The Stranger Vol. 23, No. 22

LOVE AND DINNER

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31

January

31 –February 1

Cue: An opening night party filled with alumni talent, headlined by hip-hop artist Katie Kate, and featuring performances by dancer Amy O’Neal and new arts collective The Pendleton House. Also includes DJ, catered food truck and complimentary cocktails. Tickets $25. Ages 21+. 7-10 p.m.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1

Day of Ideas: A day of performances, experiences, workshops and conversations that draw connections between art and wellbeing, featuring a workshop with David Leventhal, Program Director for the nationally acclaimed Dance for PD®, a collaboration between Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group. The day will explore the palliative nature of creativity and artistry across all spectrums of wellbeing from personal to social health. Free and open to the public. 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m.

Volume 23, Issue Number 22

January 29–February 4, 2014

STUDY GUIDE

Questions for The Stranger, Volume 23, Issue 22

1. This week, supposedly in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, Stranger staffers share romantic (and unromantic) autobiographical stories about memorable dinners they shared. So we learn that BRENDAN KILEY got engaged with pearls rather than a diamond ring, that ANSEL HERZ frequents tourist destinations (and then proceeds to trespass at them), that BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT shared crabs with a lover, that DANIELLE HENDERSON has been to England, that EMILY NOKES doesn’t like to eat much of anything, and that ANNA MINARD doesn’t like to leave the house.

a. Now that you know Stranger writers are human beings who attempt to have human relationships, do you have more or less sympathy for their foibles than you did when you perceived them as drug-addicted mouthpieces for unions and revolutionaries?

b. Was this so-called feature package supposed to be at all appetizing? How long will it be before you manage to eat again, with all the images of Stranger staffers attempting to copulate with other human beings burned into your cerebral cortex?

2. MEGAN SELING takes the opportunity of the Super Bowl to continue her long-standing feud with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Surely when you were a teenager, you became obsessed with hatred toward a popular music act. This is understandable—it’s one of our rites of passage, a way to demonstrate your evolving tastes by demarcating what you are not. Why is Seling still apparently stuck at the emotional age of 13? Why does she still try to rationalize her hatred of one of rock history’s most solid bands (and one of our most vivacious live performers) with a string of immature insults?

3. SPIKE FRIEDMAN writes a “sports column” that is just a timeline of jokes about what to do on Super Bowl Sunday. Do you believe The Stranger will continue this tedious fair-weather appreciation of sports next week just to keep up the charade, or will sports suddenly cease to exist for The Stranger as soon as the Super Bowl is over, no matter what the outcome is?

4. CHARLES MUDEDE, who has written extensively about pigeon feet, appreciates a European “thriller” about storks in the film section. The review includes the following sentence: “After the fucking, the birds leave to Africa.” Has there ever been a more Mudedean sentence than this one? If so, please share the sentence that you believe better distills Mudede’s childlike appreciation of animals, his obsession with genitalia, and his boring tendency to bring everything back to his birth continent of Africa. Don’t forget to cite the issue number and headline of the sentence according to MLA style!

BAGLEY aaronbagley.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 20 This week of busted shitheads, deadly sibling rivalry, and near-daily shootings kicks off with Martin Luther King Jr. Day , the national holiday commemorating the life and legacy of the titular human rights hero. To celebrate, Solomon Georgio —the LA-based comedian who previously spent a good stretch of years in Seattle, during which he was a perennial star of the Stranger Gong Show—spent the day engaged in some MLK-inspired social media activism. “For MLK day, I will now search for maliciously racist tweets & tell the author that I love them,” announced Georgio on Twitter before doing exactly that. A tiny, representative sampling of what transpired (asterisks are ours; original tweets are littered with full-stink N-bombs):

@marilyn_misery: “In honor of MLK day I’m not gonna shower so I stink like a n****r.”

@solomongeorgio: “.@marilyn_misery I assure you that I shower every day and smell quite pleasant. Regardless of that misconception, I love you.”

SOLOMON GEORGIO LOVES YOU

DEAR

SMUG BUS RIDER

Yes, that woman sitting in the front of the bus was reciting radio reports about the nation and claimed to be from the Psychic Radio Station in Tacoma. However, you loudly insulting her to other passengers was crass. She’s disturbed, not deaf. And she was just talking to herself, not harming anyone. She understood everything you said. Mental-health issues are not clear indicators of intelligence levels. I looked back to find out where the hatred was coming from, and you mistook my grimace for a grin and smiled at me. You were mistaken, I was not agreeing with your boisterous comments. And then you tried to chat up the bus driver about the “crazy,” talking about how you can’t handle it and how “it must be a rough night with crazy people like that woman riding the bus.” She was sitting only three feet from you. You need to check your smugness. This is PUBLIC transportation, so you are going to have to deal with the public. How else do you propose she gets around? It’s probably not wise to have a person who believes she is the conduit for psychic radio driving a car. Your mental health is a privilege that she does not have. Don’t insult her. She did no one any harm except making them feel uncomfortable. When you are taking public transportation, your privilege does NOT apply. Do like the rest of us and put in some earbuds with good music instead of being an uncaring jerk. Your insults were more upsetting than her proclamations.

@KennethPinyan2: “how the #fuck do #N****rs get a special day.”

@solomongeorgio: “.@KennethPinyan2 I like to think that MLK day is a day for everyone, I’m sorry you feel otherwise. I still love you.”

As Lindy West noted at Jezebel, “The responses ranged from bewildered (‘I love you to’) to incredulous (‘What the fuck’) to idiotic (‘to me, that word has no skin color attached to it’) to the sort-of-repentant (‘loool im sorry man just a joke. I love you too’)… It’s not that these pieces of shit deserve civility… But it’s really refreshing to see how effective the high road can be once in a while.” Thank you, Solomon Georgio, with supplementary thanks to the commenters on West’s Jezebel piece, who supplied this rich mini-dialogue in response to Georgio’s love quest:

“Seems like a strange approach i wonder if it would work on large scale.”

“Seemed to work for Jesus.”

“Pretty sure he ended up crucified actually.”

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21 As regular readers are aware, Last Days often reports stories in which people kill other people with guns. As today’s item makes clear, sometimes people also kill other people with knives Our setting: Mundelein, Illinois, a small town outside Chicago where this morning police received a 911 call from a 14-year-old girl , who told emergency dispatchers that an intruder had broken into her home, attacked her younger sister, then fled. “Police found the 11-year-old girl unconscious and in need of medical attention in an upstairs bedroom of the dwelling,” reports CNN. “She later died.” With an alleged attacker on the loose, area schools were immediately placed on lockdown, but soon the story became simultaneously simpler and much more complicated.

“The teen’s story unraveled quickly,” reports CNN. “Under police questioning, she admitted to the attack,” which reportedly involved the 14-year-old stabbing her 11-year-old half sister repeatedly with a kitchen knife. “The teen told police she was mad that her sister didn’t appreciate all she did for her,” reports CNN.

“She was also angry that the 11-year-old girl had recently hit her.” In closing, three more sentences from CNN: “Neighbors said the siblings seemed close. The girls were often seen playing together and practicing cheerleading routines.” “The 14-year-old was arrested and was charged with murder.”

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22 In better news, the week continues in Washington, DC, where today the White House Council on Women and Girls and the Office of the Vice President announced a new initiative aimed at ending rape on college campuses. “The president says his administration is focused on ending sexual violence and will hold those schools who receive federal funding accountable for shamefully inadequate reporting procedures on campus,” reports Feministing. “Vice President Biden’s words were particularly moving

SEND US YOUR VALENTINES And

We’ll

Publish Them— Free!

Love is a many-splendored battlefield that means never having to say you’re sorry. In honor of Valentine’s Day, the official holiday of love, The Stranger continues our annual tradition of letting readers gush all over their beloveds in the pages of The Stranger—for free!

How it works: Simply submit your 40-words-or-fewer valentine to thestranger.com/valentines. Do it now! The first 2,000 valentines we receive will appear in the February 12 print edition. All the others—each and every valentine submitted by Friday, February 7, at 5 p.m.—will appear at thestranger.com!

The fine print: No assholes, no stalkers, no last names, no phone numbers, and only one per customer—unless, of course, you’re poly and have video to prove it.

because he framed the conversation around what we all can do, including men, to combat gender-based violence, and directly addressed victim blaming. Essentially, the Vice President is echoing the message of ‘teaching men not to rape’ that feminists have been saying since forever.” (Today’s initiative follows the 16 initiatives introduced last year to combat sexual assault in the military. Full speed ahead, please.)

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23 Nothing happened today, unless you count the arrest of kid-pop menace Justin Bieber (picked up for allegedly drag racing under the influence) or the indictments-by-federal-grand-juries of alleged revenge-porn shitbag Hunter Moore (accused of illegally hacking into computers to poach nude photos) and conservative commentator and career race-baiter Dinesh D’Souza (accused of arranging excessive campaign contributions to a US Senate candidate).

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24 The week continues with a beguiling story from the intersection of poverty and privacy in Bonita Springs, Florida, where yesterday a police deputy was dispatched to a McDonald’s after someone complained about an old man sitting in his car in the parking lot, allegedly watching pornography and pleasuring himself. “Lee County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Spencer Toner, 79, for allegedly masturbating in the parking lot of McDonald’s,” reports WINK News. “Toner reportedly told the deputy he was homeless and was living out of his car… [and] his privacy was being invaded.” Will the ACLU rush to Toner’s defense? For

now, all we know is that he was arrested for indecent exposure in public, and his car was towed from the McDonald’s parking lot.

YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

SATURDAY, JANUARY 25 As the week draws near to its close, we pause to round up all the week’s instances of ridiculous gun violence. On Monday, a student was hospitalized after being shot on campus at Pennsylvania’s Widener University. On Tuesday, a student died after being shot on campus at Purdue University. On Friday, a student was fatally shot on the campus of South Carolina State University. And oh, yeah: “Last week, there were at least three other school shootings, resulting in the hospitalization of five students between the ages of 12 and 18,” Adam Peck at Think Progress reminds us.

“In the first 14 school days of the year, there have been at least 7 school shootings… there were 28 school shootings in all of 2013.” Which brings us to today, when a gunman opened fire at a shopping mall near Baltimore, killing two people and wounding another person before killing himself. U!S!A! U!S!A!

SUNDAY, JANUARY 26 Nothing happened today, unless you count the Grammy Awards, where old, hairy white ghosts haunted the stage, French robots won big, and “Same Love” finally calcified into something gross.

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

We love you at THESTRANGER.COM

Burning Questions About New

Year’s Eve Fire at

Neighbours

While the SPD Tries to Find an Arsonist, the Community Wants Answers About the Investigation

BY DOMINIC HOLDEN

On New Year’s Eve, just after midnight, Neighbours nightclub was crowded and boisterous when, police say, someone poured gasoline down a flight of stairs and set it

ablaze. The club’s sprinklers helped douse the flames, someone grabbed a fire extinguisher, and the staff evacuated the crowd without injury, a small miracle considering 750 people were packed inside. Police reportedly found a gas can inside, and the unknown arsonist has remained at large ever since. “The community needs to feel safe,” said Shaun Knittel, Neighbours’ media relations person, who is also president of the group Social Outreach Seattle. “It’s not just about Neighbours. If there is someone out there trying to hurt one business, then they might be willing to hurt another.”

January 13: After reviewing the club’s video surveillance footage of the crowd, cops and Neighbours staff isolated a person of interest. Using images from the video, police posted grainy photos of a man who appeared to be carrying a large object (possibly the gas can) on SPD’s blog and asked the public for help identifying him.

January 16: In an unrelated case, Musab Mohamed Masmari, 30, appeared in Seattle municipal court to be sentenced for assaulting a man on the north end of Broadway last July. This wasn’t Masmari’s first experience with law enforcement, court records show. Masmari faced several criminal charges in 2013, including another assault, property destruction, violation of an anti-harassment order, and obstructing a police officer. Still, on this particular Thursday, the court let Masmari leave on $5,000 bail, allowing him to join a work-release program and return for a 30-day jail term in February. Capitol Hill Seattle blog would report in the next

week that Masmari’s work-release job was at a gas station. According to a Facebook page for Masmari, he is from Benghazi, Libya.

January 18: Staff members at Neighbours had grown frustrated that police refused to release the club’s surveillance video—a potentially critical tool for identifying the person of interest. According to Knittel, police pressured them to suppress the video themselves.

“The photos were out, but they were blurry, and people couldn’t ID the person, because the photos were so bad,” Knittel said. “The next logical thing is to release the video footage.” Knittel said SPD Arson/Bomb Squad sergeant Jim Hansen wanted to protect the

Several people who called SPD with tips never got calls back.

privacy of people in the club, an argument that “didn’t make sense” to Knittel. “When someone tries to burn down a club with 750 people inside it, the investigation trumps privacy. It’s not like you are in a private club.” Knittel made the decision to leak the video, which aired on TV news.

January 18–23: Business owners and residents on Capitol Hill saw the video and photos and believed the man to be Masmari, a regular at nearby businesses. Several people who asked to remain anonymous said police did not return phone calls tipping them off that

remain anonymous said police called her back to say they “were quite aware of Musab [Masmari] and said they have received multiple calls about him.” She added: “Police know him well and should have the resources available to determine if it is in fact him in the video.”

January 24: More than three weeks after the fire, Knittel, the Neighbours spokesman, couldn’t understand why police hadn’t apprehended Masmari. “I think the police should bring him in for questioning. This is the one guy they wanted to ID, and three weeks into this [investigation], they have a name. I don’t get the game that they are playing. I don’t understand the delay. What are they biding their time for?”

January 27: After four days of SPD’s media office refusing to answer questions from The Stranger, Detective Mark Jamieson called back. Asked why police discouraged Neighbours from releasing the video, Jamieson said, “What would be the purpose of putting out the video? We didn’t see any reason to do that.” Asked why SPD failed to call back people who said they had tips, he said, “I don’t know.” Asked if the SPD had already identified Masmari as being the man in the video when he appeared in court earlier in the month, he said, “We don’t have a timeline on this.” Finally, Jamieson added, “I think detectives are trying to identify the person detected in the [photos] and the video and would very much like to question that person.”

Masmari may be the man they’re looking for. “I am disturbed that the police have not responded to the people who have made phone calls to SPD,” said the owner of a cafe on Capitol Hill. The cafe banned Masmari after employees said Masmari had stuck his finger into one patron’s food, ate food off yet another customer’s plate, and once unzipped his pants in front of the cafe in what might have been an attempt to expose himself. “We had all the signs of him losing his shit over time,” the cafe owner said. “It just got progressively worse.” While he couldn’t positively identify Masmari, he said, “He looks similar to that guy in the video, and he has sporadic bad behavior.”

January 23: Seattle police confirmed in a voice mail to The Stranger that the person of interest in the arson case—the person they believe appears in the video—is Masmari. But when pressed for more detail, police spokespeople clammed up. Among the unanswered questions: Why did police try to suppress the surveillance video? After asking the public for help, why were police failing to return calls? Are police planning to detain and question Masmari? If so, why was Masmari not questioned when he appeared in court the previous week? All that Sergeant Hansen, who is leading the arson investigation, would say when he was reached by phone was: “We’re not going talk about” the case. “It could impact aspects of our investigation.” He refused to elaborate. The scope of the case is unknown at this point. Silence from SPD raises the possibility that they are not the only agency involved in this investigation. And for what it’s worth, some members of the community who called in to say they believe the man in the video to be Masmari did get calls back. One woman who asked to

Ian Goodhew, the deputy chief of staff at the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said today, “Our primary goal is to work with police agencies to establish enough evidence to file a charge, which is what we’ve been doing in this case.” That will require evidence—evidence from people offering information, some of whom, again, the SPD has been ignoring, while it is also trying to suppress the very video evidence that led to those tips in the first place. There may be a logical explanation for the SPD’s behavior, but whatever they’re doing, it’s not winning over the people who were endangered by this incident or the people trying to help.

As of this date, it remains unclear whether Masmari is a suspect. As far as The Stranger knows, he’s simply a person of interest in the case. Neither The Stranger, the people interviewed for this article, nor the SPD are saying that Masmari committed this crime. Meanwhile, a major question remains: Is a larger investigation under way? Sources who spoke confidentially to The Stranger said that Mona Elassiouti, the daughter of the owner of Neighbours, may be acquainted with Masmari, but The Stranger has not been able to verify this. Elassiouti has not returned calls seeking comment.

January 28: As The Stranger went to press, Mayor Ed Murray sought to assuage concerns about the investigation. “Less than an hour after I officially became Seattle’s first gay mayor, there was an arson at Seattle’s oldest gay nightclub with a potential for considerable loss of life… I am not just invested as the chief law enforcement officer of this city in bringing this case to justice, I am personally invested,” Murray said. “But we also need to let our law enforcement professionals do their job, which they are doing with utmost diligence, caution, and concern for public safety. In the end, we want a conviction, and I’m asking for patience on the part of the public.”

Developers Sue to Make Seattle More Developer-Friendly

They Call a Law Promoting More Affordable Housing “Extortion”

BY ANNA MINARD

Acoalition of several developers filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court on January 15 that would make Seattle, already booming with construction cranes, more friendly for developers. Their issue? One of the city’s affordable-housing programs.

Since 2006, the city has struck a deal with developers in the downtown core: In exchange for setting aside a few modestly affordable units or paying fees toward a city housing fund, developers get to build taller buildings. For example, developers could build a 400-foot tower where they’d otherwise have to keep it under 300 feet. The Seattle City Council raised those fees by about one-third in December 2013. In their lawsuit, which cites three Supreme Court decisions, the developers claim that fee hike is “an out-and-out extortion.”

So they’re asking a judge to invalidate that higher fee, making it cheaper and easier to build the tallest buildings allowed downtown—while throwing even fewer scraps to the city’s growing affordable-housing needs.

“This just shows developers are not willing to do their fair share,” says Rebecca Saldaña of Puget Sound Sage, an affordable-housing advocacy group. She says Seattle’s taxpayers fund a housing levy, and politicians have eased other development requirements. This latest uptick in fees, Saldaña says, is “really just asking developers to come up to speed.”

In many ways, this complaint represents the city’s worst housing fears. For years, there have been whispers that this kind of program may not withstand a legal challenge. Washington State law is stacked heavily in favor of property owners. If the city loses, it could send lawmakers back to the drawing board to figure out how to keep building rentals that working-class people can afford.

A victory by developers could also change the landscape of who can live in Seattle, according to lawmakers at city hall. This program is intended to incentivize what’s called “workforce” housing, for people who make around 80 percent of the area’s median income, or about $49,000 a year. Lose this tool, says city council land-use chair Mike O’Brien, and you could see a dramatic shift. While other programs fund low-income housing and the market continues to produce high-rent units, the workforce in the middle could get squeezed out, “creating a city of really lowincome and wealthy folks,” says O’Brien.

When this goes to court, the judge will be considering a law passed last December. After the city council dramatically raised heights in South Lake Union with new affordable-

“This just shows developers are not willing to do their fair share,” says a housing advocate.

housing regulations, the council extended those rules downtown, too. Now developers can build extra-tall towers if they either toss in a few affordable units or pay into the city’s housing fund so the city can build some later. But in the hopes of making it more appealing to developers to include affordable units in their own buildings, the council raised the fees from $15.15 fee per square foot of the extra floors to $21.68.

This group of unnamed downtown developers, calling themselves the “Koontz Coalition,” says in their lawsuit that the city is charging them an unnecessary fee to

Ignore the Fearmongering

Seattle’s Coming $15-Minimum-Wage Ordinance Will Not Be the Small-Business Killer Some Fear BY

GOLDY

As popular support for a $15 minimum wage continues to grow, Seattle’s small-business community has grown ever more fearful.

In an open letter to Mayor Ed Murray and the task force he’s assembled to study the minimum-wage issue, the Broadway Business Owners Association recently declared that it “unanimously opposes a $15 minimum wage,” asserting that “a 60% increase in employee wages would create an extreme hardship,” forcing the closure of some small family-owned businesses.

It is a fear that restaurateur Dave Meinert—who insists he supports raising the minimum wage—was quick to repeat. Sitting in the bar at Capitol Hill’s Lost Lake Cafe, which he owns, Meinert counted up his fixed costs and thin margins before declaring: “If I had to go to $15 across the board tomorrow, I’d close.”

But it is unlikely to come to that, for a number of reasons.

First, Meinert was equally quick to walk back from his suicide note, emphasizing that he’d try raising prices, cutting hours, and other adjustments before shuttering Lost

exercise their constitutional right to develop their land. They claim that excessive fees for affordable housing are not directly related to housing demands that their projects create.

Developer Greg Smith, whose Second and Pike project is named in the suit, did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The city, meanwhile, has always said this is just an optional program for extra height, which can be avoided by building to the base height—still hundreds of feet in these neighborhoods.

For example, Smith’s Second and Pike project is a proposed 400-foot tower, with 290 residential units above retail and restaurant space. Normally, the height limit there is 290 feet. Under the new fee regulations, in exchange for that extra height, Smith would have to pay a one-time fee of around $2.5 million into the city’s housing fund. The lawsuit says the city should revert to the former requirements, which require paying only $1.8 million. (In an odd twist, Smith will pay the $1.8 million either way, because he applied for a permit under the old rules.)

“My hope is that most people won’t actually pay the fees,” says O’Brien. “They’ll just provide the housing” inside the new construction. In Smith’s building, that would mean setting aside 20 or so moderately affordable units—around $1,300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

Clearly, even that isn’t particularly affordable, and 20 apartments don’t amount to much housing. And the city knows its program isn’t good enough. Which is why housing advocates, developers, and lawmakers have been meeting since last summer to overhaul the program.

But if the developers challenging these rules opposed the higher fees, they certainly didn’t tell the city last year—no one spoke against the rules at the numerous public meetings and hearings, and O’Brien said the one person who contacted him in opposition declined his offer to meet and discuss it.

Now the city is going to court, which O’Brien calls “maddening.”

“Litigation is an ineffective way to make policy,” he says. “Especially in a city that really prides itself on having an open and transparent process.”

Lake’s doors. (Meinert is also an owner of the 5 Point, Big Mario’s, and the Comet.) Even in a $15 minimum wage Seattle, demand for bars, restaurants, and retail wouldn’t disappear, and some enterprising business owners would figure out a way to profitably meet it.

Second, the immediate across-the-board jump to $15 that many small businesses fear is not likely to happen. “We know we’re not going to get everything,” says Seattle City

There may be exemptions for small businesses and nonprofits.

Council member Kshama Sawant about coming negotiations over a minimum-wage ordinance. “But the way you win battles is to bargain hard, win everything you can, and then fight another day.” Some have criticized Sawant’s 15Now.org campaign as divisive and inflexible, but those aren’t the words of somebody who is unwilling to compromise.

So what might Seattle’s minimum-wage

ordinance look like? SEIU Healthcare 775NW president David Rolf, who cochairs the mayor’s task force, expects a “variable rate phase-in” to be considered, in which different industries or businesses of different sizes might hit $15 at different times—for example, fast-food restaurants might see an immediate jump to $15, while restaurants like Lost Lake might phase it in over a number of years. There may also be exemptions for small businesses (SeaTac’s minimum wage exempts businesses with fewer than 10 hourly employees) and for nonprofits. Meinert, who is a member of the task force, argues for Seattle’s minimum wage to consider “total compensation”—a formula based on wages, tips, and benefits.

“It’s super complicated,” says council member Sally Clark, who chairs the council committee considering an ordinance. She expects the council to pass a “nuanced” measure that considers the needs of small businesses.

But one thing that appears to be set in stone is the number. “Fifteen dollars is incredibly popular,” says Rolf. So it’s not as much a question of if we get to $15 but how and which businesses and what time frame. “A conversation about how to get to $15 is incredibly fruitful, resistance to $15 is not,” warns Rolf. But that, echoes Meinert, is a conversation that he is happy to have: “It’s not the number so much as how we get there.”

So don’t expect Lost Lake—or other small businesses—to be shutting their doors when a wage hike passes.

(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

(2/6) Alex Pentland ‘Social Physics:’ Engaging with the Big Data Around Us

(2/8) Saturday Family Concerts Te Fare O Tamatoa

(2/9) Thalia Symphony Orchestra presents Passion, Love, and Tragedy

(2/10) Jennifer Senior The Ups and Downs of Parenthood

(2/10) Geoff Dyer How the U.S. Can Beat China’s Global Agenda

(2/11) ParentMap presents Richard Louv Getting Kids Back to Nature

(2/12) Ignite! Seattle

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The Red Hot Chili Peppers Are Playing the Halftime Show

We Interrupt Our Award-Winning Sports Coverage to Bring You This Important Story

BY MEGAN SELING

As you certainly know by now, the Seattle Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl for the second time in franchise history. This is great news for football fans, snack fans, and

marijuana fans, as well as for Chihuahuas in the Pacific Northwest that have been looking for an excuse to wear 12th Man sweaters. But not all the Super Bowl news that’s come through our newsroom has been super. Throughout the regular season and now the postseason, The Stranger has been the go-to place for in-depth coverage of football, including our groundbreaking stories on how the Seahawks’ secondary has clutched and grabbed its way to the top of the NFL. We published brilliant reporting on John Schneider’s salary cap management and a multipart exposé on Cliff Avril’s strip sacks. We also crunched the numbers to demonstrate how second-year quarterback Russell Wilson has proved far more valuable than his statistics

sing “Ning nang nong nong ning nang nong nong ning nang.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers are the lowest common denominator in rock music, if not the lowest common denominator in fractions themselves. They’re the tribal armband tattoo on the asshole who shoves his way to the front of the crowd at an overpriced music festival. They’re the cold sore that you thought had healed up in time for your wedding day but comes raging back three times worse than before hours before the vows. Worst of all, they don’t seem to know how bad they are—they’re absolutely serious about the music they make. Anthony Kiedis sings, with a straight face, “Give to me sweet sacred bliss/ Your mouth was made to suck my kiss” and “Realize I don’t want to be a miser/Confide wisely, you’ll be the wiser/Young blood is the lovin’ upriser/How come everybody wanna keep it like the kaiser?” What does that even mean, guy? Did you have a stroke?

Of course, Bruno Mars has been booked to play the halftime show for months—a nontraditional choice, considering the Super Bowl usually goes for old white guys and their guitars (Paul McCartney in 2005, the Rolling Stones in 2006, Tom Petty in 2008, Bruce Springsteen in 2009, the Who in 2010). Mars is a non-old, non-white, very charming R&B crooner who sings that “Locked Out of Heaven” song that sounds like the Police. So naturally, the Super Bowl powers that be were all: “What the fuck? I said white guys! With guitars!” And then RHCP were added to the bill. While I’m not very well versed in Bruno Mars, I do know the man can entertain—his confetti-and-giant-disco-ball-filled 2013 tour received all kinds of critical acclaim, and I was looking forward to his performance, especially now that our very own Seahawks would be competing for whatever trophy it is that football players win! But now, all that’s ruined. Hopes of a decent halftime show are shattered. I won’t even be able to enjoy the Super Bowl snacks I’ve been looking forward

What, was Creed busy?

SPORTS COLUMN™

BY SPIKE FRIEDMAN

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY TIMELINE

6 a.m.: Wake up and go check to see what Super Bowl Santa left you under the tree. The answer is nothing: Super Bowl Santa isn’t real. Go back to sleep.

11:20: Wake up. Start the day with a hearty breakfast. Go get a beer from the fridge. Oh shit, there’s no beer! Where’d the beer go? Trip over a pile of empty beer bottles. Remember where the beer went. Make a quick trip to Safeway.

11:40: Arrive at Safeway. Realize this won’t be a quick trip.

11:54: Grab last 18-pack of Rainier. Punch holes in every can of Coors Light in the store to “send a message.” Allow the horrified crowd watching you to determine if the message is an anti-Broncos statement or something broader.

12:43 p.m.: Joke to person next to you in checkout line as you finally approach register, “Man, you’d think there was a hurricane, huh?” Ha-ha-ha.

12:55: Get home. Check pulse. Note elevated heart rate. Drink a beer.

12:57: Check pulse again. Drink another.

1:00: Turn on Super Bowl pregame show.

1:01: Mute Super Bowl pregame show. Remember that Super Bowls are a social situation. Call friend. Offer him nachos. Tell him to bring more beers.

2:36: Friend arrives. Ask him/her if he/she brought nachos. Impress each other with made-up football facts. Drink more beers.

3:25: National anthem time. Unmute TV and stand up for America for once in your damn life.

3:30: Kickoff! The Seahawks typically defer to their opponent, so the Broncos will likely have the first possession of the game. Check pulse. Consult WebMD. Learn you are having a heart attack. Drink more beers.

3:32: First quarter, 14:53, OH GOD PEYTON MANNING HAS THE BALL. WHY DID WE DEFER??

3:33: First quarter, 14:43, Peyton Manning completes pass to Wes Welker. Realize that winning the Super Bowl means beating Peyton Manning. Black out from terror.

would suggest. And we published Charles Mudede’s trenchant and timely critique of Richard Sherman’s doctoral thesis.

But this week, in advance of Sunday’s big game, our attention turns to an issue not even related to the Seahawks—a horrific blow from which none of us are going to be able to escape: THE STUPID RED HOT MOTHERFUCKING CHILI PEPPERS ARE PLAYING THE GODDAMN HALFTIME SHOW. What, was Creed busy? Couldn’t afford the $500 it’d take to get Sublime with Rome? If Super Bowl organizers were looking to score a band that would appeal to both meatheads and “cool dads,” why not get Metallica? James Hetfield has written some pretty terrible lyrics, but he’s never sunk so low as to

to because the goddamn Red Hot Motherfucking Chili Peppers will take the stage and I’ll be puking all over the floor. Reports claim it was Mr. Mars who invited the Peppers to join him, but I don’t buy it. Because, really, why would Bruno Mars “choose” the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Aside from the factual statement that they’re TERRIBLE, they haven’t released a record since 2011’s I’m with You, and that was their worst-selling album in more than 20 years (2006’s wet fart Stadium Arcadium sold more than eight million copies worldwide, while I’m with You didn’t even break the two million mark). Like that cold sore, they had been hibernating, and we were all better off. But now the cold sore is coming back. On Super Bowl Sunday, of all days. Bruno Mars could’ve handled this on his own. Or hell, he could’ve gotten some of his other famous friends to help out. Instead, the Super Bowl fell back into old habits, grabbing a name that might not be relevant anymore but was at one time, and now all we have to look forward to is whether or not Flea will get naked—he recently tweeted (then deleted) “anybody wanna see my cock at the Super Bowl?” NO, FLEA, WE DO NOT. PUT A SOCK ON IT. Better yet, don’t show up at all. Our Seahawks have a Super Bowl to win.

5:05: Halftime, come to briefly. See Bruno Mars on television. Make Popeye in Space joke. See game is tied. Black out from terror.

6:45: Fourth quarter, 7:52, come to briefly. See giant talking baby selling car insurance. Black out from terror.

7:35: End of game. The Seahawks will have either won or lost. Regardless of result, yell and cry.

7:55: After losing both your voice and all the moisture in your body, remember that Super Bowls are a social situation. Sprint to Pike/Pine. DO NOT SET CARS ON FIRE. Do drink more beers and offer congratulatory/conciliatory hugs to strangers. DO NOT SET CARS ON FIRE.

8:25: SERIOUSLY, STOP SETTING CARS ON FIRE.

8:45: You didn’t listen. Spend night in jail with a rock of nacho-type substance sitting heavy in your stomach. Consider it a metaphor for shame.

SPIKE FRIEDMAN is The Stranger’s sports editor… so long as the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. If they don’t… well, who can say? Things change. Newsroom budgets are tight these days and The Stranger doesn’t really “need” a sports editor. Go Hawks!

Love and Dinner True Stories from Our Lives By Stran ger Staff

A Proposal with Pearls at Cafe Presse

BY BRENDAN KILEY

Idon’t know quite how to begin. A few years ago, I proposed to my girlfriend over a candlelit dinner. In fact, it was possible that we were already sorta-kinda engaged. Certain sentiments had been exchanged a few nights earlier in a tattered thatched hut on a Caribbean beach. But it was a chaotic moment, not exactly binding, and certainly not the kind of we-got-engaged! story you’d go home and tell your parents. Plus, we hadn’t really talked about it in the days since. Maybe she’d regretted it. Maybe it didn’t even count. A real-deal proposal, a walk out onto the tightrope to ask a simple yes-or-no question—a moment filled with wild hope and vertiginous fear—was required. I quickly dropped the idea of a ring. A ring seemed too small, too token (even an expensive one), and she’d look marvelous in a string of pearls. I’d always thought her skin had a slightly pearlescent, iridescent quality, white with a flush of darkness and color beneath that changed subtly depending on the light and the angle.

same but looks different depending on the light of circumstances and the angle of perspective.” My increasingly fevered, proposal-minded brain was probably overheating—and overreaching—but the images were starting to come together: her skin, pearls, oysters, a relationship. A study in iridescence.

Aren’t relationships iridescent in their way?

I spent the better part of a day agonizing over pearl necklaces in various jewelry shops, so clearly out of place that I was followed closely and questioned repeatedly by store clerks and security guards. (For what it’s worth, jewelry-shop owners of Seattle, I wound up plunking my money down at a relaxed place where I had the breathing room to concentrate on the luster of various pearls instead of being accosted by employees.) I casually suggested to her over e-mail—I thought my voice might give me away—that it had been too long since we’d been to Presse. Why not have dinner there tonight? She agreed.

a table in the back room. As we settled in, two old out-of-town friends—a playwright and a comedian/ musician from New York—were just getting settled at their table, practically next to us. I quietly and hurriedly explained that while we’d like to catch up, we needed a little privacy. If I remember correctly, I hinted that they should maybe sit a little farther away. I hoped that didn’t sound too weird.

One of the staffers I’d met earlier that day came by. (Were her eyes too full of intrigue? Was she giving it all away?) My about-to-be-proposed-to dinner companion promptly ordered oysters and champagne. Either she’d been tipped off or this was a nice touch of luck. Either way, I’d take it.

The oysters arrived, pearls among the shells. Her eyes asked: “What is this?” I asked: “Will you marry me?” She said yes. We lifted ourselves off our chairs and kissed across the table.

We must’ve ordered more food and eaten dinner. But neither of us can remember much beyond the word “yes.”

When we first started seeing each other, we spent many hours at Cafe Presse eating oysters served on crystalline beds of rock salt. “Oysters are iridescent,” I thought to myself. “Rock-salt crystals are a little iridescent, too. And aren’t relationships iridescent in their way? The material is essentially the

Then I hurried to the cafe and explained my plan: I’d give them the agonized-over necklace, come back at a certain hour with a certain lady-friend, and order a dozen oysters and champagne. They’d lace the necklace around the shells, over the rock salt, and bring it nonchalantly to the table. In the middle of my explanation, I caught a glint of eagerness in one of the staffers’ eyes. I was inadvertently creating an audience for the evening.

The proposal was hours away, but I’d already taken my first few steps down the tightrope.

We arrived a few hours later and were shown to

Saved by a Space Needle Security Guy

BY ANSEL HERZ

Iwalked through Sea-Tac International Airport sleep-deprived, sweaty, and nervous. It was spring, and I’d just flown in from Haiti, by way of LAX, where I’d spent an awkward night sleeping in the airport. I’d been in Haiti reporting on politics

and aid when an earthquake struck—in January 2010—pretty much destroying the country’s capital city. I stuck around to cover the earthquake’s aftermath.

An old friend of mine (let’s call her R) called the state department and pretended to be my sister to find out if I’d survived. (They released information only to family members.) I learned this from her later, over Skype. We had mutual crushes on each other from back in the day, and it was finally dawning on us that we cared enough about each other that we should try dating. She picked me up at the airport, and after a few nights together, I wanted to do something romantic, something to counterbalance the image of the sweaty, dusty guy walking out of the airport. The only thing I could think of—I’d been away from Seattle for years and had never been atop its most famous landmark—was dinner at the Space Needle.

Pretty touristy, right? I didn’t care. As darkness fell, I drove up and handed the keys to the valet like a boss. We zoomed up in the elevator.

And the view was awesome. But then they seated us away from the window. I raised hell and they moved us. Through the clear glass, the city sparkled and spun slowly around us. Because the restaurant actually spins!

“We were right up against the window, so that was cool,” R remembers. “You were being all sappy-faced.” Both of us remember playing footsie under the table, but not

“I didn’t really have time to be like, ‘This is not a good idea.’”

what we talked about. Time flew, and before we knew it, the restaurant was closing. “We were one of the last ones to leave,” R says. “And on our way out, you saw this exit sign. I didn’t really have time to be like, ‘This is not a good idea.’”

I grabbed her hand, and we dashed through the exit door—exiting up. The stairway led to the observation desk. Normally it’s packed with gawking tourists, but at this hour, it was just us. On top of the Space Needle. Us and the fresh night air swirling around. The city’s late-night noises, its twinkling lights. The night suddenly felt extra special.

A security guard approached to say it was after hours and the observation deck was offlimits. We pleaded with him for a few minutes. He smiled and walked away. We looked at each other and laughed. “We ran around the observation deck and made out a few times,” R remembers, blushing. It was exhilarating. We’ve been together since. I don’t know how I’ll top that night when I propose. But I’ll think of—or maybe I’ll just improvise— something.

Fresh Crab on the Coast BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

We awoke early to what sounded like someone hammering forcefully on the cabin’s front door. We’d arrived late, in the cold and quiet night, and failed to notice the foundation of the motel-to-be 10 feet north of us; construction was beginning, right there, at seven a.m. on Saturday.

We put pillows over our heads. A pillow

is powerless against insistent, very nearby hammering. After a while, we got up.

The Washington Coast is its best self in the winter: the diffused light, the gradations of gray, the spuming, relentless surf that would freeze you in a minute. It wasn’t raining, and we walked down the beach and back again, looking at kelp and shells and driftwood and the other cabins we could’ve been staying in that were farther from the construction. Lumpy sea stacks of rocks with firs growing on their backs stood out in the water. It appeared that we were the only ones there.

The tiny town of La Push also seemed nearly deserted. The Quileute Tribe, upon whose land we walked, had only recently become famous because of the Twilight series; the new motel would house the coming onslaught of vampire-and-werewolf enthusiasts. We looked around the docks, then found one open store, its shelves sparsely populated, and we asked the man if there was a place to buy some crabs. Or did we ask the lady we talked to who was standing on her porch? Neither of us can remember now. In any case, someone said sure, just walk down to the docks around 3:30 that afternoon—we’d see the boats coming in, they said—and we could get them right there. Bring a box or a bag, they said.

We walked back to the cabin to warm up, and we waited, reading and looking out the window. Then we went back to where the

We ate crab until we could not eat any more.

tribal fishermen were now unloading immense open-topped containers teeming with Dungeness crabs. After watching a while, we shouted, could we please buy a few? Sure, one man said. Twenty dollars for three. Aw, give them four, another said, so he did.

Four big Dungeness crabs in a paper grocery bag are calmer than you’d think, but still exciting to carry.

We put them, bag and all, in the fridge, and as soon as night fell—about an hour later—we boiled a big pot of water and cooked all four. We melted an unconscionable amount of butter, covered the cabin’s little table with newspapers, and lit the candles we’d brought. The window looked out onto the beach, but it was so pitch-black, we couldn’t see anything but our flickering reflection. We ate crab, united in concentration and messiness and glee, until we could not eat any more. It tasted like the first sweet smell of the freezing cold wintertime waves when you get out of the car on the coast in the night.

After the feast, we put our coats and boots on and went back outside to walk some more in the dark, and we said I love you for the first time. The next morning, there was no construction, and we made crab omelets, and it was still the best crab we’ve ever had.

The Table of Honor at Pacific Place

BY TINA ROWLEY

ight months after our first child was born, my husband and I attempted to go to the movies. We’d been gazing longingly at Casino Royale movie times in the paper since its release. Not only were we planted in baby world 24/7, but we were living at my mom’s house—effectively erasing every adult feeling from our lives. We hadn’t

gone on a date in six months. By this point, we were dreaming of seeing Casino Royale like the Three Sisters dreamed of going to Moscow. My mom, whose babysitting philosophy was less “You kids have fun!” than it was “Ticktock, motherfuckers,” agreed to look after the baby. Here’s how our date unfolded:

4 p.m.: The movie is downtown at 4:40. We should leave the house. By 4:20 p.m., we do.

4:30 p.m.: Traffic. Adrift in a sea of taillights. Commercials! Previews! We’ll make it.

4:45 p.m.: No, we won’t.

4:48 p.m.: It’s playing in Ballard! To Ballard! Oh, it isn’t until 6:45. But wait, look! It’s playing at the Big Picture at 5:30! Burn rubber!

5:17 p.m.: It’s playing at the Big Picture at 5:30 on Friday. Today is Thursday.

5:18 p.m.: Unprintable

5:19 p.m.: Fine. We’ll go downtown and get dinner. We’re an hour into our driving date. Just drivin’.

5:30 p.m.: I’m tired of driving. I make a lazy turn and bang into a curb. Whatever. 5:37 p.m.: We’re in Fremont. Bored! Dave! Feel me up at this traffic light! This is a date, damn it! It’s loud driving over the Fremont Bridge. It’s weird and shaky. This is some weird work they’re doing on the bridge.

5:42 p.m.: Flat tire. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

5:43 p.m.: We pull over on Dexter. How do we get the spare tire out of the thing? From 5:44 to 6:05 p.m., we read the Toyota manual page by page.

6:06 p.m.: “It says loosen the nut. Then loosen the bolt.”

6:20 p.m.: Sweet god, it’s cold. Didn’t wear a coat on the date. Dave is changing the tire while I spaz out for warmth. There goes hour two. Ticktock, motherfuckers.

6:45 p.m.: We’re at Pacific Place. We let ourselves eat upstairs at the fancy half of Il Fornaio because of struggle.

6:47 p.m.: “Would you two be interested in sitting at our Table of Honor? We pick people randomly each night to sit at a special table and the chef sends out some nice extras and the service is particularly attentive.”

6:48 p.m.: Dave and I jab each other in disbelief as we are led to the Table of Honor.

6:49 p.m.: Now this is a date. Being at the Table of Honor is a bit like being a guest judge on Iron Chef. Please enjoy this surprise crab cake on its lobster and balsamic reduction. The Dessert of Honor is zabaglione. No lie: “the Dessert of Honor.” Dave and I imagine ourselves visiting all the regular tables and introducing ourselves: “Hi, we’re Tina and Dave from the Table of Honor. We had some downtime in between amuse-bouches, and we thought we should say hello. Oh, you just have one kind of bread? I bet you’re still going to have a great time. Sorry if we seem disoriented. We’re just used to looking at our red tablecloth. Your tablecloth is so blindingly white. The tablecloth at the Table of Honor is red. Oops, here come some Olives of Honor. We have to run.”

8:45 p.m.: We drive home slowly on our spare tire.

Eating in the Moonlight Together

BY EMILY NOKES

Early in life, I learned that eating before going out to dinner was often helpful, and that sometimes you have to push your food around for the ones you care about. The disappointed comments are constant: “You don’t like ASPARAGUS? But

ASPARAGUS is so GOOD!” “You don’t eat MEAT? Then what DO you EAT?” “How could you not like EGGPLANT?” “MAYONNAISE IS GOOD.” “EVERYONE LIKES RANCH.”

Once I realized you could just tell a person you were vegetarian, I still felt like I needed to downplay it so people would not, oh my god please not, make a big deal out of it. Nothing makes you feel more horrible than when a kind soul goes way out of their way at their big fun barbecue to make you, and only you, a fake-turducken-burger deluxe. Whoa, no. My face turns red, my ears are hot, and I really don’t want to tell you that since I have never had meat, the fake version of it is equally unappetizing. As for going out to restaurants, I truly enjoy the appetizers and salads and baskets of bread, but someone somewhere had the idea that expensive equals romantic, and expensive equals meat, so vegetarian equals not romantic. When a prom date took me to a restaurant without a single vegetarian item on the menu, not even the salad, I proposed spending whatever amount of money he was allotting for my dinner by ordering every single dessert on the menu. He was not impressed and mumbled that steak dinner was one of the reasons “to even go to fuckin’ prom.” He sucked.

These days, I’m much less picky—plus it’s never been cooler to have eating boundaries (me? Why, yes, I eat gluten! So much gluten! Thank you for asking!)—but when a person I was reaaally swooning on announced that he was making me dinner, my stomach still started doing somersaults. Since I was already on my way over, it was too late to suggest we just eat the Skittles I had in my purse. “I made you something you’ll love! It’s perfectly simple! I call it PEASANT FOOD!” he said excitedly when I got there, flinging open a pot filled simply with spaghetti, garlic, and salt. I almost cried from happiness. Now I am married to this person—this person whose food preferences place him squarely in the “I’ll eat anything” category (he is from Chicago, after all, the land of meat wrapped in other meat dipped in ranch and rolled in mayo). But he’ll happily split the vegan chow mein with me at Moonlight Cafe—a picky-paradise spot with a vast meatless menu. Moonlight is situated in an extremely beige building across from the scenic Franz bread factory on Jackson Street; its sign proudly states KARAOKE & DANCING, though I’m fairly certain there has never been anything resembling karaoke or dancing inside. The decor is 1980s tropical (as in, the dusty fake tropical plants and neon-light squiggles on the wall have most likely been there since the ’80s), and the service is often as personable as a speeding ticket, but it’s the most romantic meal ever. Just me and someone who’s developed a taste for imitation beef for me. Swoon.

Eating in England by the Side of the Road

BY DANIELLE HENDERSON

The most romantic meal I ever had was born of rage, just like the rest of my love life. In 2009, I was a 31-year-old college student living in England for my required semester abroad, and the only thing that kept me sane while I was living with teenagers was the trip to Paris, Bruges, and Amsterdam I’d be taking that December with my boyfriend. Neither of us had ever traveled in Europe, and we were really goddamn excited to see some spooky underground skull catacombs and throw macarons from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

How you hate together is as important as how you love.

The Eurostar train system had another idea—for the first time ever, it was stuck in the damn tunnel due to inclement weather, and no one was going anywhere for the foreseeable future. I was pissed. Paris was the gateway to a two-week journey that had kept me from murdering drunk, loud teenagers for the last three months, and now we couldn’t get there! My boyfriend and I silently rolled our luggage back to my dorm room and decided to get some food.

We walked into town and went to a pie shop I liked. It was full of high-backed wooden benches and narrow aisles; it smelled like a warm loaf of bread, and you could feel the steam from the kitchen settle on your skin like a damp cloth. We sat on a bench outside eating our delicious pies—my steak and onion mixed in a thick, salty gravy, a stolen bite from his pork and apple pie was a hot mix of sweet and savory goodness. Hating everything. Hating everything about the fact that we were not rocketing under the sea toward France. I think one of us broke the angry ice by saying, “How’s that not-in-Paris pie?” or something, and we laughed, watching people walk by on the street. With every bite, we laughed and released a little rage on the good people of England. “Hey, look at that not-at-all-Dutch couple” and “That guy looks like he could persuade his way into Belgium, let’s follow him!”

The night ended up being a lot of fun. We got drunk on cider at a pub, walked to a movie theater and yelled at the screen while watching Avatar, a shitty time-killing movie we never wanted to see anyway, and held hands a lot as we walked around the bricklined streets of Reading. We never threw macarons from the Eiffel Tower, but after I sobered up and got cheap plane tickets to Paris the next day, my eighth-grade French got us the most amazing coq au vin, herbed Brie, and bakery treats from this shop around the corner from where we stayed.

in my best Beavis voice.

The Spaniard said, “Don’t ever, EVER, do that again in my presence ever again.”

“You know,” I said, smiling and touching his hand, “I think I need to find the restroom.”

I took my purse and went out the back door of the restaurant, never looking back. Fuck that guy. I bet he works at a car wash now.

And I eventually married my boyfriend, because how you hate together is as important as how you love.

Eating Italian with a Spaniard

BY KELLY O

Ionce went on a date with a beautiful Spaniard. He was tall and had long black hair and big dark eyes. He was a bartender and a painter. He studied fine arts, and I was studying graphic design. When he asked me on a date, I was impressed, because the fine-arts students were rarely ever seen slumming with the graphic designers.

We went for Italian food. Candles, red wine in those wicker thingies, the whole shebang. He looked so hot in the low lighting, I could barely concentrate. The tops of my ears were burning, and my lady parts were starting to tingle.

With his accent, he could read a recipe off the back of a Hamburger Helper box and it would sound like poetry. We ordered food. He asked me about my favorite painters. Did I prefer Gauguin or Cézanne? What were my personal theories on the Postimpressionists? I started to get nervous because every one of my answers was wrong.

I scanned the room, and my own brain, for a new topic of conversation. At this moment, two obviously inebriated guys, holding each other up, loudly stumbled into the restaurant.

I laughed and said, “Those guys look like living versions of those cartoons, Beavis and Butt-head!”

“Gross,” the Spaniard said. “That show is STUPID.”

“I dunno, I think it’s kinda funny,” I said.

Then one of the drunkards knocked into a table, tipping over a lit candle into some paper napkins.

“FIRE, FIRE! Heh-heh, heh-heh!” I said

A Bucket of Gumbo on the Couch

BY ANNA MINARD

When I was 16, I went on what I think must’ve been my first “romantic dinner” date. It was Valentine’s Day; my high-school boyfriend and I considered going out to a restaurant mandatory. I wore a ridiculously tiny dress handed down from my older sister, which caused my dad to short-circuit and become a sitcom dad. (Seriously: I came downstairs, and he took one look at my outfit and went into the other room without speaking, returning with his own full-length black wool coat. “You’re wearing this,” he said. “Don’t take it off.”) My date and I went to the restaurant to play-act adulthood, which was awkward for kids who spent most of their time hanging out in public parks, reading books, and making out. What do you do with the napkin? What could you order that wouldn’t be embarrassing to eat? It went fine, but it was not a particularly romantic experience. Adulthood hasn’t been that much different. The dinners that are supposed to be special, the expensive ones, the ones with candles and someone else grinding your pepper—for me, they’re just really weird. It can feel like dress-up romance. And going out to dinner can sometimes cover up for a scarcity of actual affection. Treat you like shit, take you to a restaurant, everything becomes okay because of breadsticks? That is not a math equation I would like to participate in, thanks. So I’ve learned to care very little for the trappings of romance and a hell of a lot for small acts of mundane, everyday love— which, it turns out, are harder to come by. Then, suddenly, in my life, a dude appeared who made all other dudes inconsequential. And no dinner, on any continent or planet, could ever be more romantic to me than this person spending four hours cooking me dinner at our own house, stopping every once in a while to offer tastes and shout things like “I love cooking for you!”

Keep your candlelight and valentines, and give me no other date for the rest of my life than this man making me a vast bucket of gumbo without me ever leaving the couch. This gumbo—dear god, this food—is recipefree and unnaturally delicious, inspired by childhood memories of his New Orleanian godparents’ Thanksgiving entrée. Spicy and rich and god knows what is even in there— sausage, shrimp, all the vegetables ever invented, some spices that I don’t understand. What’s in there is bigger than that. What’s in there is an act of love that no expensive restaurant bill can touch—plus, we get to sit on the couch in PJs watching nature shows together and wiping our hands on paper towels. Homemade meals, from the most wholesome, kind person I’ve ever loved, feel like a promise and a reminder of the everyday love, the non-romance of partnership and goofing off and small caretaking. Sometimes, sitting quietly at my desk eating the leftovers, I think all these things and tear up a bit.

Microwaved gumbo that makes you cry at work? Fucking romantic, that’s what I say.

STRANGER SUGGESTS

THU JAN 30

Richard Powers

BOOKS In his novels, Richard Powers tends to write about very intelligent people who quietly go through tremendous life changes. When you see him in person, it’s easy to see where his inspiration comes from: Powers is a highly intelligent, mild-mannered speaker who casually drops sentences that change your understanding of topics like music and cognitive science. Powers’s newest novel, Orfeo, continues this trend; its main character is a genius composer named Peter Els whose hobby— he dabbles in microbiology in a home lab—gets the FBI’s attention, earning him the nickname the “Bioterrorist Bach.” (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, townhallseattle.org, 7:30 pm, $5) PAUL CONSTANT

Dylan Neuwirth ART

Rebecca Brown on Kafka

BOOKS

Welcome to the one and only time I’ll ever be able to describe an event as “Kafkaesque” and actually mean it as a compliment. Tonight, Stranger Genius Rebecca Brown leads Blueprints of the Afterlife author Ryan Boudinot and a young up-andcoming writer named Eric McMillan in a celebration of everything Kafka. They’ll read Kafka’s writing, show off some “Kafka paraphernalia”—is it too much to hope for a sex toy?—and explore exactly why we’re all so enamored with the man whose name has become synonymous with existential dread and boundless despair. (Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, hugohouse.org, 7 pm, free) PAUL CONSTANT

The year 2014—MMXIV—opens at Vermillion, bathed in a ghostly glow from the light fixtures on the walls, sculptures made by Seattle’s Dylan Neuwirth. Each is a tweet spelled out in cursive white neon letters, saying things like “good morning haters” and “just be your selfie.” They are the type of unmoored clever that leads back to no particular personality or event, except to all those hovering in the cyberlife of Twitter. Beneath each sculpture is a factory-made neon transformer strapped neatly to a cinder block with two black zip ties—a unit resembling a cross between an antennaed television and a homemade explosive device. (Vermillion, 1508 11th Ave, vermillionseattle.com, 4 pm–2 am, free, through Feb 8) JEN GRAVES

‘Richard II’ THEATER

In 2012, a theater company from Ramallah performed Richard II in the ruins of an eighth-century palace. It’s hard to imagine a better backdrop for Shakespeare’s gloomy play about broken power. George Mount, artistic director of Seattle Shakespeare Company, plays Richard as lyrical, delicate, arrogant, and totally out of touch with his noblemen, who are rumbling up from below him to seize his crown, led by the indignant Henry of Bolingbroke, soon to be Henry IV. “I wasted time,” the young king sighs in his prison cell, “and now time doth waste me.” (Center Theatre, Seattle Center Armory, seattleshakespeare.org, 2 and 7:30 pm, $29–$43, through Feb 2) BRENDAN KILEY

Fremont Vintage Mall

NOT FOOTBALL

Many weekend days, after a wonderful hangover brunch, I find myself drawn to the insanity basement that is Fremont Vintage Mall. The stock runs the gamut from classy, not-too-cheap vintage furniture to frameable little French-language flash cards and $1 records . No matter the day or your vintage predilections, the place always serves as a Museum of the Entertaining Object: a large old prosthetic leg, a Jethro Tull oil painting, a Steve Urkel doll, a neon telephone, a framed drawing of a monkey with a boner . Walk off the booze-soaked bacon and eggs through aisle upon aisle of undreamable treasures. ( Fremont Vintage Mall, 3419 Fremont Pl N, fremont vintagemall.com, 11 am–6 pm ) ANNA MINARD

Helms Alee MUSIC

If you, like me, have exhausted your ha-ha-ha-pleaseI’m-totally-fine-with-four-hours-of-“daylight” junkpop positivity playlists, it’s time to break out the hard stuff. Tonight, Seattle post-grunge metal spirits Helms Alee celebrate the release of their newest fulllength, Sleepwalking Sailors, on Sargent House. The trio splits songwriting duties, even within the same track, propelling the album into contrasting dark and dreamy territories—a thoughtfully heavy, drum-pummeled stoner odyssey with dazed harmonies and enough cathartic bellowing to get your blood moving again. Oh! And do be punctual for the tightly drawn post-hardcore/punk of Survival Knife and the blistering grit of Sandrider. (Neumos, 925 E Pike St, neumos.com, 8 pm, $10 adv, 21+) EMILY NOKES

‘Jobriath A.D.’ FILM

“Asking me if I’m homosexual is like asking James Brown if he’s black.” So crowed the American glamrocker Jobriath as he commenced his career in the early 1970s. Backing up the faggy hubris was Jobriath’s musical talent (he was a classical piano prodigy) and his shameless manager, who unleashed an avalanche of hype—from Times Square billboards to full-page ads in Rolling Stone and Vogue, all before one note of music had been released—that would ultimately prove ruinous. In Jobriath A.D., documentarian Kieran Turner tracks this incredible tale through archival and contemporary interviews, gracefully plot-forwarding animation, and dazzling performance footage. (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, grandillusioncinema.org, 7 and 9 pm, Jan 31–Feb 6) DAVID SCHMADER

RuPaul’s Battle of the Seasons DRAG

You’ve cheered, jeered, dissed, and worshipped them on TV, now see some of the greatest queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race in their natural habitat: onstage, in the spotlight, killing it. Hosted by Chief Justice of the Supreme Drag Court Michelle Visage, tonight’s all-star extravaganza features Sharon Needles, Alaska Thunderfuck, Pandora Boxx, Ivy Winters, Manila Luzon, Carmen Carrera, Willam, and Detox in a parade of lip-synchs, vocal duets, and quick-turn costume and wig changes. (Moore Theatre, 1932 Second Ave, stgpresents.org, 8:30 pm, $27.50–$47.50 adv) DAVID SCHMADER

by

ART

Provoked by the Provocative A

Difficult Performance

About Race Is Homeless Because the Frye Canceled It

BY JEN GRAVES

Coon songs were racist American entertainments around the turn of the 20th century, songs performed in blackface but created by and performed for white people. Each one was a violent cultural lobotomy; to revisit them is to wander the corridors of a derelict asylum with its twisted, glowering equipment.

When a mixed-race group of American artists and writers planned to revisit coon songs in front of an audience in a performance during the course of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference in Seattle next month, the Frye Art Museum agreed to host the fraught event. But when one of the artists, a white woman, posted an announcement on her Facebook page using the title Coon Songs, Kitsch, and Conceptual Writing, and a real historical ad—with an illustration of a ventriloquist and blackface dummy—the museum canceled the March 1 event.

Museum director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, who is white, made the decision, and in a phone interview, she refused even to repeat the title of the performance or specifically describe the image on the announcement, saying only that “the potential to cause hurt and harm was just not an option for us.”

Douglas Kearney is a poet and performer who was part of Coon Songs, Kitsch, and Conceptual Writing. The first poem in his first book, Fear, Some, in 2006, was called “The Poisonous Coon,” a character who also glared forth from the cover of the book. Kearney is black, and in a phone interview about the event and its cancellation, he said of his fellow panelists and maybe the museum, too, “I don’t think that everybody involved has as much skin in the game—pun intended. If the title was Coon Songs, Dyke Shit, and the

Maiden, that would be different.”

But, he said, “That’s not me saying I’m glad it got canceled… I also don’t want to take the perspective that it was just cowardice to cancel it… I’ll put it to you this way: I teach at CalArts, and I tell students, if you’re doing work that’s provocative, you can’t be surprised when people are provoked. You also can’t only be interested in provoking.

“But if I am provoking, I would like to have something that somebody could look to concretely and say, ‘That was provocative.’ To be denied that opportunity is a disappointment.”

altogether. We have to be ethically tidy. When it’s a mess. The panel would be a trans-racial talk and performance that welcomed the mess, welcomed the hurt, welcomed the absurdity and the contradictions.”

The group members designed their event together to be a cross between an earnest intellectual discussion and a dangerously unscripted performance. Each performer could intervene in the conversation at any moment with a performance, and those performances could change the direction of the conversation.

The poet who was chief organizer of the event, who posted the announcement to her Facebook page with the offending image, is Vanessa Place. She is someone who welcomes the hurt.

A blogger on the Huffington Post called Place’s work “ethically odious,” a distinction she then added to her bio. It may be her specific stance, and her role as organizer, that most frightened the museum off. Place performs pieces—of found texts, often from legal briefs that are part of her day job as an attorney for indigent sex offenders—packed with racial slurs, ventriloquizing that language in her own contemporary white body.

“The white gig is to act like we don’t have anything” to do or say about race, Place said in a phone interview. “I think you run into the very attractive danger of it not being our problem, or our conversation. So while I very much admire, like, the work of Ronaldo [Wilson, another of the five, author of Poems of the Black Object], it doesn’t take any burden off my shoulders. I can’t just say, ‘Well, why don’t you go watch them?’”

After one performance, a black poet told Place, “That hurt.” Place responded, “I know. I know.” Whether she actually knows whether she has, as Kearney says, “as much skin in the game” of racist speech—Hong, Kearney, and Wilson, as well as a white poet named Daniel Tiffany, who writes about another dirty word when it comes to poetry, “kitsch,” all still want to perform Coon Songs, Kitsch, and Conceptual Writing alongside Place in Seattle.

“I have serious questions about her performance,” Hong wrote, “but I do respect her for taking that risk.”

“What was interesting is that you had these folks from all these different backgrounds coming together,” Wilson said. “Sometimes you need shock… to open up a new space. Even for something as beautiful as swimming, you have to plunge your arms into the water, to disrupt things in order to glide.”

This event could still happen in Seattle. The performers will be here, and Seattle is primed for Coon Songs, Kitsch, and Conceptual Writing. Hell, maybe Seattle’s newest linguistic theorist, Richard Sherman, will be in attendance, after he’s done schooling America on racist language and winning the Super Bowl.

“Race is always handled with kid gloves.”

Cathy Hong, another of the five artists—whose celebrated 2012 book Engine Empire is playfully brutal and brutally playful in its dealings with race and language—wrote an e-mail response to the cancellation.

“Race—among poets and institutions like the Frye museum—is always handled with kid gloves,” Hong wrote. She is Korean American. “Discussions are hygienic, safe, and always compartmentalized: Black poets talk in their corner, Asian poets talk in theirs, Latinos talk in their corner, and white poets listen politely or have the luxury to ignore it

So who will step up with a venue?

If Coon Songs, Kitsch, and Conceptual Writing were to remain in an art gallery, where interdisciplinarity and boundary-crossing are the norm rather than exceptions, there’s art up now in Seattle that could make a stirring backdrop.

Ronald Hall’s Gallery4Culture show, The N Word, comprises candy-colored paintings of racist caricatures incorporating digital historical images and empty text balloons. Hall has a background working at Nintendo, and his art pictures American racial history as a video game crossed with a seductive nightmare. IDxID: New Identities Revisited at the Washington State Convention Center gallery is a group show of photographs, videos, paintings, and other objects pained and

LOOSE LIPS

• Joining Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, The Heist, and “Thrift Shop” among Seattle-sourced triumphs at last Sunday’s Grammy Awards: the gorgeous gown worn by singer/songwriter/Macklemore collaborator Hollis Wong-Wear, designed by hot-poop garment artist Mark Mitchell. Described by its creator as a Carole Lombard–esque number with an open back draped to the coccyx and hand-dyed the color Japanese Plum, the Grammy gown will be followed by another Wong-Wear/Mitchell collab, with two pieces from his acclaimed Burial collection featured in a forthcoming video for her band the Flavr Blue.

• The directors of SAM and DAM—Seattle Art Museum and Denver Art Museum— have a Super Bowl art wager. When Seattle wins, DAM will send SAM its early1900s bronze statuette The Broncho Buster by cowboy-and-Indian artist Frederic Remington for a free three-month loan. (If the impossible/unthinkable happens, SAM’s supposed to loan DAM a circa-1880 Nuxalk bird mask reminiscent of the Seahawks logo.) And after we get your cowboy, DAM, we’ll gay-marry him, too.

• Particulars for the Cascadia Poetry Festival were announced last week, and the closing event looks the best, with Stranger Geniuses Maged Zaher and Heather McHugh, plus Seattle’s Frances McCue and Vancouver’s Stephen Collis. All-access passes are $25 at cascadiapoetryfestival.org. If you’re on the fence, note that the festival moves to Victoria next year, whereupon nobody will ever hear from it again

• Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll keeps having footnote problems. On faith news site Patheos.com, Warren Throckmorton accused Driscoll of copying, without attribution, from several texts in his 2012 advice guide Real Marriage. Driscoll’s publisher responded by updating the ebook edition. Yeshua ben Yosef, the guy who inspired imaginary superhero Jesus Christ, was unavailable for comment at press time.

• Thanks to an anonymous gift of $1.35 million, the New Foundation Seattle will open its new home for art exhibitions, lectures, and workshops in fall 2014. Yay! The location is 123 Third Avenue South in Pioneer Square; Jennie Gruss Interior Design will rehab the 1971 brick building.

• The Seattle Women’s Convention drew more than a hundred artists to Hedreen Gallery last week to talk about the aftermath of the Elles exhibition at SAM one year ago. It happened against the backdrop of Tariqa Waters’s oversize pink-framed painting on the wall, depicting slave-owning garbage president Andrew Jackson wearing a pink slave collar. “My favorite guffaw of the evening came when Tariqa Waters adroitly spoke of her confusion about the hipster guys in Pioneer Square, with their period-specific BEARDS,” Deborah Lawrence commented on Slog, The Stranger’s blog. “She said their appearance made her wonder if she should use the back or front door.”

MOODS OF LOVE FROM SINISTER TO SISTERLY

SUNNY

Directed by Hyeong-Cheol Kang Korea, 2011, 124 min (Sseo-Ni) Feb 2, 2 pm

BOLLYWOOD DREAMS (Rangeela) Feb 9, 2 pm

Directed by Ram Gopal Varma India, 1995, 142 min

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

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31

January 31 –

February 1

Cue: An opening night party filled with alumni talent, headlined by hip-hop artist Katie Kate, and featuring performances by dancer Amy O’Neal and new arts collective The Pendleton House. Also includes DJ, catered food truck and complimentary cocktails. Tickets $25. Ages 21+. 7-10 p.m.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1

Day of Ideas: A day of performances, experiences, workshops and conversations that draw connections between art and wellbeing, featuring a workshop with David Leventhal, Program Director for the nationally acclaimed Dance for PD®, a collaboration between Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group. The day will explore the palliative nature of creativity and artistry across all spectrums of wellbeing from personal to social health. Free and open to the public. 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m.

pleasured by the constraints of identity. And lastly, the tidy, ghostly glowing of Dylan Neuwirth’s white neon tweets mounted on the walls at Vermillion—their content clever but blank—are the perfect foil for a messy performance of embodiment, race, text, and the search for the objective voice. Neuwirth beautifully created a hall of gleaming neon text, each tweet a cool, white mouth tethered to a power source strapped to a cinder block on the floor, forming a room full of bodies that speak but don’t say anything.

BOOKS

Now Less Kafkaesque

A New Translation Gives Voice to Kafka’s Cry for Help

BY PAUL CONSTANT

NPREVIEW

Rebecca Brown on Kafka

Thurs Jan 30, Hugo House, 7 pm, free

ow that his name has become a watered-down adjective that pretty much means “a bad experience,” it’s sometimes hard to approach Kafka’s writing as a living work. The kind of superheroic ubiquity that Kafka enjoys forces itself in between author and reader, putting a halt to the conversation of literature. Sometimes to truly get to Kafka, you need an intelligent guide. Fortunately, certified Stranger Genius Rebecca Brown is leading Ryan Boudinot and other local authors in a celebration—the word feels so strange there, but it fits—of Kafka’s work at the Hugo House this week. They’ll read and discuss his work, present “Kafka paraphernalia,” and bring the work to life for an evening. But if you prefer your Kafka oneon-one, you’ll be happy to know that translator Susan Bernofsky has, in 118 pages, made him feel as approachable as he’s ever felt. Her new translation of The Metamorphosis (W.W. Norton, $10.95) takes what is probably Kafka’s most familiar work and subtly encourages the text into a transformation of its own.

I’ve read The Metamorphosis multiple times in different translations, and at some point, the story of Gregor Samsa’s sudden awakening as “some sort of monstrous insect” has for me taken on the codified air of a Bible story, something huge and solid and in some respects unknowable. But in Bernofsky’s translation, there is a moment, early in the book, when Samsa is struggling to explain his condition to his employer—he hasn’t yet realized that he is not capable of speaking like a human anymore—and he admits, “I did in fact feel a mild foreboding yesterday evening already.” The choice of “foreboding” gives Samsa a relatable humanity that other translators did not bestow upon him.

In Ian Johnston’s translation, that “foreboding” is described instead as a “premonition.”

In David Wyllie’s translation, it’s “a small symptom” of “unwell”-ness and “dizziness.” I’m not equipped to say which is the more accurate translation from German, but I know which word resonates more to a reader.

Samsa’s admission of foreboding comes a moment after he tries to assure his audience, and himself, that he was absolutely fine yesterday. Then, a moment later, he acknowledges the size of the foreboding he was trying to deny: “Surely it was noticeable to anyone looking at me,” Samsa admits. He’s desperate, realizing the depth of his desperation as he monologues to himself about why he can’t seem to leave his bed and start the ordinary

process of beginning yet another day in a life that seems to have had all meaning and importance leached from it.

Bernofsky’s translation—her selection of words, her sense of rhythm—points the reader toward an interpretation of The Metamorphosis as the story of depression. More, it’s a personal story of depression, told by a gifted author who is heartbreakingly familiar with depression but is from a time that doesn’t have the vocabulary to recognize depression as a genuine illness. This isn’t a unique reading—it’s generally accepted, now, that Kafka suffered from clinical depression—but Bernofsky brings the rawness and the depth of Samsa’s suffering to the surface and makes The Metamorphosis feel as urgent as a handwritten plea for help freshly torn from a notebook and found on a bedside table.

This is a story that so many people can relate to: A man wakes up in bed. He looks out the window, and the “bleak weather” makes him “feel quite melancholy.” Mentally, he prepares himself to leave his bed—“Perhaps a hundred times he attempted it, closing his eyes so as not to have to see those struggling legs”—but he just can’t do it. He soon learns that food doesn’t taste good to him anymore. Nothing works as it should—his body, his brain, his voice. His thoughts burrow deeper and deeper into a self-destructive loop. He must get ready to work for a job that doesn’t challenge or interest him in order to support a family that doesn’t appreciate him. He strains and struggles to muster enough energy to join the world, but his entire universe has suddenly shrunk to the size of a hostile and stormy cube, a “proper human room, if admittedly rather too small.”

At the same time, Samsa’s family can’t understand what’s wrong with him, why he can’t just be normal. They cry and coax and ignore him until his condition becomes part of the household scenery, shunted away from the help and from visitors. They tend to his most basic needs, but they pay no attention to the glaring problem hiding under the bed in the next room, because they’re simply not equipped to deal with it. Nobody is.

This is not a happy story. Modernizing the language can’t make it any less brutal. But Bernofsky has performed an act of magic with her translation. She’s found the human inside Kafka’s words—imploring and beseeching and begging, in his own quiet way, for help—and delivered him to us, in flesh and blood. It’s a letter that comes more than a century too late, but it’s finally been delivered. That, in a quiet and bookish way, is some kind of small act of hope.

THEATER

The Person You’ve Always Wanted to Be

Turmoil at an Ex-Gay Camp in Rural Idaho

BY BRENDAN KILEY

AGreat Wilderness, Samuel D. Hunter’s bleak new play about a tiny “ex-gay” conversion therapy camp in rural Idaho, has given itself a tough job—to present the zealous Christians who run it as humane, sympathetic advocates for what is clearly an inhumane and unsympathetic cause. Hunter turns the old Christian bromide about homosexuality back on his audience, daring us to love the sinners (or at least some of them) but hate the sin. He pulls this trick by disappearing the play’s only gay kid at the beginning of act

one. A new arrival named Daniel (Jack Taylor) goes for a walk and disappears, leaving the adults to wait, fret, reminisce, drink, and argue. With Daniel gone, their one-dimensional, do-gooder masks come off—and it becomes increasingly clear that their version of a supposedly happy, healthy, heterosexual adulthood is nothing to aspire to. With role models like that, any kid in his right mind would run for the hills.

The sweetest of the bunch is Walt (Michael Winters), a gentle older man who has devoted much of his life to counseling boys in the cabin where Wilderness is set. (The two-story set design by Scott Bradley beautifully evokes the doubleness and deceptions at the heart of the story. The first floor is a warm wood cabin with fading paint, a fireplace, and ancient appliances, but it twists upward into a dusty, abstract, and abandoned upstairs—A-frame meets Möbius strip.) Walt grew up gay and is intimately familiar with the suffering mainstream culture doles out to gay kids; he decided long ago that the problem wasn’t the culture but the gayness.

“This is all about you,” he tells Daniel in the first scene. “Getting you back to who you really are, the person you want to be.”

Of course, that’s the narcissism of ex-gay therapy—you should want to be who we want you to be. When Daniel asks what happens if he doesn’t want to be straight, Walt punts the question and suggests they eat their sandwiches.

Daniel was supposed to be Walt’s last “boy” before turning the camp over to his bossy ex-wife, Abby (Christine Estabrook), and her husband, Tim (R. Hamilton Wright). But in the chaos following Daniel’s disappearance, the adults—including Daniel’s mother, an unhappy pastor’s wife who shows up looking for her boy—painfully peel back the ways they’ve been deceiving themselves and each other.

Abby wants to close the camp and sell the property. Walt worries whether his years of Christian counseling did more harm than good, and whether he’d ever really “changed.” Daniel’s mother (played with an exhausted nihilism, like a character out of Edward Albee, by Mari Nelson) wonders whether her son wouldn’t be better off dead in the woods than suffering a life sentence of gayness.

But for all its potential heat, Wilderness leaves a cold and distant impression. Some of that is in the slow pacing by director Braden

Abraham, which often creaks but rarely crackles; some is in Hunter’s characters, who don’t all achieve the depth and resonance he seems to want them to have. The script’s liveliest moments are in the few exchanges between Walt and Daniel—the old gay man and the young gay man, both sincere, awkward, and struggling—and in the mother’s bilious barbs. In a 2010 interview about a different play, Hunter talked about his mission to write rural, conservative, multidimensional characters: “Especially during the Bush administration, there was this tendency to think that red states were red simply because they were full of idiots. But that’s just not the case— it’s much more complex than that.” A Great Wilderness approaches that complexity but doesn’t quite cross the threshold.

THEATER

Sweet Nothings

The Bearable Lightness of American Wee-Pie

BY BRENDAN KILEY

For a light confection about the lifeaffirming world of a small-town bakery, American Wee-Pie has a surprisingly dismal set. Designed by Andrea Bryn Bush, it’s a study in gray, with gray polka dots on the walls, gray wood paneling, and two framed gray pictures—one appears to be a pencil drawing of flowers in a funeral urn, the other a cupcake whose gray dome of frosting looks like a cold volcano covered in ash. But they fit the mood of our sad-sack hero, Zed (a charming Evan Whitfield), a textbook editor who’s returned to his small hometown on the event of his mother’s death.

Shortly after arriving, he is saved from wandering out into traffic by an old highschool acquaintance named Linz (Tracy Leigh), who is a model of vivaciousness: pink socks, bright bows, and garish makeup. She merrily informs him of all their classmates who have died—one by Russian roulette in Iraq, another by “cancer of the tear duct or something”—and how happy she is with her “hubby,” a French cupcake visionary named Pableu (David Goldstein). It turns out that Zed has an uncanny set of taste buds, and soon he’s learning to bake.

Lisa Dillman’s characters are cousins of Sarah Ruhl’s—mildly oversize versions of themselves, bordering on cutesy (even Zed’s perpetually exasperated sister and their sleazy graveyard-plot salesman have a dash of whimsy), living in a bright, Richard Scarry–esque world that’s almost magical-realist but not quite. Director Anita Montgomery keeps them bouncing through the sweet, insubstantial plot like a pack of merry bumper cars. (Wee-Pie is great for parents, aunts, or adolescent nieces and nephews.) Like A Great Wilderness—reviewed above—the play is about characters trying to figure out who they really are. No spoiler alert is necessary to reveal that it ends with a cherry

The ONYX Fine Arts Collective: A Wider View: Contemporary art by African American artists. Free. Reception Wed Feb 5, 5-8 pm. Mon-Fri. Through Feb 28. 1701 Broadway, #2BE2116 344-4379. MIA GALLERY

Albus: Justin Dingwall & Thando Hopa: A photo series addressing the stigma of albinism in Africa. Free. Tues-Sat. Through Feb 28. 1203A 2nd Ave, 467-4927.

Continuing Exhibitions

GALLERY4CULTURE

Ronald Hall : Candy-colored paintings picturing the weight and legacy of African American history by a Seattle artist with a background working at Nintendo. He depicts racial history as part video game and part seductive nightmare. Free. Mon-Fri. Through Jan 30. 101 Prefontaine Pl S, 296-7580.

VERMILLION

Dylan Neuwirth: Forever: Thirty glowing, white neon cursive blow-ups of Tweets. Free. TuesSun. Through Feb 8. 1508 11th Ave, 709-9797.

WASHINGTON STATE CONVENTION & TRADE CENTER

IDxID: New Identities Revisited: The original exhibition from the gallery IDEA Odyssey, was called IDxID curated by C. Davida Ingram, and here’s the follow-up, with new work from painter Kathy Liao and mixedmedia artist Kat Larson, and interdisciplinary, intersectionalidentity art from several others, too. Free. Mon-Sun. Through April 9. 800 Convention Pl, 2nd Floor, 694-5000.

Events

DAY OF IDEAS

A day of discussion, performance, and speeches on the importance of art to well-being. Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center 201 Mercer St, 4417178. intiman.org. Free. Sat Feb 1, 9 am-1 pm.

DESIGN LAB: AN OPEN SKETCHBOOK ON AURORA AVENUE

Three weekly gatherings, open to the public, are intended to re-imagine what has become Seattle’s dingiest thoroughfare. Today’s is the last, on “Development.” How did Aurora get this way and where is it headed? Henry Art Gallery 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. www.henryart.org. Free. Thurs Jan 30, 4:30-7:30 pm.

GALLERY LAW WORKSHOP

Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. Yes, even the most liberating and joyful thing in the world (art) is ensnared in the tentacles of legal rules and regulations. This workshop will equip you with the information you need to traverse this murky landscape. Safeco Plaza Conference Center 3300 1001 Fourth Ave, 33rd floor. $15 artists/$40 attorneys. Wed Jan 29, noon.

KATINKA BOCK

Exhibiting artist Bock gives a talk. Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. www. henryart.org. $10 suggested. Thurs Jan 30, 7 pm. IN THE TEMPLE OF THE SELF

Margot Brandlhuber, curator at the Museum Villa Stuck—the Munich museum completely dedicated to the work of Franz von Stuck—gives a lecture called In the Temple of the Self: The Artist’s Residence as a Total Work of Art—Europe and America 1800-1948 Frye Art Museum 704 Terry Ave, 6229250. www.fryemuseum.org. Free. Thurs Jan 30, 6:30 pm.

POLA-REDS: POLAROID SELF PORTRAITS

Works from Jack Johnston’s book of Polaroids taken principally in late-’70s San Francisco. Caffe Vita , 1005 E Pike St, 709-4440. www.caffevita.com.

Free. Reception Thurs Feb 13, 5-8 pm. Feb 1-28.

THROUGH THE EYES OF ART

A group exhibition from regional artists on the theme of gentrification, a keynote speech from Bruce Harrell, and music from Draze. EMP Museum , 325 Fifth Avenue N, 770-2702. www. empmuseum.org. Free. Sat Feb 1, 6-9 pm. visualart@thestranger.com

READINGS

Wed 1/29

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. The Book Larder 4252 Fremont Ave N. www.booklarder.com. Free. 6:30 pm.

NICK TURSE

The author of Kill Anything That Moves will discuss war crimes in the Vietnam War, and there will also be a screening of a 1972 documentary titled “Winter Soldier.” Johnson Hall, Room 102 UW Campus, 543-9606. Free. 6:30 pm.

RUTH OZEKI

Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time

Being is a novel about a lunchbox that washes to shore on an island in the Pacific Northwest.

Ozeki is also the author of My Year of Meats Third Place Books , 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. thirdplacebooks. com. Free. 7 pm.

ALLERGIC TO CATS III

The press materials for “Seattle’s bra-burningest poetry reading” promises “more purrrems than ever!” The featured readers are Emily Mundy and Nadine Maestas, and this is a fundraiser for the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Black Coffee Co-op, 501 E Pine St. blackcoffeecoop.com. Free. 7:30 pm.

RICHARD POWERS

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

Thurs 1/30

GARTH STEIN, JE NNIE

SHORTRIDGE

The local novelists share the spotlight for just one night. Stein is the author of The Art of Racing in the Rain. Shortridge is the author of Love, Water, Memory University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, 634-3400. bookstore.washington.edu. Free. 7 pm.

MARGIN SHIFT

Stranger Genius Maged Zaher joins poet Jeanne Morel to read poetry as part of the monthly series put on by local poetry collective Margin Shift. Hedreen Gallery, Seattle University, 901 12th Ave, 296-2244. Free. 7 pm.

MOVABLE TYPE LITERARY MIXER

Bring the book you’re reading. Drink a drink. Talk to some other drinking person about the book they brought. That’s all you need to know about this event, which is always great fun. Vermillion, 1508 11th Ave, 709-9797. www. vermillionseattle.com. Free. 7 pm.

REBECCA BROWN ON KAFKA

See preview, page 29 and Stranger Suggests, page 25. Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030. hugohouse.org. free. 7 pm.

SOPHIE CABOT BLACK

Here’s a piece of a poem from The Exchange: “I took care of myself. took care/Of myself, thinking much too often/I took care of someone else./Everything feels like payment.” That’s a nice couple stanzas, right there. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. elliottbaybook.com. Free. 7 pm.

ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON AND ANDREW MCAFEE

Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies is a book that addresses how computers will continue to make us obsolete. Town Hall 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 pm.

Mon 2/3

JEFF VANDERMEER

VanderMeer is the author, most recently, of Annihilation, which is the first book in a sci-fi trilogy. The other two books in the series will be published this year. It’s about the latest in a long series of doomed expeditions to a mysterious land. Elliott Bay Book Company 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600. elliottbaybook. com. Free. 7 pm.

Tues 2/4

I THINK I AM IN FRIENDLOVE WITH YOU READING

This is a reading for a book titled I THINK I AM IN FRIEND-LOVE WITH YOU, which is about the love between friends, which doesn’t get as much attention when compared to the sweaty, horny kind of love between lovers. Left Bank Books, 92 Pike St, 622-0195. www.leftbankbooks.com. Free. 7:30 pm. readings@thestranger.com

THEATER

Opening and Current Runs

AMERICAN WEE-PIE

See review, page 30. 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.

BLACK LIKE US Stories of racial identity in Seattle from 1958 (when a young woman begins passing as white) to 2013 (when three sisters find out a family secret). Written by Rachel Atkins, directed by Jose Amador. Annex Theatre 1100 E Pike St, 728-0933. annextheatre.org. $5-$20. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm. Through March 1.

DAWSON NICHOLS

Two solo shows by writer, actor, and director Dawson Nichols. The first, I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe is a macabre comedy about a man who believes he is the horror author. The second, Virtual Solitaire , is a murder-mystery about a man lost in an immersive video game. Both have been hits

on the Canadian fringe circuit. North Seattle Community College, 9600 College Way N, 526-7791. dawsonnichols.com.

$10. Fri at 7:30 pm. Through Feb 7.

ED, DOWNLOADED

Michael Mitnick’s sci-fi drama set in the (hopefully) near future when a digital immortality device allows expired users to dwell in a virtual heaven pieced together from their own pleasant memories. Directed by Ali el-Gasseir. Washington Ensemble Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, 3255105. washingtonensemble.org.

$15-$20. Thurs-Mon at 7:30 pm. Through Feb 24.

A GREAT WILDERNESS

See review, page 29. Seattle Repertory Theatre , 155 Mercer St, Seattle Center, 4432222. seattlerep.org. $12-$60.

Tues-Fri at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 and 7:30 pm. Through Feb 16.

THE NORMAL HEART

“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.) 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 is 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.” (Christopher Frizzelle) Erickson Theater Off Broadway, 1524 Harvard Ave, 427-5207. strawshop.org. $18-$36. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm. Through Feb 15.

RICHARD II

“In 2012, a theater company from Ramallah performed Richard II in the ruins of an eighth-century palace. It’s hard to imagine a better backdrop for Shakespeare’s gloomy play about broken power.

George Mount, artistic director of Seattle Shakespeare Company, plays Richard as lyrical, delicate, arrogant, and totally out of touch with his noblemen, who are rumbling up from below him to seize his crown, led by the indignant Henry of Bolingbroke, soon to be Henry IV. ‘I wasted time,’ the young king sighs in his prison cell, ‘and now time doth waste me.’” (Brendan Kiley) Center Theatre, Seattle Center Armory, 684-7200. seattleshakespeare. org. $29-$48. Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Feb 2.

WHERE’S PAPI?

Solo performer Miguel Morales takes on a tour of his youth growing up Puerto Rican in Chicago and tells the story of his vanishing father, who reappears when Morales is an adult only to vanish again. Eclectic Theater, 1214 10th Ave, 679-3271. eclectictheatercompany.org. $12-$20. Thurs-Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 2 pm. Through Feb 9.

Dance

THE BRIDGE PROJECT 2014

The Bridge Project is one of Velocity Dance Center’s great gifts to the city—you want to find the next important dancer or choreographer (or musician or designer or filmmaker) in this town? That person might be here. On deck this round: Shannon Stewart, Babette McGeady, Anna Conner, and Colleen McNeary, who will perform new works created in three “pressure-cooker” weeks. Velocity Dance Center 1621 12th Ave, 325-8773. velocitydancecenter.org. $12-$18. FriSun at 8 pm. Through Feb 2.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

A second course of Tchaikovsky (after Pacific Northwest Ballet’s run of Nutcracker). This classic story of romance and slumber, choreographed by Ronald Hynd, reinforces the important message to children of all ages: You don’t have to be awake to be beautiful. McCaw Hall , 321 Mercer St, 441-2424. pnb.org. $28-$125. Thurs-Fri at 7:30 pm, Sat at 1 and 7:30 pm, Sun at 1 pm. Through Feb 9.

theater@thestranger.com

HALSTON IN AMERICAN HUSTLE

American Hustle is a smart film about wealth and deception and scattershot yearning, and it’s set in 1978, so the year’s many fashion enchantments suffuse all scenes: the man-perms, the horse-bit pendants, the disco sparkles, the bouncing gold chains, the perpetual braless-ness Costume designer Michael Wilkinson pulled inspiration from the era’s superstars, including Diane von Furstenberg and Yves Saint Laurent, and he collaborated with Halston staff, who granted him access to the company’s vaults. “There’s little bits of Halston sprinkled throughout the whole movie,” Wilkinson told Emily Zemler for Elle. Amy Adams’s character, Sydney, even

wears a couple authentic pieces—a silky apricot-colored blouse and a chocolatebrown leather wrap dress. Both garments’ necklines are split to her waist, enabling a partial spilling-out of boobs.

To really bring the razzle-dazzle in one scene, Sydney’s hair is crimped into a frothy mound, and she wears a plunging gown with silver sequins. The look recalls the stage costumes Halston created for Liza Minnelli, back when he caked her dresses in shimmering beads. The effect was intended to offset her profuse sweatiness: “Well, you’re shiny, so you might as well be shiny all over,” Minnelli says Halston told her, in the documentary Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston, which you should watch right now if you want to see more luxury retro fashions.

Ultrasuede is loaded with them, and they look gorgeous—though it’s hard to grasp their real value, because director Whitney Smith grazes over Halston’s technical skills. We come to understand Halston was an expert at bias-cut constructions, but that’s as detailed as it gets, and what seems more important to Smith is that Halston was famous as fuck, and tons of celebrities loved him.

Halston’s story ends tragically. AIDSrelated complications took his life in 1990, and in the handful of years before then, everything had gone completely wrong. At the height of his career, Halston sold his name to J.C. Penney, which cheapened his image, so Bergdorf Goodman dropped him, and then the Penney collections were failing, but Halston couldn’t recover, yet he couldn’t start over, either. Footage from the ’70s and early ’80s shows happier times, when Halston worked hard and sold well, and the world gave him everything he wanted, including his haute-minimalist Manhattan town house, his champagne-and-cocaine-and-caviar parties, his mirrored sunglasses, and his glamorous cameo on The Love Boat

MUSIC

Mother of Invention

Raica’s Incredibly Dark Woman-Machine Music

BY DAVE SEGAL

Scenes of garish violence, lurid sex, and other B-movie shenanigans from films like The Mad Butcher and Blast-Off Girls flicker on the screen at Re-bar during a recent edition of

the Monster Planet monthly. Three dudes with PowerBooks and analog synthesizers, a male drummer, and visuals guru Leo Mayberry are creating an immersive, hallucinogenic improv jam that makes you feel as if you’ve washed down three hits of LSD with absinthe. Also contributing to the audio surrealism is Chloe Harris (aka Raica). The scene typifies Harris’s career in electronic music—that of the (usually) lone exceptional woman in a tech-savvy boy’s-club atmosphere. Harris takes a break from the action and says, “[Monster Planet honcho] Gel-Sol and I are working with analog gear [Doepfer Dark Energy + Dark Time, Korg Electribe ER1]. I love this.”

from a Skinny Puppy background, all this dark aggression and these beautiful sounds, it bothered me how everything was [animatedly sings and snaps fingers] ‘WOO WOO! WOO WOO!’”

At 18, Harris decided she wanted to DJ, but didn’t get her second turntable and mixer till she was 20. She’s still using those same decks 17 years later. She scored her first residency at Mr. Spot’s Chai House in 2001.

MOTOR

w/Raica, Airport, Apartment Fox, Patternmaster, DJ Domenica Fri Jan 31, Lo-Fi, 9 pm, $5, 21+

Harris grew up in South Seattle and Kirkland, and she has lived in her childhood house in the latter place since her mother passed away in 2003. There, Harris runs the adventurous, eclectic Further Records label with her husband, Mark Cullen. The couple’s son Jack was born seven months ago—during the same week Harris dropped her great experimentalelectronic album, Lucent Glances. Her father, Kim Harris, founded Easy Street Records and comanaged the prog-metal band Queensrÿche to massive success. When he gifted his young daughter with a copy of Kraftwerk’s The ManMachine, it sparked her interest in electronic music. “All I wanted was to live in the future,” Harris says in an interview at her home, while Cullen looks after Jack in the kitchen. “Robot music—I was really fascinated with that.”

After a childhood dabbling with hiphop (and breakdancing), new wave, synth pop, and industrial music, Harris got into rave music at age 14 after stealing a friend’s older brother’s mixtapes. She started going to dance parties at 15, but she was no furry-bra’d candy raver. “I didn’t like happy dance music. Coming

“What I loved about it was, you didn’t have to play dance music,” she says. “You could play all sorts of music, which was fun, because I collect all sorts of music. I was learning about a lot of current styles of dance music then. When [defunct local internet radio station] Groovetech started, I had a residency there for the entire time it was on the radio.”

Perhaps ironically, Harris made her name as a DJ who excelled at progressive house and techno. She mastered the difficult art of warming up the club for headliners. Harris was so good that revered British DJ John Digweed tapped her to tour with him in huge venues worldwide, including stints at London’s Bedrock and Ministry of Sound. “One time in Tenerife, John was late and I DJed for almost five hours,” Harris recalls. Clubbers were howling for Digweed, but Harris kept her wits about her.

Speaking of Further, the tiny label is interested in “music that surprises us and is interesting,” Harris says. Further is a haven for unconventional artists, including the late German electronic pioneer Conrad Schnitzler, Italian producer Dozzy, Decimus (Pat Murano of No-Neck Blues Band), and Belgium’s Innercity. “Those [last two releases] are very disturbed, crunchy, weird records,” Harris says. She and Cullen favor artists who are unpredictable and hard to classify. The duo’s DIY ethos extends to manufacturing, as Cullen has figured out how to make his own covers to trim expenses, while Harris focuses on the art adorning said covers. “We try to make everything as good as we can with our limited budget,” Cullen says. “Some labels don’t care, and I notice that as a consumer.”

Two of Raica’s best releases came out in 2013: the Treh cassette on Digitalis and the Lucent Glances LP. The former emphasizes melancholy beatless beauty somewhere between Kompakt’s Pop Ambient and Mille Plateaux’s Clicks & Cuts series; the latter delves deeper into a frigid inferno of unsettling atmospheres and foreboding rhythms. It’s some of the most chilling electronic music coming out of Seattle. Lucent Glances features no overdubbing; it’s cut “just straight from the boxes to tape,” Harris says.

Harris started going to dance parties at 15, but she was no furrybra’d candy raver.

Harris explains her predilection for sonic gloom with a chuckle: “I guess because I come from Skinny Puppy and the Cure. Generally the music I love is melancholy or dark. Autechre and Aphex Twin blew my mind in 1992. Their music is not happy. Once I found out there were people making electronic music that wasn’t happy… I stopped making dance music because it was hard for me. A lot of people think dance music is easy because it’s a pattern, but that’s what’s boring about it.”

WHAT’S CRAPPENING?

NEWS, REVIEWS, & RYAN LEWIS BY PHARRELL’S HAT

• Sprockets! A new electronic-musicoriented club called Kremwerk opens February 14. Located on Minor Avenue near Re-bar, Kremwerk is owned by Berlin transplant Austin Stone and will be booked with help from local DJs Ctrl_Alt_Dlt and Roddimus, who ran the raging techno monthly SpaceRock Saturdays at the defunct Electric Tea Garden. Kremwerk has already scored a coup by getting Underground Resistance member Santiago Salazar to headline the space on February 15.

• Brian Foss, owner of legendary but now-defunct punk dump the Funhouse can’t seem to catch a break. For a minute, he was promoting shows at the lovely Sodo dive Bogart’s, but unfortunately it looks like that place has also shuttered. The indefatigable Foss remains the primary talent-finder for Broadway’s Highline, which still appears to be going strong.

• Local hardcore punks Deadkill played a record-release show on Friday night at Chop Suey, and it got off to a worrisome start. The audience Seattle-froze for the first few songs, standing around with folded arms. But by the last three songs, a

messy mosh pit was in full effect, with people throwing half-full cans of beer at the stage and shirtless lead singer Bryan Krieger crowd-surfing with ease.

• Beloved fuzzed-out reverbers the Vivian Girls officially broke up last week. The trio formed in 2007 and will play their last show in New York on March 1. The Girls still plan to keep it musical: Cassie Ramone currently plays in the Babies, Katy Goodman with her project La Sera, and Ali Koehler with her new band Upset.

• Seattle’s Macklemore & Ryan Lewis cleaned up at the 56th annual Grammy Awards, taking home golden gramophones for best new artist and, in the rap categories, best song and best performance for “Thrift Shop,” and best album for The Heist. During the televised portion of the ceremony, Mack and Mr. Lewis played “Same Love” with Mary Lambert while Queen Latifah officiated the marriages of 33 couples onstage. Madonna joined in toward the end of the performance, because of course she did, dressed in a white Colonel Sanders–type getup, complete with a cane.

Around 2005, though, Harris tired of that sound and hasn’t really spun it out since then. These days, Harris is into artists like Steve Summers, Frak, Eprom, and Soom T. “The cyclical nature of dance music puts me off of it. It needs to be something new now. We can’t keep going with the same formula in every genre. We have to push things further.”

While motherhood has slowed her musical output, Harris had her most prolific creative spurt while she was pregnant; she recorded 20 of what she called Experiential Tapes, some of which ended up on Lucent Glances. “I was trying to learn how to be varied enough to adapt to situations with my boxes live. Good learning lesson!” Harris’s entire musical career has been a good lesson—in how a woman can succeed in a male-dominated field without compromising at all.

• How do you put a crowd, uh, in the mood? One way: Play a live cover of cocaine’s greatest achievement, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, start to finish. Throughout Vaudeville Etiquette’s cover of the album last Saturday night at the Sunset in Ballard, there were couples kissing, grown men squealing, women highfiving, and at least one guy in a white dress suit doing a dance that involved lots of pointing at the ceiling. “So in preparation, we didn’t all sleep together, which we probably should have,” Vaudeville Etiquette singer Tayler Lynn said.

Up the Country

Tractor Tavern Toasts 20 Years as Seattle’s Americana Hub

BY EMILY NOKES

Opening in a rough-around-the-edges Ballard (can you imagine?) during Seattle’s 1990s music-explosion heyday, the Tractor Tavern did something a little different by catering to the

Americana, roots, folk, bluegrass, singersongwriter, and alt-country scenes. Situated on the now hoppin’ Ballard Avenue, the old girl has managed to maintain a fairly sweaty, boot-stompin’ atmosphere—a dusty oasis in the midst of an increasingly artisanified neighborhood.

In anticipation of the upcoming milestone, I chatted with Greg Garcia—the Tractor’s booker since 2008—about craft cocktails. Just kidding, we talked about sleazy fishermen and that time King Khan and the Shrines drank two gallons of Jameson.

Tractor’s 20th Anniversary w/the Maldives Fri–Sat Jan 31–Feb 1, Tractor Tavern, 9 pm, $15, 21+

What are your memories of the Tractor and Ballard before you started booking there? I have always been a fan of the Tractor for as long as I could get into bars—I’m 36 now. I played some of my first shows as a musician here and would frequent shows for bands like Willis and the Clumsy Lovers back in the day.

Ballard was really the closest thing you could get to a drunken fisherman village. Blue-collar guys coming off the boats from Alaska with pockets full of money, just wantin’ to score chicks and drink, and that was pretty much it [ laughs ]. An old Norwegian fishing village. My mom worked at the old Shilshole Broiler restaurant on Market from the time I was in fourth grade until it closed in the mid ’90s. Lots of drunken fishermen came in, who are still here, and even Mudhoney. I remember my mom telling me about the time she served Mudhoney at the restaurant and told them that I played drums, and they said, “Tell him not to get into music” [ laughs ]. She would also take me to see all the old fishing boats or to see Duffy Bishop play at the Ballard Seafood Fest. I guess Ballard has always been in my blood. Now when my mom comes over to the neighborhood, we always have to stop into the Smoke Shop so she can see Darlene, who’s still tending bar there—she’s a Ballard legend.

and the Shrines. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. They showed up almost two hours late and drank themselves silly—just got fucking hammered—and did enough blow for everyone here. I remember someone asked them, “Oh, is there anything else you guys need?” And they were like, “Oh yeah, can you get us some blow?” Totally nonchalantly. I think they drank like two gallons of Jameson that night. It was madness. It was really fun—for a Sunday night in Ballard, it was pretty weird. They did a KEXP on-air the following morning, and I think showed up there at like 7 a.m. and might have been asked to leave because they were still partying.

And Evan Dando is kind of a notorious one. One time he just didn’t show up, didn’t show up for a gig, so the last few times we’ve booked him, we’ve been a little hesitant. And one of the times we booked him, I think he shit his pants onstage. No joke. Literally crapped his pants onstage. Another time, his band was here, and they were like, “Yeah… Evan’s still in LA.” It was four hours before the show, and he was just getting on a plane. So you never know what you’re going to get from him. He’s an interesting guy.

Now, of course, Ballard has changed. A little more upscale, a little more craft cocktail going on. Yeah, craft cocktails [laughs]. But a lot of the old Norwegian people are still here, and it’s still a pretty diverse place—the downtown Ballard area is definitely condos and people in their mid to late 20s and 30s who have a little bit of money. We had a band here the other night, and they were talking about the first time they played the Tractor and how there were about three places to go get a drink before the show. Now you have about 50-plus. Obviously there has been a lot of growth here, and lots of change.

Has that changed the way the Tractor operates at all? That’s the whole thing for me—I definitely have always tried to preserve the history here, but at the same time, we’re a business. And I think it’s the same model with many live-music venues. You gotta stick with what put you guys on the map, but you gotta cater to your neighborhood, too.

The Tractor is known to have more of a country-and-western bent with shows—are there goals in mind when it comes to the shows it books? This place really got put on the map because of the alt-country movement of the mid to late ’90s, when bands like Whiskeytown started to come out, and that’s how this place really got its street cred—being a part of that movement. The Tractor has always championed a lot of the alt-country, Americana, bluegrass, and folk movements from the early 2000s. I’ve tried to take what has been successful here, but also branch out into other genres such as rock, indie, and even some hiphop shows. We have also been a big supporter to developing local bands.

What were some of the first shows you put on? Or memorable shows in your years of booking? One of the more memorable national shows I booked was the first year I started, in July of 2008. King Khan

So what about smaller bands coming through that blew up? Another show in October of 2008 was some little English folk band called Mumford & Sons. They played for the door with Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn. I think we had about 150 people here. The next time I saw them was at a sold-out Paramount show years later, and they actually asked the crowd that night if anyone had seen them at the Tractor Tavern. It’s always great to see bands later that remember their roots and pay respect to that.

The Head and the Heart played here a few times. The last time they played here, the buzz was getting pretty big, and you could just tell—we’re never gonna see this band here again. James Blake was another one. He played his first Seattle show here. The agent told me he really wanted to play here, and I think I had just got on a short flight that day, when we put the tickets on sale, and like an hour and a half later, I called the office, and the show had sold out in 45 minutes. Bastille was another one—they

“One of the times we booked him, I think he shit his pants onstage.”

played here a few months ago, and their next show is at Showbox Sodo and I think it’s sold out. Some other notables that I really was excited about were Citizen Cope, Heartless Bastards, Old 97s, Trampled by Turtles, X (Eddie Vedder joined them onstage), Split Lip Rayfield, Jason Isbell, Justin Townes Earle, Graveyard.

Tell us a little bit about the Tractor anniversary shows coming up. We wanted to put some shows together that feature bands that did some of their early shows here, as well as bands we are excited about. We just want people to drop in and share their memories. Doing two nights with the Maldives, then Mudhoney (Feb 15), Moondoggies (Feb 14), Sera Cahoone (Feb 8), and new bands like Fruition from Portland (Feb 7). The Moondoggies have played here for years and years, and the Maldives I think are the closest thing you can get to the Tractor house band. Those guys have probably played here more than anybody.

Comment on craft cocktails at THESTRANGER.COM/MUSIC

TOAD THE WET SPROCKET

Jonathan

Pusha

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.

BUZZCOCKS

Singles Going Steady (I.R.S.)

The Buzzcocks? A PARTY. A party for your face and your feet. Upbeat as all hell, spinning away full of drums, in love with you and in love with orgasms and in love with life. This is what I always hoped punk would be like! I feel like I have a place in my heart for angry punk about politics and a place in my heart for peppy punk that makes you laugh and want to thrash your hair around. I do not have room for the whiny white-boy shit where they just sound like they’re bored and annoyed that you busted in on band practice. But this is the best! First, it starts off with a song called “Orgasm Addict,” which stays funny the whole time. “Well you tried it just for once/Find it all right for kicks/But now you find out that it’s a habit that sticks/And you’re an orgasm addict.” Stains on your jeans! Making it with the lady who puts birds on cakes!

MY PHILOSOPHY

“THUG” LIFE

As I write this, as I live and breathe, it’s some days after the Seahawks clinched their Super Bowl spot—and motherfuckers are still talking about what Richard Sherman said, and how he said it. That helped make for (what Twitter user @dudmatic called) “the most racist MLK Day since the year before they started celebrating MLK Day.” Props go to Sherman for breaking down exactly what the American media and its parade of bloated, bloviating talking heads mean when they use the word “thug.” Even worse, by the time you read this, they’ll still be talking that shit, unless Canada’s sweetheart Justin Bieber takes precedence. Kiev and everywhere else can burn, I guess. Meanwhile, you can still taste your NYE hangover, but January is about to be over; one down, 11 to go—this is your year, how’s things? Friday, January 31, there are a couple shows that fall under this column’s purview—first is Seattle’s the Nightcappers (featuring former members of Disjointed Isotopes), whose jovial early-’00s throwbackpack vibe is very Puget Sound People Under the Stairs. This night, though, they’re teaming up with Gran Rapids’ Jay Battle to present Battlecaps at the High Dive. Also rocking: Kublakai, Tricericorn, the Halves Two, and Akrish

At the Neptune that same night: chillwave maker Washed Out and LA’s Kisses perform with Seattle trippy kids Kingdom Crumbs who next month are writing/recording their

(Must be a British thing.) Then a plaintive song about wanting a lover and a friend (we all volunteer, dudes!), then some British teen angst. They sound like white sneakers and jumping, like sitting on cushions on the floor in the living room and laughing so hard you fall over, like looking up at all your friends and they’re laughing too. The Buzzcocks are a club, and you are in it!

I had to listen to this one in a rush, because of circumstance. In between the initial listenings and the more in-depth repeats, I went to the dentist, where they have apparently invented a new gum-torture machine that makes the sound of a shrieking baby dinosaur chewing on a slab of glass. I do not recommend it, though, hey, we all need a new free toothbrush sometimes.

All I’m saying, really, is that this is not only great, but specifically when compared to the demon whine of a dental instrument, it is like the sound of a million tiny golden angels in a choir whispering the password of happiness directly onto each of your stereocilia. Good uses for this album:

• Dance party with all your friends

• Dance party with just you and a glass of wine

• Soundtrack to cleaning your house on a nice day and you want it to go really quickly so you can get the hell outside

• Music to listen to in transit on your way to see someone great.

In the secret dreams of my secret heart, there is at least someone out there who reads this because they are in the same spot as me, and they’re hoping to get some guidance on which Very Important Music is worth their time. You, imaginary person: This is for you! This is for us!

I give this a “wooooohoooo!” out of 10.

[Note to pedants: We know this isn’t a proper studio album, but we felt it best distills the Buzzcocks’ essence. —Ed.]

next album in the also-chill environs of the Doe Bay Resort.

Queens’s number-one 300-pound Albanian/Jewish ginger-bearded gourmet rapper (and real-life ex–New York Mets chef) Action Bronson hits the Neptune on Saturday, February 1. He’ll have his guy, producer Party Supplies, with him, so expect a (thankfully) Blue Chips 1 and 2–heavy set from Bronsolino—along with his usual fish tales of flamboyant gymnastic maneuvers (Triple Lindy out the Jeep/Land into a split/Get up into a spin), extreme sexual acts, and extravagant foodstuffs. The massive and massively prolific rapper is unquestionably great in the headphones and out the speakers (no, really, and if you truly think he sounds just like Ghostface, you might not really fuck with Ghost like that), but I can’t front—the whole blowup last year of him pouring water on a passed-out person and Instagramming the “Drunk Mexican Tranny” in question (and his subsequent “fuck the haters” non-apology) gave me a strong this-is-ashitty-person vibe, not at all uncommon with rappers by any means. Still, it was a mile, at least, over the line of hateful rap-guy shit that I can usually stomach as a grown resident of BasedWorld (though it probably contributed to his godsend status among the “real hiphop” kids for whom hateful speech is virtually an unwritten cultural law). The whole thing gave me the white-guywho-drops-the-N-bomb-among-friends—not necessarily hard R status—vibe that’s hard to shake, but I don’t know the dude (he is from the extremely diverse Flushing, Queens), or where his head’s actually at. So, like Teddy KGB said, “Pay that man his money.” That said, GO HAWKS. We need this. If you’re feeling like it’s the town’s time, you ain’t alone.

FELICIA MICHAELS

SOUND CHECK

WIMPS MAKE MUSIC YOU CAN KNOCK OVER SMALL SHEDS TO

My friend Lucas likes to chug beer and run into the side of small sheds to see if he can knock them over. He sits in his car, slams Hamm’s or Rainier, and listens to music to get fired up beforehand. He’s a large guy, but I don’t think he’s ever actually knocked a shed over—he just gets off on the release from the impact. The other day, I slipped Lucas a copy of Wimps’ new EP, Party at the Wrong Time (out on Help Yourself Records), and asked him to make it the music for his next shed-dozing escapade. I told him I wanted a review when he was finished. Two days later, Lucas called back, yelling, “Fucking drencher, yeah!” I asked him if that was good, and he said, “Oh yeah, I fucking loved it. Those songs are perfect for shed-hits. It’s rhythm ’n’ balls.” There you have it. It’s also scrappy punk, full of feisty, negativistic decrees. Party at the Wrong Time is Wimps’ second release, and the trio of singer/ guitarist Rachel Ratner, drummer Dave Ramm, and bassist Matt Nyce sounds spunky and honed. Ratner sings with hearty charges, issuing bummer-mandates in call-and-response with Nyce. Peppered lyrical content ranges from animal medicine to economic funk to phone tapping. For the interview, we imagined we were in an imaginary steak house. Lucas was not there.

Fri

Ramm: I liked the Buccaneer in Memphis. We played with this amazing blues band called Time. Also Wally’s World in Chicago and Silent Barn in New York were both really fun. And that Harrisonburg, Virginia, house party at the Crayola House was really fun.

Ratner: They passed a hat afterward, and in the hat was cash, beer, a black crystal skull, some crushed cigarettes, and an assortment of pharmaceuticals.

Where do Wimps songs come from?

Ratner: You know, the old existentially meaningless void that is everyday life in the modern world.

Nyce: The same old crap. Eating your dog’s medicine. Write what you know.

Ramm: One song’s about how I don’t party much, but when I do, it’s on a Tuesday night before my first day at a new job [laughs].

How do you all usually write? Ratner: Usually we each take a fistful of mescaline and then climb to the top of the tallest mountain and sit reflecting on the world, Father John Misty–style. Other times, we get drunk and play together and then record it

on our phones and then listen to it later and if we like it then it’s a song.

Nyce: [Pauses] Like Father John Misty.

ROCKIN PIANO SHOW

YOU NAME IT, WE’LL CELEBRATE IT!

30 • 7:30PM zach fleury w/ stephanie anne johnson & nathan reed

FRI/JANUARY 31 • 7PM DAVID LEONG PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS the year of the horse - a cultural celebration of the chinese new year 2014

2

3PM

How have Wimps changed as a band in the last year? Ratner: My body’s capacity to digest pizza has increased tenfold. And my liver is as strong as an ox. Also, Dave’s better than ever at Arkanoid. Did you know Dave is the premier Arkanoid player in Seattle? Go to John John’s, he’s got his name on the machine. They call him Arkanoid Dave.

Nyce: Dave has moved to Portland, moved to Seattle, moved to Portland, and moved to Seattle.

Ramm: We’ve toured a lot.

What are the keys to being good at Arkanoid? Ramm: It’s like Breakout from the original Atari. I started playing Arkanoid on the original Nintendo; it came with its own special paddle. One of the keys to doing well, I think, is I don’t use the laser that much. They lure you into using it—it seems like it’d be easier to shoot stuff. But it’s a distraction, and you actually get more points if you just use the regular ball.

Where have been your favorite places to play on tour? Nyce: I really like the Know in Portland. Every time we’ve been there, it’s been really good. Like when we played with the Therapists, and the guy barfed on command four different times.

Ratner: I’ve never seen someone vomit so much onstage and keep singing [laughs]. The mic was covered in it. And all I could think was “I have to use his mic after this.”

Ramm: Sometimes Rachel will have a song almost completed and then bring it to us. We probably write songs every way a band can write songs.

What do you think about when you play your instruments? Ratner: Don’t mess up don’t mess up don’t mess up don’t mess up don’t mess up don’t mess up.

Ramm: I’m really sweating a lot.

Nyce: If it’s a live show, I worry about chipping my teeth on the mics. I have a bass amp that shocks me when the switch is flipped one way and I complete the circuit by singing in the mic, but I’m not shocked at all if it’s flipped the other way. The “danger” direction changes depending on where we are playing. I’ll spend the first part of the set wondering if I will be electrocuted, then the rest thinking about Father John Misty.

How do your new songs differ from your first release? Ratner: They’re newer.

Nyce: Didn’t you write them on acid, Rachel?

Ratner: No!

Nyce: Right. Rachel didn’t write them on acid. Write that down. And we wrote them more as a band.

Ramm: It’s a fuller sound. A little less lo-fi.

Nyce: I’d say we’re in lo-/mid-fi range.

Ratner: And I think we’re always kind of progressing as a band and getting more creative in the kinds of parts we’re writing. And always looking to get better at Arkanoid…

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

WED/FEBRUARY 5 • 7:30PM patty

FRI/FEBRUARY 7 • 7PM 6TH ANNUAL GIMME SHELTER the dusty 45s w/ the believers

duncan sheik • 2/12 - 2/15 the atomic bombshells :: j’adore! a burlesque valentine • 2/16 the presidents of the united states of america (acoustic)

FRIDAY 1/31 THE PACK AD THE

SAT U RDAY 4/5 BETTY WHO

TH U RSDAY 4/10 ALEXANDER ROBOTNICK FRIDAY 2/21 CLEARLY BELOVED  S UN DAY 2/23 THE TWELVES  FRIDAY 3/28 SMALL BLACK  SNOWMINE

COMING SOON • 2/1 The Young Evils • 2/7 Desert Noises + Aan • 2/8 Hospitality • 2/9 Porter Ray • 2/10 Quilt • 2/11 Delorean + Until The Ribbon Breaks • 2/13 Shit RoboT • 2/15 Sylvan Esso • 2/19 Lawrence Rothman • 2/22 DJ Spooky • 2/24 Xiu Xiu • 2/25 A Tribe Called Red • 2/26 The Trouble Starts • 2/28 Agesandages • 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! • 5/3 Breton• 5/34 Wake Owl

UP&COMING

Lose your indie-movie make-out montage every night this week!

For the full music calendar, see page 49 or visit thestranger.com/music

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

Wednesday 1/29

Dent May, Jack Name, Acapulco Lips (Chop Suey) Headliner Dent May is a fey, ukuleleplaying singer-songwriter from Mississippi who records for Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label. His newest album, Warm Blanket, fleshes out his sound with electronic elements and bigger beats, with May’s vocals sounding like a cross between Edwyn Collins and Mayer Hawthorne. Blanket’s best song, “Born Too Late,” possesses a string-laden homage to John Barry’s “Midnight Cowboy” theme, so my previous indifference toward May has receded a bit. The main attraction tonight, though, is Jack Name (the tour guitarist for White Fence), whose Light Show is a mind-bonking rock carnival ranging from frenzied bubblegum glam to Codeined fantasias to “Pure Terror,” the most glorious psych-pop tune this side of Mercury Rev’s “Car Wash Hair.” And more. Read the article about Jack Name, “Run for the Shadows,” in the January 22 issue. DAVE SEGAL

Thursday 1/30

Zappa Plays Zappa (Neptune) The thing about Zappa Plays Zappa— Dweezil Zappa’s tirelessly touring group that pays tribute to his late father Frank’s music—is that they will never run out of material, even if Dweez lives to be 100. That’s because the Zappa/Mothers of Invention canon is huge, diverse, and rarely dull. For this date, ZPZ celebrate the 40th anniversary of Roxy & Elsewhere, a double live album that features some of Frank’s strangest and most intricate compositions. While Dweezil won’t have George Duke (RIP), Ruth Underwood, Don Preston, or Jeff Simmons in tow, he’s sure to have a crack cast to

execute these madly inventive songs. This should be a reverent homage to an irreverent sonic provocateur. DAVE SEGAL

Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell (Jazz Alley) The electric guitar really began to blossom as a musical phenomenon in the space age, back when mainstream America—and especially the supersonic Northwest—was giddy with the idea of a youth-friendly future that moved at the speed of electrons. Dick Dale, Chuck Berry, Speedy West, the Wrecking Crew, the Astronauts, Duane Eddy, and the rest of the gang were the sweetly naive soundtrack for that sweetly naive era. Tonight, the ever-morphing jazz-guitar experiment known as Bill Frisell will join four master collaborators (Greg Leisz on electric and pedal steel guitar, Tony Scherr on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums) to fool around in that interstellar rock ’n’ roll playground. If you’ve ever wanted to check out the legendary and prolific Frisell but have been intimidated by his wilder experiments, this is your golden opportunity. He’ll be starting with the all-too-familiar American pop canon and, let’s hope, launching it into orbit. BRENDAN KILEY

MusiCares benefit: Jayhawks vs. Uncle Tupelo with Star Anna, Massy Ferguson, Evening Bell, Annie Ford Band (Tractor) It’s common knowledge that people who make a serious go of it in the music business sometimes find themselves broke, uninsured, and especially vulnerable to the crap that can happen to any of us (earthquakes, illness, flooding, folly). This show is a benefit for MusiCares, an organization that serves as a safety net for music folks in bad situations. Tonight, a whole passel of alt-country musicians—Star Anna, the Swearengens, Barb Hunter, the Radio Nationals, Red Jacket Mine, many

more—will try to outdo each other with covers of Jayhawks and Uncle Tupelo tunes. There will be good-natured competitive craziness and a raffle. Hosted by Don Slack of KEXP’s country-roadhousetwang show Swingin’ Doors BRENDAN KILEY

Friday 1/31

The Maldives (Tractor) See preview, page 38.

MOTOR: Raica, Airport, Apartment Fox, Patternmaster, DJ Domenica (Lo-Fi) See preview, page 37, and Data Breaker, page 53.

Wimps, the Mantles, Still Caves (Victory Lounge) See Sound Check, page 43.

Battlecaps, Kublakai, Tricericorn, the Halves Two, Akrish (High Dive) See My Philosophy, page 41.

Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell (Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Washed Out, Kingdom Crumbs, Kisses

(Neptune) Washed Out’s endless, shimmering synth is like taking an Ambien at noon, in the summer, and then drifting down to the beach with a cooler of peach mimosas. You lie on the sand, feeling vaguely buzzed, but mostly drowsy and disoriented as layers and layers of warm dance pop wash over you. In between dehydrated naps, a blurry voice assures you: “It feels all right” and “You’re far away”—at least you think that’s what he’s saying. A couple hours or days later, you wake up draped in seaweed and sunburned. Washed Out (aka Ernest Greene) plays tonight with LA duo Kisses, bringing you all the pastel new-wave music you can handle, and Seattle four-piece hiphop/ spiritual-space-exploration unit Kingdom Crumbs. EMILY NOKES See also My Philosophy, page 41.

Ultra Bidé, Two Heads Is Twice as Many Teeth (El Corazón) When people discuss the roots of current noise-rock bands like METZ, Pissed Jeans, and Young Widows, they typically point to the 1990s rosters of Touch & Go and Amphetamine Reptile. Fair enough—Jesus Lizard, Big Black, and Killdozer certainly continue to wield their influence.

THURSDAY

FEBRUARY

FRIDAY 7

FEBRUARY

JANUARY ROWE The Buffalo Stagecoach 21+

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

SLOW BIRD Piano Piano NGHTBLND (Alex Rose of Minus the Bear) 21+ TUESDAY 4

Decibel Proudly Presents ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER The Sight Below, Dawn of Midi, Nordic Soul 21+

The Crocodile & ReignCity Present ZION I Mk Smth Aileron All Ages

The Crocodile & Da808 Music present: Winter BrewHaHa Tour PASSAFIRE & BALLYHOO! Pacific Dub, The Approach All Ages

The Crocodile Presents: “Let’s Dance” A Valentine’s Ball BOWIEVISION Braxmatics Purr Gato 21+

Sunday 3/16 CON BRO CHILL Tuesday 4/29 I BREAK HORSES UP & COMING EVERY TUESDAY LIQUID COURAGE KARAOKE

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 3/7 IKONIKA 3/19 THE KIN 3/20 JAMES VINCET MCMORROW

3/21 PAPADOSIO 3/22 BEAR’S DEN 3/25 THE MILAGRES 3/26 LOST IN THE TREES 3/27 THE STRYPES 4/3 FUTURE ISLANDS 4/6 DELTA RAE 4/11 CUNNINLYNGUISTS 4/12 KATIE HERZIG 4/16 JOHN NEWMAN 4/22 MOBB DEEP

5/1 THEE SILVER MT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA 5/3 WE ARE SCIENTISTS 5/21 S O H N Saturday 3/8 EOTO

But what about the Alternative Tentacles catalog? C’mon, certainly Alice Donut, Nomeansno, and Japanese dual-bass machine Ultra Bidé deserve equal credit. After all, Ultra Bidé have cranked out their low-end-heavy skuzzy no wave for longer than most of the current noiseniks have been alive. Their latest album, DNA vs DNA-c, came out after a 15year gap between releases, but it’s still as warped and abrasive as their early records. Let the old guys show the young’uns how it’s done.

BRIAN COOK

White Denim, Clear Plastic Masks (Neumos) Since the late ’00s, White Denim have developed their sound from a brassy, take-the-corners-wide garage/punk/noise thing to a Y2K-compliant take somewhere in the ballpark of Cream or the Allman Brothers. And while that’s not the most exciting evolution under the sun of noise, the Austin four-piece does a fine job of not bumming you out with the change. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve clearly mastered their instruments and songwriting chops in that time. Their latest, Corsicana Lemonade, which features coproduction from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, bears at least one solid jam in “Pretty Green,” and elsewhere, “Street Joy” and “Anvil Everything” off 2011’s D are sleeper classics. Further discography exploration recommended. I have not seen them live.

GRANT BRISSEY

The Pack A.D., the Dee Dees (Barboza) I bet both of these bands would kick in you right in the shins if you called them “girl bands.” Sure, both members of Vancouver garage-rock twopiece the Pack A.D. and the four members of Seattle’s Dee Dees have “female” checked on their respective driver’s licenses, but simply “girl bands” they are not. Pack A.D. singer/guitarist Becky Black and drummer/ songwriter Maya Miller play loud minimalist rock, à la other loud and rowdy two-pieces like the Black Keys and the Kills. The Dee Dees are this city’s premier Ramones tribute band, playing the punk classics from the ’70s and beyond. Both wanna party with you and properly shake the roof of Barboza. KELLY O

Cumulus, Dresses

(Chop Suey) Seattle’s most recent big-name export, Macklemore, achieved celebrity with an unlikely com-

bination of handsome-boy swag, positive messaging, and ’90s-leaning soulful beats. Cumulus, led by songwriter Alexandra Niedzialkowski, is likely to break onto the national scene for slightly more familiar reasons: well-honed songwriting chops, professional musicianship, and an ear for the occasional unstoppable, arena-ready hook. “Do You Remember,” the anthemic first cut off their debut album, I Never Meant It to Be Like This, is one indie-movie make-out montage away from going platinum. Might as well hop on the bandwagon while the getting’s good. KYLE FLECK

Saturday 2/1

Helms Alee

(Neumos) See Stranger Suggests, page 25.

Action Bronson

(Neptune) See Underage, page 52, and My Philosophy, page 41.

The Maldives

(Tractor) See preview, page 38.

Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell (Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Mary Lambert, Lemolo, Pollens (Showbox at the Market) What an effing couple

of years Mary Lambert’s had. After an excessively tough upbringing (featuring abuse, depression, evangelical Christianity, and Mars Hill Church), she graduated from Cornish College of the Arts and immediately began putting her degree in music composition to use. In 2012, she wrote and sang the invaluable hook for Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love.” In early 2013, she released her poetry book 500 Tips for Fat Girls, and in later 2013, she joined Macklemore for his “Same Love” juggernaut/victory lap; the sight of this gorgeous NW girl trading diva vocals with the professionally sculpted (and still plenty gorgeous) Jennifer Hudson at the VMAs was one of my favorite media moments of the year. Having just released her second EP, Welcome to the Age of My Body, Lambert lights up the stage at Showbox at the Market tonight, along with openers Lemolo and (fellow Cornish grads!) Pollens. DAVID SCHMADER

Piano Piano, NGHTBLND, Slow Bird (Crocodile) Piano Piano? Not a name that inspires optimism—nor makes web searches particularly fruitful. Thankfully, the Seattle group’s music overcomes those handicaps. Their baroque, elegant rock bears similarities to that of Explosions in the Sky, but Piano Piano mostly avoid the longueurs of that popular post-rock band. PP’s four musicians excel at launching fluid, florid melodies into the night sky, sometimes in tranquil beauty, other times in artful turbulence. Their proggy ambition is damn refreshing in a world overrun with underachievers. DAVE SEGAL

Sunday 2/2

Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell (Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Monday 2/3

Mayer Hawthorne, Quadron (Neumos) Michigan’s “blue-eyed (neo) soul” singer/ songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Mayer Hawthorne is a talented dude with an earnest approach to his mighty fine retro-sounding music, and now has three

solid albums to his name after last year’s Where Does This Door Go. Denmark’s Quadron (now living in Los Angeles) are fellow purveyors of modernized oldschool sounds, and fitting openers for Hawthorne’s throwback stylings. Featuring sultry-voiced Coco O on vocals and producer Robin Braun on their loungey electronic beats, their formula is simple but effective, and the end result heard on their recent Avalanche was enough to confirm that they’re one of the best things happening in this genre today. MIKE RAMOS

EntreMundos

(Capitol Cider) Newly installed at Capitol Cider, Latin jazz/soul collective EntreMundos are now busting out “diverse and groovy” jams every Monday night. Led by the silky vocal stylings of Adriana Giordano, EntreMundos’ masterful musicians are equally fit for boogie-down blues, Brazilian funk, or old-fashioned torch songs. And, as EntreMundos bills itself a “jam session,” expect to hear some newcomers rock the mic as well. The Hill just got that much funkier. KYLE FLECK

Tuesday 2/4

Oneohtrix Point Never, the Sight Below, Dawn of Midi, Nordic Soul (Crocodile) See Data Breaker, page 53.

La Luz, Pure Bathing Culture (Neumos) Local surf-rock quartet La Luz experienced some severe highs and lows in 2013. While they released a serious contender for Seattle album of the year with their excellent and widely celebrated It’s Alive, they also suffered a severe accident on the road when their tour van slipped on a patch of black ice and was struck by an out-of-control semitruck, leaving them with bruises and broken bones, destroying their gear, and forcing them to cancel their remaining dates (opening for indie veterans of Montreal, no less). Now healed up and fully back at it thanks to donations from their supporters, the band will headline their first local show of 2014—sure to be a righteous celebration of their accomplishments and resilience, and a welcome continuation of the progress they made last year. MIKE RAMOS

TUESDAY 2/4

$6 • 8PM

$6 • 8PM

THE RAM RAMS, THE LONELY DRIVERS, SMASHIE SMASHIE

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

TERENCE BLANCHARD SEXTET

THU, FEB 20 - SUN, FEB 23

Five-time Grammy winning trumpeter touring in support of his new release Magnetic

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

1.30 Thursday (Phish Tribute) An Evening With SHAFTY A Tribute to PHISH 1st set @9pm, 2nd set @11pm w/ “Kurodaesque Light Show”

$7 adv / $10 dos, 8pm doors, 21+

1.31 Friday (Power Funk) POLYRHYTHMICS w/ special guest Lucky Brown PLUS Turkuaz, DJ Funkscribe $10 adv / $15 dos, 8pm doors, 21+

2.1 Saturday (Latin) THE CUMBIEROS (CD Release party) Orkestar Zirkonium, Cordaviva, DJ Chilly (KEXP / Manos Arriba!)

2.2

’80s WRESTLERS, ’90s ATHLETES

DRUNK OF THE WEEK …BELOW THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA …51 UNDERAGE…52

POSTER OF THE WEEK …52 DATA BREAKER …53

WED 1/29

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 Pries, Thwag Lord, Andre Fabre, $15

CHOP SUEY Dent May, Jack Name, Acapulco Lips

CROCODILE All Star Opera, Cheef of the Knowmads, Warm Gun, DJ LazerJones EL CORAZON Oh Dear!,

AMRCNDREAMING, Coma Figura, Fantastic Animals

HIGH DIVE The Lucky Strikes, Mbrascatu, Tae Phoenix, 8 pm, $6

JAZZ ALLEY Oliver Mtukudzi, 7:30 pm, $26.50 LO-FI Matt Owen and the Eclectic Tuba, Wiscon, $8

PINK DOOR Casey MacGill & the Blue 4 Trio, 8 pm THE ROYAL ROOM Han Bennink, guests

SUNSET TAVERN Whiskey Myers

TRACTOR TAVERN Betsy Olson, Shakey Blankets, the Lonely Mountain Lovers

TULA’S Greta Matassa Jazz Workshop, 7:30 pm, $10

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Blue Sky Trio DJ

BALTIC ROOM DJ Shane, free before 10 pm, $3 after CHA CHA LOUNGE DJ Hank Rock, Cutz Like a Knife, free 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

PONY Bloodlust: DJs Gin & Tonic

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Fade: DJ Chinkyeye, DJ Christyle

CLASSICAL BENAROYA HALL 2014 Winter Festival:

THURS 1/30

LIVE 2 BIT SALOON Libby Koch, Mike Giacolino, Darci Carlson

ARABICA LOUNGE OAG Thang

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Pyramid Lake, the Jungle, Tessa and Anshika

CAFE RACER Nu Klezmer Army, How Things Work, Delta Halos

CHOP SUEY Tennis Pro, Fault Lines, 8 pm

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER Blackheart Honeymoon, the Bend, Christa Says Yay

CONOR BYRNE the Guardians

DISTRICT LOUNGE Cassia

DeMayo Quintet, 8 pm, free EL CORAZON Acidic, Dig the Kid, 7:30 pm, $10/$12 a GUAYMAS CANTINA

Oleaje Flamenco, 8 pm, free HARD ROCK CAFE Martha! Mother, J. Martin, Abraham

HIGHLINE Eternal Bad, $6

HIGHWAY 99 Deems, 8 pm, $7

JAZZ ALLEY Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell

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

NECTAR Shafty, $7

NEPTUNE THEATRE

Zappa Plays Zappa: Dweezil

Zappa

PINK DOOR Bric-a-Brac

THE ROYAL ROOM Mango

Son

STUDIO SEVEN Frank

Good, Funkitekture, Dex Amora, N$G

SUNSET TAVERN Sarah

Lee Guthrie, Johnny Iron, Snowblind Traveler, $12

TRACTOR TAVERN

Musicares Benefit: Jayhawks vs. Uncle Tupelo: Star Anna, Massy Ferguson, Evening Bell, Annie Ford Band, guests, 8 pm

TULA’S Axiom Quartet, 7:30 pm, $12

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

WAID’S Zebra Hunt, Detective Agency, $5, Zebra Hunt, Detective Agency, $5

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Rob, free

BALTIC ROOM Revolution:

DonnaTella Howe, Olivia

LaGarce, guests

THE EAGLE Nasty: DJ King of Pants, Nark

HAVANA Sophisticated

Mama: DJ Sad Bastard, DJ Nitty Gritty

LAST SUPPER CLUB Open

House: Guests

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

NEIGHBOURS Jet Set Thursdays: Guest DJs

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND The Lowdown: DJ Lightray, $3

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

THERAPY LOUNGE DUH.:

DJ Omar, guests

TRINITY Space Thursdays:

Rise Over Run, DJ Christyle, Johnny Fever, DJ Nicon, Sean Majors, B Geezy

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

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL

Shostakovich & Adams:

2014 Winter Festival

MEANY HALL University Symphony with Stephen Stubbs and Pacific Musicworks

FRI 1/31

LIVE

2 BIT SALOON

SpaceWaster, Green River Thrillers, Nordus

a ATLAS CLOTHING

USF, Red Alder, Children of Kids, 8 pm, $7

BARBOZA The Pack A.D., the Dee Dees, 7 pm, $10

THE BLACK DOG The Winterlings, 8 pm

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Annie Ford Band

CHINA HARBOR Orquesta

la Solucion, 9:45 pm, $15

a CHOP SUEY Cumulus, Dresses, 8 pm, $10/$13

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER

Big Sur, Brite Lines, Ruler

CONOR BYRNE Gomez

CROCODILE Johnny Flynn, the Melodic, 8 pm, $13

EL CORAZON Ultra Bide, Two Heads Is Twice

As Many Teeth, MTNS, $10/$12

FENIX The Herding Cats

HIGH DIVE the Nightcappers, Kublackai, Triceracorn, guests, $8

HIGHLINE Army of Dragon, Boomstick, Silver 8

HIGHWAY 99 Kalimba Band

JAZZ ALLEY Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell

LITTLE RED HEN Tony Bridges Band, $5

LO-FI Airport, Apartment

Fox, Patternmaster, RAICA

THE MIX No Body, Marion Walker, Mystery House, $8

NECTAR Polyrhythmics, Turkuaz, DJ Funkscribe

NEPTUNE THEATRE

Washed Out, Kingdom Crumbs, Kisses

NEUMOS White Denim, Clear Plastic Masks, 8 pm

PARAGON Levi Said, free THE ROYAL ROOM Marty

Ehlrich, 8 pm

SEAMONSTER Funky 2 Death, 10 pm, free

SHANTY TAVERN the Wild Snohomians, Earle Thunders, Kid Dynamite, $7

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET

Myon & Shane 54, Late Night Alumni, 8 pm

SLIM’S LAST CHANCE

Redneck Girlfriend, Hard Roller, Dead Man

STUDIO SEVEN Hanzel Und Gretyl, Murder Weapons, Stiff Valentine, Product, Church of Hate, 7 pm

SUNSET TAVERN Eternal Fair, Animal Eyes, the Magic Mirrors, 10 pm, $8

TIM’S TAVERN Rainy Day Devils, Vito and the One Eyed Jacks

TRACTOR TAVERN The Maldives, $15

a TRIPLE DOOR The Year of the Horse, 7 pm, $20

TULA’S Stephanie Porter Quartet, $15

VERA PROJECT A Lot Like Birds, Sianvar, Stolas, the Venetia Fair, guests

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE Lushy

WAID’S The Spoils, Cosmonauts, DJ Mamma Casserole, $8

DJ 95 SLIDE DJ Fever One BALLROOM DJ Tamm of

KISS fm

BALTIC ROOM Guests

BARBOZA Just Got Paid:

100proof, $5 after 11:30 pm

CONTOUR Afterhours, 2 am

FUEL DJ Headache, guests

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

LAST SUPPER CLUB

Madness: Guests

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Caliente

Celebra: DJ Polo, Efren

OHANA Back to the Day: DJ Estylz

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

[UNTITLED] Series: Seattle Symphony

CHAPEL PERFORMANCE

SPACE Elizabeth Baker:

MEANY HALL Modern Music Ensemble

SAT

2/1

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm

BARBOZA The Young Evils, Exohxo, Ghost Pains

BLUE MOON TAVERN Bad Love, Low Land High, Little Fixtures, $8

CENTRAL SALOON Amadon, the Breaking

CENTURY BALLROOM Greta Matassa Quartet

COLUMBIA CITY THEATER Chastity Belt, Wishbeard, Mega Bog, $7/$8

CROCODILE Piano Piano, NGHTBLND, 8 pm, $10

HARD ROCK CAFE Opus

HIGH DIVE Weatherside Whiskey Band, the Blackberry Bushes

HIGHWAY 99 Acapulco Gold

JAZZ ALLEY Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell

LITTLE RED HEN Tony Bridges Band, $5 LO-FI Studio 66, the Moonspinners, the 66ers NECTAR the Cumbieros, Orkestar Zirkonium, Cordaviva, DJ Chilly, $7 NEUMOS Helms Alee, Sandrider, Survival Knife, $10 THE ROYAL ROOM En Canto, 8 pm

SHOWBOX AT THE MARKET Mary Lambert, Lemolo, Pollens

SHOWBOX SODO The Devil Makes Three

SLIM’S LAST CHANCE Modern Relics, Red Jacket Mine

STUDIO SEVEN Soulfly, Asema, Unhailoed, Avoid the Void, 6:30 pm SUNSET TAVERN the Jesus Rehab, Hounds of the Wild Hunt, Tangerine, 10 pm, $8

TIM’S TAVERN Mr. Plow

TRACTOR TAVERN The Maldives, $15

a TRIPLE DOOR Alice Stuart & the Formerlys

VITO’S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE The Tarantellas, Ruby Bishop, 6 pm; Johnny Astro, 9:30 pm

DJ

BALLROOM DJ Warren BARBOZA Inferno: Guests, 10:30 pm, free before 11:30 pm/$5 after CONTOUR Europa Night: Misha Grin, Gil

CUFF Bear Heat: DJ Mattstands

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

MERCURY Machineries of Joy: DJ Hana Solo

NEIGHBOURS Powermix: DJ Randy Schlager

BY ADRIAN RYAN

RED DRESS RETURNS

Hulloooomosexuals! And, yes, of course, I’m flipping the flipping flip out just as much as you are, thank you for your kind concern. As everybody knows goddamn good and well, due to completely unexplained phenomena and gaseous anomalies and such, we have been visited recently with not one, not three, but TWO “annual” Red Dress Parties. In, like, SIX MONTHS! There’s supposed to be only one per year, you understand (hence the “annual”)—the last one was just a mere last summer (seems like yesterday!), and the next one is barreling down the track right at our faces (February 8, to be exact). But I’m certainly not one to look a gift pony in the anus, so it’s all gravy to me, baby. And so soon! Imagine! (I’m already living on a diet of barfing and caffeine capsules from the 7-Eleven.) And so to express my growing and abject twitterpations over the whole thing, I am overjoyed to afford you the opportunity to win two exclusive, highly coveted VIP TICKETS to the event, which include almost endless free-drink privileges, a foot rub from Michelle Visage, the power to travel through time, and SO MUCH MORE! (A $12 trillion value!) All I ask is that you gander at Line Out/Slog periodically in the next week (it could

NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND Club

Vogue: DJ Chance, DJ Eternal

Darkness

OHANA Funk House: DJ Bean One

RE-BAR Cock & Bull: Guests

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Guest

DJs

THERAPY LOUNGE Dance

Yourself Clean: Guests

TRINITY ((SUB)): Guy, VSOP, Jason Lemaitre, guests

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

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL

Shostakovich & Adams: 2014 Winter Festival

SUN

2/2

LIVE

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

JAI THAI BROADWAY Rock Bottom Soundsystem, free

JAZZ ALLEY Guitar in the Space Age: Bill Frisell

KELLS Liam Gallagher

LITTLE RED HEN Open Mic

Acoustic Jam with Bodacious Billy: Guests, 4 pm

PIES & PINTS Sunday Night Folk Review: Guests, free

SHIP CANAL GRILL Jay Thomas, Sun, noon

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

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

DJ

CONTOUR Broken Grooves:

DJ Venus, Rob Cravens, guests, free

THE EAGLE T-Bar/T-Dance:

Up Above, Fistfight, free

MOE BAR Chocolate Sundays: Sosa, MarsONE,

happen any time!), find my post on the matter, and follow the simple contest rules. Then cross your fingers, toes, testes, eyelashes, and so forth. It could happen. Praise Jesus! Trust.

SATURDAY 2/1

LICK HEATS UP

THURSDAY, 1/30 • 6-8PM, ALL AGES THE

W/ STU STUART + SPECIAL GUESTS

THURSDAY, 1/30 - SATURDAY, 2/1

The Original Potty Mouth! Felicia Michaels tends to raise quite a few eyebrows by refusing to allow her gender to tame her material. Michaels’ first comedy CD, Lewd Awakenings, is available on iTunes, and landed Felicia on XM Radio’s list of Top 100 Jokes.

Anyhooters… in the meantime, FOCUS, darlings, FOCUS! Welcome to February! Oh, how I loathe February. But, lo! Benevolent forces conspire to pull us through these dim and frigid days—our old friend Lick, specifically. It boggles my little gay brain that Lick has been grinding and spinning and slobbering and dazzling queerpunk Hill rats for almost 10 damn years (it was born in like 2005 or something), and it remains the most vigorous tongue-centric dance party on the Hill. (In energy and spirit, it really harks back to old Comeback. Remember old Comeback? Sigh.) Tonight’s installment showcases the inimitable talents of resident DJs Mathematix and Dewey Decimal (I just adore those two), with a guest spinner they call “Pretty Baby,” and trust me, it’s better than a sunlamp and almost better than a weekend in Cancun. (ALMOST.) We’re gonna get through this, guys. We’re gonna get through it together. Chop Suey, 9:30 pm, $5, 21+.

FRIDAY JANUARY 31 | 6:30 PM A LOT LIKE BIRDS, SIANVAR, STOLAS, THE VENETIA FAIR, DISTRICT, A TASTE OF DAYLIGHT $10 ADV / $12 DOS

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 4 | 6:30 PM REGGIE AND THE FULL EFFECT, DADS, PENTIMENTO, HONORABLE MENTION $13.50 ADV

FRIDAY MARCH 1 | 7:30 PM GRAVEFACE ROADSHOW W/ THE CASKET GIRLS, THE STARGAZER LILLIES, DOTT, DREAMEND $9 ADV / $8 W. CLUB CARD

FRIDAY MARCH 7 | 7:30 PM LESLIE AND THE LYS, DEAN AND THE DELILAHS, BOONE COUNTY COMEDY TROUPE $13 ADV / $12 W. CLUB CARD

SUNDAY MARCH 16 | 7:00 PM CON BRO CHILL AT THE CROCODILE / $10

Phosho, free

NEIGHBOURS Noche Latina: Guest DJs

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

Q NIGHTCLUB Revival: Riz Rollins, Chris Tower, 3 pm, free

RE-BAR Flammable: DJ

Wesley Holmes, 9 pm

SEE SOUND LOUNGE Salsa: DJ Nick

THE STEPPING STONE PUB

Vinyl Night: You bring your records, they play them

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL 2014 Winter Festival:

PONCHO CONCERT HALL

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

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

CONOR BYRNE Get the Spins: Guest DJs, free CONTOUR Manic Mondays: Guests

HAVANA Manic Mondays: DJ Jay Battle, free

THE HIDEOUT Industry Standard: Guests, free NEIGHBOURS UNDERGROUND SIN: DJ Keanu, free

OHANA DJ Hideki

PONY Dirty Deeds: Guest DJs

Music of the Spanish and Italian Baroque: Byron Schenkman, Ingrid Matthews

Q NIGHTCLUB Electric

TOWN HALL Early Music for All: An Intergenerational SingAlong!: Guests

MON 2/3

LIVE

AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Jerry Frank

BLUE MOON TAVERN

Andy Coe Band, 10 pm, free

CAPITOL CIDER EntreMundos, 9:30 pm

COASTAL KITCHEN Pork Chop Trio, 9:30 pm, free

EL CORAZON Kid Slim, the Specktators, PropaneLV, 7:30 pm, $10/$12

KELLS Liam Gallagher

MAC’S TRIANGLE PUB Jazz and Blues Night: Guests, free MOLLY MAGUIRES Open Mic: Hosted by Tom Rooney, free

NEUMOS Mayer Hawthorne, Quadron

NEW ORLEANS The New Orleans Quintet, 6:30 pm

THE ROYAL ROOM Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble

SEAMONSTER Monday Night Open Mic: 10 pm

Penetration, Every 6 pm, free, Reflect, 8 pm, free

CLASSICAL

BENAROYA HALL Joseph Adam

TUE 2/4

LIVE AQUA BY EL GAUCHO Ben Fleck, 6 pm BASTILLE CAFE BAR The Djangomatics, 8 pm, free CAFE RACER Jacobs Posse CONOR BYRNE Ol’ Time Social: the Tallboys, 9 pm CROCODILE Oneohtrix Point Never, the Sight Below, Nordic Soul

HEARTLAND CAFE & BENBOW ROOM Open Mic: Guests

HIGH DIVE the Nathaniel Johnstone Band, Paul Mauer, Dogwood, 8 pm, $6 JAZZ ALLEY Ana Popovic, 7:30 pm, $22.50 KELLS Liam Gallagher

Iwouldn’t have guessed that Shogo Ota made this creepy collage. He’s all over the map stylistically these days, and he’s doing some pretty exciting work for Neumos and many others. Check out more at tiremanstudio.com. AARON HUFFMAN

White Denim w/Clear Plastic Masks Fri Jan 31, Neumos

TRACTOR TAVERN the Tallboys, 7:30 pm, $5

TRIPLE DOOR

Musicquarium: Free Funk Union, free

THE MIX Jazz Night: Don Mock, Steve Kim, Jacques Willis, 8 pm NEUMOS La Luz, Pure Bathing Culture, $12 OUTWEST Wine and Jazz Night: Tutu Jazz Quartet, free PINK DOOR Michael Navedo, 8 pm SEAMONSTER McTuff Trio, 10 pm, free

SATURDAY 2/1

BY JACKSON HATHORN

ACTION BRONSON: BEAUTIFUL SHIT FOR REAL MOTHERFUCKERS

You can learn something about Action Bronson’s music by watching him make a hamburger. There are a lot of YouTube videos of the culinary-trained rapper cooking, eating, or talking about food, but my favorite one shows him in a restaurant kitchen, probably in Queens, probably after hours. There’s chopped meat on the grill, full pans on the stove, chicken cutlets in the deep fryer, and a bun in the oven. He’s spent years busting his ass in this environment and now enjoys taking his time, moving between stations with an unhurried cocksure grace. Bronson’s palate is refined, bold, and unfussy, and he speaks with simple declarations. He says his craft is self-explanatory, making “beautiful shit” for “real motherfuckers.” He also calls out bullshit when he sees it; sesame seeds on a hamburger bun will only hold you down, and aioli is just a fancy word for flavored mayo. When it’s finally time to put everything together and assemble the Bronson Burger on the make-line, you’re ready for it. Layers are carefully stacked, but then there are some surprises (like, where did those grilled red onions come from?). And soon enough, Bronsolino can’t keep a straight face. “Now it just gets stupid,” he says, pointing to the burger’s midsection, sautéed shiitake mushrooms on top of gabagool. He laughs, turns away, and

dismisses his creation. “What did I just do? Get this out of my face.”

Action Bronson’s towering concoctions, whether they’re meals or songs, only seem over-the-top once he tells you so. The best part of his music isn’t necessarily what he says as much as how he says it. You can pick any Bronson song and find some of his favorite references: ’80s wrestlers, ’90s athletes, his hometown of Queens, New York, and yes, food, all expertly arranged and distorted. But before it gets too excessive, songs will end with coughs, shrugs, and chuckles, or on more serious notes: “A bit disturbed, confessions in a journal/I’m sickened by my thoughts, so it’s tossed in the inferno.” His releases all feel like endlessly imaginative yet clearly related courses in the same lavish meal, and he somehow never repeats himself. I recommend you come hungry for Action Bronson’s first

BY DAVE SEGAL

FRIDAY 1/31

RAICA AND APARTMENT FOX WEIRD UP MOTOR X

Seattle’s preeminent experimental-electronic event and strangest dance party, MOTOR, presents another strong lineup—this time with more female power. Seattle producer Raica (aka Chloe Harris, half of the Further Records brain trust) makes a rare live appearance. Her prolific output ranks among the darkest, most chilling electronic music coming out of this region. Raica’s 2013 releases—Lucent Glances and Treh—plumb some of the same dank, unsettling yet oddly beautiful territory as Kompakt’s Pop Ambient and Mille Plateaux’s Clicks & Cuts series. They also recall the more introspective and enigmatic abstract electronica from the Warp and Lo labels’ ’90s heydays. Raica goes on first, so get there early! Apartment Fox used to play in Portland’s outstanding analog-synth group Operative. His self-titled 2013 album on Beacon Sound proves that he’s not lost his knack for off-center dance music that throws off all sorts of wonky textures while still delivering crushing grooves that make you feel indestructible. With ever-stellar local support from Airport, Patternmaster, and DJ Domenica Lo-Fi, 9 pm, $5, 21+.

TUESDAY 2/4

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER ZIGZAGS OUT OF THE BLISS ZONE

Don’t know about you, but I’ve been jonesing for some live Oneohtrix Point Never action ever since his incandescent 2010 Decibel Festival performance. The work of 0PN (aka Daniel Lopatin) has transitioned from a strain of ultra-vivid, eventful power New Age to a more disjunctive, hypermodern kind of Cubist sampledelia on his debut album for Warp Records, R Plus Seven. Parts of it evoke the disorienting corporate exotica and anomic eeriness of James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual—which means it’s much harder to get your tranquility on than it used to be to 0PN’s music. Only you can decide whether that’s a good thing. I’m still adjusting to this new phase, but it is growing on me. Brooklyn’s Dawn of Midi are conformed like a jazz trio—bass, drums, piano—but they sound more like minimalist post-rock majors who are minoring in organic dance music. Their intriguing, heady tracks remind me of Archie Pelago’s genre-warping creations and Matmos’s mesmerizing collab with So Percussion, Treasure State. With the Sight Below and Nordic Soul Crocodile, 8 pm, $15 adv, 21+.

FILM

Back to the Heart of Darkness

A European Thriller Discovers That Migrating Birds Are Not the Same as Migrating Laborers

BY CHARLES MUDEDE

Akey moment in this European actionadventure: The protagonist, Jonathan Anselme (Harry Treadaway), realizes that the birds he is studying for Swiss ornithologist Max Böhm (Danny Keogh) can fly over the borders of many countries without being checked by customs or immigration officers. The human world of nations, tariffs, and legal and illegal citizens means nothing to these long-legged and long-beaked birds. Their movements from this to that country (in Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa) follow other and more ancient biological laws. But their freedom from the cultural laws of humans, young Jonathan realizes, reveals not only the

arbitrariness of culture, but a golden (if not diamond) opportunity for the unscrupulous.

That is the key revelation of the film, but this is how Flight of the Storks begins: Jonathan (a lanky, handsome young man with a flat English accent) arrives at the home of his boss, only to find the ornithologist is dead in a huge human-made nest. The sky is cloudy, the metal ladder to the nest is shaky, and Max’s eyes and liver are being picked at by a hungry stork. Who killed him? What do the birds have to do with this murder? What is his real relationship with Jonathan (one detective asks: “Were you gay lovers?”)? Who are those men watching the police investigation with binoculars?

Michigan Vérité

Snowmobiles and Small-Town Life in Northern Light

BY KELLY O

Ialways say I’m from Detroit, but I also lived in Northern Michigan. My family lived at the tippy-top of the mitten, yet still on the Lower Peninsula. We weren’t “Yoopers,” but I grew up fascinated by them. “Yooper” is slang for a person from the Upper Peninsula—someone from “the U-P,” as it’s more commonly pronounced with a heavy Finnish accent, like “Da’ Yoo Pee.” Every Yooper I’ve ever met was an uncommonly unique character—a real salt-of-the-earth townie, skilled at mechanics, deer hunting, and/or ice fishing. I don’t know if it’s because the Upper Peninsula is so isolated, sandwiched between Nowheresville, Canada, and

A confused Jonathan leaves the scene of the crime and follows the storks to Bulgaria, then Turkey, then Israel, where he meets a beautiful Jewish fisherwoman (Perdita Weeks), gets high with her in an airy cottage, and fucks her on a mussy mattress. The sunlight, the flesh and moans, the open window, the breezes, the swaying branches, the eyes of some mysterious man in the shadows of a barn next to the cottage (is he a spy? A detective? A smuggler?). After the fucking, the birds leave to Africa. In its first half, Flight of the Storks—which is directed by Jan Kounen and based on a novel of the same name by Jean-Christophe Grangé (who also wrote The Crimson Rivers), is strong; the second half is weak, though still entertaining. Why does it fall apart? Because once Jonathan leaves Israel for Africa, a new narrative force begins to dominate the imagery, acting, and editing rhythms. That narrative force has a long history; it goes all the way back to the twilight of the Victorian age, back to a short novel by a Polish-born

The human world of nations, tariffs, legal and illegal citizens means nothing to storks.

novelist, Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

This narrative first appears as a tranquilizer dart that hits Jonathan’s freckled back. He stumbles about like an animal, he falls into a lake like a drunk, he hallucinates: We learn that Max used to hypnotize him with a strange contraption in the secret basement of his Swiss home. We learn he had a childhood in the Congo and that the answers to this growing and global mystery are all in black Africa. There is also organ trafficking going on.

When he arrives in Africa, Jonathan wants more and more tranquilizers, and he has more and more hallucinations of the real world around him: the heat, the large trees, the whores, the old cars, the pitch-black skin of the poor Africans. His guide into the heart of darkness is a handsome Brazzaville hipster (Richard Lukunku) who leads him through the slums, through the war zones, and to the gate of a jungle palace. This is the heart, and in it the truth will be exposed (it’s indirectly connected to the crying replicant at the end of Blade Runner).

All in all, Flight of the Storks is a lot like Steven Soderbergh’s two-part Che. Both have a first part that’s clearly a thriller and a second part that’s clearly a horror movie. You will remember the first and forget the second.

to the long and grueling 500-lap snowmobile race, but also to their respective jobs as truckers, Walmart clerks, and nursing home attendants. The camera captures them praying before dinner, going to birthday parties, sweating through cheerleading practice, having babies, and even, in one scene, competing in a female bodybuilding competition.

Nowheresville, Michigan and Wisconsin, with nary a city for thousands of miles, or because of the ancestry of the original Swedish and Finnish people who settled up there in the snowy nothingness.

Northern Light isn’t a documentary about the Upper Peninsula culture in itself. Instead, it’s a humble and quietly thoughtful piece of cinéma vérité that follows three families who are connected to one another by their shared participation in an annual competitive snowmobile race (and never once does the word “Yooper” get uttered).

The directors shadow the families not only

Northern Light seems to want to respectfully elevate, honor, and “make an honest woman outta” the slower-paced life of all people who live and die in small towns. The snowmobiling scenes seem secondary, but still remind you that quality of life depends on getting out in the world—even if your world is a frigid 22 degrees below zero, and your hobby is going 100 miles an hour around an ice track on a frozen lake. Staying active means staying alive.

“I just needed something,” says the young wife of one of the snowmobile champs, as she wipes fake tan makeup from a shoe after a bodybuilding match. And in a small town, sometimes you need a whole lot less to make you happy.

FILM SHORTS

More reviews and movie times: thestranger.com/film

LIMITED RUN

24 EXPOSURES

A little film about a fetish photographer and a model of his who turns up dead. The director claims to challenge the distinction between art film and exploitation film. Grand Illusion, Fri-Sun 9 pm.

CHILDREN’S FILM FESTIVAL

The festival for kids continues, packed with the best in children’s cinema from all over the world. Northwest Film Forum, Wed-Sun. For complete schedule and showtimes, see nwfilmforum.org.

FATEFUL FINDINGS

What is it that takes a bad film from being boring-bad to kablooey-brain-amazing bad? Whatever it is, Neil Breen’s Fateful Findings has it in spades. Chronicling a man’s campaign to expose secrets in the US government and reconnect with his magic-spirituality soul mate, the film never stops exploding with awfulness, from wooden dialogue to spit-take-worthy action sequences and mind-bending plot points. It’s a negative masterwork, easily the peer of The Room and Miami Connection , and all fans of awesomely terrible cinema are required to see it. (DAVID SCHMADER) SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri-Sat 10:30 pm.

FLIGHT OF THE STORKS

See review, page 55. SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri-Sat 3:30, 7 pm, Sun-Tues 3:45, 7:15 pm.

GROUNDHOG DAY

Bill Murray bears repeating. Central Cinema, Fri 7 pm, Sat 3, 7 pm, Sun 8:30 pm, Mon-Tues 7 pm.

I VITELLONI

Fellini’s celebrated film about a group of aimless loafers. Seattle Art Museum, Thurs Jan 30 at 7:30 pm.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

Wong Kar-wai’s gorgeous meditation on loneliness, fidelity, and noodles in 1960s Shanghai. Central Cinema, Fri-Sat, Mon-Tues 9:30 pm.

JOBRIATH A.D.

See Stranger Suggests, page 25. Grand Illusion, Fri 7 pm, Sat-Sun 5, 7 pm, Mon-Tues 7, 9 pm.

THE KNIGHTS OF BADASSDOM

The best thing about this movie is Peter Dinklage. He plays a drug-addled LARPer who seems to use live-action role-playing as set dressing for his psychedelic exploits, and all the best lines in Knights of Badassdom belong to him. Pretty much everything else in Knights of Badassdom is just plain bad. As the main character, Ryan Kwanten gives a performance that is as exciting, and durable, as a piece of IKEA furniture. Summer Glau does no better as the love interest. Danny Pudi gives such an awful supporting performance that I now have to wonder if the Community star is just a Bronson Pinchot for the 21st century. The plot, about a bunch of LARPers who accidentally summon a demon to the real world, is impossibly generic. The special effects are about as shitty as you can get before leaning into Power Rangers territory. The dialogue is flaccid. All the humor hinges on these people dressed up like shoddy medieval characters saying anachronistic things. The joke wears thin about 20 minutes in. (PAUL CONSTANT) SIFF Cinema Uptown, Fri-Sat 11 pm.

NORTHERN LIGHT

See review, page 55. Northwest Film Forum, Fri-Sun 7, 9 pm, Mon 1, 3, 7 pm, Tues 7, 9 pm.

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2014

Perfect for people who get bored easily, the titles are separated into two programs, live action and animated. The first and third screenings each day will be the animated program, while the other two will be the live-action program. Each program runs about two hours. Harvard Exit, Fri-Tues 2, 4:30, 7:20, 9:40 pm.

PETER PAN

The 1924 version of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, with Betty Bronson in the title role and Anna May Wong as Princess Tiger Lily, is accompanied by Jim Riggs on the organ. Presented on a restored 35 mm print. Paramount, Mon Feb 3 at 7 pm.

SHADOWS OF LIBERTY

A documentary about the problems that arise when only a few major media conglomerates control a huge portion of the figurative and literal airwaves. A free screening, followed by a community discussion. Keystone Church, Fri Jan 31 at 7 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 “tough guys.” Grand Illusion, Sat Feb 1 at 2 pm.

SUNNY

A 2011 comedy from South Korea featuring teenage girls doing lively dance routines while reconnecting. Seattle Asian Art Museum, Sun Feb 2 at 2 pm.

NOW PLAYING

12 YEARS A SLAVE

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

(DAVID SCHMADER)

AMERICAN HUSTLE

It’s hard to pull off a con movie these days, when the impulse to get too elaborate has taken over. But American Hustle has a realistic sense of scale. Christian Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, a two-bit hustler from the Bronx who sells counterfeit artwork and scams people out of a few thousand dollars at a time. He leads a large and excellent cast, including Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, and Robert De Niro. The movie withholds pertinent information about characters until just the right moment, and it knows how to show its hand before things get too complicated. A good con pulls you close so you can’t see it’s hiding something important from you; American Hustle works exactly like that. (PAUL CONSTANT)

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

In August: Osage County, Meryl Streep goes full monster. As Violet Weston, the cancer-ridden matriarch of the

Weston clan, she sucks cigarette smoke and spits poison at her nearest and dearest. When her husband disappears after one of their routinely vicious fights, she summons her three daughters (Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Julia Roberts) home to her side, setting the stage for an epic, toxic, and thoroughly entertaining family showdown. When Meryl and Julia go at it, it’s like watching two drag queens fight. The screenplay is surprisingly funny, and the cast delivers all-in performances, anchored by Streep’s ferociously monstrous turn. (ALISON HALLETT)

GIMME SHELTER

One of the stupidest melodramas to have emerged in recent memory. There are too many absurdities in Gimme Shelter to mention, but its championing of single motherhood among disadvantaged youth is all too clear. That it does so by using the case study of a young woman who is ultimately offered free use of an incredibly wealthy relative’s guesthouse is infuriating. This movie can go straight to hell.

(MARJORIE SK INNER)

HER

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)

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

Joel and Ethan Coen’s caustic, marvelous depiction of the Greenwich Village folk-music scene of the early ‘60s follows down-on-his-luck folksinger Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac). Llewyn is not a bad guy, necessarily, but there’s just something about him that pisses people off. Llewyn is the latest in the string of feckless antiheroes that populate the Coen brothers’ best movies, and Isaac turns in an exceptional performance that not only fulfills the role’s technical challenges—that’s Isaac singing every note and plucking every guitar string you hear—but allows you to find some affection for this prickly, troubled character.

(NED LANNAMANN)

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN

At the height of his fame, Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) kept a young mistress, Nelly (Felicity Jones). Though he was open about the relationship in his personal life, he took pains to scrub his public life. Hence the overblown

title, which positions Nelly as a marginalized, cloistered mistress—instead of a woman who willingly entered into the relationship. 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, but under the direction of star Fiennes, it’s a selfserious, dreary affair.

(ALISON HALLETT)

NEBRASKA

An elderly man named Woody (Bruce Dern) with a drinking problem and what seems to be early-stage dementia receives a letter announcing he’s won a sweepstakes prize. His adult son (Will Forte) tries to convince him that he’s actually won nothing beyond the opportunity to buy magazines, but Woody will not be deterred, and soon, father and son are on a prizerelated road trip from Montana to Nebraska. Alexander

I TELEVISION TM

BY WM. TM STEVEN HUMPHREY

THANK YOU, SUPER BOWL

I hate football with the burning passion of a billion suns—we hold this truth to be self-evident. HOWEVER! I’ve spent the last 12 years loudly bemoaning the idiocy of the Super Bowl in this column, and where has it gotten me? NOWHERESVILLE. Thick-headed football fans no longer even try to convince me of the error of my ways, and now when I go off on an anti–Super Bowl rant, they just roll their eyes, mutter, “WhatEVER, grandpa!” and go back to running a lint roller over their big foam finger. ANYWAY! Since my annual screeds have not deterred the Super Bowl, like, AT ALL, I’ve decided to be the bigger person and adjust my admittedly shitty attitude. Starting today—even though I still correctly think that the Super Bowl is the DUMBEST, most RIDICULOUS parade of American ignorance outside of Congress—I am going list a few reasons why I am GRATEFUL for this moronic, morally repugnant, and grotesque display of macho Neanderthalism. YOU’RE WELCOME.

• I AM GRATEFUL FOR THE SUPER BOWL BECAUSE… without it, there would be no Puppy Bowl or Kitten Bowl. It’s the 10th anniversary of Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl (Sun Feb 2, 3 pm), in which adorable pups from shelters across the nation scamper around a makeshift football field, vying for the coveted MPP award (Most Precious Pup). Meanwhile, over on the Hallmark Channel, it’s the inaugural Kitten Bowl (Sun Feb 2, noon), which is obviously a blatant rip-off of Puppy Bowl—but only a true monster would

1/31-2/6

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (R) Fri: (3:30)*, 7:15, 9:50* Sat: (1:00)*, (3:30)*, 7:15, 9:50* Sun: (1:00)*, (3:30)*, 8:15 Mon: (3:30)*, 8:00 Tue: (3:30)*, 8:00^ Wed: (3:30)*, 8:00 Thu: (3:30), 8:00* NEBRASKA (R)

6 Oscar noms including Best Original Screenplay by Seattle’s Bob Nelson. Fri: (3:45)*, 7:30*, 10:00* Sat: (1:15)*, (3:45)*, 7:30*, 10:00* Sun: (1:15)*, (3:45)*, 7:30* Mon: (3:45)*, 7:30* Tue: (3:45)*, 7:30*^ Wed: (11:00 AM)*+, (3:45)*, 7:30* Thu: (3:45)*, 8:30

FROZEN SING ALONG (PG)

Sing along with the words on the screen. Just follow the Bouncing Snowflake! In 2D. Fri: (4:00 PM) Sat & Sun: (12:00 PM)* Mon - Wed: (4:00 PM) Thu: (4:00 PM)*

Payne’s Nebraska is a VIP artwork packed with the type of tiny, messy interactions that flower into something almost mythic when writ large, in black and white.

(DAVID SCHMADER)

PHILOMENA Martin (Steve Coogan) is on a writing assignment: An elderly woman, Philomena (Judi Dench), is trying to track down the son she gave birth to in a convent more than 50 years before, when she was young, unwed, and forced to give her fatherless baby up for adoption. Her mission takes her to the US, with Martin a cynical guide and counterpoint to her unerring cute-little-old-lady cheer. Philomena is excellent, thanks to the brilliant odd-couple pairing of Dench and Coogan—and a script that balances heart, humor, and a fierce sense of moral outrage.

(ALISON HALLETT)

care. Tons of cute, pink-nosed, romping furballs swat at yarn footballs and chase mechanical mice, while your heart expands to the point of eventual explosion. (Have an ambulance on standby.)

• I AM GRATEFUL FOR THE SUPER BOWL BECAUSE… it’s a good excuse for Prince to guest-star on New Girl (Sun Feb 2, 10:30 pm). Apparently, liking the sitcom New Girl is just another thing Prince and I have in common. He voiced his love for the show, agreed to be a guest star, and so this—sure to be AWESOME!!!—episode will be broadcast immediately following the Super Bowl. Why? Because I made the network promise to air something that day that wouldn’t bore the shit out of me.

• I AM GRATEFUL FOR THE SUPER BOWL

BECAUSE… it allows me to bang a lot of tail. As it turns out, I’m not the only one who despises the Super Bowl… so does your wife, girlfriend, and gay boyfriend. And while you’re stuffing your fat face with nachos and attempting awkward, unsuccessful high-fives on your drooling cohorts with the sloped foreheads and terrible haircuts, I’m banging more tail than you’ve seen in a lifetime. In fact, Super Bowl Sunday is my biggest tail-banging day of the year (barely squeaking out Easter). My tail-banging schedule is so booked up (and weeks in advance, I might add), I’ve been forced to expand my tail-banging appointments into post–Super Bowl Monday and even post–Super Bowl Tuesday morning—when you’re still too tired, fat, and hungover to properly bang the tail that I will happily (and more competently!) bang in your absence.

So actually, Super Bowl fans… maybe you should be thanking ME.

Read Humpy’s weekly TV listings at THESTRANGER.COM

Captain Blacks

Captain Blacks is a bar with two decks, a slight nautical theme, and fried chicken and waffles. The po’ boys and sliders are also quite good. Most of the food here glistens: beer-battered onion rings, deep-fried Beecher’s cheese curds. The namesake is a pipe tobacco; the apostrophe was lost at sea.

home or office into a sparkling retreat!

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

KING SOLOMON BODY TAT REVELATION

You: sandy blonde, narrow spectacles, beige mid-thigh skirt, body-length tattoo you displayed to your friends.

Me: across the aisle one booth back, facing you, also with narrow specs.

Hit me up if you need some lovin’

to tide you over. When: Sunday, January 26, 2014. Where: King Soloman’s Reef, Oly. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920227

CUTIE CAMO MAGNOLIA

ALBERTSONS

Sat 1/25 U-Camo jacket, blue jeans baseball hat + cute face. Me-Short Asian w/sugar, butter&apples.I said a quick “hello” & u gave me a smile.

I’m guessing ur not from here?Up 4 fishing?Drop me a line (u saw that coming) When: Saturday, January 25, 2014. Where: Magnolia Village Albertsons. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920226

RUNNING PAST ELLIOTT BAY BOOKS

We smiled as you ran by me in front of the bookstore this afternoon. I can only hope the guy you were running with was not your partner...You’re beautiful. Let’s run together then get a beer. When: Sunday, January 26, 2014. Where: Cap Hill-in front of Elliott Bay Books. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920225

VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER/ LACROSSE COACH

You got kicked out of Grim’s and was standing outside Purr. You asked for a cigarette and we started chatting and we kissed. I didn’t get your last name/number and you left in a cab back to Issaquah. When: Saturday, January 25, 2014. Where: Outside of Grim’s/Purr. You: Man. Me: Man. #920224

ZU BESCH ɬ§FTIGT IM BAUHAUS

[if(scope==...] “Hi, my name is T___”

[whoa, a person?!] “Are you busy?”

“Well, I’m kinda working...” [will i manage to check-in tonight if we talk?] “Nice to meet you anyway” [i totally just chose coding over a dashing gentleman. oops.] When: Wednesday, January 22, 2014. Where: Bauhaus Ballard. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920223

1/23 AFTERNOON, MAIN EVENT, SMT

You: tall dark and handsome. Me: red coat, in a hurry. We passed in a tight space. I offered to let you go first and you said “I don’t know what want.” Did we make a connection?

When: Thursday, January 23, 2014. Where: The Main Event gift shop, 3rd floor of SMT. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920222

ENJOY YOUR WORKOUT/ ENJOY YOUR COFFEE!

SAW U entering Golds Gym Capitol Hill this morning. You dropped your bottle & I held door almost long enough.. We had a nice chuckle. I would love to take you out and show really am a gentleman! When: Saturday, January 25, 2014. Where: Gold’s Gym Capitol Hill, Seattle. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920221

HOT PIZZA MAMA saw you twirling dough at Vita, beautiful red lips and slender hips. You caught my eye while you spun that pizza pie. When: Friday, January 24, 2014. Where: Capitol Hill. You: Woman. Me: Woman. #920219

TALL GUY AT DAMIEN JURADO

You said something about DJ that was funny and endearing without being derogatory.Tall and dark, blurry in my peripheral vision, giving off a certain charm.You said goodbye when my friends and I left. What else might we have in common? When: Friday, January 17, 2014. Where: Damien Jurado Concert. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920217

CHINATOWN...TRIO OF TALL

MEN

Saturday 1/19

2:30-ish lower

Jackson St. You: scarf, knitted cardigan (vintage-y), very nice smile, walking with 2 friends, heading West. We caught each others’ eye and smiled. Me:blue coat, orange scarf & hat. I know it’s a long shot... When: Sunday, January 19, 2014. Where: International District Jackson St.. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920216

HELP ME TO FIND MEGAN!!!

I met Megan in Bologna(Italy), she was on a one-month backpack holiday across Italy and Europe; she’s nearly 27 (next february), natural red haired and she’s an emergency nurse in a Seattle hospital, she lives in Seattle, she loves yoga! When: Tuesday, December 3, 2013. Where: Bologna (Italy). You: Woman. Me: Man. #920215

358 DRIVER NBOUND 1/19

Driving the max capacity 358 wearing gray Seahawks hat. Angry looking blonde with green Seahawks hat likes you. When: Sunday, January 19, 2014. Where: 358. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920214

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. I 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

I was standing out of my van trying to get it to start with some buds when you walked by. Saw you again when I 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

LAST NIGHT ON THE 43

We made eye contact getting on the bus and then getting off again. There was something about you and I couldn’t look away. Great smile. I 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 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, was at the communal center table. You were wearing dark green pants, mine were electric blue. We exchanged endless stolen glances, but 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

Beauty in black at Zinzanni

You were directly across center stage from me at the Teatro Zinzanni show on Thurs 1/24. You were wearing all black, except for the pink trim on your skirt. You were with your family (younger siblings were all around), and I didn’t want to intrude. I was the mustachioed guy with the fedora hat, blue shirt and vest, sitting with a group of older folks... feeling out of place... wishing that you and I were sharing a table. I have to say that despite the theatrics and acrobatics, my attention was on you! Your face was one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in years. You stole the show, in my opinion!

When: Thursday, January 23, 2014

Where: Teatro Zinzanni You: Woman Me: Man

BUCK HUNTER AFTER THE GAME

A, we played Buck Hunter and talked after the game. felt a connection and think it was mutual. But you left so fast, I missed getting your number! :( Let’s get coffee before you leave in a month. When: Sunday, January 19, 2014. Where: Iron BullWallingford. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920213

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

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 I was noticing & enjoying. Drink-y sometime? When: Saturday, January 18, 2014. Where: ACT Theatre, downtown. You: Man. Me: Transsexual (male to female). #920211

SURFER BLOOD, RED HAIR

Your hair is amazing and smelled like cherries. A guy named Eric hit on your friend. Thought overheard you mention a boyfriend but I 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 almost hit with my car when I was pulling up on to the curb on Terry Ave., Friday, 1/17: Your reminder to be careful will stay with me, I 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

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. smiled and said ‘Nice catch’.

Wish I 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

YOUR FIRST RESTRAINING

ORDER...

I was your first one and you hit me in the ear just after I 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. I 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 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

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 night. Let’s go to another show?

When: Friday, December 20, 2013. Where: El Corazon. You: Man. Me: Woman. #920195

HAND TATTOOS SEATTLE

UNIVERSITY beautiful brown haired girl with a nose ring and amazing tattoos on her hands. you make my afternoon coffee worthwhile. When: Monday, January 6, 2014. Where: the byte. You: Woman. Me: Man. #920194

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

For the Week of Jan 29

ARIES (March 21–April 19): On my 15th birthday, I finally figured out that eating dairy products was the cause of my chronic respiratory problems. From that day forward, I avoided foods made from cow’s milk. My health improved. I kept up this regimen for years. But a month ago, I decided to see if my long-standing taboo still made sense. Just for the fun of it, I gave myself permission to gorge on a tub of organic vanilla yogurt. To my shock, there was no hell to pay. I was free of snot. In the last few weeks, I have feasted regularly on all the creamy goodies I’ve been missing. I bring this up, Aries, because I suspect an equally momentous shift is possible for you. Some taboo you have honored for a long time, some rule you have obeyed as if it were an axiom, is ripe to be broken.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20): Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics, says that consulting experts may be useless. In his study of Wall Street traders, he found their advice was no better than information obtained by a chimpanzee flipping a coin. Meanwhile, psychologist Philip Tetlock did a 20-year study with similar results. He found that predictions made by political and financial professionals are inferior to wild guesses. So does this mean you should never trust any experts? No. But it’s important to approach them with extra skepticism right now. The time has come for you to upgrade your trust in your own intuition.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20): I’m a big fan of logic and reason, and I urge you to be, too. Using your rational mind to understand your experience is a very good thing. The less stock you put in superstitious head trips and fear-based beliefs, the smarter you will be. Having said that, I recommend that you also make playful use of your creative imagination. Relish the comically magical elements of your mysterious fate. Pay attention to your dreams, and indulge in the pleasure of wild fantasies, and see yourself as a mythic hero in life’s divine drama. Moral of the story: Both the rational and the fantastical approaches are essential to your health. (P.S. But the fantastical needs extra exercise in the coming weeks.)

CANCER (June 21–July 22): Sorry, Cancerian, you won’t be able to transform lead into gold anytime soon. You won’t suddenly acquire the wizardly power to heal the sick minds of racists and homophobes and misogynists. Nor will you be able to cast an effective love spell on a sexy

someone who has always resisted your charms. That’s the bad news. The good news is this: If you focus on performing less spectacular magic, you could accomplish minor miracles. For example, you might diminish an adversary’s ability to disturb you. You could welcome into your life a source of love you have ignored or underestimated. And you may be able to discover a secret you hid from yourself a long time ago.

LEO (July 23–Aug 22): Cosmopolitan magazine is famous for offering tips on how to spice up one’s sex life. Here’s an example: “Take a few of your favorite erotically appealing flavor combinations, like peanut butter and honey or whipped cream and chocolate sauce, and mix up yummy treats all over your lover’s body.” That sounds crazy to me, and not in a good way. In any case, I recommend that you don’t follow advice like that, especially in the coming days. It’s true that on some occasions, silliness and messiness have a role to play in building intimacy. But they aren’t advisable right now. For best results, be smooth and polished and dashing and deft. Togetherness will thrive on elegant experiments and graceful risks.

VIRGO (Aug 23–Sept 22): You are not as broken as you may think you are. Your wounds aren’t as debilitating as you have imagined. And life will prove it to you this week. Or rather, let me put it this way: Life will attempt to prove it to you—and not just in some mild, halfhearted way, either. The evidence it offers will be robust and unimpeachable. But here’s my question, Virgo: Will you be so attached to your pain that you refuse to even see, let alone explore, the dramatic proof you are offered? I hope not!

LIBRA (Sept 23–Oct 22): Kenneth Rexroth wrote a poem called “A Sword in a Cloud of Light.” I want to borrow that image. According to my astrological analysis and poetic intuition, you will generate the exact power you need in the coming weeks by imprinting your imagination with a vision of a sword in a cloud of light. I don’t want to get too intellectual about the reasons why, but I will say this: The cloud of light represents your noble purpose or your sacred aspiration. The sword is a metaphor to symbolize the new ferocity you will invoke as you implement the next step of your noble purpose or sacred aspiration.

SCORPIO (Oct 23–Nov 21): Every autumn, the bird species known as the Clark’s Nutcracker prepares for its winter food needs by burying 30,000 pine nuts in 5,000 places over a 15-square-mile area. The amazing thing is that it remembers where almost all of them are. Your memory isn’t as prodigious as that, but it’s far better than you realize. And I hope you will use it to the hilt in the coming days. Your upcoming decisions will be highly effective if you draw on the

wisdom gained from past events—especially those events that foreshadowed the transition you will soon be going through.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22–Dec 21): Can you imagine what it would be like to live without any hiding and pretending? How would you feel if you could relax into total honesty? What if you were free to say exactly what you mean, unburdened by the fear that telling the truth might lead to awkward complications? Such a pure and exalted condition is impossible for anyone to accomplish, of course. But you have a shot at accomplishing the next best thing in the coming week. For best results, don’t try to be perfectly candid and utterly uninhibited. Aim for 75 percent.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22–Jan 19): It’s a favorable time to gather up resources and amass bounty and solicit help and collect lots of inside information. I won’t call you greedy if you focus on getting exactly what you need in order to feel comfortable and strong. In fact, I think it’s fine if you store up far more than what you can immediately use—because right now is also a favorable time to prepare for future adventures when you will want to call on extraordinary levels of resources, bounty, help, and inside information.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20–Feb 18): Extravagant wigs became fashionable for a while in 18th-century England. They could soar as high as four feet above a woman’s head. Collections of fruit might be arrayed in the mass of hair, along with small replicas of gardens, taxidermically stuffed birds, and model ships. I would love to see you wear something like that in the coming week. But if this seems too extreme, here’s a second-best option: Make your face and head and hair as sexy as possible. Use your alluring gaze and confident bearing to attract more of the attention and resources you need. You have a poetic license to be shinier and more charismatic than usual.

PISCES (Feb 19–March 20): One of your anti-role-models in the coming weeks is the character that Piscean diva Rihanna portrays when she sings in Eminem’s tune “Love the Way You Lie.” Study the following lyrics, mouthed by Rihanna, and make sure that in every way you can imagine, on psychological, spiritual, and interpersonal levels, you embody the exact opposite of the attitude they express: “You’re just gonna stand there and watch me burn/But that’s all right, because I like the way it hurts/You’re just gonna stand there and hear me cry/But that’s all right, because I love the way you lie.” To reiterate, Pisces, avoid all situations that would tempt you to feel and act like that.

Homework: Do a homemade ritual in which you vow to attract more blessings into your life. Report results at freewill astrology.com.

APARTMENTS

QUEEN ANNE $1,100

New 1 bd w\ view. $1100 w/s/g included. Sorry no pets. Onsite laundry facilities. $600 deposit and 12 month lease. 206-601-5737 or text 206-422-1909.

ART STUDIO/CREATIVE

BUILDING A BETTER, Stronger Business is as Easy as Calling Urban WORKlofts@206.745.6684! We have Office Space, and Amenities that will make your Business Excel!

I AM LOOKING for someone that would be interested in sub-leasing this room. This is not a place to live or a place for a band to rehearse. See web ad for pictures. 425.444.5053 or email at robert@thevocaliststudio.com.

REAL ESTATE FOR SALE

THIS CRAFTSMAN STYLE home

has tons of upgrades & is ready to call it your own! Call us for details! 425-9682544. Clear Realty Group, INC.

ROOMMATES

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)

LOOKING FOR A room or roommate in the greater seattle area? Call us at 800=488=8050 or www.rme1.com.

RECOVERY SERVICES HOUSING

MASSAGE

$45HR FOR MEN 1.5-$65/2HRS-

$85. Tight? Sore? Achy muscles? Feel better with beneficial bodywork. No pain? No problem...get an unhurried, general full-body massage. Enjoy yourself, feel great. 19yrs masseur.

WWW.BODYWORKMAN.COM. John 206.324.0682. 10am-8pm. Cash/ incalls only. Last-minute encouraged. LMP#MA8718

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. 425319-9588. 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

STUDIES

AWARE FOR ALL Seattle Clinical Research Education Day Thursday, January 30, 2014, 5pm-8pm Town Hall - 1119 Eight Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101 Free health screenings including blood pressure, body mass index, diabetes, spinal exams, free chair massages, influenza shots, and more... Register now if you’d like more information about clinical research and how it could help you while advancing medical science. To Register visit: www.awareforall. org Call toll free: 1-877-MED-HERO. First 50 to pre-register will be given a $25 Walgreens gift card at the end of the event. *excludes event volunteers and exhibitors. CISCRP

CAR SERVICE

CASH FOR YOUR UNWANTED & JUNK TRUCKS & CARS, FAST SERVICE, 7 DAYS A WEEK, LICENSED PAID $CASH. Please visit my website www.Freejunkcarhauling.com or call me at (206)941-0612,(253)859-5566 or emeil cashforjunk@yahoo.com Thank you.

CLEANING

nized workspace. 206.307.2270 www.greencleaningseattle.com

MARIA HOUSE CLEANING Service is Seattle’s locally owned & operated cleaning company that offers quality customer service, affordable rates and great results.

MISC.

LESSONS

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

SING! JANET 206-781-5062 FreetheVoiceWithin.com

VOCALIST STUDIO We Train Vocal Athletes www.thevocaliststudio.com

MUSICIANS AVAILABLE

CAN BE A PART OF THE MIX. PLAY KEYS/WRITE SONGS, TOO. MURPHY: 206 860 3534

MUSICIANS WANTED

BASS PLAYER WANTED for melodic garage music. We gig fairly regularly and practice weekly.Looking to record. Great songs if you can sing that is a plus! BEat groups early REM, wipers, dead moon call jesse 2063214321

BASSIST WANTED FOR an experimental rock band. Swans, Black Flag, Godflesh, Arsenal, Big Black, Killing Joke, Pigface, Tad, Fudge Tunnel, Savage Republic, Unsane, Black Sabbath, Head of David, Throbbing Gristle. No drugs. 206.547.2615/ omaritaylor@hotmail.com/www.rendingsinew.com

NEED BASSIST FOR METAL BAND! Established band Red Rouletta is looking for a proficient, somewhat responsible`accountable bassist. Music is heavy. Contact at andrewcox471@gmail.com

I’m Richard Peterson, 64 year old composer, arranger, and pianist.  I’m available to play parties, weddings, clubs, shows, etc.  $200/gig.  Covers and originals.  PLEASE CALL 206-325-5271

Thank You!  CD available

SAVAGE LOVE

Working the Kinks Out BY DAN SAVAGE

I’m what was once quaintly called a “woman of a certain age” who started reading your column to broaden my horizons. As a result, some curiosities peeped their heads over the boundaries of my once happily repressed existence. I summoned the courage to join an online BDSM dating site. I got a response almost immediately from a man who decided to fill me in on how things worked. He proceeded to tell me my name would henceforth be Sub, advised me that he was to be addressed as His Majesty King Something, and ordered me to phone him. This was too much, too fast, and too weird. I gave him what I thought was a plausible excuse for my decision not to proceed to avoid hurting his feelings. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I tried blocking him, but he seemed to have several identities on the same site. I deactivated my account. So now I’m in a bit of a quandary as to where to seek out other options—preferably options that are safer and not so ritualistically restrictive.

Fear Of Flying

“When folks first decide to explore a curiosity in kink or BDSM, one of the things I let them know is that this loose band of variegated kinky types—the kink community—is NOT a utopia of ultimate sexual enlightenment,” said Mollena Williams, a kinky author, activist, and blogger. “The kink community is a microcosm of the broader society, from the lowest common denominator to the crème de la crème.”

Sadly, FOF, it sounds like one of your first interactions was with a LowCom, not a CrèmeDe. “I wish I could say her experience is unique,” said Williams. “But it is not. The same creeps, jerks, and assholes on standard dating sites are on BDSM-centric sites. And some will utilize the trappings of consensual kink to nonconsensually slime people.”

What Williams means by “slime,” FOF, is “manipulate, intimidate, and potentially abuse.” Creepy assholes like His Majesty King Something will seek out younger and/or less experienced subs like you, because older and/ or more experienced subs are more likely to recognize his behavior for the red-flag sliminess it is—and older and/or more experienced subs would tell him to fuck off without feeling obligated to spare his feelings.

So what can you do? “Block the trolls,” said Williams, “and seek out the awesome folks who are also hanging out at sites like FetLife.com, ALT.com, iTaboo.com, and BDSMfriendbook. com. A kink-friendly profile on a non-kink site is another option. I met my current dominant partner on OkCupid because my profile reveals that I happen to be a big old pervert. That caught his eye. Kinky folks are everywhere!”

You also have offline options, FOF. “She can find local events by checking out Caryl’s BDSM Page (drkdesyre.com) or by joining FetLife and searching events in her area,” said Williams. “She can attend munches, which are nonsexual social meet and greets, and classes are good places to meet people who are experienced.” Getting to know kinksters face-to-face doesn’t offer 100 percent protection from creeps, “but it’s a great way to get feedback, recommendations, and ever-important warnings. Essentially, dating in the kink world is no different than dating in the default world. You don’t have to drop your drawers because you’re told to. You don’t have to spank someone because they’re insisting they NEED it. Always meet on an equal footing first. Get to know potential partners and THEN decide if you’ve got enough in common to proceed.”

Two suggestions from me: Get a copy of Playing Well with Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities by Mollena Williams and Lee Harrington, and follow Mollena Williams on Twitter @Mollena.

I’m a 30-year-old bi girl and have been with my girlfriend for nearly 10 years. We discovered a love of BDSM together and we’ve had lots of fun exploring. Until now. I am a natural sub, but my girlfriend asked to switch and for me to dominate her. I have tried to do this half a dozen times, but afterward—or sometimes during a scene—she tells me it isn’t working. She says that it’s not about my actions but about my “tone.” Hearing this kills my ladyboner, and the scene fizzles and dies. It’s gotten to the point where I’m wondering if I should bother anymore if I can never get my “tone” right. I want to please her, and that usually keeps me trying over and over, but… I don’t know. I feel guilty and depressed because I can’t seem to return the pleasure she gave me when our roles were reversed.

Giving Up On BDSM

Either your technique and style are both lousy—maybe every fiber of your being is (subconsciously) screaming “I hate this role” during a scene—or your girlfriend is one of those BDSM switches who has a difficult time submitting to someone she knows, loves, wakes up next to every morning, gets into arguments with about bills, etc. It might be better if she subbed for someone else, GUOB, while continuing to dominate you.

I am married to a man who is into BDSM. I am happy to do lighter stuff, but I am not interested in squeezing into an uncomfortable corset and using a flogger on him. It doesn’t turn me on. So I gave him permission to visit a pro. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The pressure was off me, he was getting what he needed, our relationship and sex life improved. But I had no idea how much pros cost! He has been spending hundreds of dollars each month on his kinks! He has been going to see a pro twice a month and spends $200+ on each visit!

I was shocked! I expected that he would go a few times a year and that these “sessions” would cost $100 a pop. We are supposed to be saving to buy a home! He spent more going to his pro in December than he did on Christmas!

I asked him to cut back and go see someone cheaper, and he became angry and defensive. He accused me of going back on our agreement. I know he reads your column. Please help! What is a reasonable number of times to see a pro? What is a reasonable rate? What about a couple’s budget and plans for the future? He Spent More Than I Thought

Two hundred dollars a session—$200 an hour—isn’t an unreasonable rate when you consider a professional dom’s overheard and fixed costs. Corsets, floggers, bondage gear, and dungeon spaces do not come cheap. But unless money is no object and/or you’re single, blowing $400+ a month on visits to a pro dom is unreasonable and unfair. That’s $4,800+ a year, which could go a long way toward a down payment on a house. Since there aren’t many pro doms out there who work for $100 an hour—or many partners as understanding as you—your husband should think about cutting way the fuck back, getting a second job, or winning the lottery. But here’s something for you to think about, HSMTIT: You say all those sessions with a professional dominant have improved your relationship and your sex life. If your husband were spending $100 a week to see a shrink—$5,200 a year—and you were seeing those kinds of results, would you object?

Sports talk with Dan’s brother Billy at savagelovecast.com.

mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter

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