The Stranger Vol. 23, No. 21

TOWN HALL CIVICS SCIENCEARTS & CULTURE COMMUNITY

Global Rhythms: Krar Collective Fri, Jan 24 at 8:00 PM

$20 advance/$25 at the door/ $20 seniors/$17 Town Hall members/$10 students. A limited number of $5 day-of-show Teen Tix for those 18 and under also will be available.

Mozart Birthday Toast Mon, Jan 27 at 7:30 PM Advance tickets are $15/$13 Town Hall members, students & seniors; $18/$16 at the door.

Ishmael Beah: ‘Radiance of Tomorrow’ Mon, Jan 27 at 7:30 PM, $5

Ray Jayawardhana: Nailing Down Neutrinos Tue, Jan 28 at 7:30 PM, $5

Richard Powers with Nancy Pearl: ‘Orfeo’ Wed, Jan 29 at 7:30 PM, $5

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: Surviving the Technology Revolution Thu, Jan 30 at 7:30 PM, $5

Richard Fiske: Kilauea: Hawaii’s Most Famous Volcano Fri, Jan 31 at 7:30 PM, $5

McKenzie Funk: Getting Rich from Climate Change Wed, Feb 5 at 7:30 PM, $5

Alex Pentland: ‘Social Physics’: Engaging with the Big Data Around Us Thu, Feb 6 at 7:30 PM, $5

Saturday Family Concerts: Te Fare O Tamatoa Sat, Feb 8 at 11:00 AM Free for kids 12 and under $5 for adults with children

Jennifer Senior: The Ups and Downs of Parenthood Mon, Feb 10 at 7:30 PM, $5

Geoff Dyer:

How the U.S. Can Beat China’s Global Agenda Mon, Feb 10 at 7:30 PM, $5

Gabriel Sherman with Timothy Egan: Roger Ailes: How Fox News ‘Divided a Country’ Wed, Feb 12 at 7:30 PM, $5

Ignite! Seattle Wed, Feb 12 at 8:00 PM, $5

Chuck Adler: The Truth Behind Science Fiction Thu, Feb 13 at 7:30 PM, $5

Robert Gates: ‘Secretary at War’ Thu, Feb 13 at 7:30 PM, $5

Global Rhythms:

Valentine’s Day with the Barefoot Divas Fri, Feb 14 at 8:00 PM

$20 advance/$25 at the door/ $20 seniors/$17 Town Hall members/$10 students.

Town Music:

Karen Gomyo and Pablo Ziegler featuring the Pablo Ziegler Tango Quartet Tue, Feb 18 at 7:30 PM

$20 advance/$25 at the door/ $20 seniors/$17 Town Hall members/$10 students.

Megan McArdle: Fail Your Way to Success Tue, Feb 18 at 7:30 PM, $5

Tom Zoellner with Jon Talton: A History of Trains and Where They’ll Take Us Thu, Feb 20 at 7:30 PM, $5

Elizabeth Kolbert: The Next Mass Extinction Fri, Feb 21 at 7:30 PM, $5

Jennifer Ouellette: Mapping the Journey of Self-Identity Tue, Feb 25 at 7:30 PM, $5

Youth Drug Summit: Keeping Kids Safe in Changing Times Wed, Feb 26 at 7:30 PM, $5

Emily Parker: The Internet’s Revolutionary Power Wed, Feb 26 at 7:30 PM, $5

Nicholas Epley: Understanding the Minds of Others Thu, Feb 27 at 7:30 PM, $5

danah boyd: Technological Teens: The Ins and Outs of Social Networking Mon, Mar 3 at 7:30 PM, $5

Svante Paabo: The Human-Neanderthal Connection Tue, Mar 4 at 7:30 PM, $5

Jenifer Ringer with Peter Boal: A Ballerina’s Journey Wed, Mar 5 at 7:30 PM, $5

Saturday Family Concerts: Gustafer Yellowgold & Special Guests Sat, Mar 8 at 12:00 PM Free for kids 12 and under $5 for adults with children

Haroon Ullah: ‘A Family’s Day of Reckoning in Lahore’ Tue, Mar 11 at 7:30 PM, $5

Peter Stark with Feliks Banel: The Forgotten Empire of the Pacific Northwest Wed, Mar 12 at 7:30 PM, $5

Warren Berger: ‘Beautiful Questions’ on the Road to Innovation Wed, Mar 19 at 7:30 PM, $5

Rebecca Goldstein: The 21st Century Plato Thu, Mar 20 at 7:30 PM, $5

Global Rhythms: Harp-O-Rama Fri, Mar 21 at 7:30 PM $20 advance/$25 at the door/ $20 seniors/$17 Town Hall members/$10 students.

• Mobile Development (iOS, Android, Objective-C, Java)

• Cloud Programming

• Rapid Prototyping

• Front-End Development (JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, Ruby)

• Maya, Photoshop

• Object-Oriented Programming (C#, C++)

• DirectX and Shaders

• Social Integration Take advantage of

Volume 23, Issue Number 21

January 22–28, 2014

STUDY GUIDE

Questions for The Stranger, Volume 23, Issue 21

1. In this issue’s feature story, CIENNA MADRID details her experiences living in a small cabin perched atop the carcasses of dead animals in a small park filled with copulating homeless people, used condoms, and rats’ nests. Though the story is purportedly true, Madrid is obviously making some of this up, isn’t she? Can you think of a single worse advertisement for employment at The Stranger than the thought of Madrid living in a garbage heap in the middle of a field of refuse and misery?

2. In the news section, GOLDY makes a shockingly useful suggestion: that Seattle City Light build a city-owned fiber-optic system to provide broadband service to citizens of Seattle. It’s an intelligent, considered argument. Since he obviously did not think of it himself, who do you believe fed this article to Goldy? Was it a union representative who would financially benefit from the plan? Someone who works for City Light?

3. The mysterious and often indecipherable DAVE SEGAL interviews a mysterious and often inscrutable musician who currently goes by the name Jack Name. How can an interview between two mysterious people about secrets and darkness be so boring?

4a. This week, for the first time in its history, The Stranger has a sports section. For years, Stranger writers have prided themselves on the fact that they didn’t care about sports—but now that a local sports team is overwhelmingly adored, they have published a cheerleader-y array of pieces including an appreciative piece about a Seahawk’s fingertips, professional sports photography, and a column of sports gossip. Was this decision a financially inspired one, or is The Stranger staffed with lemmings? Do they expect us to suddenly forgive and forget the paper’s long history of anti-sports bias?

4b. On a scale of gayness, from “barely gay at all” to “too gay to function as a human being,” how gay would you rate this issue of The Stranger? Does the inclusion of sports make it less gay, just gay enough, or possibly too gay?

5. What’s more disgusting: reading PAUL CONSTANT’s writing about chicken wings or picturing Paul Constant eating chicken wings? What self-respecting newspaper would publish this gory monstrosity of a piece in its restaurant review section? When do you think you will be able to eat again without the thought of this story bubbling up your esophagus against your will?

COVER ART

Don’t Fence Me In (Chrome) #3 by PIPER O’NEILL

On display through February 27 at Winston Wachter gallery (seattle.winstonwachter.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, JANUARY 13 This week of felony eggings, million-dollar enemas, and glorious football triumph kicks off with some deadly bullshit in Florida. Our setting: the Cobb Grove 16 theater in the town of Wesley Chapel, where a couple dozen people had bought tickets to an early afternoon screening of the Mark Wahlberg war drama Lone Survivor. Among the attendees: 71-year-old Curtis Reeves, a retired Tampa police officer who “became annoyed when a couple sitting in front of him were texting during the movie’s previews,” reports ABC News. So began a tussle that saw Curtis Reeves repeatedly ask Chad and Nichole Oulson to stop their mid-preview texting, instigating an argument that ended when Reeves allegedly pulled out a .380 semiautomatic handgun and fatally shot Chad Oulson in the chest. Also wounded: Nichole Oulson, who reportedly tried to protect

To submit an unsigned confession or accusation, send an e-mail to ianonymous@thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and guilty.

A VOICE FOR THE POWERLESS

You were behind me in line at Starbucks. You were a fortysomething guy with your young son in tow. When he told you he had to go to the bathroom, you said, “Why?!” That got my attention. He continued, pleading with you to take him to the bathroom, crying that he REALLY had to go. Again you dismissed him, telling him, “That’s what your diaper is for!” Clearly distraught, your child was forced to go in his pants, old enough to know better, but given no other option. What’s worse is that after he was made to go in his pants, you berated him for asking and told him that “bathroom time is only when we are at home,” and that he needs to get used to using his diaper in public. What kind of parent does that to their child? What kind of message do you think that sends? I’m shocked that you would be so uncaring and unsupportive of your son’s willingness to actually use the bathroom. Based on your blatant neglect, I would be willing to bet that this kid was probably potty trained by the mother, who would I’m sure be shitting a brick right now if she knew what kind of a lazy, dismissive, and abusive piece of shit you are. I bet you let that kid sit in his mess all day. You asshole. And all of this was because you needed your fucking extra hot soy latte and didn’t want to lose your spot in line. —Anonymous

her husband and wound up nonfatally shot in the hand. After being arrested at the scene of the shooting, Reeves was charged with second-degree murder and ordered held without bond. For his part, Reeves claims he “was in fear of being attacked,” leading some to wonder if he’ll attempt to invoke Florida’s notorious “Stand Your Ground” defense. As law professor Kenneth B. Nunn told ABC, “The defendant’s statements to police is information that could be used to establish selfdefense, but part of self-defense requires you to retreat if you can do so in complete safety.” Nunn’s concerns were expanded upon by law professor Bob Dekle. “It’s not whether or not you’re in fear,” said Dekle to ABC. “If the standard about shooting were fear, that would give cowards carte blanche. The question is was there reasonable fear, was the fear reasonable?” Condolences to all, especially Nichole Oulson and her now-fatherless 22-month-old daughter, but also Curtis Reeves, whose trusty handgun turned him from a respected retired public servant into a scared old man charged with murder.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 14 In stupider news, the week continues with Justin Bieber, the Canadian teen pop star who shot to stardom with catchy songs and crowd-pleasing charm before devoting 2013 to making everyone hate him. (Among the highlights of Bieber’s year of international douchebaggery: disrespecting the memory of Anne Frank, public tussles with paparazzi, countless instances of public shirtlessness, and non-regulation transportation of a monkey.) Which brings us to today, when Bieber was investigated by police for felony egg-throwing. At the center of the investigation: an episode from last Thursday, when the home of Bieber’s neighbor was pelted with eggs, causing approximately $20,000 worth of damage. “The cost of repairing the damage to the house is a key factor in determining the severity of the charge,” reports CNN. “Any damage of more than $950 would qualify the charge as a felony.” And so came today’s visit from search-warrant-wielding investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “The purpose of the search warrant is to seek video surveillance or other possible evidence in the vandalism that occurred on January 9, 2014,” said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore at a press conference. “Detectives will spend the next days scouring through the video for clues about who hurled eggs toward the neighboring mansion last week,” reports CNN.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15 In less stupid news, the week continues in New Mexico, where a man will receive a $1.6 million settlement after being recklessly anally probed by cops. As the ABA Journal reports, the saga commenced on January 2, when driver David Eckert was pulled over for a minor traffic infraction, then subjected to a protracted anal exam involving three enemas and a colonoscopy, none of which turned up any evidence. Fueling the investigators’ raid of Eckert’s anus: “a police dog’s alert to the alleged presence of drugs near the driver’s seat of his vehicle and a claim that Eckert appeared to be clenching his buttocks,” reports the ABA. Armed with this evidence, cops got a rectal search warrant, but even that gets twisty: “The city of Deming and Hidalgo County got a search warrant to authorize the examination of David Eckert,” reports

DEAR GOD

SUPER-BOWL-BOUND Seahawks for Dummies Edition

Dear God,

Omigodomigodomigod! It is so much fun watching your hometown football team win football games! Having never cared about a sporting event in my life, I am now pooping with excitement for the Super Bowl. But as You know, people can be jerks. How might I best deflect antagonism from those who would dismiss or even attack me as a “fair-weather fan”?

Thanks, Catherine

Dear Catherine,

This week, I watched in horror as diehard Seahawks fans dissed fair-weather Seahawks fans, mocking them for coming out only when the team is winning, as if the true test of fandom is a lifetime commitment to the team. What dongs. Most of the Seahawks players aren’t even from Seattle. They had zero commitment to this team until they were paid an absurd amount of money to play for us. By the fair-weather test, the players are—the team itself is—the biggest offenders. They’d happily switch teams on a season’s notice to the highest bidder and then try to defeat the Seahawks. So the haters got it backward. At least the fair-weather fans genuinely care. If the purists want to dis anyone, dis the moneygrubbing turncoats on the team.

Love, God

the ABA. “However, the warrant was valid only in Luna County, and a physician at a Deming emergency room refused to perform the examination, Eckert alleges in his suit… Doctors at a second hospital, Gila Regional Medical Center, agreed to perform the exam, but the facility is located in Silver City, across the county line.” The end result of all this creepy cavity-searching and suspect-shuffling: the $1.6 million settlement for Eckert, to be co-paid by the city of Deming and Hidalgo County.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16 The week continues in Ohio, where today Dennis McGuire—the man convicted of the 1989 rape and murder of Joy Stewart, a 22-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant—was executed by the state. It was, by all accounts, incriminatingly gruesome. “Dennis McGuire, 53, was put to death using an untested two-drug protocol involving the sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone,” reports the Guardian “Last week an expert witness for the defence, David Waisel, a professor of anaesthesia at

Harvard medical school, told an Ohio court that the use of midazolam was inappropriate in an execution and that, in employing it, the state ran the risk of the inmate being conscious for up to five minutes while suffering through the sensation that he was suffocating. Eyewitness accounts of McGuire’s death appear to cor-

Dear God, I assume You saw Seahawks fans throwing food at 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman as he was wheeled off the field with a terrible injury. What kind of punishments do You have in store for the perpetrators?

Love, Brian

Dear Brian,

Terrible things you don’t want to know, all involving the urethra.

Love, God

Dear God,

Thank You for bestowing Richard Sherman with the power to deflect that pass to Malcolm Smith. That was seriously the greatest moment of my life.

Love, Jeremy

Dear Jeremy,

Thank you for your praise, but I cannot take credit for that play. I was as shocked and delighted as anyone, and it was totally the work of America’s best football player, most ambitious performance artist, and next president, Richard Sherman.

Love, God

relate with Waisel’s prediction.” Tomorrow, McGuire’s son will hold a press conference to describe what he saw at his father’s execution. “The agony and terror of watching my dad suffocate to death lasted more than 19 minutes. I can’t think of any other way to describe it other than torture.” The McGuire family is preparing a federal lawsuit that seeks to halt all executions in Ohio on grounds that they violate Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Stay tuned.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17 In much less bad but still awful news, the week continues in West Seattle, where tonight a young girl’s birthday slumber party suddenly became the site of a near-tragedy after a party guest who was jumping on the bed fell out a third-story window “We were jumping on the bed and I guess the way she jumped made her fall, and then she tripped and fell out of the window,” said party host Destiny Faiston to Seattlepi.com, which will also share the good news that the victim’s condition will be upgraded from life-threatening to serious tomorrow afternoon. Best wishes for a full recovery, unlucky bed-jumper. Seriously.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18 Nothing happened today, unless you count the 24-hour prefreak-out for tomorrow.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 19 Nothing happened today, unless you count how the Seahawks beat the 49ers to win a spot at the Super Bowl, making the vast majority of this city extremely happy and very hungover.

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

Screw Comcast and CenturyLink

Now Is the Perfect Time to Build a Fast, City-Owned Broadband Service

BY GOLDY

Shortly after taking office, Mayor Ed Murray finally pulled the plug on Gigabit Seattle, the financially challenged fiberoptic-broadband partnership that was once the centerpiece

of his predecessor’s internet strategy. But while Gigabit’s failure was certainly a disappointment, it is also an opportunity: to give a giant collective municipal finger to those monopolistic fuckers at Comcast, CenturyLink, and Wave.

Now that the market has failed to address our broadband woes, Seattle is free to reconsider building a city-owned municipal system. And with Seattle City Light in the process of evaluating technologies for its coming “smart meter” rollout, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Under its current six-year strategic plan, City Light is planning to replace about 410,000 manually read meters with new digital smart meters (City Light prefers the term “AMI,” or “Advanced Metering Infrastructure”). These smart meters would communicate remotely with City Light, allowing for instant meter reading, more flexible billing, customer tracking of power usage, and faster and more efficient responsiveness to power outages. Installations are scheduled to begin by the end of 2015 at an estimated cost of $80.5 million through 2018.

But all this two-way communication requires a medium, either wired or wireless, and “all technology options remain on the table,” says City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen. If City Light chooses a wired technology, the most obvious choice would be fiber-optic cable—a technology with the capacity to deliver high-speed data, voice, and TV in addition to

the smart meter’s minimal needs.

A city-owned fiber-optic system built atop City Light’s AMI network would eventually reach every home and business in the city, offering speeds 10 to 20 times faster than current top offerings—plus voice and TV—at a much more affordable price. A 2007 study commissioned by the city estimated that this added competition could save Seattle consumers $2 billion over 20 years, providing a “gigantic boost to the local economy.”

But is it feasible? Thomsen says that there could be “potential beyond the metering,” but that City Light lacks the mandate to even ask the question. So is there the political will to instruct City Light to explore both the technical and economic potential?

“I think that’s an appropriate question to ask,” city council president Tim Burgess says of the feasibility of piggybacking onto City Light’s smart meter installations. Burgess hasn’t abandoned the public/private approach, despite Gigabit Seattle’s failure, but he’s not averse to going it alone. If we can’t find a way to spur private investment in broadband competition, says Burgess, then “we should explore the municipal side.”

declaring “a moral obligation to make affordable high-speed internet access available to all of those who need it in Seattle,” adding, “I also believe we should explore a municipal broadband solution.”

Can’t get much clearer than that.

And the newly installed chair of the city council committee overseeing City Light is an enthusiastic supporter of municipal broadband. “If we are to begin to structure this city as a place where working people can access essential services and resources, [municipal broadband] has to be a part of it,” says Council Member Kshama Sawant.

A city-owned network could be 10-20 times faster.

Mayor Murray recently issued a statement

Three Things the New Chief Must Do to Fix SPD

He Has Only Four Months

BY ANNA MINARD

T

he new interim police chief is already off to a rocky start. When Mayor Ed Murray announced earlier this month that Harry Bailey would lead the Seattle Police Department, the mayor said Bailey could take decisive action toward reforming the troubled department. When it comes to complying with the federal consent decree under which SPD currently operates—after a US Department of Justice investigation found it had a history of excessive use of force and biased policing— Mayor Murray told the reporters, “I am not willing to wait for the hiring of a permanent chief to move forward.”

But given Murray’s fast-track timeline for hiring that new chief by April (Bailey says he has “no interest” in the permanent position), just what, exactly, can Bailey get done in four months?

Well, for starters, there are personnel shake-ups. After a December report from a

federal court monitor overseeing SPD reform blasted senior command staff for stymieing reform by warring over policy, then-chief Jim Pugel demoted two senior staffers. After Bailey’s arrival, another member of the command staff, Assistant Chief Mike Sanford, gave notice of his retirement.

While change at the top is needed, Sanford heading for the door isn’t necessarily a good thing. He’s named in that same report as showing an “admirable willingness to act with a sense of urgency and an ability to adroitly manage bureaucratic issues that could otherwise routinely thwart progress.”

Lisa Daugaard, cochair of the city’s Community Police Commission, says Sanford “was a consistent leader in support of changing problematic policing practices.”

Losing one of the only reformers in the top ranks isn’t a great sign.

Chief Bailey, meanwhile, has newly

The ultra-high-speed internet service that Gigabit Seattle promised sure was enticing—100 Mbps service for $45 a month, 1,000 Mbps service for $60 a month—but the company failed to secure the private financing necessary to build out its service. By comparison, while Comcast offers 105 Mbps in select areas for $115 a month, most residential installations top out at 50 Mbps for $77 a month. And CenturyLink offers speeds no faster than 40 Mbps for $70 a month. If you’re lucky. In many neighborhoods, CenturyLink’s distance-sensitive DSL can crawl to a 1.5 Mbps pace.

promoted three captains to assistant chief and has promised to establish a Compliance and Reform Bureau to streamline the work toward full compliance.

How are we supposed to tell what’s progress and what’s just hot air? Here are three things Bailey must do in the next four to six months to prove he’s reforming the SPD:

Launch a Computer System That Tracks Use of Force

The federal court monitor, Merrick Bobb, has been blisteringly clear about a major piece of reform that is not going well: data technology. In order to comply with the settlement agreement, SPD must track and analyze, in complex

SPD must track and analyze how it uses force.

ways, how it uses force—do certain officers use excessive force more often, are minority populations treated more harshly? Bobb wrote in his December report that SPD’s current data software is “nowhere near adequate”—it loses and mislabels data and makes it nearly impossible to do real analysis—and said he expects the planning and vendor selection for

“I’m a Comcast customer,” says Burgess, who lives in a DSL-challenged area of Queen Anne, “and I wish I had more options.”

But Seattle’s worst-served broadband customers are generally some of its poorest, stuck in Central District and Beacon Hill neighborhoods served by cable operator Wave, where CenturyLink’s lack of modern infrastructure offers little broadband competition. Robert Kangas of Uptun.org, a group advocating for faster broadband in underserved neighborhoods, says that while Wave has improved in recent years, it has yet to shrug off what he calls its “horrendous” reputation for speed, service, and reliability. Wave is also the only broadband provider of the three to impose monthly data limits—as little as 100 GB a month on its cheapest plan, about enough to stream three hours of HD video a day.

So what would a municipal broadband system cost? The 2007 study conservatively estimated a city-owned-and-run system would require $400 million in financing, but could break even at only 24 percent market penetration while offering a 20 percent discount over market prices. But might the cost of building out broadband be substantially reduced by leveraging our investment in City Light’s smart meter rollout?

That’s the question the council needs to ask.

a top-notch database system to be completed, and implementation under way, within six months.

But Chief Bailey says he isn’t sure that’s possible, given the city’s bidding and contract rules. “I think as long as the monitor sees that we are putting forth a good-faith effort to do that,” he says, we should be okay. That’s a far cry from Bobb’s exhortation that “the implementation of this new system cannot happen quickly enough.”

Stop Protecting Cops Accused of Misconduct

As we reported last week, the SPD oversight process that responds to citizen complaints is weighted heavily in favor of the cops involved. Officers can respond to charges and appeal a disciplinary decision after it’s made, opportunities denied to the complainant. In response to queries about balance, Pierce Murphy, the director of SPD’s Office of Professional Accountability, said “the civil justice system” is the place citizens should go to get a fair hearing on police misconduct. In other words: Sue the city if you want fairness. That’s bonkers, and it needs to change.

Bobb also slammed the Firearms Review Board for “deficient” reviews of officers’ use of their firearms. Bailey says work to improve

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the FRB will happen in the new Compliance and Reform Bureau, and he thinks there are “some things [the OPA director] would like to change”—but he’s real short on specifics. Victims of police misconduct must get a fair shake from the SPD, and officers’ use of their weapons must be fairly investigated.

Get Urban Officers Urban Police Training When Murray ran for mayor, he insisted that SPD officers get specific training on urban policing. Given that the city plans to hire around five dozen new recruits in 2014 (and Murray has vowed to hire 100 more officers than previous goals over the next four years), groundwork for that training must be laid immediately.

Further, Bobb’s December report says SPD “candidly admits” that they don’t adequately track whether officers attend whatever ongoing trainings the department does currently offer. While Bailey says it should be “easy” to communicate new policies on bias, stops, and use of force, those policies are useless if officers don’t learn them in training.

Bobb writes a detailed report every six months on SPD’s progress. If the next report shows these three reforms are not happening, or that internal politics remain enflamed, it will seem this latest SPD shake-up was just more hot air.

Murray’s Hidden Meetings

Mayor Holds Talks on $15 an Hour Minimum Wage

BY ANNA MINARD

The city’s new Income Inequality Advisory Committee, convened by Mayor Ed Murray to tackle the issue of raising Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, has been meeting for a few weeks now. Labor and business leaders, the most vocal advocates and opponents of raising the wage, are sitting at the same table and discussing what many consider to be the paramount issue facing the city this year.

But if you want to know how it’s going, you’re going to have to be patient. The meetings are happening completely out of the public eye.

Why a secret task force? Murray’s communications director, Jeff Reading, says, “In order to gain the full and candid input of the advisory committee participants—a group that represents a broad and diverse range of interests—we felt that some element of confidentiality was necessary.” He says some future meetings will be open to the public and a schedule is coming soon.

issue. Unlike the mayor’s committee, it will be very public (aired on TV and anyone can sign up to testify).

Chaired by Council Member Sally Clark, the committee is intended to ready the legislative body to move quickly once it gets a proposal from the mayor, in the hopes of avoiding ballot measures on the issue. They’re also going a step further: Clark says in order to “maximize the ability for people to participate,” they’ll hold some meetings in the evenings and in places other than City Hall.

Council Member Kshama Sawant, for her part, calls the minimum-wage committee (an idea she proposed in December) “a step in the right direction.”

Seattle Still Has to Overcome

We’re Not as PostRacial as We Think

BY DANIELLE HENDERSON

The Martin Luther King Jr. Day March through the city on Monday was heavy with support for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but events last weekend drove home the important housing, educational, and economic crises threatening African Americans in Seattle.

At a panel for the Rise Up! Restore the Dream MLK workshops at Garfield High

On average, African American households in Seattle make 45 percent the income of white households.

School on Monday, Dr. Thad Spratlen, professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Washington, provided hard numbers on economic inequality. Census data for 2010 reveals that the median household income for African Americans in Seattle is only 45 percent of the median for whites, averaging $30,116 versus $66,380, which heavily impacts the ability of African Americans to access housing and buy things the same way as white consumers.

Coupled with a 16 percent unemployment rate (almost double the 8.5 percent rate for whites), this paints a bleak picture of the way African Americans are struggling to survive in a city with a tremendous amount of wealth and economic inequality.

FEEL FEEL

It’s legal to have private meetings, and to be honest, it’s probably smart.

It’s perfectly legal to have private meetings—the same way the mayor and his staff meet with lots of members of the community, says Reading—and to be honest, it’s probably smart. It’s likely that members can get more bargaining done if they’re not worried about grandstanding.

But you deserve a goddamn say, right? Well, the Seattle City Council, which operates under more strict open-meetings rules, is offering you just that.

Last week, the council announced it would create a special committee of all nine members solely to consider the minimum-wage

Mayor Ed Murray attended an African and African American Diaspora event at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute on Saturday, where leaders of the black communities gave him specific calls to action on issues affecting youth, education, housing, arts, digital access, and community development. Community organizer Karen Toering asked that internet and computer access be placed high on the list of priorities. Producer and director Lola Peters received a standing ovation when she asked Murray to pay attention to all of the people telling him how they can strengthen their own community, giving power to their voices instead of the voices that often speak for them.

And Murray listened. He was quiet throughout the event, taking notes and speaking for only 10 minutes at the end. Most of us can manage that on a regular basis, but it was pretty cool that a new mayor didn’t come with the bluster of his own agenda and legitimately came to hear what everyone had to say.

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SOURCES SAY

• Several people noticed that Seattle City Council members Sally Clark, Bruce Harrell, Mike O’Brien, and Kshama Sawant showed up at the city’s annual MLK Day March, which drew hundreds, maybe thousands—it went on for blocks. The rest of the council was MIA for MLK.

HOMEGROWN HELPERS FARMACY

HOMEGROWN HELPERS

• A 32-year-old Seattle man was arrested on suspicion of malicious harassment after allegedly posting derogatory and threatening comments to the Facebook pages of Seattle mayor Ed Murray and city council member Kshama Sawant. “Mayor return to hell where you came from,” “death to socialist council member,” and “feminist must get raped and die” were apparently some of the milder comments, Seattlepi.com reported last week. A source at city hall says that comments referencing the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official, were the deciding factor in pressing charges

• After six weeks of matter-of-fact updates, the Washington State Department of Transportation took a new tack for explaining why the tunneling machine for its $4.2 billion megaproject was stuck under downtown Seattle. “When you’re sick, you go to the doctor,” began a cutesy blog post on the state’s website that made a bizarre, drawn-out comparison between the giant drill and someone who’s ill. “Based on your symptoms, the doctor checks for obvious clues about what might be ailing you.” This is a terrible analogy, if for no other reason than sometimes patients with mystery illnesses drop dead. The state went on to say it’s “going hyperbaric”—which involves sending divers into a pressurized bubble in front of the machine for more exploration—which only underscores the fact that they still have no idea what the problem is.

Dope Decision

Why Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s Opinion That Cities Can Ban Pot Businesses Might Be Great for Seattle

BY GOLDY

Pot activists and state regulators were understandably disappointed when Washington State attorney general Bob Ferguson released a formal opinion January 16 concluding that Initiative 502 does not preempt local governments from regulating or banning marijuana businesses within their jurisdiction. Attorney general opinions are not legally binding, but they generally guide state and local agencies in implementing law.

“If some local governments impose bans, it will impact public safety by allowing the current illicit market to continue,” fretted Washington State Liquor Control Board chair Sharon Foster in response. Dozens of Washington municipalities already have pot bans or moratoriums in place, including unincorporated Pierce County. (It is nearly inevitable that pot entrepreneurs will try to challenge those bans in court, regardless of the AG’s opinion.) Letting those bans stand and new ones be approved by local governments, Foster warned, “will also reduce the state’s expectations for revenue generated from the legal system we are putting in place.”

Most likely. But while Ferguson’s narrow reading may run counter to the spirit of I-502, the pro-pot crowd needs to take a big hit, chill out, and try to focus on the bigger picture. Ferguson’s opinion isn’t as much anti-pot as it is pro-local—and that’s a line of legal thinking that cities like Seattle will welcome as they attempt to enact an ever-broader local

• Do you know this man? Seattle police have released photos of a person of interest in the New Year’s Eve arson at Neighbours nightclub. About 750 people were packed into the nightclub when someone poured gasoline on the stairs and set the area ablaze, police say. If you have any information, please contact arson detectives at 684-8980.

• A flock of waterfowl defeated a pack of moneygrubbing miners last Sunday, ensuring that Seattle will face off against Denver next month at the Super Bowl, the most important event in America. Ever. Dear other states: Pot legalization in your state is obviously a gateway to football domination

legislative agenda in the face of inaction and obstruction in Olympia.

“Under Washington law, there is a strong presumption against finding that state law preempts local ordinances,” Ferguson’s formal opinion determines. “Initiative 502… includes no clear indication that it was intended to preempt local authority to regulate such businesses. We therefore conclude that I-502 left in place the normal powers of local governments to regulate within their jurisdictions.”

That “strong presumption” in favor of local authority is a precedent that Seattle’s attorneys will no doubt cite in the face of inevitable lawsuits challenging our city’s authority to regulate the minimum wage, enact universal preschool, or even tax the rich. (Some might be surprised to learn that there is no state statute explicitly prohibiting cities from imposing an income tax—thus a locally approved income tax combined with a presumption against preemption may be the key to getting the underlying

constitutional question back before the state supreme court.) So while we may not like this particular application of the doctrine, we would be better off in the long run embracing it in principle rather than challenging it in court.

Instead, pot activists should focus on lobbying legislators to pass HB 2322, a bill introduced by Representative David Sawyer (D-Tacoma), which would enact explicit language imposing the preemption provisions that I-502’s authors say were always their intent.

TIGER HEALTH CLINIC

SPORTS We Owe It All to Richard Sherman

If It Weren’t for His Fingertips, We Wouldn’t Be Going to the Super Bowl

Thanks to the heroics of cornerback Richard Sherman, linebacker Malcolm Smith, and a miraculous tip drill interception, the Seattle Seahawks will face the Denver Broncos at Super Bowl XLVIII. The margin of victory against the San Francisco 49ers couldn’t have been thinner—had Sherman been off by even a few inches, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s potentially game-winning touchdown pass would have landed in receiver Michael Crabtree’s hands. But of course Sherman didn’t let that happen. Seattle teams may have a history of letting the play get away from them in the postseason, but with Richard Sherman on board, everything is different. The only question now is what Seattle sports history would have been like if we’d had Sherman in our ranks sooner.

May 7, 1994

With a second championship in hand, it’s easy to forget how fragile the Sonics looked at the end of their first round matchup with the eighth seeded Denver Nuggets. Some would say they were the length of Nuggets’ center Dikembe Mutombo’s finger away from a humiliating first round elimination. Deep into overtime in the deciding fifth game, Mutombo grabbed a rebound that looked to seal the game for Denver, who were leading by four with mere seconds on the clock. However, after Sonics reserve forward Richard Sherman whispered something infuriating in the Congolese center’s ear, Mutombo responded by furiously wagging his finger in Sherman’s face. The Nuggets were assessed a controversial technical foul, which Sherman converted, narrowing the Sonics’ deficit to three. After Gary Payton’s inbounds pass then found Sherman just inside the three-point line, the Sonics forward had enough presence of mind to tip the ball out to Detlef Schrempf, who sunk a game-tying three-pointer as time expired. With the momentum heavily in Seattle’s favor, and Mutombo ejected for arguing between overtime periods, the Sonics easily pulled away from Denver, starting their famous playoff run that would end with a stunning four game sweep of Patrick Ewing’s New York Knicks. Knicks superfan Spike Lee later said of Richard Sherman’s performance in the NBA Finals, “I wish we were up against Reggie Miller… Sherman’s play was great, but his words… his words cut right to your core. And words can hurt.”

October 21, 2001

After amassing the best regular season record in Major League Baseball history, the Seattle Mariners found themselves on the precipice of elimination in the ALCS. With the game knotted at 1–1 and a runner on in the ninth inning, Yankees rookie Alfonso Soriano stepped to the plate to face Mariners shutdown closer Richard Sherman. “I was sitting fastball,” a distraught Soriano said after the game, “but Sherman fired in a splitter, and I grounded it right to all-natural American hero Bret Boone. It was like someone knew exactly how to exploit my weaknesses. But how?” When asked about the pitch, Sherman replied, “Do you have any idea how much tape

BY SPIKE FRIEDMAN

of Soriano I watched? I watched every swing he has taken since he was a child. I watched his father’s swings and his father’s father’s swings. I knew he was sitting fastball. I knew it and I baited him. Hard. I wanted him to make contact. Separation was in the preparation, baby!” The Mariners would ride Sherman’s dominant bullpen performances all the way to the team’s lone World Series title.

February 5, 2006

“I think the game changed early on that first quarter touchdown,” a dejected Steelers head coach Bill Cowher said after Super Bowl XL ended. “Looked like a clear push off by [Seahawks wide receiver] Darrell Jackson to me, but they didn’t throw a flag.” After the early controversial touchdown gave the Seahawks the lead and the momentum, the rout was on. When asked about his decision, outspoken referee Richard Sherman replied, “Are you kidding me? You bring some mediocre begging for a flag onto my field and expect to get a call? Please, keep trying to get a flag out of my pocket. Please.” Cowher’s Steelers team would never grab a foothold in a physical 31–14 Seahawks win in which Sherman’s officiating crew all but disappeared.

October 24, 2006

Let us never forget how close the city was to losing the Sonics. It felt like a sure thing before former Sonics owner and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, his left eye bandaged with a makeshift eye-patch, defied expectations and announced, “My attorney advised me to under no circumstances sell the team

• As soon as the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC championship last Sunday, approximately six billion people who’d been saving their legal-pot jokes up since the Denver Broncos won their championship earlier in the day got on Twitter to say: “So Seattle and Denver are getting together to smoke a super bowl????” and “Who is going to smoke a super bowl during the Super Bowl????” and “Guys, let’s smoke a #SuperBowl!!!” and “Super Bowl?

More like Smoke A Bowl.” Even more hilariousness is surely on the way. Just keep checking Twitter.

• During a post-game rally outside CenturyLink Field, socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant announced a new campaign to raise the 12th Man to 15 by 2015. Seahawks fans can join Sawant’s “Fight for 15” at the website 15Now.org. Mayor Ed Murray immediately responded with a heartfelt Facebook post emphasizing his lifelong commitment to more men.

• This year’s Super Bowl is being held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, prompting New Jersey governor Chris Christie to issue a statement reminding fans to prepare for the region’s notorious traffic. He added: “Plan ahead, leave early, and endorse my campaign. You think traffic is bad now? I can make the traffic stand so still, you’ll swear Medusa’s staring at it. You’ll hear crickets pissing on the side of 95 before you hear one single Oldsmobile move two inches without my say-so. You think that’s confrontational? All right, fine. I’ll be confrontational. I’m confronting you being stupid, because I’m sick and tired of your crap. Okay?”

to Clay Bennett.” How did this reversal come to pass? Sources inside the league office suggest that Bennett, a little-known oilman who was leading a group of prospective buyers from Oklahoma City, had been so excited to sign the selling papers that he tried snatching them out of the hands of Schulz’s attorney, Richard Sherman Esq. This was a mistake. Sherman slapped Bennett’s hand away and demanded to know whether the oilman was mad. As Bennett continued to attempt to get his pen to paper, Sherman got physical with his defense, forcing Bennett to the outside time and again. Eventually, a frustrated Bennett lunged for the papers, but Sherman intercepted Bennett’s body, pinning him on the conference table. In the ensuing fracas, Bennett managed to drive a fountain pen through Schultz’s hand, and as Schultz jerked his hand upward and, looking at it, shouted, “My steam wand fondler!” he inadvertently jabbed the back end of Bennett’s pen into his own eye, before crying, “My barista ogler!” After a moment of shock passed, and with Schultz’s detached retina clinging to the back of Bennett’s Montblanc, Sherman yelled, “That’s what happens when anyone tries to sell the Sonics in my city, Howard! Consider yourself advised.” Schultz was later pushed to sell the team to a group of Microsoft and Nordstrom executives who funded the beautiful Costco Arena in Sodo, ensuring that the two-time NBA Champion Sonics organization would never leave Seattle.

Spike Friedman is The Stranger’s sports editor.

• In what is surely an advantage for the Seahawks and their youthful quarterback Russell Wilson, the Denver Broncos’ Peyton Manning (age 37) would be the oldest quarterback to win a Super Bowl since John Elway won his second straight Super Bowl at age 38 back in 1998 for the, um, Denver Broncos. Oh.

• In further unfortunate news, no team named after a bird has ever won the Super Bowl. (The Ravens were named after a poem.) Luckily, there is no actual bird called a seahawk, so we might be okay. Science!

• The Seahawks signed star wide receiver Percy Harvin to a $67 million contract in March that paid him $14.5 million in salary and bonuses for the 2013 season. But due to injuries, Harvin has played only 20 snaps this season, catching four passes for 38 yards, plus a 58-yard kickoff return. That comes to $3.6 million a catch, or $151,041 a yard. Sweet!

• As you may have noticed, Seattle has been overtaken by a scourge of fairweather Seahawks fans. They tout their brand-new Seahawks paraphernalia as they gallivant about collecting 12 percent discounts from local businesses. The Stranger has never before witnessed such a disgraceful display of bandwagonjumping. It’s seriously mind-boggling. For shame!

BELLTOWN DIARY

The Side of the City You See When You Live in a Public Garden Frequented by Belltown Bros and Homeless Junkies By Cienna Madrid

My

first housewarming gift was a baseball bat.

It was left by the door of my 460-square-foot house in Belltown by the previous tenant, with a note that simply read “Enjoy!” The house is one of three old cannery cottages among the carefully tended gardens in the Belltown P-Patch, a beautifully weird oasis in the heart of downtown Seattle. The cottages were built in 1905. When I moved there in 2008, they were operated by Richard Hugo House, a literary nonprofit on Capitol Hill that gave discounted accommodations to four writers in residence, including me. Another female writer in residence and I were warned when we moved into our cottages that we might not last long. There had only ever been one other female tenant, a woman from New York City, and “she didn’t last more than a week,” we were told.

I dubbed the baseball bat Li’l Slugger. Honestly, I thought the present melodramatic until later that night, when I was roused from sleep—my first night in a new bed in a new place—by my two madly barking dogs. There was something clawing at the front of my house. It was about 3 a.m. When I opened the front door and stepped outside, I saw a man clinging to the side of my house, maybe eight feet off the ground, hanging from a windowsill, his legs cartoonishly scrambling against the wood.

lock for my front gate. I now keep mace by the front door, too.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, even though it was pretty obvious.

His legs slowed down. “Trying to hide from the cops,” he said.

“Do it someplace else.”

He dropped to the ground and turned and looked at me in a considering sort of way. We were about 10 feet apart. He wore a knit cap low over his forehead and he probably had 50 pounds on me. My tie-dye pajama set was less than intimidating.

“I have a baseball bat,” I said, grabbing Li’l Slugger and waving it demonstratively, although probably not threateningly because what the fuck do I know about baseball? “Get out.”

After another pause that really caused me to sweat, he walked out of my tiny yard, which has a fence around it separating it from the rest of the gardens, gently closed my gate, and disappeared. The next day, I received my second housewarming gift: a

•

I DON’T BELIEVE in ghosts for the same reason I don’t believe in God: I’m no fun. Still, I’m embarrassed to say that for a while I imagined my tiny house was haunted. Sometimes there’d be a soft scraping at the front, or tiny knocks at the windows, but whenever I opened the door or lifted a blind, no one was there. One evening at about dusk, I was reading on the couch when I heard footsteps on the roof. Pacing, just above my head. I jumped up and ran outside. But there was no ghost on my roof, just a raccoon eating a cat.

•

AFTER I’D LIVED in my cottage for a few years, two men in white hazmat suits and kneepads appeared on my doorstep and informed me that I was living atop a pet cemetery.

My house doesn’t have a foundation. It’s perched three feet above the earth on stilts. A dwarfish door at the front of the house opens up into the crawl space. The door is locked. Also, there’s a tree planted in front of it.

The men told me that because my house is surrounded by towering condos, my crawl space is the most popular spot in the neighborhood for animals to die—rats, raccoons, stray cats, other creatures. “Junkies even used to nest there,” one of the men told me. (That was before the lock and the tree.) “I bet we’ll find a lot of needles.”

The men had been sent by the city to exhume the bodies from under my house. They wouldn’t let me watch or peek inside the tiny door—they didn’t have enough hazmat suits and kneepads to go around. When they first opened the tiny door, one of the men said, “Yeesh. I’m surprised she didn’t smell that one.”

They hauled bags and bags of stuff out of there—years’ worth of accumulated dead

animals I never smelled. It took them two hours. I wasn’t sure what to do while they were thumping around, but it seemed like I should commemorate all those furry little lives somehow. I remembered my parents putting down my childhood dog when I was in college. At the time, my roommate played ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” obsessively. Now it plays in my head every time I see roadkill. But I didn’t have “The Winner Takes It All” on my computer, so I played “Dancing Queen” on repeat instead.

•

IF YOU’VE NEVER been, the Belltown P-Patch is a beautiful garden with a couple dozen plots, each carefully tended by a gardener. Some plots are vegetable gardens, some are flower gardens, and some combine the two. I have discovered so much interesting stuff in the P-Patch—lemon verbena, artichoke trees, more mints than your mouth can hold, a rat’s nest made entirely out of used condoms, raspberries, you name it. In the summer, the garden is especially gorgeous. A steady trickle of people wander through its footpaths all day: Belltown residents walking their dogs or children, homeless people looking for a spot to nap, cruise-ship passengers who’ve gotten lost on the way to Pike Place Market, gardeners admiring their plots, drug users. And, sometimes, assholes. I feel it is my job to call out the assholes. I can’t help myself.

One day, as I was attempting to prune a tree, I noticed a scroungey-looking woman with scissors clipping flowers from people’s gardens. From the way she was dressed— torn sweatpants, Crocs, and a dingy sports bra—I guessed she was either homeless or very poor.

“Hey there, please don’t pick the flowers,” I said. “Those are people’s gardens.” She turned to me, scissors in one hand and a very beautiful bouquet in the other, and said, “Bitch, I will cut your face.”

I held up my three-foot-long tree pruners and replied, “Not if I cut yours first.” We stared at each other for a second and then both started cackling. It was a very cathartic cackle—the laughter of two women who have just realized that maybe they don’t want to risk fucking with each other. Then, still laughing, she clipped another flower.

“Knock it the fuck off,” I told her. “If you

don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the cops.”

That got her moving in a hurry.

Later that evening, I was leaving the garden on my way up to happy hour when I noticed another young woman with clippers. This woman had ridden up on a Vespa. She was still wearing her matching mint-green helmet, and on her arm was a basket filled with one woman’s very carefully tended roses.

“Hey, please don’t pick the flowers,” I said to her, same as I do to everyone. “That’s someone’s garden.”

She gave me a quick glance, then continued to cut roses.

So I stepped closer to her. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to call the cops,” I said because, hey, it had worked before.

“For what? For picking someone’s roses? Oooh, I’m sure they’ll rush right over and arrest me,” she said. She was right—it was an empty threat. I wasn’t going to call the cops on someone for picking roses; cops have more important things to do than respond to such calls. That moment was a reminder that some people can be real entitled pricks. The entitlement probably comes from experiencing mild-to-nonexistent consequences for being pricks throughout their lives. It is especially common among non-poor people and white people, most of whom do not jaywalk through life with a healthy fear of being singled out and persecuted by authority figures.

This young woman knew cutting other people’s flowers was a dick move and she did it anyway.

So I tried a different tactic.

“You know you’re being a huge asshole right now, don’t you? You’re an asshole, and I’m going to stand here and keep telling you that you’re an asshole until you leave. Oh, and I’m going to take your picture and send it to all of the gardeners of this P-Patch so they know exactly what you look like, and what the stupid Vespa you drive looks like, so they can also call you an asshole every time you step foot in this garden.”

The Vespa-riding rose thief was out of there before I could get my phone out to take her picture.

IF YOU HAVE ever had sex in the Belltown P-Patch, chances are I have watched you have sex. My walls are thin and I do not own a television. If you’d like to know who has sex in the Belltown P-Patch, the answer is everyone: homeless people, people with multiple homes, drunk people, hippies, stoned people, even Greek tourists! Sometimes, the sex is funny—like the bleached-blond couple that had tantric lap sex on the sidewalk, in the middle of a sunny summer day, for two hours (I clocked that shit) while pedestrians politely ignored them. She sat on his lap and rode at a slow gallop so long that even I felt saddle sore.

Other times, the sex is sad. I have witnessed a lot of blowjobs for drugs in that garden, sometimes before I’ve had my morning coffee.

I have a hands-off policy when it comes to other people’s public sex. I mind my own business and stay out of the way until it’s over—unless it seems someone is being harmed.

Recently, I awoke to the sounds of screaming. It was around 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night. The screams were low, guttural. My first thought was, An ox is being

stabbed! I ran to my kitchen, peeked out the window, and saw two people in the garden fucking. But the woman was being fucked from behind, so I couldn’t tell if it was consensual. I ran back to my bedroom to grab my phone, and then to the front door to grab Li’l Slugger. My plan was this: Call 911, and then run out screaming and swinging the baseball bat. Going outside was maybe a stupid plan, but I couldn’t just stand there and listen to her screams. So I opened my front door, already dialing the 9—only to see that the couple had switched positions. From this new vantage, I could tell that the sex was entirely consensual. So I went back inside, full of adrenaline and perverse crabbiness, and tried to go back to sleep.

• • •

OVER THE COURSE of a few years, I’ve seen one man have sex with many different women in the garden. About a year ago, I saw this man at a rather swank public event. I felt giddy—it was like seeing my own personal reality TV star in the flesh. Later, when we were introduced, I couldn’t resist asking him if he had a plot in the Belltown P-Patch.

“No,” he said, giving me a puzzled look.

“That’s funny, I feel like I’ve seen you there a lot. I live in one of the cottages.”

He gave some vague nonresponse like “I take a lot of walks” and excused himself from the conversation soon after. I have not seen his penis since. :(

• • •

ONCE, ON MY WAY to work, a man followed me for blocks shouting, “Where’s my wang?” I said that I did not know where his wang was. To this day, it remains a mystery.

• • •

DOWNTOWN RESIDENTS ARE very concerned about crime and street violence.

I understand, but too often, words like “crime” and “street violence” are code words for “poor.” And personally—as someone who is not nearly as wealthy as any of her neighbors and who lives right next to the Millionair Club, which hooks poor and homeless people up with temporary jobs, hot meals, and an array of social services—I feel pretty safe in my neighborhood. The men who line up at the Millionair Club every morning have never harassed or threatened me. The constant cycle of men who sleep in the garden have never harassed or threatened me.

The men who harass and threaten me are usually the men who wear a rainbow of button-down shirts and party in Belltown on the weekends. On several occasions, such men have encountered me walking home. They have followed me. One told me I have DSL, and when I clearly didn’t know if I should be offended/afraid/turned on?, he clarified: “Dick Sucking Lips.” Another man just kept chanting, as he followed me home, that he could “buy and sell” me. He shouted this for blocks. I’ve caught men like these puking their guts out in the garden as often as I’ve caught homeless inebriates puking in the garden.

• • •

AS WITH SEX , I have a pretty hands-off policy when it comes to people sleeping in the garden. After all, it’s a public park and

people have to sleep somewhere. My general rule is, if you clean up after yourself, we do not have a problem.

For a few seasons, there was a young woman living in the garden. My guess is that she was in her early 20s. She was really beautiful—big brown eyes, a willowy frame, flashy white teeth. She also had a serious substance-abuse problem—meth, crack, spray paint, gas (one day I saw her huffing from a big red canister). I guess I imagined myself as a benevolent older-sister type who could maybe remind her, through generous thoughts and actions, that she had worth. If I saw her in the morning, I’d wish her a good day. When I saw her in the evening, I’d ask her how her day went. Her response was usually along the lines of “Fucking dandy” or “How the fuck do you think?”

If I offered her food, she’d say things like “Thanks, Mother Teresa.” Which was actually pretty funny.

When she left food and drugs and gas cans strewn about the garden, I’d ask her politely to pick them up. When she wouldn’t

PQ

If you have ever had sex in the Belltown P-Patch, chances are I have watched you

of it. Sure, it’s disgusting, but it’s less disgusting than having a dog lick my face with hot shit breath. One day, while patrolling for human poop, I found a ring half buried in the ground. I asked around but none of the gardeners claimed it, so I pawned it for $285. If I believed in karma, this would be a good example of it.

•

pick them up, I’d pick them up and throw them away and lecture her a bit. When she’d dig them out of the trash, I’d throw them away again and lecture her some more.

Then one early morning, I let my dogs out into the garden to sniff around while I made myself coffee. Minutes later, I went outside and discovered my two dogs lapping fresh shit off of this woman’s ass. It was the viscous shit of a hard-core drug addict. She was on her stomach, pants down, barefoot. It looked like she’d taken a shit while sitting on the ground and then rolled over. It was disgusting, yes, but I didn’t have time to process that because she appeared to be dead. I was terrified. Then she snored and I realized she was just in a drug-induced stupor. Meanwhile, my dogs had wandered away from her sparkling clean ass to lap up other puddles of shit she’d left on the sidewalk. Have you ever smelled hot human shit on a panting dog’s breath? What about two dogs?

In my head, I’m still screaming. I rounded my dogs into my yard and closed the fence and walked back to her prone form. What should I do with her? Call the cops? Call someone else? Who else was there to call? As I stood there, dumbfounded and barefoot, coffee in hand, a man walked up. I’d seen him before. Sometimes he brought her drugs; sometimes he brought her socks. We stared at her in silence. I asked if I needed to call someone. He said, “I’ll take care of it.” I watched as he pulled up her shit-stained pants, rolled her over, and woke her up by slapping her cheeks. He tried to help her sit up, but her movements were too jerky, like she didn’t have control of her limbs. She was shaking all over. Somehow, he got her up and out of the garden. I haven’t seen her since.

BECAUSE OF THE shit-eating incident, I now patrol the garden for human poop as well as dog poop. When I find human poop, I pick it up with a doggie bag and dispose

I’VE CALLED 911 only once while living in the P-Patch. This was a few years ago, during the winter, when the days get dark by 5 p.m. I was standing at my kitchen sink when I heard a commotion. Outside, a large man was stomping through several fallow garden plots. Pacing back and forth, back and forth, stomp stomp stomp. Then he reached down and picked up a broken old chair someone had used to decorate their plot and threw it. Then he ripped several stakes out of the ground and threw them. By the time he got around to heaving bricks, I was dialing 911. I gave the operator my statement as he was shot-putting decorative slabs of walkway. She asked if he could see me. I said, “Probably.” She told me to get away from the window, so I did. She was still talking—telling me soothing things, like help was on the way—when I remembered that the gate around my front yard was unlocked. And I didn’t have my dogs with me. I ran to the front door, thinking that maybe I could dash out and lock my gate and then feel oh so much better, but when I opened my front door, there he was, already in my yard at the bottom of my steps with a cement goldpainted Buddha raised high above his head. He looked up. I think I startled him. I know he startled me, so I said the first thing that came to mind: “NOPE.” Then I slammed the door and locked it.

Seconds later, flashing lights shone through my windows. I saw the man on his knees with his hands cuffed and officers looming over him. I don’t know what happened to him after that. My tacky gold Buddha I found days later, embedded in some mulch.

I’VE LIVED IN the Belltown P-Patch for five years now, which I’ve just realized is a longer period of time than I’ve ever lived in any house, ever. There’s no telling how long I’ll last. Some days, I think it’d be nice to grow old here, to die here. A lot of people in my life have died suddenly over the last few years, and some of the best memories I have of them are in this house. I want to hoard those memories, to live with them as long as possible. But realistically, I can’t live here forever. The lack of closet space is a real hassle, and the windows are so thin and rickety that a strong breeze makes the curtains dance. When my time is up—I’m talking about my death now—I have two requests: 1. My teeth are pulled and donated to needy children with imperfect smiles.

2. Someone cuts the lock on that dwarfish door and slides my toothless body under that house with whatever stray cats, raccoons, squirrels, and other corpses have happened to settle there. If shoving my whole body down there is too much to ask, I’ll settle for a hand.

Comment on this story at

STRANGER SUGGESTS

‘Dark Entries’ ART

The mysterious, throbby, sad art on the walls of Platform Gallery is like somebody you’re chasing who disappears around a corner every time you get them in view. The artists are Robert Yoder of Seattle, doing his best work in years, and New York’s Michelle Kloehn. Yoder hides layers of color and painted action under rough, dirty monochrome surfaces with enigmatic glyphs scrawled on them desperately, cultishly. Kloehn’s photographs are the sensitive exposures of the 19th-century wet plate collodion process, abstract shapes that provide the only clues to hard real things lost. (Platform Gallery, 114 Third Ave S, platformgallery.com, 11 am–5:30 pm, free, through Feb 1) JEN GRAVES

National Pie Day

The American Pie Council (is this a great country or what?!) has declared January 23 National Pie Day. Let’s have some pie! If you’re baking-impaired and lack someone you can cajole into making a pie for you, try A la Mode Pies on Phinney, American Pie in Georgetown, Pie Bar on Capitol Hill (a bar with pie!), Shoofly Pie Company in West Seattle, or the tersely named Pie in Fremont and at the Armory in Seattle Center. Pie is better than cake (and National Cake Day isn’t until November, anyway). (Wherever there is pie, all day today) BETHANY

Women in Art

ART/CONFLICT OF INTEREST A year ago, Seattle Art Museum’s ads shouted “Women are taking over!” as it presented Elles, an exhibition of female artists from Paris’s Centre Pompidou. Galleries jumped in with shows of women artists and talks about gender. Did any of it matter? Tonight’s open discussion is about how and how often women show up in Seattle art, a year after the deluge. The panel kicking things off contains artists Susanna Bluhm and Susie Lee and myself—but it’s a conversation that will be defined by whoever shows up. (Hedreen Gallery, 901 12th Ave, seattleu.edu/hedreen, 6 pm, free) JEN GRAVES

Krar Collective, Gabriel Teodros

Hyped as “the White Stripes of Ethiopia” for their tough minimalist sound, Krar Collective is the trio that spins drums, vocals, and krar (the six-stringed Ethiopian lyre) into a gorgeous tornado of music. Further drama comes from vocalist Genet Assefa’s passionate dancing, built around what the Guardian calls “impossibly rapid shoulder-shaking and dangerously frantic head movements.” Icing on the cake: Seattle hiphop hero Gabriel Teodros opens. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, townhallseattle.org, 8 pm, $20 adv/$25 DOS) DAVID

Children’s Film Festival

One of Seattle’s most reliably excellent film fests, the Children’s Film Festival showcases family-friendly films from around the globe in an 11-day parade of filmmaking workshops, pajama parties, pancake breakfasts, and other things to help kids fall in love with cinema. Grown-ups won’t be bored, either: CFF’s films are impressively ambitious, ranging from exquisite stop-motion cartoons to serious dramas featuring young protagonists. Today’s centerpiece: Horizon Beautiful, a tough, terrific Swiss film about the football dreams of an Ethiopian boy. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, nwfilmforum.org, Jan 23–Feb 2) DAVID SCHMADER

‘Usually Beauty Fails’

DANCE Someone must be slipping ecstasy into the water fountains of Montreal dance studios these days. There’s a strong populist streak—and plenty of streaking—in the outlandish, high-energy party-performances by artists like La La La Human Steps, Marie Chouinard, and Frédérick Gravel that seems allergic to austerity. (One arch critic at the Telegraph describes the phenomenon as “crutches-and-cleavage claptrap.”) This week, Gravel brings Usually Beauty Fails, a hip-gyrating piece for three musicians and six dancers that is saturated in electronic rock and smoldering sexuality. (On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, ontheboards.org, 8 pm, $25, Jan 23–26) BRENDAN KILEY

Ishmael Beah BOOKS

Tonight, Ishmael Beah will read from his debut novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, at Town Hall. Anyone who’s read Beah’s memoir about life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone knows that’s what we call a can’t-miss event. But here’s something a notch above can’t-miss: Third Place Books Ravenna is hosting an afternoon event with Beah, and for a little more than Tomorrow’s cover price, you get the book, a conversation with Beah in an intimate setting, and a delicious lunch from Vios Cafe. It’s not just can’t-miss, it’s attendance compulsory. (Third Place Books Ravenna, 6504 20th Ave NE, thirdplacebooks.com, 1 pm, $40) PAUL CONSTANT

Oliver Mtukudzi

MUSIC

Zimbabwe has only two global-level Afropop stars. One is, of course, Thomas Mapfumo, and the other is Oliver Mtukudzi, who performs tonight with his band the Black Spirits. Mtukudzi, like Mapfumo, is a master musician, has recorded lots and lots of albums and hits, and represents the great future that the small, landlocked country failed to realize after the War of Independence. Mapfumo’s best tune is “Shumba” (“Lion”) and Mtukudzi’s is “Seiko” (“I’m Just Asking Why”). The beauty of the sadness in that tune has no equal in Zimbabwean culture. (Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave, jazzalley.com, 7:30 pm, $26.50, all ages, Jan 28–29) CHARLES MUDEDE

MOODS OF LOVE FROM SINISTER TO SISTERLY

Directed by Hyeong-Cheol Kang Korea, 2011, 124 min (Se, Jie) Jan 26, 2 pm (Sseo-Ni) Feb 2, 2 pm BOLLYWOOD DREAMS (Rangeela) Feb 9, 2 pm

Directed by Ang Lee Taiwan, 2007, 157 min For mature audiences only LUST, CAUTION

For more information, go to visitsam.org/gardnercenter. Films are free with Asian Art Museum admission.

by Ram Gopal Varma India, 1995, 142 min

ART

Unscripted Explorations of the Inside and the Out

BY JEN GRAVES

“Do you feel free?”

“What’s so cool about selling crack?”

“Am I the only one embarrassed eating chicken, watermelon, and bananas in front of white people?”

Those are some of the questions in Question Bridge: Black Males. Once asked, each one gets answered by a number of other black men. To that latter question, the answers include “You’re not the only one, brother—I don’t even eat watermelon” and “There are times when you feel like you are the stereotype,” followed by testimony of the occasional contrarian desire to hide a true love for basketball and “Why do we care what they think? I don’t need their approval.”

The men are in videos projected on a wall. It looks like they’re talking to each other, back and forth, chewing on one question for a while until somebody throws out a new one. Each man gets to talk until he’s finished, no

Artists created Question Bridge. It’s kin to a project called The Roof Is on Fire. That happened one night in June 1994, when 200 public high school students sat in cars on a rooftop parking garage over Oakland, talking to each other while an audience—instructed not to interrupt—leaned and listened in. The teenagers had chosen topics of conversation that mattered to them, like sex and race and values and the future, but what they said was unscripted.

The organizers were Oakland artists and teachers Suzanne Lacy and Chris Johnson. Johnson extended the idea to black men and created an early, small version of Question Bridge, which he shopped to TV stations and museums including the Smithsonian in the 1990s, but nobody bit. Smithsonian curator Deborah Willis ended up with a copy of

“Which are you first, black or male?”

Johnson’s video, and a decade later, it was discovered by her son, Hank Willis Thomas, who’d happened to study with Johnson in college. Willis Thomas, by that time, was known for his own photographs, including a Nike symbol branded into the skin of a black man. (Deborah Willis, now head of photography at NYU, was a visiting scholar at the Henry Art Gallery last year, where she organized the exhibition Out [o] Fashion.)

Johnson and Willis Thomas teamed up with two other people—New York artist Bayeté Ross Smith and film producer/director Kamal Sinclair—to form the corps of creators needed for the herculean tasks of conducting the interviews and editing the hundreds of hours of footage into a film that feels like one smooth conversation. Question Bridge has played Sundance, been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, and is now touring extensively. At the moment, it’s in Seattle and Los Angeles.

interruptions. Occasionally, they all laugh at the same time. But they’re not in one room. Each man is in his own video; they were filmed separately, more than 150 of them, in eight cities around the nation, and most of them have never met. They appear together but separate, sort of like the Brady Bunch intro but with all black males, of all ages, from all walks, pastor to politician to famous actor to prison inmate.

“This question is for all the black gay men out there. How do you feel about yourself? Are you frightened to be out? What do you do to take care of yourself?”

“What are you afraid of?”

“What do you really think of white women?”

“I try to live good but I’m surrounded by bad. How can I live peaceful?”

“Suppose I like classical music… and Picasso over Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence… Am I still black?”

The person responsible for bringing it to Seattle is Michelle Dunn Marsh, the recently appointed director of the Photo Center Northwest. She saw Question Bridge at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York this summer while she was teaching at Parsons. Her idea was to add a local component in the form of an exhibition of photographs submitted by men of African descent in the Northwest, which she invited Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes to cocurate, also with Photo Center gallery director Ann Pallesen.

REVIEW

Question Bridge and Seen

Photo Center Northwest Through March 8

Hank Willis Thomas artist talk Wed Jan 22, 6:30 pm

“Which are you first, black or male?”

It’s like that. Raw, intense, funny, in-depth, trusting. Question Bridge creates a place that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It’s like being inside someone’s living room, if a living room could feel warm and still accommodate 150 people in focused, honest conversation. You should visit. It’s rare to be asked like this to come on in.

Some of the pictures are strictly personal reflections: an old Polaroid of a smiling, bighaired couple on a halcyon sunny day, the man wearing groovy round-framed sunglasses. Today, that man is King County Council member Larry Gossett. There are shots of Aaron Dixon at the Seattle Black Panthers office, and Robert Wade contributed a stunning portrait—this one a work of art—of Connie Matthews, a Panther operative and organizer in Copenhagen (and his then-girlfriend). Other pieces are self-portraits meant to convey a message: We’re not all deadbeat dads, I’m beyond your narrow definitions of African and African American, I’m gay and fabulous. Still other pieces are abstract landscapes, or surrealistic photocollages. As in Deborah Willis’s exhibition at the Henry, photography, like black-male-ness, is revealed to contain unseen multitudes. This

LOOSE LIPS

BY STRANGER ARTS GOSSIP SQUAD

• Question: On the Sunday afternoon of a decisive football game to decide whether the Seahawks will play in the Super Bowl, how many people will show up to an autobiographical solo show in which a Latino man ruminates on his absent father?

Answer: Four of the performer’s friends (sitting in the front row) and one critic (sitting in the third row—see review, page 22).

Follow-up question: Will the conspicuous sparseness of the audience detract from the pleasure of watching the performance?

Answer: Not at all.

• Later that evening, Gender Tender performed their latest dance piece, Sync or Swim, at Calamus Auditorium at Gay City, a show that involved performers across the gender spectrum rolling around with flesh-colored latex casts of high heels.

Gender Tender is an ongoing project about “the day to day challenges of navigating hetero-normative culture as queer wizards,” and this show consisted of send-ups of gendered family archetypes on TV. One of Gender Tender’s cofounders, Will Courtney, can do more with his eyes than some people can do with their whole bodies. “I’m Uncle Simon and I hate football,” he ad-libbed at one point, which was funny because outside the building people were hollering and honking horns, and just a few minutes earlier, in the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop that shares space with Gay City, someone in a Seahawks jersey and cap had just been holding forth about football, community, and the meaning of life or something.

• Bob Nelson, the former Almost Live! cast member, has been nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay for Nebraska, Alexander Payne’s classic-in-the-making. The movie features Bruce Dern doing a very convincing job of being senile and an excellent ending The 86th Academy Awards are on March 2.

• Meanwhile in Utah, Seattle work is lighting up the Sundance Film Festival, including director Lynn Shelton’s new film Laggies, which received a high-profile premiere and landed a domestic distributor, and actor Paul Eenhoorn’s lead performance in the dramedy Land Ho!

• Less than two years ago, Robin Held and Betsey Brock moved from their posts at cutting-edge local art museums (the Frye and the Henry, respectively) to work at Reel Grrls, a nonprofit that teaches media arts production to girls and young women. But now, both are leaving Reel Grrls without other work lined up. (Held was executive director, Brock director of external affairs.) Rumor has it that Reel Grrls is in money trouble, at least short-term. Brock, who is still at Reel Grrls but departing soon, e-mailed: “A select number of Reel Grrls major funders have turned to new priorities (in school programs and STEM only) and a number of previously awarded grants have changed regional restrictions (California only) and are no longer available to Reel Grrls. The organization is in the process of identifying replacements for them, and has more prospects and asks than ever before.” Reel Grrls interim executive director Ilona Rossman Ho didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

show is called Seen: an exploration of the inside and the out, the then and the now, by the (still) invisible men

Seattle’s a small town, and Seen is full of connections. (Dunn Marsh’s own mother was assisted in coming from Burma by a relative of the Gossetts.) How honest can self-representations be in this context? How in-depth can Seen go in presenting the identities of known locals? The horizon—from field versus house slave to Ellison to the soul shake to beyond Obama—is the real view, anyway. n

THEATER

Amy Thone Is Abnormally Talented

And Thirty Years Later, The Normal Heart Is Still Infuriating

BY CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

There’s one woman and a bunch of dying guys. That’s the structure of The Normal Heart. The woman is a doctor—the “doctor of death,” they call her—and the guys are her patients. The guys who don’t die before our eyes are going to die soon, and they know it, and it shows. These are the earliest days of AIDS; the play starts in 1981. One of the minor characters walks across the stage with Kaposi’s sarcoma on his face, and I realized, watching him, that I’d never been in a room with someone with Kaposi’s sarcoma, the purple lesions that many sick guys got. At intermission, I asked my companion, a gay engineer in his 30s, if he’d ever seen Kaposi’s sarcoma before, because I wanted his opinion on the makeup design. He thought I was asking about a band. That’s how little conversation there is among gay guys born after 1980 about our shared history.

Lots of gay movies touch on AIDS slightly, but a little knowledge, as someone smart once said, is dangerous. Young gay guys are pretty eye-roll-y and know-it-all-ish about everything. And no young gay guy goes up to an older gay guy at a party and goes, “So tell me about AIDS.” And what would he tell, anyway? The whole history of horrors in his head? That is a worthwhile conversation, but

if you’re not an aggressive conversationalist, it’s never going to happen. In walks theater. Thirty years after Larry Kramer wrote it, The Normal Heart is still full of infuriating detail about, say, how difficult it was to get the New York Times to write about AIDS, even though New York was the disease’s epicenter. (Closet cases at the New York Times didn’t want to out themselves by caring too much about it.) To say nothing of how difficult it was to get research funding. The mayor of New York City was also a closet case—or a “bachelor,” as Dr. Emma Brookner puts it, disgustedly, in air quotes. Dr. Brookner is played by Amy Thone, a brilliant Seattle actor who’s been praised to the skies in The Stranger before. (She has a Stranger Genius Award.) I hate to heap more attention on Thone at the expense of the other actors, but so be it: She’s un-look-away-from-able. Her unimpressed is very impressive. She’s so convincing, it feels like an actual pissed-off doctor from 1981 has been airlifted into the production, and the rigmarole of getting her here was so expensive, they couldn’t afford a set. (Well, it’s very sparse, but director Sheila Daniels does one or two wonderful things with it.) All the other actors are of normal talents. There was no bar at intermission, even though a bar was desperately needed. A third of the audience was in tears by the end. n

Disappearing

Miguel

Morales Asks Where’s Papi?

BY BRENDAN KILEY

AWhere’s Papi?

ccording to the US Census Bureau, around 24 percent of American children are living in a household with a mother but no father. Where’s Papi?, a new solo show by actor and improv performer Miguel Morales, is a simple account, in brief snapshot scenes, of what it was like to grow up in one. Morales was born in Puerto Rico, but we first meet him as a kid in Chicago, crawling around on his hands and knees, scrutinizing the floor. The family vacuum cleaner is broken, he tells us, and Papi has offered to pay him and his siblings a few cents for each thing they pick out of the carpet. “I got 33 things,” he says in an eager little-kid voice, but one of them is pretty big, so he figures he can break it into

two things for a few extra pennies. He then plots his trip to the corner store and the candy he’s going to buy. The lights go down, the lights come up, and it’s later in the day, when he tells us he and his sister fought over some of the candy. Papi got involved—“You never want Papi to get involved,” he informs us sagaciously—and gave them each a few bofetadas (smacks). The lights go down again.

Morales continues the tour through his upbringing in this quick-cut style: going to the bar with Papi, playing catch with an older cousin, trying to impress Papi on the pitcher’s mound, watching Papi get drunker and more distant from the family, resenting Papi, reconciling with Papi, resenting Papi again, and so on. These are stories we’ve heard before, but Morales tells them with the urgency and immediacy one feels about one’s own childhood, adding a few vivid details about life in his Puerto Rican corner of a big city: the cooking, the disappointment in how Latinos are portrayed on television, the humor. “I know Puerto Rican judo,” he tells us in the sly voice of a little kid trying on a slightly grown-up joke. “Ju don’ know if I got a knife,” he says, laying on the heavier accent of his parents’ generation, “ju don’ know if I got a gun, ju don’ know what I got!” Then he beams at us proudly.

Objectively, Papi doesn’t sound like a model father, but Morales’s story traces the irrationality and imbalance of familial love, and the peculiar way that some children in single-parent households cling even more fiercely to the parent who’s letting them down rather than the parent who’s doing the hard work of loving and raising them on a daily basis. After all these years, “Where’s Papi?” is a question that, for Morales and millions of others, is still worth asking.

BOOKS

The Book That Ate the World

When Her Novel Didn’t Work, Ruth Ozeki Climbed Inside and Fixed It

BY PAUL CONSTANT

RPREVIEW

Ruth Ozeki Tues Jan 28, University Book Store, 7 pm, free

uth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being violates one of the cardinal rules you’ll find in fiction-writing guides: She pulls herself into the book. The novel is split into two rotating narratives: One is the story of Nao, a bullied teenager in Tokyo with a suicidal father, and the second is the story of Ruth, a woman who finds Nao’s journal in a lunch box on the coast of British Columbia. Like Ozeki, Ruth is a novelist who spends much of the year living in British Columbia with her husband, Oliver. Like Ozeki, she’s of mixed American and Japanese heritage. And like Ozeki, Ruth becomes swept up in Nao’s story as the book nears its conclusion. Looking at it one way, Time Being is the story of the writing of Time Being, and looking at it another way, it somehow includes the story of reading Time Being as well. The book seems to absorb whatever circumstance is thrown at it.

Time Being had a difficult path to publication. Ozeki started struggling with the story of Nao’s depression and alienation in 2006. By 2011, Ozeki confirms in a phone

interview, the novel she had written, a “light and surrealistic romp,” just “wasn’t a very good book.” In March of that year, Japan was hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake and a series of tsunamis, which caused three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to melt down. Ozeki felt compelled to write the disaster into her draft: “It was such a world-changing event,” she says. “A moment that kind of stopped time.” Ozeki wanted to show how the events of Fukushima spread to the Pacific Rim and the rest of the world, but she wasn’t sure how to go about that. Her husband suggested that she put a version of herself into the book to demonstrate the disaster’s larger effects. Ozeki says in retrospect the idea was obvious: “It was a meta-fictional device, but it was a meta-fictional device that had a reason.” Putting herself in the fiction felt like a natural response to the disasters in Japan: “In a way, the world had intruded,” she says, into her fictional world, and the rift caused by that intrusion had opened to include her. Ozeki took up residence at Hedgebrook, the women’s writing retreat on Whidbey Island, and suddenly the book that had taken six years to write was finished in just six months. She credits Hedgebrook for “giving my mind back, or at least my fiction writer’s mind back,” and says that this confidence helped her realize that putting herself in the book was obviously “the right thing to do—I don’t think I’ve ever had a writing experience that was so intense and so fast.”

The decision paid off. A Tale for the Time Being was roundly praised, culminating in places on both the 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist and the National Book Critics Circle shortlist. Now, a year later, Ozeki is out on a long tour for the book’s paperback release. Given that Time Being’s conflict hinges on the years of difference between Nao writing in her journal and Ruth finding the journal on a beach, half a world away, does Ozeki feel an extra layer of conflict developing from the year between her and the Ozeki who wrote the book? She does feel that Time Being “is no longer mine. The book is kind of out in the world. It has a life now. I feel like this [reading tour] is sort of the last bit of letting go.”

Do fans treat Ozeki differently, now that she’s become a character in her own fiction? She says people have always assumed her stories were autobiographical. “That’s the thing about writing about characters who share your ethnic and cultural similarities,” she says. “If you’re a Caucasian middle-class guy writing about Caucasian middle-class guys, people wouldn’t think about you as writing yourself as a character unless there were specific factors” besides race and class involved. She’s always been aware of this, and she’s tried to upend those expectations in her previous novels: “In the first book, I made the character very, very tall and gave her green hair. In the second book, I made the mixed-race character kind of unreliable.” But in Time Being, “I kind of threw my hands up in the air and gave up.”

And now that Ozeki has written extensively about Ruth, does she anticipate more starring roles in future books? After all, once a writer opens the door to meta-fiction— Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, and Haruki Murakami come immediately to mind—it seems to become hard to contain themselves to traditional narratives. Ozeki sounds concerned: “I hadn’t actually thought about that, but you’re right.” But, she says, “My temptation is to slam that door and find another. I can’t imagine writing another book with this particular Ruth and this particular Oliver in it. That does not seem like something that I’ll do.” Then she second-guesses herself: “But having said that, I’ll probably turn right around and do that.”

ART

Museums

BELLEVUE ARTS

MUSEUM

Rick Araluce: The Minutes, the Hours, the Days: Araluce constructs teeny, tiny, immaculately detailed spaces that look to have been abandoned five minutes ago or five years ago. Either way, there are noirish feelings of invasion and loneliness. $10. Tues-Sun. Through Feb 2. 510 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue 425-519-0770.

FRYE ART MUSEUM

Franz von Stuck: This is dark, dirty, strange Symbolism with Art Nouveau flourishes—we’re talking Satan and hellfire and naked ladies and beautiful, swirling patterns. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth and the 120th anniversary of his American debut, Munich

Secession cofounder Franz von Stuck—the painter of Sin—finally gets his due in his first monographic exhibition in the United States. Free. Tues-Sun. Through Feb 2. 704 Terry Ave 622-9250.

HENRY ART GALLERY

Jason Dodge’s sculptures are stories. They are: what’s left after 19 farm animals spend time in the galleries, pillows slept on only by ornithologists, pillows slept on only by acrobats, linens from a local hotel linen service changed weekly, and rolls of newsprint that will become actual pages of the Seattle Times during the run of the exhibition. $10 suggested. Wed-Sun. Through Jan 26. Danny Lyon: The Bikeriders: Photos of motorcycle gangs from the ‘60s and ‘70s. $10 suggested. Wed-Sun. Through May 4. 4100 15th Ave NE 543-2280.

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

LaToya Ruby Frazier is the 2013 winner of Seattle Art Museum’s Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Prize, given to black artists who’ve been working for less than 10 years. Frazier is from Braddock, Pennsylvania, a mining town that she’s gone back to mine for her own highly personal yet broadly relevant photo and media work. It’s been shown and praised at Brooklyn Museum and the New Museum, the New York Times describing it as “preternaturally mature...arresting black-and-white photographs that sometimes look like studio portraits or social documentaries but aren’t fully at home in either category.” $15 suggested. WedSun. Through Jun 22. 1300 First Ave 625-8900.

SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM

Liu Xiaodong grew up in a small industrial town in China that’s been left behind in the same rapid urbanization that swept him up and out into Beijing and the international art world. In Hometown Boy, he goes back to portray the lost place in heartrending paintings and captioned sketches. A documentary film on the process plays in the gallery, too. It’s a stark and moving little show. $7 suggested. Wed-Sun. Through Jun 29. 1400 E Prospect St 654-3100.

Gallery Openings

G. GIBSON GALLERY Cable Griffith: Soft and skillful painting by the Seattle artist and director of Cornish College’s gallery program. His work evokes the rounded utopian qualities of platformer SNES-era video games. Free. Reception Thurs Feb 6, 6-8 pm. Wed-Sat. Through March 1. 300 S Washington St 587-4033.

Continuing Exhibitions

ARTSWEST

Dee Dee Redux: Artworks by Deborah Faye Lawrence: A retrospective for an artist who has been working in Seattle for two decades. Her varnished collages buzz with color, pattern, text, and politics. Sometimes they’re a pure flurry of visual and textual data. Sometimes they get her in trouble. Free. Thurs-Sat. Through Feb 22. 4711 California Ave SW, 938-0339.

PHOTOGRAPHIC

CENTER NORTHWEST

Question Bridge: Black Males:

See review, page 21. Hank Willis Thomas speaks Wed Jan 22 at 6:30 pm. Free. Mon-Sun. Through March 8. 900 12th Ave, 720-7222.

Events

SEATTLE WOMEN’S CONVENTION

A year ago, Seattle Art Museum’s ads shouted “Women are taking over!” as it presented Elles, an exhibition of female artists from Paris’s Centre Pompidou. Galleries jumped in with shows of women artists and talks about gender. Did any of it matter? Tonight’s open discussion is about how and how often women show up in Seattle art, a year after the deluge. The panel kicking things off contains artists Susanna Bluhm and Susie Lee and The Stranger’s Jen Graves— but it’s a conversation that will be defined by whoever shows up. Hedreen Gallery, Seattle University 901 12th Ave, 2962244. Thurs Jan 23, 6-8:30 pm.

STEPHEN VITIELLO

A free lecture from this electronic musician and media artist. Reservations are recommended. Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. www.henryart.org. Free. Thurs Jan 23 at 7 pm. visualart@thestranger.com

READINGS

Wed 1/22

OKEY NDIBE

Foreign Gods, Inc. is a novel about a Nigerian man who becomes a cab driver in New York City. Ngugi wa Thiong’o loves it, which should be all that you need to know. Pigott Auditorium, 901 12th Avenue, Seattle University Campus, 2966000. Free. 5 pm.

KURT TIMMERMEISTER Local author Timmermeister’s food—especially his butter, which is the best butter I have ever eaten—is phenomenal. I also enjoyed his memoir, Growing a Farmer . Now he’s got a new book, Growing a Feast, about all the work that goes into making a single huge meal. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. bookstore. washington.edu. Free. 7 pm.

Thurs 1/23

CHEAP WINE & POETRY

Wine is so cheap at these events to get you in the mood for poetry. When you’re drunk, poetry is more meaningful, funnier, and more beautiful. (It’s like sexual attraction that way.) This outing of the popular poetry series features Rauan Klassnik and Amber Nelson, among other readers. Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. hugohouse.org. Free. 7 pm.

KATE LEBO

A Commonplace Book of Pie is a collection of poems about pie. It was published by very good local publisher Chin Music Press, which means it’s an attractive book as well. University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. bookstore.washington.edu. Free. 7 pm.

MAX TEGMARK

Promotional materials indicate that Our Mathematical Universe is based on the author’s “hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse.”

This book description makes me really wish David Foster Wallace was alive to read it. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 634-3400. townhallseattle.org. $5. 7 pm.

EREZ AIDEN, JEANBAPTISTE MICHEL

Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture is about using data from the internet to examine “trends in human history across the centuries.” The description for this book introduced me to a new word: zettabytes. It’s a number with 21 zeroes after it, and this year, the world will create five zezzabytes of data. Cool. Scary, but cool. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 634-3400. townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 pm. Fri 1/24

LEN VLAHOS

The Scar Boys is a young adult novel about an “outcast” who

becomes a “guitar hero.” Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. thirdplacebooks.com. Free. 6:30 pm. PAM HOUSTON

The very popular author of Cowboys Are My Weakness will give a lecture on writing dialogue, followed by a Q&A between Houston and local yoga memoirist Suzanne Morrison. Hugo House 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. hugohouse.org. $10. 7 pm.

Mon 1/27

ISHMAEL BEAH LUNCHEON

See Stranger Suggests, page 19. Third Place Books Ravenna 6504 20th Ave. NE, 525-2347. $40. 1 pm. JENNIE SHORTRIDGE, INDU SUNDARESAN

The local author of Love Water Memory will chat with Sundaresan about her book Mountain of Light, which is a novel about a rare gem and the Punjab Empire. This reading will be formatted like a book club, and local booksellers will also discuss books that they’ve been reading. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. elliottbaybook.com. Free. 7 pm.

ISHMAEL BEAH

The author of a memoir about being a child soldier returns with his first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow. It’s set in the Sierra Leone, just like Beah’s memoir. See also Stranger Suggests, page 19. Town Hall , 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 pm.

Tues 1/28

THE SEX-POSITIVE STORY SLAM

This new-ish open mic was created as “a place for people to tell their (mostly) true stories of sex, sexuality, and living in a gendered body.” This month’s theme is “In the Dark.” Black Coffee Co-op, 501 E Pine St. www. sexpositivestoryslam.org. Free. 6:30 pm.

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

San Francisco’s Maupin is a popular author who comes to town often. The Days of Anna Madrigal revisits one of Maupin’s most famous characters, who in press materials is referred to as the “transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane.” Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. elliottbaybook. com. Free. 7 pm. readings@thestranger.com

THEATER

Opening and Current Runs

AMERICAN WEE-PIE

A man returns to his small hometown to spread his mother’s ashes. As if that’s not depressing enough, he’s a professional textbook editor. But he nudges his way toward a happier life via a former high-school classmate and her French baker husband who run a cupcake emporium together. Directed by Anita Montgomery. Seattle Public Theater, 7312 W Green Lake Dr N, 524-1300. seattlepublictheater.org. $15-$32. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Feb 16.

THE FOREIGNER

A man pretends to not speak English in order to get some peace and quiet while on vacation, then realizes that his ruse puts him in a position to hear intriguing things said by people who think he can’t understand them. Village Theatre 303 Front St N, Issaquah, 425-3922202. villagetheatre.org. $39$54. Wed-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri at 8 pm, Sat at 2 and 8 pm, Sun at 2 and 7 pm. Through March 2.

A GREAT WILDERNESS

A drama about an aging de-gayer (or whatever you call people who try to coach other people into straightness) who is forced to confront his life’s legacy by one final client. Directed by Braden Abraham. Seattle Repertory Theatre, 155 Mercer St, Seattle Center, 443-2222. seattlerep. org. $12-$60. Starting Jan 17. Tues-Thurs at 7:30 pm, Fri-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 and 7:30 pm. Through Feb 16.

JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA

“There’s not much of a plot—the first act is basically an episode of The Jerry Springer Show set to music, in which Jerry (Brandon Felker) is killed; the second act is a Jerry Springer Show episode set in hell (with Satan played by Sean Nelson). But what makes this show work is the single precarious premise that juxtaposes a classically operatic score against a blasphemous and intentionally offensive libretto.” (Goldy) Moore Theatre , 1932 Second Ave, 329-1050. balagantheatre.org.

$30-$35. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 6:30 pm. Through Jan 26. THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED

A play by Douglas Carter Beane about an actor, his agent, and her worries about how his “slight recurring case of homosexuality,” including a physical relationship with a hustler, might damage his career. Directed by Annie Lareau. ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave SW, 938-0339. artswest.org.

$17-$37. Starting Jan 22. WedSat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 3 pm. Through Feb 8.

THE NORMAL HEART

See review, page 22. Erickson Theater Off Broadway, 1524 Harvard Ave, 427-5207. strawshop.org. $18-$36. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm. Through Feb 15. WHERE’S PAPI?

See review, page 22. Eclectic Theater, 1214 10th Ave, 6793271. eclectictheatercompany. org. $12-$20. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Feb 1.

Dance

BETTER OFF NUDE

A burlesque tribute to the movies of the 1980s, featuring a performance, among many others, by the woman who played the “naughty nurse” singing telegram in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Stephanie Baker. Columbia City Theater 4916 Rainier Ave S, 723-0088. columbiacitytheater. com. $22-$27. Fri-Sat at 8 pm. Through Jan 25.

CACOPHONY FOR 8 PLAYERS

Dancer Beth Graczyk and com poser Angelina Baldoz (both of the dance company Salt Horse) join forces with direc tor Torben Ulrich and fellow dancers Peggy Piacenza and Allie Hankins to explore “the porous interplay of performative history.” inspiration from key “texts” by Bharatamuni, Abhinavagupta, August Bournonville, Vaslav Nijinsky, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Maya Deren, and Pina Bausch. 153 14th Ave S. cacophonyfor 8players.com. $15-$20. ThursSun at 8 pm. Through Jan 26.

GRUPO CORPO

This high-energy, high-powered Afro-Brazilian dance company will premiere the sea and the songs of medi eval Galician-Portuguese trouba dours”) and ideas about movement and the human body”).

Campus, 543-4880. uwworld series.org. $38-$52. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm. Through Jan 25.

USUALLY BEAUTY FAILS

“Someone must be slipping ecstasy into the water fountains of Montreal dance studios these days. There’s a strong populist streak—and plenty of streaking— in the outlandish, high-energy party-performances by artists like La La La Human Steps, Marie Chouinard, and Frérick Gravel that seems allergic to austerity.

(One arch critic at the Telegraph describes the phenomenon as ‘crutches-and-cleavage claptrap.’)

This week, Gravel brings Beauty Fails for three musicians and six danc ers that is saturated in electronic rock and smoldering sexuality.”

(Brendan Kiley) 100 W Roy St, 217-9888. onthe boards.org. $12-$25. Thurs-Sun at 8 pm. Through Jan 26.

UW DANCE FACULTY

CONCERT

A program of three pieces

choreographed by UW dance department faculty members Jennifer Salk, Jürg Koch, and Rachael Lincoln.

UW Campus, 543-4880. meany. org. $10-$20. Wed-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Jan 26.

(1/22) Deborah Cohen Overcoming the ‘Obesity Epidemic’

(1/23) Max Tegmark A Physicist’s Guide to the Universe

(1/23) Erez Aiden Culturomics: Unlocking Culture with Raw Data

(1/24) Global Rhythms Krar Collective with Gabriel Teodros

(1/26) Seattle Festival Orchestra A Winter Concert

(1/27) Mozart Birthday Toast

(1/27) Ishmael Beah ‘Radiance of Tomorrow’

(1/28) Ray Jayawardhana Nailing Down Neutrinos

(1/29) Richard Powers with Nancy Pearl ‘Orfeo’

(1/29) Stolen Youth presents Not On Our Watch Responding to Sex Trafficking Locally

(1/30) CISCRP presents Aware for All Clinical Research Education Day

(1/30) Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, & Ramez Naam Surviving the Technology Revolution

(1/31) Richard Fiske Kilauea: Hawaii’s Most Famous Volcano

(2/2) Early Music Discovery Early Music for All: An Intergenerational Sing-Along!

(2/5) McKenzie Funk Getting Rich from Climate Change

WORN OUT

RITUAL ELVIS WEAR

EMP’s vast and shiny Sky Church recently hosted an Elvis Presley Tribute Show, with a couple dozen amateur impersonators singing the hits, some in striped Jailhouse Rock ensembles and others pairing leis with tropical shirts, bringing on a zany bingo-hall vibe. Most performers wore costumes from Elvis’s Vegas era, because that was when he was at his most intriguing, what with his panther-like sexiness and heart full of obscure sorrow, and his blood swirling with drugs.

Elvis’s famous white jumpsuits were intricate, striking, and costly—encrusted with semiprecious stones and careful embroidery, and built from Italian stretch-wool

gabardine (not ever polyester, I should point out, the most unfairly ridiculed material in all of fashion history). Silk scarves, assorted pendants, and hefty lamb chops completed the ensemble, while sweat rolled from Elvis’s body in dense and glittering sheets. This made all the ladies go apeshit with desire, and to ensure the effect, he would consume a handful of salt tablets and several quarts of water just before a performance. His weight fluctuated wildly, but it’s tough to say just how bad it really got. In 1975, Hilton staff stopped allowing photographs to be taken of him in the showroom, so it must’ve been pretty bad. From David Adler’s The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley, room-service records indicated “he lived on hamburgers and more hamburgers piled high, high across his [hotel] bed.” In Gulp, Mary Roach describes the ring Elvis commissioned with a range of colored diamonds to symbolize each prized ingredient in a Greek recipe: green for parsley, white for bread, brown for meat, yellow for onion. Now back to the Sky Church and its collection of fashion notables. Performer Scott Coon purchased his bejeweled American Eagle jumpsuit from B&K, a remarkably high-end Elvis-wear company that uses authentic materials and the King’s original garment patterns. Found by performer Elvi-lele in a Utah thrift store, another look started as a Mormon baptismal uniform, made of a thick white heat-crimped synthetic with a subtly curdled texture. A former insider tells me much of this religion’s ceremonial wear imparts a “retrosci-fi-Logan’s-Run” flavor, and the jumpsuit’s flared collar and bell-bottoms were already close to perfect, but Elvi-lele had to add the fringe and glitz and jingles himself.

Wings of Desire

The Best Thing About Sports Is Buffalo Wings

BY PAUL CONSTANT

The story of the buffalo wing is a story of triumph. Someone in Buffalo, New York, in the middle of the last century—accounts of the creator’s identity vary—discovered a use

for a chicken part that had traditionally been trashed or humbly reserved for stock or industrial food purposes. And the use they found for the ugly old wings that everyone else tossed out? Slather them in butter and hot sauce, and serve them with blue cheese and an entire roll of paper towels, preferably in the middle of a large and raucous sporting event. From garbage to beloved snack in a matter of decades? That’s American ingenuity at its finest!

I’m not a sports fan at all—at all—but Super Bowl season always instills in me a deep-seated craving for a good, sloppy plate of buffalo wings. A table full of people eating wings is never pretty: faces and hands smeared with a hyperactive orange sauce, trays of small, slick bones everywhere, plugs of juicy meat dipped into a cheese sauce that dribbles, inevitably, everywhere, and mountains of crumpled paper towels growing higher by the second, punctuated by thirsty gulps from greasy glasses of

beer. Aesthetically, it’s a nightmare. But the symphony of clashing flavors that somehow build to a perfectly balanced experience is a very specific itch that can only be scratched in one very specific way.

From garbage to beloved snack in a matter of decades? That’s American ingenuity at its finest!

If you’re thinking about eating buffalo wings in Seattle, one name dominates the conversation: Wing Dome. The local chain— despite the corporate feel, Wing Dome’s only branches are in Kirkland, Kent, and Greenwood—has branded itself as virtually the only buffalo-wing expert in the region. A lunchtime visit to the Greenwood location affirmed

YOU ASKED FOR IT.” Meals should not have to come with trigger warnings.

The Seattle restaurant world in the year 2014 is full of nervous energy, shifting in its seat whenever anyone mentions a traditional menu item. Everything needs to be adjusted, made better, infused with something or somewhere else. So when Ba Bar announced that their new Tuesday special was 50-cent chicken wings served 10 at a time, I was prepared to confront a new twist on an American original. What I got, instead, was a great plate of comfort food: With their fish sauce and their syrupy consistency, Ba Bar’s chicken wings are more like the sweet, spicy side dish that’s been served at American Chinese restaurants for decades. They’re crispier than Wing Dome’s wings, and the flavors are much more complex, with undertones of heat lurking beneath the clash of sweet and salty. The sticky sauce causes less of a dining disaster, too—I needed only a single napkin to ferry me through the meal. Combined with a glass of bright-red wu wei iced tea ($3) and a plate or two of Ba Bar’s excellent street food (the Huê dumplings and the crispy imperial rolls are favorites), and followed by one of their brilliant macarons ($1.65, go for the passion fruit if it’s available), and you’ve got yourself a filling meal of small delights.

But sports are everywhere right now, and so some tradition is called for. It’s time for an oldfashioned plate of goddamn buffalo wings, and the best way to enjoy buffalo wings is to make them yourself. The best and simplest recipe for wings I’ve found is Alton Brown’s, though I’ve made some modifications over the years.

Paul Constant’s Alton Brown’s Buffalo Wings

12 fresh (not frozen, what the fuck is wrong with you?) chicken wings

1 stick butter

that they’ve certainly got the trappings of a wing place down: Every steel-topped table in the garage-looking space had a roll of paper towels on it. TVs are everywhere—for sports, you see—and the food is served in red plastic baskets on top of red-and-white-checked wax paper.

And the wings? Yeah, they’re all right. I got the one-and-a-half-pound lunch special ($12.99) with the four-alarm sauce. The peppery sauce was good, and there was a lot of it, but the wings were a little on the slender side, and the meat was in danger of being too juicy—it fell off the bone, with no give at all. You don’t want your wings to behave like barbecue; there should be a little fried-chicken firmness mixed into the DNA, too. It didn’t help that the side made the whole plate feel uninspiring: The crinkle-cut fries may as well have been extravagant origami, bearing no resemblance to a potato at all.

Wing Dome ranks their traditional sauces on a one-to-seven alarm scale. Four is “On the Hot Side.” If you’re into public pain, you can take a hot-wing challenge: If you eat seven seven-alarm wings in seven minutes with no beverages, you get the meal for free and a T-shirt. Photographs of the “winners” of the challenge, their faces neon-orange-slick and their eyes glistening with tears, line the hallway to the restrooms, representing a club that I have no interest in joining. This whole foodas-punishment thing is off-putting and, frankly, unappetizing; I realized halfway through my meal that the wall next to my table was screaming at me in giant letters: “STOP CRYING

1/3 cup hot sauce

Assorted spices, to taste

Cut and separate the whole wings until they look like wings. Steam them over medium heat for 10 minutes until they’re ghastly old-person-skin white. Put the wings on a bed of paper towels in the fridge for about an hour. Move them to a parchment-paper-lined baking tray and put them in a 425 degree oven for 40 minutes, turning them over at the 20-minute mark. They should look like roasted chicken when you’re through.

Finally, toss those fuckers in a bowl full of the mixture of hot sauce and melted butter. If you’re not interested in making your own hot sauce, Frank’s works well: It’s cheap, it miraculously never causes digestive problems the way other hot sauces do, and it’s got just about the right amount of heat. To that basic mix, add spices as you like: I prefer a lot of pepper, but garlic salt, minced garlic, lemon pepper, or basically anything else would work, too. Serve with celery sticks, beer, a 12-pack of paper towels, and the biggest tub of blue-cheese dressing you can find. Serve hot.

Eat until it looks like you slaughtered a mythical creature with your bare hands and teeth. Go Hawks.

DRINKING WITH CHARLES MUDEDE

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

OLD DREAMERS

I leave the great cave of Pioneer Square Station, walk past the oldest skyscraper in the city and the sunken parking lot on Yesler, make a left onto First (the brick buildings, the old signs, the wet air), reach the glass door of a shop that was once a bookstore but is now devoted, confoundingly, to the work of “skilled artisans, craftsmen, farmers, teachers, healers, and builders,” enter the front, pass glass displays that contain many curious things, and there it is: the bar. It’s small—it fits only about 15 or so people comfortably around its U-shaped counter—and dark. The shop makes no sense to me; the bar, of course, does.

I order a bottle of sparkling wine, Montmartre Brut. A fluted glass is placed in front of me by a woman who is dressed in black. The bartender pours, re-corks, and, before she can return the bottle to the fridge behind her, realizes that I’m already waiting for the second glass (The first drink is always in fact the second; the first drink is never there, it’s a zero, an empty space; the second drink becomes the first by filling the void left by that thing that never in reality happened.) The

wine is properly chilled, balanced, not very bubbly, and dry. Above the bar hangs the head of an animal. Its glassy eyes stare into an air that’s filled with music. The tune above my head is “Salvation Song” by the Avett Brothers (Wikipedia: “roots rock,” “indie rock,” “neo-folk”). “We came for salvation/We came for family/We came for all that’s good, that’s how we’ll walk away,” sing the Avett Brothers, who come from Concord, North Carolina.

The furry and thick neck of the animal is bolted to a decorative American flag that looks like the wings of a great bird. Below the neck and the flag are two iron picks that a gold dreamer of old used to crack worthless rocks that concealed the metals that would make him stupid rich and madly happy. The lights of a star hang on the brick wall above the small kitchen. The arm of the young woman sitting next to me is covered by a green and red tattoo. She is eating deviled eggs. Next to her is a man with a large gray beard who is drinking a frothy beer. When done with my bottle of sparkling wine, I settle my bill, stand, pass the main room and a glass counter that

with a

of Pioneer

and

Chow Events

Thurs 1/23

NATIONAL PIE DAY

See Stranger Suggests, page 19. United States of America

Fri 1/24

VICTOR’S 97TH

BIRTHDAY

“How many bars in town

have a loyal happy hour patron who turns 97?” the Swedish Club rhetorically asks. Celebrate Victor Manarolla’s birthday with him tonight! The drink of the evening will be “The Victor,” and all celebrants get birthday cake. Swedish Cultural Center, 1920 Dexter Ave N. Free. 5:30 pm.

Sat 1/25

EAT FOR EQUITY

Nonprofit Eat for Equity helps fund Seattle nonprofits by throwing community feasts

made with locally sourced, organic ingredients, so you can “eat, drink, do good, and be merry.” This month, they’re raising money for ROOTS Young Adult Shelter, providing services to homeless young adults. 4338 Latona Ave NE. eatforequity.org. $15-$20. 7 pm.

Tues 1/28

WALRUS & THE CARPENTER NIGHTTIME OYSTER PICNIC

Armed with lanterns, farm the oyster beds of Totten Inlet for dinner, then have wine and oyster stew by the bonfire. Host/localseafood-hero Jon Rowley promises “just the right mix of magic and madness.” Benefits the Puget Sound Restoration Fund. Taylor Shellfish Farms, 130 SE Lynch Road, 963-5959. taylorshellfish.com. $125. Also Sun Feb 16.

MEANS WE RECOMMEND IT. SEND EVENT INFO TO: chow@ thestranger.com Find the full calendar online.

BEERMOSAS AND INDUSTRIAL CHARM AT THE EASTERN CAFE

I-Miun Liu

Owner, Eastern Cafe 510 Maynard Ave S, 623-1776

Eastern Cafe inhabits a ballroom-like space in the International District that stood vacant for three years before owner I-Miun Liu signed the lease. I-Miun hired a contractor who removed the drywall and carpet to reveal beautifully weathered mint-green and yellow cement walls and the space’s original fir floors. With simple lighting and changing local artwork (currently a mixed-media show by Aung Robo), the place is appealingly industrial without any distressed-jeans-esque overkill. The building is more than 100 years old, built as a hotel for railway workers; the rooms upstairs are now rented as apartments.

I-Miun, whose background is in economics and banking, also owns a nearby bubble tea shop, Oasis. He wanted to open a type of business that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the neighborhood—Eastern Cafe serves espresso, sandwiches, crepes, and gelato from Gelatiamo. Though intrigued by the “beermosa,” I was perfectly happy with Eastern’s regular mimosa. I also tried a lusciously avocado-stacked and reasonably priced ($5) veggie sandwich and an exceptionally fresh pear turnover from Le Fournil. The cafe is next door to the Seattle Pinball Museum, which I-Miun finds fun and educational—he likes the Wizard of Oz machine and mentioned that he learned that pinball parlors were historically associated with organized crime. SARAH GALVIN

THIS WEEK AT LO-FI

1/22 MAMMA’S CAVE: SKIP HELLER & THE HER CAR PIT CREW , PORNADOES, RAMBLIN’ YEARS, DAVID GUILBAULT, DJ MARS NOVA 1/23 MAMMA’S CAVE : MTNS, STICKERS, UNIVERSE PEOPLE, GUEST 1/24 MAMMA’S CAVE W JAMES APOLLO, UH OH ESKIMO, DARKPINE 1/25 PRIVATE PARTY 1/26 4-7:30PM HAPPY HOUR ORIGAMI VAGINAS BENEFIT 8PM MAMMA’S CAVE : TAXIDERMY WESTERN, BUFFALO STAGECOACH, GUESTS 1/28 STOP BITING DJS INTROCUT, SAME DNA (SF), OHMEGA WATTS & FISHBOOGIE

MUSIC

Run for the Shadows

Jack Name’s Dazzling and Eccentric Light Show

BY DAVE SEGAL

The year is absurdly young right now, but I’m calling it: Light Show by LA musician/producer Jack Name is going to be one of the rock albums of 2014. Its 12 tracks skitter and

slither by in 29 minutes, but their strange tonal aura and off-center yet addictive melodic flavor demand repeat plays. Like some of the best releases from the Ralph Records roster, Light Show teems with subliminal details that may make sense only under the influence of mind-altering substances.

Jack Name is the nondescript alias of a sonic eccentric with sweet connections in LA’s fertile subterranean-rock anti-scene; he’s pals with Ariel Pink and played shows with the glo-fi progenitor before anyone gave a damn about him. Name also plays guitar for White Fence when that brilliant psych band tours. For the record, Jack Name’s website is johnwebsterjohns.com, but nothing is sure in his world. “I’ll probably have 20 more names I’ll want to try on,” Name says in a phone interview, his low, slow delivery at odds with his frenzied, high-pitched singing style. “There’s no strategy behind it. It’s just weird indecisiveness and a lack of respect for my lineage.” Name’s résumé includes stints with the Charlemagnes and Anti Space People— groups so low-profile they don’t even have

Discogs pages—and working solo as Fictional Boys and Muzz. All the while in his Rampart Village pad, he was working on the songs that form Light Show, which Ty Segall’s Drag City imprint God? just issued.

Jack Name w/Dent May, Acapulco Lips Wed Jan 29, Chop Suey, 8 pm, $8 adv/$10 DOS, 21+

The songs on Light Show have a spontaneous feel. They never outstay their welcome, either; they’re concise. However, Name admits that he spent much time working on the songs’ details, “but not in a Steely Dan way. I don’t know if this is too romantic-sounding, but it’s like the idea that there’s a sculpture in the rock, so you just carve the thing out of the rock. It’s that same kind of idea. I know that there’s something there that I want to have, and I can tell if I play a certain bass note and it sounds too something, I’ll spend a bunch of hours locked in my room just doing bass stuff until I figure it out. That’s where I have fun making music: being picky and meticulous.”

For Light Show, Name used a mix of tape machines of various sizes and Max/MSP software programs, a weird blend of low and high technology. He deployed six different

drummers and two vocalists: Jamie Phillips and Nora Keyes.

Generally speaking, Light Show starts in manic/panic, euphoric mode and then gradually decelerates into eerie, morbid atmospheres, with Name’s oneiric, hazy production in the service of jittery inventiveness. Much of the album consists of familiar-sounding rock that’s alchemized and coated in a tantalizing otherness, like a slightly more rock-infatuated Residents. “Pure Terror” could be an alternate-universe hit single, a lilting charmer somewhere between “Car Wash Hair”–era Mercury Rev and Olivia Tremor Control. It makes you want to fly into the sun.

Shadows recur often in Light Show’s lyrics. Turns out that the album’s central conceit is a struggle between two gangs: the Shadows and the Woolie Boolies. Name explains: “The Woolie Boolies are obsessed with putting light on things and making it so that everything is visible or under surveillance or balanced or accounted for. The Shadows are against this. They’re into the idea of negative space. They’re being oppressed by the Woolie Boolies. At the point that the story starts, they’re exiled, living out in the badlands. They’re almost religious beliefs related to this concept of shadows and mystery—as a good thing. And then there are oppressors who see it the opposite way.”

The strangeness extends to “My Own Electric Ladyland,” an urgent, staccato gush of feisty guitars and helium vocals somewhere between Ariel Pink and Ween, in which one of the Shadows talks about being stuck inside the cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland LP (all those nekkid women) and how stressful that is. “For the Shadows, dreams

Light Show may make sense only under the influence of mindaltering substances.

are a way of divination,” Name says.

Light Show ends with “Killing a Shadow,” an eerie, delicate ballad. Name and Phillips sing, “We opened you up and filled your body with light,” and it sends chills like “Willow’s Song” does in cult British film The Wicker Man. “The war’s over, so to speak,” says Name, “and the Shadows have lost. One of them wakes up in some kind of shitty hospital rec room with a bunch of people singing a mind-numbing song to him.”

So, not a Hollywood ending, then. You can think of Jack Name as the antithesis of plastic Southern California culture, a catalyst for LA’s thriving, eldritch sonic underbelly. He instinctually knows that the most interesting stuff happens in the shadows.

• One of the large plate-glass windows at Chop Suey was broken from the inside during the Jai Ho! Bollywood Dance Party on Saturday evening. Though sources say the damage was allegedly caused when a person (or persons) was thrown through the glass during an altercation, we prefer to imagine that someone was just DANCING SO HARD.

• Friday night, Wooden Shjips turned the Crocodile into a frottage-intensive clusterfuck—and it wasn’t even a free Sailor Jerry–sponsored show. The San Francisco foursome is one of the least surprising bands working now, but their serpentine throb of minimalist psych rock is one of the coolest sounds ever conceived. Wooden Shjips’ genius idea is fusing the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner” with Suicide’s “Ghost Rider,” and then pushing their riffs into an LSD/OCD hypnosis. What a trip their performance was.

• The Presidents of the United States of America surprised attendees of the Neumos 10th anniversary party on Tuesday evening. During the set, lead Pres Chris Ballew was midway through an animated story when he abruptly stopped and shouted, “HOLD ON! MY WIFE WANTS TO TELL ME SOMETHING!” After ducking down for a few seconds, he announced his wife wanted to hear “Body,” which they then played immediately. A few songs later, two drunk giddy audience members fell to the ground, clutching each other, apparently too wasted elated to continue standing.

• Also last Tuesday, up-and-coming hospitalgowned trio Childbirth celebrated the release of their 2.5-ounce cassette It’s a Girl at Chop Suey. The excellent NighTraiN, So Pitted, and Half Breed also played, causing everyone in the audience to “synch up,” if you know what I mean. You know what I mean.

• Provocative rockers Partman Parthorse celebrated the release of their newest album, Wet Sounds, at the Highline on Saturday with frontman Gary Smith covered in fake blood and plenty of mesh. A source said they “saw a butthole and a penis, which I was warned would happen.” Apparently a lollipop was involved with said butthole as well—or maybe it was all wishful thinking.

• The Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl because Macklemore performed “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” during the untelevised halftime show of the team’s playoff game against the 49ers on Sunday. Or maybe they won because of Justin Timberlake starting a SEA! HAWKS! chant during his KeyArena show on Friday. (Unrelated: Doesn’t it seem like JT and Mack would make a good wholesome-best-friend crime-fighting team?)

CHANCE TO WIN 2 TICKETS

Yuck vs. Yuck An English Indie Band Versus Giving Birth, Mastication, and Condoms

BY KATIE MARTIN

Yuck—despite also being a descriptor for things that are unsavory or way gross—are an indie band from across the pond that will satiate your Clinton-era nostalgia. Their music has been hailed as college rock, weaving alternative influences from the late 1980s and ’90s with a healthy dose of new melodic thrills. Yuck experienced a serious change in their seating chart last April as frontman Danny Blumberg called it quits and left the band—an alteration that

normally spells out certain death for a band (unless your band is Van Halen or INXS or something). Guitarist Max Bloom has since stepped up to the microphone, and the group’s sophomore album, Glow & Behold, features Bloom’s soft, lilting vocals. Because of the confusion often associated with Yuck the band and “Yuck!” the declarative statement, I’ve pitted my top three favorite Yuck songs against their actual yucky counterparts to highlight their distinctive differences. Yuck w/Ephrata Fri Jan 24, Neumos, 8 pm, $13 adv, 21+

“Chew”: Released as a single in 2012, this is a gravelly, ’90s-revival guitar-rock song through and through, with one hand whammying that whammy bar and the other saluting Dinosaur Jr. All those crunchy, fuzzy effects and the echoing repetition of “We chew it together” very nearly situate this song on the “literally yucky” side of the spectrum, but the dreamy vocals and gratifying sinkhole of a melody keep it firmly planted in the Yuck (band) category.

“Rebirth”: From Yuck’s Glow & Behold comes a lush and rollicking song whose sweeping melody chugs steadily along its starry-eyed shoegazey path. The tune is interspersed with celebratory cymbals that create the sensation of being pleasantly slow-motion heave-ho’d into a body of water. The lyrics align accordingly with this feeling of descent: “Go down, I’d wanna go down.” Have you ever taken muscle relaxers? Me neither, but this sounds like how I imagine that would feel.

“Rubber”: This song punctuates Yuck’s self-titled 2011 album with a heavy dirge of reverberating guitars overlaid with desperate chanting vocals and almost indecipherable mutterings. It’s a tuneful car crash of a song, creeping along its mournful trajectory (“Should I give in? If I put rubber in your hand, would you make me into a man?”) until it reaches its resolution (“Yes, I give in”) in a frenetic collision of sounds.

Chewing: Although chewing is an unavoidable exercise in survival—and as much as we all enjoy cramming a hot slice of pizza into our gobs, or the crisp crunch of an apple—sometimes watching other people chew is gross! Listening to someone smack their chops as they turn solids into liquids inside their mouth (or barely-solids into liquids, as remnants of mashed potato creep out the corners) is stomach-churning. Don’t get me wrong: I live to chew, but a sloppy maw full of gravy is sickening when it isn’t mine. VS.

Actually Giving Birth: Laboriously expelling a super-clingy life force through your birth canal is infinitely less agreeable than this song, except for the mess of free drugs you’re allotted and that whole bringing-new-life-into-the-world thing (granted, that “life” will be screaming and shitting, and will grow up to say things like “Screw you, Mom!” as they drive away in your car). The song “Rebirth,” however, is completely painless and would never cause you to defecate on your baby.

Rubbers: Condoms, I’m sure we can all agree, are necessary (see: Actually Giving Birth) but unappetizing nonetheless. The antiseptic scent of latex, the squelchy “snap” sound as they’re removed, and the terror that surfaces upon finding one untied in your personal space all locate used rubbers under the soggy umbrella of “yuck” and not Yuck.

CENTER WILL EVALUATE YOUR GEAR AND MAKE OFFERS ON QUALIFYING ITEMS SELL YOUR GEAR AND GET PAID CASH*

Guitar Center Seattle 530 Westlake Ave. N., Seattle (206) 287-9100

Guitar Center Southcenter 230 Andover Park W., Tukwila (206) 243-9077

Guitar Center Kirkland 12608 120th Ave. NE., Kirkland (425) 814-9640

Guitar Center Tacoma 2919 S. 38th St., Tacoma (253) 474-2900

Guitar Center Lynnwood 18420 33rd Ave. W., Lynnwood (425) 640-0110 For more locations, visit guitarcenter.com

JANUARY

PATTERSON HOOD

Michel Stegner & Keith Lowe All Ages

The Crocodile & ReignCity Present DJ QUIK

Raz Simone, Gifted Gab, Dj Swervewon 21+

TRUE SPOKES & IAN MCFERON BAND Bradford Loomis 21+ THURSDAY

The Buffalo Stagecoach 21+

The Crocodile & Dead Nation Present JOHNNY FLYNN The Melodic All Ages SATURDAY

Wednesday, Mar. 19th THE KIN

SLOW BIRD

Piano Piano NGHTBLND (Alex Rose of Minus the Bear) 21+

Decibel Proudly Presents ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

The Sight Below, Dawn of Midi, Nordic Soul 21+

Friday, Mar. 21st PAPADOSIO Saturday, Apr. 12th KATIE HERZIG

& COMING EVERY TUESDAY LIQUID COURAGE KARAOKE 1/26 KING WASHINGTON 2/7 ZION I 2/8 PASSAFIRE & BALLYHOO! 2/14 BOWIEVISION 2/15 SHEARWATER 2/15 MOTHER FALCON @ THE SUNSET

2/17 HELLFYRE: BUSDRIVER, OPEN MIKE EAGLE, NOCANDO & MILO 2/18 ANE BRUN

2/20 BLOODY SABBATH 2/22 THE CRYING SPELL 2/26 WILD FEATHERS 2/27 THE FRATELLIS

2/28 AER 3/1 CIBO MATTO 3/8 EOTO 3/16 CON BRO CHILL 3/20 JAMES VINCET MCMORROW 3/22 BEAR’S DEN 3/25 THE MILAGRES 3/26 LOST IN THE TREES 4/3 FUTURE ISLANDS 4/6 DELTA RAE 4/11 CUNNINLYNGUISTS 4/16 JOHN NEWMAN 4/22 MOBB DEEP 5/3 WE ARE SCIENTISTS

BY ANNA MINARD

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

NICO

The Marble Index (Elektra)

Hey, do you ever miss the days when I hadn’t gone to music first grade yet, and I was still really confused and angry all the time about these albums? I used to hear 30 seconds of a punk song and feel like my ears were going to throw up. But recently, I’ve been liking a lot of the stuff I’m listening to, and I haven’t been embarrassing myself so much. Nico, I know, is hella important. It would be embarrassing not to “get it.”

BUT UGGGGHHHH. Dave Segal gave me this album, and I’m 99 percent sure he’s just pranking me. (Yeah, dude, I’m on to you.)

Look, I get it. Nico’s so cool! Nico hung out with Andy Motherfuckin’ Warhol. Nico sang with the Velvet Underground. Nico had the most eyelashes you’ve ever seen. Nico and her shiny hair and German cheekbones made all the boys cry

But oh, BARF. This is just all bells and talksinging and waggling noises and some lady who sounds like she lives in a tree. Each track goes like this: A certain instrument

MY PHILOSOPHY

BALANCE & OPTIONS

My man Charles Mudede sometimes harps about how few great MC-slashproducers there are—he really puts Pete Rock up there as a rapper (yeesh), doesn’t think much of RZA on the mic at all (that’s insane, especially if you ever heard the first albums from the Wu or the Gravediggaz), and is wholly dismissive of Dilla’s (superslick and wildly underrated) bars.

Crazy, but I’m not just here for refuting my colleagues: I really thought it’d be a good segue into one of my all-time favorite hiphop artists, who has been a monster in both arenas since before most of you reading this were able to read. I speak of Compton’s son David Blake, the legendary DJ Quik—coming to the Crocodile on January 24. Proudly repping the class of ’91, Quik has withstood a lot of things: the march of time, the media-hyped coastal rap wars from which hiphop’s collective psyche has never fully recovered (and in which he was a bit player/scapegoat), and enough drama, beef, and heartbreak to break a man. (The latest in a sadly dogged saga of familial trauma was the 2013 arrest of his daughter for her alleged involvement in the beating death of her own 2-year-old son.) But still he remains, an OG whose rep holds his weight in platinum, plaques, and respect. From Quik Is the Name to the album he put out 20

starts—an organ thing, or maybe an accordion or a violin—and then it just blahs around lumpily, and then Nico shows up with her strange accent to pronounce some bullshit as if she’s getting really into Wicca. “Truuuuuue heeeearts of duuuuunes.” What?

Here’s a trick: Try playing “Ari’s Song,” the one with that little twizzling whistle in the background, for a dog. They will not like it! Nico: Music to Bother Your Dog With

I played Nico for my dad, a dude for whom this is age-appropriate music, songs he heard the first time around. His response? “People did a lot of weird stuff in the ’70s just to seem weird.” Then he immediately tried to turn off the stereo system

And what do you get if you make it all the way through to the last track, “Evening of Light”? PUNISHED, THAT’S WHAT. “Midnight winds are landing at the end of tiiii-iiiime.”

In the background, what sounds like a hammer dulcimer, the most Birkenstocksat-Folklife of instruments. Then the music grows and grows, and then it just blurbles strangely forever. By the end of the track, it’s just screeching and cymbals and chanting.

I went over to Segal’s desk and yelled at him for a while, and then I called Nico a “cheekbone witch,” which made him upset, and so then I said I’d give him the end of my column to explain why she’s so great anyway. Here you go, Segal:

“This is no prank, Anna: This is rehearsal for end times. The Marble Index is the most harrowing album ever. It took supermodel/ actress Nico—with arrangements by fellow Velvet Underground exile John Cale—going against type to fuse folk with chamber music and set them on a tundra of mournful harmonium, wretchedly beautiful viola, and cursed glockenspiel. The crushing existential gravity and grotesque beauty here would, I’d like to imagine, make JeanPaul Sartre blubber like a baby. Feat! (Also, I’d like a word with your dad.)”

I give this a “I’m an idiot, I know” out of 10.

years later (his latest, 2011’s The Book of David), Quik’s catalog is as shiny and thick as his mane (“Best Hair in Hiphop,” he tweeted)— he still perms and/or braids to this day.

Opening up for this one is Raz Simone, the powerfully gifted Seattle rapper who I’ve reductively called “Blacklemore” before— and who is reportedly the first rapper signed to 300, the new label from industry big (like huge) dogs Lyor Cohen, Kevin Liles, and Todd Moscowitz. Also on the bill, one Gifted Gab (fka Gift Uh Gab), Moor Gangstress and noted Lil B hater—soon to drop a very heavy sophomore album, titled Girl Rap LA’s Hopsin is hitting the Showbox at the Market on January 25 with Dizzy Wright our own Neema, Knothead, and DJ Hoppa I haven’t slept on Hopsin’s rise through the underground, and it’s great to see him owning his own label now (Funk Volume), but MAN is his shit insufferably corny to me. Imagine mid-2000s-era Canibus, dressed in Tech N9ne shock-accoutrements (his white contact lenses), doing a bad Slim Shady LP impression, complete with knockoff Dre beats and really shitty rapper disses—that’s the impression that I get, Bosstones. Las Vegas’s Dizzy Wright, though, is definitely worth your time.

Sunday, January 26, brings Seattle the Ying Yang Twins up at Nectar, and Layzie Bone over at Neumos, while Kentucky’s Nappy Roots are returning to Nectar on January 28. Do with this info what you will. Furthermore, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will. I dunno what that means, I think I read that on somebody’s sweatshirt or something?

SOUND CHECK

INTERVIEWS BY TRENT MOORMAN

DJ QUIK REVOLVES TO EVOLVE

In rap’s sanctified Compton triptych, the first gilded panel you see belongs to Eazy-E, the centerpiece houses Dr. Dre, and the third frame belongs to one DJ Quik (David Marvin Blake), the Funkadelic-formed rapper/ producer extraordinaire. Quik’s 1991 groove-carved platinum release Quik Is the Name helped usher in a most beautiful West Coast G-funk sound. Quik utilized live instrumentation over samples to float his throaty, lazed flow. His subject matter spells out gangsta narratives of players and bounties of the game. Quik’s beats, always massively danceable, work well with his penchant for the party rap. Quik’s production and collaborations through the years link him to the land of hiphop giants: Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Tupac Shakur, 50 Cent, Raphael Saadiq, the Roots, and Suga Free, to name a few. In 2011, Quik’s album The Book of David very much made the statement that he’s still making solid music. Quik spoke by phone from a northern Los Angeles locale.

DJ Quik w/Raz Simone, Gifted Gab, DJ Swervewon Fri Jan 24, Crocodile, 9:30 pm, $25 adv, 21+

through so many changes when he got out of jail—knowing him before and after— to see how incensed he was, was a little unnerving, but it was also like he was whipping everybody into shape. Charged up and getting everybody to work like he worked. He could talk to you without saying words, and that’s a wonderful thing about him, he got his point across just by looking at you. I wish it didn’t turn out like it did, because we still need him. And I’m sure that music would be in a much different place if he and Biggie were alive. I think it would be much more fun and not as melancholy. After they died, you know, things got sad. It’s still hard to believe he’s gone. I miss him.

There’s a rapper in Seattle, Gifted Gab, who’s very much on the come up. She’s opening for you in Seattle. She’s great, and raps like a boxer bobs and weaves. She’s a big fan of yours, so I got her to give me a couple of questions for you. Gab asks, “What is the

signed to my friend Brian Gardner. Brian mastered it.

Who do you listen to these days? I like Kendrick. He’s on a stellar run right now. I like everything Pharrell’s doing. I like Lorde’s “Royals,” that’s a hot record. I bought Beyoncé’s album. Rolling Stone was correct how they graded the record, I get it. She set a trend with releasing it in secret. That was just amazing. And she shot all the videos. That’s really super dope. Marketing-wise, that’s just one of the more brilliant moves. Of course Jay Z’s album is good. Yeezus took a little bit of growing on me. I had to listen to it twice to understand where he was coming from, and then I ended up getting it. He’s just eccentric, you know. I fuck with Kanye. I like A$AP Ferg, and A$AP Rocky, they jammin,’ and I like the dude Future.

Where are you? I’m in a top-secret laboratory underground, and we’re making nuclear weapons—please don’t tell anybody.

Who are the nuclear weapons for? They’re for Dennis Rodman and his lips.

You have multifaceted skills—writing, rapping, producing. How have you evolved over the years? From Quik Is the Name to now? One way I evolved is that I revolved. I’m just going back to what I do. Music’s changing, things are different. It’s a more tear-driven game. It’s more ratchet music or trap that people are doing and people are liking. I’m sticking an ear into everything, and as a producer or an engineer, I’m trying to get a tolerance for it. It’s like broccoli and brussels sprouts. After a while, I’ll like it, it just needs lots of butter and cheese.

You can speak to some origins in rap music, to what rappers in LA were doing as an art form in the late ’80s. People associate groups of artists with movements in art. Like the surrealists with Ernst and Dali. I think about Ice-T, N.W.A., and you in the same way. Yeah, you know, it’s like a little frat. Myself, Dre, and Cube. Now there’s Kendrick and Problem. With Eazy and N.W.A., we had a hotbed. I don’t even know if we knew that was going to happen. We were just doing what we wanted to do. When we started in music, it was just about equality. We were all pumped up off of Eric B and Rakim, and Public Enemy, and we wanted to make movement music like that. Conscience, but at the same time getting across what we love—money and bitches. Pussy and the power. We were kids having fun with it, and who knew it would make such an indelible mark on the music industry. To see the resurgence means that it was all worthwhile; to see, 20 years later, Kendrick Lamar up for the album of the year Grammy. These things are amazing.

I’m gonna throw a name at you: Tupac Shakur. What’s the first thing that comes to mind? His eyes. The strength of his eyes. To see Tupac go

key to longevity in the game? Like, there are too many ‘right now’ rappers. In a couple years, the majority of these muhfuckas are gonna be lost in the sauce. Nobody’s gonna remember them. What makes a timeless classic, or what do you do to stay relevant without, like, selling out?” Hello, Gab. Nice to meet you. See you in Seattle. We call those “right now rappers” microwave music. Me personally, I don’t put any effort into trying to keep up with anybody, ’cause you’ll never be able to do that. Like Kobe, he can’t keep up with all those young knees out there on the court. Ride the horse for as long as you can, and ride your race. I stayed in my lane, and I continue to do that. With the artists I work with, the Mack 10s and whatnot, we do music that we know. We’re not trying to do the little bouncy records, no disrespect to J. Cole. We do what we do, and that’s music that we feel good about.

Gab’s second question: “What was your biggest inspiration?” I got tired of being broke. Fuck that [laughs]. I’m not trying to sell cocaine. I was scared to death. Motherfuckers trying to rob me. I couldn’t sleep. I commend anybody for being able to be in the dope game back then, but money comes and goes so quickly, it don’t matter. I started investing in equipment and learning from engineers how to get my chops up so I could have a sound.

I know you’re a George Clinton fan. Oh yeah. I’m sitting here looking at a plaque right now—Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove platinum record that he

What’s the key to a good a dis track? Unfortunately, hostility. Anger. Alcohol. A little weed. And some of your homies in the studio with you to pump you up and go hard. Gimme something else to say about this bitch-ass nigga. [Switches to homie’s voice] “Yeah, man, talk about his mama.” No no! We need something better than that. [Back to his homie’s voice] “Talk about his ho.” [Laughs] I’ll tell you something funny, I got into an actual fistfight when I was working on “Dollars and Sense” for the Death Row soundtrack Murder Was the Case. I chased a motherfucker down the street with a belt, trying to hit him with the buckle. Out in front of the recording studio. He came in there and said something funny to me when I was rapping, and I had no patience. I came out and hit the nigga, fucked him all up and shit. I was out of my motherfucking mind. Crazy as hell. Working on that goddamn song. When I listen back to it, I think, “I needed to chill out just a little bit.” But we’re cool now.

What are your current sets like? I got my son with me, he’s producing now and he’s having fun with it. He’s just like me, just 23 years younger. I also got an artist, Gift Reynolds, from Detroit with me. He’s my enforcer. And you know I play guitar now, so I jam “Let’s Get Down.” Classic records, all the way up into my new shit. And then back to the old shit, too.

What kind of guitar do you play? I play a Fender Strat and an Epiphone Les Paul. Like 335 knockoff.

What effects pedals do you like? I was in Japan and I got a bass envelope filter that I use for guitar that’s kinda awesome. I got two Moogerfoogers. And I got a Moog resonance filter. Come on, man, I’m really fucking with it.

Everybody in Seattle is excited for your show. Thank you. I hope to impress. I still sound like myself. I still look like myself. I’m one of the older guys in hiphop and I look like I’m in my 20s or 30s.

How do you keep it up? I’m gonna be honest with you—some good pussy. You gotta find somebody you really like and fuck ’em all the time [laughs]. And I don’t do coke. I drink a little bit, and have fun. Eat as healthy as I can. You know, I worked for a lot of other people and did my thing with ’em, now I’m doing if for myself. And I’m launching my son, so I can back that shit up and go get me a yacht, and come set up off y’all’s coast…

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

COMING UP

WEDNESDAY 1/22 MUTUAL BENEFIT

WEDNESDAY 2/5 GENTLEMEN HALL  BASIC VACATION

FRIDAY 2/7 DESERT NOISES  AAN SUNDAY 2/9

PORTER RAY  HELLA MAZE

FRIDAY 2/28 AGESANDAGES

WEDNESDAY 3/5 FIONA DAWN SUSY SUN

COMING SOON 1/22 Mutual Benefit • 1/23 & 1/24

Robert DeLong • 1/29 Pries and Neffy • 1/31 The Pack AD2/1 The Young Evils • 2/8 Hospitality • 2/10 Quilt • 2/11

Delorean + Until The Ribbon Breaks • 2/13 Shit RoboT • 2/15 Sylvan Esso • 2/19 Lawrence Rothman • 2/21 Clearly Beloved • 2/22 DJ Spooky • 2/24 Xiu Xiu • 2/25 A Tribe Called Red • 2/26 Hospitality • 3/1 Pigpen Theatre Co. • 3/2 together Pangea • 3/7 Angel Olsen • 3/12 Cayucas • 3/15 Atomic Bride • 3/19 This Will Destroy You • 3/22 Yellow Ostrich • 3/24 Wakey! Wakey!

JUST GOT PAID FRIDAYS INFERNO SATURDAYS DANCE NIGHTS

CRYSTAL

UP&COMING

Lose your grade-A bro music every night this week!

For the full music calendar, see page 42 or visit thestranger.com/music For ticket on-sale announcements, follow twitter.com/seashows

Wednesday 1/22

Darkside, High Water, Nordic Soul (Neumos) See Data Breaker, page 45.

Disappears, Dreamsalon, Gang Cult

(Chop Suey) Kranky Records is respected as a bastion of high-minded drone and ambient music and challenging post-rock, so to say that Disappears are the label’s most conventional act isn’t necessarily a diss. The Chicago quartet makes stoic, burly rock that chugs with a steely determination reminiscent of prime art-brut-ish Wire and krautrock immortals Neu! and Faust. Seattle’s Dreamsalon—a supergroup consisting of members and ex-members of A Frames, Factums, the Intelligence, the Lights, LoveTan, and others—create frayed-nerve, catchy garage rock filtered through the filthy lens of British post-punk to fill the Rough Trade Records–shaped hole in your heart. Fellow locals Gang Cult plow a similar but more sinister path of bullshit-free garage punk.

DAVE SEGAL

Mutual Benefit, Julie Byrne (Barboza) In the wake of Mercury Rev’s 1998 album Deserter’s Songs, a steady stream of intimate-yetexpansive, soft-focus rock has issued forth—an airbrushed sound that Bon Iver have taken to the bank. Count Mutual Benefit’s 2013 full-length Love’s Crushing Diamond as one more recording at least partially indebted to that beloved work; vocalist/creative force Jordan Lee is a dead ringer for the Rev’s Jonathan Donahue. Solemn, meticulously polished songs predominate. It’s a very pretty collection, and critics have embraced it to the tune of

a lofty 84 on Metacritic.com. If you enjoy twinkly, cozy folkiness liberally sprinkled with stardust and NPR respectability, Mutual Benefit will gently transport you to your happy place. DAVE SEGAL

Thursday 1/23

Ryan Hemsworth, Shy Girls, Keyboard Kid (Neumos) After blowing up the music-nerd blogosphere with lush remixes of tracks by the likes of Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey, and Grimes, Canadian beatsmith Ryan Hemsworth finally got around to releasing his debut LP late last year. As someone who made his name remixing others, Hemsworth somewhat predictably struggled to find his own unique sound on Guilt Trips, despite uniformly stellar production and a well-curated roster of guest vocalists. Nonetheless, he remains one of the more consistently intriguing electronic musicians, combining woozy down-tuned synths, hypnotic vocal samples, and trap-leaning low end into heady concoctions of narcotized rump-shakers. If nothing else, his live material may provide a clue to where the chameleonic producer is headed next. KYLE FLECK

DTCV, Tangerine, Charms (Chop Suey) DTCV (formerly Détective, currently pronounced “detective”) are James Greer (ex–Guided by Voices), Guylaine Vivarat, and Chris Dunn. They’ve had a very productive last couple years, releasing two EPs (Very Fallen World and Basket of Masks) and a full-length Burger cassette (However Strange) in 2012, plus a big ol’ 26-track double album called Hilarious Heaven: a blend of shadowy

post-punk dotted with loose sketches/sound snippets and ambitious detours ranging from spacey free jazz to chilled bedroom pop to a flute-heavy cover of the Monks’ “Shut Up.” Think ’90s-alternative-style “indie,” from its earlier, more respectable days as an adjective. EMILY NOKES

MTNS, Stickers, Universe People (Lo-Fi) Local experimental-noise outfit MTNS make some of the most distinctive-sounding music in the city, and their live sets are often just as awesomely spastic and aggressively out-there. The high-decibel

OLIVER MTUKUDZI and THE BLACK SPIRITS

TUE, JAN 28 - WED, JAN 29

Zimbabwean afro-beat roots music against oppression

91.3 KBCS PRESENTS BILL FRISELL’S GUITAR IN THE SPACE AGE

ft. GREG LEISZ, TONY SCHERR & KENNY WOLLESEN

THU, JAN 30 - SUN, FEB 2

ANA POPOVIC

TUE, FEB 4 - WED, FEB 5

The 4x Blues Music Awards nominee blends smoking electric funk slide guitar, jazzy instrumentals and tight blues groove with soulful feminine vocals.

JOHN ABERCROMBIE ALL-STAR BAND

TUE, FEB 11 - WED, FEB 12

American jazz guitarist steeped in jazz fusion and post bop

KPLU 88.5FM PRESENTS DOUBLE BILL: KENNY WERNER TRIO/ CECILE MCLORIN SALVANT

TUE, FEB 18 - WED, FEB 19

World Class pianist/composer and winner of the 2010 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition 2033 6th

ferocity of their shifting, dynamic rock freak-outs are somehow matched by their wild-eyed performance-art-style shows—something that words can’t really do justice and can only be experienced firsthand, like a Northwest version of Lightning Bolt. Also-local Stickers stick (ha) to a more straightforward no-wave punk formula than MTNS do, but rival their performances in terms of pure energy and volume (two of the most important aspects of any live show). There’s no way you can go wrong with this one, which goes down at the forever-underrated Lo-Fi. MIKE RAMOS

Friday 1/24

Krar Collective, Gabriel Teodros (Town Hall) See Stranger Suggests, page 19.

Levon Vincent, Anthony Parasole, Tyler Morrison

(Re-bar) See Data Breaker, page 45.

Excision, Dirtyphonics, Ill Gates

(Paramount) This is a lineup of grade-A bro music right here—the kind best enjoyed while fist-pumping with one hand and pounding a Red Bull with the other. But while Dirtyphonics fit neatly into that category, and do indeed make first-rate fistpumping music, they bring a little bit more to the beer pong table than many of their stadium-dubstep counterparts. Sure, their songs still basically sound like robots having sex/being murdered, but they also regularly include things like actual human singers, electric guitar, and metal-worthy double bass drums. It’s electronic music you can headbang to. If that is a thought that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself, go and watch them try their best to tear down the classy Paramount with dangerous levels of bass.

KATIE ALLISON

Patterson Hood, Michael Stegner and Keith Lowe

(Crocodile) As Patterson Hood (cofounder of the Drive-By Truckers and great American songwriter) tells it, the songs on his latest record were originally intended to complement a book he was writing— “basically a half-assed fictionalization of [a] very turbulent period of my life,” he says. At first, the chapters poured out along with the songs, then the sentences stopped and the songs kept coming. The result: 2012’s Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, an album its creator describes as “the most personal album I’ve ever made.” Fresh off a monthlong residency at Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge, Hood delivers a solo set from the stage of the Crocodile. Opening the show: Michael Stegner and Keith Lowe, two well-known fixtures of Seattle’s music scene, who’ll perform tonight as a duo.

DAVID SCHMADER

Deadkill, Dust Moth, Rookery, Into Violence

(Chop Suey) Black Flag is a reference point that gets thrown around a lot in press coverage for Deadkill’s new album No, Never!. It’s not unjustified—there’s certainly no shortage of unmitigated Rollins-style fury in Bryan Krieger’s vocals and no lack of Damaged-era anthemic nihilism in their songwriting. Hell, the backing vocals on “Hoof Polish” even sound sneakily similar to the shout-along on “Six Pack.” But a big part of Black Flag’s sonic identity was Greg Ginn’s jazz-fueled faith in wrong notes. Where Black Flag’s plan of attack involved forays into counterintuitive chord progressions and absurdly random leads, Deadkill are propelled by streamlined, no-bullshit four-chord riffs. And that disparity is a good thing, especially considering what Black Flag became in 2013. Keep your copy of Slip It In, but consider getting your modern fix of aggression from No, Never! BRIAN COOK

DJ Quik, Raz Simone, Gifted Gab, DJ Swervewon

(Crocodile) Compton rapper/producer legend DJ

WEDNESDAY 1/22

COUNTRY LIPS

Krar Collective Friday 1/24 at Town Hall

Quik’s debut, Quik Is the Name, came out in 1991— a full 20 years before his most recent full-length, The Book of David—but the quality of his output has barely (if at all) faltered in that time span. He’s still producing all of his own classic Way-2-Fonky West Coast beats and still running circles around suckers with his effortless flow and rapid-fire, smooth-yet-sharp rhyme patterns. Quik’s refusal to let his game slip has rewarded him the kind of career longevity that very few rap veterans get to enjoy. Expect his live set to include nothing but hits and very few signs of aging. Local standouts Raz Simone and Gifted Gab are able and worthy openers worth showing up early for. MIKE RAMOS

See also Sound Check, page 36, and My Philosophy, page 35.

Yuck, Ephrata (Neumos) Guitars, bass, drums. Choruses that often consist of nothing but lines like “I can’t get this feeling off my mind” or “trying to make it through the wall.” A constant fuzz of distortion clouding angst-ridden adolescent lyrics. All signs point to UK-based Yuck as just another yawn-worthy indie

revival act, worshipping past greats without adding much of their own. And yet the guitars’ squall bites just a little harder, the bass is just a little catchier, the sneering vocals snarl just a little more believably. Despite losing lead vocalist Daniel Blumberg, Yuck soldiered on with 2013’s Glow & Behold a slight step down from their self-titled debut, but a solid set nonetheless. Ideal music for the Northwest, birthplace of so many indie-rock giants, Yuck somehow manage to get ’90s nostalgia right. Time to bust out the flannel. KYLE FLECK See also preview, page 32.

Saturday 1/25

Jeff Samuel, James Flavour, Gato Negro (Re-bar) See Data Breaker, page 45.

Matthew Shipp with Michael Bisio (Chapel Performance Space) Listening to the brilliant jazz pianist Matthew Shipp is much like reading the heavy works of Hegel or even Aristotle. The thing that the philosophers do with words and grammar is similar to what Shipp does on the piano. Like the philosophers, he is not elegant, poetic, or enchanting. His work (which often experiments with hiphop and electronica) is instead deeply intellectual, about making sense of an idea rather than selling it or making it seductive. The Frankfurt School theorist Adorno once described the coughing fits that would disrupt Hegel’s lectures on world history. This coughing did not, however, stop the completion of the idea. One could easily imagine coughing fits disrupting Shipp’s performance without ruining the completion of the idea he was trying express.

CHARLES MUDEDE

Eyehategod, Graves at Sea (Highline) I first heard sludge-metal deities Eyehategod at my pot dealer’s house in East Detroit a gazillion years ago. It was 1996’s Dopesick. Man, that album is HEAVVV-YY! Dealer dude always made me sit a while, so there wasn’t obvious traffic at his place. He was a pit-bull breeder, and it was terrifying to watch him fist-pump, shirtless, to

THE ABIGAILS, LONESOME SHACK BAD BLOOD

$6 • 9PM

THURSDAY 1/23

MATT ANDERSEN

$15 • 8PM

FRIDAY 1/24

SURREALIZED

GIBRALTAR, A BREAKTHROUGH IN FIELD STUDIES

$8 • 10PM

SATURDAY 1/25

VAUDEVILLE ETIQUETTE PRESENTS: FLEETWOOD MAC’S ‘RUMOURS’

$8 • 9PM

SUNDAY 1/26

JD WILKES AND THE DIRT DAUBERS

JACKRABBIT STARTS

$10 • 8PM

MONDAU 1/17

ORIGAMI GHOSTS

ABSENT TIGER , CRYSTAL FUZZ

$6 • 8PM

NECTAR LOUNGE 412 N 36th St 206.632.2020 www.nectarlounge.com

1.23 Thursday (Reggae)

TRIBAL ORDER w/ Soulistic Gypsy

THE MYSTIC ARROWS

Positive Rising

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

1.24 Friday (Funk / Hip Hop)

SOPHISTAFUNK

SNUG HARBOR

Sphynx

$7 adv / $10 dos, 9pm show, 21+

1.25 Saturday (Reggae/Jam)

GIANT PANDA GUERILLA

DUB SQUAD and special guests: The Expanders, The Simpkin Project, DJ Duncan (91.3 KBCS)

$15, 8pm, 21+

1.26 Sunday (Hip Hop)

YING YANG TWINS with Dirty D, D Menace, B. Cole, Most Official. Hosted by Neema, with DJ Gerze

$15 adv / $20 Doors (or 2 for $25 adv)

$30 with Meet & Greet from 7 - 8pm 8pm doors, 21+

1.28 Tuesday (Hip Hop)

NAPPY ROOTS

The Staxx Brothers

$12 adv / $15 dos, 8pm doors, 21+ 1/30

Suzanne Westenhoefer

ANI DIFRANCO

Eyehategod while I sat, petting one of his gigantic monster-dogs. 2013 marked the band’s 25th anniversary. It was also the year they lost their drummer, Joey LaCaze, at age 42. The New Orleans natives have been through a lot in two decades— including death, drug addictions, and Hurricane Katrina. But is it slowing them down? “We don’t know how to give up,” singer Mike Williams told NPR in a recent interview. “That’s been the story of our entire career, our lives, even without the band. We just don’t know when to quit.” KELLY O

Posse, Koda Sequoia, Swamp Meat, Neighbors (Blue Moon Tavern) Posse have been MIA around town for the last few months, so I’m excited to see that they are back on the local circuit after a little recording break. If you missed seeing the lovable rock trio live, the band is a perfectly noisy mix of punky party pop and ’90s college-radio rock. Dually fronted by guitarists Sacha Maxim and Paul WittmannTodd, who have a delightful back-and-forth style as vocalists, Posse play infectious Pixies-/Breeders-influenced pop. And it looks like they might be airing some new jams in light of having just announced the release of a forthcoming album on Beating a Dead Horse Records in March. Joining them on the bill are the experimental psych rock of Swamp Meat, the Elephant 6 collective–ish pop of Koda Sequoia, and the pleasantly ramshackle rock of Neighbors. Welcome back, Posse! BREE MCKENNA

Sunday 1/26

(Nectar) Atlanta’s Ying Yang Twins are best known for their platinum early-’00s work with two huge ATL tastemakers: iconic crunk choirmaster Lil Jon and the man who brought the world Soulja Boy, Mr. Collipark (aka DJ Smurf). While “Get Low” and “Salt Shaker” are C-word classics, it’s the snap/“intimate club” landmark “The Whisper

Song” that’s endured far better (it even got bitten by David Banner’s “Play” within months of release). You would agree if you’ve ever seen a group of classy ladies dance in a club, rapturously chanting “beat the pussy up” and “wait’ll you see my dick.” While a bunch of dudes in jerseys and headbands “throwing ’bows” and drinking Red Bull and tequila (aka “crunk juice”) out of gas cans is cool, I’ma go with the other scenario. I guess that means “snap” wins over “crunk”; either way, this show should be bonkers. LARRY MIZELL JR. See also My Philosophy, page 35.

Monday 1/27

Origami Ghosts, Absent Tiger, Crystal Fuzz

(Sunset) Origami Ghosts are the seashell-folk/ gentle-indie project of Seattle’s J.P. Scesniak—you know, one of those bands where one person holds it down, but reserves the right to be joined by a few or a lot of friends. OG’s songs are intricate, with layers of strings, guitar, and accordion (tasteful accordion) coming together at the corner of “peaceful nature hike” and “busker beach bonfire.” The earnest lyrics and airy vocals remind me of Little Wings, with the shy melancholy of Carissa’s Wierd, and a maybe a touch of stripped-down Pinback. Origami Ghosts are joined tonight by Absent Tiger, a pedal-fueled bedroom-synth-pop duo, and Crystal Fuzz, a band whose Facebook claims, “The group pulls heavy influence from bands such as the Deftones, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Portishead.” EMILY NOKES

Tuesday 1/28

Oliver Mtukudzi (Jazz Alley) See Stranger Suggests, page 19.

Into It. Over It., the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, A Great Big Pile of Leaves, Special Explosion (Vera) See Underage, page 44.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22ND

DISAPPEARS

DREAMSALON // GANG CULT

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24TH

DEADKILL

(RECORD RELEASE) DUST MOTH // ROOKERY INTO VIOLENCE

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29TH

DENT MAY JACK NAME (OF WHITE FENCE) ACAPULCO LIPS

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31ST

CUMULUS

DRESSES // TOMTEN THE HOOT HOOTS

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1ST

LICK! A TOTALLY QUEER DANCE NIGHT

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH ROCKARAOKE LIVE BAND KARAOKE (FREE!)

1/23 DTCV (EX-GUIDED BY VOICES) 1/25 TALCUM 1/26 NIGHTMARE FORTRESS 1/28 CABANA 1/30 TENNIS PRO 2/2 ARTACHE + HANGOVER FLEA MARKET 2/6 XOLIE MORRA & THE STRANGE KIND 2/7 COLDNOTE 2/8 FERAL CHILDREN 2/11 INCAN ABRAHAM 2/12 WILD ARMS 2/13 MAD CADDIES (ALL-AGES) 2/14 TACOCAT (ALBUM RELEASE) 2/19 R. STEVIE MOORE 2/20 WILD THRONE 2/25 COM TRUISE

A PAVILION OF CAMP

DRUNK

WED 1/22

LIVE

418 PUBLIC HOUSE Claudio

Rochat-Felix, guests , free a 88 KEYS Blues On Tap, 8 pm, free

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Mutual Benefit, Julie Byrne, 8 pm, $10

CHOP SUEY Disappears, Dreamsalon, Gang Cult

CROCODILE Moon Taxi, Run River North, 8 pm, $10

JAZZ ALLEY Grace Kelly Quintet, $22.50

LO-FI Skip Heller, Pornadoes, Ramblin’ Years, David Guilbault, DJ Mars Nova, $6

MERCURY Live Music & Bands: Guests

NEPTUNE THEATRE Colin Meloy

NEUMOS Darkside, 8 pm

NEW ORLEANS Legacy Band, Clarence Acox

PARAGON Two Buck Chuck

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

THE ROYAL ROOM Huck Notari, Squirrel Butter, the Abramson Singers

SEAMONSTER The Unsinkable Heavies

SHIP CANAL GRILL The Canteloupes Jazz Jam

STUDIO SEVEN Toxic Holocaust, Exhumed, Ramming Speed, Mammoth Grinder, guests , 6 pm

SUNSET TAVERN Country

Lips, Abigails, Lonesome Shack, $7/$8

a TINY NINJA CAFE

Open Blues Jam: The Groovetramps, free

TRIPLE DOOR George Kahumoku, Led Kaapana

TULA’S Jazz Etc., 7:30 pm, $7

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Lamar Lofton Trio

DJ

BALTIC ROOM DJ Shane, free before 10 pm, $3 after CONTOUR Rotation Tryouts: Guests

THE EAGLE VJDJ Andy J 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

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Fade: DJ Chinkyeye, DJ Christyle

THURS 1/23

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA Robert Delong BLUE MOON TAVERN

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 MERCURY Isolation: DJ Coldheart, $3

CHOP SUEY DTCV, Tangerine, Charms, 8 pm, $7/$10

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER Tangent Trio, Savani Latin Jazz Quintet, 8 pm, $10/$12

CROCODILE Ghost Town Riot, 8 pm, $5

DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free a GUAYMAS CANTINA Oleaje Flamenco, 8 pm, free

HIGHLINE Ice Teeth, guests, $6

JAZZ ALLEY Peter White, 7:30 pm, $28.50

LO-FI MTNS, Stickers, Universe People, $7

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

NECTAR Tribal Order, Soulistic Gypsy, the Mystic Arrows, Positive Rising, $5 NEUMOS Ryan Hemsworth

PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac

SCARLET TREE How Now Brown Cow, 9:30 pm, free SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET North Mississippi Allstars, 8 pm

SUNSET TAVERN Matt Anderson, 8 pm, $15

TIM’S TAVERN Kings of Cavalier

TULA’S Thomas Marriott VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Jason Parker Quartet, Casey MacGill DJ BALLROOM DJ Rob, free

Specters, the Noble Firs, the Autonomics, $5 CAFE RACER Snowday, Ryan Bedard

DRUNK OF THE WEEK

OH, DIVINE GRACE!

Ihope the frickin’ Seahawks know how batshit crazy their fans went when they won Sunday’s playoff game. Like Grace here, at Moe Bar: Instead of just screaming her head off like everyone else, she dropped down on the floor and almost broke her

doing the splits. She can also do a shot without ever touching the glass—if you put the shot on top of her head! Girl’s got some serious sports talent. KELLY

NECTAR Sophistafunk, Snug Harbor, Sphynx, $7

NEUMOS Yuck, 8 pm, $13

PARAGON Levi Said, free

PARAMOUNT THEATRE Excision, 7 pm

a THE ROYAL ROOM

Django Birthday Celebration: Guests

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free

SHANTY TAVERN The Rainieros, the Black Crabs, the Western Bluebirds, $7

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET

Lord Huron

SUNSET TAVERN Surrealized, Gibraltar, Black Swedes

TIM’S TAVERN Last Great Fire

TOWN HALL Krar Collective, Gabriel Teodros

TRACTOR TAVERN Futurebirds, Natural Child, Fox and the Law, $10

TULA’S Marc Seales Trio

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Figgins and Halbert Jazz Group

DJ

95 SLIDE DJ Fever One

BALLROOM DJ Tamm of KISS fm

BALMAR Body Movin’

Fridays: DJ Ben Meadow, free

BALTIC ROOM Bollysutra:

DJ RDX, DJ Evolusion

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

CONTOUR Afterhours, 2 am

CUFF TGIF: C&W Dancing:

DJ Harmonix, DJ Stacey, 7 pm, Guest DJs, 11 pm, $5

FUEL DJ Headache, guests

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

LAST SUPPER CLUB Madness: Guests

MERCURY Exposure: Guests

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Caliente

Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren

OHANA Back to the Day: DJ Estylz

RE-BAR TRIBAL!: Rob

Noble, Michael Manahan, Guest DJs

SCARLET TREE Oh So Fresh

Fridays: Deejay Tone, DJ

Buttnaked, guests

THERAPY LOUNGE Rapture: Guests, $3 after 11 pm

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

THE WOODS Deep/Funky/ Disco/House: Guest DJs

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL 2014

Winter Festival:

CHAPEL PERFORMANCE

SPACE Electro-Acoustic Music Festival: Guests SAT 1/25

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BALMAR Rotating DJ Night: Guests, 9:30 pm

BLUE MOON TAVERN Posse, Koda Sequoia, Swamp Meat, Neighbors

CENTRAL SALOON The Winterlings

CHOP SUEY School of Rock Performs Goth $10/$12

CROCODILE True Spokes, Bradford Loomis, 8 pm, $10

HIGH DIVE Mile 9, Stillstand, Grand Horse, $8

HIGHLINE Eyehategod, Graves at Sea, guests , $20

JAZZ ALLEY Peter White

NECTAR Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, the Expanders, the Simpkin Project, 8 pm, $15

NEPTUNE THEATRE Volcano Choir, 8 pm

NEUMOS Daniel Kirkpatrick and the Bayonets, $9

PARAGON Solbird, free THE ROYAL ROOM Garfield Alumni Jam

SHIP CANAL GRILL Eugenie Jones, 8:30 pm

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Dizzy Wright, DJ Hoppa,

FRIDAY 1/24

Neema, Knothead, 8 pm

SKYLARK CAFE & CLUB The Stravinsky Riots, Sarah Pasillas, Don’t Cry Mac, $5

SLIM’S LAST CHANCE the Gallow Swings, Less Than Equals, Burien

TIM’S TAVERN Fatal Butterfly

TRACTOR TAVERN Shelby Earl, $10

TRIPLE DOOR Kim Virant, Gerald Collier, $15 | $18

TULA’S Greta Matassa Quartet, 7:30 pm, $15

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Ruby Bishop, 6 pm

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Warren

BARBOZA Inferno: Guests, 10:30 pm

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

CONTOUR Europa Night: Misha Grin, Gil

CUFF Bliss: DJ Harmonix

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

MERCURY Machineries of Joy: DJ Hana Solo

MOE BAR Panther Down: DJ N8, Anthony Diamond, free

NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ Randy Schlager

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal Darkness

OHANA Funk House: DJ Bean One

PONY Stiffed: DJ Pavone

RE-BAR Cherry: Amateur Youth, Mathematix SEE SOUND LOUNGE Guest DJs

THERAPY LOUNGE Dance Yourself Clean: Guests

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

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

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL Prokofiev, Haydn and Mozart: Seattle

BY ADRIAN RYAN BenDeLaCreme

ONE FIERCE QUEEN AFTER ANOTHER Can’t you just taste it? Floating on the breeze? Like a combination of MAC products, padding, perfume, tension, and shade? A measly few weeks is all that stands between you, me, and the thrills and wonders of the Gay Super Bowl, also fondly known as RuPaul’s Drag Race. The an-ti-ci-pa-tion is crushing—I’m piddling myself on the daily. (I usually save that for special occasions!) Of course, I’ve got fingers, toes, legs, eyelashes, and testes crossed for our dear BenDeLaCreme (it’s terribly uncomfortable), but frankly? I’m not so sure my selfish little heart is prepared to share her with the world. I mean, we’ve become basically an occasional whistle stop for Jinkx as she flutters off to everywhere else, and I sorely miss the days when one had to step over her lithe and lovely passed-out frame just to get to the urinals. And even if Ben goes down in flames in the first three seconds (perish, evil thought—die, die, die!), she’ll still be rushing off to do the millions of reunions and drag cruises and all the other required appearances of a RPDR gurl, so we better become accustomed to a little less DeLaCreme in our lives. (It’s happening already—you’ve noticed that we haven’t even had a decent Tuck in ages?)

Le sniffle. Le sigh…

But before we really have to start worrying about all that, we have to start worrying about all this: Seattle’s brandnewest live RPDR knockoff drag competition. It’s aptly called Fierce Queen, and here’s what we know: Drag performers old and new will herd themselves into

Symphony

CHAPEL PERFORMANCE

SPACE Matthew Shipp

QUEEN ANNE CHRISTIAN

CHURCH Romantic Moments with Trio Paradies: Trio Paradies

SUN 1/26

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BALTIC ROOM DJ Shane, guests , $4

BLUE MOON TAVERN J.P. and the Geminis, 8 pm, free

CHOP SUEY Nightmare Fortress, Bestial Mouths, Butcher, Zoolab, 8 pm, $8

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER

Elias Wonder, My Cartoon Heart, Susy Sun, 8 pm

CROCODILE King Washington, the Janks

EL CORAZON the Persevering Promise

HIGH DIVE Razors & Red Flags, Walker Rose and the Pines, Citizen Corvus

HIGHLINE Weregoat, Chapel, Old Skin, 10 pm, $6

JAI THAI BROADWAY Rock Bottom Soundsystem, free

JAZZ ALLEY Peter White, 7:30 pm, $28.50

LO-FI M. Lockwood Porter, Taxidermy Western, Kate Lynn Logan, $7

NECTAR Ying Yang Twins, Dan Valdes, D Menace

NEPTUNE THEATRE Josh Ritter, 8 pm

NEUMOS Layzie Bone

PIES & PINTS Sunday Night Folk Review: Guests, free SUNSET TAVERN JD Wilkes and the Dirt Dauber

TRACTOR TAVERN Kim Richey, 8 pm, $16

TULA’S Jim Cutler Jazz Orchestra, 8 pm, $8

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

the Eagle to be subjected to the brutal critique of one Miss Amoania, a vicious and acerbic shock queen who moved back to Seattle from San Francisco just for the privilege, and a queen called Urethra Franklin, whom I’ve never heard of, so there. (But I just adore the name— drag names should be an Olympic sport.) Categories to be judged: look, track selection, synching or singing, creativity, and moves. They’ve already got 12 local dragsters on the docket to compete, and nails are being sharpened and lashes beaded as we speak—there’s not only pride on the line, but real cash monies! Now, I know we seem to be going to the Eagle almost every damn weekend (Jesus Christ!), but it’s just so ironically delicious that what was once the best place to suddenly find a fist in your butt (whoops!) has transformed into a pavilion of camp and draggy whimsy. It’s a beautiful thing. The Eagle, 10 pm, $7, 21+.

Pole Fitness Seattle

In 2013, we opened our boutique SODO studio with the vision of smaller and more diverse pole classes for everyone. Pole Fitness Seattle believes in a burlesque or classical approach when teaching striptease in our workshops and parties. We pride ourselves on beautiful techniques and theory that date back to the Golden Age. Try our 4 week “Intro to Pole” series, designed for beginners, where you’ll learn the six fundamental pole spins, as well as safety and terminology. Or, take a drop-in “Heels & Chair,” Flexibility” or “Polesque” class!

Acuna Boxing

The sport of boxing is a sport with its own original circuit training format that helps to develop self-defense and boxing fighting skill while you get in the best shape of your life. If you are ready to step it up and challenge yourself to get to a state of better fitness, resistance, cardiovascular shape, or to enhance your boxing skills, Acuna Boxing can help you get there. Open to anyone older than 16 of any gender, all fitness levels accepted.

Hour Training Session ($60 Value). Your Price: $30 Praxis Brazilian Jui Jitsu

Praxis is Seattle’s only school teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu exclusively. Jiu Jitsu is designed for the smaller person to learn to defend against a larger aggressor using leverage and timing. Jiu Jitsu provides a safe way to develop solid selfdefense skills and get into phenomenal shape without weights or treadmill.

DJ

CONTOUR Broken Grooves:

DJ Venus, Rob Cravens, guests, free

THE EAGLE T-Bar/T-Dance:

Up Above, Fistfight, free

MERCURY Classic EDM: DJ Trent Von, $5

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

NEIGHBOURS Noche Latina: Guest DJs

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

Q NIGHTCLUB Revival: Riz Rollins, Chris Tower

RE-BAR Flammable: DJ

Wesley Holmes, 9 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Salsa: DJ Nick

THE STEPPING STONE PUB

Vinyl Night: You bring your records, they play them

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL Prokofiev, Haydn and Mozart: Seattle Symphony

QUEEN ANNE CHRISTIAN

CHURCH Romantic Moments with Trio Paradies: Trio Paradies

TOWN HALL Seattle Festival

Orchestra Presents Sibelius Karelian Overture

MON

1/27

LIVE BLUE MOON TAVERN

Andy Coe Band, 10 pm, free CAPITOL CIDER EntreMundos, 9:30 pm

HIGHLINE Wilderun, Medieval Eternity, Last Bastion, 9:30 pm, $6

MOLLY MAGUIRES Open

Mic: Hosted by Tom Rooney, free

NEW ORLEANS The New Orleans Quintet, 6:30 pm

SUNSET TAVERN Origami Ghosts, Absent Tiger, Crystal Fuzz, 8 pm, $6

TRACTOR TAVERN Ash, Deaf Havana, 8 pm, $15

TRIPLE DOOR

Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free TULA’S Jim Knapp Orchestra

DJ

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 Industry Standard: Guests, free

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

Q NIGHTCLUB Reflect, 8 pm, free

CLASSICAL

TOWN HALL Mozart

Birthday Toast: Byron Schenkman

TUE

1/28

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BASTILLE CAFE BAR The Djangomatics, 8 pm, free CAFE RACER Jacobs Posse

CHAPEL PERFORMANCE

SPACE Torben Ulrich

CONOR BYRNE Ol’ Time

Social: the Tallboys, 9 pm EL CORAZON The Toasters, Easy Big Fella, Jen’s Tits, 7:30 pm, $12/$14

HEARTLAND CAFE & BENBOW ROOM Open Mic:

Guests JAZZ ALLEY Oliver Mtukudzi, 7:30 pm, $26.50

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

NECTAR Nappy Roots, the Staxx Brothers, 8 pm OUTWEST Wine and Jazz Night: Tutu Jazz Quartet, free PINK DOOR Michael Navedo, 8 pm

SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free

SUNDAY 1/26

I’m a sucker for the retro-modern style of Shed Labs, a three-person design studio in Greenville, South Carolina. In this week’s poster, it’s the little textural details, like the trees/cigarettes, that really get me. See more at shedlabs.com.

AARON HUFFMAN

Volcano Choir w/the Cloak Ox Sat Jan 25, Neptune Theatre

TRACTOR TAVERN The Autumn Defense, 8 pm, $15

BY BRITTNIE FULLER

or call

HOUNDS OF HATE, WHITE WARDS, WET Two Olympia hardcore bands—White Wards and Wet—make the Black Lodge the destination for heavy-music fans tonight. White Wards’ whirlwinds of tyrannical guitar fury have offered no apologies in the past, with tracks like “Fucking a Dead Body” and “Tear the Veins Out” spewing abrasive horrors into ears in about a minute or less. Keep an eye out for their sure-to-be-debased fulllength released in the next couple months on Iron Lung Records. Fellow Olympians Wet rely on a more distinctively Northwest flannel-wearing riffage that also smells heavily of teen spirit. But with a cold face-pummeling attack that also reinvigorates tired grunge-punk tropes through a spastic hardcore lens, Wet have a promising future as well. New York straight-edge hardcore act Hounds of Hate round out the bill with even more hard and fast riffs—come armed with earplugs and perhaps kneepads. Black Lodge, 9 pm.

TUESDAY 1/28

TOPSHELF RECORDS’ EMO EXPANSIONISTS

Emo—once condemned as a pejorative term for the red-eyeliner-wearing, GerardWay-worshipping, and generally clueless—is alive and bleeding again in its truest form at Boston label Topshelf Records. As the brood-prone reader may be able to infer, the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am

No Longer Afraid to Die is a gazillionpiece, Connecticut-based ensemble that writes grandiose songs high on emotional luminescence and low on self-restraint. Released last year, their debut full-length, Whenever, If Ever, possesses a nearly overwhelming sense of urgency. The record reveals everyday tragedies through meticulous orchestration and clean production, and its sparkly guitar lines and teenage feelings coalesce, sounding honestly Kinsella-blessed without getting overly sappy. This should translate well to a live show adorned with barely choked-back tears and the clever guitar sounds of fellow Topshelf signees Into It. Over It. and A Great Big Pile of Leaves, as well as the Eastside’s post-high-school indie rockers Special Explosion. Signed to the label in December, the young band creates gleaming and dreamy indie rock, making their upcoming EP one of the year’s most anticipated local releases. Vera Project, 7:30 pm, $10.

BY DAVE SEGAL

WEDNESDAY 1/22

DARKSIDE’S JAARINGLY GOOD

SONGS

So Matador Records is getting back into electronic music again? The longrunning bastion of indie rock showed great taste in the ’90s by signing acts like Techno Animal and Pole. But that era didn’t last long and it was soon back to its bread and butter. But with Darkside’s Psychic, Matador proves its electronic-music acumen’s still sharp. Consisting of techno producer Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington, Darkside conjure a crepuscular netherworld of sexy intrigue and elegant chaos. Psychic moves in the same mongrel electronic/blues-rock/noir-jazz space as some of Matthew Dear and Air’s work, but it disperses into more astral abstraction and eerie ambience than those artists do. Bonus: They hang a seven-foot rotating mirror above them onstage. With High Water and Nordic Soul Neumos, 8 pm, $20 adv, sold out, 21+.

FRIDAY 1/24

DECONSTRUCT TECHNO/HOUSE

LORDS LEVON VINCENT AND ANTHONY PARASOLE

The High & Tight crew continue their quest to secure MVP honors in Seattle’s electronic-music scene for this booking, two of New York’s deepest techno and house heads: Levon Vincent and Anthony Pasarole. These hombres—who run the Deconstruct Music label— typically pack out the most discerning dance clubs in Europe, so we’re lucky to get ’em in an intimate space like Re-bar. Both cats worked for Brooklyn’s revered Halcyon record shop last decade, so their knowledge is supreme. Vincent’s exceptionally skilled at crafting minimalist, mesmerizing techno with a vast array of unusual textures. Check out “Games Dub” or “Woman Is the Devil” for master classes in how to maximize a few elements into gripping dance-floor burners. With Tyler Morrison Re-bar, 10 pm–6 am, $15 adv, 21+.

SATURDAY 1/25

JAMES FLAVOUR’S SOPHISTICATED HOUSE, JEFF SAMUEL’S CHALLENGING TECHNO

Re-bar’s hella-hot weekend continues tonight with Berlin/Vancouver DJ/producer James Flavour and Berlin-via-Seattlevia-Cleveland DJ/producer Jeff Samuel Flavour is another one of those housemusic mavens who push a sophisticated and sensual sound. The line between sublime and corny in this realm is thinner than a record store’s profit margins, but Flavour keeps it in the black and very deep, as you’d expect from a Dirt Crew Recordings artist. Samuel is simply one of the best techno DJs I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen more techno DJs than you’ve made botched transitions. He’s always brought the challenging, unconventional tracks (Cristian Vogel, Si Begg, etc.) and still kept bodies moving. I hope he hasn’t gone all Pete Tong in the five or so years since I last saw him perform. (Kidding, Jeff.) With Gato Negro Re-bar, 10 pm–3 am, 21+.

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REGGIE AND THE FULL EFFECT, DADS, PENTIMENTO, HONORABLE MENTION

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FRIDAY MARCH 1 | 7:30 PM GRAVEFACE ROADSHOW W/ THE CASKET GIRLS, THE STARGAZER LILLIES, DOTT, DREAMEND

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FRIDAY MARCH 7 | 7:30 PM

LESLIE AND THE LYS, DEAN AND THE DELILAHS, BOONE COUNTY COMEDY TROUPE

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ALWAYS ALL AGES

SHOWING 1/24 - 1/30

(3:30)*, 7:45

(R) Fri: 7:15*, 9:50 Sat: (3:45)*, 7:15*, 9:50 Sun: (3:45)*, 7:15* Mon: 8:00 PM* Tue: 8:00 PM*^ Wed: (11:00 AM) +*, 8:00* Thu: 8:00 PM* INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (R) Fri: (3:45 PM)* Sat & Sun: (1:15 PM)* Mon Thu: (3:45 PM)*

FILM

Artists Fucking with Crows

A Documentary Dedicated to Tokyo’s Smart Black Birds

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

Let’s begin with an important scene in this short documentary by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson: A scientist (or at least I think he is a scientist—he sits in what looks like a lab) holds up two transparent receptacles that contain the brains of two types of birds. The brain in one container is huge and the one in the other is small. The huge brain, we are told, belonged to a crow, and the small one to a duck. The crow’s brain, which is double the size of the duck’s, helps to explain why urban corvids are so bloody clever, why they can use tools to get food or the wheels of cars to crack open nuts. Tokyo has 20,000 of these birds—small compared to

the city’s human population (13 million)—and their beaks appear to be larger or more bulky than the ones we find in Seattle. But crows over there make the same horrible noise as the ones here—that throaty, soulcrushing, beak-blasting call. In a key scene, young Tokyo artists drive around the city with a stuffed crow hanging out the window and fake calls blasting from speakers. Hundreds of crows follow the car in complete confusion. The stuffed bird, the recorded calls, the speeding car, the laughing artists—the birds do not know what to make of it. Should they bomb the automobile? Is bombing a car even a good idea? Why is that

Bland Expectations

BY ALISON HALLETT

It’s too bad The Invisible Woman is so stubbornly unfun, because it’s got all the makings of a lavish, juicy period piece. The subject matter is suitably racy—the secret affairs of Charles Dickens!— but under the direction of star Ralph Fiennes, it’s a self-serious, dreary affair.

The plot, in brief: At the height of his fame, Dickens (Fiennes) kept a young mistress, Nelly (Felicity Jones), with the full knowledge, if not outright consent, of his wife. Though he was open about the relationship in his personal life, he took great pains to scrub his public life of any trace of Nelly’s presence. Hence the

dumb crow flying so close to that funny car?

More birds arrive and fill the Tokyo sky with even more confusion, more horrible calls. It seems they are looking for just one among them who has the brains to make sense of this situation and offer the correct course of action. But none knows what do. Crows are smart, but not that smart. None has the intellectual power to break the spell and finally see what’s really going on: They are part of an art project. The whole business seems so cruel. Humans can be so mean.

In another scene, we watch crows building nests with clothes hangers in trees and on the tops of telephone poles. Crows apparently have a fetish for this and other human-made objects. They also, of course, love our garbage, and they are constantly watching us, trying to see what we are up to, studying our ways with their dark eyes, or hopping toward things we’ve turned our backs to or abandoned. The documentary is a poem—meaning it has no narrative structure or some crow specialist who consistently feeds us facts about the habits of this species. It only captures random moments, brief ideas, snatches of scientific information about the accidental relationship between them and us. Shot with raw video (the poetry is in the editing and not the cinematography), we see how we (or at least the citizens of Tokyo) feel about the birds—some love them, some hate them, some see them as a symbol of the cycle of life. Crows, like rats and pigeons, are synanthropic (with humans). Our cities have become their ecosystem.

Crows, of course, love our garbage.

overblown title, which positions Nelly as a marginalized, cloistered mistress—instead of a woman who willingly entered into a relationship with a man with whom she was smitten. In this telling, Nelly essentially lacks agency—this might have been an interesting story, but The Invisible Woman tells it in a profoundly uninteresting way.

The Invisible Woman’s plot unfolds entirely in flashbacks, as an adult Nelly remembers her youthful dalliance with Dickens. Given that we know from the film’s framing that Nelly will land on her feet—she now lives in a comfortable house with a kind husband and

In one of my favorite moments of the film, a man explains that he has seen a bored crow flying high up to the sky with an object in its mouth, dropping the object, diving after it, and catching it before it hits the ground. Being a crow is not all about finding tasty bits of food in our garbage bags. They not only have lots of free time on their wings but can also get bored with city life. They are human, all too human.

cute children—the stakes are quite low during her affair with Dickens. It’s also tough to credit the film’s bid for serious character development when nothing actually happens. As a director, Fiennes is overenamored with Jones’s face—Jones is fine in the role of a pretty young thing, but her face doesn’t convey the volumes that Fiennes seems to think it does, as his camera lingers relentlessly on her vague, vacant expressions. She spends much of the film striding purposefully on the beach, looking coy and confused. It’s all so serious, yet so superficial at the same time.

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/film

LIMITED RUN

CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL

See Stranger Suggests, page 19. Eleven days packed with the best children’s cinema from all over the world. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Tues. For complete schedule and showtimes, see nwfilmforum.org.

FIGHT CLUB

From Helena Bonham Carter’s exquisitely dirty masochist to the torrent of advertising-derived visual effects, every detail in David Fincher’s film vacuums you into its repugnant world. A pop masterpiece. (ANNIE WAGNER) Central Cinema, Fri-Sat, Mon-Tues 9:30 pm

THE NEW SUNDAY SCHOOL

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 14 years old, it was Sunday morning, and my mother—who, because it was Alabama, was legally required to be a Southern Baptist—repeated the phrase she’d used every weekend since I was in diapers: “Time to go to Sunday School!” Normally, I’d put on my tie and dress shorts, and climb into the car without argument—but not that day. That was the day I turned to her and said, “You know, Mom, 14 years of church is enough for anybody. I’m never going again.” AND I NEVER DID. I still regard that as one of the best decisions I’ve ever made—and 97 percent of my choices in life have been terrible. But I was absolutely right: 14 years of Sunday School IS TOO LONG. (Especially when the primary message is “Don’t masturbate.”) Happily, I made up for all that wasted time of non-masturbating by furiously masturbating (along with other crimes against God, which I won’t bore you with at this particular juncture).

ANYWAY! As it turned out, I didn’t stop going to Sunday School… I just started going to a different Sunday School—one that I still attend today, and is held at a rather unorthodox church I like to call “Our Lady of Perpetual Television Watching.” Here’s what I like about this TV-based church: It takes place every Sunday in my living room. (Convenient!) It has a large TV as the focal point, instead of a big wooden cross with a bloody person hanging off of it. (Christians are weird.) This TV-worshipping Sunday

PANDORA’S BOX

G.W. Pabst’s controversial melodrama featuring silent icon Louise Brooks in her signature role. “Sensationally modern, the film follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl Lulu, whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone she comes in contact with,” writes Criterion.com, bringing to mind a certain Verhoeven showgirl. The film even dabbles in lesbian subtext, with Lulu engaging in a shameless ballroom dance with a libidinous countess. Along with Riggs on the Wurlitzer, the screening features a post-film discussion led by SIFF director of programming Beth Barrett. (DAVID SCHMADER) Paramount, Mon Jan 27 at 7 pm.

School also has a far more liberal view on masturbation. (If they can’t see me doing it, they don’t care.) AND it has super-entertaining things to watch every Sunday (especially right now), such as…

Downton Abbey (PBS, 9 pm, Sundays):

Things are much less lighthearted this season with a grieving Mary and a Downton party that went terribly, horrifically wrong for Anna. Tonight I’m hoping for more hilarious, withering disses from the Countess Dowager. For example: “Lord Grantham, your mama’s so fat, when she broke her arm, gravy ran out.” (Why can’t I write for this show??)

True Detective (HBO, 9 pm, Sundays):

If you’re not watching this electrifying new crime series starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, you’re missing a show that’s gonna swamp the Emmys next year. Woody and Matthew are doing the best acting of their lives as two troubled cops in search of a serial killer. Miss 14 years of Sunday School… but DO NOT MISS THIS.

Sherlock (PBS, 10 pm, Sundays): In the second episode of the third season, Sherlock encounters the greatest challenge of his career: writing a speech for Watson’s wedding. Oh, and there’s also a killer stalking the reception, but whatever, pish-tosh, tuppence for the birds. (EEEEK! Only one episode left after this!!)

Girls (HBO, 10 pm, Sundays): Lena Dunham is the undisputed master of capturing narcissistic and oft-times nude twentysomethings. But make no mistake: Girls features more reality in a single episode than any book of the Bible—though she’s kind of slacking off in the masturbation department. Seriously, where am I going to find a religion that focuses on the important stuff?!?

Read Humpy’s weekly TV listings at THESTRANGER.COM

11:45 2:15 5 7:45 10:30 TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

Opens Fri, Feb 7 8pm with director Q&A 11:30 2:00 4:30 7:00 9:30

RAZE

“How many more do I have to kill?!?” pleads a sweaty, bloody-knuckled Sabrina in the very first of way too many fights scenes in Raze. Ten minutes and 18 seconds into the film, she breaks the arm of an extremely confused medical claims adjuster (with an unfortunate background in kickboxing)—snapping the woman’s humerus bone (not funny!) with a loud, audible CRRRR RAAACK! She then uses both of her fists to transform other the woman’s face into a soft, gooey pile of meat that looks an awful lot like raw steak. “This is making me physically ill,” says my movie-watching pal, a normally tough-as-nails lesbian. “Why on earth would anybody watch this?” On paper, the storyline of Raze isn’t the worst, and can be summed up in almost one sentence: “Women get randomly kidnapped by a creepy, elitist secret society of weirdo rich fucks who force them to fight each other to the death with their bare hands, and then the one final winner gets turned back out into society as a newfangled Super Female.” Or something like that. There’s some bonus hokey pro-feminist mumbo jumbo like “No man could ever survive this!” and “To be a woman, you have to be devious in this world!” But nothing can compete with the sheer brutality of the fight scenes—the nonstop punching sound effects that sound like a small

FESTIVE

WOMEN IN CINEMA

Kicking off with a documentary portrait of the brilliantly prickly Broadway legend Elaine Stritch and closing with a romantic drama led by Orange Is the New Black star Taylor Schilling, SIFF’s Women in Cinema festival is a five-day showcase of films by, about, and starring women. For full descriptions of the fest’s nine films and screening times, see siff.net. For now, mini-reviews of two featured films.

Free Ride

Based on a true story and set in an expertly artdirected 1970s, this engrossing drama follows single mother Christina (Anna Paquin) as she relocates with her two daughters to Florida and quickly finds herself embroiled in the drug trade. In a quietly brilliant twist, director Shana Betz keeps the drug-trafficking scenes prosaic to the point of dullness, with involved parties mostly just waiting around and doing degrading grunt work. Instead, the film finds its heart and the majority of its drama in Christina’s family. There’s a hint of Mildred Pierce in how Christina’s desire for a better life for her daughters drives her to do extraordinary things, and how the daughters’ open disdain of lower-class living sends her beyond legal deeds. But simplistic melodrama is handily bypassed, with the film collecting good, messy moments for all three of the family’s women—especially elder daughter MJ, a conflicted teenager brought to indelible life by Liana Liberato, a young actor filmmakers should be clamoring for in the next couple years.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden Dan Geller and Danya Goldfine’s alternately dreamy and titillating documentary tracks the extraordinary events that unfolded on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos in the 1930s. Our main players: a Nietzsche-loving German doctor seeking nothing but isolation for contemplation, the pregnant woman who brought herself to the island hoping the Nietzsche-loving doctor might assist in her delivery (he refuses, as he came here to be left alone), and the flamboyant French baroness who arrives on the island with a small stable of lovers and a dream of building a hotel. What happens next involves guns, drought, turtles, adultery, media circusry, and a murder scandal, brought to the screen by archival footage and photographs, and celebrity narration (often incorporating letters written by actual parties). It’s bizarre and fascinating.

(DAVID SCHMADER)

Women in Cinema 2014 runs January 22–26 at SIFF cinemas. For full info, see siff.net.

hammer hitting a wet cow. “I’ve watched horror movies, boxing matches, and even cock-fighting before,” says my friend. “None of it was ever as hard to watch as this.” (KELLY O) Grand Illusion, Fri-Sat 10 pm, Sun-Tues 8:30 pm.

THE SPROCKET SOCIETY’S SECRET

SATURDAY MATINEE

A family-friendly series featuring classic movie serial episodes plus secret classic feature films, all shown on 16 mm. The serial: 1949’s Batman and Robin. The secret feature film: secret, but this month’s theme is “superheroes.” Grand Illusion, Sat Jan 11 at 2 pm.

THE THIRD MAN

Carol Reed’s aesthetically impeccable, intellectually terrifying film noir of 1949 follows an American writer lured by a friend to postwar Vienna, where he’s thrust into a mind-twisting nightmare of betrayal, crime, and murder. Well-received in its time, The Third Man has earned a reputation as one of the finest films ever made. Starring Jospeh Cotten, Orson Welles, and a wonderfully creepy zither soundtrack. (DAVID SCHMADER) Central Cinema, Fri 7 pm, Sat 3, 7 pm, Sun 3 pm, Mon-Tues 7 pm.

TOKYO WAKA

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)

HER

Tons more reviews online! thestranger.com/film

See review, page 46. Grand Illusion, Fri 7, 8:30 pm, Sat 5:30, 7, 8:30 pm, Sun 5:30, 7 pm, Mon-Tues 7 pm.

TOUGH GUISE 2

A look at the way the media shapes and warps prevailing concepts of masculinity, and at “the violent, sexist, and homophobic messages boys and young men routinely receive from virtually every corner of the culture.” Keystone Church, Fri Jan 24 at 7 pm.

UMBERTO D

SAM’s Golden Age of Italian Cinema series continues with Vittorio De Sica’s celebrated story of a pensioner and his little pooch. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Jan 23 at 7:30

WOMEN IN CINEMA

See Festive, page 48. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Wed-Sun. For complete schedule and showtimes, see siff.net.

YOUNG LAKOTA

We’re coming up on the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, so let’s not take it for granted. Young Lakota follows three Native American kids who rise to action when their tribal president wants to build a women’s clinic on their reservation despite the state ban on abortion. It’s worth your time to check this out. (DANIELLE HENDERSON) New Freeway Hall, Wed Jan 22 at 7:30 pm.

NOW PLAYING

12 YEARS A SLAVE

The brutal tale of 12 Years a Slave comes from the 1853

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of Jan 22

ARIES (March 21–April 19): Actor Casey Affleck appreciates the nurturing power of his loved ones. “My family would be supportive,” he says, “if I said I wanted to be a Martian, wear only banana skins, make love to ashtrays, and eat tree bark.” I’d like to see you cultivate allies like that in the coming months, Aries. Even if you have never had them before, there’s a good chance they will be available. For best results, tinker with your understanding of who your family might be. Redefine what “community” means to you.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): Author John Koenig says we often regard emotions as positive or negative. Feeling respect is good, for example, while being racked with jealousy is bad. But he favors a different standard for evaluating emotions: how intense they are. At one end of the spectrum, everything feels blank and blah, even the big things. “At the other end is wonder,” he says, “in which everything feels alive, even the little things.” Your right and proper goal right now, Taurus, is to strive for the latter kind: full-on intensity and maximum vitality. Luckily, the universe will be conspiring to help you achieve that goal.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): At her blog other-wordly.tumblr.com, YeeLum Mak defines the Swedish word resfeber this way: “The restless race of the traveler’s heart before the journey begins, when anxiety and anticipation are tangled together.” You might be experiencing resfeber right now, Gemini. Even if you’re not about to depart on a literal trip, I’m guessing you will soon start wandering out on a quest or adventure that will bring your heart and mind closer together. Paradoxically, your explorations will teach you a lot about being better grounded. Bon voyage!

CANCER (June 21–July 22): How does a monarch butterfly escape its chrysalis when it has finished gestating? Through tiny holes in the skin of the chrysalis, it takes big gulps of air and sends them directly into its digestive system, which expands forcefully. Voilà! Its body gets so big, it breaks free. When a chick is ready to emerge from inside its egg, it has to work harder than the butterfly. With its beak, it must peck thousands of times at the shell, stopping to rest along the way because the process is so demanding. According to my analysis, Cancerian, you’re nearing the final stage before your metaphorical emergence from gestation. Are you more like the butterfly or the chick?

LEO (July 23–Aug 22): “I’m not sure where to go from here. I need help.” I encourage you to say those words out loud, Leo. Even if you’re not sure you believe they’re true, act as if they are. Why? Because I think it would be healthy for you to express uncertainty and ask for assistance. It would relieve you of the oppressive pressure to be a masterful problem-solver. It could free you from the unrealistic notion that you’ve got to figure everything out by yourself. And this would bring you, as if by magic, interesting offers and inquiries. In other words, if you confess your neediness, you will attract help. Some of it will be useless, but most of it will be useful. VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): Dogs have a superb sense of smell, much better than we humans. But ours isn’t bad. We can detect certain odors that have been diluted to one part in five billion. For example, if you were standing next to two Olympic-sized swimming pools, and only one contained a few drops of the chemical ethyl mercaptan, you would know which one it was. I’m now calling on you to exercise that level of sensitivity, Virgo. There’s a situation in the early stages of unfolding that would ultimately emanate a big stink if you allowed it to keep developing. There is a second unripe situation, on the other hand, that would eventually

Despite the dangerously high-concept premise—“a man falls in love with Siri”—Her is one of the best sciencefiction movies I’ve seen in a good long while. It’s not flashy rockets-and-robots sci-fi: The artificial intelligence that Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix, rumpled and wearing a big, friendly, Vonnegut-like mustache) falls in love with feels less like a quantum leap ahead of Google Now and Siri and more like a couple of well-paced quantum skips. But the AI is voiced by Scarlett Johansson with a remarkable warmth. Once Twombly powers her into existence, she’s chipper like an enthusiastic retail employee, but she quickly grows fond of him. It’s such an organic progression that only the most cynical viewers will fight it. (PAUL CONSTANT)

WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW?

This modern Taiwanese film takes a lighthearted tone but deals with some serious relationship issues. Weichung is a low-key optometrist and has been married to Feng for nine years. They have a 6-year-old son and their marriage is comfortable if not passionate. One day, a handsome stranger comes into the eyeglass shop, and Weichung can’t deny his strong attraction to him. It turns out that he was gay before he got married, but decided to give it up for family life. “I haven’t been gay in a long time. I used to be. Then I stopped,” Weichung admits to his new crush. Feng is unsettled; she knows something isn’t right, but she doesn’t know what it is. Weichung’s sister Mandy is engaged to a nerdy but loving man, but she longs for romance and excitement. She is fearful of settling down and having a boring life. And doling out advice is Stephen, a gay man married to a lesbian, who navigates Taipei’s gay scene with a posse of friends and lovers. Love has an affable feel and does a good job of showing the tensions between a traditional society and the changing attitudes about relationships. (GILLIAN ANDERSON)

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

This is a movie that’s funny and alive and furious, and it often feels like a live-action cartoon, outsize and ludicrous, but Scorsese’s not content with that: When Terence Winter’s screenplay turns dark and intense, Scorsese doesn’t let up. (ERIK HENRIKSEN)

yield fragrant blooms. I advise you to either quash or escape from the first, even as you cultivate and treasure the second.

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): Whatever adventures may flow your way in the coming weeks, Libra, I hope you will appreciate them for what they are: unruly but basically benevolent, disruptive in ways that catalyze welcome transformations, a bit more exciting than you might like but ultimately pretty fun. Can you thrive on the paradoxes? Can you delight in the unpredictability? I think so. When you look back at these plot twists two months from now, I bet you’ll see them as entertaining story lines that enhance the myth of your hero’s journey. You’ll understand them as tricky gifts that have taught you valuable secrets about your soul’s code.

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): Manufacturing a jelly bean is not a quick slam-bam process. It’s a five-step procedure that takes a week. Each seemingly uncomplicated piece of candy has to be built up layer by layer, with every layer needing time to fully mature. I’m wondering if maybe there’s a metaphorically similar kind of work ahead for you, Scorpio. May I speculate? You will have to take your time, proceed carefully, and maintain a close attention to detail as you prepare a simple pleasure.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): I understand the appeal of the f-word.

It’s guttural and expulsive. It’s a perverse form of celebration that frees speakers from their inhibitions. But I’m here today to announce that its rebel cachet and vulgar power are extinct. It has decayed into a barren cliché. Its official death-from-oversaturation occurred with the release of the mainstream Hollywood blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street. Actors in the film spat out the rhymes-with-cluck word more than 500 times. I hereby nominate you Sagittarians to begin the quest for new ways to invoke rebellious irreverence. What interesting mischief and naughty wordplay might you perpetrate to escape your inhibitions, break taboos that need to be broken, and call other people on their BS and hypocrisy?

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) has had a major impact on the development of ideas in the Western world. We can reasonably divide the history of philosophy into two eras: pre-Kantian and post-Kantian. And yet for his whole life, which lasted 79 years, this big thinker never traveled more than 10 miles away from Konigsberg, the city where he was born. He followed a precise and methodical routine, attending to his work with meticulous detail. According to my analysis, you Capricorns could have a similar experience in the coming weeks. By sticking close to the tried-and-true rhythms that keep you grounded and healthy, you can generate influential wonders.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): The Aquarian author Georges Simenon (1903–1989) wrote more than 200 novels under his own name and 300 more under pseudonyms. On average, he finished a new book every 11 days. Half a billion copies of his books are in print. I’m sorry to report that I don’t think you will ever be as prolific in your own chosen field as he was in his. However, your productivity could soar to a hefty fraction of Simenon-like levels in 2014—if you’re willing to work your ass off. Your luxuriant fruitfulness won’t come as easily as his seemed to. But you should be overjoyed that you at least have the potential to be luxuriantly fruitful.

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): When I’m older and wiser, maybe I’ll understand the meaning of my life. When I’m older and wiser, maybe I’ll gain some insight about why I’m so excited to be alive despite the fact that my destiny is so utterly mysterious. What about you, Pisces? What will be different for you when you’re older and wiser? Now is an excellent time to ponder this riddle. Why? Because it’s likely you will get a glimpse of the person you will have become when you are older and wiser—which will in turn intensify your motivation to become that person.

Homework: How could you change yourself in order to get more of the love you want? Go to freewillastrology.com and click “Email Rob.”

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

DEAR RED LIPSTICK MAN

01/18/14, you bought tickets from me to see some funny theatre. lovely red shade of lipstick & a smile that kept looking back at me. I should have made it more obvious that was noticing & enjoying. Drink-y sometime? When: Saturday, January 18, 2014. Where: ACT Theatre, downtown. You: Man. Me: Transsexual (male to female). #920211

BLUE EYED ARCHITECT, BUS 48

We were sharing a seat on the 48, laughing when an al-dente toddler passed by. We talked about teaching kids, long years in school, but no names. You: grey hat, very blue eyes. Me: blue coat and curly ass hair. When: Saturday, January 18, 2014. Where: Bus 48 between Greenlake and U District. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920210

CUTE ART THERAPIST

Came through my line at TJ’s. You’re going to Antioch for Art Therapy, name is Joy. don’t ask out customers, but now I have regret. Come back and see me, let’s do something. When: Saturday, January 18, 2014. Where: Trader Joe’s. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920209

HIGHTOP VANS, BANGS, SHERWOOD APARTMENTS

was standing out of my van trying to get it to start with some buds when you walked by. Saw you again when was driving across pine at the end of the night. You’re a babe. Just sayin. When: Saturday, January 18, 2014. Where: Melrose. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920208

SURFER BLOOD, RED HAIR

Your hair is amazing and smelled like cherries. A guy named Eric hit on your friend. Thought I overheard you mention a boyfriend but don’t fucking care because holy shit. He’s probably not adequately worshiping you. When: Friday, January 17, 2014. Where: Sunset Tavern. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920207

I’M SORRY!

To the two people I almost hit with my car when was pulling up on to the curb on Terry Ave., Friday, 1/17: Your reminder to be careful will stay with me, promise. Please accept my humble apology. When: Friday, January 17, 2014. Where: 1400 block of Terry Ave.. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920206

BIRTHDAY GIRL @ SALON

MOXI

Pink haired Sienna Miller lookalike stylist @ East Capital Hill. Your green eyes have me hypnotized, your sunshine smile still has me seeing spots! Your devil chocolate Bawk Mow cake with me as your frosting. Happy Birthday, Sweet Sexy Lady! When: Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Where: Salon Moxi 1319 East Pine. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920205

TALL GREASER, UNIVERSITY STREET STATION

You: Tall, dark hair, leather jacket and boots. Me: Tall, brunette, green coat, black tights, grey boots. We kept making eye contact, both waiting for the Southbound train - I looked away cause I’m shy. Next time ride together?

When: Wednesday, January 15, 2014. Where: University Street Station, South Bound side. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920204

LAST NIGHT ON THE 43

We made eye contact getting on the bus and then getting off again. There was something about you and couldn’t look away. Great smile. want to see it again. When: Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Where: Capitol Hill. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920203

SHOPPING, STEALING GLANCES, MADISON MARKET

We made eye contact while shopping. A few times. When I was looking at soups. When you were looking at wines. When we were checking out. And finally as I was leaving. Want to do it again sometime? When: Monday, January 13, 2014. Where: Capitol Hill. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920202

VICTROLA ON PIKE

You were near the east wall, I was at the communal center table. You were wearing dark green pants, mine were electric blue. We exchanged endless stolen glances, but I was too shy to introduce myself. Coffee together sometime? When: Wednesday, January 15, 2014. Where: Victrola on Pike (Capitol Hill). You: Man. Me: Woman. #920201

NICE CATCH AT VICTROLA

You: Super cute woman with long blonde hair, sitting at my table reading and eating a piece of cake. You dropped your fork and caught it. I smiled and said ‘Nice catch’. Wish would have said more. Second chance? When: Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Where: Victrola on 15th. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920200

THAT’S A LOT OF CANVASES

Met in line at Cap Hill Blick. You were buying a heap of small canvases and paint to take on a road trip. Wish the line had been a bit longer. Me: short blond hair with bangs, blue eyes. When: Sunday, January 12, 2014. Where: Capitol Hill blick. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920199

PUNK ROCK PRINCE

Punk rock prince seen at the X and Blasters show at El Corazon. You: earring and black coat. Me: red & white polka dot shirt at merch table. Probably the youngest people there that

HAND TATTOOS SEATTLE

Donuts and Coffee?

Saw you at Top Pot. You have cute facial hair thats brown/red, you were wearing a grey beanie and a dark zip up hoodie. You were working and I was short on money. You paid for my coffee and donut.

When: Saturday, January 18, 2014. Where: Top Pot Donut on 5th. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920212

YOUR FIRST RESTRAINING

ORDER...

I was your first one and you hit me in the ear just after took a shot of whiskey. But I’m glad I was your first. You were nervous/adorable. Maybe coffee sometime? When: Sunday, January 12, 2014. Where: Roxy’s Diner. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920198

THE EXCHANGE

You came into Northgate Gap, to exchange a Green Henley. You had beautiful eyes, light brown curly hair, and a plaid blue shirt on. was the attractive female that did your exchange. Stop by and see me again. When: Friday, January 3, 2014. Where: Northgate. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920197

BEARD GUY OUTSIDE

ESSENTIAL BAKERY

You were parking your car while I was getting in mine. You: beard/vest driving a car with a ski rack on top. Me: brown hair, getting in my wagon. We exchanged smiles. Wanna ski or do coffee sometime? When: Thursday, January 9, 2014. Where: Essential Bakery. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920196

WOMEN SEEKING MEN

GETS DRUNK ON PATIOS

I am a girl on Eastlake who is ready for a real relationship with a man who is happy with himself, faults and all. The partnership I seek is full of laughter, kindness, and mutual respect. Jet_City_Red, 40

REMIND ME OF THE BABE

If you have a greater-than-average enthusiasm for animals, science, healthy living, dancing, music, philosophizing, writing, laughing and a generally impressive curiosity for life and capacity for fun, you may find a worthy co-conspirator in me. mountaingoat8, 30

SEEKING A PARTNER FOR LIVE

Im cool laid back Woman who is searching for the right one,Most of my friends would say I have a easy-going personality,On a date,I tend to like quiet surroundings.Im not very experienced in relationships.I have had about 2 longterm relationships. singlenanny101, 32

I AM NOT A HIPSTER

Mostly harmless gal with opposable thumbs and a fully equipped kitchen seeks fun, active smarty-pants for insufferably cute hijinks. Or a date to the symphony. TheBugg, 32

RUGGED, SWEET OUTDOOR CAT. MEOW

Looking for someone sincere in hopes that it could potentially blossom in to a relationship. Me: - Sporty - Funny and love to laugh You: - Charismatic - Fit in with my friends and lifestyle - Not a douche. Geekalicious, 30

UNIQUELY DANCING TO LIFE

Native American woman who is intelligent, humorous, & enjoying life. I adore my culture, family & friends w/natural beauty of life surrounding us. I’m fit/ curvy, great attributes - love music, sports, technology & culture. Lifedancing 42

BUBBLY, SPONTANEOUS AND ENERGETIC, BLONDIE!

Looking for companion or one-night stand! Companion: Someone smart, tall, sensual, brave, comes over to keep me company, to eat, sleep, have sex, talk to, walk, and have little adventures throughout the great nw with occasionally, I’m your gal ;). MissLilyPad, 20

I LOVE TUBE DISASTERS

I’m moving to Seattle from the wastes of paradise in December...and am hoping someone can show me around. I like records, traveling, books, making things, shows, being outside and learning new things. criminalflowers, 25

SWEETIE

I am super sweet, compassionate, and funny. Looking to meet someone honest and not a hot mess. I am pretty serious when it comes to dating, don’t like wasting my time or anyone else’s. GAPeach, 31

I’M CALLING YOU

love life and the natural world. i love to travel, private time, learning about new people and things. at times can be serious, and at others silly. intellectual conversations. politically progressive.not into machismo narcissitic rather, keen on the fire inside. ntrlfem, 49

PROFILE OF THE WEEK

uhm

25 year old Woman Seeks a Man or Woman for Dating

Looking for Casual Dating

Sardonic, bellicose, boorish, academic, realist I want to meet some people who are smart, want to play, like doing lots of different stuff, and are just, in general, *down.*

us know if you would

MEN SEEKING WOMEN

ROCKING ROLLING MAKING GREAT FILMS

Im looking to find good company to have fun with . i am not seeking a life long partner but if she falls in front of me i will catch her . bosco12, 34

COOK SEEKING COMPANION ON HOTLINE

Constantly seeking happiness for others, I receive little. I’d love to find someone to remind me to take time and have some fun. Wanna help me enjoy life? At the least, you’ll get a delicious dinner out of it. OutOfTime, 20

FORMER PSYCHOTHERAPIST SEEKS CO-DEPENDENT ADVENTURER

I am smart, genuine, open, funny, giving, quirky, and successful. I enjoy adventure, learning, and achievement. I like the pure joy that two people can create together. Looking for smart, spunky, independent, fun, sexy, accomplished, adventurer. 94Goldwing, 52

KOOKIE MUSICIAN CHEF SEEKS

LADY:0)

Sweet man w/a Kookie outlook on life. Love music, exploring Seattle, making food, great restaurants, the outdoors.. Love good conversation... ..&joking:0) Do you like laughing, being a smart ass? Enjoy hanging out, &all the great things in life?:) Same here. guitarboy13, 36

LAID BACK, WRITER, LISTENER, READER

Going to shows by myself is ok, but I would like someone cool to talk to during the intermission. Constructing fantasy lives of everyone around me is easier with someone else. My journal is an acceptable substitute, but it’s mute. Radiohead373, 24

GRANOLA DOCTOR SEEKS SMARTYPANTS SWEETIEPIE

I’m a youthful and mature ND and biology professor seeking you: A smart, sexy & warm companion for a long-term frolic including: bike-rides, pub crawls, beer brewing, frisbee, dancing, and sumptuous nights in with home made dinners &long, hot nights. Brew_Doctor, 42

HOLA

Just move to Seattle a month ago and looking to meet new people and make new friends. I am a goofball and enjoy humor and silly adventures. I guess I am pretty much game for. Just ask. Irish_guy, 28

CARPENTER. ARTIST. WOLF.

Last girl I met asked, “Are you a leo? A capricorn?” I said, “No, I’m a wolf.” When pressed, I said I typically swim upstream, but love the rush of letting go. Gimme danger. Nautilist, 32

COCKTAILS AND KINK

Nice single guy with kinky side seeking like-minded woman. I Like swing dancing and classic cocktails. Experienced with rope bondage, flogging, devices. I’m GGG, tell me your deep dark kinky thoughts. I’m Generation-X. You be Millennial, Gen-X, or Boomer. racktheniteaway, 39

WOMEN SEEKING WOMEN

COWGIRL MUSICIAN SEEKS SEXY NERD

I want your horse. And maybe you? I am easily delighted, brainy, tactile, uncategorizable, untamed, kind, potty trained, and perfectly content to spend Friday night reading till my eyes cross. You are FUNNY, nice, sexy, not psychotic, expressive, and literate. samhillrecords, 43 JUST CHECKING THINGS OUT ... In search of soulful human, good seed, cares abt othrs; environmt,animals.Deep soul,

WOMEN SEEKING MEN

READY TO BE SUBMISSIVE

I am an attractive, sexy, educated woman seeking a Dom male. I am in control of my life and need to learn to let go of that power. I am looking for an intelligent, attractive Dom. readytoplease, 43

SEXLOVER

Looking for a sex-positive Black man who enjoys pleasuring a woman and exploring options for moving to greater heights. You love jazz clubs and dance as foreplay. Let’s explore our bodies to see if they are in sinc. lovepassionatesex, 50

STARTING FROM A DISTANCE

Finding out what I want and desire in a Dom and what my options are as a Sub. Seeking long-distance correspondence to start.....experienced older Dom’s only, please. Karlay45, 45

A PASSIONATE LOVER

Searching for a married man who desires great intimacy. A man committed to his family. Who needs passion, touch and sweet, long kisses. ALovelyLady, 40

I’VE MURDERED OUR LOVE.

21. I have lots of imagination and desires

I’m looking to be filled. Nothing seri-

ous. Fleeting from moment to moment, I don’t want to be tied down with feelings. Just wanting to try new things with new people. thatprettymothafxcka29, 21

SEXY EBONY BOMBSHELL

Hi Gents, I’m new to the Seattle area and I’m looking to meet new friends. I have a super bubbly personality and I’m always down for a good time.Message me if you want to know more. Smooches! kiyeraamour, 26

PINUP NEEDS HEAVILY TATTOOED MALE heavily tattooed female pinup seeking heavily tattooed male with strong hands me: Hwp hands, neck and face tattooed.. nice round bottom thick thighs and wet lips. You: must be heavily tattooed.. hands&face a plus Looking for regular or semi regular thing. Mona1122, 31

HIGHLY FUNCTIONAL NERDESS

Time to get back into it. I am looking to start having fun again, seeking to fulfill my kinky cravings and desires, with the blessing of my significant other. Not looking for any serious relationships though.

ALeafOnTheWind, 24

HORNEY, LONELY, AND BUSY MILF

Hi guys, I’m really searching for someone that thinks they can handle me.

N.S.A must be D.D.F I am so horney I can’t stand it any longer. I want to be dominated by a real man with a nice tool. Sweetnectar, 32

I AM “KENTUCKYSINCE1993” -

LOVELAB

Dreaming of live-in STRAIGHT male couple companionship with woman befriended enough to share a “no free-loading”; “no lazy slobs” environment where a virgin female enjoys attention, touch, (hugs; kisses; tickling; laughter) and healthy lifestyle - including orgasmic foreplay & cuddling. WetTicklishDreams, 47

A PLEASANT SURPRISE

This past year has taught me that no matter what wholesome act I try to put on I will always be a kinky girl. I’m ready to experience some much needed spice in life. Skndreams, 23

MEN SEEKING WOMEN

NSA, FWB, CASUAL ENCOUNTER

35 YO educated professional. Enjoys art and music. Reserved in public, dominant in the bedroom. A perfect gentleman in public, but an animal behind closed doors. 334578206, 35

FIT, SMART, DADDY, DIRTY MIND

I have a body to match my dirty mind, and insatiable demand for your you pussy. You’d never know by talking to me at the office, or PTA meeting. But I’m a naughty boy. mozzersea, 36

YOUNG AND READY TO GO

Im a 22 your old sailor. Dont get a alot of opportunity to get off the boat and meet people. Thought I would give this a try message me if you want to meet up. Rfoley, 22

EROGENOUS MIND

Hello, I’m looking for someone to exchange emails with. Who knows if we’ll ever meet? Fantasies, experiences, dreams and stories are what I want, and what I’ll give.

Happyhealthy_mostly_sane, 31

LOOKING FOR LIKE MINDED FRIENDS

Hi, I’m looking for playmates/FWB. Open to LTR if the right person comes along.

I’m HSV with no symptoms or outbreaks. Into most kink. Not bi butt do enjoy occasional strap on play with the right lady. Catalina30, 48

TOYS FOR TWO

I’m looking for the girl that likes it all.

Giving and receiving , maybe at the same time. Toys , role play, multi tasking excites me. I am fit so expect to take a little time. Amp22, 40

RESPECTFUL DOMINANT SEEKING RESPECTABLE SUBMISSIVES

Experienced Dominant seeking respectable submissives. I am DWM, 41, HWP, 165lbs, greenish eyes, auburn hair, soft spoken and intense. Specialized in anal training/tantric sex. Not interested in humiliation/degradation or verbal/ emotional abuse. I get off to get off horny submissive women. KingoftheDogs, 40

FUCKING PUNKS

Looking for someone to hang out and have a good fuck with on the weekends. I naturally take charge, slap your ass and pull your hair during sex but love to be fucked speachless too. Also, my cock is pierced. itschase, 28

WOMEN SEEKING WOMEN

LOOKING FOR A STERN WOMAN

I am a 33 year old blonde desperate to find a local woman to spank me on occasion. All I ask is that you have a real passion for it. misslady2424, 33

SUBBY REDHEAD LOOKING FOR...

RACK, romanticism and fun describes my relationships. Not looking for play, Vanilla with a healthy dash of D/s. Looking to take things slow (almost ‘old fashioned’) feel free to contact me! Lunakitty, 40

ARE YOU MY LITTLE SECRET

I am 31 & fun,outgoing and can carry some great conversations.I yearn to feel a womans touch again and to please her. I would love to have you as a secret FWB, you won’t regret it. ;0). reeree8282, 31

MEN SEEKING MEN

FUN, BI-BTM, HOTTIE

Clean, tan, smooth, DDF, out for N.S.A., M2M, Sex, cum 2U get naked and give you a little something something to talk about in the morning. MidnightRiser, 45

POLYAMORY AND SCRUFF

Looking for friends and fun and whatever comes my way. Happily partnered, but always down to share a load between friends. Really into people in alternative fashion and/or lifestyles. I like the top and bottom bunk. WOOF! Xnoxx, 23

PERVERTED SUBMISSIVE SEEKING

DIRTY TRAINING

You: fit, older, DDF, HWP, dominant, perverted, and of course hung Me: 40 BWM dominant with ladies but desperate to worship cock I wish to be restrained, sodomized, and gagged, restrained sodomized, and gagged the game is called Ass-to-mouth, Sir! ellisonwonderland, 41

COUPLES

LOOKING FOR A BBW BEAUTY

We are a married and secured white couple looking to have a woman join us for pure pleasure. I’m a bigger girl but very clean ddf shaved and love a woman’s touch and love to give just as much. blueridergirl1, 39

HOT COUPLE 4 THREESOMES GIRLS

I am a sexy 43 year bisexual with both dominant and submissive nature. I love threesomes. am seeking a female play/ friend who would join us (my man and I) sexadventures for all. One on one with women is great too. Janet1127, 43

DIRTY WILD THING

My master has requested for another female to join us, we are a BDSM couple. Looking for another sub, do not contact us if you are a: Couple, strict lesbian, or not open to rough play. Ages 18-30 only please. Masterspet, 18 TWO, TENTATIVE, CURIOUS Two professional gentlemen considering opening up to third or bi couple. Unsure2, 35

MARRIED COUPLE SEEKING COUPLES We are a securely married couple looking for other couples for full swap. Husband loves to watch and participate. Wife loves sucking cock and is hoping to have 2 cocks at once. sobmel, 32

1/2 OFF 1ST

SHORELINE $575 + $75, UTILITIES $675 + $75 UTLITIES. DEPOSITS & FEES REQUIRED. 6+ HOUSEMATES. NO PETS, DRUGS, DRAMA OR LOUD PEOPLE. CLOSE TO BUS ROUTES, I-5, SHOPPING CENTERS. OPEN MINDED HOUSE. 206-849-4707

ALL AREAS - ROOMMATES.COM. Browse hundreds of online listings with photos and maps. Find your roommate with a click of the mouse! Visit: http:// www.Roommates.com. (AAN CAN)

I AM LOOKING for a female roommate. I am a female Junior at SPU with room available for $745 a month before utilities. Large room and parking spot. Washer/Dryer in Unit. Contact: Hailey Thomson - thomsonh@spu.edu LARGE BEDROOM. BEAUTIFUL apartment on Bitter lake. View, outdoor balcony, dock, swimming. Awesome older mom who is a student, and a cool seven year old girl. I am a future nursing student. You are fun, responsible, and considerate. Cat friendly

COUNSELING

NEED SUPPORT AND encouragement to build the life you want? Compassionate, nonjudgmental adult counseling. Depression, anxiety, self esteem, life transitions, trauma, grief, domestic violence, illness. Build strengths and life skills. Sliding fee, free phone consultations. Available weekends. Call 206-734-7998.

MASSAGE

$45HR FOR MEN

1.5-$65/2hrs-$85. 19yrs masseur. Tight, sore problem areas? Feel better with bodywork. No pain? No problem...get an unhurried, general full-body massage. Enjoy yourself, unwind, feel great. WWW.BODYWORKMAN.COM. John 206.324.0682. 10am-8pm. Cash/ incalls only. Last-minute encouraged. LMP#MA8718.

ANCIENT CHINESE MASSAGE!

Experience the power of Tui Na, an ancient method of massage that has been passed down through 4 generations. Call to schedule your life changing massage, today! 206-533-9420

AWARD WINNING VIRTUAL

OTHER

COMMITTED, LOVING LESBIANS seeking sperm donor- gay preferred but exceptionally compassionate straight men considered. No financial obligation including legal protections but “unclelike” role open for discussion. Help us start our family and bring new life into the world.

PREGNANT? THINKING OF ADOPTION? 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)

AUDIO/VIDEO

MUSICIANS AVAILABLE

FEMALE PUNK SINGER wanted for electronic/punk/noise duo. Influences: Crystal Castles, Sleigh Bells, Nirvana. Looking for an Alice Glass style singer with high energy who can scream on key, crowd surf, start a riot, etc. 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 musician to Sublet my practice space. Discounted rate of $200/mo for both Feb and March. Ideal for Drummers. Contact: a.b.huckabay@gmail.com

SINGER/KEYBOARD PLAYER WITH SONGWRITING ABILITY: CONTACT ME AT murphy.thomas8@gmail.com

SINGING SONGWRITER

Reception Click4Time, an Award Winning feature rich Online Appointment Booking solution that is fast, easy and grows your business. All accounts 60 day free trial. http://www.click4time.com/free Use code INTERNET

PA/SOUND SYSTEMS AVAILABLE for corporate functions, conferences, weddings, community events, city fairs, DJ applications, bands, private parties, etc. Rental includes mics, mixer, stands, cables, plus delivery, set-up, running, and teardown. State-certified sound technician available. 206-5517366 Vivo Rentals www.vivo-usa.com/

$200/gig. Covers and originals. Please call 206-325-5271, Thank You! CD available. Must have a piano.

MUSICIANS WANTED

COMPUTER

-ON-SITE

U OF W big room available now. 5 blocks north on 17th NE. Completely renovated old home. New plumbing, wiring, alarms, granite counters, big kitchen, wide halls, tall ceilings, 24 hour lights, 5 bathrooms. Cable, tv to every room & business class comcast wireless. House computer, tv room w/ comcast on demand, commercial laundry & lots of hot water. We do not rent to smoker or take pets. Avail now is a 13X15’ room on main floor with new Ikea queen bed. 6 ceiling lights & fan. 9’ ceilings & a bay window + built in dresser & shelves. $625 + $80 for all utilities and yard care. Zone 6 parking is available for $80 per yr. Call T.H. Monroe 206-229-8853 10am-7pm

FEMALE LICENSED THERAPEUTIC Massage Since 1988. MA00004012. Nurse, Teacher, Astrologer. Secluded Waterfront Studio Down The Rabbit Hole In North Edmonds. Lomilomi, Deep Tissue, Swedish, Breema, Barefoot Asian Style, Hot Stones, Bamboo, Hot Cupping, Access Bars, Couples Massage Instruction. 425-319-9588. www.abbycicirelli.com Non-Sexual

LAURIE’S MASSAGE (206)919-2180

LIKE A JAPANESE Hot Springs - At The Gated Sanctuary you can soak naked outside among soaring cedar trees in jetted hot pools, dip in a cold plunge, and relax with therapeutic massage. Unwind in our eucalyptus steam room. (425)334-6277 www.TheGatedSanctuary.com

MISC.

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

BASSIST/FRONTPERSON SOUGHT. NEED male or female bass player & frontperson for original blues-based/rockabilly project. Rehearse twice weekly in Auburn, must have all the usuals. Call Bill at 360.292.3568 or 253.229.4946, or Glen at 206.954.0255. Embrace the volume.

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!

RECORDING/REHEARSAL

Visit wildersoundstudios.com. Located in SODO Seattle. Contact Samantha 425-445-9165. s.wilder@wildersoundstudios.com

SUBLETTING PRACTICE SPACE for both February and March at discounted rate: $200/mo. Situation ideal for drummer or low maintenance project. Location: Studio7. Contact: a.b.huckabay@gmail.com

SAVAGE LOVE

Great Pains BY DAN SAVAGE

I’m a straight 24-year-old female, and I just recently lost my virginity. I’ve had sex only three times (not with a monogamous partner) and have found each time to be incredibly painful—even when the guy’s just using his fingers. I’ve always been extremely sensitive. In the past, I’ve had guys run their hands over my jeans, and even that hurts. I brought this up when I went to my first ob-gyn appointment, and my doctor assured me that everything was normal down there. It’s driving me nuts because I feel like I’m missing out on a big part of my life. I know a lot of this may be psychological, but I wanted to know if I am just supposed to continue having sex to the point where it becomes pleasurable?

Tight Twat

“Although vaginal intercourse hurts some women the first time or two that they have sex, it’s usually not ‘incredibly painful,’” says Dr. Debby Herbenick, a research scientist at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, and the author of numerous books. “And women rarely experience pain when it’s just fingers (unless the person is being really rough or has sharp fingernails), and especially not when someone is just running hands over jeans.”

issue? Is there a fix?

Can’t Really Eat All My Pecker’s Icky Emissions

So your regular third with the big cock is nice, open-minded, and STI-free. Sounds great, CREAMPIE, but how can you be certain about the STI-free part when you see him only three times a year? Unless he’s abstinent the rest of the year, or unless you test before each of your threesomes, there’s some risk here.

So something is up down there, TT, and you did the right thing by seeing a doc. “It’s fantastic that she went to an ob-gyn so soon after starting to have sex,” says Herbenick. “Many women are too shy or nervous, even though it’s recommended for all sexually active women. Unfortunately, many doctors have had little to no training in diagnosing or treating vulvar pain, something that groups like the National Vulvodynia Association (nva.org) have been working to change.”

So it’s great that you went to a doctor, but you’re going to have to see another doctor, TT. Herbenick recommends that you find someone who “lives and breathes the vulva and vagina in their medical practice” via the NVA or the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease (issvd.org). “I don’t know where she lives, but there are excellent vulvovaginal health clinics at the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan,” says Herbenick. “The US is really far behind other countries in the establishment of such clinics, but we’re getting there. I dream of the day when every major US city has one—and smaller places, too!”

For more info on vulvar and vaginal pain—and other sexual health and pleasure issues—get Herbenick’s latest book, Sex Made Easy: Your Awkward Questions Answered— For Better, Smarter, Amazing Sex. And you can follow her on Twitter @DebbyHerbenick.

Five years ago, my wife and I decided to pursue her MFM threesome fantasy. Part of her fantasy was that the other chap have a BBC (big black cock), so we advertised and met this great guy who we’ve seen three times a year ever since. He is nice and open-minded, and we’ve become so comfortable with our BBC that we meet at our home now instead of a hotel. So there are respectful and safe people out there to be found! The issue I’m writing about is a problem with me. After our BBC ejaculates in my wife—everyone is tested and free of STIs—I enjoy going down on her, he enjoys watching me go down on her, and she enjoys having me lick the interloper’s come from her pussy. That isn’t the problem. The problem arises when our BBC isn’t in the picture. We enjoy talking about our dirty threesomes, and we both talk about how hot it will be when I go down on her after I’ve unloaded in her myself. Unfortunately, once I’ve made my deposit, I have zero desire to go down on her. It’s like someone flips a switch in my brain and something I couldn’t wait to do is suddenly repulsive to me. This problem doesn’t arise in our threesomes because our BBC always comes before I do. What is my

You also describe your regular third as “respectful,” and that’s great. We all deserve respectful sex partners. You do, CREAMPIE, your wife does— and so does your regular third But referring to your regular third as BBC, or “big black cock,” isn’t respectful. It’s dehumanizing. Now, his big black cock brought you all together, of course, and it’s fine to be attracted to others for particular physical attributes. It’s also fine to explore racially charged fantasies so long as everyone is up for it and no one feels disrespected or dehumanized. But since this big black cock is attached to a fun and trustworthy guy who you enjoy spending time with (and cleaning up after), maybe you could refer to him as your ABC (“awesome black chum”) instead of as your BBC? Just, you know, to show some respect for him as a person. Which is what he is.

Anyway, CREAMPIE, as for your problem: A man’s body releases the hormone prolactin when he comes. That particular hormone makes a man sleepy, it makes his boner deflate, and it temporarily renders him indifferent to and/or repulsed by sex. So something that sounded hot right before you came—eating your own come out of the wife’s pussy—is going to be much less appealing right after you come. It’s a snatch-22, CREAMPIE, and there’s no fix.

I’m 45, female, and married to a smart, funny, intelligent 50-year-old man. We’ve been together nine years, married seven. The sex was good for the first year and then dropped off to nothing. He says, “I’ve had plenty of sex in my life. I’m just not interested anymore.” During my first marriage, the sex was so bad that I thought, “If I could find a man who loved to cuddle, I could go the rest of my life without sex.” Perfectly describes husband number two! Except now I feel more sexual than I ever have! I’ve discussed this with my husband endlessly and have mentioned open marriage, but nothing ever comes of it. I’m not an instigator, although I have tried a few times and have been rejected. Yes, he has had his testosterone checked. It’s normal. Not even going to a therapist helped. What do I do? He’s a great guy, he loves me and my grown kids unconditionally, but we are more friends/ roommates than husband and wife. We have a safe, comfortable life, but I’m too young to go without that for the rest of my life!

Careful What You Wish For

He’s done with sex, and you’re not—so you get to fuck other people, and he doesn’t get to say anything about it. Take a lover, CWYWF, take two. There are tons of men out there in sexless marriages that they don’t want to end because they love their wives or they love their kids or they can’t be bothered or all of the above. Get your ass online and find one or two. If your husband is against an open marriage in principle—if he insists that you remain “monogamous” to him—tell him what he wants to hear and fuck other men regardless.

There’s an upside to herpes, courtesy of science! At savagelovecast.com.

mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter

2005 VW Jetta 43k miles

Great condition, alloy wheels, sunroof, low jack, new tires dark grey in color

Email: Shannonosten@gmail.com

ADOPTION

Devoted, nurturing, loving gay couple in Seattle, 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

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

Get Strong and Live Long, Quantum Martial Arts!

964 Denny Way, Seattle. (206) 322-4799 Quantumseattle.org

Great NW Soup Co.

Catering, Party platters, Box lunches, Salad bars, Custom packages avaiable. Call 206-383-7468- Www.GreatNWSoupCompany.com

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.

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!

Relay For Life of Capitol Hill needs you to help fight cancer! Learn more Thursday Jan. 23rd, 6:00PM at the Capitol Hill Library!

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

TEASE Pin-Up

Be a pin-up! Featuring costumes, hair + makeup, and retouching. Women-owned and operated. www.teasepinup.com

She is the daughter of a dancer and a former professional motocross racer who met in Jarabacoa, in the Dominican Republic. She was born in Manhattan but spent the first few years of her life in the Dominican. Coming back to the States at the age of four, Romy liked to pretend that she didn’t speak English to avoid doing the things she was asked, though she spoke the language just fine. As a child she dreamed of becoming a dancer like her mother though now she sees herself one day owning a boutique with her own clothing line. She’s picking up some experience for these future endeavors as a sales associate at our Garden State Plaza location in New Jersey, as well as studying part time, looking to go into Marketing and Merchandising. In her spare time Romy blogs, DJs, plays soccer and loves white water rafting – though in winters like these she just hides out and sews. Romy is pictured here wearing the Performance Wear Sports Bra and Pencil Pant.

February 14