The Stranger Vol. 23, No. 13

STUDY GUIDE

Questions for The Stranger, Volume 23, Issue 13

1. When it’s expedient for The Stranger to do so, the newspaper mocks glossy magazines like Seattle Metropolitan for running purportedly advertorial content. This week’s Stranger contains a collection of highly advertorial essays promoting local restaurants, distilleries, and spas, as well as hot tub sales and topical ointments. Write an essay from the point of view of The Stranger explaining why shilling for businesses is “cool” when an alternative weekly decides to do it, but decidedly “uncool” when a glossy magazine chooses to do the same thing. Draw your own simple “pop-art” illustration for your essay (that’s what they often do).

2. In the beginning of her most recent review, JEN GRAVES admits to being delinquent in her duties as a reviewer of visual art. When a reviewer opens a review by admitting failure in important parts of her job, does that make you more or less likely to read the review that follows? If you answered “more,” why would that possibly be the case? Consider your own work ethic and level of professional accomplishment when formulating your answer.

3. PAUL CONSTANT interviews a standup comedian in the books section. Has Mr. Constant completely given up on reviewing books with any literary merit? Do you think that Mr. Constant—who has outed himself as a reader of comic books on several occasions—even cares about literature as an art form? Name at least three Seattleites who could do a better job as a book reviewer than Mr. Constant. Why do they not have this job?

4. Rather than interview the Cave Singers about music, TRENT MOORMAN decides to waste most of his allotted time joshing around about calluses and blisters. If you can, explain the joke.

5. Speaking of advertorial content, DAN SAVAGE has written a page-long “think piece” about HUMP!, The Stranger’s annual amateur porn festival. Mr. Savage, of course, has made a so-called “career” out of trafficking in other people’s perversions, and HUMP! is only one manifestation of his voyeuristic empire. Given that Mr. Savage makes money in exchange for (other people’s) sex, would that make him a prostitute or a pimp? Is “pimpstitute” a thing? Should it be?

COVER ART

Bounty by BRIAN BRITIGAN

If you happen to be near Queens Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand, look for a 40-foot shipping container housing a show called Everybody Has a Spirit Animal. You can find this piece there. Also, go to brianbritigan.com.

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

LAST DAYS

The Week in Review BY

DAVID SCHMADER

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18 Hello!

The week kicks off in Florida, where today George Zimmerman —the notorious gunman who just four months ago was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old that Zimmerman claims to have fatally shot “in self-defense”—was arrested after allegedly pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend . As CNN reports, Zimmerman was arrested this afternoon at 27-year-old Samantha Scheibe’s home in Apopka, after Scheibe called 911 to report the dispute that allegedly ended with Zimmerman aiming a shotgun at her face. “According to a police report about the incident, Scheibe said that after an argument, Zimmerman broke a table with a shotgun and then pointed it at her ‘for a minute,’” reports CNN. Tonight, Zimmerman will be held at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility, where, among other things, he’ll be served divorce papers from his estranged wife, Shellie. Tomorrow, Zimmerman will appear in Seminole County Court, where a judge will find probable cause for Zimmerman’s arrest on charges of aggravated assault, battery, and criminal mischief. And oh yeah: “A prosecutor revealed a new allegation against Zimmerman while trying to argue for a higher bail—that Zimmerman tried to choke his girlfriend a week and a half before Monday’s alleged shotgun incident,” reports CNN. “The new allegation is not reflected in the preliminary charges. But Judge Fred Schott cited the choking accusation when he

SHUT UP, MOM

You sit inside your tiny apartment collecting welfare and disability for your self-inflicted disease, while incessantly screaming at your child, telling him how worthless he is and how he never does anything for you. You scream at him all your waking hours while telling the neighbors it’s none of our business. Who do you think pays for your disability and welfare checks? He IS our business—we taxpayers support your pathetic existence, yet we have to endure your selfish, invasive howls. Too self-absorbed to realize the entire building, perhaps block, can hear your degrading impositions. When your son hopefully leaves you and you have only yourself to scream at, remember that you’ve always been screaming at your ugly self. Get a mirror and see the witch that you are—SHE is not our business! —Anonymous

put the bail at $9,000, saying it prompted him to set it higher than the $4,900 requested by the defense.” With the bail comes restrictive conditions, including three can’ts (Zimmerman can’t contact Scheibe, can’t travel outside Florida, and can’t possess weapons) and one must (he’s required to wear a monitoring device). Next week, a police search of Sheibe’s home (where Zimmerman had been staying) will turn up five weapons (including an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle) and more than 100 rounds of ammunition. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Thanksgiving W ord Jumble!

NEW COLUMN!

Below are 10 things intimately connected with Thanksgiving (but SFW!). Can you unscramble them all? Good luck!

1. RUEKYT

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19 In some other kind of news, the week continues on the internet, where one of the world’s most profitable companies is taking heat for offering employees penny-pinching pointers in lieu of a living wage. Ground zero of the hubbub: the McDonald’s McResource Line, “a dedicated website run by the world’s largest fast-food chain to provide its 1.8 million employees with financial and health-related tips,” as ThinkProgress reports. On the page “Digging Out from Holiday Debt,” employees are advised, “Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash.” Elsewhere, the site offers help for employees applying for food stamps before veering into mock-worthy callousness with advice like “Breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full ” (which sounds like survivalist wisdom to be whispered among prisoners in a gulag, not something provided by an employee website). “McDonald’s employees are some of the most underpaid workers in the country,” writes ThinkProgress. “The company’s cashiers and ‘team members’ earn, on average, $7.75 an hour, just 50 cents higher than the federal minimum wage. Responding to rising living costs, many stores have staged walk-outs, strikes and protests, demanding a living wage.” For all those striking/protesting/walking out (or merely just stressing out over meager wages), the McResource line has some advice: “Quit complaining. Stress hormones levels rise by 15% after 10 minutes of complaining.”

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 In worse news, the week continues in Hamilton, Ohio, where yesterday brought the discovery of a 23-month-old baby wandering alone in an alley barefoot, wearing wet pajamas, and holding a cup of beer with a bug in it . Today, parents Nicholas and Elizabeth Latta turned themselves in on five counts each of child endangerment.

“Officers went to the girl’s home and found four other children living there,” reports the Hamilton Journal-News “The home had no electricity, no running water, and inadequate food supply. Animal feces was throughout the residence. Police said the home is unfit for habitation and the children were removed.”

2. SLIMGRIP

3. DICEGONE

4. PANTPHORTY

5. RONC NO HET BOC

6. RONC TON NO HET BOC

7. YVARG

8. KLABC DYARFI

9. DRAMTELP PHOSSPER

10. YEBRRRANC UCSEA

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21 The week continues at a figurative crossroads, where Last Days must choose between two stories to feature. On one side: the goofy tale of how New York Times columnist Frank Bruni found a lost cell phone in a New York City cab and stealthily determined that it belonged to none other than Courtney Love (The odds! The near-mystical connection! And yet, who cares?) On the other side: a really twisty story about a guy in Arkansas who was arrested today after accidentally “buttdialing” the man he was allegedly planning to kill , thus allowing his alleged intended victim to overhear a 90-minute conversation during which the butt-dialer allegedly gave a third man instructions on how to execute the hit. Arrested today, the unlucky and allegedly murderous butt-dialer sits in Craighead County Detention Center, awaiting a probable-cause hearing scheduled for early next week.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22

Nothing happened today, unless you count the 50th anniversary of the worst presidential motorcade in history.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23

The week continues in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, where today Jay Leggett , a comedian who once produced a documentary about the joys

of deer hunting, bagged himself a deer and soon after collapsed and died . Details on the vaguely karmascented scene come from CNN, which reports: “Leggett, 50, collapsed and died next to his allterrain vehicle… A deer that Leggett had killed was strapped to the ATV.” Condolences to all.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24

Nothing happened today, unless you count the birthdays of original Beatles drummer Peter Best (born on this day in 1941), original Blondie drummer Clem Burke (1955), Warhol star and transgender icon Candy Darling (1944), and Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy (1961), or the death days of American actor Pat Morita (died on this day in 2005), Spanish gorilla Snowflake (2003), and global superstar Freddie Mercury (1991).

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

People die every day at THESTRANGER.COM/SLOG

Meanwhile, Sawant intends to introduce her own $15-minimum-wage bill in an effort to establish a starting point for these discussions. “You have to not start with compromise, but end with compromise if necessary,” explains Sawant about her legislative strategy.

As to what an acceptable compromise might look like, there are a number of possibilities. An ordinance might exempt very small businesses (for example, SeaTac’s Prop 1 exempts businesses with fewer than 10 nonmanagerial employees), or be limited to certain industries. There could be a lower wage for employees who receive tips. Or the $15-an-hour target may be phased in over a number of years.

But one provision that isn’t up for negotiation is the $15-an-hour rate. “What I said [during the campaign] is I support the $15 minimum wage,” insists Murray.

And it doesn’t sound like Murray will face much of a fight from the council, at least on the core principles. Every member of the council has now publicly or privately affirmed support for a higher-than-state-mandated minimum wage, with the exception of Tim Burgess, who only just barely hedges. “I don’t know yet,” says Burgess before essentially acknowledging that it’s something we need to address at the local level. “Ideally, the state would handle this,” laments Burgess. “But the state is not going to do that.”

Wage War

Seattle Is About to Become the Battleground in the National Struggle for a $15-an-Hour Minimum Wage

BY GOLDY

One way or another, Seattle voters will be asked to approve a $15-an-hour minimum wage next November. And the whole nation will be watching. “There is a lot of momentum,”

says Seattle City Council member-elect

Kshama Sawant in the wake of her stunning come-from-behind victory over incumbent Richard Conlin. An avowed socialist, Sawant made a $15 minimum wage the centerpiece of her campaign, and it is fair to argue that Sawant’s surprising victory was at least in part a proxy vote on her signature issue: “We are in a position to get something in 2014,” Sawant predicts, “because the [$15 minimum wage] issue is so alive in people’s minds.”

SEIU 775NW president David Rolf agrees. “We are going to see something happen in Seattle,” says Rolf, whose union spearheaded the efforts to successfully pass SeaTac’s historic Proposition 1, an initiative that guarantees a $15 minimum wage and other benefits to

thousands of airport and hospitality workers.

Although SeaTac Prop 1 still faces a series of legal challenges, its victory at the polls, combined with Sawant’s council win, makes Seattle the obvious next battleground in the fight for a living wage. (The SeaTac battle also demonstrates the high stakes: The airline, hotel, restaurant, and car rental industries spent about $200 per vote opposing Prop 1—that’s equivalent to spending $40 million to sway an electorate the size of Seattle’s.) As Rolf puts it, “I don’t think at this point we could hold back a debate in 2014 if we wanted to.”

So what will this battle look like?

It will be a two-front war—both at city hall and at the ballot box—a strategy intended to force minimum wage opponents to sue for

Anti-Pot Cities May Get Sued

State Won’t Do a Damn Thing to Stop the Lawsuits

BY BEN LIVINGSTON

State marijuana regulators received more than 800 applications to grow, process, and sell cannabis in the first week of the application window, which runs from November 18 until mid-December. But many of those pot entrepreneurs will face challenges—not from the state, but from local governments that are attempting to block them from opening their doors.

In a legislative committee hearing last week,

state lawmakers were particularly concerned with jurisdictions that oppose these legal pot companies. More than 50 cities—including Vancouver, Kent, and Issaquah—have enacted bans on cannabis businesses. But that’s not the state’s problem, Washington State Liquor Control Board director Rick Garza told the committee. The state intends to issue a license to any qualified applicant, regardless of a city’s

peace in the council in order to avoid a more devastating defeat at the polls.

Leading the charge at city hall could be mayor-elect Ed Murray, who embraced the $15-minimum-wage issue mid-campaign and has publicly promised swift action. “We’ll begin our process immediately,” Murray tells The Stranger. “We’re having our discussions in the transition team already.”

Murray intends to convene negotiations between business, labor, and community leaders to draft a compromise proposal that all can support. “I want to engage labor and business interests to do it in a way that’s effective,” explains Murray. Even the Washington Restaurant Association—which invested heavily against SeaTac Prop 1—appears willing to participate. “The hospitality industry is proud of its long-standing working relationship with mayor-elect Ed Murray, and looks forward to

Rules could exempt small businesses and tipped employees.

working with him on many issues in the future,” WRA president Anthony Anton replied in response to a request for comment. The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which organized the opposition to SeaTac Prop 1, did not respond to a request for comment.

moratorium on pot businesses, and let the cities defend themselves from lawsuits from licensees.

“We will issue licenses regardless of bans or moratoriums in those communities and wait and see what the response is,” said Garza. In other words, it’s not the state’s job to defend possibly illegal moratoriums—and anti-pot cities are on their own. He adds that the agency has participated in several trainings to help council members get over their issues.

In dozens of the cities and counties with moratoriums, council members intended to buy time to enact specific cannabis zoning regulations. But others seem intent on undermining the will of voters, who approved the

Burgess believes that we are “highly likely” to have a vote on an ordinance in the coming year. “I know that the council is going to work closely with mayor-elect Murray and do it quickly,” says Burgess “We don’t want a situation where we spend a year or more studying.” In late November, the council approved $100,000 for an analysis of the wage issue, and findings are expected by the end of June—at the latest—unless the chamber of commerce successfully argues that the study requires more time.

“The window for action is within the first six months of the new year,” advises Rolf. “The council has to act by July 1 or face the risk of a less-well-considered popular initiative that no one really controls.”

As part of her left flanking maneuver, Sawant also plans to file multiple versions of her less-business-friendly $15 minimum wage ordinance as a city initiative, while organizing a campaign to pass it. She insists she wants to work with her colleagues to pass an ordinance, but, she adds, “The only way to make sure is to keep up the pressure and organize.” And that’s a commitment to preparation that will come in handy. For even if the council passes a minimum wage ordinance, opponents will surely seek a referendum that sends it to voters. They’d be crazy not to. Because if $15 an hour passes in Seattle, similar local measures will pop up nationwide. And that’s a threat to their record profits that the fast food, retail, and other low-wage industries simply cannot allow.

That means the next Battle in Seattle will be fought at the polls in November 2014.

Additional reporting by Anna Minard.

marijuana-legalization law last November. Earlier this month, the Pierce County Council banned pot businesses so long as the federal government outlaws marijuana. “We should not be thumbing our nose at the law of the land,” said council chair Joyce McDonald. But Pierce County executive Pat McCarthy vetoed that pot ban on Monday, citing concern for the “legal risk” the council was taking and saying, “The voters of Washington State have spoken.”

Cities and counties have three months before the state expects to issue pot business licenses. Those that try to stop pot businesses could be sued—and the state, obviously, doesn’t intend to help them.

In Defense of Africatown

The City Just Botched a Chance to Address Race Problems in Schools

BY ANSEL HERZ

On November 12, Seattle police had a WMD moment. According to police “intel,” four men had taken over the Horace Mann school building in the Central District, placed a sniper on the roof, and wired the building with explosives, Detective Renee Witt told reporters. Across the street, dozens of armed officers milled about. A SWAT team was on-site, and the entire block was cordoned off.

Like those nonexistent Iraqi nukes, however, “There were no explosives or weapons found on the premises,” Witt admitted later that week in an e-mail. The most resistance they faced was 67-year-old activist Omari Garrett hollering from a window about the need for a proper warrant before he agreed to come down. The men were arrested, charged with criminal trespassing, and released hours later.

Those men were the final holdouts of a five-month schoolhouse occupation by a coalition calling itself Africatown. Through teach-ins and educational programs, the group sought to bring attention to the disadvantages that African American students face in Seattle schools, but some neighbors, education activists, and even reporters took sides against them, riled by what they deemed an unruly group of “squatters.”

long-scheduled renovations could move ahead, he said. Banda estimated that the school district was losing about $1,000 each day by postponing construction. Most of the coalition members— organizers of math, arts, and vocational classes, as well as urban gardening, dance, and video game programming workshops—packed up.

One of them was Julia Ismael, who runs the Al-Noor Academy, a math and arts program tailored to the needs of Muslim students that was based in the Mann building. Before the eviction, she posted a photo of the austere, empty structure on her Facebook wall with the caption: “Homeless.”

So where does Africatown go now?

The disparities in Seattle schools are well documented. According to the school district’s data, African American third graders pass state math tests, for example, at half the rate of white students. And over the last decade, suspensions and expulsions have been meted out to black high-school students at least three times as often as to white students, school records show. That prompted the federal Department of Education to begin an investigation last year into whether Seattle Public Schools “discriminate against African American students by disciplining them more frequently and more harshly than similarly situated white students,” according to DOE spokesman Jim Bradshaw.

All of this adds up to a sense of institutional racism that’s been festering for decades. In the historically black Central District, Africatown (think Chinatown, but for African Americans) was trying to do something about it.

“It’s really important that there’s a centralized space where young people of color can find support from people who look like them and who understand their place in society,” explains Nikkita Oliver, a UW law student who volunteered with the group. She says public school teachers who attended their meetings complained that they’re “not getting the training to be culturally relevant” to African American students.

The district has been negotiating with the group for a new space since the summer. First, it proposed space at Van Asselt Elementary on Beacon Hill at reduced or free rent rates, according to Malakhi Kaine, a parent and member of the Africatown partnership task force created by the superintendent. But an official offer never came, and after an extended delay, the district instead offered Van Asselt at full price (meaning tens of thousands of dollars in unaffordable payments) or a lease on rooms at the Columbia Annex even farther south in Rainier Valley.

“Wait, where’s the greatly reduced rent that you’re giving us to serve your students?” Kaine says. Some reluctantly accepted the Columbia Annex, while others decided to continue occupying the building in protest.

School district spokeswoman Teresa Wippel says Africatown did not meet “the required level of community outreach to neighbors” for discounted rent.

But Africatown should have a home in Seattle schools, says school board member Betty Patu, who represents the southeast portion of the district. She says Superintendent Banda “could have done a better job, and executed faster” in negotiating with the group.

Police wrongly claimed explosives were inside.

The activists also got mixed messages from the district. A September e-mail message to Africatown members from school superintendent José Banda said he’d witnessed their “innovative work and programs.” Nonetheless, they needed to vacate the building so that

The district has treated its minority students like “second-class citizens” for far too long. For years, it’s talked about “doing something” about it, Patu says. “And I’ve seen little progress. It took the Mann building to really open up a door that no one wanted to open.”

That door may be open—a door that allows officials to address racial disparities head-on—but so far, the district doesn’t seem willing to walk through it.

A Deal with the Developers

How Much Affordable Housing Can We Get in Exchange for Allowing Taller Buildings?

BY ANNA MINARD

T his past spring, Vulcan Real Estate went apeshit. They said the city was being “blatantly unfair.” Why? The Seattle City Council passed rules that allow property owners in South Lake Union—including Vulcan, a Paul Allen company—to build taller towers. But in exchange, those South Lake Union landowners had to pay more money into an affordable housing fund than developers in other parts of the city.

Vulcan spokeswoman Lori Mason Curran said at the time that leaning harder on their neighborhood than adjacent downtown was “disappointing” and “shortsighted.”

Well, now Vulcan can stop whining: In the next couple of weeks, the council is set to vote on applying the same housing rules downtown, establishing parity for both neighborhoods.

A bill introduced by Council Member Mike O’Brien would extend South Lake Union’s rules, which say residential developers can access extra height for their towers—in some places they could be up to 10 stories higher—if they include some modestly affordable units. (Modestly affordable means affordable to those making around $48,000 per year.) But there’s a catch: If developers don’t want to build that housing themselves, or if they are building commercial office towers, they can simply pay into a low-income housing fund. Currently, down-

A more liberal council may demand more from developers.

town developers must pay $15.15 per square foot of new floor space to access that bonus height, and developers have been routinely paying it instead of building cheaper units themselves. O’Brien’s bill would raise the fee to $21.68 per square foot, the same as South Lake Union.

But the council is not stopping there. With a push from progressives, including O’Brien, the council plans to take a fresh, comprehensive look at programs like this all over the city, with consultants analyzing how much affordable housing—and affordable for what income levels—the city needs so that the people who work in our rapidly growing city can actually afford to live here. And that’s where it gets really interesting. In South Lake Union, “there was a lot of debate as to what the adjustment [to those fees] would look like,” says O’Brien. “And we got to a place where we had five votes.” In other words, the progressive wing pushed for as much affordable housing as they could, but they still needed centrists to get a majority. But a shake-up this election has seen Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant oust developer-friendly Richard Conlin, changing the makeup of the council. That could give folks like Sawant and O’Brien leverage to require even more affordable housing from developers than is currently required downtown or in South Lake Union.

What the new rules will look like, we don’t yet know. But one thing is for sure: We can expect a lot of squawking from developers—like Vulcan—that the new rules are “blatantly unfair.”

exhibition

SOURCES SAY

NICK STARR

• On November 21, a social media fanatic named Nick Starr entered Capitol Hill’s Lost Lake Cafe wearing Google Glass, the eyewear that acts as both computer and recording device, only to be asked by a manager to remove the nonprescription glasses or leave the restaurant. At that point, Starr writes on Facebook, he “asked to see where it was policy for Glass to be disallowed at Lost Lake. [The manager] said she couldn’t provide any.” As Starr was leaving the restaurant, he noted that the Lost Lake menu encourages customers to “post photos on our

He had to remove the Google Glass or leave the restaurant.

website via Instagram by using #LostLake.” Starr asks rhetorically: “So how is an establishment which is REQUESTING photos be taken, not allow me to bring a device which takes photos and can post to Instagram?” At this point, you’re probably asking yourself, who’s the bigger asshole? Starr, apparently. “I would love an explanation, apology, clarification, and if the staff member was in the wrong and lost the owner money last night and also future income as well, that this income be deducted from her pay or her termination,” Starr writes on Facebook, which is exactly the kind of asshole response you’d expect from someone wearing Google Glass.

• Sally Clark became the eighth Seattle City Council member to endorse a $15(ish) minimum wage, if in a somewhat Clarksian fashion. “Sure,” she said in response to the question. “I think it could be. Is it exactly the right number? Fifteen is fine, I guess.” Coming from Clark, that’s downright enthusiastic! (And for those of you keeping score at home, that leaves Tim Burgess as the only council member not on record as endorsing the higher minimum wage.)

• The city council has requested that the Department of Planning and Development “provide recommendations describing options for regulations and incentives to reduce or eliminate leaf blower noise and emissions in Seattle.” In a legally binding Slog poll, 53 percent of our readers have decreed that they should be banned. Next!

• Sources say Council Member Mike O’Brien has been shot down as chair of the transportation committee. Further committee chair gossip says Kshama Sawant is expected to be handed the Seattle City Light committee, which seems perfect, since the publicly owned utility is pretty much a socialist dreamscape.

• Sure, we’re big Sawant fans around here, but it’s perfectly understandable that other media outlets are just getting to know her. One example: a recent interview by KING 5 News’ Linda Brill, who asked Sawant, who was born in India, penetrating critical questions like “What caste were you?” and “What do you have against corporations?”

The Pantry Raid

Cooking for Smart People www.thepantryraid.com

Testosterone & Insulin Sensitivity Study

Men are needed for 2-1/2-month investigational study using acyline, letrozole, and testosterone gel to examine the effects of androgens on insulin sensitivity, body composition and fat.

Eligibility:

• 25-55 years of age

• Healthy male

• No History of infertility.

Survival Guide

Brrrrrr! Jesus, It’s Cold. Here Are Three Ways to Stay Warm You’ve Probably Already Thought of, and One or Two You Definitely Haven’t

Have you been outside? Yeah. It’s so cold, people’s limbs are snapping off. Especially people who aren’t from here. It’s times like this we turn to the people who grew up around here and go: How do you survive?

BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT has been surviving Seattle winters since she was a kid. On page 17, she writes her autobiography in soup— from Campbell’s to her first bowl of pho to digging razor clams for chowder to making homemade butternut squash soup. (There is blood involved.) She also eats soup at Calamity Jane’s, Hopvine, and Canlis.

EMILY NOKES has been sitting in a hot tub since last winter (continuously!), when a friend decided to deal with her divorce by buying one

off Craigslist. Are you familiar with how a hot tub can change your life? Because a hot tub can change your life. Details on page 21.

CLARE GORDON has been warming up by slumming in the tasting rooms of some of Seattle’s upstart distilleries. She finds four especially good ones: Old Ballard Liquor Co. (for their aquavit), Copperworks Distilling (for their gin), Westland Distillery (for their whiskey), and Letterpress Distilling (for their limoncello). See page 22.

BRENDAN KILEY has taken off his clothes and bathed with strangers all over the world, so we sent him to clothing-optional spas in Lynnwood and Doe Bay. He also touches on communal bathing in small-town Japan, group showers at the Oregon Country Fair, and the musings

of a 12th-century nun who wrote that saunas could heal “a divided mind and crazy thoughts.” Kiley’s attempt to undivide his own mind is on page 25.

And, arguably taking this whole concept too far, SARAH GALVIN—intrepid, just-say-yes Sarah Galvin—investigates the use of Icy Hot as a sex toy. Just how hot does your junk get if you rub Icy Hot on it? Is it hotter than warming lube from Babeland? Hotter than a pumpkin spice latte? Spoiler: Yes, it’s way hotter than those things. Hotter than you can imagine. Dangerously hot. (Oh yeah, and: It’s for on you, not in you. Never, ever in you.) How exactly does she know it’s hotter than a pumpkin spice latte? You are about to find out (it involves an experiment in the bathroom at Zeitgeist Coffee). See page 26.

The Undeniable Goodness of SOUP

A Clam Chowder Adventure, a Butternut Squash Fiasco, and the Best Pho in Town

By Bethany Jean Clement

When I was growing up, the rain never stopped. From September through June, it was rarely heavy, but never ending, with the clouds a wet wooly blanket pressing down from above. Now Seattle has days of eerie, creeping autumn fog, trying silently to warn us about climate change; we’ve got thunderstorms and flash floods, the kinds of downpours that, back in the day, would take a solid month (day and night) to eke out. In summertime, we’ve got record-breaking stretches of sunshine, glorious and terrifying; in fall and winter and spring, we see the sun too, days of glare and much colder air. It used to be that a childhood in Seattle gave you a tolerance for a certain constant low level of depression, or at least a reduction in general expectations (a helpful thing in life). Gratification is easier when the base-

line is chilly water falling through gray air; a couch and a blanket and a book, with a bowl of soup on the way, seems pretty good. Is alphabet soup every American’s first favorite? It’s hard to see how it could not be—it is letters in soup. Somewhere I learned that if you ate the initials of the one you loved first, before any of the other letters in the bowl, you would have luck in this love. (It’s possible I made this up.) I trawled the tomatoey broth in search of a small noodle “S” and then a “C,” for Steven Crouch, the beautifully mundane name of my wished-for fourth-grade sweetheart. The spell did not work, and the love went unrequited, though once, alone in the classroom at recess, I kissed his corduroy jacket as it hung across the back of his chair. Campbell’s alphabet soup’s given name, in a complete failure of marketing, is “Vege-

table Soup.” It has high-fructose corn syrup and MSG in it. I still eat Campbell’s alphabet soup once every year or three, preferably alone, watching the rain.

Pho Bac—the original location, where Boren and Jackson and Rainier converge—is much the same on the inside as it’s been for a couple decades. I ate my first bowl of pho here after returning home from college, with the friend of an ex-boyfriend; we’d become friends, too, and he was handsome and funny, and after the breakup, hanging out with him was both pleasure and pain. Because he was inextricably linked in my mind to the ex, it was like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt. The outside of Pho Bac, shockingly, got remodeled into the shape of a boat in 2011, with its prow pointing

east. Nowadays, the Pepsi reader board menu acknowledges Pho Bac’s fame (“WELCOME TO THE BEST PHO IN TOWN… MAYBE, DON’T KNOW, REALLY, WHO CARES, JUST EAT IT”), but it still has tile floors, bright lights, and brusque service. The pho is better than most: The broth is mild but tasty, and when I had dinner there last week, the round steak was tender, every bite. Christmas carols were playing, and then three carolers from the Pentecostal Missionary Church of Christ came in and sang some carols live, relatively tunefully, then collected donations for victims of the typhoon.

The best pho in town may actually be found at Monsoon (lunch and brunch only) and Ba Bar. It costs $10 to $13 to Pho Bac’s $7 to $8, but it’s made with good, local ingredients, and the rich, nuanced broth will knock your socks off. When Ba Bar opened, owner Eric Banh threw out whole batches of broth because they didn’t meet his standards; they just weren’t serving it, as I learned from the beleaguered servers when I tried to order it on two different days. Now you can get it until 2 a.m. on weekdays and 4 a.m. on the weekends, which is a godsend.

After college, I moved to San Francisco for a summer and stayed for five years. I lived in a room the size of a shoe box, in a flat with what felt like nine other people (only three, actually). A friend had found cheap rent out in the suburbs of the Sunset district, in a run-down house shared with three guys who had a grow room in the basement. It was a used-sectional-sofaand-omnipresent-bong-type household, but my ever-generous friend tried to take good care of the boys, and she loved to cook. One year, instead of going back to our respective hometowns, we decided to make Thanksgiving dinner.

Clearly, the first course needed to be butternut squash soup, served from a hollowedout pumpkin. Finding a pumpkin the day before Thanksgiving was challenging; this was

When Ba Bar opened, owner Eric Banh threw out whole batches of pho broth because they didn’t meet his standards.

before the Ferry Building farmers market, before the streets of autumnal San Francisco were paved with local, organic gourds. Finally, a distant Cala supermarket yielded a Halloween leftover that was big enough and looked all right from most angles.

On Thanksgiving Day, everyone did copious bong hits, and then we commenced cooking. I disemboweled the pumpkin without mishap. But while cutting the butternut squash, I noticed that the tips of my fingers were growing puffy and taut, in some kind of tactile allergic reaction. (Ignoring the conventional wisdom about testing out anything you’re going to make for company, I had never made this soup before.) I showed my roommate (“LOOK at my HANDS!”) and then ignored it, which worked out fine— the finger weirdness resolved on its own, as it has every time I’ve made this soup since. However, I still managed to stab my thumb with a severity just shy of requiring a trip to the hospital. (Raw butternut squash is the opposite of squishy, and the household’s knives were dull enough to slip, sharp enough to puncture. Also, bong hits.)

The blood pulsed out. It was very red.

While not normally squeamish, I fainted. I came to on the sectional sofa, and someone, for some reason, brought me a Pepsi. My roommate bandaged my thumb, and we finished cooking, and dinner was good. After dinner, we walked down the street to the big park full of eucalyptus trees; it was warm in San Francisco on Thanksgiving, and the trees smelled terrific. That night, very late, one of the guys tried to climb into bed with me. I just shoved him back out, more sleepily annoyed than anything.

It sounds a little depraved in retrospect; at the time, it all seemed normal, the misfits and the bong hits. It felt like a family, albeit a very makeshift one. It was fun. Everyone loved the soup served out of the pumpkin.

Now I live three blocks from the Hopvine Pub on Capitol Hill. Michael Congdon makes the soup there. His 2004 cookbook is immodestly, but many would say correctly, entitled S.O.U.P.S.: Seattle’s Own Undeniably Perfect Soups. His work is seasonally based, and on the more elaborate side—right now, there’s Southwestern pumpkin with cheddar and walnuts, and white bean and fennel with almonds—but he doesn’t overdo it, so the innate goodness of the pumpkin or the bean is not lost. The Hopvine’s soups come with a couple slices of so-so bread and a foilwrapped pat of butter, and the floors are of worn wood. The wireless password is likely to be something soup-related, even though it’s called the Hopvine and they have lots of good beers. The bartender was overheard recently saying that somebody had called and said, “What kind of soups do you have on tap?” Then he laughed for quite a while.

Janice Vaughns is also famous in Seattle soup circles. She’s the chef at Calamity Jane’s, an old-fashionedy place located in a 1909 building in Georgetown. (Calamity Jane’s motto is “Where all the girls can kick your ass”; it’s also supposedly haunted by a man in a bowler hat, and before Jane’s moved in, a hoarder lived there.)

refrigerating my right side. There was only one table closer to the source of the arctic blast, and a man sat down at it, immediately said it was too cold, and moved. Upon inquiry, the server indicated it was a known issue with the whole restaurant, this weather system, and that they’d adjusted the heat. It never became equal to the situation. I kept my grandmother’s shaggy old fur jacket on the whole time. I neglected to ask her, before she departed this world, what kind of animal it came from; the fur is coarse and black and thick, like you’d imagine a bear’s would be, and it’s got padded shoulders as broad as any Joan Crawford ever wore. No one looks askance at a fur coat at Canlis.

We went out to the coast to dig razor clams a few years ago. When we woke up at 5 a.m. to get going, it was still dark. It was also snowing. It was April. The sand and the air and the sky of Pacific Beach, at the edge of the Olympic Peninsula, were uniform, like static on a TV. The freezing waves smashing on the shore in the distance were a sound, not a sight. The razor-clamming season, only a few hours long on a few different days, was set to low tide, not to the human clock. We trudged out—my brother, his girlfriend, my boyfriend, and me, after a short night of sleep in a one-room cabin, the only one the Sandpiper Resort had left—and there was no one around, and it seemed to the foggy brain like some kind of prank by the fisheries department and the weather in concert, to get the city people out alone on the beach in the dark and the blowing April snow. Then we looked back and others were coming, looking exactly like zombies in the predawn: shuffling walks, faceless, almost audibly moaning, coming from all up and down the beach, moving en masse out toward the shore.

Your feet can stay dry razor-clamming if you’ve got good boots, but your hands are destined to become sandy, frozen hooks.

Vaughns makes excellent ribs and marvelous dessert (only one kind per night, so it’s just right), and her soups are equal to the greatness of the rest of her food: a rarity. Clam chowder is available every day, and each day of the week has a different special soup, too. It is a shopworn thing to say, but Vaughns’s soups taste like home, and if you don’t add on one of her johnnycakes for $1.83, you are a damn fool.

Canlis is the fanciest restaurant in Seattle, ergo, it serves the city’s fanciest soup. I thought for certain it would be lobster bisque, the kind of rote rich-people food that Canlis chef Jason Franey has been winning awards for reinventing since he came here from Eleven Madison Park in New York. But the soup at Canlis right now is potato-leek, a preternaturally creamy version—if it’s possible for something to be more creamy than cream, this is it—with teeny-tiny croutons and enough black truffle to create a rising, warm, invisible cloud of dirty-good truffle smell. In the lounge, the soup costs $8. The modest portion was presented in the deep center of a bowl with a huge brim, like a flying saucer or an absurd-looking hat; the spoon had a fluted handle, like a Greek column. The whole bowl had obviously been warmed, my fingers happily discovered, for while the live piano music tinkled and the lighting was exactly right, the night outside was clear and cold, and an objectively freezing draft traveled down the lounge stairs,

I don’t really remember all the digging— the mind blocks out certain things, in order to fool you into possibly doing them again—but we dug and dug as it gradually got light and stopped snowing and the sky cleared, and you could see that there were whole families, young and old, and barefoot people who looked like their other pastimes might be stealing things and doing meth. Due to overharvesting, razor clams have become a delicacy like geoduck, a commodity like copper wire.

Your feet can stay dry razor-clamming if you’ve got good boots, but your hands are destined to become sandy, frozen hooks. We didn’t get our limit, but time was up, and we went back to the tiny cabin and had panfried clams and whiskey for breakfast, thawing ourselves out.

Back in Seattle, my boyfriend and I made razor-clam chowder using an actual seaman’s chowder recipe. My boyrfiend’s father, now my father-in-law, was in the Coast Guard, and this had become a family recipe, adopted from a colleague. No clam chowder will ever be as good as that clam chowder, containing the excitement and drudgery and freezing and disbelief of that very early morning, composed with the sea-galley knowledge of Chief Petty Officer Reynolds. In the event that we ever revisit razorclamming, we will surely make the chowder again, but odds are, it won’t snow.

For the clam chowder recipe, find this story online at THESTRANGER.COM

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The Leary Traveler

The Leary Traveler is the neighborhood pub, located… you guessed it, on LEARY. Word to the wise: come with a healthy need to imbibe, and an appetite for delicious Eurocentric delectables. The menu is just chock full of seasonal sundries and solid standards. Care for a pint of locally crafted beer with those Steak Frites? Got a four-legged friend? That’s A-OK! Dogs are welcome! Bring friends, neighbors, even strangers, and discover that new favorite bar that’s just around the corner.

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How a HOT TUB Can Change Your Life

Sad? Cold? Going Through a Divorce? What Is Your Problem? Get a Hot Tub!

By Emily Nokes

Breakups are a bummer, but breaking up in Seattle, in the winter, is a goddamn nightmare. A few years ago, I became friends with Sarah and John—a couple who’d been together three years and majorly had their shit together, as they say. They were engaged and good at mowing the lawn and cleaning out the fridge and planning for their future; they juggled grad school, two dogs, teaching jobs, and car payments. I squeaked into their lives just in time to be invited to their wedding, and I always thought of them as a couple, an entity.

After they married, they moved a few times and finally bought a house. When I went through a breakup, I felt lucky to remain a part of their rock-solid lives. While I still felt like a teenager who couldn’t properly make a bed, they were making their own concrete countertops for their kitchen in the house they owned. Because that’s something you can do, MAKE YOUR OWN COUNTERTOPS. They wrote their initials in the wet cement so underneath the counter it read S + J =

It’s hard to know exactly how it happens. Couples fight. Sometimes a lot. And no one ever knows how much fighting is normal. S and J seemed to have the healthy relationship bases covered—they squabbled, sure, but went to counseling on the regular. In their eighth year together, the house was coming along and plans for babies were in the works. But then one day late last November, without warning, John told Sarah he was leaving. He made her some ravioli and left.

The news floored me. No way. No fucking way! Sarah was hysterical.

That first night, she lay on top of the concrete countertops, on top of the part that hid the S + J = , and sobbed. My heart broke for her, for them, and I braced myself for the worst winter ever. What if brilliant, strong, beautiful S was never the same again? Divorces can destroy people, right? The news came right after a few other close friends also went through monumental breakups, and I felt selfish for my own depression creeping in. We were all getting so old, so grown-up and sad. And it was fucking freezing outside.

wake up, sob for 15 minutes, put pants on, and then sob for another 20 minutes before being able to put a shirt on. Friends brought over candy, flowers, food; we gave good advice, shitty advice, stayed the night, anything she needed. She was hardly ever alone. Pretty quickly the mood shifted from devastated and heartbroken to “Let’s all go buy glittery hair pom-poms and matching fake fur jackets!” and “You don’t have nearly enough hot-pink lipstick on!” A month after John left, Sarah found Hot Tub Mike on Craigslist and sent him an e-mail, inquir-

hand in and the water was hot. She told him that if he included delivery and setup in the price, and if she could get it installed before December 31, they had a deal. (Since hot tubs take days to heat up initially, and probably also since Sarah is beautiful, Hot Tub Mike invited her to a hot tub New Year’s party at his house. She declined.)

The arrival of the hot tub was just as exciting for Sarah as it was for all of her friends—at this point, we’d become a sort of family, rallying around Sarah, rallying around each other, dedicated to the cause

The hot tub christening was extravagant. Sarah said the one thing she knew was that a hot-tub-warming party would need cake and pink champagne. She picked out the prettiest cake at QFC and asked the woman at the counter if she could write SPARKLE SPRINGS on it with frosting. “Is this what you wanted?” the woman asked minutes later, holding out the cake, having misspelled it SPARKEL SPRINGS. Sarah replied, “It’s perfect.” The hot tub would be known as Sparkel Springs (pronounced Sparkelle) from then on. Technically it was meant to hold six, but the hot-tubwarming party featured 16 people piled in, winning it a slogan: SPARKEL SPRINGS: EVERYBODY TOUCHES. You just can’t sit in a hot tub with more than six people and not touch, a detail made more hilarious and weird since everyone was basically in their underwear or less.

Later we marveled at the world of waterproof toys and gadgets we’d discovered online—it was like this secret society of tan, happy ’80s people with waterproof light-up boom boxes. “Psssst, do you need a tiny plastic floating fountain that changes colors every few minutes?” the luxurious ’80s people asked through the internet. “You’ve come to the right place [saxophone riff plays sexily].”

Winter revolved around the hot tub. The rules were simple: No food except grapes, no glass, and no handjobs. A friend made a Tshirt with the last rule painted on the front. Another friend built an impressive screen in the backyard to project rom-coms and football games onto. Sarah bought a set of lockers for her basement to help the droves of friends who came over keep track of their many towels and bathing suits (a hot tub in winter makes you mighty popular). Communal piles of flip-flops in every size were available to ease the icy walk from the house to the tub. Perhaps due to its, uh, origins, the hot tub had some electrical problems that would cause the water temperature to drop after a while. At that point, nothing could faze us.

ing about his hot tub for sale. He called her immediately and told her she could come get the hot tub that very afternoon. A few hours later, she met him at a giant garage; he drove up in a Mustang convertible with a kid in the back.

For the next few weeks, Sarah would

Inside, the garage was piled to the roof with Jet Skis, sleds, lawn mowers, saws, and HOT TUBS! One hot tub sat in the corner, already filled with water. She dipped her

of not being depressed. Clearly the hot tub needed a name. Alliteration seemed necessary, for sure—Glitter Gulch and Sequin Spa almost made the cut, but ultimately Sparkle Springs had the best ring to it. Sparkle Springs! A real hot tub in a real backyard in the Central District. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining or snowing if you’re sitting in a hot tub. Have you ever been in a hot tub in the snow?

Technically the hot tub was meant to hold six, but the hot-tub-warming party featured 16 people piled in. Everybody touched.

We devised a system of boiling pots of water to pour into the tub—if you got up to go to the bathroom, it was expected that you either put a pot on or took one off on your way back. At the end of the night, a few die-hard buds would often sit in the tub until it became the same temperature as our bodies, smoking spliffs, just talking and talking. One night, as we watched the temperature drop from 104 degrees to 98, a friend muttered, “We’re like human ice cubes, cooling down the water.”

The hot tub—in all its tacky, wonderful, opulent, ridiculous glory—changed our lives that winter. One night at Sparkel Springs, John texted Sarah to ask, “How are you?” She responded simply, with just a photo: 16 friends in a hot tub, everybody touching. One of the guys in that hot tub? He and Sarah are now dating. The other day, Sarah said, out of the blue, “Remember how fun my divorce was?”

Warming Up with Seattle’s HIGH-PROOF TALENT

Four Local Distilleries You’ve Got to Try—with Tasting Rooms You Can Just Walk Into

By Clare Gordon

What to do, as bitter weather casts a gloom over the entire city? Drink, naturally. Since Washington began licensing craft distilleries in 2008, the local industry has exploded—more than 100 new boozemakers are now among us. Most distillers allow you to sample their booze for free and buy anything you like on-site, perfect for gifts or for filling up a flask as you face the ghastly prospect of holiday shopping. Of the local distilleries I’ve visited recently, these were the best products I tried so far.

AQUAVIT

Tucked away on an industrial avenue in the neighborhood for which it’s named, Old Ballard Liquor Co. is a one-woman operation. Owner and distiller Lexi (who mysteriously refuses to reveal her last name to press) welcomes a steady trickle of guests to her little warehouse three days a week with plenty of sass and a generosity of information and attention. Within minutes of eloquently and engagingly explaining the colossal difference between raspberry-infused vodka and vodka distilled from raspberries, the distiller also goes on a tangent about her obscure dream of a Japanese-Swedish foodfusion concept. Lexi lived in Sweden for long enough to develop an affinity for the culture and culinary traditions, extending to her latest project (and my favorite of the selection sampled): her brand-new aquavit, which defies the American style currently dominating the domestic market. She explains that the liquor is traditionally imbibed with food, so while versions that showcase the sweeter members of the licorice family, like anise and fennel, are commonly associated with the genre, Old Ballard’s interpretation is more true to the original process, infused with 100 percent caraway and aged with local alder wood. Closer to a boozy Cel-Ray soda devoid of any trace of sugar than its sambuca-esque rivals, a Bloody Mary would be lucky to have it. An operation that takes pride in eccentricities, Old Ballard Liquor Co. is surprisingly accessible, thanks to Lexi’s genuine desire to share her ideas and work. (Old Ballard Liquor Co., 4421 Shilshole Ave NW, oldballardliquorco.com; tasting room open Fri–Sun 3–7 pm)

GIN

When I step through the door at Copperworks Distilling Company, my choices are either to be herded directly into a group headed for a tour of the glowing pot stills and barrel storage in the hands of a heavily bearded man, or to head straight to the tasting bar, where another heavily bearded man pours samples of gin and vodka. Jason Parker and Micah Nutt are Seattle beer-brewing veterans, and they’re in the process of graduating to whiskey production, joining a select few other distilleries in the area. While their whiskey needs to mature in barrels over the next couple of years, they do have two

company to any other distiller in town, and their eyes widen as they speak with envy of the enormous space and its fancy outfitting. Good thing Westland has excellent taste and expertise—their first release is promisingly well-balanced, if especially assertive, as is to be expected of a two-year whiskey. Imagine lightly burning your mouth on a hot chocolate-chip cookie—warm flavors like vanilla and brown sugar, without the mellowing quality brought by letting it cool off (or leaving it to age longer in American oak, in this case). An incomparably beautiful tasting room awaits after the tour, which features rows of promising barrels and an aroma of fermentation akin to warm sourdough bread—Westland crafts and brews their wort in-house from five roasted and kilned barley malts. And they have seats, an amenity strangely missing from other tasting rooms. (Westland Distillery, 2931 First Ave S, westlanddistillery.com; tasting room open Tues–Sun 11 am–6 pm)

LIMONCELLO

IWESTLAND DISTILLERY It looks more like an architecture firm’s gift shop than a distillery. As for the flavor of their whiskey, imagine lightly burning your mouth on a hot chocolate-chip cookie. COPPERWORKS DISTILLING COMPANY Glowing pot stills on the left, tasting bar on the right. Try their London dry style gin.

clear products to show for their labors. My favorite was their London dry style gin, an especially juniper- and coriander-forward spirit distilled from malted barley that’s botanically exaggerated for its category but tastes good anyway. Thanks to their longstanding relationship with local breweries, the aforementioned barley is turned into mash (in brewing terms) or wort (in the distillery world) at the more space-conducive Elysian Brewery, and then transported to Copperworks to be fermented and distilled. The bearded men describe their namesake copper pot stills with warmth and pride,

and the custom-built towers from Scotland shed a warm glow throughout the distillery. (Copperworks Distilling Company, 1250 Alaskan Way, copperworksdistilling.com; tasting room open Wed–Thurs 2–6 pm, Fri–Sat noon–7 pm, and Sun noon–5 pm)

WHISKEY

When you first walk in, Westland Distillery looks more like an architecture firm’s gift shop. Its combination of custom equipment and structural showmanship is immediately apparent and obviously expensive. Mention the new

f you’ve ever been coerced into sipping commercially produced limoncello on its own, the experience has likely involved a searingly sweet and artificially yellow liquid, not exactly something that would qualify as a craft spirit. Seattle’s local version, however, is a refreshing departure from the saccharine standard—a boozy delight that tastes shockingly like real lemon, distilled with fresh zest and honey for an earthy rather than astringently citrus effect. Skip Tognetti at Letterpress Distilling crafts the best limoncello I’ve ever tasted, in as primitive a warehouse operation as can possibly be legal—I found the tasting room down a driveway in Sodo with the aid of smartphone navigation and a sandwich board. I chatted with the proprietor about everything from drawing inspiration from his Italian childhood to what he does with the cases of bald lemons left over after zest collection—as it turns out, a local popsicle company buys them, as if the process could get more delightful. Periodic interruptions while we talked were illuminating, as Tognetti propped up a metal tank in his back room with a plank so the last of a lemony solution could be distilled through a plastic hose. There’s an overwhelming charm to everything about Tognetti’s DIY expertise, from the final product to his future projects—a couple of flavors of amaro (an Italian-style digestif, commonly made with a variety of herbs and spices), which he expects to release next year. Personally, I can’t wait. (Letterpress Distilling, 85 S Atlantic St, #110, letterpressdistilling.com; tasting room open Sat–Sun noon–6 pm)

The Letterpress Hot Toddy

Skip Tognetti was kind enough to offer up this cold-weather cocktail, an insta-toddy of sorts to chase away colds and make everything seem a little brighter. In a twist of fate, his lemon and honey concoction marries perfectly with bourbon in creating an extra-boozy version of the classic.

1.5 oz. Letterpress limoncello 1.5 oz. bourbon

.5 oz. lemon juice

3–4 oz. hot water

Mix alcohol and lemon juice, add water, stir, and savor.

BATHS

I Have Taken with Others

The Ancient, Awkward, Sometimes Awesome Ritual of Communal Spas

by Brendan Kiley

Icouldn’t tell what the eager, naked Japanese man wanted from me, but I was a visitor in his country—the international rules of etiquette dictated that it was my responsibility to try and figure it out.

There were maybe a dozen of us, all naked and squatting on short plastic stools in front of a wall of spigots. This was my first visit to a Japanese sento, but I knew I was expected to wash thoroughly before moving to the soaking tubs in the next room—where men sat in hot water, white washcloths draped over their heads, emitting a chorus of low, grumbling sighs like a pack of water buffalo who’d just finished a large dinner.

I had been living in a small town in Japan for a few months and was getting used to being a gawk magnet—schoolgirls wanting to take pictures with me, fellow diners not-sosubtly watching me eat in restaurants. Now I felt slightly more naked than everyone else. The man nodded enthusiastically and twirled his finger in the air. He wanted me to turn around. I complied, a little nervously, and he—to my surprise—began gently scrubbing my back. Then he turned around so I could return the favor. The awkwardness evaporated, replaced by a feeling of almost fraternal tenderness. As we walked to the soaking room, it occurred to me that bathhouses like this one, where most Japanese families washed until the 1960s, are more than just a place to get clean. Stripping down and bathing together can be rehumanizing.

It reminded me of my first adventure in public bathing as a teenager at the Oregon Country Fair, a hippie/vaudeville festival whose outdoor showers and large sauna can accommodate more than 100 bathers at a time. My initial shyness on walking in and putting my clothes in a cubbyhole was quickly replaced by a newfound curiosity about the human form—not just the classically beautiful bodies a 16-year-old would normally spend a lot of energy trying not to stare at, but all the bodies, big and little, saggy and taut, scarred and tattooed, young and old, hairy and sleek, pink and brown and mottled. In her 12th-century treatise on medicine, the nun, composer, theologian, physician, receiver-of-visions, and all-around polymath Saint Hildegard von Bingen uses a strange word: virgichtiget. It’s not in the Oxford English Dictionary (nor Google Translate), but Saint Hildegard repeats it throughout her Physica to describe how parts of the body and mind might feel arthritic, pained, weak, or generally fucked up. “One who is virgichtiget,” she writes, “and from it has been made a bit mad, with a divided mind and crazy thoughts, should take a sauna bath.” Saint Hildegard knew, as others have known for centuries, that saunas and soaking pools aren’t just for warming a body up or scrubbing it down—they’re for tying a

divided self back together again.

But public bathing takes effort. It’s like writing—it’s not something I like to do, it’s something I like to have done. You have to leave the warm indoors and go somewhere, get undressed in front of strangers, take a shower that will probably involve being cold at various points in the process, ease yourself into a too-hot pool or sauna room, sit for a while to let your body adjust, perhaps endure awkward conversations or awkward silences, and then, if you’re serious about it (and you’ve come all this way, so why not?), plunge your thermally disoriented corpus into a pool or cascade of freezing-cold water. Your body and mind buzz for a few seconds with the shock. Then you do it all over again. It doesn’t sound that great on paper, but after a few cycles of hot-cold-hot-cold, some-

ish conquistadors of the Aztec temazcalli (from the Nahuatl words for “steam” and “house”), Korean jjimjilbang (with steam rooms whose ceilings and walls are encrusted in supposedly medicinal minerals), Elizabethan “stews” (public baths that doubled as brothels and pubs), hippie hot springs, you name it.

Where can you go around here?

There’s the well-known Russianstyle Banya 5 in South Lake Union ($40 per trip) with a Turkish steam room, a much hotter Russian-style parilka steam room, soaking pools, and rooms for naps and tea. It’s coed, and everyone wears a bathing suit—purists might argue that those carry dyes, soaps, oils, and other stuff

thing happens. Eventually, I stop noticing temperature altogether. Hot and cold, comfort and discomfort begin to seem irrelevant, or at least less relevant than they were a few hours ago. An explanatory placard at the out-ofthe-way Bella Luna Spa & Sauna in Lynnwood explains it in terms that sound like Saint Hildegard’s: “Sudden changes in temperature promotes deep muscle and tissue relaxation. It also improves circulation and calms the psyche.”

coed rooms (the spa provides light cotton clothes to wear) with varying levels of heat and “healthful” minerals built into them. One room is lined with jade (the placard at the entrance claims it’s good for “calming the soul, maintaining healthy blood circulation, and clearing eyes and ears”), another with imported Korean yellow clay (supposedly good for your skin, gastronomic problems, and “female disorders”), and another with rock salt (good for “insomnia, arthritis,

The Korean-run Bella Luna spa is the best deal I’ve found, with gender-segregated soaking pools for nude bathing. One coed sauna is lined with jade.

aches, muscle spasms,” and so on). Between hot rooms, you can visit a refrigerated “snow room,” the closest you can get to a cold plunge while staying dressed. Bella Luna also has a simple, small cafe where a pleasant older lady cooks bulgogi (marinated and grilled beef with vegetables), bibimbap (mixed rice dish with a fried egg), tea, and other Korean treats before you take another round of hot and cold.

The hippie-inflected Doe Bay Resort on Orcas Island has one of the few coed, clothing-optional public baths in the state (camping sites start at $45, rustic cabins at $85) with a sauna room and three soaking pools on a covered platform built into the hillside, overlooking the chilly sea. On a recent weekend visit, its pools were crammed. Walking past the privacy-protecting wooden fence, down the path, and toward the tubs, I felt the familiar old surge of reluctance—the cold, the social politics of nakedness. But I got naked, showered, approached the least-crowdedlooking tub, and asked if there was room for one more.

World history is full of variations on that theme: Roman baths, Turkish-style hammam, the Jewish schvitz (which is said to have evolved from the prohibition against heating water at home on the Sabbath—the schvitz in Cleveland is legendary), Nordic saunas, Japanese sento (public baths) and onsen (public baths fueled by hot springs), Russian banyas, old accounts from Span-

that isn’t ideal for keeping the tubs clean and clear. Either way, it’s a pleasant place to spend a few hours.

The Korean-run Bella Luna spa (which is the best deal I’ve found, at $25 per trip) has gender-segregated soaking pools and sauna rooms for nude bathing, plus seven

It was a tight fit, but people didn’t seem to mind. There was a serene older man with a beard, a quiet woman with short hair and tattoos, a young family of four, a visiting astronomer, and a small herd of bubbly young people who had gathered for a wedding. We talked, alternated between the heat and a deluge of cold water on one corner of the platform, and eventually lapsed into long stretches of quiet. We were strangers together, each treating an individual virgichtiget, and slowly coming back to ourselves.

Warming Up with ICY HOT

Is It True That Some People Get Off On Rubbing Icy Hot on Their Junk? How Warm Does It Get, Anyway?

By Sarah Galvin

When I learned people put Icy Hot on their junk for sexual purposes, I thought, wouldn’t it be hellishly painful, like getting oral from a piece of duct tape? And then I thought: What if I’ve just discovered a new way to stave off Old Man Winter? I texted the most pain-loving person I could think of, who confirmed searing pain is the desired effect. I then did some googling—I believe the phrase I searched was “Icy Hot on cunt.”

The first thing that turned up was a YouTube video of a group of young guys (none of whom appeared to have cunts) sitting around in a room with a couch, a Confederate flag, a bowling trophy, and a framed picture of a couch. They explained they were all going to put Icy Hot on their balls. One announced, “I’m gonna rub it all over my wiener and everything.” They all scooped the ointment between their legs and then sat on their couch under their couch photo. It hit all of them at once, and the only guy who didn’t run for the bathroom said, “I put it on my leg. They’re dumbasses.”

tween her legs. I read that even if you enjoy pain, Icy Hot is absolutely not to be used internally, no matter how erotically mummified or surrounded by frozen objects you are. Nor should it be applied to mucous membranes, which probably explains the dearth of Icy Hot cunt videos. Nonetheless, I had two questions to answer—is it fun to put Icy Hot on your junk, and does it keep you warm in cold weather?

I picked up some Icy Hot from Bartell Drugs. As I’m not a masochist, I worried it wouldn’t turn me on, so I also went to Babeland and got a lube with a warming effect from a brand called Emerita. I put a bit of it on the back of my hand and blew on it as the box suggests, and indeed it magically warmed up. The box informed me it’s made with cinnamon bark—a festive touch.

I thought, “How much will this hurt?”

I braced myself.

I found one YouTube video starring a woman who applied Icy Hot without knowing what it was. She also claimed she bought it at “The Stupid Store.” She hopped around looking alarmed, but she didn’t seem turned on at all.

In hopes of finding some more risqué Icy Hot videos, I did the same search on XTube. In a video called “Electro Icy Hot Mummy,” a man wrapped entirely in duct tape lay on the floor, breathing through a plastic tube. He looked like the cocoon of some kind of giant exotic sex butterfly. A hole was cut in the tape to expose his cock and balls, which were soon ushered into an electrical device. He moaned and wiggled as he was shocked—in great enjoyment, judging by the state of said cock. Then his exposed parts were slathered in Icy Hot, causing more moaning and wiggling.

I found a few more XTube videos of boys repurposing Icy Hot, but no ladies. One woman’s answer to “Will Icy Hot Hurt the Vagina?” on Yahoo Answers was that it caused her to run around the apartment “butt ass naked” sticking frozen objects be-

To help gauge the warming/seasonal appropriateness of these products, I decided to get the gold standard of cold weather items: a pumpkin spice latte. Zeitgeist Coffee has good ones, so I went there. Ordering pumpkin spice lattes always feels to me like asking for an appletini or one of those shots with “nipple” in the name. I actually felt less embarrassed covering my crotch with Emerita in the bathroom. I waited excitedly for the warmth I’d felt on my hand in the store, but nothing happened. I tried to blow on it, but I’m simply not flexible enough to do that effectively in Zeitgeist’s bathroom. I did, however, get some in my mouth, and it tasted nearly as good as my latte (which was delicious).

I was a little afraid of the Icy Hot. As I rubbed a dab onto the most peripheral spot possible, I thought, “How much will this hurt?” I braced myself for a red-faced hobble out of the cafe. I made it back to my seat before it kicked in, and it was… actually pretty exciting. I was very glad I had used a tiny amount and had researched where it should and shouldn’t go. It was a bit like the feeling in your chest when you take a shot of nice whiskey. I was somewhat turned on, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because of the Icy Hot, or because I was doing something weird in public. I certainly didn’t notice the cold when I left.

The World’s Best Amateur Porn Festival Is So Good, We Had to Double the Grand Prize

by Dan Savage

There’s something magical about HUMP!

HUMP! is the Pacific Northwest’s oldest, biggest, and only amateur porn festival, now almost a decade old. Thousands of people crowded into theaters in Seattle, Portland, Bellingham, and Olympia over two weeks to watch amazing, hilarious, sexy, and kinky amateur porn. Straights watched and cheered for gay porn, gays watched and cheered for lesbian porn, vanillas watched and cheered for kinky porn, kinksters watched and cheered for vanilla porn, genderqueers watched and cheered for gendermuggles, and vice versa.

There’s an energy in the theater during a HUMP! screening that’s difficult to describe. Yes, people are shocked at times—people are watching porn that they wouldn’t choose to watch at home—but people come away energized and elated. The joy that everyone seems to take in each other’s pleasure is what I love most about HUMP! The little porn festival is all grown up now, and it’s both a celebration of sexual diversity and evidence

of the healthy sex culture that we’ve created in the Pacific Northwest. I wish HUMP! came around more than once a year!

Before we get to the HUMP! 2013 Awards—which are determined by audience ballot—I want to thank everyone who made or appeared in a film for this year’s festival. This year’s HUMP! was spectacular, and you’re the ones who made it happen. Thank you so much, and we hope you’ll all submit again next year!

Okay! On to the prizes! HUMP! Awards are given in four categories: Best Humor, Best Kink, Best Sex, and Best in Show. And the winners are…

Best Humor ($1,000 Prize): The Legend of Gabe Harding. This moving documentary tribute to a legendary porn-set fluffer opened the festival, and it was a runaway audience favorite. Blow, Gabriel, blow!

Humor Runner-Up ($250 Prize): Anal Alley. A late-night television infomercial for a butt plug bowling set that makes good and dirty use of all three of this year’s “ex-

tra credit” props: butt plugs, bowling pins, and Hillary Clinton!

Best Kink ($1,000 Prize): Fun with Fire. A man and a woman experiment with flash paper and fire—and high definition, slow-motion video technology. This one had audiences squirming in their seats.

Kink Runner-Up ($250 Prize): His This vertigo-inducing film features a male dom, a female sub, and some expert suspension bondage.

Best Sex ($1,000 Prize): Ouroboros This hot gay sex rewind/infinity loop—complete with Hillary Clinton coasters—starts with a come shot and ends with a man in bed watching the sex he’ll be having later on his laptop. Ass-pounding and mindbending!

Sex Runner-Up ($250 Prize): Art Primo. This beautifully shot film features a diverse group of stunning women, nudity, sweat, and some playful slapping—an amazing slice of all-women erotica, and a favorite with HUMP! audiences!

Best in Show ($5,000): After all the ballots were counted—more than 16,000 of

them—fewer than 20 votes separated the top two vote-getters in this category. We thought about doing a recount, but recounting ballots is a huge pain in the ass. It took us a week to do the first count! And the vote was so damn close! So instead of doing a recount and picking one winner, we decided to make some HUMP! history and declare a tie in the Best in Show category! So the Best in Show prize goes to Ouroboros, the hot gay sex infinity loop that also won for Best Sex, and to Fuck, a moving and erotic spokenword monologue filmed in black and white. But instead of splitting the $5,000 grand prize for Best in Show between the two Best in Show winners, we’re doubling the grand prize money so that both sets of filmmakers will be awarded $5,000.

Thanks to everyone whose film appeared in HUMP! this year, congrats to the winners of this year’s HUMP! Awards, and we’ll see you next year at HUMP! 2014!

Comment on HUMP! at THESTRANGER.COM

STRANGER SUGGESTS

Waxahatchee, Swearin’ MUSIC

Need something to be thankful for? This is it! Waxahatchee, aka Katie Crutchfield, plays thoughtful (but not overwrought) folk-flavored pop songs that will appeal to fans of the very great Hop Along and Laura Stevenson. Also on the bill are Philadelphia’s Swearin’, a pogo-friendly and fuzzy quartet that is at the heart of the recent pop-punk revival (it’s about time that happened, you guys!). Have a listen to their new album, Surfing Strange it’ll simultaneously tug the heartstrings and put you in the best mood ever. (Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, chopsuey.com, 8 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages) MEGAN SELING

Give Thanks, and Give

Today, let’s be thankful for what we have, and mindful of what other people have not. Northwest Harvest has been helping to feed hungry people in Washington State for 45 years, distributing food to 325 food banks, meal programs, and (heartbreakingly) high-need elementary schools They provide more than 1.6 million meals every month to those in need in our state. Our safety net is tattered, so we must mend it as well as we can to provide for our neighbors—the children and the elderly, especially. Give what you can at northwestharvest.org, and thanks unto you. (northwestharvest.org) BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

Dina Martina Christmas Show

THEATER

The Christmas shows of Dina Martina—the monstrously untalented chanteuse brought to life by the monstrously talented Grady West—are the stuff of legend, and this year’s installment is a veritable Whitman’s Sampler of that legend, cherry-picking the best bits from all 14 of Dina’s previous Christmas shows. Expect punny songs, awkward transitions, stupid gifts, astounding outfits, cheerful blasphemy, and interstitial stories that will bend your brain. (Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, brownpapertickets.com, 8 pm, $20 adv/$25 DOS, 21+, through Dec 31) DAVID SCHMADER

Soul Poet: A Lou Reed Tribute in Music and Images

TV/NIGHTLIFE Lou Reed was rock’s preeminent poet of perversity, and dozens of his beautiful, abrasive songs will be revered forever. Tonight, many of his devotees pay homage to the late, prickly Velvet Underground leader with film footage of Lou (10 minutes max per clip) drawn from the best submissions from the public; send URLs to NWFF’s Facebook page. In addition, local bands will be covering the great man’s songs We’re gonna have a real good time together. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, nwfilmforum.org, 9 pm, $11/$6 NWFF members, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

ArtAche and Hangover Flea Market

Maybe you’ve been to ArtAche, one of Seattle’s longest-running pop-up shops. Or maybe you liked the Hangover Flea Market, Sunday afternoons at the (soon to be reopened!) Comet Tavern. Combining the two should be a holiday shopper’s wet dream Peruse handmade objets d’art, jewelry, and a truckload of vintage clothing while you drink a $3 mimosa. Enjoy live music by the Witches Titties and the excellent electro-retro spinnings of DJs Explorateur and Veins. There’ll also be a puppy-print tote bag by local artists C.M. Ruiz and Meg Schmitt, with all proceeds donated to the Humane Society. Everybody (including puppies) wins! (Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, 324-8005, 1–6 pm, free, 21+) KELLY O

The Moth

STORYTELLING

Short Run Small Press Fest BOOKS

In just three years, Short Run has become one of the most important events in the Seattle literary calendar. It’s a free, daylong celebration of small publishers from Seattle and around the country, featuring comics, literary zines, gorgeous art prints, food, and entertainment including “All-Day Transformative Hair Brushing.” Exhibitors I’m especially excited to visit include Alice Blue Books, Babel/ Salvage, Sparkplug Books, the Center for Cartoon Studies, and Chin Music Press. Also exciting: Short Run will conclude with a “Comics Prom,” a nerdy dance party featuring the Shivas and Specs Wizard. (Washington Hall, 153 14th Ave, shortrun.org, 11 am–6 pm, free; Comics Prom, 7:30–11:30 pm, $5, 21+) PAUL CONSTANT

Violet Sweet Shoppe

Everything in Violet Sweet Shoppe is incredible. Their shortbread is my favorite, available in a variety of flavors like pistachio (THE BEST!), chocolate, lavender, and lemon. It’s buttery and crumbly, as the best shortbread is, without being too dry—it goes perfectly with a cup of coffee or tea. Their cakes are also amazing—they’re so moist you’ll pause mid-bite to wonder how they made it happen. And get a peanut butter cup! They’re small, but they’re the most decadent peanut butter cup you’ll ever have. And I should also mention this: It’s ALL VEGAN. (Violet Sweet Shoppe, 3612 NE 45th St, violetsweetshoppe.com, 10 am–6 pm) MEGAN SELING

“True stories told live.” That’s what the Moth, which busted out of its chrysalis in New York in 1997, promises. Founder George Dawes Green says he named the storytelling events after the moths that would gather around porch lights on evenings in his home state of Georgia. He wanted to re-create that relaxed, story-swapping atmosphere, and the phenomenon exploded, especially among the NPR/This American Life crowd. The list of storytellers includes Margaret Cho, Al Sharpton, and Malcolm Gladwell, local yokels Dan Savage and Lindy West, as well as hundreds of everyday folks with something they want to tell you. (Neptune Theatre, 1303 NE 45th St, stgpresents.org, 8 pm, $36.50) BRENDAN KILEY

THEATER Primordial Horror Meets Cold Victorian Logic

Seattle Repertory Theatre Makes Fun of The Hound of the Baskervilles

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

L. B. Morse’s set design for Seattle Repertory Theatre’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s second-greatest novel (number one, of course, is The Sign of the Four) is dazzling. His genius conjures up an impressive system of floating paintings, gothic furniture, hard ramps, translucent curtains, and projections of old, haunting footage of London and the English countryside.

Though many of his set’s wonders were made possible by new technologies, it constitutes the most primitive element of this production. The ancient plays of Greece also aspired to this kind of spectacle, this desire to overwhelm the senses. Theater back then was all about impressing the audience, making them clap at some feat of coordination or device that made gods fly. What is new to theater now is the minimal play with no sets, just people talking. Something similar can be found in the microscopic realm of biology: Viruses are thought to be stripped-down life-forms, and so are actually more modern than the much larger and more complicated single-cell organisms—getting rid of stuff is more advanced, adding stuff is more ancestral. When the opening-night audience

clapped at the end of the first spectacular sequence (the detective and his sidekick pursuing a suspect through the streets of London), with its huge but smoothly gliding set pieces and floating stairs, they were experiencing a feeling the Greeks could easily understand.

Director Allison Narver chose to transform the novel (adapted by established local actors R. Hamilton Wright and David Pichette), which is a cool combination of crime thriller and ghost story, into a comedy. The haunting poetry that defines Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (“The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart’stongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun…”) is captured in Morse’s designs, such as the numinous beauty of the train journey or the rising fog of the moor, but it doesn’t determine the tone of the performances. The thing that does this is Narver’s direction of Darragh Kennan as Sherlock Holmes, and their comic approach to England’s most famous literary character. (Hamlet runs a close second.)

Recall Jeremy Brett’s Holmes in the ’80s British TV series; recall his intense seriousness, tight lips, and eagle-sharp eyes. This Holmes was so cold that every time he spoke, you expected to see a blast of chilled air from his mouth. Kennan’s Holmes is the opposite of Brett’s. He is loud and batty, which makes sense when you consider the improbability of the character’s certainty, mastery, and observational powers. Holmes can make preternaturally accurate readings of unknown persons (where they grew up, where they now live, what kind of animals they own, what they had for dinner last night, and so on) based only on their surfaces (their clothes, their accents, their manners). Instead of trying to make these pronouncements plausible, Kennan amplifies them, never failing to amaze Watson, in

a way that reveals their ridiculousness without going so far as to collapse them into a boring and cheap heap of camp.

After the nightmarish opening sequence, in which a man is pursued and devoured by a hellhound on a misty moor, Kennan initiates the comedy, and the rest of the play keeps it rolling in ways that are direct (such as Charles Leggett’s crowd-pleasing rendition of the old fart Frankland) or indirect (Andrew McGinn’s Dr. Watson, Hana Lass’s Beryl Stapleton, and Basil Harris’s Dr. Mortimer, which are closer to the original text).

Even the dead-serious themes and concerns of the play—such as trying to capture a killer, protect the innocent, and separate the natural (true) from the supernatural (untrue)—become funny. Once Holmes’s seriousness is undone by traces of comedy, the entire culture Conan Doyle’s novel represents is undone, and we can’t help but chuckle at a society that had complete faith in progress, saw women as soft in the head, believed that the shape of a man’s cranium corresponded with his intellectual abilities, and saw wars for resources and markets as an honorable civilizing mission in the long march of history.

Baskervilles first appeared a little over six months after Queen Victoria died in 1901, but it can hardly be called an Edwardian thriller—Edwardian novels, such as Heart of Darkness, anticipate the decline of imperial Britain, while Victorian novels could only bask in its glory, even as it was fading. All the major themes of that century, the peak of the empire, are packed tightly into this little novel. Victorians witnessed many amazing things: the commercialization of railroad transportation, the massification of consumer culture, a mail service that was fast and dependable, the rise and dominance of the godless theory of evolution that placed heredity at the center of life and fate, the end of biblical time, and the awareness of deep time. In the novel, as in the play, we see the ease and swiftness of trains, the commercial activities of the city (getting new boots, taking a cab, renting a room), the letters Watson writes

LOOSE LIPS

BY STRANGER ARTS GOSSIP SQUAD

• As the first-ever speaker in the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry for Seattle Arts & Lectures, poet Dorothea Lasky gave a speech that compared orgasms to being possessed by a ghost (you shudder, you lose control, and then the spirit leaves you, mysteriously as it arrived). She was resplendent in her colorful sequined jacket, bright green glasses, chunky rainbow jewelry, and matching purse and insane high-heeled shoes, which glimmered like a rainbow on an oil slick. Equally resplendent? SAL’s Rebecca Hoogs, in a pastel quilted skirt. Better outfits have never been worn to a poetry reading.

• In the middle of a recent screening of 12 Years a Slave at Ark Lodge Cinemas, a man physically accosted a woman for making too much noise with her popcorn bag He freaked out and knocked the popcorn from her hands into the aisle, and much yelling ensued. What’s most bizarre is that the man considered the snacking sounds to be worth a loud, huge confrontation while watching a true story about SLAVERY.

• The Northwest has many quality exports, from coffee and cheese to hiphop and artsy drag queens. Our latest: homegrown pornography, with the greatest hits of HUMP! The Stranger’s legendary amateur porn fest—heading out on a tour. February 15 brings three shows in Chicago, and February 28 and March 1 bring seven shows in San Francisco—see humptour.com.

• In other export news, SuttonBeresCuller, the Stranger Genius Award–winning artist trio, have their first New York gallery show—titled Solid Gold—in December. Whoever writes Planthouse Gallery’s PR is a bringer of brilliance and groans: “These three amigos wear one sombrero,” the release reads. “Each is a rock to the others’ paper and scissors. Truly a trinamic trio.” Also, the line that begins “Having conquering the hollowed grounds of Seattle’s ultra chic art scene” is, you know, clever, even if accidentally so.

• An “Unnamed Hot Dog/Cheesesteak Cart” was shut down by the health department in Fremont at 10:40 p.m. on Friday, November 1, for operating without a valid business permit, and (according to kingcounty.gov) it remains closed. A small, sad short story about this pretty much writes itself.

• A big white head is coming to the waterfront. It’s 44 feet tall, made of resin mixed with marble dust, and modeled on a photograph of a 9-year-old girl; the artist is Spaniard Jaume Plensa Echo will sit on the water’s edge at Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, not far from the naked-father-and-son fountain by Louise Bourgeois. She’ll face away from them, toward the mountains, with her eyes closed, because eww! Naked! Echo’s a gift from Hunts Point collector/Build-a-Bear investor Barney A. Ebsworth

• A show of new works in watercolor and encaustic from soon-to-be-former Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin opened to mixed reviews.

• The clouds were very interesting one morning this week—they looked like fish gills. Cirrusly.

to Holmes, and the perpetuation of regressive or progressive family traits alongside the horror of the moor itself—which is ancient, pre-Christian, and lost in the depths of time. Conan Doyle, and this production, cast two spells at once. One enchants us with our terrifying closeness to the moor, the monsters, the primitive and visceral. The other enchants us with the belief that all of that can be undone by the finger-snap of technology, science, and cold rationality. Baskervilles is two stories in one: half horror, half crime.

BOOKS

“Yes, a Bird Is an Animal”

Talking with Rob Delaney About Atheist Prayers and Helper Parrots

BY PAUL CONSTANT

doing that—but I believe the experience is augmented if you have series of time when other parts of your brain are being engaged. If you’re getting interested or educated or titillated or offended or terrified, then the laughs, when they come, are going to be more significant.

Do people come to you with their personal stories about alcoholism and depression? They do; they absolutely do. This might sound crazy, but it was easier [to quit drinking] than coming to terms with depression and learning to treat that. My bottom, as they call it, was me in jail in a wheelchair with four broken limbs. I had a hospital gown on, and sometimes I would fall out of my wheelchair and expose my private parts to everyone in jail. That was easier than pulling the trigger—what a terrible euphemism—on getting help for depression. Because depression was worse than being in jail in a wheelchair, and I’m not kidding when I say that. It was so bad that I prayed actively.

I suppose if we’re going to be strict about it, I’m an atheist, which is to say that I don’t believe in a deity. So I wasn’t praying to a bearded god, saying, “Hey, Dr. God, I need help.” I was speaking to the universe. And I did actively and regularly pray for the opportunity to help other people overcome depression. Even at my worst, I still cared about other people. I thought, “Oh my God, I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through this.” So I really prayed, “If I get through

ob Delaney is a comedian whose act—typified in his special Live at the Bowery Ballroom—involves very long and involved stories, often with no discernible punch lines, about terrible things like alcoholism, hepatitis, and depression. Delaney became popular on Twitter, where he’s almost the exact opposite of his onstage persona: quick, brutal, and hilarious. In his first book, Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. (Spiegel & Grau, $25), Delaney fuses those two selves into one whole person, a memoirist who writes with almost alarming frankness about the skeletons in his closet while occasionally slapping the reader in the face with a joke. It’s not your typical comedian vanity project; it feels like the sort of book that, properly applied, could save a life.

What surprised you most about writing the book?

Maybe the almost slingshot-like energy of how much I did not enjoy writing the first draft and how much I did enjoy doing the revision. As a comedian, you’re used to getting an immediate response, whether positive or negative, and you get accustomed to that. So I was so happy after my publisher and editor read it and it became more of a dialogue. A book is a collaborative effort, even if one person is actually clicking and clacking and writing out every word. Other people are involved. It’s fun to realize that. And they know more about books than me. It was fun to create a book under the guidance of a very experienced publisher [Julie Grau]. She published and edited Orange Is the New Black and a lot of other great books.

In your standup, as well as in your book and on Twitter, you can go for uncomfortably long periods without saying or writing something funny. And your serious moments don’t always boomerang back into punch lines. Did you have to fight with yourself to just let the chapters of the book about your struggles with drinking and depression go for long stretches without being funny?

I didn’t, because when I’m not onstage, I am at peace with people not laughing for a while. I have to remain compelling, but I want to tell the truth when I’m writing. I err toward humor, but being honest is the most important thing. If you’re reading by yourself, it’s wonderful to laugh at a book—I love

this, may I help other people with this.” The fact that people want to come to me to talk about this, or to tell me that they read something I wrote that helped them get through that, is an explicit answer to the only prayer I’ve ever made in my life.

How do you come across new books? What’s the process that brings you to a new novel?

If authors that I’ve read before write a new thing, like a Kate Atkinson or a John Banville, I don’t even have to know anything about it, I just need to go pick it up. My wife is an avid reader, and her friends are all avid readers, and they’re all sources of books for me. Like a lot of people, I get the bulk of my news from Twitter, and then I’ll branch out to other websites. I found some great writers and literary sites on Tumblr. And I’ve gotta say, it is majorly encouraging to see so many independent bookstores across the country, and to be meeting and touching so many book-lovers. I mean, books are aliiiiiiiiiiive, and it is a beautiful thing to witness.

I read your book on an airplane. A man got kicked off the plane before we took off because he had a helper parrot that was making people uncomfortable. Whaaaaaat?

rot detects agitation, it speaks directly into the person’s ear: “Relax, Sam. It’s okay, Sam. I’m here, Sam.” Like that. Anyway, after the plane took off, I was reading your book, and a woman behind me said the following sentence: “Technically, is a bird even an animal?” So I have to ask you: Technically, is a bird even an animal? Was the airline right to throw the man off the plane for having a helper parrot?

Now, you know, there’s a couple answers to that question. First of all, yes, a bird is an animal. It’s in the animal kingdom, so yes, it’s technically an animal. But in the context, is a bird a service animal? Jesus, I didn’t even know that it could be. And I am skeptical. That woman, I suspect that she and I would be kindred spirits, because they are giving out service animals to people for lots of stuff these days, and you know there’s an argument to be made for toughing it out. You have a rage problem? You gotta work on that. You don’t mediate it with a talking bird. Get to the root of it. Sometimes our problems are like invitations from the universe to address the things that need work. That guy’s not an irredeemable piece of garbage. He has a personal problem that needs to be dealt with, and that bird’s making him a total laughingstock. So it gives him more of an excuse to squeeze his rage-juice into the world. That was a great question. Thank you for asking that question.

Read the rest of this interview at THESTRANGER.COM

ART

Burning Love

Tatiana Garmendia’s Gorgeous Art Can’t Be Contained in Mere JPEGs

BY JEN GRAVES

beneath the figures, and calligraphy in English and Arabic quoted from popular songs by Courtney Love, Linkin Park, and the Chemical Brothers.

Garmendia has technical chops, her influences are drawn from a passport full of stamps, and she isn’t afraid to take on the biggest imaginable subjects. Cameron explained that Garmendia was born in Cuba, where her parents were jailed, where she saw terrible things. For her, war, torture, and love come together, and they are real.

The pietàs, a series called Lamentations, are connected with the erotic drawings, called Garden of Joys. They’re all part of Garmendia’s six-part cycle, The Last Judgment. The garden is the final chapter. The story ends in love, not war.

Each pair of lovers (all hetero, as far as I saw) is impossibly intertwined, arms and legs wrapped and splayed. Garmendia is referencing shunga, traditional Japanese erotica in which swollen genitalia are located on the bodies in much the same way noses are lo-

Her erotic drawings are burned into paper using a tool that’s like a pen, but on fire.

cated on Picasso faces—wherever the artist likes, the better to draw the eye. But shunga represents something tangly, primal, and internal, not pornographic, about sex. And in Garmendia’s burn drawings, as in shunga, the eye may first be drawn to the bull’s-eye of penetration, but it radiates out, along the dense foliage of designs that entangle the lovers.

REVIEW

Tatiana

Garmendia:

The Garden of Joys

Patricia Cameron Gallery Through Dec 20

Irarely go to Patricia Cameron Gallery, and I was walking by it on the street the other day, not intending to go in, when Patricia Cameron smiled graciously and waved to me, and her kindness made me feel even guiltier, because even though the art hadn’t looked great in the JPEGs I saw online, the concept of the show interested me, and I felt frustrated all over again about not having time for everything, and I shuffled in dutifully—and the JPEGs were wrong. Dead wrong. Tatiana Garmendia has made some of the most gorgeous things. The main subjects of the exhibition are her erotic drawings that are burned into paper, not drawn on, using a tool that’s like a pen, but on fire. She paints between the burn lines in pastel watercolor, in a process she describes as cooling the heat of the burns. You can almost hear sizzling.

Garmendia has been living and working in Seattle since 1993. She teaches at Seattle Central Community College, and a couple of her pieces in the Wing Luke Museum’s group show this summer, Under My Skin: Artists Explore Race in the 21st Century, made an impression for being both unsettling and lovely. They were overlays of love and war, six-foot ink paintings of pietàs set in the ongoing Iraq war. The Madonnas wore dark, shadowy, realistically rendered burqas—such drapery—and the Christs were uniformed soldiers in camo and boots. Prayer-carpet motifs in pinkish red swirled

Their hair turns wildly into flowers and storms of curlicues. Those lines lead farther outward, too, to written words, words like “Beirut” and “Aleppo,” and demarcation lines and topographic marks. The backdrops, you realize, are maps. The lovers are melting into their environments, and the joining of their bodies also melds sometimes-warring environments together. Enemies have turned lovers.

As in the Lamentations pieces, these fantasies contain Arabic script—in this case, lines from Hollywood movies: Gone with the Wind, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. Why can’t their goopy-hopeful sentiments about kissing, about finding something true, appear alongside geopolitics? The collaging of elements is slyly feminist, like breastfeeding in a legislature.

In larger pieces, some of the burn lines are long, leaving gaping openings in the handmade papers where the images breathe through the wounds. Every disparate person and place is brought together in Garmendia’s lightly rococo style. Jeffry Mitchell— Seattle’s most beloved artist, and a master of the subversive rococo—would love these. So would Claire Cowie, another Seattle artist whose tenderness with watercolor and ink line barely masks her forays into death and war. Garmendia’s style is not as tight as those artists’, and sometimes more stiltedly illustrative, but her ambition is breathtaking and inspiring, the way she DJs together strains of pain and pleasure and tramples down walls that separate languages, people, the high and the low.

Before you leave the gallery, be sure to go over to the wooden cabinet against one wall. Hidden inside are handmade books by Garmendia you’re welcome to handle. One contains these tiny, exquisite intimacies—two people kissing, just their heads visible—taking place in windows of translucent Mylar, caught in washes of paint so thin as to feel like gusts of smoke.

CRYSTAL BALL READING ROOM

11/27 NIGHTMARES ON WAX 11/29 NADASTROM 11/30 SANDRIDER 12/12 DUB POLICE TOUR FT. CASPA 12/13 PERE UBU 12/19 NACHO PICASSO 12/21 ROSE WINDOWS 1/4 ATOMIC POP 1/5 VIDEOSEA LIVE 1/18 MAX BEMIS 1/22 DARKSIDE 1/25 DANIEL KIRKPATRICK & THE BAYONETS 1/31 WHITE DENIM 2/3 MAYER HAWTHORNE 3/1 NICKI BLUHM & THE GRAMBLERS 3/5 DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR. 3/29 LONDON GRAMMAR 4/17 GODFLESH

CRYSTAL BAL

FRIDAY 12/6

FRIDAY 12/6 EL TEN ELEVEN ALL AGES

FRIDAY 12/20

UBU

DEEP SEA DIVER BRYAN JOHN APPLEBY TUESDAY 12/17

FRIDAY 1/3

FLY MOON ROYALTY + FRESH ESPRESSO HOSTED BY MARCO COLLINS

FRIDAY 12/27 + SATURDAY 12/28 BUILT TO SPILL SATURDAY 12/21

ROSE WINDOWS UNNATURAL HELPERS + LOW HUMS

1/17

THURSDAY 1/23 RYAN HEMSWORTH

COMING UP: 11/24 MIKEY DAVIS 11/30 NOVEL NATURE 12/6 BASIA

BULAT + CATE LE BON 12/8 LEE RANALDO AND THE DUST 12/12 WILL HOGE 12/13 ERIN MCKEOWN 12/14 KING KRULE (SOLD OUT) 1/7 TENNIS 1/11 MARIA TAYLOR 1/15 CLOUD CONTROL 1/20 SUPERHUMANOIDS 1/21 DRENGE 1/23 ROBERT DELONG 2/11 DELOREAN 2/22 DJ SPOOKY 2/25 A TRIBE CALLED RED 3/2 TOGETHER PANGEA 3/7 ANGEL OLSEN

SUNDAY 12/1

BRENDAN CANNING (OF BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE)

TUESDAY 12/3

KID SMPL ZOOLAB + NEWAXEYES + ALGEBRAIC SATELLITE

FRIDAY 12/20

12/30 + TUESDAY 12/31

FRIDAY 1/3

COMING UP: 11/24 MIKEY

MONDAY 12/9

DONTE PEACE

ROYCE THE CHOICE + LIL RIPP + FEEZABLE THE GERM + FRANCHEYES + JOEY KA$H + SILVERBACK GORILLAZ & MORE

TUESDAY 12/10 GAVIN TUREK WITH KATIE KATE + FEY MOTH

MUSIC

Cerebral Operator

The Cave Singers’ Morgan Henderson

BY TRENT MOORMAN

During the creation of the Cave Singers’ fourth album, Naomi, they added bass player, multi-instrumentalist, and Seattle nice guy Morgan Henderson to their assemblage. He’s a highly

cerebral musician whose rooted, willowy bass lines and flute sounds fit naturally within the Cave Singers’ illumined folk framework. Through his experience playing various types of music with various types of bands over the years (the Blood Brothers, Past Lives, Fleet Foxes), Henderson has developed a keen sense of what a song needs. He knows how notes should be delivered, and his palette of ways to play is wide and apt. Naomi, as an album, is a continuance and extension of the Cave Singers’ celestial riffed-bluegrass sound. With Henderson involved, Peter Quirk, Derek Fudesco, and Marty Lund have broadened and burnished their Blue Ridge Mountain hook-stomp and groove. Quirk’s vocals animate with revival and traveling-medicine-show tones. “Karen’s Car” takes you to a place in Toccoa, Georgia—close to the Carolina/Tennessee borders. (Home to James Brown in his youth.) There’s an abandoned shed in some thick-ass woods near the dark-green shade of Lake Rabun. Ivy overgrows the shed, its one window is busted out, and water moccasins are all around. I think it used to be a still. Inside, there’s an old bronze phonograph horn on the floor—dented and covered in dust, but reflective. You hold it up and see the hills behind you in the curve of the speaker horn. The sun hits off the bronze like a lens flare. Everything curves. You sit there until night. Soon crickets will come, with their symphonies from the trees. Henderson spoke. No crickets were audible.

The Cave Singers w/Pollens Sat Nov 30, Neptune, 9 pm, $20, all ages

and that would sort of be it. They didn’t really give me guidelines or anything specific they wanted to hear. More or less, they gave me free rein to play what I heard in my head— the way they could sound with bass, and just what felt right. I hadn’t played electric bass in a band since the Blood Brothers, and I’d missed it. Working on the material with them was a complete joy. They’re also about the best hang you can have. It’s always great getting in the van, or going to practice. It takes a while to actually play music, because we’ll be listening to records or shooting the shit.

Did you have to build your calluses back up? Bass playing tears fingers up It can, yeah. With the upright, I mainly play with my index and middle fingers, but with the Cave Singers, I immediately started playing just with my thumb. I hadn’t ever played that way for any other band, but for some reason that’s just the sound I started doing. So yeah, it was a different callus. Nothing rips up the hands like the upright does, though. We played for KEXP at the Triple Door, and since we wanted to do a different take on the songs, I played only upright. We’d practiced for it, but during the show, I blistered up, and they popped. There was blood everywhere because I was digging further into my hand. It was gnarly [laughs]. I bled for the cause.

about Flea doing that. I’m a Flea fan. He’s a runner, and a crazy bass player. And a Lakers fan, so he hits the boxes for me. I know Joanna Newsom gets heavy calluses from her harp playing, and she’ll use rubber cement. Once you get a callus, though, you’re fine—those don’t rip off. The blister is where you’re in trouble.

You’re a flute player as well. Is there a flute callus? Is there a callus of the embouchure? The Jethro Tull callus? There’s no flute callus that I’ve developed yet, but there’s definitely a need to have the muscles in your mouth worked up. Of any instrument I’ve played—using hands, feet, whatever—mouth muscles are quickest to go if you don’t keep them up.

Do you use effects on your flute? Yeah. There’s a great company called Strymon—I have a couple of their pedals. For the Cave Singers, I use their delay pedal. There’s a couple songs where I give it a longer tail.

Get that shit going for your 12-minute Jethro Tull “Locomotive Breath.” The first time I played flute live, somebody yelled out, “Jethro Tull!” I was like, “Oh no, have I crossed the line or something?” I don’t really listen to Jethro Tull, though.

What? You don’t listen to Jethro Tull? That’s not possible! Who are the flute players you’re into? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen videos of Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull playing with an orchestra and doing weird stuff. He’s an amazing musician. There’s a guy named Hermeto Pascoal, I think he’s Brazilian. Eric Dolphy is great. I’m not so into the rock flute, more into the jazz and classical side.

What’s coming up for you? Are you playing with anyone else these days? Not too long ago, I finished doing an album with a gentleman named Hamilton Leithauser. He’s the lead singer for the Walkmen. Hamilton and his Walkmen bandmate Paul Maroon asked me to work on his solo record with him, so I was down in Los Angeles with them and Richard Swift. I think the record is being mastered right now to be released in the spring. It was an excellent experience working with those guys. I’m excited about it. Hamilton and Paul put a lot of work and care into it. I hope people like it.

“The first time I played flute live, somebody yelled out, ‘Jethro Tull!’”

I’ve heard the Cave Singers have a talent for finding good food in the middle of nowhere. Where is the best, most random food you all have ever stumbled upon while on tour? In Massachusetts, there’s a place called Miss Worcester Diner. The owner is a very tough woman. It’s in an old train car, I think. There were all these grizzled guys in there, and we had the best breakfast. Heavy, but delicious.

WHAT'S CRAPPENING?

• The Comet Tavern was robbed last Tuesday evening: Someone broke in and stole the dollar bills that have been affixed to the ceiling for as long as anyone can remember. The dive’s new co-owner, Jason Lajeunesse, estimated the amount taken from the ceiling was close to $1,000 (we guessed it was more like $27, but then again, we haven’t looked at the Comet’s ceiling in a while, lest we get pinkeye). Lajeunesse also said, “My landlords received a call from a very inebriated someone last week who threatened to come and steal the Comet sign and anything else he thought belonged to him…”

• Every time we turn on KEXP and hear a song by an artist older than 60, we are seized with the fear that the person has died. Help!?

• At the Go Health Yourself healthcare-meets-music show at Chop Suey on Thursday, we learned what exactly “this Obamacare thing is” (best part: free birth control!), a couple swayed and sang every word to headliners Hey Marseilles’s songs, and King County executive Dow Constantine said “ass” onstage (as in “Get your ass covered with insurance!”).

• Rumor has it OutKast are reuniting, probably, and will definitely maybe be performing as headliners at Coachella 2014 Totally loosely set in stone.

• Last weekend, The Stranger received an e-mail that began with “Are you serious? my name is [redacted] this is my father’s e-mail I’m using. Your write up on Layne Staley’s death pissed me off.” The irate e-mailer went on to give us such advice as “Get a clue you stupid ass wipe” and “FUCK off and write about shit you actually care about because you suck and your website your the editor for sucks.” The article in question was written 11 years go by a writer who left our staff nine years ago. The e-mail ended with “Sent from Windows Mail.”

• MTNS drummer and all-around badass Dan Enders continued his streak of injuring himself at nearly every show he plays, smashing his finger midway through a sold-out set at the Black Lodge and refusing to stop playing. A previous incident saw him cut his foot open with his cymbal and bleed profusely all over Vermillion.

• Gabe Day, son of noted Lincoln-impersonator Daniel Day-Lewis, unleashed the video for his rap track “Green Auras” last week, in which he smokes a lot of weed and makes the completely legit claim that “judging someone for their dad is just as bad as being racist.” Noted!

How did you go about enmeshing yourself and your playing into the Cave Singers’ sound? They had been working on parts for Naomi and had a handful of the songs. Initially, I was just going to play bass on the record,

Ever try the Flea thing and put rubber cement over your popped blisters so you can play? Did Flea really do that? Wouldn’t it just give you instant cancer? You’re the Flea authority, right? Oh yeah. I don’t actually know

Something tells me Miss Worcester didn’t take shit from anybody. I think that’s a correct assumption. If anyone’s fucking around, she’d probably smack the hell out of them. But she’s also real sweet. If you cross the line, though, you’re going to have a problem…

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

• Saturday night at Neumos, British post-punk legends Wire closed out their DRILL: Seattle festival with a humongous rendition of “Pink Flag,” which featured at least 20 guitarists onstage, including members of Helmet, Chastity Belt, FF, By Sunlight, and Vestals. It wasn’t Rhys Chatham’s 100 Guitars, but it did rock pretty mightily.

TUESDAY 3 DECEMBER

WEDNESDAY 4 DECEMBER

LiveMixtapes Presents: A Special Evening w/ NACHO PICASSO + AVATAR DARKO All Ages

Caribbean Blu Presents VINTAGE REGGAE NIGHT VOL. 2 Alex Ducan, Blumeadows, ZJ Redman 21+ SUNDAY 1

DECEMBER CRASH KINGS Hand of The Hills All Ages

CHURCH OF MISERY Saviours Wizard Rifle All Ages

Monqui & Bumbershoot Present THE MOWGLI’S Blondfire Hunter Hunted All Ages

Monqui Presents LISSIE Kopecky Family Band 21+

AND AND AND Brite Lines &Yet 21+

GIBSON 12/10 JAKE MILLER

12/11 FRIENDS & FAMILY 12/12 MIDLAKE 12/13 & 12/14 PICKWICK 12/17 YUNA

12/20 MY GOODNESS 12/21 THE PHYSICS 12/26 WAX 12/27 BLACK BREATH 12/31 FLAVR FORTRESS 1/8 AUSTIN JENCKES 1/9 AUSTIN JENCKES 1/10 CALIFONE 1/11 AUSTIN JENCKES 1/22 MOON TAXI 1/17 WOODEN SHJIPS 1/24 DJ QUIK 1/24 PATTERSON HOOD 1/25 TRUE SPOKES & IAN MCFERON BAND 1/31 JOHNNY FLYNN 2/4 ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER 2/7 ZION I 2/8 PASSAFIRE 2/14 BOWIE VISION 2/15 SHEARWATER 2/18 ANE BRUN 2/28 AER Saturday May 3rd WE ARE SCIENTISTS

MY PHILOSOPHY

LARRY MIZELL

SOL, AVATAR DARKO AND NACHO PICASSO, ZULU JAM

So Outkast is reuniting for Coachella next year. Your shitty band’s reunion will not engender half the goodwill of theirs, so fall back ’til 2015, please.

WEDNESDAY 11/27

CASCADIA ‘10

November 27, Sol makes his longawaited return to his hometown stage, rocking what will surely be a sold-out Showbox Market along with Sam Lachow and Dave B. Sol hasn’t played in the 6 since last summer (another sold-out Showbox show), before he took a sabbatical from his flourishing music career, embarking on a months-long spin through a dozen countries, having been awarded UW’s Bonderman Travel Fellowship. Touching home and collecting his thoughts, Sol released the Eyes Open EP back in September, produced by Nima Skeemz, Budo, Elan Wright, Grumps, and the Zillas—the name applied to both Solzilla’s backing band and his fans. Spacious synths and big beats underpin Sol’s delicate, restrained brushstrokes. While he’s on occasion shown some real hanger on the mic, Sol’s breathe-easy sparsity better conveys expanded horizons. Does it sometimes play a little like a familiar narrative—the college guy turned worldly humanitarian by a free summer abroad? Sure, a touch, because that’s exactly what it is, except that the guy is a fairly accomplished rapper as well—and being such, he can’t help but flex (i.e., brag, floss) about his traveling and, more importantly, about the deep appreciation of the human condition that he gained from his trip… which, at the end of the day, is kind of an awkward thing to flex. But he’s right: Understanding and compassion are fucking lacking, people are poor, hungry, dying—this is real. Whether or not you agree with my assessment, or care about any of that other shit, though, you gotta know that the well-executed moves, including the unmistakably post-Heist stadium posi-pop rap of Eyes Open, all point to big things on the horizon for Sol—but anybody paying attention has known this was the case for at least the past year. Starting in January, he’ll be hitting the road with Zion I. All Zillas should start lining up now if they want to be close to the front. Two nights later, November 29—Moor Friday, by the way—Avatar Darko and Nacho Picasso co-headline the Crocodile. The duo’s Vampsterdam release has only gotten stronger with repeated listenings, their chemically altered chemistry strong, their ear for music dark like our city at 5 p.m. Nacho let fly his much-anticipated High & Mighty on Halloween, and a week later, Av—who’s long been, pound for pound, one of the most vivid rappers our town’s ever produced—dropped his slapping Boris the Blade tape. Just another brick in the wall of one of the town’s most impressive catalogs. Expect a tandem set and solo works from both this night. That same evening at Washington Hall, you’ll find the Hip Hop History Month (that’s this month) edition of the Zulu Jam, giving you a cultural foundation you possibly didn’t know existed beyond Worldstar and Love & Hip Hop. If you’re even partly responsible for somebody’s upbringing, you should bring ’em to this.

WITH DOWN NORTH AND REAL DON MUSIC

$8 • 9PM

FRIDAY 11/29

NOREY (ALBUM RELEASE)

THE COUNTRY LIPS, THE SWEARENGENS AND AARON MCDONELL & THE GOSPEL PLOW

$8 • 10:30PM

SATURDAY 11/30

THE REDWOOD PLAN WITH THE WEST AND BLACK SWEDE (ALBUM RELEASE)

$8 • 10PM

SUNDAY 12/1

VAPOR TRAILS WITH GODZILLIAN, MYRMIDON AND AUDREY HORNE

$6 • 8PM

TUESDAY 12/3

TRACTOR PRESENTS

NATALIE STOVALL AND THE DRIVE

$8 • 8:30PM

WEDNESDAY 12/4

HOBO NEPHEW OF UNCLE

FRANK WITH PUDDLE STOMPERS AND JEREMY SEWER

$7 • 9PM

UP&COMING

Lose your annoying radio single every night this week!

For the full music calendar, see page 45 or visit thestranger.com/music For ticket on-sale announcements, follow twitter.com/seashows

Wednesday 11/27

Sol, Sam Lachow, Dave B. (Showbox at the Market) See My Philosophy, page 39.

Nightmares on Wax, Theoretics, Introcut (Neumos) See Data Breaker, page 48.

Waxahatchee, Swearin’, Dead Bars (Chop Suey) See Stranger Suggests, page 29, and Underage, page 49.

Polyrhythmics, Funky 2 Death, Secret Sound Society (Nectar) Seattle octet Polyrhythmics do this bigband Afrobeat/funk thing with proper zest and adventurousness. On their new album, Libra Stripes, the group’s 32 limbs work in intricate harmony to generate a sophisticated slinkiness and expressive brassiness; theirs is a bold, complex chiaroscuro of wind, keyboard, guitar, bass, and percussion instruments. Polyrhythmics set out to move you, of course, but not without also ensuring that your mind expands out of its usual dimensions. Right about now, they sound like one of the most impressive sonic pleasures this city has to offer. Hit up polyrhythmics.bandcamp.com and go straight to “Bobo” for instant Fela Kuti–esque gratification and to “Skin the Fat” for sublimely greasy, Meterslike funk. DAVE SEGAL

Thursday 11/28

Cat Power, Nico Turner

(Showbox at the Market) Just like the last time Cat Power, the fragile/wonderful Chan Marshall, was in town (she played Showbox Sodo last November), the internet is tsk-tsking with accounts of her hitor-miss shows. (The Chicago Tribune called her recent Old Town School of Folk Music performance a “self-indulgent mess of a show,” and claimed that the only saving grave of the evening was hitting the McDonald’s afterward.) Yes, she’s emotionally jagged and apparently still a bit off-balance after all these years, but it’s part of who she is. And probably why she’s able to weave jagged emotions into ever-evolving music your heart will break and heal to over and over again. (Plus, Market>Sodo, though I’m not sure where the nearest McDonald’s is from there.) EMILY NOKES

Sophisticated Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

(Havana) If you’re looking to warm up and shimmy those November blues away, may I recommend the hallowed “Sophisticated Mama” night at Havana?

DJs Sad Bastard and Nitty Gritty have been throwing down the funkiest, grooviest soul and R&B from the ’60s and ’70s every Thursday for the last few years and seem constitutionally incapable of disappointing. They throw cut after amazing, obscure cut at you, then right around midnight, when the room’s bursting to capacity with ecstatic booties

and hips, they’ll drop a “Sex Machine” or “I Want You Back” and truly set it off. Go grind the autumn chill away with a bunch of inordinately attractive people wearing stylish and impractical outfits to truly phenomenal music. Many an inaugural PDA has played out on this dance floor. KYLE FLECK

Friday 11/29

Nadastrom, Salva, Sinden, Jameson Just (Neumos) See Data Breaker, page 48.

Worthy

(See Sound Lounge) See Data Breaker, page 48.

Zulu Jam: Hip Hop History Month Edition (Washington Hall) See My Philosophy, page 39.

Nacho Picasso, Avatar Darko (Crocodile) High & Mighty, Nacho Picasso’s latest sleaze-rap opus, is the sound of an artist at the height of his powers throwing down the proverbial gauntlet: Step up, or get the fuck out. Everything from his raspy flow to the fantastically black-lit production oozes through your speakers loud, clear,

and impeccably unrefined. The music is down-beat and minor-key, yet it’s impossible to miss the infectious joy Picasso gets from spitting his gutter-nerd wordplay: In the first track alone, there are references ranging from Full House to Genghis Khan. There are a few clear influences (Mac Dre’s nonchalant thuggery, Cam’ron’s deluded boasting), but Nacho’s operating on his own plane now. As our own Charles Mudede recently put it, he’s “currently the future of local hiphop.” Listen, learn. KYLE FLECK See also My Philosophy, page 39.

Soft Metals, Ononos, New Weather, DJ Dr. Troy

(Highline) If you like classic, traditional synth pop, Portland’s Soft Metals—vocalist/keyboardist Patricia Hall and synthesist/programmer/drum-machine operator Ian Hicks—should hit your sweet spot right in the bull’s-eye. Hall coos with dulcet placidity over mid-tempo beats and swirling, expansive synths that make you want to get in romantic entanglements in European cities whose names you mispronounce. Their latest album, the sleekly beautiful Lenses, whisks you away to a glamorous rendezvous or five. The rest of this bill consists of some of Seattle’s finest purveyors of agitational (Ononos) and interstellar (New Weather) keyboard-centric music. DJ Dr. Troy will school you hard and deep

with his rare, excellent records featuring beaucoup synthesizers. DAVE SEGAL

Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme, Chaotic Noise Marching Corps (Tractor) Long-running Seattle funk ensemble Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme celebrate the release of their third album, Gravy’s in Your Area with two shows at the Tractor. (Tonight is circusthemed; Saturday is masquerade-themed, and a spectacular light show is promised for both dates.) With their huge, sprawling lineup and flamboyant stage demeanor, Eldridge Gravy have become one of the most reliable party units in the city. If you’re looking to burn off the excessive calories you shoveled into your piehole over Thanksgiving, these folks’ high-energy jams can help you. Gravy’s in Your Area—which features Stranger Genius Eyvind Kang adding strings on two tracks—is another batch of over-the-top, maximalist soul and showboating funk. Subtlety flies out the window, along with your inhibitions, when Eldridge Gravy hit their glittery-bell-bottomed stride—especially on their blown-out cover of the Parliaments’ “(I Wanna) Testify.” DAVE SEGAL

Saturday 11/30

Soul Poet: Lou Reed Tribute (Northwest Film Forum) See Stranger Suggests, page 29.

Roro, Ti Femme, Sue Ann Harkey, Stalebirth (Hollow Earth Radio) See Underage, page 49.

Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme, Banda Vagos (Tractor) See Friday.

Sandrider, Constant Lovers, Dust Moth (Neumos) Sandrider’s 2011 self-titled debut was a beast of a record—sludgy, with a heavy dose of driving rock, it was what you’d expect from a band

featuring former members of Akimbo. But holy shit, they have unleashed something even wilder with their new album, Godhead. The band’s as epic as ever—buzzing riffs that’ll make the insides of your ears tingle and beats that’ll weaken your knees—but Godhead also has a bite of attitude that, at times, recalls the cockiness of Mclusky/Future of the Left. Check out the song “Scalpel” for evidence. The band rightfully, loudly celebrates the release of Godhead tonight with a hell of a party also featuring Constant Lovers (yeow!) and Dust Moth. MEGAN SELING

The Cave Singers, Pollens (Neptune) Northwestern no-witches the Cave Singers have gone the extra mile on their fourth album, Naomi. It’s a distinctive and varied offering of abstract/percussive-harmonic folk-pop songs about

addiction, Northwest fireworks, cars, and God that come on as dark, emotional, and near-magical impressionist poems. The core trio of Peter Quirk, Derek Fudesco, and Marty Lund recently added Morgan Henderson (of Sharks Keep Moving/Blood Brothers/Fleet Foxes) to the Cave Singers family. With Henderson’s addition, the arrangements have grown in complexity and depth while maintaining their signature, a sound that is both comforting and frightening. They continue to explore new aural crevices and expand their unique dialect with each subsequent release. The Cave Singers’ beautiful, earthy, and haunting music is something special. BREE MCKENNA See also preview, page 37.

Dream On, Jealous Dogs, the Dee Dees (High Dive) The High Dive brings you a night of

three tribute bands, paying homage to three different breeds of what’s now known as “classic rock.” Dream On, you may have inferred, honor Aerosmith (of whom nothing more under the sun needs to be written), while the Jealous Dogs tackle the hits and relative obscurities/B-sides of the immortal Pretenders. The Dee Dees, billing themselves hilariously and (as far as I know) accurately as “Seattle’s only all-female Ramones tribute band,” may be the odds-on favorite of the evening, because who can resist a quartet of leather-clad, sunglasses-at-night ladies belting out “Blitzkrieg Bop”? KYLE FLECK

The Dickies, Dreadful Children, Go Like Hell

(El Corazón) My favorite kind of punk bands are those that don’t take themselves too seriously. You know, bands that rage all the same, but don’t buy into the whole gimmick of being pissed off at everything at all times. Since rising from the San Fernando Valley in the early ’80s, the Dickies haven’t had a serious bone in their collective body, writing songs about Howdy Doody going down on Buffalo Bob, being forced to hang out with Marlon Brando, and even doing the official Killer Klowns from Outer Space theme. Let’s hope they haven’t changed. Show up early for Go Like Hell and witness some pure throwback rock ’n’ roll fury.

KEVIN DIERS

JLK & Babysitter, Hair and Space Museum, Happy Noose, Witches Titties

(Heartland) Happy Noose are a trio from Olympia whose recent EP, Amagosa, is overcast, galloping pop braced with unaffected vocals and a heavy dose of buzzy/bendy guitar resonance. Their selftitled 2011 debut skewed toward more upbeat, straightforward indie punk. Let’s hope tonight’s show will be a mix of both, like a goth prom where everyone actually dances. Switching gears from darkness to weightlessness, the expansive, otherworldly multimedia project Hair and Space Museum (Midday Veil’s Emily Pothast and David Golightly) will project you into an actual Hair and Space Museum where post-humans learn about what it was like when, trillions of years ago, their ancestors grew something called hair on their heads and did

TAJ MAHAL TRIO

FRI, NOV 22 - SUN, DEC 1

(CLOSED ON MON, NOV 25TH & THANKSGIVING)

Composer and multi-instrumentalist, Mahal is a two-time Grammy winner and one of the most influential American blues and roots artists of the past half-century.

ELDAR

TUE, DEC 3 - WED, DEC 4

“He’s a (piano) genius beyond most young people I’ve heard.” - Dave Brubeck

ANGIE STONE

THU, DEC 5 - SUN, DEC 8

Neo-soul singer/songwriter with over 5 million albums sold worldwide and ten singles on the R&B charts

LOUIS HAYES and THE CANNONBALL LEGACY BAND MON, DEC 9

For more than 40 years, Hayes has been a catalyst for energetic swing, straight ahead post-bop, and modern jazz. Joining Mr. Hayes: Vincent Herring, Jeremy Pelt, Rick Germanson, and Dezron Douglas

MIKE STERN BAND feat.

RANDY BRECKER, ANTHONY JACKSON, AND KEITH CARLOCK

TUE, DEC 10 - WED, DEC 11

Jazz fusion all-star band

2033 6th Ave. | 206.441.9729

11.27 Wednesday (Afrobeat / Funk) POLYRHYTHMICS

Funky 2 Death, Secret Sound Society

$10 adv / $15 dos, 7pm doors, 21+

11.29 Friday (Dance Party / Ska) WORLD’S FINEST DANCE PARTY featuring 2 full sets from WORLD’S FINEST plus DJ Indica Jones spinning 80s hits $7, 8pm doors, 21+

11.30 Saturday (Klezmer/Baltic/Dance Party) Nectar and Jconnect Seattle present: BUBBE’S OLD-FASHIONED HANUKKAH SHINDIG feat live music by: Bucharest Drinking Team, Erev Rav, The Debaucherauntes, The Mongrel Jews w/ LIVE AERIALISTS, BURLESQUE & more!

$10 adv / $15 dos, 8p doors, 21+

12.3 Tuesday (and EVERY TUESDAY!!) KARAOKEGRASS: Free Live Band Karaoke! NO COVER, 7pm Doors, 21+

12.4 Wednesday (Dance / Electronic) PLANET BOOTY

Mighty High, Radio Raheem

$5 adv / $8 dos, 8pm doors, 21+

12.6 TRL 12.7 Elzhi 12.12 Phutureprimitive 12.13 Acorn Project - Juno What?! 12.14

Comedian Michael Malone is an international headliner known for his energy, “rubber face” and versatility of

styles. Malone has been featured on the Bob and Tom Radio and TV Show and made appearances on WGN TV, National Lampoon’s Operation Comedy Tour, NBC TV, XM Sirius Satellite radio and the

He also just won the 33rd Annual Seattle Comedy Competition and was named one of the “HOT Comics to

old-timey things like travel through a quaint little concept they called space. EMILY NOKES

Sunday 11/31

IAMSU!, Sage the Gemini (Showbox at the Market) Richmond, California’s IAMSU! has been on the rise for the last couple years, thanks in part to his work ethic—releasing five solo mixtapes and two joint ones (one with fellow HBK Gang affiliate Jay Ant, one with LA rapper Problem) in the past three years—but also largely thanks to his swagged-out-yet-radio-ready content. While IAMSU! can rap quickly and technically when he wants to, he mostly avoids saying too much to keep his synthed-up, Auto-Tune-assisted takes on traditional Bay Area party rap sounding like hits. The fact that he’s headlining Showbox at the Market seems to support the notion that he’s an updated (since the internet is making rap time move at an exponentially faster rate now), California version of a 2008 Wiz Khalifa or Wale. HBK Gang’s Sage the Gemini, who has an annoying radio single out now about girls shaking it like a red nose pit bull, will open. MIKE

Monday 12/1

Damn, we miss Megan already.

Tuesday 12/2

Deck the Hall Ball 2013: Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, the Head and the Heart, and more (KeyArena) KNDD’s first-ever Deck the Hall Ball took place in 1992, and it consisted of Evan Dando and Sarah McLachlan performing solo sets on the steps of the Seattle Art Museum. By ’94, the Ball was a humongous show packed with established and upand-coming stars. In 1994, this meant Sheryl Crow, the Cramps, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Radiohead at the Mercer Arena. In 2001, this meant Staind, Coldplay, and Travis at the Paramount. And in 2013, it means a fresh batch of hot-poop-right-now stars

at KeyArena, including Vampire Weekend (creator of what might be the year’s most beautiful album) and Lorde (creator of what might be the year’s most beautiful pop hit). Also on the bill: poppy Frenchmen Phoenix, folky locals the Head and the Heart, and Britty rockers Arctic Monkeys. DAVID SCHMADER

Anna Oxygen, S, Childbirth (Chop Suey) Anna Huff, aka Anna Oxygen, is another welcome blast from the glorious, femininerich past, born in the ’90s Pacific Northwest (similar same-era bands like the Need, Girl Trouble, Tara Jane O’Neil, and Quasi are suddenly all performing again). Oxygen, though now located in Los Angeles, still identifies as both a musician and a multimedia performer. She’s spent the past decade or so with an LA performance art group called Cloud Eye Control and a synth-pop group called the Space Ballerinas. Expect the unexpected with Oxygen’s shows, and don’t miss the gorgeous acoustic melancholy of Jenn Ghetto’s S, or openers Childbirth— Seattle’s newest (and only!) rock band that focuses on the more primal aspects of pregnancy, labor, and delivery of tiny humans.

KELLY O

Kid Smpl, Zoolab, Newaxeyes, Algebraic Satellite

(Barboza) You already know about Kid Smpl’s fathoms-deep emotronica, right? You’ve surrendered to his lush, interior world of slow-motion beats and smoldering, drizzle-of-tears atmospheres, yeah? You’ve already bought a lifetime pass for the night bus, correct? Good. Keep up the good work. The other local acts on tonight’s bill are all playing their first club shows, and all are new to me. Zoolab (Terence Ankeny) creates down-tempo, crepuscular electronic music whose beats bang a bit harder than Kid Smpl’s, but it’s still more about overcast moods than moving butts. Algebraic Satellite (Tacoma’s Justin Tung) uses buxom beats and melodramatically florid melodies that evoke popular synth bands from the ’80s. Newaxeyes (Aloysius Nitsch) opts for a stranger array of sounds, eking out eerie, disjointed sound experiments that leave you feeling disoriented—a too-rare occurrence nowadays. Welcome my new favorite electronic weirdo to the scene! DAVE SEGAL

GROSSLY NAMED LOCAL TRIO

…49

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

RENDEZVOUS Weaver, $10

SHIP CANAL GRILL The Canteloupes Jazz Jam, 7:30 pm

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Sol, guests, 8 pm

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB

Open Mic: Guests

SUNSET TAVERN Cascadia 10, Down North, Real Don Music, $8

TRACTOR TAVERN Rewind, $15

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Tarantellas, 6 pm

DJ

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

HIGHLINE Art of Verse, Black Magic Noise, Man Danno, Nocturnal Beats, guests, free HIGHWAY 99 Little Ray and the Uppercuts, 8 pm, $5

JAZZ ALLEY Taj Mahal Trio, 9:30 pm, $28.50

NECTAR Polyrhythmics, Funky 2 Death, Secret Sound Society, 8 pm, $10

NEUMOS Nightmares on Wax, 8 pm, $17

NEW ORLEANS Legacy Band, Clarence Acox

OHANA Live Island Music

PIES & PINTS Live Rotating Bands: Guests, 8:30 pm

CHA CHA LOUNGE DJ Hank Rock, Cutz Like a Knife, free CONTOUR Rotation Tryouts: Guests

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, 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, $5/$8

PONY Bloodlust: DJs Gin & Tonic SEE SOUND LOUNGE Fade: DJ Chinkyeye, DJ Christyle, 10 pm

THURS 11/28

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

ARABICA LOUNGE OAG Thang BLUE MOON TAVERN The Brothers Balthazar CAN CAN Vince Mira DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia

DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free a GUAYMAS CANTINA Oleaje Flamenco, 8 pm, free LITTLE RED HEN 8 Second Ride, $3

LUCID The Hang: Caffeine, 9:30 pm, free PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac, 8 pm

SCARLET TREE How Now Brown Cow, 9:30 pm, free SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Cat Power

THE STEPPING STONE PUB Open Mic: Guests

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

THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark

HAVANA Sophisticated

Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

LAST SUPPER CLUB Open House: Guests

MOE BAR Saucy: DJ

Rad’em, DJ 100 Proof, free

NEIGHBOURS Jet Set Thursdays: Guest DJs

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND The Lowdown: DJ Lightray, $3

OHANA Chill: DJ MS

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

THE WOODS Pure Thursdays: Omar Valadez, MMars, Chris T, 10 pm, free

FRI

11/29

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben

Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Pink Bead, Keeping Secrets, Sky Pilot, Jay Barz, 6 pm, $8

BLACK LODGE Acid Fast, Nervous, KTE

BLUE MOON TAVERN the Guardians, Tom Price Desert Classic, Aaiee, $5

CAFE RACER Brother Inferior, Satin Stone

COLUMBIA CITY

THEATER Lou Reed/ Velvet Underground Tribute: Hounds of the Wild Hunt, Gibraltar, Bigfoot Wallace, $6/$8

CONOR BYRNE Brian Ballentine, Sam Russell and the Harborrats, Gomez a CROCODILE Nacho Picasso, Avatar Darko, 8 pm, $10

DARRELL’S TAVERN The

dinner & show

WED/NOVEMBER 27 • 7PM & 10PM CAN CAN PRESENTS buckaroos

FRI/NOVEMBER 29 & SAT/NOVEMBER 30 • 8PM 7TH ANNUAL THANKSGIVING WEEKEND MELTDOWN the paperboys w/ danny godinez (11/29) & locarno (11/30)

SUN/DECEMBER 1 • 7PM

ABBEY ARTS PRESENTS the winter round

MON/DECEMBER 2 • 7PM 2nd annual dammit liz holiday special

TUE/DECEMBER 3 • 7:30PM ed kowalczyk “i alone acoustic” w/ callaghan WED/DECEMBER 4 • 7:30PM omar torrez DRUNK TATTOO OF THE

AND NOW A WORD FROM PAUL’S TATTOO… On this Thanksgiving, please remember that it’s perfectly OKAY to be overcome by emotion, drunk with happiness, and/or intoxicated with alcoholic liquor. It’s also perfectly okay if all three of these things happen AT THE SAME TIME. Happy holidays! KELLY O

next • 12/5 david bromberg quintet • 12/6 vaden todd lewis • 12/7 an evening with joe henry • 12/8 an evening with buika • 12/10 rhett miller • 12/12 - 12/28 land of the sweets: the burlesque nutcracker • 12/31 an evening with storm large • 1/2 seth freeman cd release party with the cody rentas band • 1/4 the brian nova all star big band • 1/8 red molly w/ anne and pete sibley • 1/9 - 1/11 elvis alive w/ vince mira & guests • 1/12 school of rock performs the beatles • 1/14 emily asher’s garden party

• 11/27 the true romans • 11/28 closed for the holiday • 11/29 gypsy swing happy hour: the djangomatics / grant schroff trio • 11/30 jelly rollers • 12/1 highway 99 blues club presents: charles mack • 12/2 crossrhythm session • 12/3 singer-songwriter showcase featuring: whitney mongé and kurt lindsay • 12/4 supersones

SEE SOUND LOUNGE

Bad Things, Bakelite 78, the Debaucherauntes a EL CORAZON Adestria, Kingdom of Giants, Dayseeker, guests, 7 pm, $10/$12

HARD ROCK CAFE Amanda Markley, 5 pm, free HIGH DIVE Bone Cave Ballet, Case + Ctrl, Lowmen Markos, $8

HIGHLINE Soft Metals, Ononos, New Weather, DJ Dr. Troy, $10

HIGHWAY 99 The Missionary Position, 8 pm

Court Supreme, Chaotic Noise Marching Corps, 9:30 pm, $15/$20

a TRIPLE DOOR The Paperboys, 8 pm, $25

TULA’S Stephanie Porter Quartet, 7:30 pm, $15

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Lushy

THE WHITE RABBIT the Reds, Unwed Mothers, Wildlife Indoors, $6

DJ

95 SLIDE DJ Fever One

Worthy

THERAPY LOUNGE Rapture: Guests, $3 after 11 pm

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

THE WOODS Deep/Funky/ Disco/House: Guest DJs SAT 11/30

LIVE

Cutlass Supreme, $10 suggested donation

8 pm, $15

HOLLOW EARTH RADIO Roro, Ti Femme, Sue Ann Harkey, Stalebirth

JAZZ ALLEY Taj Mahal Trio, 9:30 pm, $28.50

LITTLE RED HEN Michael Anthony Pratt, $5

JAZZ ALLEY Taj Mahal Trio, 9:30 pm, $28.50

LITTLE RED HEN Michael Anthony Pratt, $5

a NEPTUNE THEATRE Black Joe Lewis, $20/$22

NEUMOS Nadastrom, Salva, Sinden, Jameson Just, $18

PARAGON Levi Said, free RAVIOLI STATION

TRAINWRECK Dizzy, guests RENDEZVOUS Yo Zombie, Harder You Fall, Rorschach Test, 10 pm

BALLROOM DJ Tamm of KISS fm

BALMAR Body Movin’ Fridays: DJ Ben Meadow, free BALTIC ROOM Dirty Work: Rotating DJs including Sean Majors, BGeezy, Mikey Mars, Sir Kuts, guests

BARBOZA Just Got Paid: 100proof, $5 after 11:30 pm

CHOP SUEY Bottoms Up: Guests, $5 before 11pm, $7 after

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BALMAR Rotating DJ Night: Guests, 9:30 pm

BARBOZA Novel Nature, 7 pm, $10

BLUE MOON TAVERN Buffalo Stagecoach: Locomotives, John Lee Spectre, Buffalo Stagecoach, $5

CAFE RACER Tobias the Owl, Brendan Shea

COLUMBIA CITY

NECTAR Bubbe’s OldFashioned Hanukkah Shindig: Bucharest Drinking Team, Erev Rav, the Debaucherauntes, the Mongrel Jews, 8 pm, $10 NEPTUNE THEATRE the Cave Singers, $20 NEUMOS Sandrider, Constant Lovers, Dust Moth, 8 pm, $10

NORTHWEST FILM

CONTOUR Afterhours, 2 am CUFF TGIF: C&W Dancing: DJ Harmonix, DJ Stacey, 7 pm; Guest DJs, 11 pm, $5

THEATER Cock And Swan, Golden Gardens, Levator, 8:30 pm, $8/$10

a THE ROYAL ROOM Piano Royale, 5:30 pm, Ayron Jones, Eugenie Jones, 8 pm

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free SLIM’S LAST CHANCE Surgical Chaos, Stone Bender, Nova Spot

a STUDIO SEVEN Whatever, White City Graves, 7 pm, $10/$12

FUEL DJ Headache, guests

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

LAST SUPPER CLUB Madness: Guests

NECTAR World’s Finest Dance Party: Guests, 8 pm, $7

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Caliente

CONOR BYRNE Ball of Wax #34: Guests

CROCODILE Alex Ducan, Blumeadows, ZJ Redman, 8 pm

DARRELL’S TAVERN Kissing Potion a EL CORAZON the Dickies, Dreadful Children, Go Like Hell, 8 pm, $13/$15

SUNSET TAVERN NoRey, the Country Lips, the Swearengens, 10:30 pm, $8

TIM’S TAVERN Eroder, Super Edge, Space Waster

TRACTOR TAVERN Eldridge Gravy And The

Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren

OHANA Back to the Day: DJ Estylz

SCARLET TREE Oh So Fresh Fridays: Deejay Tone, DJ Buttnaked, guests

FRIDAY 11/29

DINA PUTS THE MESS IN XMESS

I really don’t even need to mention that the annual Dina Martina Christmas Special opens tonight, now do I? No. I definitely didn’t think so. Re-bar, 8 pm, $20 adv/$25 DOS, 21+, through Dec 31.

SATURDAY 11/30

THE MEN’S CHORUS PLAYS IT AGAIN, SANTA

And I suppose it equally goes without saying that the (formerly “Gay”) Men’s Chorus opens with their annual holiday show tonight, too, right? You know, just like they have for the last 150 years? RIGHT? LA-LA-LA! I miss Halloween. Benaroya Hall, 8 pm, $28–$78, all ages, through Dec 22.

SUNDAY 12/1

MAMA DOES DREAMGIRLS

Warning! Warning! Drag brunch down! I am sorry to report this, but evil, vicious, and totally reliable liars report that Sylvia O’Stayformore’s delightful, popular, but too-damn-far-away drag brunch (Columbia City? Do I need a passport?) has died and gone to drag brunch heaven. These liars further report that the main consideration for killing the show is that Sylvia is now in hot pursuit of a lucrative career as… wait for it… a drag queen Tupperware lady? That throws Tupperware parties, in, um, drag and stuff?

HEARTLAND JLK, Hair & Space Museum, Happy Noose, Witches Titties, 8 pm HIGH DIVE Dream On, Jealous Dogs, the Dee Dees, $8 HIGHLINE Vacant Sea, Oddeven, Sailor Mouth,

Apparently, yes, this is a thing. That, like, actually, is. (Best of luck, Tupperware queen!) Anyway, the point is, that leaves but two kicking and screaming drag brunches: Julia’s Queen of the Brunch and the longest surviving drag brunch in town (or anywhere for all I know), Mimosas with Mama. Now, if you’ve already seen Mama’s 30-Minute Hairspray

and don’t feel the urgent need to go again, YOU ARE SO BEHIND THE TIMES, IT’S SICKENING. That ended ages ago: The new and improved Mimosas with Mama now features a signature 30-Minute Dreamgirls, which might seem a little peculiar, being a bunch of very tucked and very white boys in dresses playing Effie and Deena and so forth, but there you have it. (Also, you’re wrong! Drag queens can do anything.) And you better get to seeing it quick: After the first of the year, the show is gonna flip again, they’ll do 30-Minute Something Else Entirely, and you will have missed the whole famn dabulous thing. Starring Robbie Turner, Tipsy Rose Lee, and, of course, Mama Tits Unicorn/Narwhal, 1 pm, $12 adv/$15 DOS, 21+.

Redwood Plan, the West, Black Swade, 10 pm, $8

TIM’S TAVERN Tragedy, Controversy the Misfit, Influential Minds, Young $hellz TRACTOR TAVERN Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme, Chaotic Noise Marching Corps, 9:30 pm, $15/$20

TRINITY PARISH CHURCH

Randy Schlager

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club

Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal

Bottom Soundsystem, free JAZZ ALLEY Taj Mahal Trio, 7:30 pm, $28.50

KELLS Liam Gallagher

Darkness

OHANA Funk House: DJ Bean One

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Guest DJs

PICTUREPLANE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5TH

JAIL WEDDINGS

Byrd Ensemble, 7:30 pm, $20

a TRIPLE DOOR The Paperboys, 8 pm, $25

TULA’S Bill Anschell Trio, 7:30 pm, $15

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

THE WHITE RABBIT The Highlife Band, Freudian Slurp, Tae Phoenix, $6

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Warren

BALTIC ROOM Good Saturdays: Guest DJs

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

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

CONTOUR Europa Night: Misha Grin, Gil

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

NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ

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

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

SUN 12/1

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Brendan Canning, Holly Miranda, 8 pm, $15

BLUE MOON TAVERN J.P. and the Geminis, 8 pm, free CAFE RACER The Racer Sessions

CONOR BYRNE Open Mic: Guests, 8 pm

CROCODILE Glenn Cannon, Intisaar Jubran, 8 pm EL CORAZON Big B, Dan Valdes, 7:30 pm, $10/$12

HIGH DIVE I Like Science, Planet of Giants, Elbow Coulee, Wildberries, 8 pm, $6 JAI THAI BROADWAY Rock

LITTLE RED HEN Open Mic Acoustic Jam with Bodacious Billy: Guests, 4 pm; Jukehouse Hounds, $3 PIES & PINTS Sunday Night Folk Review: Guests, free THE ROYAL ROOM Dave Marriott Big Band, 7:30 pm

SHIP CANAL GRILL Jay Thomas, noon

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET IAMSU!, Sage the Gemini

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB Mary Leigh Roohan, 4 pm

ST. STEPHEN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH Byrd Ensemble, 3 pm, $20

SUNSET TAVERN Vapor Trails, Godzillian, Myrmidon, Audrey Horne, $6

TRACTOR TAVERN Freedy Johnston, 7 pm, $12/$14

TRIPLE DOOR Abbey Arts Presents the Winter Round: Guests, 7 pm, $13/$15

BY DAVE SEGAL

WEDNESDAY 11/27

LIE BACK AND FEEL NIGHTMARES ON WAX’S FUNK

11/27 WAXAHATCHEE *ALL AGES*

12/1 ARTACHE MARKET X HANGOVER FLEA MARKET (HOLIDAY EDITION) 12/7 LICK!

12/8 THEM HILLS (FT. MEMBERS OF BROKEN BELLS, HELLA, PHOSPHORESCENT)

12/12 THE FAMILY CURSE // CONSTANT LOVERS 12/13 BOOTIE SEATTLE: HOLIDAY PARTY 12/14 HOLOGRAMS

12/15 ROCKARAOKE 12/16 DON PEYOTE

12/18 THE UNLIMITED HORRORS (ROKY ERICKSON TRIBUTE BAND) 12/19 NOUELA

12/20 MOTOR IX FT. PETE SWANSON 12/21 SRG & CHOP SUEY HOLIDAY PARTY FT. HE WHOSE OX IS GORED 12/22 HATTERS FOR HIRE (CD RELEASE) *ALL-AGES* 1/22 DISAPPEARS // DREAMSALON 1/23 DTCV (EX-GUIDED BY VOICES)

Warp Records’ longest-running act, Nightmares on Wax, have settled into a familiar style that suggests leader George Evelyn subsists on the most potent pot in the world. But NOW’s anomalous 1991 debut full-length, A Word of Science: The First and Final Chapter, was actually more redolent of LSD than weed, reflecting that era’s immersion in acid house and freaky electro. The six albums that followed, though, slotted comfortably into the triphop sphere, albeit with a higher emphasis on tropical atmospheres and dubby inflections. At core, Evelyn’s a mellow seducer, a suave manipulator of moods, and a deft architect of rhythms designed to get you horizontal while keeping your hips nodding and your head grinding. The man has a doctorate in laidback funk, and the title of NOW’s new album, Feelin’ Good, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. With Theoretics and Introcut Neumos, 8 pm, $17 adv, 21+.

FRIDAY 11/29

NADASTROM’S MOOMBAHTON, SINDEN’S TECH-HOUSE ODDITIES

Nadastrom (Dave Nada and Matt Nordstrom of Washington, DC) are progenitors of moombahton, an oft-rambunctious fusion of house and reggaeton that began adding humidity to dance clubs in 2009. It’s typically barrel-chested, raucous

dance music that moves at about 110 bpm and is full of exuberant exhortations in gruff voices. Fun stuff, mostly. Sinden is the best artist on Diplo’s Mad Decent label, for my money. Whereas many on the MD roster pander too hard to EDM’s LCD, Sinden infuses his dance tracks with plenty of weird textures and oddly hypnotic rhythms. In fact, I’d say he’s the best artist on Fool’s Gold, too. A great case in point is the recent Ring Around the Moon EP on that label. Its four techhouse tracks revel in a playful yet dark psychedelia that never descends into corniness. With Salva and Jameson Just Neumos, 9 pm, $18 adv, 21+.

WORTHY’S BASS-SICK HOUSE MUSIC

Seattle loves San Francisco label Dirtybird, as witnessed by the frequency with which its cofounder Claude VonStroke and artists like J.Phlip and Justin Martin play here. Its operatives balance crowd-pleasing production qualities that also stand up to headphone scrutiny. Worthy is yet one more Dirtybirdman on the global circuit, performing at big festivals like Ultra, Love Parade, and Burning Man. A favorite of filthy-rich DJs like Diplo, Richie Hawtin, Carl Cox, and Sven Väth, Worthy creates extroverted house music that taps into breakbeat’s robust funkiness and future bass’s obscene low end to aid in the movement of rear ends. Things seem to be twerking out well for Worthy in this regard. See Sound Lounge, 9 pm, $15 adv, 21+.

Bones, Blackburn, 7:30 pm, $8/$10

by

6:30

Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free

THE WHITE RABBIT

Michael Shrieve’s Spellbinder, $6

DJ

BALTIC ROOM Jam Jam: Zion’s Gate Sound, $5

BARBOZA Minted: Icon

Mondays: Sean Majors, guests, free, DJ Swervewon, 100proof, Sean Cee, Blueyedsoul, free

COMPANY BAR Rock and Roll Chess Night: DJ Plantkiller, 8 pm, free

CONOR BYRNE Get the Spins: Guest DJs, free

CONTOUR Manic Mondays: Guests

HAVANA Manic Mondays: DJ Jay Battle, free

THE HIDEOUT Introcut, guests, free

LO-FI Jam Jam: Zion’s Gate, Sound Selecta, Element, Mista Chatman, $5

THE MIX Bring Your Own Vinyl Night: Guests, 6 pm

MOE BAR Minted Mondays:

DJ Swervewon, 100proof, Sean Cee, Blueyedsoul, free

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND SIN: DJ Keanu, free

OHANA DJ Hideki

PONY Dirty Deeds: Guest

DJs Q NIGHTCLUB Electric Penetration, 6 pm, free; Reflect, 8 pm, free

TUES 12/3

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben

Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Kid Smpl, Zoolab, Newaxeyes, Algebraic Sattelite, 8 pm, $6/$7

CAFE RACER Jacobs Posse

CHOP SUEY Anna Oxygen, S, Childbirth, 8 pm, $8

CONOR BYRNE Ol’ Time

Social: the Tallboys, 9 pm a CROCODILE Church of Misery, Saviours, Wizard Rifle, 8 pm, $15

EL CORAZON Danielia Cotton, Jonny Marnell, 8 pm, $8/$10

ELECTRIC TEA GARDEN

Monktail Creative Music

Concern, DJ Shonuph, free HIGH DIVE Joe Rosati, 8 pm, $6

JAZZ ALLEY Eldar Djangirov, 7:30 pm, $22.50

KELLS Liam Gallagher

KEYARENA Deck the Hall Ball 2013: Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, the Head And The Heart, guests

LITTLE RED HEN Jerkels

MAC’S TRIANGLE PUB Open Mic: free

THE MIX Jazz Night: Don Mock, Steve Kim, Jacques Willis, 8 pm

THE OULD TRIANGLE Open Mic: Guests, 8 pm, free

OUTWEST Wine and Jazz Night: Tutu Jazz Quartet, free OWL N’ THISTLE Jazz Improv Night: Guests

SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free

SUNSET TAVERN Natalie Stovall, the Drive, 8:30 pm, $8

TIM’S TAVERN Open Mic: Linda Lee, 8 pm

TRACTOR TAVERN Escondido, 8 pm, $10 a TRIPLE DOOR Ed Kowalczyk, 7:30 pm, $35/$40

THE WHITE RABBIT Downbeat Dustoff: Guests, free

This week’s poster (by Jordan Rundle of the band Newaxeyes) may look pretty straightforward at first, but the beauty is in the subtle details and textures. Not to mention the cool little logo on the lower right. AARON HUFFMAN

Kid Smpl w/Zoolab, Newaxeyes, Algebraic Satellite Tues Dec 3, Barboza

DJ 95 SLIDE Chicken & Waffles: Supreme La Rock, DJ Rev, free

BALTIC ROOM Drum & Bass

Tuesdays: Guests

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

THE EAGLE Pitstop: DJ Nark

HAVANA Word Is Bond: Hoot

BY BRITTNIE FULLER

WEDNESDAY 11/27

WAXAHATCHEE, SWEARIN’, DEAD BARS

If the phrase “wah-oh wah-oh” and the act of fist-pumping make you squeamish, you should probably avoid this show. If, however, emotionally transparent indie rock tickles your endlessly selfdoubting post-college twentysomething psyche, you should probably attend and smile/cry/do whatever makes that student debt feel okay! Twins Katie and Allison Crutchfield achieved something like cult status in DIY folk punk under the moniker P.S. Eliot, but now each have respective projects in the bigger and more fedorawearing world of indie rock.

Katie Crutchfield writes startlingly honest, punktinged folk-pop songs as Waxahatchee. But since I’m currently averse to singersongwriter/acoustic projects (I call it the “Elliott Smith Syndrome”), I’m admittedly more stoked on Allison Crutchfield’s slackadaisically delightful pop-punk band, Swearin’. Whereas Waxahatchee takes the volume down and intimacy up, Swearin’ is loud on both fronts. On would-be hit “Here to Hear” from their 2012 self-titled debut, co-songwriter Kyle Gilbride gets almost infringement-level J Mascis with his near-frenzied slacker rasp: “I keep thinking/Is this as good as it gets?” It just might be, if you crave classic ’90s slacker finesse and inescapably catchy

and Howl, $3 after 11 pm LO-FI Stop Biting: Introcut, guests, $5

MERCURY Die: Black Maru, Major Tom, $5

MOE BAR Cool.: DJ Cory Alfano, DJ Cody Votolato, free

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Vicious Dolls: DJ Rachael, 9 pm, $5

OHANA DJ Marc Sense

WILDROSE Taco Tuesday: Guest DJs

hooks. With local pop-punks Dead Bars, whose first single, “Funhouse Monday,” in addition to spewing forth heartfelt gobs of earnest punk jubilance, also hints at their name’s inspiration. Wah-oh wah-oh! Chop Suey, 8 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS.

SATURDAY 11/30

RORO, TI FEMME, SUE ANN HARKEY, STALEBIRTH

If you’re looking for something completely different, Norwegian composers Roro and Ti Femme will be weirding up your local DIY radio station tonight. If the words “improvisation” and “found sound” don’t inspire fear, be sure to check out Roro’s minimalist percussion and multi-instrumentalist Ti Femme’s long-form, chant-intensive freak-outs Also don’t miss local improv guitarist Sue Ann Harkey, who creates harp-guitar and otherworldly 12-string ragas guided by Middle Eastern and African tonalities. Harkey’s been active in the Seattle and New York experimental music/ visual arts scenes since the late ’70s; her “futurist folk” songs form a vertiginous, hypnagogic blur. Opening is the grossly named local trio Stalebirth, whose cassette debut, Comepuppy, contains six prog-length drone/noise jams with mostly incomprehensible banshee wails and a trancelike percussiveness that occasionally warps into free-jazz pagan sacrifice Hollow Earth Radio, 8:30 pm.

FILM

Film Review Revue

A Starry Nativity, a Tragic Athlete, a Quasi-Parodic Action Flick, and a British Buddy Film (Starring Judi Dench!)

Black Nativity

dir. Kasi Lemmons Wide release

Written by the poet Langston Hughes and first performed in 1961, Black Nativity is a retelling of the classic Christmas story featuring gospel music and an all-black cast. It’s also a Seattle institution, with the talent-packed local production—directed by Jacqueline Moscou, choreographed by Donald Byrd, with musical direction by the Total Experience Gospel Choir’s Pastor Patrinell Wright—playing to packed houses (first at the Intiman, then at the Moore) every year from 1998 to 2012.

At the center of Black Nativity is the simple and familiar story of a mother, a father, and their son. These characters aren’t so much real-life humans as figures in a mythic play about parents and children, love and fear, judgment and forgiveness. In the Seattle stage production, the story is brought to life with serious theatrics, provided by a 30-member choir, nearly a dozen dancers, and a live band. In the Hollywood film adaptation, things are powered by original Raphael Saadiq compositions—performed in classic musical style, with characters bursting out in song during regular life—and interstitial rapping by Nas.

But the primary draw of the film is its A-list talent (Saadiq and Nas included). Nothing can enliven a big, broad, familiar story like great actors, ones who see clichés as challenges, and who can fill the spindliest outline of a character with vibrant life. Forest Whitaker leads the charge as the pastor and patriarch, with a luminous Angela Bassett as his wife. Jennifer Hudson plays the prodigal daughter with a vanity-free earthiness and a humongous voice. And Mary J. Blige plays some semimystical angel figure in a hilarious white Afro wig. The result is essentially

his climb to global superstardom. In one scene, Cooke walks around his old Brooklyn hood with an ESPN reporter, explaining how, once settled in the NBA, he will return to and invest in the rough, poverty-stricken hood. He wants to build a YMCA over here and a movie theater over there. He wants to be the next Magic Johnson, an entrepreneur who connects corporate America with the streets. No one laughs at or questions the reality of his plans. The words coming out of his mouth are as good as the money coming out of an ATM.

But there is a problem: Cooke is lazy. He hates waking up early, he hates doing pushups, his grades are dismal, and he likes to party with gold-diggers. This laziness, which generates bad decision after bad decision, eventually costs him his brilliant career. He is not picked during the 2001 draft, spends a few years playing ball in markets in Asia and South America, gains weight, and ends up an ordinary guy watching LeBron James on TV. The end of the film might make you cry.

But everything else is… pretty okay. The script doesn’t sing or anything, but Stallone doesn’t embarrass himself, either. Franco is just the right flavor of ham, reveling in his petty little kingdom. Winona Ryder holds her own as a washed-up biker skank—she looks angular these days, and it suits her—and a deathly thin Kate Bosworth agitates the plot as Gator’s meth-addicted sister. Homefront delivers a higher class of cast than Statham usually gets to bounce off of, and as it turns out, that makes all the difference. PAUL CONSTANT

a full-length Christmas music video about the power of love and forgiveness, but the starpacked cast and Kasi Lemmons’s stylish direction makes it all float by like a dream.

DAVID SCHMADER

It’s impossible to watch this documentary, which opens by following a high-school basketball player on the verge of superstardom, and not compare it with the ’90s masterpiece Hoop Dreams Lenny Cooke is a fine doc, but unlike Dreams—which is a masterful work of cinematic sociology, presenting a grand picture of a time, a political context, and an exhaustive history of the material consequences of racial oppression—Cooke is mostly about the character flaw of an individual who once had the whole world in his hand and, like a fool, dropped it.

The documentary begins in 2001. Lenny Cooke is at the end of his secondary education and rated number one in the whole nation. Yes, he is, according to spools of statistics and the deepest professional analysis you can imagine, the best high school basketball player in the country. No one doubts his future of fame and large living. Even LeBron James, at a prestigious basketball camp, sees Cooke as the person to beat on

Watch the trailer for Homefront, and you won’t quite be able to tell if it’s parody or not. You’ve got Jason Statham starring, of course, as a tough guy with a history; in this case, he’s a cop who used to wear a really bad wig and go undercover with biker gangs. Statham is seen in several golden-framed scenes interacting with his precocious young daughter (Izabela Vidovic), where she says something about how much she misses her mommy, who died about a year ago. Statham misses her, too. Their decent new life in a small Louisiana town is endangered when they cross paths with a smarmy meth cook named Gator who’s played by—here’s where the parody part really kicks in—James Franco. Is this one of Franco’s famous art-school projects, a shrugging pastiche made up of the most cliché plot elements imaginable? And what if I told you the screenplay was written by Sylvester Stallone? What would you say then?

Philomena is a quirky movie about an adorable old Irish lady—played by none other than Dame Judi Dench—and its release is timed to coincide with prime holiday family-movie-viewing season. You’re right to be skeptical. All signs point to schlock.

But Philomena is excellent, thanks to the brilliant odd-couple pairing of Judi Dench and Steve Coogan—and to a script that balances heart, humor, and a fierce sense of moral outrage.

Closely based on a true story, Philomena is about a disgraced government official, Martin Sexsmith (Coogan, who also cowrote the script), who picks up a freelance writing assignment to keep himself busy after he’s forced to resign from his job. It’s a human-interest story: An elderly woman, Philomena (Dench), is trying to track down the son she gave birth to in a convent more than 50 years before, when she was young, unwed, and forced to give her fatherless baby up for adoption. Her mission takes her to the United States, with Martin a cynical guide and counterpoint to her unerring cute-little-old-lady cheer.

In Homefront, James Franco is just the right flavor of ham.

But Homefront is surprisingly watchable, especially when compared with the generic action-movie product Statham’s been pumping out lately. The stakes are refreshingly low (Gator is a small-time crook with aspirations to become a lower-middle-class crook), and the action is fast and dirty. Unfortunately, the action is nearly impossible to follow, too. Anything good caught on camera seems to happen in spite of first-time director Gary Fleder, who traffics almost entirely in actionmovie clichés.

Philomena is deeply personally invested in finding her son, but Martin is looking for a good story—a story that begins to look pretty good indeed when it becomes clear that it involves eeeevil nuns and faith-based oppression in both Ireland and the US. The tension between their respective agendas only compounds the many ways in which these two are different: Philomena is deeply religious, while Martin is an atheist; Philomena is kindly to a fault, and Martin is kind of a dick. Philomena is a surprisingly complex little film that pulls off some impressive balancing acts; chief among them is that it permits two very different worldviews and personality types to coexist without condemning either one. Dench and Coogan should franchise an odd-couple buddy comedy series, because their pairing is perfect. ALISON HALLETT

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/film

LIMITED RUN

THE BIG LEBOWSKI

If pressed to name my single favorite moment in my single favorite Coen brothers movie, The Big Lebowski, it would be a three-way tie between Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski’s dumpster-bumping car crash, the sheriff’s assault on the Dude with a coffee mug, and the Raymond Chandler–esque discovery of Jackie Treehorn’s hard-on doodle. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) SIFF Film Center, Fri-Sat 9 pm.

THE BOOK THIEF

The film adaptation of the best-selling novel about a girl growing up with a family that’s harboring a Jewish refugee in Nazi Germany. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Wed 5, 8 pm, Thurs-Sun 2, 5, 8 pm, Mon-Tues 5, 8 pm.

CAMILLE CLAUDEL, 1915

A biopic about the committed (to an asylum, that is) French sculptor, starring Juliette Binoche. SIFF Film Center, Fri 6:30 pm, Sat-Sun 4:15, 6:30 pm, Mon-Tues 6:30 pm.

CASABLANCA

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walked into his. Central Cinema, Fri 7 pm, Sat-Sun 3, 7 pm.

DAYS OF HEAVEN

Days of Heaven, from 1978, takes visual luxuries that the story—about a love triangle between two migrant workers and a wealthy landowner—can’t quite justify, and it is slow. But when you see those blissfully arid images pouring through a 35mm print, you won’t care. (ANNIE WAGNER) Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 9 pm, Sun 5, 7, 9 pm, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.

DONNIE DARKO

Having studied Donnie Darko carefully a few times, I still can’t tell if the plot’s weird calculus—what actually happens, to whom, and where, and when—actually adds up to anything more than a semi-random sequence of related but unconnected events. What I can say, however, is that the film resonates with a uniquely American kind of sadness. (SEAN NELSON) Central Cinema, Fri-Mon 9:30 pm.

THE GREAT BEAUTY

Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty is a movie about an aging but still famous, rich, and admired writer who lives in Rome, is often sad, and yet really knows how to party. Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) is Rome’s top socialite. He knows everyone, and everyone wants to be associated with him. The life he leads in the great city is exactly the life he wanted as a young man: “When I came to Rome at age 26, I didn’t want to simply be a socialite, I wanted to become the king of socialites. And I succeeded. I didn’t just want to attend parties. I wanted the power to make them fail,” he says, as he walks his apartment at dawn after a long night of parties, witty conversations, and sex with a gorgeous and rich middle-aged woman. Jep is 65, lonely, and often thinks about the first and only novel he wrote. Jep loves walking the streets of Rome at night or as the sun rises—he sleeps during the day. Jep lives next to the Coliseum. Jep never bores his friends or the audience watching this excellent movie. This film has a great opening, lots of lushly photographed moments, and ends perfectly. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Varsity, Fri-Sun 1:45, 4:45, 7:45 pm, Mon-Tues 4:45, 7:45 pm.

LENNY COOKE

See review, page 51. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues 7, 9 pm.

THE LIMEY

A one-night-only screening of Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 crime thriller—featuring a killer performance by Terence Stamp—presented as the closing-night special of SAM’s 36th annual Film Noir Series. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Dec 5 at 7:30 pm.

MAP PRESENTS: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE

SLAYER TRIVIA NIGHT

It’s a trivia night about Buffy, for Buffy buffs. And hey, it’s a benefit for Theater Schmeater, which is saving up to buy a new home for itself in Belltown. Central Cinema, Tues Dec 3 at 7 pm.

PHILOMENA

See review, page 51. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Wed 5:15, 8:15 pm, Thurs-Sun 1:45, 5:15, 8:15 pm, Mon-Tues 5:15, 8:15 pm.

SAVAGE STREETS

Linda Blair plays a high-school girl who takes justice into her own hands as she seeks revenge against a violent gang of weirdos. On 35 mm. Grand Illusion, Sat-Sun 11 pm

SOUL POET: A LOU REED TRIBUTE IN MUSIC AND IMAGES

See Stranger Suggests, page 29. Northwest Film Forum, Sat Nov 30 at 9 pm.

TRASHED

Jeremy Irons travels around the world to see beautiful locations tainted by pollution. Jeremy Irons hates looking at garbage, so please try to produce less garbage. Keystone Church, Fri Nov 29 at 7 pm.

NOW PLAYING

12 YEARS A SLAVE

The brutal tale of 12 Years a Slave comes from the 1853 autobiography of Solomon Northup. Northup was a free black man living in New York with his wife and children when, in 1841, he was kidnapped, transported south, sold to the highest bidder, and subjected to a barbaric 12-year enslavement. In the film, Northup is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, an accomplished British actor who does extraordinary work here. Throughout 12 Years are scenes of such barbarity, brought to life by actors talented enough to tap every nuance of that barbarity, that at times I had to look away. But amid the violence is so much identifiable humanity, you’ll leave sore.

(DAVID SCHMADER)

ALL IS LOST

The nearly wordless All Is Lost focuses, with exhausting intensity, on a single man. (In the closing credits, he’s listed only as “Our Man.”) He’s played by Robert Redford—wrinkled, presumably, from both years and water. When a yacht he’s sailing hits a shipping container in the middle of the Indian Ocean, water rushes into his cabin with startling speed; everything that follows charts his attempts to stay alive. Grim and quiet and melancholy, All Is Lost is tough and relentless—but perhaps the most impressive thing about it is that Redford and writer/director J.C. Chandor make this story as exciting and as touching

as it is harrowing. (ERIK HENRIKSEN)

THE ARMSTRONG LIE

In 2009, Alex Gibney commenced work on a documentary about cyclist Lance Armstrong’s heroic post-retirement return to the Tour de France. Then the doping scandal broke and the project was shelved—until now. In The Armstrong Lie, Gibney juxtaposes his pre-scandal Armstrong interviews with an intricate play-by-play of how it all unraveled, painting a compelling portrait of an extraordinary American all but ruined by reckless ambition, lies, and narcissism. (DAVID SCHMADER)

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

Blue Is the Warmest Color ranks among the best love stories I’ve ever seen. High schooler Adèle falls for bluehaired college student Emma the first time she sees her. Adèle is needy, aimless, and libidinous, and the two enter into a beautifully adolescent relationship, all hungry sex and deep, pseudo-intellectual conversations. As the years pass and the women age, the beautiful, vague Adèle slowly begins to come into focus, but it’s not until she screws things up with Emma that she—and we—understand how much the relationship really means to her. (ALISON HALLETT)

BLUE JASMINE

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

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

When career partier Ron Woodroof contracted AIDS in 1986, the disease was still, in the public’s eye, very much limited to the realm of gay men. Woodroof overcame not only his deeply ingrained homophobia but, for many years, the disease itself: He smuggled in unapproved medications from Mexico, Japan, and elsewhere, selling them to HIVpositive patients while the FDA remained in Big Pharma’s thrall. It’s an interesting story, but the real meat of Dallas Buyers Club is Matthew McConaughey’s performance. He dropped 50 pounds, filtering his Texas good-ol’-boy schtick through Woodroof’s wiry bigotry and rage. The film sputters at the end with some directorial overreach, but for the first

I TELEVISION TM

BY WM. TM STEVEN HUMPHREY

A CHARLIE BROWN POP QUIZ

Welcome, class. Please take out a number 2 pencil, because it’s time for this week’s “Holiday TV Pop Quiz,” and… OH, DON’T YOU GROAN AT ME, YOUNG MISTER AND MISSY! You knew what you were getting into when you signed up to read this column, so stifle that back-sass and let’s get to work!

Today’s quiz will be about the animated holiday classic A Charlie Brown Christmas (CBS, Mon Dec 2, 8 pm). Please provide complete answers for each, and ABSOLUTELY NO CHEATING OR WISENHEIMERY. You have one hour. Begin.

1. It’s Christmastime, and Charlie Brown claims to enjoy “getting presents, sending Christmas cards, and decorating trees”—so why is he not happy? Is he ever happy? Name a few possible causes for his depression, besides holiday malaise and prepubescent-onset baldness.

2. At one point, Charlie says, “I know nobody likes me—why do we have to have a holiday to emphasize it?” Is Charlie’s self-loathing a contributing factor to his general unlikability? Would you classify him more as “manic-depressive” or a “textbook narcissist”?

3. Which of the following responses is the most acceptable reaction to the phrase “Charlie Brown is directing our Christmas play”?

a. “Oh no, we’re doomed.”

b. “This will be the worst Christmas play ever.”

c. Dance around the stage while Schroeder plays a tiny piano.

d. All of the above.

hour and a half, McConaughey’s exceptional performance is riveting enough. (NED LANNAMANN)

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

The best way to watch the second Hunger Games movie is to do what the folks hosting the press screening made me do: Before the film, spend a full hour of your life watching a live-stream of Yahoo!-branded professional starfuckers splooge their adoration at the outfits and bodies of the celebrities involved in the film, who were attending the real premiere in LA. The exuberant Hollywood hoopla surrounding this franchise—who’s tweeting what about star Jennifer Lawrence’s legs; “How do you pick out a dress for an event like this?!?!”—is a cunning preamble to the film itself, because it is exactly the kind of mind-numbing garbage the film is about to satirize. If you haven’t read the books or seen the first film, a recap: In a dystopian future, the uber-wealthy Capitol—the seat of both government and culture—forces the children from the outlying districts of a desperately barren North America to battle to the death for the entertainment of Capitol residents, people wealthy enough to gorge themselves and watch reality TV. (The metaphor is not intended to be subtle.) This sequel is set in a time of riotous civil unrest in the districts, where the government is trying to quash a full-scale revolution. Jennifer Lawrence, as the game-winning protagonist Katniss, is expected to parade around the country in entertaining outfits so nobody notices that the districts’ masses look like subjects in a Dorthea Lange photo. As her mentor (Woody Harrelson) warns her, she is “a distraction so people forget what the real problems are.” So to watch actual Jennifer Lawrence, dolled up in an enormous, completely transparent gown, walk down a red carpet—to catch her blink, take a quick breath, look human for a second, and then pop on a big flashbulb-friendly smile… do I need to go on? The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, like the book it draws on, may be heavy-handed and a bit uneven. But its own obnoxious PR machine is a perfect foil to its message, making the questions the film raises about consent, distraction, and revolution feel freshly relevant and complex. (ANNA MINARD)

NEBRASKA

An elderly man named Woody (Bruce Dern) with a drinking problem and what seems to be early-stage dementia receives a letter announcing he’s won a sweepstakes prize. His adult son (Will Forte) tries to convince him that he’s actually won nothing beyond the opportunity to buy magazines, but Woody will not be deterred, and soon, father and son are on a prize-related road trip from Montana to Nebraska. Alexander Payne’s Nebraska is a VIP artwork packed with the type of tiny, messy interactions that flower into something almost mythic when writ large, in black and white. (DAVID SCHMADER)

4. When Lucy threatens to physically assault Linus, he responds, “Christmas is not only getting too commercial, it’s getting too dangerous.” Do you agree, and if so, why? Is there a better holiday for beating up loved ones? Why do you think domestic violence is funny, you monster?

Supply three legitimate reasons why I shouldn’t have you arrested right now.

5. Lucy says, “We all know Christmas is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a big Eastern syndicate, you know.” What “Eastern syndicate” is Lucy talking about?

a. Italian

b. Jewish

c. Asian

d. Homosexual

e. All of the above.

6. When Charlie is asked to choose a tree for the Christmas play, he picks a real tree over an aluminum one. Were the others correct in saying, “Boy, are you stupid, Charlie Brown,” “Can’t you tell a good tree from a poor tree?” and “You’re hopeless, Charlie Brown”? Isn’t it more environmentally friendly to choose an aluminum tree because it can be used repeatedly? Does it further the “commercialization of Christmas” more to buy a tree once, or again and again? Aluminum trees are the best. This is not a question. This is a statement of fact.

7. Linus explains the “true meaning of Christmas” by quoting the Bible’s version of the birth of Christ (“a babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”). Was Linus saying that those who do not subscribe to the Judeo-Christian mind-set cannot possibly understand the “true meaning of Christmas”? If so, isn’t Linus defying the words of Christ, who preached the values of inclusiveness? Could it be that Linus actually doesn’t know what the shit he’s talking about? Discuss.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of Nov 27

ARIES (March 21–April 19): Thinking inside the box will be a crime against your nature in the coming weeks. The last place you want to be is in a pigeonhole. I advise you to stay far away from tight squeezes, claustrophobic “sanctuaries,” and “convenient” confinements. If you’re in a onesize-fits-all situation, you simply won’t be able to access your highest intelligence. So then where should you be? I am rooting for you to wander into the wild frontiers where unsanctioned wonders and marvels await you. I’d love for you to find virgin terrain and uncharted territories where the boring old rules don’t apply.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): Mike Finnigan is a veteran keyboardist and blues vocalist who has toured with more than 20 major acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Leonard Cohen, and Los Lonely Boys. There’s a primal quality to his singing. It’s gritty and fluid and tempestuous, almost feral at times. I understand perfectly why Bonnie Raitt has called him a “tall drink of bacon.” The sound he makes with his voice is that lush and tasty. Can you guess his astrological sign? It’s Taurus, of course. I’m naming him your patron saint this week because you yourself are as close as you have ever come to being a tall drink of bacon.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): French painter Henri Matisse thought highly of his own work. He tended to ignore critics because he didn’t think they understood his art well enough to produce intelligent critiques. There was one person whose opinion he was willing to heed, though— a single colleague who he said had earned to right to evaluate and assess his art: Pablo Picasso. I encourage you, Gemini, to come up with your own short list of people whose judgment you totally trust and respect. It’s a good time to seek out their feedback on how you’re doing.

CANCER (June 21–July 22): How is it possible that you have come so far and worked so diligently only to be resigned now to hanging out in limbo, waiting around for the lucky break that may or may not ever arrive? I’m here today to escort you out of this infernal place. If you resist, my assignment is to drag you out. Why am I so adamant? Because I am sure it’s a mistake for you to be passive and hope for the best. You need to resume working diligently, focused for now on what’s right in front of you without worrying too much about the big picture. In my opinion, that approach will lead you to unforeseen help—and a clarification of the big picture.

LEO (July 23–Aug 22): Your levels of personal magic are high. The radiance beaming out of your eyes is extra sparkly. There’s an artistry to the way you are expressing yourself. Without even trying, you’re exuding natural charisma and animal magnetism. In light of all these advantages, I suspect you will have an elevated capacity for both giving and receiving pleasure. In fact, I predict that your ability to feel really good and make other people feel really good will be at a peak. I hereby designate this the Week of Supreme Bliss.

VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): The BBC reported on an expert who combs Switzerland’s Risoud Forest to find the spruce trees whose wood can be made into the highest quality violins. After years of experience, Lorenzo Pellegrini knows which few trees will produce instruments with the most resonant tones. They grow slowly and have few knots. They need to have had enough water to grow strong, but not so much water that they’re mushy. Your task in the coming weeks, Virgo, has a certain resemblance to the master treepicker’s work. It’s time for you to start selecting and gathering the raw materials you will use to craft your own lyrical story in 2014.

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): Here’s the bad news: For all of us, including you, there is a gap between our intentions and our actual effects. Here’s the good news: Now is your special time to narrow that gap. More bad news: All of us, you included, are periodically guilty of sending out mixed messages. We confuse people with our ambivalence; what we say is sometimes different from what we feel. More good news: Now is your special time to reduce your mixed messages to as close to zero as possible. One more taste of bad news: Like all of us, you are a bit hypocritical. You engage in behavior that you criticize in others. You don’t practice what you preach. One last piece of good news: Now is your special time to work on being forthright, genuine, and consistent.

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): “I am very fond of strawberries and cream,” said author Dale Carnegie, “but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish.” That’s a good teaching story for you, Scorpio. In order to get your desires fulfilled by the people who have the power to do that, you should give them what they actually long for—not what you long for, nor what you wish they would long for. This is always true, of course, but it’s especially applicable to what’s going on in your life right now.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): Touted as a prime source of “kick-ass spirituality,” author Danielle LaPorte has advice that’s

good for you to hear. “You will always be too much of something for someone,” she says, “too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy.” But that’s exactly as it should be, she adds. It would be a mistake to “round out your edges,” because then you would “lose your edge.” And I’m here to tell you that you need all of your edge right now, Sagittarius. It’s time to ignore people’s mediocre expectations and push past their limits. To be true to yourself, you will probably have to be too much of something for several someones.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): Going into my spiritual mentoring session with the priestess, I had the intention of discovering truths about myself I didn’t know before. That meant stirring up revelations about my ignorance as well as my potentials. I wanted assistance in facing my flaws as well as in tapping into my dormant powers. It worked. Her guidance was a potent catalyst. I was able to shed the debilitating nonsense stories I’d been telling myself about who I am. I awakened strengths that had been asleep. What I wish for you, Capricorn—indeed, what I predict for you—is a comparable experience. To expedite matters, go out in search of a person, adventure, or breakthrough that can help provide you with the kind of prod I received.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): I bet people will be gossiping about you more than usual. Is there anything you can do to ensure that it’s mostly benevolent gossip? Yes, there is. First, make sure that when you gossip about others, you are unfailingly positive in your comments. If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, don’t say it. Second, be on your best behavior. Communicate clearly and don’t even think about taking unethical shortcuts. Finally, contribute more inspirational energy than usual to every group you’re part of. Be an effervescent team player.

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): Maybe your ego isn’t big enough. I’m serious. Is it possible that you could benefit from being more proud of yourself? Would it be healthy for you to give yourself more credit for the struggles you have weathered and the skills you have mastered and the beauty you have managed to forge out of the chaotic raw materials that life has given you? I’ve got a good feeling about this, Pisces. I can imagine you summoning the playful courage you will need to express more confidence. I can even picture you beginning to fantasize about embarking on certain stirring adventures you’ve never believed you were strong enough to try before now.

Homework: What part of you is too tame? How can you inspire it to seek wilder ways of knowing? Write Freewillastrology.com.

RESTAURANT/HOTELS/CLUBS

APARTMENTS

PIONEER SQUARE $749 The Addison on Fourth has studios starting at just $749 a month. One month free with 12 lease! Located within blocks of countless buses and the light rail. All utilities included! Pets welcome. Contact us at www.addisononfourth.com or (206) 682-2601

QUEEN ANNE $1,200 New 1 & 2 Bd top floor w/balcony & view. $1200-$1800 w/s/g included. Sorry no pets. Onsite laundry facilities. $600 deposit and 12 month lease. 206-

ROOMMATES

Talk with caring agency specializing in matching Birthmothers with Families Nationwide. LIVING EXPENSES PAID. Call 24/7 AbbyÕs One True Gift Adoptions. 866-4136293. Void in Illinois/New Mexico/ Indiana (AAN CAN)

VIAGRA 100MG, 40 pills+/4 free, only $99.00. Save Big Now, Discreet shipping. Call 1-800-374-2619 Today! (AAN CAN)

AUDIO/VIDEO

PA/SOUND SYSTEMS AVAILABLE for corporate functions, conferences, weddings,

is an equal opportunity employer.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

EARN $500 A DAY Airbrush & Media Makeup Artists For: Ads - TVFilm - Fashion Train & Build Portfolio in 1 week. AwardMakeupSchool.com (AAN CAN)

LESSONS

BEGINNING VIOLIN AND Piano with Annie Ford. Ages 6 and up! $45/ hr or $35 for half hour. Ask about monthly rates.

SING WITH CONFIDENCE. Beginners welcome. Breathing/Range Dev. Sliding Scale. Call Rosy 782-9305 singwithconfidence.com

SING! JANET 206-781-5062 FreetheVoiceWithin.com THE VOCALIST STUDIO We Train Vocal Athletes www.thevocaliststudio.com Scream technique, 5 Octave range. Eliminate Tension. Downtown Seattle studio. 425.444.5053

MUSICIANS

AVAILABLE

AVANT-ROCK BAND SEEKING violinist. Swans, John Zorn, Uzi, Live Skull, Glenn Branca, Zero 7, Laibach, Of Cabbages and Kings, Jarboe, Amber Asylum, Tribes of Neurot, traditional Spanish, Irish, Mediterranean and Arabian music. No drugs. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@hotmail. com/www.myspace.com/branavinix

COMPOSER AND BLUES/JAZZ pianist, Rolf Jones-Moore, will be available to perform a 2 hour concert for your event or house concert. Visit his website, rolfjonesmoore.com, for a complete audio experience of his music.

DRUMMER AVAILABLE. 45 yrs exp./ good equipment. Experienced in all types of music. Appearances with many bands in the PNW. Seeking to find older musicians to form a group in the Everett/North Seattle. Contact: Wild Bill 425-265-7103

MUSIC INSTRUCTION & SERVICES

EXPERIENCED VERSATILE GUITARIST available for recording session work. I also have instruction experience. Styles range from classical, delta & Chicago Blues to modern Metal, and almost everything in between. Can fill in for vacant gig spots. Own gear & transportation.

LEGENDARY PIANIST AVAILABLE

Opened for Jeff Bridges! I’m Richard Peterson, 65 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.

MUSICIANS WANTED

AUXILIARY PERCUSSIONIST NEEDED to round and augment the percussive element of experimental rock band. Polyrhythms, metal percussion, timbales, bottles and knives will be used, along with other implements. Black Flag, Swans, Savage Republic. No drugs. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@ hotmail.com/www.rendingsinew.com

DRUMMER SOUGHT FOR avantrock band. Swans, My Bloody Valentine, Live Skull, Godspeed You!Black Emperor, Jarboe, Angels of Light, Diamanda Galas, John Zorn, early Pink Floyd, Zero 7, Glenn Branca, traditional Irish, Spanish, Mediterranean and Arabian music. No drugs. 206.547.2615/ omaritaylor@hotmail.com.

BAND REHEARSAL SPACE

1 Shared Rehearsal Room @ $220/month Incl. 36hrs/month & Private closet Visit wildersoundstudios.com Located in SODO Seattle. Contact Samantha 425.445.9165 s.wilder@wildersoundstudio.com

KING COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT, STATE OF WASHINGTON

SAMRAWIT GHEBREHIWET, Petitioner, v. DAVID LAMON YOUNG, Respondent. No. 13-3-11166-1SEA.

SUMMONS The State of Washington to DAVID LAMON YOUNG, Respondent: You are hereby summoned to appear within of this summons, to wit, within sixty days after the 6th day of November 2013 and defend

tioner SAMRAWIT GHEBREHIWET, and serve

DRUMMER WANTED FOR Rock band by heavy guitar player. Influences include Sabbath, Blue Cheer, MC5, Stooges, Misfits and Monster Magnet. skgrease@hotmail.com. www.myspace. com/eroder also on facebook!

EXPERIMENTAL ROCK BAND seeking keyboardist/soundscape artist. Swans, Big Black, Neurosis, Black Flag, Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Laibach, SPK, Coil, Godflesh, Savage Republic, Pigface, Jarboe, Diamanda Galas, Head of David. No drugs. Bass/drums/guitar. 206.547.2615/ omaritaylor@hotmail.com/ www.rendingsinew.com

FEMALE GUITARIST/BACKING

VOCALIST Needed for new rock band with punk influences. Angelic backing vocals and co-lead vocals to add depth to and soften male lead. An Emmylou Harris for a Neil Young in Nirvana with piano and violin. MerchantMarinerSeattle@gmail.com

FEMALE VOCALIST WANTED for Electronic/Punk/Alternative band. Influences include Crystal Castles, Sleigh Bells, Beach House, Tennis, The Distillers. Needs high energy, strong performance abilities, and a desire to play live shows. Ages 18-21 Preferred. Call Skyler (970) 403-9575

KEYBOARDIST WANTED FOR an avant-rock band. Swans, Black Flag, Masada, John Zorn, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Zero 7, Of Cabbages and Kings, Suicide. No drugs. 206.547.2615/omaritaylor@hotmail. com www.myspace.com/branavinix

LOOKING FOR A singer. Someone who is dedicated and is willing to try new things. If you feel you have the chops check us out at www.soundcloud.com/animalfamily

PHOBOS AND DEIMOS is seeking a dedicated drummer. We practice out of Olympia, WA. Check out our band at www.facebook.com/phobosanddeimos to hear our sound and get the gist of us. Contact us via facebook or at phobosanddeimos@live.com.

ROCK DRUMMER NEEDED - New rock band looking for a solid precision drummer with a penchant for battle beats a la Dropkick Murphys. Not punk or trad, though we include some elements of each. Please email MerchantMarinerSeattle@gmail.com for more info.

ROCK DRUMMER WANTED. Influences are punk rock and 60’s and 70’s rock. Not a punk band. Call or text Jeremy @ (253)820-7541. We have professional recordings if interested.

RECORDING/REHEARSAL

MUSIC REHEARSAL STUDIOS and Artist Lofts for Rent. Starting at $329/mo! Heated with 24 hr access! 206-682-2601 addisononfourth.com

ONE SHARED REHEARSAL room @ $220/month including 36hr/month & private closet. Visit wildersoundstudios.com. Located in SODO Seattle. Contact Samantha 425-445-9165. s.wilder@wildersoundstudios.com

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

Your Legal Notice Here! Call 206-323-7101 or email

WOMEN SEEKING MEN

BIKES BEERS PETS PARKS PUNK

I spend my day on my fixed gear frankenbike. I’m more comfortable at a hole in the wall bar. I like art and math and history and chaos theory. I’m looking for adventure and fun people to experience it with. MothgirlFriday, 36

OH SWEET

A recent trip to the Whistler Squamish defines what I love most: time playing outdoors, great food a little live music and great talks with friends (irreverent and/or illuminating), followed by a nice soak/bake in the sauna. lunabella, 50

ONLY THE MEEK GET PINCHED!

I believe in kindness. I just don’t understand the premiss of being a dick. Exactly what purpose does it serve. I also feel a kinship with penguins. Awkward on land, graceful underwater.

DameNotDamsel, 31

BIKER BABE

I am a community oriented person who enjoys the outdoors and learning new things. However i dont fuck around with morons. I like having fun no macho guys. impress me in other ways. moccasin, 18

AMAZING COOK

I just want a good looking guy that has a good heart. Cooking in, dining out, movies, and talking about crazy nonsense. Playing pool or shooting at the gun range. Maybe someone who can take me snowboarding? khttn0330, 22

ROMANIAN BEAUTY

My name is Adriana. I’m super funny and sarcastic! I have a sweet personality if I like you and am pretty honest for my own good. ;) Love to laugh and have fun! Up for anything new! inlovewithyou143, 24

TEMPEST SEEKS TRUSTY

CAPTAIN

My desires are to have a lover, friend to spend a couple nights a week letting off steam and occasional weekends away for further adventures. I love rich experiences and am ready to create more. Celestia, 43

ITINERANT PLEASURE SEEKER

Happily-married and in an open-relationship-looking for great conversation and hopefully more. I’m a young 41, athletic and healthy, enjoy putting on a pair of heels and dressing the part. You’re relaxed and confident with a great sense of humor. SecondWitch, 41

I WANT TO BE WET

I am addicted to attention. I want your curiosity. I need your words to stun me, arouse me, make my imagination catch my breathe. Let’s start with incredible conversation and go from there. I promise to not disappoint. Curiousone24, 41

GOOD GIRL WITH BAD TENDENCIES

I Like Wine. Having Inappropriate Conversations in public. Cussing (my favorite cusswords are fuck and motherfucker). My mom <3. Reading about dysfunctional women. Figuring out better ways to present myself. Writing about my life. And a lot of other shit... Kahleelah, 22

PROFILE OF THE WEEK

THE LITERATE THUG

I’d be your typical absent-minded scientist if your typical absent minded scientist was a strength junkie. I love moving heavy stuff around and I love climbing vertical surfaces. I had asthma as a kid and decided to deadlift it away. As befits us sciencetypes, I engage in math, old literature and other assorted nerdery. I’ve recently started trying to teach myself electrical engineering. I cook and bake... I’m one of a few who can make a decent Sans Rival.

paralipsis

37 year old Man Seeks Woman for Dating and Friendship

Looking for: Friends, Friends with benefits, Some Action, Casual Dating, Long-term Relationship, Open Relationship

Let us know if you would like to be featured in the Stranger. If selected, you will receive a 2 week complimentary subscription. Visit: thestranger. selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals/Contact

COLD HANDS AND PERPETUAL IDEAS

I get excited about creativity. I enjoy making my bed so I can untuck it. I’m always out doing something interesting. My purpose for posting, dear Lovelab reader, is to meet interesting people and see where it takes me. heartbeatrunn, 30

1,000 VIRGINS SOUNDS TERRIFYING

Play Xbox with me and then I think we should get stoned and walk to Golden Gardens down the creepy staircase. If you remember the blanket, I’m yours. People seem to like me. Haven’t figured that out yet. PotentMenagerie, 36

SMART, GEEKY BBW

if i had one wish, it would be to know everything. i’m a size 26/28 geeky girl who really wants to meet an interesting geekboy who’s just a little off so we can be awkward together and have great sex. sine, 44

FUN SPUNKY GYMRAT

A high energy person who loves to be out exploring the outdoors or working on improving myself in the gym but also enjoys a good meal, glass of wine, and a quiet eveing curled up by the fire. CardioQueen629, 23

MEN SEEKING WOMEN

BOURBON AND ROCK N ROLL

Hello all! I’m Colby a graphic designer from Seattle. I love to cook, riding my road bike and great conversations oh yeah I also am a vinyl collector. A habit I picked up from mom. Feel Free to message me! Colbyh, 29

PROCEED ON PURPOSE

I’m A-Ok. I Enjoy Friends, Running, Soccer, Bikes, And Tons Of Other Things. Writing Is Fun. You Might Be Fun As Well. Hope Everything Is Splendid For You Today And In The Days To Come. RunsOnBeer, 32

CARS KILL, KILL CARS! :) I ride bikes daily. I love home cooked meals, with emphasis on Mexican or Italian Vegan food. I’ve been into punk/ hardcore for 21 years. I dream about escaping to the country to hike, rock climb, snowboard, canoe, & camp. Bikepunk75, 37

SMOOTH, SWEET, AND BAD-ASS

Fun loving and open-minded. Welleducated and a jack-of-all-trades; I pride myself on my conversational skills. I’m into micro-brews, world food, and hot yoga. I sing with a few choral groups, and have been known to karaoke.

NorthCity125, 29

LOOK AT ME

People like me. I am funny. I am nice. I like to eat and drink good foods and drinks. I like doing happy fun good things and adventuring. jonnyloser, 33

YEEEAAAAH ABOUT THAT...

So yeah I like to laugh, drink with friends, watch most sports, and people watch. I have other intriguing interests and admirable qualities, but I can’t list them all here because that would spoil the MYSTERY! a_scholar_and_a_gentleman, 32

INTELLECTUAL, SMART, SOCIAL, OUTGOING, WELCOMING

Moved to Seattle because its close proximity to many getaway venues. I wear a suit to work but on weekends a skate hat and shirt; unless attending theatre/burlesque. I absolutely love seeing a woman in high heels/wedges on occasion. JasonMcKendree, 29

BOOKS-MOVIES, MOTORCYCLES, BV202S, STEELYDAN, I’m a

in Seattle, because my Mom loves it, and I wanted to point out some of the key spots for her. I am a artist from TX. 1yr deep in the Northwest. Boulet420, 35

WOMEN SEEKING WOMEN

ART-WEIRD GIRL-WOMAN SEEKS UNEXPLORED POSSIBILITIES Tiny but big, blacksheep proud. Delighted to be untethered, unconventional, liberal. Prom dress still fits, but always indulge. Happy but not saccharine, sadder but wiser. Peacefully divorced. Moving to Paris soon, hope to depart Seattle full of love and lust. lafleurdelise, 42

I’M ON A HIGH ON I don’t do relationships but I will do you. Winter is coming, let’s just have fun. No strings attached, nothing too serious. Just laughs and cuddles and words and distractions. reallyshy, 33

MEN SEEKING MEN

HOWDY SEATTLE MEN! Former military Texas country boy seeks a clean cut masculine guy to be my future sidekick/partner in crime. I am avg build and have a great personality. I prefer dates over hookups and guys around my age please. Say Howdy! accstud1986, 26

CONSCIOUS MAN I’m an artist (graphic novelist, architectural designer) and business man (real estate investment). I’m looking for someone I connect with. OtterPopp, 44

MUSHACHED SEATTLE FIREMAN ON E5

Friday, picking up lunch at Paseo’s

I was struck by the lovely smile of a tall, dashing fireman. noticed the firetruck license plate: E5. If you are he, the young lady in black hat/coat would love to chat sometime. When: Friday, November 15, 2013. Where: Paseo. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920127

PURPLE BEANIE POLKA DOT BACKPACK

We both saw each other on the bus 2 this afternoon. You were wearing a purple Carhartt beanie and had a purple backpack with large white and green (and pink?) polka dots on it. I thought you were real cute. When: Friday, November 15, 2013. Where: Bus #2 to down-

VITO’S WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 13TH.

FATE

We

BANK OF AMERICA

WEDNESDAY

When: Wednesday, November 13,

Where: Vito’s. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920125 WE LOCKED EYES ON 11TH My Co-Worker asked you to politely to move your car; that’s when “I Saw U” and know you saw me. From the back of the moving truck in a white long-sleeve I hollered “Thanks,” and waved. When: Thursday, November 14, 2013. Where: In Ballard on 11th. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920124

BEAUTIFUL GIRL

Girl in line with beanie and cowboy boots at counter, then seated waiting for teller/banker. saw you on my way out. Wowser, you are a gorgeous mystery lady! When: Wednesday, November 20, 2013. Where: bank. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920134

SUPER CUTE BRUNETTE

GREY COAT

waiting at bus stop and on D Line sitting across from each other. You had on a grey coat and jeans with an orange Seattle “hospital” messenger bag. I was in black coat with metropolitan market bag. When: Friday, November 22, 2013. Where: bus. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920133

WALKING AROUND

WOODLAND PARK

was walking my dog with my friend. You had lighter hair and glasses--so cute I got distracted. As we passed on the trail on the north side, we smiled at each other. Would love to meet you over coffee! When: Saturday, November 16, 2013. Where: Woodland Park Zoo trails - North side. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920132

PANAMA RED

We always end up riding the 26 or 28 together. You call me “darlin’”. Dirty thoughts about you kept me happy all the way home. You: male, Me: Curvy redhead with glasses. What kind of trouble can we stir up? When: Monday, November 18, 2013. Where: Downtown. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920130

TENDING BAR AT BARBOZA

You were adorably tending bar on Saturday the 16th. I ordered a drink and we both stopped silent and had an awkwardly silly moment. kept ordering ciders as an excuse to see you. Goodness, you’re ridiculously cute and charming! When: Saturday, November 16, 2013. Where: Barboza. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920129

THE ROCKET TO MY BARNACLE.

We shared a moment at Alki, staring at the city skyline. Then again, saying goodbye at SeaTac. It’s been a month and I haven’t stopped thinking about. Let’s hop in a car and drive until we forget why we left. When: Thursday, October 17, 2013. Where: SeaTac Airport. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920128

I was heading to the Pike Grocery and made eye contact with you. I couldn’t help but notice how stunning you were. Beautiful smile and amazing blond hair. Just wanted to let you know that you are gorgeous. Best wishes! When: Wednesday, November 13, 2013. Where: Pike and Boren. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920123

DON’T EVEN KNOW YOUR NAME

I only know you from friendly conversations. You make my day when I get a coffee. dig your style, bangs, mod patterns, plaids, great music. There aren’t a lot of girls like you. Rad, modern, vintage all at once! When: Tuesday, November 12, 2013. Where: Uptown. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920122

THE PIG BAR, OLY, 11/9

I recognized you from Italia, and we locked eyes from across the bar several times. Wanted to come talk to you, but lost my nerve. Wishing I had a second chance! Maybe next Saturday...same time, same place...? When: Saturday, November 9, 2013. Where: The Pig Bar, Olympia. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920121

BALLARD BAUHAUS BEARD

You: White male with brown beard at Bauhaus. Me: blond wearing black boots and black hoodie. asked if I could sit with you. You smiled and said yes. think you’re cute and wish we’d been able to chat. When: Tuesday, November 12, 2013. Where: Ballard Bauhaus. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920120

TWILIGHT HELLO! You: Beautiful brown wonder at Twilight Exit on Monday night. Me: I didn’t know it was Monday until you gently informed me. Want to go on adventure sometime? Or... perhaps engage in more twilight conversations on the prison industrial complex...? When: Monday, November 11, 2013. Where: Twilight Exit. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920118

PINK LEGGINGS ON THE 8 I wanted to talk to you but am vigilant about not being a creeper on the bus-maybe to a fault. The moment

think maybe some Sounders gear. We met at Adams place and I never made it your way after the match. Would love to finish our conversation next time I’m in town. Stay stripy! When: Saturday, November 2, 2013. Where: Seattle, wa. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920109

DARK CURLS AT DUSK South Jackson & 2nd Ave South. We locked eyes for a heartbeat. Just wanted you to know how stunning you looked. You: Dark curls, dark coat, dark eyes. Me: Blue rain shell, walking fast. When: Tuesday, November 5, 2013. Where: S Jackson St, across from Zeitgeist. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920108

PINE ST. STUMPTOWN

HOTTIE GIANT You: tall, gentle giant, running shoes, perfectly coifed hair, double hottie

SAVAGE LOVE

Depressing BY DAN SAVAGE

I recently ended a relationship that lasted a year and five months. While I loved this woman, for much of the relationship she was, to varying degrees, depressed. I tried to be as helpful and patient as possible, with the hope and expectation that she would get better. I got her into counseling. We went to couples counseling together. She got on medication. I encouraged her to eat well (I cooked her many healthy meals) and exercise daily (which she was never able to do). I tried to get her out into nature. I tried to listen and practice strong communication skills. I encouraged her to explore the benefits of a fulfilling and GGG relationship, but our sex life faltered because of the depression and her low libido.

I kept helping and waiting, but she was simply unable to assert herself to make healthy changes (both physical and mental). I felt trapped dating someone who couldn’t take control of her life, and the patterns kept repeating. I eventually ended the relationship, which was the right decision for me, but she was crushed. I’m hoping we can be friends in the future. Do you have any advice for dating someone with depression? Can relationships and depression work? I found it to be soul-crushing.

Serious About Depression

“I think SAD did the right thing,” said Rob Delaney, the comedian, Twitter supernova, and author of the new book Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. (more on page 34). “And not only ‘the’ right thing, but a series of right things.” Delaney’s book is a collection of personal essays—most of them hilarious—in which he writes about his own struggle with depression so crippling, it almost took his life. Delaney is now the official spokesperson for all people everywhere who struggle with depression.

“This guy went above and beyond, motivated by his obvious love for this woman and his decency as a person,” Delaney continued. “One might ‘suck it up’ for a bit longer if there are kids involved, or if you’ve been together for years and years and this depressive state is an anomaly, but this guy can’t be expected to weld himself to someone he’s been dating for less than a year and a half when there are people out there he’d truly enjoy himself with.”

Delaney not only felt that you had done right by this woman, but that your actions could serve as a template for other readers dating people struggling with depression.

“SAD was kind, patient, and proactive, and when that didn’t work, he ended the relationship,” said Delaney. “He didn’t assume that she would implode without him around. He seems to have a manageable enough ego to realize that he’s not the sun and the air and the only doorway through which this woman can walk to happiness; he’s merely another human being (albeit a kind one) whose happiness has value, too. And maybe this breakup will provide the jolt she needs to recalibrate her approach to her depression and really get better. He also showed her another person taking care of himself. I sincerely hope she develops this skill herself, but as anyone who’s been around for a while and witnessed trouble and had troubles of their own knows, you cannot will that behavior into people. That does not mean you don’t love them.”

Not following @RobDelaney on Twitter? You’re the only one. Go to robdelaney.com to buy his new book.

Setting sexually transmitted infections aside, is it safer for a woman planning to have a onenight stand to take the guy back to her place or to go to his place? Does this apply if both are staying in hotels?

Reader Is Seeking Knowledge

When you’re having sex with a stranger, RISK, it’s generally considered safer—some would argue only marginally so—to go back to his place. The reason for this is kinda depressing: A stranger is less likely to murder you at his place because then he has to dispose of your body, which is apparently a real pain in the ass. But if he murders you at your place, RISK, he can jet in the morning and stick your landlord and loved ones with disposal duties.

I’m a 21-year-old gay male who loves listening to the Savage Lovecast as I bike to school.

My question: Can someone grow out of or “quit” a fetish?

For me, I’m an ABDL, which stands for “adult baby/diaper lover.” I get turned on by putting other guys into diapers or having other, usually older, guys put me in diapers. I can have normal sex and have had a few decent relationships, or at least as decent as most gay guys still in college have, with guys I’ve met through kink sites like Fetlife or through the normal means of meeting guys. I’ve met a great guy who has helped me mix ABDL with bondage for some REAL fun, and I’m pretty okay with knowing that there’s nothing particularly wrong with having a kink like mine. I had a perfectly normal childhood, and it’s not like I suffered a diaper-related trauma or something. I just always liked diapers. Unfortunately, this particular fetish creeps most people out and is closely associated with pedophilia, even though members of the ABDL community have NO interest in kids. However, the idea of being into this kink when I’m in my 40s really grosses me out. I’ve gone through the binge-and-purge cycle most guys go through when they realize they’re into diapers. But is there any way to retrain your brain to not get off on a particular fetish?

Another Boy Diaper Lover

The consensus in the sex-and-science research crowd is this: Your kinks will always be your kinks—a brain cannot be retrained where kinks are concerned—so you might as well enjoy your kinks. But that’s only if your kinks can be enjoyed consensually, ABDL, which yours happily can be. And while it’s true that some people have taken drugs to “treat” disturbing kinks, these drugs—mostly SSRIs—suppress libido generally; they do not target (nor can they eradicate) one kink in particular. (Are you willing to give up sex to get over diapers? I didn’t think so.)

That said, ABDL, kinks have certain narratives—kinks have broad themes—and figuring out your kink’s narratives and themes may help you tap into and enjoy other kinks with similar Ns and Ts but lower creep factors. If what you enjoy about diapers is the helplessness and loss of control they symbolize mixed with your submission to an affectionate and caring authority figure, you might find fetish puppy play similarly arousing, ABDL, as that kink also has themes of helplessness, dependence, and affection. And while most people don’t find fucking a person who is pretending to be a baby dog any less creepy than fucking a person who’s pretending to be a baby baby, there seem to be a lot more puppy players out there than diaper fans.

But honestly, ABDL, I think you should keep looking for a guy who’s into the same things you are. If for some reason you can’t date the great guy who helped you mix diaper play with bondage, you should take his existence as proof that there are other guys like him, i.e., guys who will like you and like what you like.

This week on the Savage Lovecast, Dan chats with

ADOPTION

Devoted, nurturing, loving gay couple looking to adopt first baby into a family offering education, fun, travel, laughter, and unconditional love and support. Call, TEXT, or email anytime about Kyle & Adrian; 971-238-9651 or kyleandadrianfamily@gmail.com or visit kyleandadrianadoption.com

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 who loves to help others, or know someone who is?

We would love to talk with you! Generous compensation.

$250 Referral Bonus

Call: 206-515-0042 or email: DonorEggBank@pnwfertility.com

DO YOU WANT TO STOP USING ALCOHOL?

The UW and the Seattle VA are looking for people ages 18 and over who use alcohol frequently, have problems with it, and want to stop using it. Non-veterans are welcome!

Study is evaluating whether an investigational medication is effective at reducing alcohol craving and use. Study takes 16 weeks. Volunteers will be compensated. Call Ian at 206-277-4872.”

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 & dating experiences. Single women of all ethnic backgrounds aged 21-30 can earn up to $320 for a multi-part study. Call Project FRESH at (206) 543-5536 or visit www.fresh.uw.edu.

UW Psychology research project. FREE CERVICAL CANCER SCREENING

Age: 21+. Volunteers will receive either self-collected at home HPV testing or regular Pap test screening. Up to $200 compensation for study completion. Call 206-543-3327 or e-mail homehpv@uw.edu. Learn to WELD!

allmetalarts.eventbrite.com • contact@allmetalarts.org Gift Certificates Available

LEGENDARY PIANIST AVAILABLE

Opened for Jeff Bridges! Clubs, Weddings, Parties

I’m Richard Peterson, 65 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 piano!|

SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION GOT YOU DOWN?

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

Both

Patron was beaten up at Grim’s (Capitol Hill) on Friday night, Oct. 18.

Please call Susan if you are a witness. 206-399-7609