. Ed breaks the ice, but Earl does not want the ice to be broken—he wants to be left alone to drink in peace. Ed tries to shock Earl with his big plan to blow up a mall. Eventually, Earl opens up and engages with the young man’s dark fantasies. The two get very drunk, and at the end of the night, Ed gives Earl a blowjob. This is how the friendship between two American terrorists begins.

The play, directed by Peggy Gannon, is short, smart, and economical, and it never loses your attention, though it is about two predictable losers. Earl is a spiritually dead employee of some generic American company. He lives in an RV, his wife dumped him, he always carries a pistol in a lunch bag, he drinks like a fish. Earl has used up his future. Ed, on the other hand, has a future but does not know what to do with it. He is unemployed and spends his free time watching the couple that lives next to him through a secret crack in the wall. These men are dead ends.

On the night I watched of terrorists entered a mall in Nairobi and opened fire on innocent people. Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group that has ties to Al Qaeda and is at war with Kenyan troops in Somalia, claimed responsibility. It’s reported that the terrorists did not kill Muslims in the mall. If you had a Muslim-sounding name, or if you knew the name of Muhammad’s mother, they allowed you to leave and live. These terrorists were acting with a sense of purpose. The terrorists in Soft Click, however, appear to have no purpose. Indeed, Earl agrees to commit an act of terror with Ed on the condition that it is not politically motivated. This is the key to the play: Earl imagines that an act of terrorism can be apolitical. This is nothing but madness. In the way the terrorists in Kenya operated with the fiction of a God directing and blessing their crime, the terrorists in the play operate with the fiction that their crime can be executed with no political implications or consequences. CHARLES MUDEDE

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

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

ART

Museums

HENRY ART GALLERY

David Hartt: Stray Light: A gallery is transformed into a room carpeted in the style of the 1971 Johnson Publishing Company building in Chicago. On display are a film and photographs of the same subject. Hartt’s almostdeadpan pictures wonder about the lines between personal identity and shared, often bureaucratic, places. $10 suggested. Wed-Sun. Through Jan 5. 4100 15th Ave NE 543-2280.

Gallery

Openings

COLUMBIA CITY GALLERY

8th Annual Juried Exhibition: The work of no fewer than 20 regional artists. Including works in sculpture, mixed media, photography, and painting. Free. Reception Sat Sept 28, 5-8 pm. Wed-Sun. Through Nov 17. 4864 Rainier Ave S, 760-9843.

WRIGHT EXHIBITION

SPACE

Free. Sat Sept 28-Sun Sept 29 at midnight.

STRANGER GENIUS AWARDS

The best art party of the year is about to happen. This year’s visual art finalists—up to win $5,000 and the honor of Geniusness—are Rodrigo Valenzuela, the Chilean-born video artist; Sherry Markovitz, the maker of intensely personal paintings on fabric and sculptures smothered in beads; and Matthew Offenbacher, the brilliant and kindhearted writer, publisher, thinker, organizer, and painter who’s coined the term “enthusiasmism” (“enthusiasm is the opposite of coolness,” he stated simply). Winners in every category, including Film, Literature, Music, and Performance, will be announced from the stage, and then we’ll throw down and dance to music by Seattle Rock Orchestra and DJs. Moore Theatre 1932 Second Ave, 292-2787. www.themoore.com. $10-$125. Sat Sept 28 at 8 pm.

TRAYVON MARTIN: REMEMBER AND RESPOND

Books Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave. NE, 525-2347. Free. 7 pm.

JOHN HAMILTON Great local publisher Dark Coast Press has published Hamilton’s new novel, Hell Called Ohio It’s about working-class people in Ohio. Elliott Bay Book Company 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. Free. 7 pm.

STRANGER GENIUS AWARDS See Stranger Suggests, page 23. Moore Theatre 1932 Second Ave, 888-377-4510. www.themoore.com. $10. 7:30 pm.

Sun 9/29

LINDA RONSTADT Yes, that Linda Ronstadt. She’s reading from Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir Town Hall 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. $31. 7 pm.

Mon 9/30

Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center 104 17th Ave S, 684-4758. langstoninstitute.org.

$10-$20. Thurs-Fri at 7 pm, SatSun at 2, 7 pm. Through Oct 26. KILL ALL COMEDY A critically admired comedy group from Chicago—whose members regularly perform with Second City, the Annoyance, and the iO Theatre—gives Seattle a whirl. (Probably because Becky Poole, an actor/comedian/musical saw player who gained a dedicated fan club during her few years in Seattle, is a member.) Kill All Comedy promises: “Fans of The State, Kids in the Hall, or Dan Deacon’s Wham City Comedy

MIDDLETOWN

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

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

9 from L.A. : Virginia Wright, in conjunction with the Getty Conservation Institute, has brought together works from her collections, Seattle Art Museum’s, and loans that include works by postwar L.A. artists including Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, John McCracken, Peter Alexander, and De Wain Valentine. Highlighted is Valentine’s Gray Column, which is exactly what it claims to be: 12 feet tall and 8 feet wide of grey polyester resin. It’s like the monolith from 2001 but a bit more squarish and tapered at the top. We, the audience, will play the part of the apes, as we gather around it to receive its eternal, cosmic, Seattle-colored wisdom. Free. Thurs-Sat. Through April 25. 407 Dexter Ave N, 264-8200.

Continuing Exhibitions

BLINDFOLD GALLERY

See review, page 26. Free. Wed-Sun. Through Oct 5. 1718 E Olive Way, Ste A, 328-5100.

CORNISH COLLEGE OF THE ARTS

The 2013 Neddy at Cornish: This year’s eight finalists for the Neddy Award all are featured, and most of them made new work for the occasion. Especially great: Julie Alpert’s painting installation (see review, page 26), Robert Yoder’s gravestone homages, and Emily Gherard’s wall/rock paintings. Don’t miss really good video interviews with the artists near the entrance to the gallery, made by Reel Grrls. Free. MonSun. Through Oct 19. 1000 Lenora St

Events

APRIL GREIMAN

The early proponent of using the computer as a design tool gives a lecture including a sneak peek at interactive, augmentedreality public art possibilities for the Seattle Waterfront. Whoa. Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue. Free. Sat Sept 28 at 6:30 pm.

HARRY DODGE

The badass multimedia/video artist who founded San Francisco community-based performance space The Bearded Lady and is known for her collaborations with Stanya Kahn is making a rare visit. Don’t miss! Henry Art Gallery 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. www.henryart.org. $10. Fri Sept 27 at 7 pm.

LECTURE: BUSTER

SIMPSON

The artist whose environmental installations are the secret backbone of Seattle is presenting one final, illustrated talk before the close of his historic survey exhibition at the Frye. If you haven’t seen the show or heard the artist talk, don’t miss. Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, 6229250. www.fryeart.org. Free. Thurs Sept 26, 6:30 pm.

ONE SPIRIT, MANY LIVES

To commemorate Lucid’s fifth anniversary, it’s throwing this 24-hour art event that promises to be a feast for every sense. Live mural painting, music, and film art. And it’s a bar. Lucid, 5241 University Way NE, 369-3248.

The museum hosts community dialogue and artistic responses to the verdict of Florida v. George Zimmerman Northwest African American Museum, 2300 S Massachusetts St, 518-6000. www.naamnw.org. Free. Wed Sept 25 at 6:30 pm.

visualart@thestranger.com

READINGS

Wed 9/25

JENNIFER SHEA

The popular local cupcake maker reveals all her secrets in her book Trophy Cupcakes and Parties. Man, I love a Trophy cupcake. The Book Larder, 4252 Fremont Ave N, 397-4271. Free. 6:30 pm.

Thurs 9/26

MOLLIE KATZEN

The Moosewood Cookbook mastermind returns with a new cookbook titled The Heart of the Plate The Book Larder, 4252 Fremont Ave N, 397-4271. Free. 6:30 pm.

DIANE RAVITCH

This is a reading from the book Reign of Error: The Hoax of Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools Kane Hall, Room 130, UW Campus, 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.

LIT FIX

This reading-and-music series features local authors Kevin Emerson, Indu Sundaresan, Jarret Middleton, and Litsa Dremousis. Plus booze! Rendezvous Jewelbox Theatre, 2322 2nd Ave., 634-3400. Free. 7 pm.

NORMAN RUSH

Rush is a much-celebrated author of novels like Mortals and Mating His new one is titled Subtle Bodies, and it’s about the Catskills and an old group of friends. Elliott Bay Book Company , 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. www.elliottbaybook. com. Free. 7 pm.

PETER BAGGE

See preview, page 25, and Stranger Suggests, page 23. Town Hall 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. www.townhallseattle. org. $5. 7:30 pm.

Sat 9/28

TERESA TAMURA

The author of Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp will discuss a shameful moment in American history. Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, 6246600. Free. 1 pm.

SHIRO KASHIBA

The beloved local genius sushi chef will be reading from his new memoir, Shiro: Wit, Wisdom and Recipes from a Sushi Pioneer, on the Bainbridge ferry departing from Seattle at 3 p.m. Then there will be a sushi tasting at a Bainbridge restaurant called the Intentional Table. Bainbridge ferry, Pier 52, 801 Alaskan Way, 842-2665. Free. 3 pm.

BRENDAN JAY SULLIVAN

Rivington Was Ours is a memoir by Lady Gaga friend and accomplice DJ Brendan Jay Sullivan. It’s about New York City and the music scene from which Lady Gaga erupted. Third Place

AMIT CHAUDHURI Calcutta: Two Years in the City is exactly what the title says: two years in the life of a fascinating city. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 6246600. Free. 7 pm.

NICHOLSON BAKER Baker undertakes his first true sequel— Room Temperature doesn’t quite count as a sequel to The Mezzanine, even though it’s basically the same conceit— with his new novel Traveling Sprinkler, which stars the narrator of Baker’s The Anthologist This time, our hero wants to write a perfect pop song, despite the fact that he’s not really good at that kind of thing. Town Hall 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. $5. 7:30 pm.

Tues 10/1

ERIC SCHLOSSER See Stranger Suggests, page 23. Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, 386-4636. Free. 7 pm.

JACK MCLEOD The North Cascades Highway: A Roadside Guide is a delightful illustrated book depicting a beautiful road in Washington. University Book Store Mill Creek, 15311 Main St, 6343400. Free. 7 pm.

NICHOLAS SPARKS AAAAAAA HHHH! AAAAA HHHHH! It’s the guy who wrote The Notebook ! AAAAAAAAAA HHHHHH! Maybe his new book, The Longest Ride, features a scene in which Ryan Gosling will take his shirt off in the rain! AAAAAAHHHHH! [Faints, dies.] Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. $35 (admission for two). 7 pm.

readings@thestranger.com

THEATER

Opening and Current Runs

BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO

See review, page 29. Washington Ensemble Theatre 608 19th Ave E, 3255105. washingtonensemble.org. $15-$25. Thurs-Mon at 7:30 pm. Through Oct 7.

BROKE-OLOGY

In this play by Nathan Louis Jackson, adult brothers cope with the failing health of an aging parent and the associated emotional and financial challenges. Directed by Valerie CurtisNewton, produced in association with the Hansberry Project. Seattle Public Theatre, 7312 W Green Lake Dr N, 524-1300. seattlepublictheater.org. $10$22. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Oct 20.

FUSSY CLOUD PUPPET SLAM VOLUME VII Short-form adult puppet variété. Theatre Off Jackson , 409 Seventh Ave S, 340-1049. brownpapertickets.com. $10. Sat Sept 28 at 7 and 9:30 pm. HELLO DARLIN’S: MOM’S GOT SOMETHING TO TELL YOU! A solo show, written by Dan Owens and directed by Jacqueline Moscou, about groundbreaking comedian “Moms” Mabley, who get her start on the Chitlin Circuit and came out as a lebian in the 1920s.

to ourselves. Will Eno’s play is a loose riff on Thornton Wilder’s Our Town , but seen through the eyes of an astronaut, a cheerfully morbid librarian, a confused young housewife, a drunk mechanic, a poetically minded but brutal cop, and oth-

THE

See review, page 29. West of Lenin, 203 N 36th St, brownpapertickets.com. By donation. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm. Through Sept 28.

Dance

50 HEARTBREAKS (AND I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOUKRAINE) Heartbreak and Ukrainian history told through dance, stopmotion animation, old family photos, and a woman in a rabbit outfit. By Jenna Bean Veatch and Nadia Tarnawsky. Annex Theatre, 1100 E Pike St, 7280933. annextheatre.org. $5-$20. Tues-Fri at 8 pm. Through Oct 4. AIR TWYLA

She’d probably hate to be called a “living legend,” but that’s what Twyla Tharp is. Tharp is to contemporary dance what Stephen Sondheim is to musical theater— arch and intelligent enough to satisfy the cognoscenti, but populist enough to keep selling tickets and inspiring imitation and adulation. In Air Twyla Pacific Northwest Ballet will present three works, including a new piece titled Waiting at the Station with music by New Orleans titan

WORN OUT

PAGEANT WEAR FOR PRINCESSES

In recent Bellevue happenings, the Miss Chinese Seattle Pageant delivered an important lesson about beauty: It’s not about what’s on the outside, it turns out. It’s more about the ability to project a list of qualities like confidence, regality, punctuality, and determination, along with other valued traits, all of them blended up and oozing together. The prior evening, during interview sessions before a panel of judges, the contestants spoke in sentences ranging from the deft to the circular, revealed personalities from the bubbly to the enameled, and described an assortment of hobbies: conducting Bible quizzes, following nail-art fashions, picking up litter, meeting new friends, and promoting world peace. For some, the past has been a succession of dreams coming true, while others

chandelier earrings.

have lived very difficult lives and recited the details with astonishing serenity. Trending onstage the night of the ceremony, prom-inspired evening dresses contained fluffy blends of chiffon and tulle, ice-cream pastels, mermaid skirts, and strapless bodices caked with sparkling spangles. For one round, the women wore glittering cheongsams, the traditional Chinese gown with raglan sleeves, mandarin collar, and slit skirt. During the bathing-suit competition, contestants joyously flung their sarongs away and glide-walked across the shiny stage in only floral-print bikinis. Not all of us consider this activity to be an unfathomably humiliating objectification of women: “It’s a great way to show physical fitness, and that’s something to be proud of,” explained one contestant. Shimmering embroidery, white satin sashes, and chandelier earrings brought added dazzle to many ensembles. And hair was either swept up or left loose and long, with the curls tumbling, just a-tumbling. The talent round was especially thrilling when Ka Man Lee, overwhelmed with feeling, dropped to her knees while singing the anguished Les Misérables ballad “I Dreamed a Dream.” (Soon after, she was crowned Miss Chinese Seattle.) It’s hard not to relish the living shit out of these potent emotional displays. Keith Lovegrove’s great book Pageant: The Beauty Contest explores similar moments, what with all the winners’ shrieks and wooziness and joyful tears, but the unhappiness creeps in. During the 1953 Miss World competition, when Miss Egypt discovered she’d lost to Miss France, she “collapsed on the stage, writhed about in frustration, and lost consciousness.”

Oct. 9

Jesmyn Ward & Vivian Phillips ‘Men We Reaped’: A Memoir

(9/25) Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner

Bridging Our Cultural Conflicts

(9/26) Peter Bagge with Cienna Madrid

‘The Margaret Sanger Story’ (9/26) Kenneth Pollack Our Problem with Iran (9/27) Panel Discussion The Future of News in the Digital Age

(9/29) Elliott Bay Book Co. presents Linda Ronstadt: ‘Simple Dreams’ (9/30) Nicholson Baker with Warren Etheredge ‘Traveling Sprinkler’

(10/1) Third Place Books presents Nicholas Sparks with Warren Etheredge ‘The Longest Ride’

(10/1) Clive Thompson Technology is Improving Our Minds

(10/2) Sightline Institute presents Matt Taibbi How Money Influences Governance (10/2) Daniel Lieberman The Evolutionary Story of the Human Body

(10/4) Paul Polak & Mal Warwick ‘The Business Solution to Poverty’ (10/4) Margaret Atwood ‘MaddAddam’

(10/5) Earshot Jazz Festival presents La Familia Valera Miranda

(10/6) Short Stories Live Portraits of Three Women (10/7) Debora Spar ‘Wonder Women’

CHOW

Rachel’s Ginger Beer Forever

It Takes 1,500 Pounds of Ginger to Make the Best Drink You’ll Ever Have

BY MEGAN SELING

Ifelt like such a jerk. More than a year ago, while judging a pie-baking contest at Capitol Hill’s High 5 Pie, I was sitting at a table surrounded by local food connoisseurs—

well-known bakers, cafe owners, and food editors—when someone chimed, “Does anyone want something to drink? Water? Coffee? Rachel’s Ginger Beer?”

While the others immediately started cooing—“Rachel’s Ginger Beer!” some cried in unison, fighting back the urge to climb over the table to get their hands on that bottle just one second faster—I looked around and said, “What’s that?”

it so much that it tastes bitter and too sharp. It’s a common mistake.”

RGB Market

1530 Post Alley, rachelsgingerbeer.com Daily 10 am–10 pm

“WHAT’S THAT?” someone asked with utter horror, as a cold brown bottle was handed to me. “Here, drink!”

My mouth instantly puckered, and my face tingled all through my cheeks. I even felt a little tickle on the tip of my nose. At first it was sour, then sweet—and the wave of cool liquid burned, delightfully, as it washed down my throat. It was, perhaps, the best drink I’ve sipped—a perfect, simple blend of ginger, lemon, sugar, and water that was unlike any ginger beer or ginger ale I’ve had before.

And the kicker? I don’t even like ginger! I generally consume ginger ale only when it’s served in a sugar-packed green aluminum can that warns, “Made with artificial flavors.”

Rachel Marshall, the genius behind Rachel’s Ginger Beer, has heard that before.

“It’s ’cause everyone sucks with ginger,” she explains, obviously frustrated by the root’s unjust reputation. “People overprocess

Marshall, who’s been making ginger beer for about three years now, after first having it while living in the UK after college, has perfected her art. After a lot of trial and error, Mashall’s potion is in such high demand that it’s carried at more than 100 local bars, restaurants, cafes, and stores, from hippie-dippy Central Co-op to fancy-pants Spinasse. You can even order growlers of it via AmazonFresh. And just a few weeks ago, Marshall finally opened the Rachel’s Ginger Beer flagship store on the corner of Post Alley and Pine in Pike Place Market. Like the soda it serves, the store’s decor is simple—chalkboard menus hang over the counter, and a mural painted by local artist Stacey Rozich brings a pop of color. But with its amazing view of the sunset, it doesn’t need much.

The shop has at least seven flavors of Rachel’s Ginger Beer available on tap; they turn the kegs several times a day, too, to take care of natural separation. The selection includes the original recipe as well as a colorful variety of seasonals—right now, there’s white peach, blood orange, carrot-beet, hibiscus, strawberry (Mashall’s favorite—“It tastes like a Starburst!”), blueberry, cranberry, and extra spicy. The cocktail menu includes the Porch

Swing (RGB, gin, and Aperol), the Dark & Stormy (RGB and dark rum), and the El Diablo (RGB, cassis, and tequila), as well as a couple blended drinks like the frozen strawberry mule, which a booze-loving friend of mine said was “like a beautiful adult Slurpee.”

Not a drinker? That’s okay! They have shakes and floats, too, which are handcrafted with your choice of RGB and Cupcake Royale’s vanilla, strawberry, or dairy-free coconut ice cream.

“The blood-orange ginger beer milkshake with Cupcake Royale’s ice cream is so good. It tastes like an Orange Julius,” Marshall says.

It takes about eight hours to make the most perfect ginger beer, and the process involves about 1,500 pounds of ginger every week. After basically making a juice of ginger, lemon, and sugar, Rachel’s brews this juice together with filtered water and, for the special flavors, other juices from local farms. The upcoming fall menu sounds especially great.

The frozen strawberry mule is like a beautiful adult Slurpee.

“We are working with a really awesome farm in Long Beach, Starvation Alley— they’re going to do all our cranberry juice for us. They’re going to be the only organic cranberry farm in Washington State that doesn’t give their cranberries to Ocean Spray,” she says. “And we are perfecting pear cardamom. We worked with this awesome lady from Ballard last year, whose grandfather had a big quince tree, so we’re also working on a quince flavor for autumn.”

One ginger beer flavor you won’t see? Pumpkin.

“I fucking hate pumpkin,” Marshall says. “When I see that pumpkin spice latte at places, it makes me cringe. ‘Oh, the trees have turned! Let’s do pumpkin everything!’ It’s like the potato. It’s cheap and boring.”

Fucking hate pumpkin at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

WITH CHARLSE MUDEDE

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

SEATTLE CAN BE JUST LIKE A BIG CITY

Bathtub Gin & Co.

2205 Second Ave, 728-6069

What do the inhabitants of all midsize cities (Seattle, Denver, Atlanta) have in common? They have almost no resistance against the impulse to show a visitor from a big city a bar or restaurant that is (according to their estimation) just as cool, just as fancy, just as chic as the ones in the big city. I have done this. You have done this. We have all done this. Of course, the visitor caught in this sorry predicament is kind if he/she conceals his/her contempt, and unkind if he/she express it. But to be fair, you too have been in this situation. At one time or another, you visited a big city and were shown by your eager hosts a place or something that was easily enjoyed or gotten in your midsize city.

For example, in 2010, a couple of New Yorkers decided to amaze me with a new Thai restaurant that opened in their Chinatown. They insisted the experience would change my life. I tried and tried to suggest that a French or Italian restaurant might be

the way to go. I even made up a sensitive stomach, one that’s easily troubled by the unfamiliar spices of Asian dishes. But this is what the New Yorkers kept thinking: He is from a small city and so is scared of the exotic delights of our big city. And this is what I kept thinking (and this thinking indeed proved to be true): No Thai restaurant in the Big Apple could compete with even those on the outskirts of Seattle.

These thoughts came to me soon after I entered Bathtub Gin & Co. from a door in an alley. It was exactly the kind of place I would show to a friend from New York. Its old brick walls, its cool basement area, its creaky furniture, its high ceilings, its lamps, its wood-rich bar, its black-and-white photographs, its intimacy, its respectable selection of cocktails and wine (I had an excellent drink called a Coup D’État and a sound glass of Côtes du Rhône), its handsome and almost whispering urban types, its ’90s hiphop and triphop, its dark corners—how could a person from a big city not feel right at home in a place like this? A place that’s right in the middle of midsize Seattle?

Comment on Drinkking with Charlse Mudede at THESTRANGER.COM/CHOW

WITH SHIRO The great Shiro Kashiba talks about his memoir/cookbook, Shiro: Wit, Wisdom and Recipes from a Sushi Pioneer, aboard the 3 p.m. Bainbridge ferry, followed by a (FREE!) tasting at the Intentional Table in Winslow. This should be really great. Bainbridge ferry. Free with ferry ticket. 3 pm.

Sun 9/29

VEGAN BAKE SALE TO BENEFIT (LIVE) BACON

Vegan Haven, the 100-percent vegan store up by Wayward Cafe and Pizza Pi on the Ave, is having a bake sale to raise money for the Pigs Peace Sanctuary, a farm in Stanwood that provides a safe haven for poor little abandoned piggies. Vegan Haven, 5270 University Way NE, 523-9060. facebook. com/VeganHavenSeattle. 10 am-8 pm.

Tues 10/1

A CONVERSATION ABOUT I-522

Chef Jim Drohman feels so strongly about the labeling of genetically modified foods, he’s going to feed you snacks at his lovely Cafe Presse while you get educated about it. Come! (And call 709-7674 to RSVP so he knows how many to expect.) Cafe Presse , 1117 12th Ave, 709-7674. cafepresseseattle. com/news. $5.22 suggested donation. 8:30-9:30 am; also Thurs Oct 17, 5:30-6:30 pm.

MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. SEND EVENT INFO TO: chow@thestranger.com

Find the full calendar online.

SCRAPPY’S BITTERS WILL CURE WHAT AILS YOU

Miles Thomas Owner, Scrappy’s Bitters scrappysbitters.com

It’s likely Miles Thomas, the owner of Scrappy’s Bitters, has made you a drink—during his 10 years bartending, he worked at Serafina, Branzino, and the Hideout. He fiddled with an old bitters recipe until he concocted something so popular he needed a storage closet under a Belltown restaurant to keep up with demand. Thus Scrappy’s Bitters was born, the first new American bitters company in 100 years “Scrappy” is a nickname Miles acquired because of a (now outgrown) tendency to get in fistfights, which his superhero build would suggest he usually won. The still-growing business now inhabits a building in Fremont. Like Willy Wonka or the military, Miles only allows certain people on the premises, in order to keep his recipes top secret. Bitters are made by macerating herbs and fruit into alcohol, and were originally marketed as a cure-all. While it’s no replacement for antibiotics, it tastes much better in cocktails than penicillin, and apparently does, in fact, aid digestion. It’s a key ingredient in many classic drinks, such as Sazeracs and Manhattans. Miles says you can find his bitters all over town, but mentioned that Canon and Tavern Law carry every single kind, including cardamom and chocolate. He’s recently developed a habanero tincture he calls Firewater, which may burn your Bloody Mary garnishes to pickled cinders if used carelessly. SARAH GALVIN

MUSIC

The Man Behind Seattle’s ElectronicMusic Mecca

Sean Horton on Decibel Festival’s Devastating

First Decade

BY DAVE SEGAL

Long before he became head of the Seattle-based Decibel Festival, Sean Horton endured two winters working 20 hours a day on fishing boats in Alaska. That seems relatively easy compared

to the monstrous quantity of tasks he tackles these days. Besides running Decibel—one of the world’s best electronic-music/digitalarts events—with a staff of more than 200 volunteers, including audio and video/lighting techs, Horton serves as director of music strategy and senior music supervisor for PlayNetwork. Oh, and he DJs and produces his own electronic music. And he receives more than 500 e-mails a day, most of which demand a reply. And he’s married. Sleep is overrated, anyway.

(often generators of dB’s greatest thrills), educational conferences, and even yoga sessions round out the program.

Decibel Festival Wed–Sun Sept 25–29, dbfestival.com

No one—including Horton himself, he admits—could’ve predicted in that first meeting at Barça that Decibel would blossom so magnificently. Like most fests, it started as a DIY grassroots labor of love. Unlike most, it’s grown to a million-dollarplus affair while staying true to Horton’s rigorous vision of quality electronic music in multiple styles.

in between. I’ve always made a concerted effort to tell a story with the programming. Whether that story is the history of Detroit techno, or the evolution of dub, or the emergence of bass-oriented production, I use the festival showcases as an opportunity to entertain as well as educate attendees. Though the venues have grown in both number and size, my integrity and commitment as curator has never swayed and never will.”

Horton has noticed Decibel crowds skewing younger in recent years, aided partially by the inclusion of all-ages shows. “I remember my own musical upbringing in Detroit in the ’80s and ’90s,” he recalls, “migrating from hiphop to metal to industrial to techno to ambient to more experimental forms of music. The youth of today is going through a similar musical transformation, and like all of us, they need to start somewhere. There are artists that I’ve selected over the past decade that cater to that culture (e.g., Deadmau5, Diplo, Justice, the Glitch Mob, Zedd, Flosstradamus, etc.). We’ve always had some outreach to emerging trends, typically years before they’re popular with mainstream audiences. I’m proud to have been ahead of the curve on many of these selections, while offering an opportunity for attendees to experience an eclectic program of music they wouldn’t normally be exposed to. Decibel has always been about discovery.”

One might think that the rise of “EDM” in America has been advantageous to Decibel’s drawing power, but Horton refutes this notion. “The blanket term ‘EDM’ is not only hurting Decibel, it’s hurting electronic music as a whole. [As with] ‘rave’ and ‘electronica,’ I loathe terms that make an effort to label something as vast and longstanding as electronic dance music or electronic music.

“The main issue that I have is that it’s far easier to exploit a subculture once it has a given label, and that is exactly what is happening right now with EDM and the fashion and drug culture associated with it,” Horton continues. “I have always positioned Decibel as grassroots, intimate, eclectic, and live— with an emphasis on visual art and education. Decibel is the antithesis of [what EDM] has become in recent years (impersonal, formulaic, excessive, homogeneous, drug-fueled). My sincerest hope is that all the blatant ‘EDM marketing’ targeting largely inexperienced mainstream audiences loses momentum. When it all collapses, Decibel will once again be there, extending an alternative experience focused on quality underground music in all its forms.”

• During their set at Heartland on Friday, Portland rock trio the Woolen Men broke a guitar string during the second song, then accidentally busted through their kick-drum head with a kick pedal two songs later, before finally snapping a bass string (nearly impossible!) on their secondto-last song. Other than the bad luck, their set was thoroughly enjoyable and included a cover of the Fall’s “Psycho Mafia.”

• An anonymous tipster admitted that 30 seconds into the S performance at Chop Suey on Sunday, they burst into tears—unexpectedly blindsided by Jenn Ghetto’s voice and vulnerability. Later, the tipster reported that an adorable man was popping and locking along to Lovers, which did not cause tears, only admiration.

• Which song do you prefer: “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus or “Locked Out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars? If your answer was both/neither/who cares, you are correct, because they are the same song.

• Defunct, revered Seattle post-punk group A Frames have four songs appearing in a film titled Animals by Spanish director Marçal Forés, which will screen at the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival on October 15.

• An anonymous sound guy was aggressively disappointed when a man dressed as a cowboy (a) did not play country music, (b) played what sounded like the same noncountry song for more than an hour, and (c) would not leave the stage so the sound guy could clock out.

• If you decide to stay indoors and paint a wall during this rainy weather, don’t listen to Chicago. It’s just a really bad idea.

• It’s rumored that one half of THEESatisfaction, Stasia Irons, has relocated to Brooklyn. Also, THEESat’s Black Weirdo party last month in Brooklyn was a huge success—the line for entry is said to have gone around the corner.

• Last Thursday, someone said, “Got my mojo twerkin’.” And with that, the whole twerking thing officially jumped the shark.

Horton’s workaholism has helped make Decibel—celebrating its 10th anniversary this year—an essential stop on the global music-fest circuit, and in the last decade, annual attendance has grown from 2,500 to 25,000. This year’s lineup bursts with diversity and excellence on international, national, and local levels—there’s a lot of something for almost everybody. For every Moby, Lorde, and Zedd, there’s an Actress, Raime, and Ben Klock. You want legends? Check out Juan Atkins, Green Velvet, the Orb, and Peter Hook. Young Eastside newbies and aging, staunch avant-gardists can unite for five days and enjoy a surfeit of acts (more than 150, in fact) in 12 downtown, Capitol Hill, and Queen Anne venues. After-hours parties

But with exceptional growth comes subtle differences in scheduling. In 2004, Decibel would not have booked Moby or New Order’s bassist.

“Decibel is the antithesis of what EDM has become in recent years.”

Perhaps Horton has felt the need to snare more popular acts as Decibel has moved to bigger venues and extended to five days?

“Believe it or not, it really hasn’t changed much since the inception,” Horton says.

“From year one, I have been curating the festival based on personal taste and experience with all facets of electronic music, spanning techno, house, dub, modern bass, hiphop, ambient, electropop, downtempo, and all points

When asked what his fondest memories of Decibel’s first decade are, Horton confesses how tough it is to choose, but he starts with one of my most awestruck Decibel experiences: Amon Tobin’s ISAM Live US debut at the sold-out Paramount Theatre in 2011. “I remember having to go on stage before Amon’s set to make some announcement and hearing that wave of cheers after welcoming everyone to the 8th annual Decibel Festival. I still get chills thinking about it.

“I’d also put Speedy J’s blistering techno set to close out the 2006 program as an incredibly memorable performance, particularly because I had zero expectations and

• Master Musicians of Bukkake have dropped off the bill of Hypnotikon: Seattle Psych Fest. Tokyoidaho have replaced them in the lineup, which includes the legendary Silver Apples, Lumerians (fresh off opening for My Bloody Valentine’s North American tour), CAVE, and eight other national and local groups. Hypnotikon takes place October 11–12 at the Triple Door.

• After five years of dating and countless premarital sexual relations, singer/songwriter/harpist Joanna Newsom and comic/actor/musician Andy Samberg tied the knot in Big Sur, California, this past weekend. Congratulations to the newlyweds, who seem like a much better match than their forerunners in sandyhaired-musician/brown-haired-actor mashups. (See Gibbard vs. Deschanel, 2012.)

Jochem [Paap] had the Neumos crowd reeling. After his set, Jochem got on the mic to declare, ‘This is the best festival in the world,’ and all I could do was weep. Those closing parties have always been incredibly emotional and inevitably wind up being my favorite events each year.

“My fondest memory, however, has to be getting married at the 2009 program. It was such a beautifully surreal experience having friends, family, and artists all file into the Asian Art Museum—home of our OPTICAL 3 event directly after—and then migrate out to a beautiful September day at Volunteer Park to celebrate with 2,000 other festival attendees who had gathered for the dB in the Park event. Diana and I really couldn’t have asked for a better way to celebrate our love. The fact that we met at Decibel made it all the more endearing.”

We have to balance all that heart-melting greatness with some Decibel lows. There’ve been a few. Horton begins with last year’s OPTICAL fiasco at Broadway Performance Hall. “We had simply overestimated the

“At one point, his effects processor got unplugged and let out a deafening shriek that lasted several minutes.”

venue’s ability to house the event. Plagued with technical issues, we had to push everything back over an hour, and I finally made the executive call to cut friend and Decibel collaborator Rafael Anton Irisarri’s band Orcas from the lineup, which broke my heart. In the end, Nils Frahm performed one of the most memorable sets of the entire festival, but it was still incredibly embarrassing.

“Another low point has to be the legendary Kraftwerk percussionist Wolfgang Flür, whose horrifically bad DJ set in 2007 cleared the venue. At one point, his effects processor got unplugged and let out a deafening shriek that lasted several minutes. People honestly thought the fire alarm was going off. [The Flür set] reiterated the importance of curating only artists that you’ve actually seen perform before. I’m pleased to say that with nearly 900 artists from more than 30 countries booked over the past decade, there’s really only a handful of real disappointments.”

With this landmark occasion, it’s time to wonder: Can Decibel go on indefinitely or does Horton envision an end? (He claims to have lost more than $250,000 throwing Decibel events since 2004. Ow.) “The family that Decibel has spawned will live on, regardless of whether Decibel continues. I’ve already gotten more out of the festival than I would’ve ever imagined. I hope that it will continue, but I know my limitations as a human being. I’m getting older, and the workaholic lifestyle continues to take its toll. I also know the limitations of a team that has constantly given everything they have simply to see it happen again and again and again.

“Ultimately, the success of Decibel lies in the Seattle community, which is who I built it for in the first place. The more that people support the events we produce year-round and the festival, the more chance it has of surviving. One thing is for certain: The next two weeks will determine our future, and I’ve never been more confident in the festival program.” For every Moby, there’s an Actress at THESTRANGER.COM/MUSIC

Nardwuar:

Our Man in Canada Interviewing

BY DEREK ERDMAN

Nardwuar the Human Serviette (his legal name since 1986) is a Canadian treasure. Aside from being an exemplary celebrity interviewer who has talked to everyone from Nirvana to Tame Impala—often catching his subjects off guard with his thorough knowledge of the interviewee’s personal history and his attempts to steer the interview toward all things Canadian—he also contributes to the world’s culture trove as a member of bands the Evaporators and Thee Goblins, each holding true to the ethos of the classic punk sound. I recently turned the tables on Nardwuar via e-mail, and we breezed through the topics of the music of the Pacific Northwest, George C. Scott, and why he now wears a tartan tam.

me of George Segal, who shot the movie Russian Roulette in Vancouver, which in turn makes me think of my favorite George Segal movie, The Hot Rock, which Sleater-Kinney named an album after!

The Evaporators w/Thee Goblins, Acapulco Lips, Bottlenose Koffins Sat Sept 28, Comet, 9 pm, $8, 21+

We have a few things in common: Macklemore gave you a jacket of your face that I painted. Have you ever worn it in public? Thank you (and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis) for that incredible creation! I’ve worn it quite a bit, and I am thinking if I ever interview Neil Young or Kanye West, that is the jacket I will be sporting!

Do you think the prevalence of the internet has been a good thing for music? I am not the best person to ask about musicindustry things. I once heard a prerelease tape of Green Day’s Dookie and thought it would be a failure. I could not hear one hit on it!

Do you think that discovering the entire lineage of a band in a matter of minutes removes some of the magic that we as preinternet music fanatics had to endure? I have been lucky as a volunteer at CiTR—the University of British Columbia radio station—to be exposed to a tremendous amount of music from the minute I walked in the door! The station was packed with records, a clippings file on artists, and, most importantly, DJs who were eager to share their knowledge with me and the listeners. In fact, the magic never stopped—the internet has only intensified it!

If I were doing this interview in person, I’d do my best to give a nod to the history of Vancouver and present you with a poster for my favorite horror film, the 1980 George C. Scott movie The Changeling. Have you ever seen that movie? That is so nice of you, Derek! I do know The Changeling was filmed in Vancouver! However, George C. Scott reminds

Calabros, Rockin’ Rod and the Strychnines, Ze Whiz Kidz, the Dehumanizers, Diddly Squat, and can I also add 10 Things Zine, Backlash magazine, Pool Dust, The Canadian Penny, Peter Blecha’s Sonic Boom: The History of Northwest Rock, and every band that ever played the Funhouse.

Do you resent people who don’t respond well to your interviews? I used to be a huge fan of Blur, but I have to say, after the Dave Rowntree incident where he bullied you (even though he apologized), not so much. No, not at all. That is life.

How many interviews in the familiar character have you done? I started my radio show on CiTR in October 1987, so every week since then, I have pretty much done an interview.

When was the character developed? Believe it or not, the first interview I ever did, even before my radio show, was with Art Bergmann from the Young Canadians. They were a great punk band out of Vancouver circa 1979. On their second EP, they thanked my high school in their liner notes! I was shocked! So I just had to find out why, and on September 26, 1985, I did my first interview.

Are you familiar with the term “fuck band”? Is that a common term in Vancouver? After a while, the first wave of punk bands in Vancouver decided to have some fun and switch instruments and create “fuck bands” with punks from other bands! The most famous one, Rude Norton, had Nick, the singer of Pointed Sticks, on drums, Wimpy, the singer from Subhumans, on bass, and Dimwit, the drummer for Subhumans, on guitar. All this is explained in the incredible Bloodied but Unbowed documentary about Vancouver punk. There still are fuck bands today in Vancouver, including Eating Out and Heavy Chains, who share members with White Lung and Nü Sensae.

Are you familiar with the Goblins from Chicago? Has there ever been tension over having such a similar name? Derek, you are so astute! We have played with the Goblins from Chicago! The gig was billed as an “international border clash,” and we made an eight-track tape (no joke) to commemorate the occasion!

Do you love Seattle? Do you have any memorable Seattle stories? I love Seattle so much, and I will never forget the time Janet from Fallout Records gave me Steve Turner’s and Mark Arm’s phone numbers! That changed my life, as then I was able to set up an all-ages gig for them and Beat Happening in Vancouver. Later, Mudhoney contributed the track “Fuzzbuster” to a Canada versus USA battle of the bands compilation I put out called Clam Chowder & Ice vs. Big Macs & Bombers! Furthermore, I remember one time coming down to interview Dan Quayle in Shoreline, and he didn’t know who the prime minister of Canada was!

Are there any lesser-known Seattle bands from the past that you liked but never really seemed to get their due? The Fallouts, HEAD, Dead Vampires, Aaiiee, Flop, Thee Sgt. Major, Visqueen, Mighty Squirrels, Gas Huffer, Night Kings, Tiny Tony and the Statics, the Viceroys, Rocky and the Riddlers, Blue Scholars, Source of Labor, Kid Sensation, Paper Dolls, Mr. Epp, Death Wish Kids, the Meyce, the Dynette Set, Sicko, the

Can you tell me what happened with the Quiet Riot interview? Things got heated? I still don’t know or understand, as they destroyed the videotape from the interview! I figure they just wanted their interview erased from history. Sebastian Bach of Skid Row also smashed the videotape I was using to capture his interview. The shitty thing was, the tape contained interviews with former Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Sandra Bernhard, and George Clinton! Plus, he stole my favorite toque. That is why I wear a tartan tam—Baz stole my toque! So it seems I always have trouble with the “hair farming” bands. When I interviewed Gene Simmons, I brought my friend, Canadian heavy-metal legend THOR, along in case anything went wrong. As it turned out, nothing happened! Gene was a sweetie! Although he denied his wife was born in Dildo, Newfoundland.

Do you currently live in Vancouver? If so, what are your favorite places there? Yes, I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada! My favorite restaurant is Tomahawk Barbecue in North Vancouver. Bryan Adams once worked there as a dishwasher! I always have the Skookum Chief hamburger, which contains egg, bacon, wiener, meat, and cheese. Basically, it’s three meals in one. The ’Hawk also appears in the Evaporators’ “Hot Dog High” video! I also love to check out Beat Street Records, Red Cat Records, Scratch Records, Zulu Records, Audiopile Records, Scrape Records, Dandelion Records, and Neptoon Records!

In Montreal, they sell a thing called “smoked meat.” Have you ever had it? I have indeed! Schwartz’s delicatessen in Montreal is the most famous smoked meat place in Canada. I love Montreal, too! The Gruesomes are from Montreal and got me turned on to an amazing cache of Quebecois 1960s garage rock. Bands such as Les Lutins, Les Hou Lops, Les Sinners, Les Miserables, and my current fav, a bunch of kids wearing sailor outfits called Les Mousses!

Is there anything you’d like to add to the people out there? C. J. Frederick from Daswasup Gig has been putting on a bunch of amazing shows in Seattle for a while now, and I am so excited to finally play one! Also, thank you, Derek, for caring, and please keep on rawkin’ in the free world! Doot doola doot doo…

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18TH

THURSDAY

WEDNESDAY

COMING UP: 9/25 PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT 9/26 JETS 9/27 PEARSON SOUND 9/28 JOHN TEJADA 10/12 REYKJAVIK CALLING 10/13 KID INK 10/14 PALMA VIOLETS 10/15 HOLY GHOST! 10/16 KING KHAN & THE SHRINES 10/18 GOBLIN 10/21 THE BLOW 10/22 DEER TICK 10/24 GODFLESH 10/25 COCOROSIE 10/26 THE 1975 10/27 AU REVOIR SIMONE 10/28 BERNHOFT 10/30 CHARLI XCX 11/2 AYRON JONES AND THE WAY + SIR MIX-A-LOT 11/4 SEPULTURA 11/6 OF MONTREAL 11/7 RADIATION CITY

COMING UP: 10/5 EXILE PARADE 10/6 HOUSES 10/8 OKTA LOGUE 10/9 JACCO GARDNER 10/10 BUDO 10/11 SIR SLY 10/12 TIM KASHER 10/13 HELADO NEGRO 10/15 CRYSTAL STILTS 10/16 TONY LUCCA 10/17 NEEMA 10/19 SAN FERMIN 10/20 YOU MAY DIE IN THE DESERT 10/22 CLAIRY BROWNE & THE BANGIN’ RACKETTES 10/23 KEEP SHELLY IN ATHENS + CHAD VALLEY 10/24 SCRIBES 10/26 KODALINE 10/27 LEAGUES 10/29 TANGERINE 10/30 GOLDROOM 11/1 WHITE LUNG 11/2 RUBBLEBUCKET

Quality Out of Control

Thirty Must-See Decibel Artists

BY KYLE FLECK, CHARLES MUDEDE, EMILY NOKES, AND DAVE SEGAL

ACTRESS (Thurs, Crocodile) Elusive British maverick Darren Cunningham’s tracks shimmer, shimmy, and pulsate with quicksilvery inventiveness among techno, dubstep, garage, and gamelan. Hazyville, indeed.

DAVE SEGAL

ARCHIE PELAGO (Sun, Neumos) This Brooklyn trio runs its sax, cello, and trumpet through Ableton programs to create warped, jazzy disco and futuristic avant-jazz. Their nuanced fusion of organic and synthetic sonic molecules represents an otherworldly breakthrough. DS

craving quality Bulgarian dance music, get your ass to KiNK’s set at Decibel’s From Disco to Disco Finale. His wonky tech-house cuts somehow combine ecstatic party vibes with undercurrents of menace, a fascinating paradox that’ll make you sweat. DS

Decibel Festival Wed–Sun Sept 25–29, dbfestival.com

AXEL BOMAN (Fri, Q) The excellently named Axel Boman is a Swedish DJ whose warm and friendly house jams will make for the perfect late-night dance partner at Q, and he’s also hitting the decks during the day for Decibel’s boat party series, which promises to be a scenic, feel-good time. On a boat! EMILY NOKES

BEN KLOCK (Wed, Q) One major reason why Berlin rules the minimal-techno world is this guy, whose DJ mixes are psychedelic assemblages of driving, bleep-intensive cuts. Klock’s gonna sound amazing on Q’s massive system. DS

EVIAN CHRIST (Thurs, Chop Suey) Fresh off production duties on Yeezus highlight “I’m in It,” British beat prodigy Evian Christ trades in booming 808s, scrambled rap samples, and wafting, hazy melodies undercutting all the hard talk with a palpable sense of longing. KYLE FLECK

HUERCO S. (Thurs, Chop Suey) With Colonial Patterns, Kansas City’s Huerco S. shoots to the forefront of America’s experimental-techno scene. His crepuscular, exotically humid, and oddly angled dance music is bafflingly fresh and great. DS

IKONIKA (Wed, Crocodile) Queen of the later-era London dubstep scene (and pony in the Hyperdub stable), Ikonika commands wacked-out melodic curlicues, bouncy chiptune, and throwback/Pac-Man-eating-adisco-ball synth grooves. EN

JUAN ATKINS (Sat, Showbox at the Market) Juan Atkins’s work with Cybotron put the idea of the new sound of techno in the air in the early ’80s. Later, under the name Model 500, Atkins purified that sound. Clearly he did more than anyone else to separate Detroit from Chicago and to establish techno.

CHARLES MUDEDE

KINK (Sun, Neumos) If you’ve been

minimalist German keyboardist wrings devastating emotion from his contemplative compositions. His beautiful, crystalline set at last year’s Decibel prompted the wildest applause I heard at the fest. DS

THE ORB (Sat, Showbox at the Market) These legendary purveyors of whimsical, psychedelic dub and ambient house fried my synapses at a 1995 gig. Here’s betting they still have that transcendently mischievous essence. DS

OREN AMBARCHI (Sun, Triple Door) Nearly every sound from this Australian’s guitar subverts your expectations about guitar sounds. His pliable drones take on traits of water, factories, aviation, and busted fax machines. Ambarchi’s the anti–Angus Young. DS

PEARSON SOUND (Fri, Neumos) David Kennedy, corunner of UK label Hessle Audio, is the busy man behind Pearson Sound (as well as the dubstep alias Ramadanman and/or Chicago-house alias Maurice Donovan), who produces cutting-edge tech-house that’s always in demand because he’s always evolving.

EN

PHARMAKON (Sat, Triple Door) The scariest music at Decibel’s going to be by this young woman, whose Abandon album is packed with sonic white-knuckle sandwiches; it’s a gristly trawl through doom-noise’s most harrowing corridors. DS

RAIME (Sun, Triple Door) This British duo’s music shivers in the same ominously desolate vein as Demdike Stare’s. Raime create encroaching, sooty soundtracks for slowly losing your grip on sanity. Beyond woebegone. DS

KODE9 (Wed, Crocodile) Hyperdub Records’ boss is bass-centric music’s foremost philosopher, a keen judge of postdubstep talent (he discovered Burial), and a wicked, versatile DJ and producer. DS

LORN (Sun, Crocodile) If Lorn (the menacing electronic project of Marcos Ortega) were a landscape, it’d be a scorched and smoldering one. The postapocalyptic, last-man-standing style is dark and defiant, yet satisfying in its cohesiveness. EN

MACHINEDRUM (Fri, Showbox at the Market) Machinedrum’s latest work sees him combining juke rhythms with jungle’s aggression and ambient’s underlying current of melancholy, with breathtakingly beautiful results. KF

MILEECE (Wed, Chihuly Garden and Glass) Ever wonder what sort of music your plants like? Or what sort of music they themselves might make if only you attached electrodes to their leaves and then created a program to translate the findings into soundscapes? English artist Mileece is known for her beautiful/minimal recordings and installations based on this blend of science, nature, and music. EN

MOUNT KIMBIE (Fri, Showbox Sodo)

Mount Kimbie got their start in the UK “bass” music scene, but quickly developed their own quirky, idiosyncratic take on the genre, with fizzy melodies and clockwork percussion aligning them more closely to IDM acts like Plaid. When MK play live, however, expect plenty of that low end to return. KF

NATASHA KMETO (Thurs, Crocodile)

Portland’s Natasha Kmeto makes blurrededged, catchy synthetic-soul music with song titles that describe a life I wouldn’t mind leading: “Morning Sex,” “Vodka Diet,” and “Idiot Proof.” KF

NICOLAS JAAR (Fri, Showbox Sodo)

Jaar satisfies your need for understated, richly melodic techno with suave panache. His 2011 debut album, Space Is Only Noise, is a euphorically morose bedroom-techno album for the ages. DS

NILS FRAHM (Fri, Benaroya) This

RYAN HEMSWORTH (Sat, Crocodile) Hemsworth’s rapidly ascending profile is based on his gift for crafting absolute bangers from a few simple-yet-addictive ingredients: syrupy, celestial R&B production, quasi-trap beats, and mournful, ghostly vocals. Zeitgeisty! KF

SHABAZZ PALACES (Thurs, Showbox at the Market) The ever-riveting Shabazz Palaces (project of space shamans Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire) take atmospheric hiphop to shadowy dimensions through potent beat mists and lyrical mirages. EN

SPEEDY J (Fri, Q) If there were a Dutch techno hall of fame, Speedy J would be the first inductee. For 20 years, he’s maintained astronomically high quality control re: thrusting, abrasive warehouse techno. So intense. DS

TEEBS (Sun, Crocodile) Brainfeederaffiliated LA whiz kid Teebs makes music that sounds like a junkyard brimming with hidden life: Harps and chimes sprout like flowers between the cracks in the beats, their gorgeous melodies blooming under a brown sky. KF

THOMAS FEHLMANN (Sat, Neumos) The elder statesman of German techno, this geezer’s a master of the schaffel groove, smoothly propulsive minimal techno, and dubby, aquatic ambience. DS

VESSEL (Thurs, Chop Suey) Recording for the renowned Tri Angle label, England’s Vessel creates trudging, astral-gothic house music to which you can rhythmically brood. His music exudes a pitiless beauty. DS

XXYYXX (Fri, Showbox at the Market) Marcel Everett—the 17-year-old producer also known as XXYYXX—makes snapping/ clicking beats, chillaxed experimental compositions, and pop collages that take from artists like Ne-Yo, TLC, and R. Kelly and sound like the sampling equivalents of sensual ransom notes. EN

ZOLA JESUS WITH JG THIRLWELL (Sat, Triple Door) Frosty goth-pop sensation Zola Jesus’s latest album saw her reworking past material into a series of sweeping, orchestra-aided torch songs. Her voice is a thing of beauty: Be prepared to swoon. KF

NEVER HEARD OF ’EM

BY ANNA MINARD

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

NEW YORK DOLLS

New York Dolls (Mercury)

I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE, YOU GUYS, I’M HAVING A BREAKDOWN. Phew. I just had to let that out. I mean, I can still do this column, I just can’t do Nipper’s recommendations two weeks in a row. Nipper, who literally sits in our offices inside a plastic booth and listens to records all day (I’m not kidding! You can visit him!), does not know how regular human ears work, and so I can tell when he’s behind the picks for this column because they drive me bonkers Dude is great; he’s like a library of music knowledge—totally unusable knowledge, because when he talks, so much weird shit comes out that you can’t find the wisdom in between the mom jokes and the esoteric music slang. But everyone else who recommends albums for this column takes at least one second to question if they might drive me over the doom ledge. He only hears something that’s like a synesthetic combination of the actual music sounds plus the encyclopedia entry on that

band, all wound together in a big knowledge symphony. So what I hear is a scrooooowowow of guitar, somebody pounding on a piano, and this lead singer screaming the way a baby does when it gets cartoony—its lips waggle and vibrate and you can tell the poor dear is going to run out of air.

New York Dolls are glam rock, which means something about outfits and that sometimes they sound like the soundtrack to a wacky musical. The first track has a lot of piano, and the screaming reaches baby level about halfway through. It hurts.

At first, I was trying to picture listening to this in some dark, 1970s New York place—a club, a warehouse, an apartment decorated in animal prints. But truthfully, without the extra genre-knowledge gained from looking at the album cover, this sounds like sunny road-trip music. Like you should listen to it while driving through golden afternoon fields in an old-fashioned car. “My pretty baby,” etc. Sure, the snarls and gyrations come through. But there’s something stately and traditional to the structure here, and if you don’t listen to the words (it’s cool, you can’t understand half of them anyway), it’s just bright, organized guitar jags and straightforward drumbeats building to crescendos. American as apple pie, porn titles with puns in them, and capitalism. It’s fine.

I do not, however, understand how music nerds always forget that other people don’t get a simultaneous microfiche slide show of history while they’re listening to music. It’s just sounds, dude! They have to stand on their own.

I give this a “sure, whatever” out of 10.

MY PHILOSOPHY

EVERYTHING FEELS PERSONAL

“We need emotional content. Now try again.”

—Bruce Lee

Spoiler warning: In this column, I (briefly) talk about Drake. Wait, that’s just a spoiler, isn’t it? Before all that, though: There’s a bunch of great hiphop (and more) being featured at the Decibel Festival showcase for the 25th anniversary of great-music institution Sub Pop Records. These are all folks I have worked with and/or currently work with and forever love, namely the gods Shabazz Palaces, Portland’s two-man electro-rock NASA the Helio Sequence, my sistren THEESatisfaction, and Cloud Nice’s crowned Kingdom Crumbs. This (IMO) massive happening goes down at the Showbox at the Market on Thursday, September 26. If you like rap, you might also like a lot of the beat-minded stuff going on at the world-famous dB Fest—experiential souls should check out dbfestival.com for the lineup.

Last week in this column, I spoke on a couple people we lost due to suicide and other shit—and in the week since, as we all know, there’s been several more deaths, many due to shocking acts of violence. Bad craziness, as Hunter S. Thompson would say. These times are a test, the air charged with desperation and hurt, the communication breaking down—I’d advise you hone your own skills in that department and work on building emotional intelligence in between backand-arms and legs day at 24 Hour Fitness. As always, I’m talking to myself as much as you

here—except for the whole fitness thing. (Pardon my advice-giving, and my occasional shitty joke—such is just my nature.)

Speaking of folks we lost, on Monday, September 30, at Chop Suey is a show dedicated to the memory of Crystal “CK Bella” Robinson—someone beloved by more than a few people in our hiphop scene, including the homeboy Mic Phenom who put together the lineup for this benefit. Songstress/MC Dice, head-cuttin’ spitter Spac3man, high-priced rhymer Louis V, singer Christina Pallis, and the Yuk Mob/ Rize Team’s Romaro Franceswa (who just started his “No Beat Is Safe” freestyle campaign) all perform, and the proceeds go to CK Bella’s daughter, who also lost her father to gun violence just last year. I hate the word “support,” as it’s usually used by thirsty rappers, but for real… support this It sucks sometimes that we only really feel like—and understand that we are—a true community when somebody dies.

Now, about that emotional content/ intelligence. This is not something that Drake lacks on his third album, Nothing Was the Same (aka EmoThug Motivation 101). Everything feels personal. Every song or verse sounds like it’s written for someone specific, no doubt by design. I suspect that in my old age, I am starting to get over my general distaste for Aubrey Graham (“I make mistakes; I’ll be the second to admit it”). I mean, how could I not appreciate a line like “I just like the rush when you see your enemy… and you realize he just not in a position to reciprocate your energy.” I’ll still clown the cornier aspects of the particular archetype he occupies (the terminally thinskinned cool dude, maudlin and jealous), and even though he is a bit of a Hooters-waitresslovin’ captain-you-know-what, I treasure the palpable, nonstagey honesty in his music. Fuckin’ Canadians.

TYLER BOEH

With a background in improv and a love for writing, Tyler’s act is fast paced with a shotgun delivery. His comedy can be described as high-energy, intelligent, physical, and silly. Tyler balances west coast charm and east coast attitude and has performed across the country from Portland, OR to Portland, ME, so whether he is on the small stage of an intimate comedy club or performing at a theater, Tyler is comfortable, confident, and hilarious. He uses his quick wit and celebrated talent of “beatboxing” to bring audiences to hysterical heights. us He uses his

KINGDOM

CRUMBS IN THE

SPACES

BETWEEN Kingdom Crumbs construct ascendant architecture out of beats. Their lyrical assemblages climb into and see out from edifice cakes of eyes. Levitated, ambient Brian Eno crossbeams connect sky to street, Funkadelic, and b-boy individuation. Tay Sean, Mikey Nice, Jarv Dee, and Jerm D are Seattle-based versifiers and musicians. The strength and face of their music lies in the notes and spaces they’re not playing. These Crumbs live in the offbeat, in the spot hidden between girders. On their selftitled, Cloud Nice–released full-length, they rap from the unconscious, maintaining intent. Live, they wile out while provoking contemplation. Kingdom Crumbs also give the listener different levels they can get in on. There’s the undeniable fun and sweat of dance grooves—or deeper, the hesitating, vacillated, human-made beats where reflection and a message take place. For this interview, we met at the International District’s Panama Hotel Tea House. A fine coconut oolong was poured.

What do you each represent in the Kingdom of the Crumbs? Mikey: Jerm is the OG street prophet, the educator, the cat that’s providing vital information to influence our choices. Tay’s the captain of the ship—the one with the map. Jarv is the muscle [laughs].

Jerm: If Jarv were an element, he’d be fire. Tay is water. Mikey is earth. And I’m wind or whatever you want to call it.

Tay: On the village tip, Jarv is definitely the soldier, he’s the army. Mikey’s like the court, he allows the interface between people. Jerm is the scientist, or the teacher, on the academic side of things. And I’m like the priest-shaman that brings shit from the other side to here.

What’s your message? Jerm: Selfawareness. Don’t trip on other people.

Decibel Festival w/Kingdom Crumbs, Shabazz Palaces, the Helio Sequence, THEESatisfaction

Thurs Sept 26, Showbox at the Market, 9:30 pm, $30 adv/$35 DOS, all ages

Because it’s Decibel, let’s touch on your beats. “Pick Both Sides of My Brain,” that’s a fat beat. Tay: I vividly remember making that beat. I’d been listening to some Tyler, the Creator and hearing this drastic juxtaposition of atonal sounds paired with melody. Tyler’s “Yonkers” cut had just come out. It starts off with a dissonant pulse, and then he comes in with pretty chords later in the song and layers them together at points.

With “The Mezzanine,” it floats, even though it’s heavy. You all live in that offbeat. Tay: That song is unique compared to the other ones because it’s one chord the entire time. Lyrically, Jarv started it—he came to us with the hook. I think I was comfortable doing one chord because I was listening to Sa-Ra’s “Glorious.” That’s one chord. That offbeat space has become crucial to us. You’re right: We live there.

Kingdom Crumbs use economy like J.D. Salinger did. He wrote a story in 1948 called “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” It’s only five pages long, but it seems like an entire book. Mikey: It allows you to fill in the spaces as the reader or listener. I like that.

I remember walking into a house in Sitka, Alaska, for a HomeSkillet Fest preparty, and you guys were jamming. I couldn’t see who it was at first, but I thought, “Damn, whoever’s playing is right fucking great.” Y’all are musicians who rap. Tay: My hippie-ass home gave me a drum set. We always have instruments lying around.

Jerm: I grew up in church, too, and was always messing with the drums there.

Jarv: I played saxophone and drums for band at school. What I love about the group is that we’re always showing each other new stuff—it keeps us on our toes.

Mikey: The approach has always been to never stop trying to learn. Starting the Cloud with Tay, we built a studio, then we got to where we could mix, then we wanted to improve on the music itself.

Jarv: Feel comfortable being you.

Mikey: I feel like we have less a message and more a mission. Wake up, that’s the mission. Especially in hiphop.

Tay: I try to take something that’s in my heart, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, moral or wrong, and bring it out. There are so many filters we could smash our stuff through—it’s important to take what you feel and put it out there.

How do you bring your tracks live? Tay: We have the beat that we produce for the song, then we’ll pull things out and improvise them live. We’re going to be doing more and more things live. I think that makes it more exciting—people get a different version of the song live and it’s fun to watch. It’s something that’s been missing from hiphop.

Tay: We came from freestyling with each other at barbecues. We all danced, too. That’s a big part of us, the b-boy side.

Jerm: We have more of a direct connection to the culture and the history of the culture. The generic stuff thinks it’s connected to the culture, but it’s really just connected to the industry, what’s on TV, what’s commercialized. That’s why it’s all the same.

Mikey: From my experience in b-boy culture, you have to have your own style. Nobody gives a fuck if you look like everybody else.

Jarv: I try to make music for that kid that feels embarrassed to play music around his homeboys. I was that kid, listening to a whole bunch of stuff, but I couldn’t bring it around.

Tay: Jarv turned me on to the Clash.

Jerm: Jarv used to do polka music. Jarv’s ill.

Tay: I remember growing up in the mean streets of Mill Creek. In sixth grade, my Asian homies clowned the fuck out of me because they found a cassette with one of my first rap songs called “My Beats Be Real.” I took the cassette, pulled all the tape out of it, and was like, “We’re never listening to this again.”

Mikey: I hope there’s cats out there who see themselves in us, and see that there’s different ways to do this shit. You don’t have to clone. Like what you like…

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

October 1 TICKETS From: $30 KEITH JARRETT, GARY PEACOCK & JACK DEJOHNETTE 30TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

An Earshot Jazz Festival co-presentation

S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium Jazz piano trio hits Seattle as part of a fourcity U.S. tour!

November 5 TICKETS From: $40 EMMYLOU HARRIS AND RODNEY CROWELL WITH RICHARD THOMPSON

S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium

Emmylou Harris continues to inspire with her latest album, Old Yellow Moon , a collaboration with Rodney Crowell.

Media sponsor: KEXP

November 7 TICKETS FROM: $23 MAKANA

Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall Virtuosic and versatile, Makana defies description.

November 16 & 17 TICKETS From: $31 OVER THE RHINE WITH NOAH GUNDERSEN

Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall Don’t miss out

THU/SEPTEMBER 26 • 7:30PM sonny landreth w/ cindy cashdollar

FRI/SEPTEMBER 27 • 8PM an evening with robert cray

SAT/SEPTEMBER 28 • 6:30PM DECIBEL FEST PRESENTS optical 3 - night vessel w/ zola jesus, jg thirlwell & margaret chardiet aka pharmakon

SUN/SEPTEMBER 29 • 6:30PM DECIBEL FEST PRESENTS optical 4 - black noise w/ oren ambarchi, the sight below, raime

TEN YEARS THROUGHOUT THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER! next • 10/2 john scofield’s uberjam • 10/3 - 5 la danse! le burlesque! l’edition francaise! • 10/6 vinicius cantuaria • 10/7 bob schneider w/ gabriel kelley • 10/8 kat edmonson • 10/9 dave simonett (trampled by turtles) • 10/10 wendy ho • 10/11 hypnotikon: cave, lumerians, midday veil, fungal abyss • 10/12 hypnotikon: silver apples, cloudland canyon, night beats, jetman jet team

UP&COMING

Lose your bicycle-powered synthesizer every night this week!

For the full music calendar, see page 53 or visit thestranger.com/music

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

Dirty Beaches, Sisu, Chasms

Wednesday 9/25

Decibel Festival: Peter Hook & the Light, ADULT., Nightmare Fortress (Neumos) Legendary bassist Peter Hook will run through New Order’s first two landmark post-punk albums from the early ’80s, Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies. Will you swoon or cringe? Is this worthy homage or crass cash-in? You probably won’t care once the choppy-guitar rush of “Age of Consent” and the dolorous euphoria of “Dreams Never End” swirl around your noggin. Detroit’s ADULT.—Nicola Kuperus and Adam Miller—have been creeping out freaks with neurotic, anxious electro rock for more than 15 years. Their new Ghostly International album, The Way Things Fall, refines ADULT.’s tense, melodic approach to making urban alienation danceable. DAVE SEGAL See also Stranger Suggests, page 23, and preview, page 43.

Billy Cobham’s “Spectrum 40” (Triple Door) If you’re new here, Billy Cobham is among the most powerful and nuanced drummers ever to sit behind a kit. His stints with Miles Davis circa A Tribute to Jack Johnson and fusion gods Mahavishnu Orchestra during their zenith assure Cobham entry into the pantheon. But his own solo career has some monumental peaks, too, including the 1973 LP Spectrum. This tour celebrates the 40th anniversary of that jazz-fusion monsterpiece. Check out “Quadrant 4,” which is the fieriest, most adrenalized jazz-rock track that’s never scored a chase scene. Unfortunately, no other original members who played on Spectrum will accompany Cobham, but the material’s so fantastic it almost doesn’t matter. DAVE SEGAL

(Barboza) Listening to Dirty Beaches (the drifting lo-fi project of Taiwan-born, Montreal-raised Alex Zhang Hungtai) is like trying to look through the grimy windows of a dilapidated summer house where you know something eerie and interesting is happening in every room, but you can’t quite see the whole scene. Everything is familiar—Hungtai isn’t shy about influences—but also murky and obscured. Some Dirty Beaches tracks summon a band-playing-in-a-floodedgymnasium/distorted-ESG funkiness or the Elvis-y synth-punk of Suicide, while others could pass for an introspective score to an indie film with the occasional leap into the electronic realm. EMILY NOKES

Thursday 9/26

Drake (Tacoma Dome) See My Philosophy, page 45.

Decibel Festival: Kingdom Crumbs, Shabazz Palaces, the Helio Sequence, THEESatsifaction, and more See Sound Check, page 47, My Philosophy, page 45, and preview, page 43.

Decibel Festival: Moby, Loops of Fury, Blondes

(Showbox Sodo) Richard Melville Hall, or simply Moby, as the masses know him, was the numberone bald vegan of the early ’90s, making techno that people who loved techno loved. He then released Animal Rights, which alienated everyone and made Moby consider a career in architecture instead of crappy music. But he kept on and made Play, which wasn’t noticed until almost a year af-

ter it was released, and suddenly it was cool to like Moby again if you were a mega-celeb or a mallmusic programmer. Whatever he’s been up to since then, his Decibel appearance will be one of only six he intends to do this year. EMILY NOKES

Garage Voice, the Jesus Rehab, Baltic Cousins (Columbia City Theater) This time of year, I always miss Bellingham’s horror-loving punk band Black Eyes & Neckties. Leaves are turning orange, stores are filling up with pumpkins and Halloween candy, and Black Eyes and Neckties, with their riotous organ-laced songs about coming back from the dead and being murdered, were the best thing to listen to before settling in for a night of old horror movies. Baltic Cousins aren’t the same, I know, but the band, featuring a couple former BE&N folks, still sound perfect on an autumn day. They’re like an Appalachian version of the Thermals. Their punk-folk songs will appeal to fans of Two Gallants and RVIVR, assuming you’re a RVIVR fan who doesn’t hate the banjo. And how could you hate the banjo? Banjos can be great. Baltic Cousins prove it. MEGAN SELING

Cold Fronts, Dude York, Swamp Meat (Heartland) The undeniably catchy power trio Dude York are playing with Philly-based foursome Cold Fronts, who come on strong like a bouncier Strokes soaked in a bucketful of hooks. See them in this intimate space while you can; they recently signed to Sire/Warner Records. Swamp Meat bring a lazy

FRIDAY SEPT 27 | 7:30 DOORS 8:00 SHOW THE EVENS $8 ADV MONDAY SEPT 30 | 6:00 PM RAIN FEST & THE VERA PROJECT PRESENT: ALPHA & OMEGA TAKE OFFENSE & MORE! $10

FRIDAY OCTOBER 4 | 7:00 PM PREPARE THE BRIDE EP RELEASE EARTH CONTROL $6 SATURDAY OCTOBER 5 | 7:30 PM FREE TIME PERMANENT COLLECTION $8

MONDAY OCTOBER 7 | 7:00 PM DAN CROLL $12 ADV

THURSDAY OCTOBER 10 | 7:00 PM RADICAL SOMETHING DOWN WITH WEBSTER $16 GENERAL ADMISSION

SUNDAY OCTOBER 13 | 7:30 PM D PRYDE $11

’60s feel to their lighter, floral-patterned, psychedelic-tinged garage. Frayed and a little off, their casual approach wins. You want some harmonica in there? Put some harmonica in there. You want that high note in there, but you’re not sure you can hit it? Whatever, it’s great. That’s seriously what makes it great. If I wanted to listen to perfectly executed vintage pop, I wouldn’t. EMILY NOKES

Broken Bow Ensemble Presents Mer (Chapel Performance Space) John Teske is a tremendously interesting human you should start watching this minute. He listens for natural rhythms and follows them. Otherwise, he’s pretty unlimited. He writes for all kinds of instruments, including a bicycle-powered synthesizer, and himself is a double bass player. (In the summer months, he performs by carting his bass around behind his bicycle in a custom-made trailer. He also happens to run sound and visuals for the Frye Art Museum on the side.) This past year, we saw his work at the ONN/OF Festival, where he and Nat Evans set up the transporting (truly, it was) Space Weather Listening Booth, inspired by the northern lights. Now, the ensemble Teske founded, Broken Bow Ensemble, with 26 strings and woodwinds, will present his new, 40-minute composition guided by local tide data, called Mer JEN GRAVES

Friday 9/27

Decibel Festival: Henrik Schwarz, Max Cooper, Little Boots, Lusine, many more See preview, page 43.

Mavis Staples (Moore) See Stranger Suggests, page 23.

The Evens (Vera) See Underage, page 54.

Buck 65, Open Mike Eagle (Tractor) Two decades into a career that’s seen him morph from DJ/turntablist to literate indie-rap powerhouse to searching post-hiphop performance

artist, Buck 65—the stickiest nom de musique of Nova Scotia’s Rich Terfry, who’s also recorded as Dirk Thornton and Stinkin’ Rich—remains a great force for musical good. 1999’s “The Centaur” will forever be hiphop’s deepest big-dick brag, 2003’s Talkin’ Honky Blues is a start-to-finish killer, and everything the man’s released since the turn of the century is worth your time. With no new Buck 65 product to be pushed, here’s hoping tonight’s show is the career retrospective Terfry deserves, in front of an adoring packed house. DAVID SCHMADER

Chelsea Wolfe, True Widow (Barboza) At some weird imaginary aural crossroads, past Comus and Swans, but somewhere before Strawberry Switchblade and Julee Cruise, you’ll find the otherworldly darkness of Chelsea Wolfe. For her last several records, Wolfe experimented with ethereal doom-folk (she’s also covered Burzum’s “Black Spell of Destruction”). Her newest album, Pain Is Beauty, is less sparse then the haunting acoustic work of Unknown Rooms, but still hints at a panicked numbness, akin to a sensory

Wednesday 9/25 at Neumos

MEKLIT HADERO

WED, SEP 25

“...combines N.Y. jazz with West Coast folk and African flourishes, all bound together by Hadero’s beguiling voice” -Filter Magazine

DAVID GRISMAN QUINTET

THU, SEP 26 - SUN, SEP 29

A unique blend of folk, swing, bluegrass, Latin, jazz and gypsy.

AKI MIYAFUJI

KOBE’S 2013 VOCAL QUEEN

MON, SEP 30

14th Sister City Jazz Day

THE YELLOWJACKETS

TUE, OCT 1 - WED, OCT 2

Celebrating 30 years and their debut project with new band member, bassist Felix Pastorius. KARRIN ALLYSON

THU, OCT 3 - SUN, OCT 6

“Ms. Allyson is one of the most grounded singers working today.” – New York Times

DAVE HOLLAND - PRISM

TUE, OCT 8 - WED, OCT 9

Featuring Kevin Eubanks, Craig Taborn, and Eric Harland

PAT MARTINO TRIO

WITH JAMES CARTER

THU, OCT 10 - SUN, OCT 13

An iconic figure in modern jazz

2033 6th Ave. | 206.441.9729

all ages | free parking full schedule at jazzalley.com

depravation tank or a near-death experience… perhaps even more so, as the electronic undercurrents exploit that tension. Heavy and gauzy Texas outfit True Widow reference rhythmic post-rock repetition and swirling shoegaze haziness without submitting to either. They balance a chaotic underbelly with cactchy, simple melodies and compelling harmonies. Dark, deep, and unique, they make music to get lost in.

BREE MCKENNA

Young Evils, Branden Daniel & the Chics, Black Whales (Sunset) Whales don’t hibernate, but it seems Seattle’s Black Whales do—Lindsay Lohan gets arrested more often than the psych-leaning rock band plays out these days, so you should definitely seize the opportunity and get to the Sunset on time to catch ’em. A little extra incentive: They’ll be playing new songs from their upcoming record! Just when I thought they had maybe fizzled, the band confirms that a new album is on the way. Speaking of bands that went (temporarily) MIA, the Young Evils are getting back on the stage, too, after taking a short

show break. They’re also putting finishing touches on a new album, which they recorded in the legendary Sound City studios. Cool! I wonder if Dave Grohl makes an appearance. MEGAN SELING

Saturday 9/28

Stranger Genius Awards (Moore) See Stranger Suggests, page 23.

Marisa Anderson, Walrus Machine, Overcasting (Gallery 1412) See Underage, page 54.

Decibel Festival: Lorde, Until the Ribbon Breaks, Flosstradamus, John Tejada, DJAO, many more See Underage, page 54, and preview, page 43.

Joan of Arc, Arrington de Dionyso’s Songs of Psychic Fire (Barboza) The first couple of Joan of Arc LPs were difficult, but there were some really golden moments of warped beauty tucked away in Tim Kinsella’s deconstructed art-rock. Around the time of their ironically titled studio album Live in Chicago 1999, though, you sensed that Kinsella and company were done making music and were now just fucking with you. Roughly a dozen albums later, Joan of Arc seem to have roped in the more puzzling bouts of experimentation. Sure, their moments of nimble instrumentation are still littered with found-sound detritus, and their passages of quirky beauty are still hacked to pieces before you can fall under their spell, but recent records feel less like “how much art can you take” tests and more like the exploratory math-rock collages of their early years.

BRIAN COOK

The Evaporators, Thee Goblins, Acapulco Lips, Bottlenose Koffins (Comet) If you’ve ever seen any of the hundreds of interviews—skillfully and hilariously conducted—by the Evaporators’ founding member and lead singer, Nardwuar the Human Serviette, then you know the potential for wild surprises exists in

9.25 Wednesday (Reggae) EVERTON BLENDER and the Yard Squad Band with Triniti, Wet City Rockers

$12 ADV / $15 DOS, 8pm, 21+ 9.26 Thursday (Funk / Rock) THE QUICK & EASY BOYS

Jelly Bread, Snug Harbor

$6 adv / $10 dos, 7pm doors, 21+

9.27 Friday (Reggae) Nectar and Da808 present: NATURAL VIBRATIONS

The Steppas, Tribal Order $15adv / $15 dos, 8pm, 21+

9.28 Saturday (Funk)

School of Rock Presents: TEAR THE ROOF OFF! (The Funk Show)

5:00pm doors, 5:30pm show

All ages, $10 adv / $12 at the door

9.28 Friday (Pop / Dance)

REQUEST LIVE NIGHT

THURSDAY

SEPTEMBER

SUNDAY

Decibel Festival Proudly Presents: RESIDENT ADVISOR SHOWCASE FEAT ACTRESS

Lapalux, Natasha Kmeto, Ghost Feet All ages

Decibel Festival Proudly Presents GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL SHOWCASE FEAT SHIGETO

Lusine, Beacon, Dauwd All Ages SATURDAY

Decibel Festival Proudly Presents HUSH HUSH SHOWCASE FEAT CYRIL HAHN

Ryan Hemsworth, Henry Krinkle, Kid Smpl, DJAO, domokos All Ages

Decibel Festival Proudly Presents TIMETABLE SHOWCASE FEAT NOSAJ THING

Teebs, Lorn, D Tiberio All Ages

Monqui Presents LONDON GRAMMAR Jaymes Young 21+

ReignCity Presents XPERIENCE OF OLDOMINION

“THE REVELATIONS” [EP] ALBUM RELEASE with Vitamin D, Nissim, John Crown, Dice, Perry Porter, Hosted by Neema All Ages

The New Futures All Ages

everything he touches. A band since the late ’80s, the Evaporators’ first garage-rock LP was called Oh, God, My Mom’s on Channel 10! (Channel 10 being what I can only imagine as an old public access channel). The last time I saw the Evaporators, Nardwuar asked everyone to lie down on the filthy floor of the Funhouse for the last song. If you ever really even SAT on the Funhouse floor, you know what a stellar request this is. Eventually people did it, though. Nardwuar is a very powerful man.

KELLY O See also preview, page 41.

Sunday 9/29

Decibel Festival High & Tight Boat Party: Kyle Hall, Matias Aguayo (Islander Boat Cruise) If it’s a High & Tight event, you know you’re going to get low and loose. This afternoon soiree features Chilean minimal-techno charmer Matias Aguayo and Detroit maverick Kyle Hall. Better than almost everybody in his genre, Aguayo combines mischievous percussion, textural touches, and endearingly goofy Spanish vocals and chants, demolishing the argument that minimal techno’s dry. Hall’s a prodigy sprouted from a city filthy rich in techno history, but he’s not beholden to it. His house productions sport adventurous textures and bold rhythms while maintaining soulfulness. Hall’s not reinventing the wheel so much as he’s putting dazzling new rims on it. DAVE SEGAL

See also preview, page 43.

Jarboe, Helen Money, Eye of Nix (Chop Suey) To understand the enigma of awesomeness that is Jarboe, you have to immerse yourself in the duality of her work. After years of formal classical vocal training, she joined now-classic noise rockers Swans in 1985, adding another layer of hauntingly beautiful bliss to the chaos that Michael Gira had created. From there, she’s been all over the place, branching off to do her own solo work and collaborating with everyone from Neurosis to members of black-metal overlords Mayhem. In seconds, her voice goes from delicate to destructive, and her immense discography displays many emotions in between. KEVIN DIERS

Monday 9/30

Serenity for Saniah Benefit Show (Chop Suey) See My Philosophy, page 45.

Tuesday 10/1

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette (Benaroya Hall) Back in 1983, the great Keith Jarrett (piano) joined forces with the great Gary Peacock (bass) and the great Jack DeJohnette (drums) to release two significant records, Standards, Vol. 1 and Standards, Vol. 2. The jazz on these recordings is solid, beautiful, and simply stated. There is no wizardry on these recordings, but instead a display of mastery. This is jazz with the confidence of a major institution that has a huge institutional memory. Indeed, tonight’s performance is a celebration of the memory of those recordings, which happened 30 years ago. For those who do not know of Jarrett, he is famous for participating in the electrified end of Miles Davis’s history-making career, for his own solo masterpiece, The Köln Concert, and, finally, for banning audiences around the world from taking pictures of his performances (check out the other Perugia controversy).

CHARLES MUDEDE

Youth Code, Night Sins, Crypts (Chop Suey) Youth Code want to convince you that industrial music is hip again. Channeling a ravaging Wax Trax!–style angst to which you can shake your dreads, the young LA duo set their synths—and voices—to harsh mode, but they can also finesse some subtly chilling horror-film maneuvers when they so desire. Oldsters with stacks of Ministry and Nitzer Ebb discs in their libraries may scoff at Youth Code, but their devotion to the genre is undeniable. Enough time has passed for a new generation to slap its own fingerprints on industrial dance music, as the Young Gods did for a while in the late ’80s/early ’90s. Maybe Youth Code will do so as they continue to progress. DAVE SEGAL

ASTONISHING LOVEJUNK

DRUNK OF THE WEEK …BELOW UNDERAGE…54 THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA …55

POSTER OF THE WEEK …56

WED 9/25

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON Hurry Up and Die, Murmurs, free

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Dirty Beaches, Sisu, Chasms, 8 pm, $10

CHOP SUEY Decibel Fest: Ejeca, Riff-Raff, Pavone

COMET Diminished Men Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand, Uncle Pooch, $5

CROCODILE Decibel

Fest: Kode9, Ikonika, guests, $20

a EASY STREET RECORDS

(WEST SEATTLE) Cage the Elephant, 7 pm, free a EL CORAZON Guttermouth, Agent Orange, Pinata Protest, the Graceland Five, Regional Raction, 7 pm, $13/$15 FOUNDATION Flinch, Dotexe

HIGH DIVE The Tenants, Ian Jones, Katrina Charles, 8 pm, $6

HIGHLINE Acrotomones, Pixelpussy, guests, $6

HIGHWAY 99 Little Ray & the Uppercuts, 8 pm, $5 a JAZZ ALLEY Meklit Hadero, $18.50

NECTAR Everton Blender, 8 pm, $12/$15

NEPTUNE THEATER Phosphorescent, 8 pm, $17.50/$20

NEUMOS Peter Hook & the Light, Adult., Nightmare Fortress, $25

NEW ORLEANS Legacy Band, Clarence Acox

PINK DOOR Casey MacGill & the Blue 4 Trio, 8 pm THE ROYAL ROOM Bounce, 7:30 pm

SEAMONSTER Rippin Chicken, 10 pm, free SHIP CANAL GRILL The Canteloupes Jazz Jam, 7:30 pm

a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Wax Tailor, Blockhead, 8:30 pm, $30/$35

SUNSET TAVERN Cabana, West Coast Improvement

Company, Seminars, Vapor Trails, $6

TRIPLE DOOR Billy Cobham, 9:30 pm, $25/$30

TULA’S Greta Matassa Quartet, 7 pm, $10

a VERA PROJECT Set Sail, Onward Etc., Shebear, 7:30 pm, $8/$10

DJ

BALTIC ROOM Crunk: DJ Henski, Marty Mar, Blue Eyed Soul, Bgeezy, guests

CAPITOL CLUB Roll Bounce: OCNotes, Spirit Fingaz, EverGrimeState, free CHA CHA LOUNGE DJ Hank Rock, Cutz Like a Knife, free CONTOUR Rotation: Rotation Tryouts: Guests, guests, 10 pm, $5

THE EAGLE VJDJ Andy J

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN Passage: Jayms Nylon, Joey Webb, guests

HAVANA SoulShift: Peter Evans, Devlin Jenkins, Richard Everhard, $1

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

HELP ASHLEY REMOVE THIS TATTOO

Last week on Slog, I announced the winner of The Stranger’s first-ever Worst Tattoo Contest. Readers voted, and a dude named Joe with two pentagrams on his forehead won a free tattoo removal donated by Seattle Skin & Laser. Since this announcement, I’ve received several e-mails from people wanting to donate to a contestant named Ashley. Her tattoo (pictured here) was given to her by a man who abused her and other members of her family. It’s a tattoo that needs to be removed! Seattle Skin & Laser will match half of the cost. To donate, and read more about Ashley’s story, go to thestranger. com/drunkoftheweek. KELLY O

= Recommended

Contagious

LAVA LOUNGE Mod Fuck

Explosion: DJ Deutscher

Meister

MOE BAR The Hump: DJ

Darwin, DJ Swervewon, guests, 10:30 pm, free

NEIGHBOURS Undergrad: Guest DJs, 18+, $5/$8

PONY Bloodlust: DJs Gin & Tonic

Q Decibel Fest: Ben Klock, guests, $22

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

THURS 9/26

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

ARABICA LOUNGE OAG

Thang

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Smashie Smashie, the Fun Police, $5

CAN CAN Vince Mira

a CHAPEL

PERFORMANCE SPACE

Broken Bow Ensemble

Presents Mer Featuring John Teske

CHOP SUEY Evian Christ, Vessel, the Haxan Cloak

COLUMBIA CITY

THEATER Garage Voice , the Jesus Rehab , Baltic Cousins , 8 pm, $8/$10

CONOR BYRNE John Totten, Justin Jude, Jake Whipple

CROCODILE Decibel Fest: Actress, Lapalux, Natasha Kmeto, $20

DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia

DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free a EL CORAZON Teenage

Bottlerocket, the Queers, the Copyrights, Smokejumper, 7:30 pm, $13/$15

HARD ROCK CAFE Post

Adolescence Honor Hall, Verdant Mile, 8 pm, $5 a HEARTLAND Cold Fronts, Dude York, Swamp Meat, 8 pm

HIGH DIVE Sterling Loons, 7 pm, free

HIGHLINE Prat Attack , Grindylow, the Weird-Ons

HIGHWAY 99 Monster Road, 8 pm, $7

JAZZ ALLEY David Grisman Quintet, $26.50

LITTLE RED HEN Highway 9, $3

LUCID The Hang: Emerald City Trio, 9:30 pm, Caffeine, 9:30 pm, free

NECTAR The Quick and Easy Boys, Jelly Bread, Snug Harbor, 7 pm, $6/$10

NEPTUNE THEATER Jake Bugg, 8 pm

NEUMOS Decibel Fest: Jets, Jimmy Edgar, guests, 2 am, $20

a NORDSTROM RECITAL

HALL, BENAROYA HALL

Decibel Fest: Hauschka, 6 pm, $35

PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac,

8 pm

Q Decibel Fest: Ame and the Martinez Brothers, guests, 9 pm, $25; Cajmere Vs. Green Velvet, 2 am

RENDEZVOUS Psydcar, David Johnson, District, 10 pm

THE ROYAL ROOM Twang Royale: 1 Uppers

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

a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Shabazz Palaces, Helio Sequence, THEESatisfaction, 9:30 pm, $30/$35

a SHOWBOX SODO Moby, Loops of Fury, Blondes, 9:30 pm, $35/$40

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Reign DeeJay, 8 pm, $6

SUNSET TAVERN Furniture Girls , Clutch Douglass, Andy D, $6

a TACOMA DOME Drake, 7 pm, $49.75$99.75

Birds of a feather watch Seahawks together.

a TRIPLE DOOR Sonny

Landreth, Cindy Cashdollar, 7:30 pm, $30/$35

TULA’S Beth Winter 60th

Birthday: Guests, 7:30 pm, $10

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Casey MacGill, 5:30 pm, free

THE WHITE RABBIT Marmalade, $6

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Rob, free BALTIC ROOM Revolution: DonnaTella Howe, Olivia LaGarce, guests

CAPITOL CLUB Citrus: DJ

Skiddle

Cascabel, LB.!, Czar, Binary Holocaust

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Chelsea Wolfe, True Widow, 7 pm, $15

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Squirrel of Shame, the Throbs, the Underminers, $6

BOGART’S The Fancy Lads, free

CAFE RACER Ecstatic Cosmic Union, Rainbow Wolves, Perpetual Ritual, Sacred Signs, DJ El Hefe, free COLUMBIA CITY THEATER Bone Cave Ballet , Tokyoidaho, & Yet, $8/$10

THE KRAKEN BAR & LOUNGE We Were Heroes, Eken Is Dead, A War in the Sky, Steven Cole Smith, $5

LITTLE RED HEN Michael Anthony Pratt, $5

LO-FI Shark Dentures, p.Wrecks, Man Danno, guests, free

LUCID Kaffeine, 9:30 pm

MOORE THEATRE Mavis Staples, 8 pm, $37.50

NECTAR Natural Vibrations, the Steppas, Tribal Order, 8 pm, $15

NEPTUNE THEATER Noah & the Whale, $18/$20

THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark FOUNDATION Boy

George, guests

HAVANA Sophisticated

Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

LAVA LOUNGE Rock DJs: Guests

COMET Eighteen Individual Eyes, Magpies, Wishbeard , Golden Space, $7

CONOR BYRNE L’Orchestre D’Incroyable, Voodoo Organist a COUTH BUZZARD BOOKS

NEUMOS Decibel Fest: Little Boots, Light Asylum, Young Galaxy, $25; Hessle Audio After-Hours: Pearson Sound, Ben UFO, Pangaea, 2 am, $20

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

NEIGHBOURS Jet Set Thursdays: Guest DJs

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND The Lowdown: DJ Lightray, $3 a NEUMOS Psychotropic featuring Neon Indian DJ Set, Teen Daze, Big Black Delta, Vox Mod, $25

SEE SOUND LOUNGE

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

THERAPY LOUNGE DUH.: DJ Omar, guests

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

FRI

9/27

2 BIT SALOON Numb,

Randy Bowles, Rebecca Cohen, 7:30 pm, free CROCODILE Decibel Fest: Ghostly International Showcase with Shigeto, Lusine, guests, $17

DARRELL’S TAVERN Thaddilac, Cracker Factory , the Screens, $7

EGAN’S JAM HOUSE Robert Parks Quartet, 7 pm; Thomas Marriott Quartet, 9 pm, $10 a EL CORAZON Powerman 5000, Peratus , Sanction VIII , Letzter Geist, Syztem7, Suction 7:30 pm, $18/$20 a EMPTY SEA STUDIOS Tall Heights, 8 pm, $12/$15 FOUNDATION Felix Cartal FUEL Goldbar, $5 HEARTLAND Infinite J, Koda Sequoia, Pitschouse , 8 pm

HIGH DIVE The Trouble Starts , Red Jacket Mine Glass Notes, 9:30 pm, $8 HIGHLINE Dog Shredder , Sirhan Sirhan, Ghetto Blaster, Tacos!, $7 HIGHWAY 99 Doctorfunk , 8 pm, $15

FRIDAY 9/27

THE EVENS

a NORDSTROM RECITAL HALL, BENAROYA HALL Decibel Fest: Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, 6 pm, $40 PARAGON Levi Said, free PINK DOOR The Eric Miller Band

Q Decibel Fest: Deep Roots Pt. 2: Henrik Schwarz, Waifs & Strays, guests, $25; Decibel Fest: Electric Deluxe After-Hours: Speedy J, guests, 2 am, $25

RAVIOLI STATION

TRAINWRECK Dizzy, guests a THE ROYAL ROOM Picoso, Piano Royale, 5:30 pm

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free

a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Machinedrum, XXYYXX, $30/$35 a SHOWBOX SODO Nicolas Jaar, Tarik Barri, Mount Kimbie, $35 a SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Zoe Wick, Like Lightning, 8 pm, $7

a STUDIO SEVEN Anethema, Alcest, Mamiffer, 7 pm, $17/$20

SUNSET TAVERN Young Evils, Branden Daniel & the Chics, Black Whales , $8

BY JACKSON HATHORN

If you’re a fan of the groups in which Amy Farina and Ian MacKaye have played, you will find things to like in their collaborative project, the Evens. Although their albums don’t initially sound like their previous and much beloved bands—such as the Warmers, Fugazi, or Minor Threat—Farina and MacKaye’s rapport brings out the best of their abilities. Farina’s drumming creeps and lulls with airy restraint, while MacKaye’s baritone guitar fills the space with burly riffs. Their lyrical interplay feeds off of each other as well—where Farina is elegiac and yearning, MacKaye is stern and brooding. Without relying on the brute force of traditional punk or hardcore, the Evens are incredibly tense and disarming, giving fury to quotidian indignities in a whole new way. Vera Project, 8 pm, $8 adv/$10 DOS.

SATURDAY 9/28

MARISA ANDERSON, WALRUS

MACHINE, OVERCASTING

Marisa Anderson defies easy categorization. Her rough-hewn and improvisational guitar compositions rarely sound the same and almost never last longer than two minutes. Listening to one of her albums is a bit like speeding very fast across America and having a crackling speaker that picks up guitar snippets along the way. You pass by Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and the Mojave Desert. You catch glimmers of different sounds (there’s bluegrass, there’s folk, there’s country), but before you can totally home in on one, it’s already drifted away and a new song has

begun. Anderson is agile enough where this doesn’t sound like a bunch of dusty field recordings. Her songs are testaments to the expansive nature of American guitar expression and very much alive. Gallery 1412, 8:30 pm.

LORDE, UNTIL THE RIBBON BREAKS Have you heard of Lorde? She is a young New Zealand singer whose song “Royals” recently went to number one on the US Billboard Alternative Songs chart. Drawing from influences as diverse as Animal Collective to Lana Del Rey, Kanye West to the Replacements, Lorde is a brilliant outcast, reinterpreting big, boastful tales of American excess into suburban-minded, seemingly languid yet highly complex electro-pop songs. If you’re lucky enough to have a ticket to tonight’s show, you’re not just catching a skillful new musician. You might be seeing the most talented 16-year-old on the planet. (This show is part of Decibel Festival.) Showbox at the Market, 6:45 pm, $20.

THE WOODS Deep/Funky/

Disco/House: Guest DJs

SAT

9/28

LIVE 2 BIT SALOON Spiderface, Vile Display Of Humanity Dumbass Jones

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Joan of Arc, Arrington de Dionyso’s Songs of Psychic Fire, 7 pm, $12

BLACK LODGE Haunted Horses , Constant Lovers, Wasted USA

BLUE MOON TAVERN Country Lips, Hounds of the Wild Hunt, Surprise Guests, $6

CAFE RACER Finn Doxie, David Guilbault, free

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER

A Tribute to Repo the Genetic Opera: Desillusion, Murder Weapons, Endless Sunder, $8/$10

COMET The Evaporators, Thee Goblins, Acapulco Lips, Bottlenose Koffins, $8

CONOR BYRNE The Rainieros

CROCODILE Decibel Fest: Hush Hush Showcase: Cyril Hahn, Ryan Hemsworth, guests, $20

DARRELL’S TAVERN Animals in Cars , Red Heart Alarm, the Scramblesuits, Half Japanese Girls, $7

EGAN’S JAM HOUSE The Debutones, 7 pm, $10, Downtown Mountain Boys, 9 pm, $10

EMPTY SEA STUDIOS

Matt the Electrician, 8 pm, $15/$18

a GALLERY 1412 Marisa Anderson, Walrus Machine, Overcasting, 8:30 pm, $6

a GORGE AMPHITHEATRE

Maroon 5, Kelly Clarkson, Rozzi Crane, 7 pm, $45$120

HARD ROCK CAFE Anthem:

A Tribute to Rush: Hairstorm, $10/$13

HIGHLINE Piñata Protest, Skablins, Sour Scream & Salsa, guests, $8 HIGHWAY 99 Randy Oxford Band, 8 pm, $15

a JOSEPHINE Levels , Argonaut, Gladiators Eat Fire , Plains, 8:30 pm, $5

THE KRAKEN BAR & LOUNGE My Life in Black

and White, Savage Henrys, Kids on Fire, $5

MOORE THEATRE 11th

Annual Stranger Genius

Awards: Seattle Rock Orchestra, 8 pm, $12

a NECTAR Tear the Roof Off!: School of Rock, 5:30 pm, $10/$12

NEPTUNE THEATER Citizen Cope, $29.50/$31.50

NEUMOS Gold Panda, Odesza, Slow Magic, Luke Abbott, $20

PARAGON Solbird, free PARAMOUNT THEATRE Krewella, 7 pm, $72.40

Q Decibel Fest: Home Bass with Dusky, Midland, J. Alvarez, $22; I-94 AfterHours: Derrick Carter, Kyle Hall, guests, 2 am, $20

QUEEN CITY GRILL Faith Beattie, Bayly, Totusek, Guity, free

RENDEZVOUS Werebearcat, Argentina Weeps, Richie Dagger’s Crime, 10 pm

a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 6 pm

SEAMONSTER Porkchop Express,10 pm, free

SHIP CANAL GRILL Eugenie Jones, 8:30 pm

a SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Lorde, Until the Ribbon Breaks, 7 pm, sold out; the Orb, Juan Atkins, 10 pm, $30/$35 a STUDIO SEVEN Darklight, Esitu, the Purpose Being, Echoreason, Pilot to Bombardier, 7 pm, $10/$15

SUNSET TAVERN Kinski , Unnatural Helpers, Big Eyes, Trash Fire, $8

TIM’S TAVERN Mrs. Howl, Baby & the Nobody’s

TRACTOR TAVERN Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, guests, $20/$22

a TRIPLE DOOR Optical

3: Night Vessel, Zola Jesus, Thrillwell, Pharmakon, 6:30 pm, $35

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Ruby Bishop, 6 pm, Yves, 9:30 pm

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Warren

BALTIC ROOM Good Saturdays: Guest DJs

BARBOZA Inferno: Guests, 10:30 pm, free before 11:30 pm/$5 after

BROADWAY PERFORMANCE HALL

Decibel Fest: db in the Park with Poolside, Juno, 11 am, free

CAPITOL CLUB Get Physical: DJ Edis, DJ

Paycheck, 10 pm, free

CHOP SUEY Talcum: Gene Balk, Mike “Teal Pants” Nipper, Marc Muller, Mike Chrietzberg, 9 pm, $5

CONTOUR Europa Night:

Misha Grin, Gil

CUFF Bliss: DJ Harmonix

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN

Shameless

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

ISLANDER BOAT CRUISE

Decibel Fest: Migmag Boat

Party: Ryan Hemsworth, John Tejada, 1:30 pm, $30/$35

LAVA LOUNGE DJ Matt

MOE BAR Panther Down: DJ

N8, Anthony Diamond, free

NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ Randy Schlager

NEIGHBOURS

UNDERGROUND Club

Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal

Darkness

PONY Stiffed: DJ Pavone

RE-BAR Cherry: Amateur Youth , Mathematix, 10 pm, $5/$7 after 11 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Guest

DJs

a SHOWBOX SODO

Flosstradamus, guests, 9:30 pm, $35/$40

TIN HAT Beam Me Up: A Nerdy DJ Night: Guests

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

THE WOODS Hiphop/R&B/ Funk/Soul/Disco: Guest DJs

SUN 9/29

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

CAFE RACER The Racer Sessions

CHOP SUEY Jarboe, Helen Money, Eye of Nix, 8 pm, $12/$15

COMET Flaamingos, $7

a CROCODILE Decibel Fest: Timetable Records Showcase with Nosaj Thing, Teebs, Lorn, guests, $17

a EL CORAZON Cancer Bats, Bat Sabbath, the Loss, Head Honcho, guests, 8 pm, $10/$12

HIGH DIVE Wes Hartley Band, Take Shelter, Combinator, 8 pm, $6

HIGHLINE I:Scintilla, the Azoic, More Machine Than Man, guests, 5 pm

KELL’S Liam Gallagher

BY ADRIAN RYAN

FRIDAY

9/27

DIRTY, DIRTY, SPANK, SPANK

Do you know who Colby Keller is? Well, not being much of a boy for porn (shut up), neither the hell did I until Kevin Kauer brought him to man an inspired “spanking booth” (like a traditional kissing both, but much more spanking and a little less herpes) during Dickslap in August last year. Then I was all, OMFingG, hubba-hubba, harder, harder! So what you need to do please is google that scorching emeffer RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND. Good? Now click Images. See what I mean? I’ll give you a few moments alone to abuse yourself…

If you’re quite done angering Jesus, we’ll continue: Almost our whole weekend is about Colby (and his muscles and his gingery gingerness) in one way or another (and his sexy beard, and perfect ass, and astonishing lovejunk), and it begins tonight with ANOTHER trip to the spanking booth, which Mr. Keller (and his perfect abs and lovely cuticles) shall again be manning as a superstar guest paddler. You will attend. You will be paddled! You do not want to miss a chance for this man to touch your butt. No one should die with that on his conscience. The Eagle, 10 pm, 21+.

LITTLE RED HEN Marlin

James Band, $3, guests

NEUMOS Decibel Fest:

From Disco to Disco with Aeroplane, Tiger & Woods, guests, $22; Kompakt 20 After-Hours: John Tejada, Matias Aguayo, Thomas Fehlmann, 2 am, $20

PARAMOUNT THEATRE

Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Mayday, guests, 7 pm, $31.25

Q Decibel Fest: Rebel House: Art Department, Maxxi Soundsystem, Mano Le Tough, $25; Decibel Fest: Mixmag After-Hours: Derrick Carter, Kyle Hall, guests, 2 am, $20

THE ROYAL ROOM KBCS

Dead Nite, free

SHIP CANAL GRILL Jay Thomas, Sun, noon

a SHOWBOX SODO Zedd, Oliver, Alex Metric, sold out

STUDIO SEVEN Nate Jerz, KD the Prodigy, Two Dope, guests, 7 pm

a TRIPLE DOOR Optical 4: Black Noise, Oren Ambarchi, the Sight Below, Raime, 6:30 pm, $35

TULA’S Special Forces, 3 pm, $7; Jim Cutler Jazz Orchestra, 8 pm, $8

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

DJ

BALTIC ROOM Mass: Guest DJs

CAPITOL CLUB Island Style:

DJ Bookem, DJ Fentar

CONTOUR Broken Grooves:

DJ Venus, Rob Cravens, guests, free

THE EAGLE T-Bar/T-Dance:

Up Above, Fistfight, free ISLANDER BOAT CRUISE

Decibel Fest: High and Tight

Boat Party with Kyle Hall, Matias Aguayo, 1:30 pm, $30/$35

LAVA LOUNGE No Come Down: Jimi Crash

MOE BAR Chocolate Sundays: Sosa, MarsONE, Phosho, free

NEIGHBOURS Noche Latina: Guest DJs

PONY TeaDance: DJ El Toro, Freddy King of Pants, 4 pm Q NIGHTCLUB Revival: Riz Rollins, Chris Tower, 3 pm, free

RE-BAR Flammable: DJ Wesley Holmes, 9 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Salsa: DJ Nick

TUCK GETS SCHOOLED

It’s beginning to seem like TUCK happens every 30 seconds, AND THIS IS GREAT, because it’s awesome. However! Since I gush all over it EVERY TIME, I’m not going to peep the peepiest peep about this one, except maybe to tell you that the theme is Back to School, which is practical, as you can bring a math book to hide the big throbbing boner you got when Colby Keller (and those dreamy eyes and, um, adorable toes) gave it to you in the spanking booth earlier. And, oh! It’s Ben DeLaCreme’s birthday, too! Chop Suey, 9 pm, $10/$8 in drag, 21+.

SATURDAY

9/28

COSTAR WITH COLBY

Do you know who Colby Keller is? (God, I just love Google Images.) Well, YOU’RE GONNA BE IN A MOVIE WITH HIM (and his elbows and his taint). No, not THAT kind of movie, don’t get your hopes (or anything else) up. It’s a short by Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel director/sexy Russian Wes Hurley. An ’80s gay-bar scene! Wear leather, fetish gear, anything Tom of Finland–like, and in exchange have something delightful to show your grandkids—or other people’s grandkids. Whatever. Pony, 11 am–4 pm, free, 21+.

THE STEPPING STONE PUB Vinyl Night

MON 9/30

SATURDAY OCT 19TH

LIVE 2 BIT SALOON Eroder, Viking Funeral, $5 AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Jerry Frank COASTAL KITCHEN Pork Chop Trio, 9:30 pm, free COMET The Drop Shadows, Hectic Hobo, Seeing Blind $5 a EL CORAZON the Venetia Fair, 7:30 pm, $8 a FULL TILT ICE CREAM The Leafy Greens, 8 pm, free HIGHLINE Psyclon Nine, Dawn of Ashes, Murder Weapons, DJ Omega Brain, 9 pm JAZZ ALLEY Aki Miyafuji, $5/$10 donation KELL’S Liam Gallagher a NEUMOS Hanson, Paul McDonald, 8 pm, $27.50 NEW ORLEANS The New Orleans Quintet, 6:30 pm TRIPLE DOOR Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free TULA’S Mach One Jazz Orchestra, 7:30 pm, $5 a VERA PROJECT Alpha & Omega, Take Offense, Malfunction, Malice, Growing Stronger, Shadowboxing, 6 pm, $10 THE WHITE RABBIT Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder, $6

DJ BALTIC ROOM Jam Jam: Zion’s Gate Sound, $5 BARBOZA Icon Mondays: Sean Majors, guests, free CAPITOL CLUB The Jet Set: DJ Swervewon, 100 Proof COMPANY BAR Rock and Roll

T his week, in my never-ending quest to bring you images with MEANING, something other than geometric patterns and stoned-out finger painting by the usual gaggle of fago-fruito-disco-homos, I came across this spooky poster by the incredibly talented Seattle designer Derek Vander Griend. Check out more of his work at dvandergriend.com. AARON HUFFMAN

FILM

At Close Range

New Northwest Cinema at the Local Sightings Film Festival

BY DAVID SCHMADER

Founded in 1998, Local Sightings is the Northwest Film Forum’s annual showcase of new cinema from the Pacific Northwest, bringing together films and filmmakers from Alaska to Oregon, with a good bunch of the selections made right here in Seattle. (Playing spot-the-locale is but a fraction of the fun.) The immediately impending 2013 Local Sightings contains five programs of short films and almost two dozen features—of which Charles Mudede and I managed to review exactly five. For full info, see nwfilmforum.org.

Walking Against the Wind

Claiming this year’s coveted opening-night spot is the debut feature by Seattle’s Brendan Flynn, who uses black-andwhite cinematography and a moody score by Ian Becker to tell the tale of Frank, a middleaged Seattle man who’s lost in misery following the death of his wife. Still living: his daughter Aspen, who’s processing the loss in her own teenage way, doing her best to stay out of the way of her aggressively pathetic father. (When he’s not blacked out drunk, he mimes in whiteface on the street.) Actor Tom

captured by director of photography Connor Hair, who’ll let the camera rest on Aspen’s face-obscuring bangs for the majority

Pacific Northwest campground, where they find a never-ending supply of vague menace and symbolic symbolism that occasionally threatens to jell into something an audience member might latch onto but never quite makes it. Miraculously, in this swamp of muddy intent, a number of actors manage to distinguish themselves, mostly notably Phillip Roebuck as the mysteriously beleaguered father. DS

Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse

James Chasse was a well-regarded fixture in Portland’s late-’80s punk scene until mental illness took over his life and a tragic run-in with Portland police ended it. Portland filmmakers Jason Renaud and Brian Lindstrom’s documentary Alien Boy seeks to capture this tragedy in full, and starts out strong: The time we spend getting to know the pre-mental-illness Chasse is the best stretch of the film. But after Chasse dies at the hands of Portland police, the film morphs into a legal procedural with an eye on social justice—a perfectly noble goal, but one that’s ultimately missed by the filmmakers, who stretch their impressive supply of supporting materials (primarily focused on the trial of the cops who fatally manhandled Chasse) to the point of crass emotional manipulation. A vital story, if klutzily told (but fans of NW punk history and issues of police brutality will still want to see it). DS

Nobody’s Perfect Human Nature Dissected in Enough Said

BY ALISON HALLETT

In Enough Said, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, a single mom with a good relationship with her daughter, a busy practice as a masseuse, and a nice best-friend couple that sometimes lets her tag along on their dates. She’s pretty and funny and cheerful—a nice change from the way single middle-aged ladies are often portrayed on film. When she meets Albert (James Gandolfini) at a party, they immediately hit it off, and a promising grown-up romance begins to flourish.

of a scene, and emerge with something that captures something deep and true. As with many of the films in the fest, Walking Against the Wind has some trouble reaching a satisfying conclusion, but it does a lot of good, sad stuff on the way. DAVID SCHMADER

Lauren Is Missing

Michael Harring’s effectively creepy mumblecore psychodrama concerns Mia (Brand Upon the Brain!’s Maya Lawson), a punky young woman who returns to Seattle to find her life in strange disarray: The job she’d hoped to reclaim is gone, her roommate is missing (along with the rent money), and every once in a while, an odd man drifts by in the periphery. Things click into focus with the appearance of Millie (Erin Jorgensen), a confident, charming young woman who claims to be a friend of the missing roommate and quickly insinuates herself into Mia’s life—hanging out on her couch, helping her throw a yard sale, even getting her a job at the taxidermy studio where Millie works. (Best known as the marimba player with the French Project, Jorgensen does a strikingly good job playing Millie, and the scenes of the women’s friendship growing before our eyes are the film’s best.) Slowly but surely, things get crazy, in a variety of Vertigo-meets-SingleWhite-Female-meets-Fight-Club-y ways, and director Harring hits us with some audaciously scrappy cinema tricks, all but re-creating Vertigo’s Dali-inspired freak-out with stop-motion construction paper. But the ending’s a cheap, confusing cop-out that you’ll hate extra hard because the preceding movie was so interesting. DS

Mother Nature

Coming on like an existential spin on The Blair Witch Project, Johan Liedgren’s Mother Nature casts a father and son onto a

You Make Me Feel So Young

Zach Weintraub’s third film, You Make Me Feel So Young, completes a trilogy that began with Bummer Summer, which was followed by The International Sign for Choking, the film that led to Weintraub becoming a Genius Award finalist for film this year. The best film in the series is the second, but the most polished and aesthetically pure is You Make Me Feel So Young, as each of its 30 or so scenes comes very close to the stillness and beauty of a photograph. A love affair on the rocks (or heading toward the rocks) is at the center of all three features, two of which (the first and the latest) were shot in the Northwest and in black and white—Choking, the second, is set in Buenos Aires. So Young is about a twentysomething woman, Justine (Justine Eister), who is completely out of place in a world that’s dominated by her arty boyfriend, Zach (the director and writer). Justine is pretty in a plainish way, is practical, has a sense of humor, and wants to study social work and do real things like help ESL students. She is the very opposite of her boyfriend, who has a striking appearance, interesting and beautiful friends, and a cool job (he is a film programmer for an art house cinema). One wonders how they met in the first place; they are clearly not made for each other. As the movie progresses, you begin to get the sense that Justine is looking for a way out of the relationship. What happens at the end of So Young will not surprise you.

CHARLES MUDEDE

Enough Said

Until Eva realizes that her new friend Marianne (Catherine Keener), a poet, is Albert’s ex-wife. Which means that all the complaining Marianne has been doing about her ex—about how he’s unambitious, has annoying habits, is lousy in bed—is actually about Albert. But rather than tell Albert and Marianne about the awkward coincidence, she continues to pump Marianne for info about Albert’s flaws. And with each new revelation, Eva’s enthusiasm for her new boyfriend fades a little bit further.

If the premise feels a bit contrived, the payoff is worth it, because the characters are so resolutely multifaceted: Albert is great and he has some super-annoying habits. Eva is kind and well-intentioned and capable of making hurtful, self-interested decisions.

As a director, Nicole Holofcener’s body of work makes a good case for the argument that creativity thrives on limits. All of her films are built from the same building blocks: From her 1996 debut, Walking and Talking, through Lovely and Amazing, Friends with Money, and Please Give, each of Holofcener’s movies are about white women. They’re about self-deception and unhappiness and relationships and how to be a good person. Catherine Keener is always in them.

But from this toolbox of feelings and Catherine Keeners, Holofcener consistently constructs perceptive, emotionally acute films that are clear-eyed about human frailty. And while it doesn’t let any of the characters off the hook for their bullshit—it wouldn’t be a Holofcener joint if it did—Enough Said is her warmest movie to date, thanks to the insanely likable Louis-Dreyfus and a great turn from Gandolfini, in his last performance before his death. (If he had to go out, this is a fine note to go out on: His character is kind, funny, rumpled, handsome in a suit. Flawed, but trying. You know: a person.)

Enough Said is certainly ripe for the same critiques as all of Holofcener’s work—that she only writes and directs movies about privileged white people—but those, as ever, miss the mark: Her work is deeply interested in interpersonal dynamics, and she’s attentive to how economic and racial privilege factor into the way humans relate to each other. Holofcener is the kind of director whose work is only interesting if you think other people are interesting, because she’s captures so precisely the nuances and pitfalls of human interaction.

Fuck You

Documentary Attempts to Defile J.D. Salinger’s Corpse

BY SEAN NELSON

It’s too obvious to say J.D. Salinger would’ve hated the new documentary about his life and work (emphasis on the former), because, obviously, he’d have hated any movie, or book, or personal

essay, or blog post on those subjects, even a great one. It feels safer to suggest that he’d have especially hated Salinger, which is so powerfully not-great that one feels a pang of empathy for the late author, who spent most of his 91 years discouraging people from exploring his private life. If this is what interests the hoi polloi of his readership, if this is how his former friends, colleagues, and lovers express themselves, no wonder Salinger wanted nothing to do with them.

Under the guise of questing intrepidity, filmmaker Shane Salerno proceeds to penetrate the corpse of Salinger’s storied privacy with all the delicacy of TMZ. But the problem is less to do with the information revealed (a lot of which is undeniably of interest to devotees, and journalistically hard-won) than with the salacious presumptuousness of the film’s tone. It’s not that Salerno is investigating a private man’s private contradictions, it’s that he seems to resent his subject’s temerity in having cultivated the persona of a recluse while still having human desires, human traits, human flaws. It comes not to praise Caesar but to dig him up, defile his corpse.

The film shames Salinger for being irreconcilably imperfect while striving for perfection in his work, for not being a “true recluse” (a

recurring phrase) because he sometimes gave in to the ego he was attempting to eradicate, and for having unorthodox courtly relationships with young girls and women.

The film is a double act with the new biography by Salerno and David Shields, which shares a great deal of the testimony offered in the film. And while the book offers its own spiritual and moral tangles, it succeeds by meeting the writer on his home court. In addition to its mightily impressive research, it contains speculation that successfully captures not Salinger, but the frustrating experience of being moderately-to-not-so-moderately obsessed with Salinger’s mystery, such that you spend time constructing an elaborate fiction of his inner life just to satisfy your thirst. What’s different in the movie is that you see the talking heads’ delight at finally being able to dish their well-rehearsed Salinger stories before a camera; you see the unbalanced faces of the stalkers who staked Salinger out because they thought he had answers for them, and you see the camera tacitly blaming Salinger for not being more available to them; and worst of all, you see the excruciating reenactments of events being described, including a recurring motif in which an actor (never seen in close-up) impersonates Salinger typing and

smoking while huge images of war, or former girlfriends, loom over him on a movie screen, or walking through the Bradbury Building in LA to drop off a manuscript. These reenactments, now a commonplace of documentaries, are both contemptible and contemptuous, partly because they’re distracting, partly because they’re insultingly literalistic, and partly because it feels like the filmmaker knew they were precisely the kind of phony flourishes Salinger would have hated most, and put them in not despite but because of that, as a postmortem “Fuck You” on the wall of the elementary school of his psyche. Salinger reveals a lot of facts about Salinger, some of which you might wish you could unknow, and some of which, like the image of him storming Utah Beach at D-Day with six chapters of The Catcher in the Rye in his flak jacket, are instantly indelible. With so fascinating a subject, and such thoroughgoing journalistic diligence, the film remains full of interest. It also remains full of actors, famous ones, discussing their love of the author. It’s telling that despite the gratuitousness of their presence, one of them, Martin Sheen, provides the movie’s only real gravitas. (Again, the book is a better, more expansive treatment of this material.) We learn that Salinger kept writing, that there are several finished works. We

see unseen photos, hear unheard text. Perhaps Salinger’s greatest service comes when someone correctly pronounces the name Zooey (rhymes with “chewy”), short for Zachary. But the film mainly reveals Salinger by the magnitude by which it misses him. Maybe “misses” isn’t right. The magnitude of its will to reduce him to the most cynical human dimension. It attempts to cram a great artist’s impossibly complicated inner life into a frame made by and for a world he wanted no part of. True, that doesn’t exempt him from critical thought, but Salinger isn’t critical. It isn’t curious. It’s vengeful, acquisitive, invidious, prurient, gauche. By the time it gets around to the section on Catcher’s terrible centrality to the murder of John Lennon and the less-terrible-but-still-terrible attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, the film becomes irredeemably ghastly.

But it certainly doesn’t demystify the durably holy experience of reading his fiction. Far from obliterating his enigma with damning information, the film only serves to fortify Salinger’s mystery. You’d have to be pretty generous to imagine that anyone involved was interested in doing that. No one could have embarked on so exhaustive a project without retaining trace elements of admiration for the writing—in the same way Seymour tells Buddy that every “God-damn” is “a low form of prayer”—they are overwhelmed by bathos, gossip, and the unmistakable stench of genius envy.

You can’t wait for Salinger to end, for everyone’s sake.

The Catcher in the Rye is one of those rare cultural phenomena that basically everyone has not only an opinion about, but an intimate relationship with. One of the most painful experiences in a life of loving that book is finding yourself trapped in a conversation with someone who loves it just as ardently as you do, but for reasons you not only can’t fathom, but actively reject, like people who love the Beatles because of their politics. That’s the feeling of watching Salinger. Someone asks you what writers you like, you say J.D. Salinger, and then for two hours, it’s a litany of, “Well, you know he wasn’t a real recluse, and did you know he liked young girls, and wasn’t a good husband or father, and saw some terrible things in the war, and all that stuff about the ego—he had a huge ego!” Until you can’t wait for it to end, for everyone’s sake.

Many reviewers have made the obvious joke that Holden Caulfield would’ve hated Salinger because it’s so phony—and he would have, and it is. But I kept thinking of another Salinger character, if you want to know the goddamn truth. Watching this movie is like getting stuck having lunch with Lane Coutell.

GRAVITY IN

(PG-13) Thu:

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 IN 2D (PG) Fri: (4:35), 7:10*, 9:30 Sat: (2:15), (4:35), 7:10*, 9:30 Sun: (2:15), (4:35), 7:10* Mon: (4:35), 7:10* Tue: (4:35), 7:10*^ Wed & Thu: (4:35), 7:10* PRISONERS (R) Fri: (3:55)*, 7:00*, 9:25* Sat: (1:35)*, (3:55)*, 7:00*, 9:25* Sun: (1:35)*, (3:55)*, 7:00* Mon: (3:55)*, 7:00* Tue: (3:55)*, 7:00*^ Wed & Thu: (3:55)*, 7:00* TOUCHY FEELY (R) Fri: (4:50)*, 7:20, 10:15* Sat: (1:45)*, (4:50)*, 7:20, 10:15* Sun: (1:45)*, (4:50)*, 7:20 Mon-Thu: (4:50)*, 7:20

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/film

LIMITED RUN

BLUE CAPRICE

Inspired by the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks, the reserved, grim Blue Caprice boasts no fewer than four fantastic performances (particularly from Isaiah Washington, who gets a lot more to work with than anybody else). But while director Alexandre Moors sets a disconcerting, melancholy atmosphere, Ronnie Porto’s script, crammed with foreshadowing, never lets you forget how the story will end, keeping its characters at a chilling but safe distance. For a film that spends nearly all its time leading to a horrific and forgone conclusion, Blue Caprice says frustratingly

MY TIME IS VALUABLE

transformed into

At

start of Blue Caprice, we know John and Lee will become monsters, and at the end, they do, and that’s that. (ERIK HENRIKSEN) SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri 7, 9:30 pm, Sat 2:45, 5, 7, 9:30 pm, Sun 2:45, 5, 7, 9:10 pm, Mon 5, 7, 9:10 pm, Tues 5, 7 pm.

DRAGONSLAYER

Bearing the magical amulet of the sorcerer Ulrich of Craggenmoor, young Galen Bradwarden endeavors to slay the dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative, thereby saving the lives of innumerable virgins who would otherwise be sacrificed to the dragon on a biannual basis by the pragmatic King

exasperated-daughter duo running a big advertising agency. And it doesn’t look half bad! While I can’t imagine how they plan on sustaining the energy of the first episode, look for some funny improv from Williams, as well as a standout performance from Mad Men’s James Wolk (aka Bob Benson! SQUEEEEEE!!).

Okay look, dong-holes! It’s the new fall season of shows, and I don’t have time for any of your flighty, namby-pamby, wishywashy CRAP Hell no, I don’t have time to go to yoga. Hell no, I haven’t had time to read that “fascinating long-form article” in the Atlantic on the “inexorable demise of enchantment.” And hell no, I don’t have time to Twitter what I had for lunch today or how glorious the sunset looks from my backyard patio. Screw your patio, screw the sun, and SCREW YOU. This is the way this is gonna work: I’m gonna tell what to watch and what NOT to watch on TV this week, and you’re going to say, “Thank you, Wm.™ Steven Hump-Me, for your diligent work, and I’m sorry if I’ve wasted any of your extremely valuable time!”

• The Michael J. Fox Show (NBC, Thurs Sept 26, 9 pm). I am bound by federal law not to say anything disparaging about Michael J. Fox—who has Parkinson’s… through no fault of my own!—or his new sitcom The Michael J. Fox Show. But I can say this: Michael J. Fox remains a great comedic actor and has killed it in guest appearances on Rescue Me and Curb Your Enthusiasm… aaand Back to the Future is still pretty boss? Aaaaand… (ahem) there are worse new shows on television? (Phew. Barely escaped that one. Take it from me, federal penitentiary is the worst.)

• The Crazy Ones (CBS, Thurs Sept 26, 9 pm). Less-annoying-than-he-usedto-be Robin Williams teams up with more-annoying-than-she-used-to-be Sarah Michelle Geller as a crazy-pop/

• Masters of Sex (Showtime, Sun Sept 29, 10 pm). Based on the recent biography of sex-research pioneers Masters and Johnson, this dramedy starring Michael Sheen (as sexually uptight gynecologist William Masters) and Lizzy Caplan (as sexually UNtight assistant Virginia Johnson) has puh-lenty of drama and sex. Yahoo! But it also offers Masters and the rest of us plenty to think about in terms of women’s rights—both in and out of the sack. Thought-provoking, charming, and hornyinducing, Masters of Sex has it all… in bed!

• Breaking Bad (AMC, Sun Sept 29, 9 pm). Yes, I know this isn’t a new show, BUT OF COURSE YOU’RE GOING TO WATCH THIS!! It’s only the series finale of one of the top five TV shows of all time! Tonight we learn the fate of meth-cooking chemistry teacher/megalomaniac Walter White, and if you say, “Oh, I’m unfamiliar with that series, and besides I’m simply swamped trying to perfect this delightful new recipe for gluten-free zucchini and heirloom tomato lasagna I read about on Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop,” IIIIIII WEEEEEEEL KEEEEELLLLLL YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!! (Ahem. That’s your cue.)

“Thank you, Wm.™ Steven Hump-Me, for your diligent work, and I’m sorry if I’ve wasted any of your extremely valuable time!”

No sweat! That’s what I get paid for!

Find Humpy’s weekly TV listings at THESTRANGER.COM

Casiodorus. Lost $4 million at the box office. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Tues Oct 1 at 9:30 pm.

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS

A wonderfully trashy beauty pageant mockumentary that’s littered with brilliant performances from Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, Kirstie Alley, and Brittany Murphy (RIP). Central Cinema, Sat 9:30 pm, Mon 9:45 pm.

GMO OMG

Just in time for our vote on Initiative 522 (requiring labeling of genetically engineered food in Washington State) comes this documentary looking into what GMOs are, why people support or fear them, and the possible effects of their use. Director Jeremy Seifert uses his concerns about what his children are eating as a jumping-off point to investigate the proliferation of GMOs in the US and to ask questions about the effects on the environment, on agriculture, and on us. He looks into issues of food sovereignty, how chemical companies are taking over the food supply, the scary environmental repercussions, and the unknown health effects of eating foods that have been genetically altered. The reality is, we are eating these things every day; 80 percent of all processed foods in the US have GMOs, and we don’t really know what they are or what the effects could be. We are part of a giant experiment, and at least with food labeling, we can decide whether or not we want to be experimented on. (GILLIAN ANDERSON) SIFF Film Center, Fri 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 5:15, 7 pm, Mon-Tues 7:30 pm.

HIGH SCHOOL DYSTOPIA

Seattle’s great Scarecrow Video continues its weekend screening series. Friday night brings Class of 1984 which envisions a near future (from the vantage point of its release in 1982) of public high schools overrun by violent gangs. On Saturday, the follow-up film, Class of 1999 finds the school system in even worse shape, following the introduction of weaponized robotic faculty. (Plus, beer for sale to those 21+!) Scarecrow Video, Fri-Sat 8 pm.

LOCAL SIGHTINGS

See preview, page 59. The Northwest Film Forum’s annual festival of locally produced short and feature films. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues. For complete schedule and showtimes, see nwfilmforum.org.

MOTHER OF GEORGE

When Ayodele emigrates from Nigeria to marry a Brooklyn restaurateur, she doesn’t entirely leave her culture behind, so when months pass without her getting pregnant, the pressures of traditional family life begin to conflict with the attitudes of her newly adopted country. Seven Gables, Fri 4:40, 7:05, 9:30 pm, Sat-Sun 2:15, 4:40, 7:05, 9:30 pm, Mon-Tues 4:40, 7:05, 9:30 pm.

OUR NIXON

See Stranger Suggests, page 23. Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.

PINK RIBBONS, INC.

Here’s an incomplete list of pink Susan G. Komen Foundation-themed products you can buy to “raise awareness” about breast cancer: Avon and Estée Lauder lipsticks, Yoplait yogurt, Ford Mustang cars, KFC chicken buckets, and miscellaneous footballs, guns, even gasoline. Yet despite billions of dollars being raised, more women are being diagnosed than 20 years ago. This documentary examines the disturbing commercialization of breast cancer and the public’s willingness to pinkwash and prettify a deadly disease instead of asking tough questions about how Komen spends its research money. Buying pink Yoplait yogurt isn’t going to cure your sister or mom—pressuring Komen to explore prevention measures and the environmental causes of the disease just might. (CIENNA MADRID) Keystone Church, Fri Sept 27 at 7 pm.

THE SEVEN SAMURAI

Based on the novel The Seven Samurai You Meet in Heaven SIFF Cinema Uptown, Thurs Sept 26 at 7 pm.

WAXIE MOON IN FALLEN JEWEL Wes Hurley’s goofy, campy, and local-star-packed comedy

continues its once-a-month screening at Central Cinema. This month’s is a benefit for the Washington Bus. Central Cinema, Fri Sept 27 at 9:30 pm.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES Sofia Coppola’s debut film, adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’s debut novel. Central Cinema, Fri-Sat 7 pm.

YOJIMBO

A drifting samurai happens upon a town in peril, and what does he do to help? If you chose “exploit the hell out of the town,” then congratulations! You are Akira Kurosawa. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Mon Sept 30 at 7 pm.

NOW PLAYING

DON JON

I’ll concede that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has earned the right to direct a modest, low-stakes indie flick, and that’s precisely what Don Jon is: the story of a simple, pornaddicted Jersey guido (JG-L), who thinks he’s found love in the club with a calculating, narcissistic guidette (Scarlett Johansson) who isn’t crazy about his extracurriculars. (Think Steve McQueen’s Shame with jerk-off jokes.) As writer, director, and star of Don Jon , Gordon-Levitt’s auteur ambitions here are evident—and while the film isn’t a total disaster (the acting and direction are both serviceable), it’s clear that his hollow, cavernous eyes are significantly bigger than his stomach. With a condescending script that shows a complete lack of sympathy for (or even interest in) its characters, Gordon-Levitt seems almost contemptuous of the petty and monotonous lives he’s created. An underused Julianne Moore, reprising her time-honored role as Oedipal Complex Personified, is the only emotionally relatable character the film musters—and even she’s basically a two-dimensional plot device. (ZAC PENNINGTON)

IN A WORLD...

Actress Lake Bell’s directorial debut digs into the subculture of voice-over artists. Carol (Bell) is a vocal coach who wants to break into the industry. The supporting cast includes Bell’s Childrens Hospital costars Ken Marino and Rob Corddry, as well as Tig Notaro and Demetri Martin, and Bell is a likable protagonist. The film works because In a World... evidences a genuine interest in the day-to-day work of a voice-over artist: The thing is the focus, rather than the character who is interested in the thing. It’s the difference between superficial quirk and acknowledging that the world we live in is a weird and interesting place.

(ALISON HALLETT)

INEQUALITY FOR ALL

There two ways of dealing with the deep decline of America’s middle class: One is to restore the policies and institutions that supported it in the past (labor unions, regulated banks, progressive taxes). The other is to invent completely new or futuristic modes of economic life (reducing working hours, transforming leisure from something you do to recover from work to something you do for itself, transforming private banking into a public utility). The famous economist Robert Reich, the subject of this rather dry documentary and the former member of Clinton’s inner circle, clearly holds the former position—he wants to go back to the good old days, the days when America was all about building a large and stable middle class. As a consequence, the documentary (which has lots of facts and graphs) deals with the real problem of growing inequality in America in a way that’s unsatisfying. The real solutions to this problem are not found in the current and past structures/institutions of American democracy, but outside of it. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

TOUCHY FEELY

Stranger Genius Lynn Shelton’s newest film features her highest concentration of big stars yet—Rosemarie DeWitt, Ellen Page, Scoot McNairy, Allison Janney, and Ron Livingston—but it’s not like she’s gone Hollywood. Shelton keeps the scope small as a masseuse (DeWitt) develops an aversion to skin at the same time that her straitlaced dentist brother (Josh Pais) becomes a faith healer to the new agey crowd. The performances are all strong, but ultimately Pais steals the show with some electrifying, tightly wound physical comedy that makes a minimalist character sketch feel like a bravura performance.

(PAUL CONSTANT)

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of Sept 25

ARIES (March 21–April 19): I’ve got a good feeling about your relationship with intimacy in the coming weeks. Judging from the astrological omens, I think you will have a good instinct about how to drum up interesting fun with your most important allies. You’ll just naturally know what to do to make your collaborative efforts synergistic. So by all means, cash in on this potential. Don’t just sit back and hope for the best. Rather, call on your imagination to provide you with original ideas about how to make it all happen.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): Would you be willing to go to extraordinary lengths to transform aspects of your life that you have felt are hard to transform? Now would be a good time to do that. Luck will flow your way if you work on healing your number one wound. Unexpected help and inspiration will appear if you administer tough love to any part of you that’s addicted, immature, or unconscious. Barriers will crumple if you brainstorm about new ways to satisfy your frustrated yearnings.

warning, Leo. On the one hand, I believe you will soon glimpse quite a few new understandings of how the world works and what you could do to make it serve you better. On the other hand, you’ve got to be extra alert for these new understandings and committed to capturing them the moment they pop up. Articulate them immediately. If you’re alone, talk to yourself about them. Maybe even write them down. Don’t just assume you will be able to remember them perfectly later when it’s more convenient.

VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): After a storm, British wildlife lover Gary Zammit found a baby heron cowering in a broken nest. Its parents were dead. Zammit took the orphan under his wing. He named it Dude, and cared for it as it grew. Eventually, he realized that Dude was never going to learn to fly unless he intervened. Filling his pockets full of the food that Dude loved, Zammit launched a series of flying lessons—waving his arms and squawking as he ran along a flat meadow that served as a runway. Dude imitated his human dad, and soon mastered the art of flight. Can you see ways in which this story might have metaphorical resemblances to your own life, Virgo? I think it does. It’s time for your mind to teach your body an instinctual skill or self-care habit that it has never quite gotten right.

by being as unselfish and empathetic and compassionate as you can stand to be. I don’t mean that you should allow yourself to be abused or taken advantage of. Your task is to express an abundance of creative generosity as you bestow your unique blessings in ways that make you feel powerful. In the words of theologian Frederick Buechner, you should go “to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): Imagine a scenario like this: The CEOs of five crazily rich US corporations, including a major defense contractor, stage a press conference to announce that in the future, they will turn down the massive welfare benefits and tax breaks the federal government has been doling out to them all these years. Now picture this: The pope issues a statement declaring that since Jesus Christ never had a single bad word to say about homosexuals, the Catholic Church is withdrawing its resistance to gay rights. I am envisioning a comparable reversal in your life, Capricorn—a flip-flop that seems equally improbable. But unlike the two I named, yours will actually unfold in the course of the next eight months. If it hasn’t already started yet, it will soon.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): I bet your normal paranoia levels will decline in the coming weeks. Fears you take for granted won’t make nearly as much sense as they usually seem to. As a result, you’ll be tempted to wriggle free from your defense mechanisms. Useful ideas that your mind has been closed to may suddenly tantalize your curiosity. I won’t be surprised if you start tuning into catalysts that had previously been invisible to you. But here are my questions: Can you deal with losing the motivational force that fear gives you? Will you be able to get inspired by grace and pleasure rather than anxiety and agitation? I advise you to work hard on raising your trust levels.

CANCER (June 21–July 22): “Sometimes people have nothing to say because they’re too empty,” writes author Yasmin Mogahed, “and sometimes people have nothing to say because they’re too full.” By my reckoning, Cancerian, you will soon be in the latter category. A big silence is settling over you as new amusements and amazements rise up within you. It will be understandable if you feel reluctant to blab about them. They need more time to ripen. You should trust your impulse to remain a secret and a mystery for a while.

LEO (July 23–Aug 22): “Insight is not a light bulb that goes off inside our heads,” says author Malcolm Gladwell. “It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.” Take that as a constructive

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): For four days twice a year, the East China Sea recedes to create a narrow strip of land between two Korean islands, Jindo and Modo. People celebrate the Sea-Parting Festival by strolling back and forth along the temporary path. The phenomenon has been called the “Korean version of Moses’s miracle,” although it’s more reasonably explained by the action of the tides. I foresee some sweet marvel akin to this one occurring in your life very soon, Libra. Be ready to take advantage of a special dispensation.

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): The desire for revenge is a favorite theme of the entertainment industry. It’s presented as being glamorous and stirring and even noble. How many action films build their plots around the hero seeking payback against his enemies? Personally, I see revenge as one of the top three worst emotions. In real life, it rarely has redeeming value. People who actively express it often wreak pain and ruin on both others and themselves. Even those who merely stew in it may wound themselves by doing so. I bring this up, Scorpio, because now is an excellent time for you to shed desires for revenge. Dissolve them, get rid of them, talk yourself out of indulging in them. The reward for doing so will be a great liberation.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): Just for a few days, would you be willing to put your attention on the needs of others more than on your own? The weird thing is, your selfish interests will be best served

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest who lived from 1552 to 1610. For his last 28 years, he worked as a missionary in China. Corresponding with his friends and family back home required a lot of patience. News traveled very slowly. Whenever he sent out a letter, he was aware that there’d be no response for seven years. What would you express about your life right now if you knew your dear ones wouldn’t learn of it until 2017? Imagine describing to them in an old-fashioned letter what your plans will be between now and then… what you hope to accomplish and how you will transform yourself. Right now is an excellent time to take inventory of your long-term future.

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): The cosmos is granting you poetic license to practice the art of apodyopsis with great relish. You know what apodyopsis is, right? It refers to the act of envisioning people naked—mentally undressing them so as to picture them in their raw state. So, yes, by all means, Pisces, enjoy this creative use of your imagination without apology. It should generate many fine ramifications. For instance, it will prime you to penetrate beneath the surface of things. It will encourage you to see through everyone’s social masks and tune in to what’s really going on in their depths. You need to do that right now.

Homework: What pose would it be a relief for you to drop? How are you faking, and what could

CUSTOMER SERVICE

PAID RESEARCH

APARTMENTS

RESTAURANT/HOTELS/CLUBS

Qualified apps must have an open & flex sched including, days, eves, wknds and holidays. We are looking for applicants who have prev exp related exp and enjoy working in a busy customer service-oriented enviro. We are also willing to train! We offer opps for advancement

-

COMPUTER

CARS/TRUCKS

EDUCATION

COUNSELING

MUSICIANS LESSONS

PRO GUITAR LESSONS

Specializing in technique and theory. Rock, metal, blues, funk, jazz, acoustic.

Taught by G.I.T. grad and teaching 12 years. All ages welcome! 206-2616363

SING WITH CONFIDENCE. Beginners welcome. Breathing/Range Dev. Sliding Scale. Call Rosy 7829305 singwithconfidence.com

THE VOCALIST STUDIO We Train Vocal Athletes www. thevocaliststudio.com Scream technique, 5 Octave range. Eliminate Tension. Downtown Seattle studio.

425.444.5053

MUSIC INSTRUCTION & SERVICES

MUSICIANS AVAILABLE

AVANT-ROCK BAND SEEKING

keyboardist to complete personnel. Bass/Guitar/Violin/Cello/Voice. Swans, Glenn Branca, Godspeed You!Black Emperor, Zero 7, Jarboe, Live Skull, Saint Vitus, Black Sabbath, Painkiller. No drugs. We have a rehearsal space. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@gmail.com www.myspace.com/ branavinix/www.branavinix.com

GREAT SAX SOLOS for your studio/ live project. All styles. Call Danny Welsh at (206)501-7559 or dannywelsh@mac.com For more info and music go to: www.dannywelsh.com or www.myspace.com/dannywelshjazz

I SING, WRITE, PLAY SYNTH. Call 206 860 3534

1

Greenlake, U-Dist., Wallingford, and Greenwood. Large, clean, well-maintained houses, fully equipped common areas,

LEGENDARY PIANIST AVAILABLE

Opened for Jeff Bridges! I’m Richard Peterson, 64 year old composer, arranger, and pianist. I’m available to play parties, weddings, clubs, shows, etc. $200/gig. Covers and originals. Please call 206-325-5271, Thank You! CD available. Must have a piano.

SEATTLE VOCALIST/ SONGWRITER/KEYBOARDS CALL MURPHY 206 860 3534

MUSICIANS WANTED

AVANT-ROCK BAND SEEKING guitarist. We are currently drums, bass and voice. We will be adding more instrumentation in time. Swans, My Bloody Valentine, Angels of Light, and traditional Spanish, Irish, Mediterranean, and Arabian music. No drugs. www.myspace.com/branavinix/206.547.2615

FREE AND COMPLETE articles on Songwriting, Recording, SelfReleasing and Promoting your own songs at www.MyCD.ca

NEED A PRODUCER? MUSICIANS, DJs, VOCALISTS...YOU NEED A

PRODUCER THAT WILL MAKE YOUR VIDEOS AND RECORDINGS COME ALIVE AND GET YOU THE ATTENTION YOU NEED. CALL MURPHY AT 206 860 3534.

OBOL NEEDS DRUMS. We play originals with an unusual / progressive vibe, so some occasional odd time signatures, etc. We’re ready to record album 2 and play shows. We just need your drums. Listen at www.obolband. com Write us if interested.

RECORDING/REHEARSAL

BAND REHEARSAL SPACE 1 Shared Room @$210/month Incl. 36hrs/month & Private closet and Private Rooms @ $500/mo. Call 425445-9165 or Visit wildersoundstudios. com Located in SODO Seattle

CAREFULLY. THE DEADLINE FOR YOUR WRITTEN RESPONSE IS: 5:00 p.m. on September 30, 2013 TO: Liliana Dannels, John Doe Dannels, and all other occupants 26909 35th Avenue S. Kent, Washington 98032 TO THE DEFENDANTS: This is notice of a lawsuit to evict you from the property which you are occupying. Plaintiff is asking the court to declare that you are unlawfully or forcibly detaining the premises, direct the sheriff to remove you and your belongings from the property, enter a money judgment against you for unpaid rent and/or damages for your use of the property, and for court costs and attorneys’ fees.

If you want to defend yourself in this lawsuit, you must respond to the eviction complaint in writing on or before the deadline stated above. You must respond in writing even if no case number has been assigned by the court yet.

You can respond to the complaint in writing by delivering a copy of a notice of appearance or answer upon the person signing this summons by personal delivery, mailing, or facsimile to the address or facsimile number stated below TO BE RECEIVED NO LATER THAN THE DEADLINE STATED ABOVE. Service by facsimile is complete upon successful transmission to the facsimile number, if any, listed in the summons.

The notice of appearance or answer must include the name of this case (plaintiff(s) and defendant(s)), your name, the street address where further legal papers may be sent, your telephone number (if any), and your signature.

If there is a number on the upper right side of the eviction summons and complaint, you must also file your original notice of appearance or answer with the court clerk by the deadline for your written response.

You may demand that the plaintiff file this lawsuit with the court. If you do so, the demand must be in writing and must be served upon the person signing the summons. Within fourteen days after you serve the demand, the plaintiff must file this lawsuit with the court, or the service on you of this summons and complaint will be void.

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

MAKING FRIENDS AT FREMONT OKTOBERFEST

You were the best volunteer at Fremont Oktoberfest and I’m sad I didn’t even get to say bye to you! Do you need a Seattle tour guide? Visit the cider bar on the Hill or get some root beer? When: Sunday, September 22, 2013. Where: Fremont Oktoberfest. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #920029

LCW FRED MEYER HANDSOME MAN You said you liked the way my hair is blonde and dark underneath. We were standing in line at the LakeCity Fred Meyer customer service. I said “thanks” but meant “woah handsome man alert”. I hope you read the Stranger. When: Sunday, September 22, 2013. Where: lake city. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920027

GOOGLE GLASS IN THE WILD!

You: handsome redhead walking on Pine. Me: brunette in orange dress who hung up on her mother to take a picture. I asked how you liked Glass; you responded, “I love it!” Shall we discuss your other interests over coffee? When: Saturday, September 14, 2013. Where: On Pine in front of Cocina Oaxaque ɬ±a. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920024

3RD AVE DOWNTOWN 9/20

4:00PM

We walked by and smiled at each other on 3rdAve. You:Tall man, dark hair, blue shirt, blue eyes. 25-30years. Me:5’6 brunette woman, grey skinny jeans and purple tshirt. 24years. Saw you looking back at me. You waved, I waved back. When: Friday, September 20, 2013. Where: 3rd Ave between Union and Pike. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920023

HOT MAMA

Lady, you are gorgeous! I’ve seen you on the WestSide, wrangling a small crowd of children before you. I like your wild hair and sassy smile. Let’s meet up some time; I’ll read you a bed time story... for starters When: Friday, September 20, 2013. Where: West Side, Olympia. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920022

UPTOWN CINEMA

WILDSTYLE B-BOY JAMES

The Dapper Man on Broadway

You

When: Sun, Sept 22, 2013. Where: In front of Phoenix Comics on Broadway E. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920026

If you wish to seek the advice of an attorney in this matter, you should do so promptly so that your written response, if any, may be served on time.

You may also be instructed in a separate order to appear for a court hearing on your eviction. If you receive an order to show cause you must personally appear at the hearing on the date indicated in the order to show cause IN ADDITION to delivering and filing your notice of appearance or answer by the deadline stated above.

This summons is issued pursuant to Rule 4 of the Superior Court Civil Rules of the State of Washington and Chapter 59.12 RCW. IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND TO THE COMPLAINT IN WRITING BY THE DEADLINE STATED ABOVE YOU WILL LOSE BY DEFAULT. THE PLAINTIFF MAY PROCEED WITH THE LAWSUIT, EVEN IF YOU HAVE MOVED OUT OF THE PROPERTY.

Artsy brunette from Ohio wishes she exchanged contact info with you. You sat next to me at the Charlie Ahearn films & talked about growing up b-boy. I like your energy& wanna see you dance.... or maybe a Parkour demo. When: Thursday, September 19, 2013. Where: Uptown Cinema SIFF, Queen Anne. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920020

HEATHER AT VIRGINIA MASON

The notice of appearance or answer must be delivered to: Carrie A. Ivy, Esq. Mullavey, Prout, Grenley & Foe, LLP 2401 N.W. SIXTY-FIFTH SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98117 (206) 789-2511/FAX: (206) 789-4484.

We say hi and smile all the time in passing. I’ve had opportunities to say something more but always chicken out. I’ve got a crush on you. You probably know who this is. When: Wednesday, September 18, 2013. Where: First Hill. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920019 LOVE CITY LOVE

SAVAGE LOVE

Clueless and Clitorless BY

DAN SAVAGE

I’m a 23-year-old homo who came out one year ago. Life has done good and bad things to me. Good things include success in the intelligence lottery, a full ride to college, and now a job with a six-figure income. Sadly, I find that my place in life is different from the place occupied by most other young gay men. When meeting someone, I am often bummed to discover that they are in a state of transience (between cities, between degrees), or bummed because I detect a difference in socioeconomic upbringing/status that will make it hard for us to relate to each other, or bummed because they are not as smart as I am, or most often bummed over a combination of all these things. These thoughts sap my interest in new people, telling me that “it just wouldn’t work.” Am I right to think that and keep looking, or should I do some substantial “rounding up to one” and go on that second date, even though the odds of compatibility seem slim?

Lots Of First Dates

I’m tempted to tell you not to go on “that second date” with anyone you feel is beneath you intellectually, socioeconomically, or status- or upbringing-wise—not to spare you his ghastly company, LOFD, but to spare him the ghastliness of yours.

Look, Gloria Upson, if dating gay men your own age means exposing yourself to guys who are in “states of transience”—completely normal states for dudes in their early 20s—then date guys in their 30s and 40s. Not that dating older guys is a surefire recipe for romantic success: Your snobbery, classism, and elitism are so repulsive that most older guys will be blocking your number before you can call about a second date.

Andrew Sullivan wrote a beautiful post at The Dish a few weeks ago about the egalitarianism of getting laid. He recalled dancing all night in a gay club full of African American guys back when he was a “cute twinky English schoolboy.” And Andrew didn’t just dance with the black guys he encountered after moving to Washington, DC.

“There’s nothing like dating or fucking a person of another background, race, or class to help you see the humanity in everyone,” Andrew wrote. “How do you get scared of generic young black men when you’ve danced with them all night long?… In that sense, I’ve always felt that being gay was a real moral blessing. I could have been so much worse a human being if I’d been straight.”

You’re young, LOFD, and I’m being hard on you. I don’t mean to step on your ping-pong ball. But if you don’t get a grip on your classism and snobbery, you will become so much worse a human being than you need to be. So snap the fuck out of it, okay? And remember: We gay people are a tiny, tiny minority. If you reject as potential partners, friends, and fuck buddies all gay men who aren’t of your exact same class, education level, social status (ugh), or salary level (barf), LOFD, you won’t be left with many guys to date, hang out with, or fuck. Which is not to say that you’ll wind up alone. Refusing to date any gay man who doesn’t belong to the same club that Bunny Bixler does (and isn’t pulling in 100K+ a year) will complicate your search for love, LOFD, but there are other gay snobs out there. You could find a boyfriend who’s just like you, i.e., same class, same education, same income bracket, same snobbery and shitty-ass attitude. But I wouldn’t wish that kind of guy on anyone, LOFD. Not even on you.

I recently started dating a 26-year-old female. I was a little surprised when she told me that she gets nothing out of oral sex, as that has been my typical method for getting my past partners off. Eventually, I was to discover that

this was because she has no external glans (clitoris hood/head). It’s just smooth skin where a clit would be. I was shocked when she showed me. She is probably the easiest person I’ve ever met to get to orgasm (thank god!), so this isn’t a problem, just a mystery. I know that the clitoris is much larger than just the part you can see—the “head”—and she gets off on the feeling of pressure on and around where the glans would normally be, so I’m sure she has developed nerves and, I guess, has a clit under the skin. She assumed this was common enough, as none of her gynecologists has ever brought it to her attention. Have you ever heard of this? Is it common?

Clitorless Lad In Torment

“It’s pretty rare, but yes, it happens,” said Debby Herbenick, a research scientist at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, the author of Sex Made Easy (among other books), a frequent guest expert for Savage Love, and the only woman who has ever chased me around a room with a vulva puppet.

When a woman doesn’t have an exposed clitoral glans, “there’s usually other genital parts that haven’t developed or have developed in atypical ways,” said Herbenick. “But there have been a few case reports in which the women had other typically developed genital parts—labia, etc.—while the clitoris alone is missing or very small. Some of these women report erotic sensation in the clitoral area.”

Should your girlfriend talk to a doctor about it?

“I haven’t seen this woman’s genitals specifically,” said Herbenick, “but sometimes there is atrophy or even ‘coverage’ of the clitoris (for example, the hood fuses over the glans partially or completely) due to vulvar skin disorders such as lichen sclerosus. Some children have LS, and often it goes undiagnosed for years and, without treatment, her clitoral hood could have fused over the glans. A dermatologist or gynecologist knowledgeable about vulvar dermatoses could look into this possibility via a very small biopsy. (Doctors with expertise in vulvar health can be found through issvd.org.)”

Follow Dr. Herbenick on Twitter @DebbyHerbenick.

My girlfriend and I have a vibrant relationship. Sex is great and adventurous when we have it, but I have one small issue that clouds up the sexual chemistry and turns me into a somber theologian: Since the earliest days of my childhood, I was told by my family that abortion was a horrible, horrible thing. And that thought has complicated my relationships. I simply don’t know how to get past this thought and indulge my partner and myself sexually without feeling uncertain about the possible outcome of our getting funky. I feel awful that my girlfriend has to deal with this moral panic of mine, and I’m sick of putting her through it. Help!

Bummed About Bad Experiences

Some suggestions: Use a hormonal birth control method and a condom and pull out before you come. Don’t have penis-in-vagina intercourse— you can stick to oral sex, mutual masturbation, and doing her in the butt (if being done in the butt is something your girlfriend enjoys). Deposit a few loads at a sperm bank, keep ’em on ice until you want kids, and get a vasectomy. Or, hey, you could learn more about abortion while continuing to act responsibly, i.e., using birth control and condoms. Abortion is not a horrible, horrible thing. It is a medical, medical thing.

This week on the Savage Lovecast, the appalling crisis of homeless LGBT youth, at savagelovecast.com

mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter

heyo@llaa.org for more

Lifelong is looking for young (16-24) gay, bisexual, or queer identified men and/ or trans men and trans women who are living with HIV to work on a campaign this fall to reduce the stigma of being young, queer and HIV+. Train as an educator, public speaker, and advocate.

Lifelong empowers people living with or at risk of HIV/AIDS and/or other chronic conditions to lead healthier lives.

Ahh! Time to get *Ahh-thorized*

24/7 Patient Verification

Doctor-Nurse Owned Holistic Center 425-243-2441 or 888.508.5428

Seattle - Issaquah - Ellensburg AdvancedHolisticHealth.org

Be an Egg Donor

Are you a healthy woman in your 20’s wholoves to help others, or know someone who is? We would love to talk with you! Generous compensation. Call: 206-515-0042 or email: DonorEggBank@pnwfertility.com

Donate Your Car, Truck or Motorcycle

Support Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound. We offer free pickup of used vehicles in most cases running or not. Tax deductible. (206) 248-5982

Female Social Drinkers interested in dating men wanted for a study on alcohol and dating experiences. Single women of all ethnic backgrounds aged 21-30 can earn up to $320 for a multi-part study that includes online surveys and one study visit. Call Project FRESH at (206) 543-5536 or visit www.fresh.uw.edu. Part of a research project at the UW, Dept. of Psychology. HAPPY HAULER.com

Debris Removal

206-784-0313

Major credit cards accepted INJURY LAW (206) 262-7558 Law Office of Scott