Seattle Weekly, March 11, 2015 by Sound Publishing

MARCH 11-17, 2015 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 10

SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM I FREE

NEWS THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF A CIGARETTE TAX »PAGE 5

TEAM TROUBLE

HOPE SOLO, JERRAMY STEVENS, AND A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. BY RICK ANDERSON PAGE 9

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inside» March 11–17, 2015 VOLUME 40 | NUMBER 10 » SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM

»5

news&comment 5

TOBACCO ROWS

BY MATT DRISCOLL | Will a proposed

cigarette tax just lead to more contraband sales? Plus: What’s new with the officers’ union and the fight against Citizens United.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE

BY RICK ANDERSON | Untangling

the complex domestic life of the U.S.’s highest-profile female soccer star.

food&drink

15 QUEENS OF TARTS

BY DAKOTA MACKEY | A transcontinental pie-loving summit meeting. 15 | FOOD NEWS 15 | THE WEEKLY DISH 16 | THE BAR CODE

arts&culture 17 PROJECTIONS OF FAITH

BY BRIAN MILLER | A preview of the

Seattle Jewish Film Festival. 17 | THE PICK LIST 19 | OPENING NIGHTS | Mistrans-

lations in China, ruminations in a cinema. 20 | PERFORMANCE/EAR SUPPLY 21 | VISUAL ARTS/THE FUSSY EYE 22 | BOOKS

OPENING THIS WEEK | Ballet, kung fu,

the new Cinderella, and a terrifying visit to 1971 Belfast. 25 | FILM CALENDAR

27 MUSIC

BY DAVE EINMO | Talib Kweli’s magic

moments. Plus: the Funhouse, the Dodos, and two jazz masters. 32 | THE WEEK AHEAD

»27 Editor-in-Chief Mark Baumgarten EDITORIAL Senior Editor Nina Shapiro Food Editor Nicole Sprinkle Arts Editor Brian Miller Music Editor Gwendolyn Elliott Editorial Operations Manager Gavin Borchert Staff Writers Ellis E. Conklin, Matt Driscoll, Kelton Sears News Intern Shawn Porter Calendar Assistant Diana M. Le Editorial Interns Bianca Sewake, Alexa Teodoro Contributing Writers Rick Anderson, Sean Axmaker, James Ballinger, Michael Berry, Roger Downey, Alyssa Dyksterhouse, Jay Friedman, Margaret Friedman, Zach Geballe, Chason Gordon, Dusty Henry, Rhiannon Fionn, Marcus Harrison Green Robert Horton, Patrick Hutchison, Seth Kolloen, Sandra Kurtz, Dave Lake, Terra Clarke Olsen, Jason Price, Keegan Prosser, Mark Rahner, Tiffany Ran, Michael Stusser, Jacob Uitti

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SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

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SEIZE THE DAY 2015/2016 BROADWAY SEASON

“Large rocks are easily dodged when thrown. I’ve done so myself before, and I’m not even a police officer.”

chatterbox the

He may or may not have had a rock, but so what? Is that grounds for murder? Large rocks are easily dodged when thrown. I’ve done so myself before, and I’m not even a police officer. I just wonder where all those other unsafe shots came to rest? Luckily not an innocent bystander (this time) or we would have heard about it. But really? Three officers with body armor, tasers, pistols, and I’m guessing at least one long gun in the trunk between the three, and they have to chase him and shoot him? Couldn’t they have hit him in the head with the gun? No? Maybe shot him in the leg or arm with one of those 13 shots fired at rush hour in downtown Pasco? Some vids leave the shooting open for debate. Oh, that’s right, police officers This one closes it. WhatSend your thoughts on don’t have the skill or restraint ever did happen up to to place other than a head shot this week’s issue to that moment, there’s no justification for shooting a letters@seattleweekly.com or center of mass multiple times. There’s no way three trained man with his empty hands officers could ever shoot an unarmed man to stretched out. Maybe he was wounded in such a disable, “that’s not how they’re trained.” I mean, I way he couldn’t raise them? could shoot a man in the leg from 30 feet with Donte, via seattleweekly.com a pistol, but maybe that’s because it would be murder if I shot and killed him. His hands must be up and open. The lack of that in the Brown case is one of the reasons the Thebriang, seattleweekly.com U.S. Department of Justice cited in not charging [Officer Darren] Wilson. Being at risk of death is not a requirement for One of the things as I review the video as use of deadly force in Washington. Risk of Zambrano-Montes flees from the corner, after he “Great personal injury” is the criteria as is actual and the officers have crossed the street, is that his resistance to a felony (a rock being thrown at you left hand appears to be open and up (as if gesturis second degree assault). More important, offiing). The right hand appears to be closed. Caveat, cers or citizens have no legal obligation to retreat the video quality is poor. Is he holding a rock in (or dodge) from any place they are lawfully the right hand? During the foot pursuit from entitled to be, before asserting self-defense. the corner, he seems to turn on several occasions Georgenf, via seattleweekly.com and furtively throw and not release at officers. He moves the right hand past his waist on several The cops who had no duty to dodge did— occasions. Even if you discount the possibility though the rock never came close—then shot of a rock and accept that his hands are open and him in the back as he runs through the crossempty as he turns to the officers, is that turn— walk. You see him limping in the crosswalk after hands open and arms toward officers—an act of he is hit. If he is holding a rock in his left hand, surrender or an attempt to close with the officers it is a small one, and his only remaining weapon and try and wrestle them for their weapons? As against men who are actively trying to kill him. a legal matter, the benefit goes to the officers, or Doesn’t matter. As he raises his hands the cops a citizen, if they draw conclusions of threat from murder him. Zambrano-Montes’ actions. Their conclusion Brian Holbrook, via seattleweekly.com E only need be reasonable. Comments and letters have been edited for length and clarity. Georgenf, via seattleweekly.com EXCHANGE ON GUNFIRE

Last week, Rick Anderson wrote about the video that shows unarmed farmworker Antonio ZambranoMontes being shot by Pasco police ("The Pasco Moment: Police, Lies, and Videotape," March 4, 2015). "I’ve watched it several dozen times," Anderson wrote. "It looks like manslaughter caught on tape." The video appears to present overwhelming evidence of the kind of abuse that activists have decried following numerous recent deaths of unarmed men, in particular Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., this past summer. But for some, it wasn't evidence enough.

Dan DeLuca (Jack Kelly) (center) and the original North American Tour company of NEWSIES. © Disney. Photo by Deen van Meer.

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news&comment

Two Paths and a Pitfall in the Citizens United Fight

Pack Rats

Yes, Jay Inslee’s proposed cigarette tax will raise revenue. But it will also increase criminal activity.

BY SHAWN PORTER

ate last month, campaign-finance-reform activists got some good news when a bill calling for a constitutional convention was assured consideration in the House State Government Committee in Olympia. The aim of the convention would be to propose “a free and fair elections amendment” to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment would nullify the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which lifted all restrictions on independent corporate-funded advocacy regarding elections. But there is a long way to go before that happens. What is the path forward, and what are the pitfalls?

BY MATT DRISCOLL

The Convention Article V of the Constitution provides two paths to an amendment. One is through the will of the U.S. Congress. The other—currently being pushed by a national activist group called Wolf PAC—goes through the states and requires two-thirds of their legislatures to request a constitutional convention. Such bills have been passed in four states—Vermont, California, Illinois, and New Jersey. Washington, some activists hope, will be next. So once every week, a few Wolf PAC volunteers spend the day at the capitol attempting to build support for the bill. “Right now it’s stuck in committee and there’s no motion likely until 2016,” says Washington’s Wolf PAC leader Jeff Eidsness. “So what we need to do is inoculate as many people as we can against all the fears.”

Last year, Washington state lost $319.7 million in tax revenue to contraband cigarette sales.

The Runaway Convention State Senator Jamie Pedersen is no enemy of campaign-finance reform, having endorsed several attempted measures in the past. But the 43rd District democrat believes a constitutional convention could cause trouble. “I think if you open up the Constitution, you could potentially have a convention that would make much more dramatic changes to [it],” he says. “Would we ban flag-burning? Would we be doing something about personhood beginning at conception? I don’t know what things might be in there. There are a lot of pieces of the Constitution that are very protective of minority rights or the right of the accused that aren’t necessarily popular.” The Congressional Amendment

Eidsness says the “runaway convention” is a “myth,” but he wouldn’t mind avoiding the whole affair either. Drawing on history, he explains how the threat of a convention can be enough to exact change. “With the 17th amendment, they were two states away from actually having a convention, at which point Congress is like, ‘Yeah, we better do this’ because they want the credit,” he says. “I don’t think a convention is going to happen, but we need to ask for it. The convention is not the goal, the amendment is the goal . . . History shows us that calling for a convention is the only legitimate way that people who aren’t arbitrarily wealthy can influence Congress to do the will of the people.” E

news@seattleweekly.com

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

undetected, into the United States for sale to rently sold in Washington are contraband is unsuspecting consumers. In one such case, the that the lawmakers and number-crunchers in owner of Lovely Nails and Beauty Salon in Olympia are well aware of this. When it comes Kenmore, Han Bui, pleaded guilty in Februto raising taxes on smokes, it’s an accepted part ary 2013 to the illegal of the numbers game. importation and sale of Department of “People find all sorts of The untaxed cigarettes over Revenue regularly incornearly two years. ways of getting [cigarettes]. porates the theory of According the the elasticity into the fiscal There are people who sell notes that accompany all U.S. District Attorney of Western Washington’s tax-hike bills. Elasticity, them out of the trunk office, which prosecuted in this case is the admisthe case, “When a search sion that when taxes go of their car.” warrant was served on up on smokes, a certain [Bui’s] home in July 2011, she possessed more number of people will stop, some will smoke than 400,000 contraband cigarettes, along with less, and some will find cheaper sources. $115,500 cash, and a Lexus SUV that she admit“People find all sorts of ways of getting ted was purchased with the proceeds of her ciga[cigarettes],” says DOR economist Steve Smith. rette trafficking.” Bui was ultimately sentenced to “There are people who sell them out of the 18 months in prison and three years of probation, trunk of their car.” and ordered to pay nearly $250,000 in tax penalFor example, when in 2010 the cigarette tax ties. Her Lexus was seized by the government. jumped from $2.025 to $3.025 a pack, the number of contraband cigarettes consumed in Washington went from 71.5 million packs to 94.1 What’s perhaps even more surprising than the fact that roughly one-third of cigarettes cur» CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

JOSHUA BOULET

f one subject in Olympia divides Republicans and Democrats even more than the aisle separating seating in the House and Senate, it’s taxes. Democrats push for more of them; Republicans despise them. At least that’s how it usually plays out. But when Democratic G overnor Jay Inslee introduced the key aspects of his 2015–17 budget proposal late last year, one new tax brought the two sides together in relative silence. While revenue-generating items like a capital-gains tax and a tax on carbon polluters were met with scorn from Republicans, a tax that (according to the state Department of Revenue) will bring in nearly $42 million in new revenue over the next biennium failed to generate more than a peep of opposition. The tax in question is Inslee’s proposed 50-cent-per-pack hike on cigarettes, which—if approved—would bring the state tax on cigarettes up to $3.525 per pack (yes, there’s such thing as a half-cent). And while the money this tax would presumably generate is chump change compared to something like a capitalgains tax, if Washington legislative history has shown us one thing, it’s that increasing revenue from the pockets of smokers is an idea nearly everyone can get behind. Over the past 20 years, the state cigarette tax has gone up nine times. In 1993, the tax was just 34 cents per pack; in the two decades since, it has increased by nearly 900 percent. That revenue goes straight into the state’s general fund. Given this precipitous rise, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the sale of untaxed cigarettes in Washington is big business. According to Department of Revenue estimates, nearly onethird of all cigarettes sold in 2013 were contraband—a number that doesn’t include the untaxed cigarettes sold legally on reservations through tribal contracts and compacts, or cigarettes sold on military bases. By the DOR’s calculations, the 33 percent equates to nearly $320 million in lost revenue for the state. And 2013 was nothing compared to the previous year, when, the DOR says, more than 35 percent of all cigarette sales were contraband, and Washington lost out on just over $357 million. Cigarette smuggling takes many forms. At its most basic, residents of border towns like Vancouver or Spokane buy cheap smokes in neighboring states. That’s to be expected when Washington has the sixth highest cigarette tax rate in the nation, Oregon has the 28th, and Idaho has the 41st, at only 57 cents per pack. But it also gets far more complex. There is commercial cigarette smuggling, which usually involves large trucks packed with cigarettes making their way from nondescript warehouses across the country to your local smoke shop. Then there’s international smuggling, with cigarettes made to look like name brands manufactured in places like Vietnam and then shipped,

Pack Rats » FROM PAGE 5 million, which represented an increase from 23.9 percent to 32.6 percent of the overall market. According to Smith, this came as no surprise. The obvious question, then, is what will happen to the rate of cigarette smuggling in Washington should Inslee’s 50-cents-per-pack increase become a reality. While Smith says the exact numbers haven’t been figured yet, he does say that the DOR expects the sale of taxed packs of cigarettes to fall from 123 million a year to 116 million under Inslee’s plan.

The Cigarette Tax Impact* $4

400 MIllion

TAX PER PACK 1993

Illegal Sales Legal Sales 2013 *WA State Dept. of Revenue

More severe projections come from the Macki-

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nac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, a nonprofit think tank that spends much of its energy pushing market-driven approaches to taxation. (Disclaimer: Yes, it’s often referred to as “right wing” and/or “conservative.”) Since 2008, the Center has published a yearly report on the rate of cigarette smuggling in 47 states. In 2013, the Center found that Washington had the third highest smuggling rate in the nation, with a total of 46.37 percent of all packs sold deemed contraband. (It’s important to note that Mackinac’s 47-state model for calculating cigarette smuggling doesn’t take into account Washington’s tribal contracts and compacts for cigarette sales.) As Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, sees it, Washington’s high rate of cigarette smuggling will only increase with each new tax hike. Asked to crunch the numbers on Inslee’s proposal, LaFaive predicts that the smuggling rate will rise by more than six percent, and the net revenue gain will be as little as roughly $14 million. “Our conclusion is [that] the high excise taxes on some states’ cigarettes is the primary driver of illicit trafficking. The best way to thwart the illicit trafficking is to lower excise taxes,” LaFaive tells Seattle Weekly. “Now, we’re not so naive as to believe that politicians are going to learn how to do that, because many state capitals are as addicted to tobacco revenue as some people are to nicotine. So we hope they will consider lowering excise taxes perhaps as part of a larger enforcement package.” At this point, and whether or not Inslee’s new cigarette tax comes to fruition, no such lawenforcement package is planned. In fact, according to Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesperson for the state Liquor Control Board—one of several state and federal agencies responsible for investigating cigarette trafficking—cracking down on the crime has been a dwindling priority. “We have not had any big cases of contraband smuggling in the past couple years,” Carpenter says. “Due to budget constraints, we have to be strategic in allocating our resources.” E

mdriscoll@seattleweekly.com

news&comment»

Reform, Minded

Seattle Police Officers Guild president Ron Smith is facing blowback as he takes his union in a new direction and collaborates with onetime foes. BY NINA SHAPIRO

JOSE TRUJILLO

Smith stands before a memorial for fallen officers at the Seattle Police Officers Guild offices.

Smith says she has listened to the guild in other settings. When the union complained that officers involved in shootings spent months waiting for a hearing before the Firearms Review Board, O’Toole whittled the process down to a few weeks. It should be noted that just last year, after Ed

Murray became mayor, some believed Smith’s union and the Seattle Police Management Association had too much influence. In fact, there was talk of a union “coup.” The mayor had then appointed a former assistant chief named Harry Bailey, known to be friendly to the unions, as interim head of SPD. Union leaders, including O’Neill, then in his final days as SPOG president, were frequently seen chatting with command staff. Bailey promoted people who were close to the unions. And the interim chief famously reversed several disciplinary decisions regarding officers, which got both him and the mayor in hot water when the news leaked. Around the time that Smith was taking charge of SPOG, there was speculation that he’d had a hand in temporarily sidelining longtime SPD public-affairs director Sean Whitcomb, who had become embroiled in a convoluted investigation by the Office of Professional Accountability. It started with a Facebook comment.

Whitcomb complained to OPA about a post Smith had made questioning the public-affairs office’s decision to give away Doritos at Hempfest the preceding year—a goodwill gesture in the aftermath of voters’ passage of marijuana legalization Initiative 502. Pot critics inside the department hated the idea, as did Smith, apparently. He wrote that Whitcomb and publicaffairs staffer Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a former Stranger writer, would “meet their destiny.” Whitcomb saw the comment as a threat and told OPA as much. Smith denied the charge, and OPA found no wrongdoing. Strangely, though, OPA then began investigating Whitcomb due to questions raised during its investigation about whether the public-affairs director put undue pressure on employees to participate in the Doritos stunt. Was this retaliation from Smith? Now, as then, Smith denies it. Regardless, the union leader recounts that as soon as Whitcomb was cleared of wrongdoing and returned to his post, Smith called him and asked if they could meet. “We took a walk on Fifth Avenue, shook hands, and put it into whatever it was,” Smith says. Whitcomb confirms Smith’s account, adding: “Our relationship is as good as it could possibly be.” As for the unions having an outsized influence on the department, that seemed to change when O’Toole took over, as evidenced earlier this

week when The Seattle Times reported that the chief will be replacing all four of her assistant chiefs—two of them, over fierce objections from SPMA, with department outsiders. Meanwhile, Smith went on to form even more remarkable relationships. “I never in my life would have imagined that I would have the relationship I have with Lisa Daugaard,” he says. A leading public defender, Daugaard has often criticized police practices, including those she has argued are biased against minorities. Daugaard is also co-chair of the Community Police Commission, a group tasked by the consent decree with providing community input to proposed reforms. SPOG has a representative on the commission, and by working together the union and their longtime critics have found common ground. “None of us expected this to be possible,” Daugaard marvels. One of the things that paved the way for this working relationship was what Smith calls his “profound appreciation” for defense attorneys following his own run-in with the law. In 2008, at a motorcycle bar in Sturgis, S.D., Smith shot and wounded a Hells Angel whom he claimed had attacked him. Smith was indicted for assault, among other charges.

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

on Smith has been getting a lot of grief lately. Sitting in the SODO offices of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, dressed in jeans and a shortsleeve shirt revealing arms covered with tattoos, the bald and bearded union president is the first to admit it. He says his members expressed “frustration” a couple of weeks back when, in an interview with The Stranger’s Ansel Herz, he elaborated upon a SPOG Facebook post that advised members to wise up and get with the times when it came to social media. “Think before you hit send,” read the post, which came in the midst of a growing controversy about perceived racist and otherwise disrespectful Facebook comments by officers. And then he went and told Herz that if officers didn’t like the Seattle Police Department’s new social media rules prohibiting such comments, they always had the option of going elsewhere. Smith insists it wasn’t so much his pointed comments that caused blowback, but the fact that he “would even submit to an article with The Stranger,” a paper that he says many officers view as not giving them “a fair shake.” Some in his position would have held off on media interviews for a while. Yet here he is talking to Seattle Weekly, carving out more than an hour for an expansive conversation about police reform and the direction he is trying to take the union. His openness is deliberate. He says that when he stepped into office a year ago, taking over from longtime president Rich O’Neill, he “came in with an open slate” and a determination to “talk to any media” as long as he wasn’t misquoted. That was just part of a new tone that he says he was trying to set at the union—one that moved away from the contentious posture it was known for and strived to be “collaborative.” As he saw it, he explains, the police department was in a difficult spot. It was working with the federal government to enact the sweeping change mandated by a consent decree with the Department of Justice, which had charged SPD with routinely using excessive force. Yet at the same time, Smith says, he saw an “opportunity.” A new chief, Kathleen O’Toole, was coming in. He had high hopes. After she had been nominated by the mayor, Smith says he called his counterpart in Boston, where O’Toole had served as commissioner, and asked about her. The Boston police-union president said “she was the best commissioner he had ever worked under,” Smith recounts. As Smith tells it, no police chief in Seattle had worked collaboratively with his union since, ironically, Norm Stamper—regarded as probably the most liberal chief Seattle has ever had, one who went on to support drug legalization and denounce police militarization. Stamper, who served as chief during the ’90s, had SPOG’s then-president sit in on command-staff meetings—a practice that ended when he left, according to Smith. O’Toole hasn’t reopened that invitation, but

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news&comment» Reform, Minded » FROM PAGE 7 “You know what they say,” he says. “You can indict a ham sandwich.’ ” That may be true, but it’s uncommon to hear from a police officer, as is the respect Smith pays to those who normally work on the opposite side of the criminal-justice system. He says his defense attorney at the time ably showed that Smith had been attacked—a version of events bolstered by a video—and the charges were dropped. For some time after the incident, Smith harbored bitterness toward the SPD, whom he felt had maligned him in the days after the shooting, in part by saying that the gun he’d used in the scuffle was department-issued when in fact it was not. He sued the department, but the case was dismissed. “I made a choice after that happened not to become a bad employee,” he says. Now he seems to be making a choice to give the reform process a try. When representatives from a group of more than 100 officers told him last year that they intended to file a suit against the SPD over a revamp of the department’s useof-force policy, Smith tried to get them to air their complaints instead with the CPC. The officers filed their suit anyway. (It was subsequently dismissed.) Even so, Smith says he went on to suggest that the CPC hold listening sessions with officers about the use-of-force policy. It did, and in November issued a report calling for a variety of changes. “It’s just poorly written,” Smith says of the policy. The old policy, he points out, was 15 pages. This one is 80. And he holds that the details are confusing. For example, he says, “You’re not allowed to do stuff to juveniles or somebody who’s pregnant. But how do you know when somebody’s pregnant? All pregnant people don’t look the same.” What’s more, he asks: “How do you know who a juvenile is? Some juveniles look like adults, and there are times when juveniles can be just as violent.” It’s this street-level “grasp of reality” that he says is lacking in some of the people who are now “sitting in judgment” of those in the field, such as those on the court-ordered monitoring team overseeing reforms. On SPOG’s Facebook page last month, right after he posted his message to officers concerning social-media practices, Smith linked to news reports on civil-rights leaders in other states who had submitted themselves to a training exercise that simulates the environment officers face on the street. The leaders had to decide whether to use force or not, and their own reactions surprised them. A Houston activist named Quanell X found himself tasing a suspect that he thought had a knife. But when questioned, he admitted that he’d never actually seen the knife—which is just the kind of scenario that has generated fierce criticism for officers around the country. “It would be nice if the Seattle Monitoring Team would courageously go through the same scenarios,” Smith wrote on Facebook. Later, in his office, when asked who on the team he might ask to do so, he suggests deputy monitor Peter Ehrlichman. Seattle Weekly called and e-mailed Ehrlichman, who works for the local firm Dorsey & Whitney, to see if he was game, but was not able to reach him by press time. The offer is still on, though. Smith says he’ll be happy to set it up. And who knows? It’s the kind of provocative move that just might help him with some of those disgruntled members. E nshapiro@seattleweekly.com

THE TROUBLED STORY OF A TALENTED COUPLE. By Rick Anderson Illustration by Jon Stich

t was the night before the big day. Thirty-one-year-old Olympic soccer star Hope Solo was in the final hours of the single life, due to tie the knot with Jerramy Stevens on what was also the former Seahawks star tight end’s 33rd birthday—November 13, 2012. Then the party turned into a melee. Despite the celebratory air of a pre-matrimony gathering at Solo’s Kirkland home, the long night ended in an eruption of booze and emotion. Police arriving at Solo’s luxury home overlooking Lake Washington termed it a drunken scrap that drew blood. Solo suffered a laceration, and Stevens emerged with blood on his shirt and cheek. When asked about the red smudges, he said, oddly, that it was the result of a kiss from his future wife.

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

» FROM PAGE 9

FRIDAY, MARCH 13TH TH to TUESDAY, MARCH 17

Stevens, the first Seahawk to catch a Super Bowl touchdown pass, was released from jail the next day and, healing from their pre-wedding bash, the loving couple entered into marital bliss. The 5´4˝ olive-skinned bride with the ebony mane stood next to the neatly goateed 6´7˝ groom—the top of her head barely reaching the bottom of his chin—and said their I-do’s at pastoral Bella Luna Farms near Snohomish. Tom Douglas catered, serving lamb chops, short ribs, and “pie extravaganza. Stevens apparently provided some musical entertainment. “He seems really nice, very polite, sweet and friendly and open,” Solo’s aunt Kathleen Shaw told a reporter, “and he sings like a dream.” The media twisted the Kirkland incident out of shape, Solo said afterward. “I know the people closest to me are the only ones who really know what happened. The facts are out there if people really want to find them out—they can go and find them out in the police report.” She has complained about gossip and media exaggeration on other occasions, and insists the celebrity duo doesn’t deserve its portrayal as a pair of bickering troublemakers. At other times, Solo has said she doesn’t really care what others think of her. Stevens consistently does not comment when asked. Neither he, she, or their public-relations handlers responded to an interview request for this story. Their attorney, Todd Maybrown, says he forwarded Seattle Weekly’s request to the PR contacts, but “As you might imagine, there have been many inquiries” for interviews. One request Solo did accept the other day was from Robin Roberts of ABC’s Good Morning America. The session gave Solo the chance to talk freely and tell her side in a setting devoid of police reports. During one recent headlinegrabbing event—a family fight last summer with her half-sister Teresa Obert and Obert’s teen son—she was wrongly accused as the perpetrator, Solo told Roberts. “I was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of my 17-year-old nephew, who is six-foot-nine, 280 pounds. I was struck over the head and concussed pretty severely. It was a very scary night.” That’s different from the stories we’ve all heard. But, as Solo suggested, let’s indeed go read the records—the police and court reports, among others. Just be aware there’s a catch—the public documents are incomplete, too. Neither Solo nor Stevens likes to put much on the record. In their most recent run-ins with the law, they have tended to be tight-lipped, and have urged others to clam up as well, while complaining that the full story never gets told. For example, police couldn’t get them to say much about the wedding-eve fight, which took place at the home Solo had bought a half year earlier. It wasn’t long after she moved into the $1.5 million abode that she began dating Stevens, whom she knew from the University of Washington when both were standouts on the soccer pitch and football turf, respectively, between 1998 and 2001. Solo, the two-time Olympic gold-medal goalkeeper with the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team who also plays for the Seattle Reign FC and has a contract to promote Nike sportswear, is, like Stevens, a millionaire—as her new home

attests, with its sport court, swimming pool, six-car garage, and sweeping lake and city view. According to police and court reports and a 911 recording, Solo’s brother, Marcus, 35, made four calls to Kirkland PD from the home just after 3 a.m. on Nov. 12, 2012. He told a dispatcher of a “little fight in the house” that apparently required use of a stun gun to end it. There was “definitely a physical altercation and an innocent bystander got hurt,” Marcus said. When police arrived, they found a woman (not Hope) lying on the floor with a hip injury. Marcus Solo had bloody knees, a forehead cut, and the start of a shiner. Hope had a bloody elbow. Both siblings were intoxicated. Following an odor trail of marijuana, officers discovered Stevens in an upstairs bedroom, on the floor between a wall and the bed. He appeared to be hiding. Stevens, despite those blood spots on his cheek and shirt, claimed he had slept through all the commotion. Both Stevens and the Solos had past experiences with law enforcement, having grown up among guns and badges. Stevens, who had earlier arrests for assault and rape, was the son of a female police officer. The Solo siblings were the offspring of the first female prison guard at Monroe and a father who spent time in prison as an inmate. (Her twice-married father had his wives’ names tattooed on his arm since both, fortunately, happened to be named Judy Lynn Solo). It was during a conjugal visit, behind bars, Hope Solo recalls in her 2012 biography, that she was conceived. She grew up in Richland, learning to play soccer in the fields along the Columbia River. She and Marcus “shared our father’s DNA: piercing eyes, Italian coloring, intense emotions,” she writes in Solo: A Memoir of Hope. Dad bailed from the family after he was caught stealing $1,800 by using her grandfather’s checkbook to write checks to himself, Hope recalls. Their car was repossessed and they were evicted from their home by the sheriff for nonpayment of mortgage—Dad had made off with that money, too. He was later busted for embezzlement and, during his marriage to the second Judy Lynn, had an affair with a minister’s wife. Among his many arrests was the time he called in a bomb threat to the local credit union, causing a SWAT team to kick down his door.

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that morning, Hope and Jerramy weren’t exactly rookies as persons of interest. In the police report, Hope is called uncooperative. On a 911 audio tape obtained by KOMO-TV, she can be heard conferring with her brother about what not to say, telling him “My husband is going to go to jail.” “No, he won’t,” says Marcus. “No, he will. He’s on probation,” Hope says. The two had long had a testy sibling rivalry. She and Marcus fought often, she recalls in her book. “I called him fat and stupid and whatever cruel things I could think of.” Like her, Marcus had a rep in high school—she was a freshman when he was a senior. He was often “fighting, drinking, driving under the influence” as a teen, Hope writes, and she did some of the same. She was 17 when her then-boyfriend got pulled over for drinking—but she, not him, had been

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violated conditions by smoking weed and spent imbibing, and they were let go. School officials three weeks in jail. UW coaches wrote to the heard of the stop, and Solo was suspended from court seeking a break for Stevens, according to the Richland Bombers girls basketball team. (It the Times’ report, calling the assault “an isolated was the same day news broke that she’d signed a incident.” Though Stevens seemingly had “a proletter of intent to play soccer for UW.) She later pensity toward violence,” had kicked a football was kicked off the high-school team altogether. “It was the first time I realized that by excelling, I teammate in the testicles, and threatened referees in a basketball game after he was ejected, court could become a target,” she recalls. papers stated, he was allowed to negotiate a plea Marcus, according to a detective’s report on and was sentenced to time served. the pre-wedding bash, was heard saying they would lie to the police so Stevens wouldn’t get in trouble. Marcus blamed the fight on othShortly after the rape charges were dropped in ers, whom he did not identify, saying they had 2000, Stevens got another pass for a hit-andalready left. Police arrested Stevens anyway, feelrun accident on the freeway. Though he left the ing he was responsible for scene, the State Patrol later assaulting Hope. He was cited him only for speedbooked and then released ing. He then went on to the next afternoon by a become a serial arrestee. In court that could not find 2001, he drove his pickup enough evidence to suptruck into the side of a port the charge. In the end, Seattle retirement home, with no one talking, police slightly injuring a 92-yeardropped the case. And after old woman whose dresser the wedding, Solo brushed fell onto the bed where it off. She was happily marshe was sleeping. He plearied, she said, and there had bargained a suspended been no fisticuffs because sentence on the promise “I would never stand for that he stay out of trouble. domestic violence. I’ve never In 2002, he left the UW been hit in my life.” early and was drafted by That could be true. Certhe Seahawks, signing a tainly no such charge was $6.2 million pact for five made in that case. And Solo’s years. Seahawks coach aunt, Kathleen Shaw of OreMike Holmgren said “I gon, told The Oregonian there really trust that everything was more to the story, accordis behind him.” Noneing to what she was told. The Stevens and sister enter theless, that year he was fight was between two drunk Kirkland Municipal Court in June. stopped for speeding at 98 guests, one of whom insulted mph, and later for neglithe other’s wife, she said. “When the husband gent driving. reacted, the first guy took a swing at him and it In 2003, he was stopped for suspected drunk started a fight,” she said. “Jerramy’s involvement was driving, pled it down to reckless driving, and did to walk into the room and try to stop them.” Hope seven days in jail. “You don’t want to be another was not hit, she added. The two reportedly had been Reggie Rogers,” Kirkland Municipal Court Judge fighting over where they would live after they were Albert Raines told Stevens, referring to the former married, Kirkland or Florida. But, said Shaw, that’s UW and NFL player whose long DUI record “another false rumor.” includes an accident that killed three teens. “You Still, some of Solo’s Twitter followers (863,000 don’t want to cause another tragedy on the freeat press time) wondered what she was doing way.” Stevens’ attorney told the court to have faith, marrying a “rapist,” as one put it, dredging up the footballer “is growing up,” he said. Stevens’ notorious history. Solo responded: “why But was he? “I do not have a problem with do you speak of things that arent true? there was alcohol,” Stevens told the judge. Besides jail time no charge because he was not guilty. People are and a $1,000 fine, he was forced by the NFL to too quick to judge.” enter a substance-abuse program. In 2006 he was She’s right again. Stevens was arrested for rape back in court, stopped twice for driving with a in 2000, while still a Husky athlete, but never suspended license. He got another 90 days suscharged. The alleged victim, a UW freshman, pended on the promise to stay out of trouble. In said she thought she’d been drugged and sexually 2007 he was stopped for drunk driving in Arizona, assaulted by Stevens outside a fraternity house; his blood level more than twice the legal limit. He semen later found in her vagina and rectum was got 12 days in jail and a one-game suspension by linked to Stevens by a DNA test. But then-King the NFL. He was then released by the Seahawks, County Prosecutor Norm Maleng claimed there who’d had enough. “I would say it’s probably time was insufficient evidence to bring a charge. The for a change of scenery,” said the Seahawks’ genlead detective in the case told The Seattle Times eral manager at the time,Tim Ruskell. the evidence was in fact “overwhelming” and Also in 2007, after he was signed by the that Stevens had got a pass because he was a Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Stevens was suspended Husky football star. (In 2003 Stevens was sued one game for substance abuse. In 2008 he was by the woman whom he denied raping outside suspended for two games and fined the equivathe Sigma Chi fraternity. He and the fraternity lent of three game paychecks for substance abuse. settled for a $300,000 payment to her). In 2010 he was arrested for possession of 38 Stevens had also gotten a pass in 1998, it grams of marijuana; he got three years probation. seemed, when he was in high school in Lacey, The Buccaneers then waived him. In 2011 he after he had accepted a UW scholarship. When was charged with felony battery for punching a he showed up to fight another River Ridge stupair of bouncers in a Tampa bar. In 2012 he was dent, one of his buddies hit the teen in the head arrested for the wedding-eve fracas. A few weeks with a baseball bat. As he collapsed unconscious, later, in Florida, because of the Kirkland arrest, Stevens stomped him, breaking his jaw. Charged he was busted for violating conditions of his with felony assault, Stevens was confined to his Florida marijuana parole, then released. home wearing an electronic tracking device, but » CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

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Solo stretches prior to a Reign FC match, Stevens with her in spirit.

Stevens was not around for the June 21, 2014, family fisticuffs at Solo’s half-sister’s place in Kirkland. According to police and court records, officers were called to handle a woman who was “going crazy and hitting people.” The nephew claimed “We just let her back into our lives . . . [she] always does this.” Solo, who’d been drinking, came without Stevens because, she said, “he was being a jerk” for refusing to drive her to the airport. Solo and the teen then allegedly got into an argument—“I then told her to get her cunt face out of my house,” the nephew told police. Solo allegedly called him a “pussy” and punched and tackled him, saying he was crazy and a “fat pig,” and allegedly attacked his mom, punching her when she tried to step in. The nephew clubbed Solo on the head with a wooden broomstick, and tried to get her to leave by pointing a broken BB gun at her. But she began circling him, “cornering me like a shark,” the teen claimed. She allegedly left the house, jumped a fence, re-entered, and attacked her half-sister again. Pictures of the sister and nephew taken after the fight, obtained by the website TMZ.com, show scratches, abrasions, and red spots on the hands, arms, neck, and head of the mother and son. Solo was arrested on two counts of domestic violence. She claimed self-defense. In January of this year, a judge threw out the case after the halfsister and nephew apparently chose not to pursue charges, failing to show up for pretrial interviews. On her Facebook page (1.7 million likes as of press time), Solo thanked her legal team and soccer officials and teammates “whom, under great pressure to do otherwise, chose to stand by and believe in me,” adding, “I always had faith that once the facts of the case were presented, I would be cleared of all charges and I am so happy and relieved to finally have it all behind me.” And then all back in front of her again. Prosecutors in February appealed the decision, claiming the judge abused his discretion in tossing the case. And Solo and Stevens had already climbed back into the headlines after the ex-footballer was stopped again for suspected drunk driving on January 19. Stevens was at the wheel and Solo was a passenger in a van rented by the U.S. women’s soccer team when it was pulled over near their hotel in Manhattan Beach, near Los Angeles. The national team was practicing in nearby Carson for upcoming matches. It was about 1:20 a.m. when the officer spotted Stevens driving without headlights on. Police by law won’t release the arrest report, and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office tells SW that charges have not yet been filed in public court. But TMZ.com says it has talked with police sources who claim Solo

was belligerent and recorded the incident on her cell phone, supposedly asking an officer “Don’t you know who we are?” Stevens was arrested and released on $5,000 bail with a court date set for March 19. “The timing is interesting,” TMZ noted, as did most news stories, “considering Solo was JUST let off the hook in a domestic violence case against her nephew and sister in which she was accused of going on a drunken violent tirade.” With her off-field notoriety again outdistancing her on-field prowess—which includes a record 72 career shutouts against opponents— Solo was suspended by the U.S. Soccer Federation for 30 days, beginning January 21. She missed matches in France and England. Any further mistakes and she could miss this summer’s World Cup play. Despite her quick reflexes and masterful defensive play, Solo isn’t irreplaceable, as she first learned in 2007. Back then coach Greg Ryan benched Solo after she criticized veteran keeper Briana Scurry, causing Solo to miss some World Cup action. She didn’t take it lightly. Solo claimed Ryan shoved her during their talk (he denied it), and after her team lost 4-0, she boasted, “There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves.” During that period and through the start of her marriage to Stevens, Solo cultivated a tough, outspoken image. Forget Seattle Reign, think Oakland Raiders. Her bio as a Nike spokesperson cites the “fighting spirit” of the “global icon,” explaining, “It’s true. Hope Solo has a chip on her shoulder. In fact, she has many: there’s her difficult childhood and then there’s the brouhaha that erupted in 2007 after she publically [sic] criticized one of her coaches. More generally, there are the numerous double standards she faces as a woman athlete. Most recently she took shots from critics who questioned her decision to participate in a televised dancing competition—no matter that when a national football star appeared in the same contest, he was praised for being the ultimate athlete.” Much of this criticism, it should be noted, was over her claims that Dancing With the Stars was rigged and her accusation that she was slapped across the face by her partner, ballroom champion Maksim Chmerkovskiy, for missteps during practice. The bio continues, “Then there are the physical chips from years of competitive play, leading to major shoulder surgery that would have ended the careers of lesser competitors. But Hope is a fighter. These chips are merely motivation. They are what have made her not just the best female goalkeeper in the world but the best female goalkeeper the sport has ever seen.”

randerson@seattleweekly.com

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SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

Solo seconds that. “I’m one of the best goalkeepers the country’s ever seen,” she said in a 2012 interview with ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap. “I play to win. And speak the truth. And people either love me or hate me.” She added: “I have a lot of critics, we all know that, and I do, I do kinda want to say, you know—put my middle finger up to everybody and say—‘Think what you want about me. I am who I am. But at the end of the day I’m an athlete that wants to win.’ ” Nike has stuck by her the past two years as she has endured more public ridicule. She, along with other celebs including Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, was a target of an online theft of nude photos the women had uploaded to a cloud storage site. Though she posed in the buff for ESPN the Magazine’s “Body Issue” (as have Reign teammate Megan Rapinoe and the Seahawks’ Marshawn Lynch), those images were tastefully done. The stolen photos were not. They included graphic close-ups of her most intimate body parts, drawing crude comments and amazement that she would store such shots in cyberspace. The photos remain aloft on the web today. Also, her 2014 domestic-violence charge came around the same time that Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was indefinitely suspended by the NFL after knocking out his fiancée with a sucker punch. Nike dropped its pact with Rice, just as it did with Adrian Peterson when the Minnesota Viking was accused of child abuse—spanking his son with a switch— before the two had their days in court. But in what some called a double standard, the Soccer Federation as well as Nike chose to await the outcome of Solo’s court action. Cindy Boren of The Washington Post, observing that Solo was not only on the field but was being honored for her recent play, asked “While U.S. Soccer doesn’t have the same high profile as the NFL, how do the cases differ? Aren’t women’s soccer players just as much role models as male football players?” Solo seemed to answer that herself when she tweeted after the arrest that “I take seriously my responsibilities as a role model and sincerely apologize to everyone I have disappointed.” Some have felt all along that an athlete’s private life should be off-limits to the public, especially misdemeanor incidents like Solo’s. “Perhaps Solo really is happy with her life and Stevens as her husband,” Adam Wells of Bleacher Report wrote after their wedding. “Solo defends her husband and his actions for whatever reasons. That is her choice, and no one else should be jumping down her throat to criticize her for the way she lives her life.” It’s not just the press but the public that has it wrong, Solo thinks. In one tweet, she observed, “I feel bad for all the ignorance in the world. People are so quick to judge. The media spins stories in such dramatic fashion.” Of course, the surest way to stay out of the headlines is to stay out of the courts. And she’s trying now to do that, Solo indicated to Robin Roberts in that recent interview. She and Stevens made a mistake in deciding to let him drive the van, and she regrets that. “Clearly, I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “It was a horrible choice. I think I just wasn’t in a good place emotionally to even make good decisions.” Her voice cracked. She seemed on the verge of tears. It’s a start—or a restart, perhaps. On February 21, she was reinstated to the U.S. women’s team and departed for Portugal the next day to play in the Algarve Cup, a series of matches considered warmups for World Cup play this summer. Still, as she told Roberts, “I’m a work in progress, and will continue to be a work in progress until the end of my days.” She didn’t say “Jerramy is too.” But she didn’t have to. E

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food&drink

Priestesses of Pie

FoodNews BY JASON PRICE

Seattleite Kate Lebo and New Jerseyan Ellen Gray talk crusts, obscure apples, and our love affair with this all-American dessert.

The 2015 Washington Cask Beer Festival is coming up on March 28 with over 40 guild-member breweries at the Seattle Center exhibition hall. There will be over 100 cask-conditioned beers on tap during two sessions, noon–4 p.m. and 6–10 p.m. Beers are brewed and served in the traditional English method, which requires natural conditioning without artificially introduced CO2 and pouring via a hand pump or by gravity.

BY DAKOTA MACKEY

Top: A trio of pies. Bottom, left to right: Lebo and Gray.

DAKOTA MACKEY

In a tribute to the artists that inspired Food and Sh*t co-conspirator Prometheus Brown to become vegan (for a little while), this month’s installment is all about the veg. Sariwa will be held on March 16 at Inay’s Asian Pacific Cuisine, with seatings at 5 and 8 p.m. $40 gets you five dishes, including charred carrots and cauliflower with calamansi cilantro vege mayo, eggplant and gnocchi adobo, and the famous ube cheesecake, vegan-style. E morningfoodnews@gmail.com

food@seattleweekly.com

Cantina Leña’s ceviche. BY NICOLE SPRINKLE

NICOLE SPRINKLE

Earlier, Lebo told her “Pie School” students that a great advantage to being a master is that it is impressive to show up to a party with a pie rather than just a bottle of wine. “Many people are uncomfortable with pie, having never baked it,” Gray says. “It is a mysterious dessert that requires skill to make.” Lebo nods in agreement, knowing this is why people take her classes—to learn firsthand how to overcome a complicated recipe and know by feel what it takes to bake an exceptional pie. “People touch the crust too much,” Lebo says. “Be gentle but firm.” A large part of Lebo’s class is instruction on what dough should feel like and how to form it. She laughs as she explains how difficult it can be to describe a certain step in writing. Her latest book takes several extensive pages just to describe the process for her all-butter crust. “People who are good with their hands are good with pie,” Lebo says. Lebo gingerly forms these crusts in her new kitchen in Spokane, where she takes refuge between book tours; Gray, in the bakery where she experiments with flavors and dreams up the signature puns for her blog, which she calls “pieisms.” As Gray says herself, “The oven mitts are coming off.” E

TheWeeklyDish

I’m generally distrustful of ceviche. Too often it consists only of shrimp or a cheaper fish, and can be doused with lime juice to the point of obliterating any other flavors. Not so at Tom Douglas’ first foray into Mexican food at Cantina Leña, just across the street from the Palace Kitchen. In this preparation, perfect bite-sized chunks of yellowtail tuna are marinated in a lime aioli, which adds a slightly creamy heft that tones down the acidity. Slices of radish and small dollops of guacamole bring further points of interest, while the cripsy tostada it’s served on delivers great crunch. A single thin slice of yuzu kosho (yuzu peel and salt) is a garnish you’ll want to take a bite of for a single blast of sour amid the otherwise judiciously balanced dish. It’s a great starter for two, though even the four in my party all managed to get a taste. E nsprinkle@seattleweekly.com

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

Drinks in hand, I ask: “Why pie?” “There is human connection in pie,” Gray says. “It conjures memories that other desserts don’t; there is always a story.” For Gray, it stirs childhood recollections of pie for breakfast; sheet trays of them on the farm where she worked; making her son his favorite nut pie, which she calls Drew’s Wild Nut Pie; and hours of work fluting and forming crusts in her current role as a baker and blogger. Lebo began making pie in her early 20s as a break from writing poetry. Her other book, A Commonplace Book of Pie, was part poetry book, part cookbook. “Pie was instant gratification,” she says. When crafting a poem was challenging, she knew she could be successful baking a pie. After years of making a career surrounded in flaky pastry and literary work, Lebo says she has lost sight of why she focuses specifically on pie. “It’s something I know how to do well and can teach, so it puts gas in my car and pays my rent. Just pie itself doesn’t have a lot of growth potential, and I’ve gone as far as I can go with it, so the next thing to do is figure out what is next.” Gray probes Lebo for what might be in her future. “It’s always food-related,” Lebo says. Aside from their personal love for pie, Gray says the timing for pie is good now: “Pie is the new cupcake.”

FRANCESCO SAPIENZA

After leaving Lebo’s “Pie School” class at the Pike Place Market Atrium Kitchen, I stroll behind the two, listening to them lust over apple varieties. Gray likes making pie with Macoun apples from New York, but Lebo says she can’t get them in the Northwest. Lebo reminisces about a trip to Massachusetts where she found heirloom apple varieties like Belle de Boskoop, which she says shine when baked or sauced. The apple banter began in response to a question I posed: If you could eat only one, which pie would you choose? Gray won’t pick a favorite, insisting she could have two: peach and strawberry rhubarb. Lebo argues peach is perhaps the hardest to make, so she would choose apple for its ease and comfort. “Apple because that’s real food,” she says. Both women would make the pie themselves. “I only want to eat my pie,” Lebo says. “Me too,” agrees Gray. “It’s a pie-lady thing,” Lebo says.

Throughout March, Li’l Woody’s is featuring burger specials designed by different chefs, including Matt Dillon, Brendan McGill, and Renee Erickson. First up is Maria Hines from Golden Beetle, whose burger includes harissa aioli, lettuce, pickled serranos and onion, Gruyère, baharat-seasoned Northwest grassfed beef, and mayo.

CHRISTOPHER NELSON

f you had asked me a year ago what I thought of cherry pie, the image of a cloying ruby filling would pop into my head— gelatinous goo spilling from the sides of a tough crust. Perhaps because I ate cherry pie at Denny’s once. Last August, I changed my mind. I reluctantly dug my fork into a golden pie, imbued with sour cherries from Wisconsin. The flavor was tart and sweet, a marriage of lemon zest and sugar. The two women responsible for this change of cherry-pie heart met me for a drink last weekend (perfect timing considering that this Saturday, 3/14/15, is National Pi Day. Yeah, the numerical pi, but what the heck?).We discussed preferred fats for crust and apples for filling, and why people are drawn to pie. But first let me tell you how I met these fellow bakers and pie enthusiasts. Ellen Gray—baker and blogger for No More Mr. Nice Pie—and I pitted and peeled fresh fruit for 80 pies this past September for an upstate New York retreat called The Longhouse Food Revival. With experience baking at a small shop in Maplewood, N.J., and owning a restaurant in Philadelphia, making 80 pies is nothing new for Gray. I was instantly drawn to her theatrical prance in the kitchen, swerving between checking the hot oven and testing filling for imperfections. Upon moving to Seattle and getting a job as a baker, I attended the launch party at the Pike Place Market Atrium for Seattleite Kate Lebo’s cookbook, Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour and Butter. After trying several of her pies, including marionberry with hazelnut crumble and plum with sprinkles of fresh thyme, her book is part of my permanent collection. When Gray said she would be visiting Seattle, I knew I had to set up a meeting with my pie muses, representing the East and West Coasts.

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SHAMROCK RUN AFTER-PARTY W/ JP HENNESSY: 10AM-NOON ERIN MCNAMEE: 6-9PM FADE TO BLACK: 9PM-CLOSE GAELIC ROOM - DJ T-HUMP: 9PM-CLOSE sunday, MARCH 15

CRUMAC: 5PM-8PM HERDING CATS: 9PM-CLOSE tuesday, march 17

JP HENNESSY: 12-3PM STOUT POUNDERS: 3-6PM GEOFFREY CASTLE & FRIENDS: 6-9PM POP-OFFS: 9PM-CLOSE GAELIC ROOM - THE HIPSTERS: 9PM-MIDNIGHT Performing throughout the weekend:

irish dancers and Eastside firefighters, pipes and drums!

eattle, sometime in the past few years, you killed off the bartender. In its place we have the “mixologist,” but I’m not sure that’s been a positive trade. There’s no doubt that the quality of cocktails citywide is much higher than it was a decade ago, and that’s BY ZACH GEBALLE worth a toast—but at what cost? Waxed mustaches, suspenders, and a broad knowledge of obscure cocktails can’t make up for an inability to perform basic customer-service functions, including actually making drinks quickly and socializing with guests in a manner other than condescending to them or ignoring them for ordering uninteresting drinks. There was a time when being a bartender meant being able to whip up a drink fast and assess the needs of your patrons; to converse about sports, music, movies, and other aspects of pop culture; and most of all to be a friendly face in a world that can be cold and indifferent. In our blind pursuit for cocktail Nirvana, have we lost sight of what a trip to a bar should be about? I don’t want to give up what we’ve gained and go back to a world where, when you order a Negroni, you get Campari, gin, and orange juice served over crushed ice (that’s a story for another column). Yet given that there are so many reasons to go to a bar, doesn’t it seem a bit mad that we’ve so heavily emphasized just one: getting an exceptional drink? Even I’m not sure: After all, many of my favorite cocktails these days are either rediscovered gems or modern inventions that, without a strong culture of experimentation, I’d never have tried. I appreciate that for many in the vanguard of this movement, it was important to differentiate what they did from combining rum and Coke, and that most if not all were truly passionate about their vocation. Just for making fresh-squeezed citrus juice commonplace, they deserve acclaim. Yet as the market for craft cocktails has exploded, it’s no longer just the realm of a few dedicated folks hoping to open minds and expand tastes. Craft bartending has become marketing drivel, with a look and an air of superiority, and less about turning customers on to a drink they’ve never tried or an exciting spirit. For every bartender I encounter with a genuine passion for what he or she does, I meet five or 10 who are happiest when they can patronize a guest who’s never heard of mezcal or Aperol or aquavit. Sadly, I don’t think there’s a solution. Craft cocktails aren’t going away anytime soon—not now that restaurateurs have found that they can charge $12–$14 for them—and the image of the craft bartender is fixed in the culture, for better or worse. There’s no doubt that you can get a truly great experience at many of Seattle’s wonderful cocktail bars, but it’s undoubtedly different from one you’d have gotten at great bars a decade or two ago. Better? Worse? You tell me. E Thoughts on the changes in the bar scene? E-mail thebarcode@seattleweekly.com or reach out on Twitter @zgeballe.

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arts&culture

ThisWeek’s PickList

Next Year in Cape Town A documentary sampler from the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

THURSDAY, MARCH 12

BY BRIAN MILLER

Michelle Ellsworth

Fighter pilot Dani Shapira in Above and Beyond.

PLAYMOUNT PRODUCTIONS

Because I love all World War II movies, Above and Beyond pro-

LITTLEWHITELIETHEFILM.COM

and ’70s confidante of Yasser Arafat. He spent half his life in exile, the darling of European leftists, traveling among various cities and gathering an international string of lovers. Two women, an Israeli Jew and a Syrian Christian, talk intimately about their old paramour, but we get little sense of the man beyond newsreels and dull, heroic poetry gone hopelessly out of fashion. Fond of booze, women, and cigarettes, Darwish and his secular company have been totally eclipsed by Hamas and ISIS. An ex-wife lovingly calls him “my tragic poet,” like some dated figure from the 19th-century Romantics. It’s hard to see what future significance he’ll have in the funda-fied Middle East. (4 p.m. Thurs., March 19.) Down in South Africa, however, we can surely still draw inspiration from the example of Albie Sachs, a white Jewish member of the ANC who barely survived a government assassination attempt in 1988. Soft Vengeance relates how this stoic, loyal colleague of Nelson Mandela endured imprisonment, exile, and the loss of an arm and eye with remarkably little bitterness. Among his admirers here are retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nadine Gordimer, and the Notorious R.B.G. herself—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg! (A documentary about her is surely forthcoming.) Appointed by Mandela to South Africa’s highest court, the now-retired jurist Sachs recovered from divorce, wrote his memoirs (the basis for this movie), and married again. The final beach scenes with his second wife and young son show that, even after apartheid, a fresh start is still possible. Alfre Woodard narrates. (8:10 p.m. Tues., March 17; director Abby Ginzberg will attend.) E

bmiller@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL Runs Sat., March 14–Sun., March 22 at Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, and Stroum Jewish Community Center (Mercer Island). $5–$18. Tickets & info: 324-9996, seattlejewishfilmfestival.org.

Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 217-9888, ontheboards. org. $15. 8 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ FRIDAY, MARCH 13

Big-Screen Hitchcock

Apart from Liam Neeson’s Run All Night, there aren’t any real crime flicks opening this weekend. Now Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) always insisted he made thrillers, not vulgar shoot-’em-ups, the best of them infused with mordant wit, sex appeal, and postwar sophistication. But beneath those thrills there must be a crime, whether already committed, coming soon, or being covered up. (It’s that latter point, the concealment of guilt, that so appealed to the Catholic-raised Hitchcock, master of the bad conscience.) So in this five-film weekend retro-

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

vides a fascinating postscript to one conflict while also launching a new national chapter. There was vard Law grad no Israeli Air Force when—before Barack Obama. Israeli statehood was declared in What makes her ’48—the Brits pulled out of Palestine film so confoundand five Arab countries stood poised ing is that she Schwartz at her bat mitzvah in Little White Lie. to invade. What I didn’t know about didn’t guess her post-WWII history is that U.S. secret parentage pilots of the Jewish faith—and others—would until college. Her filmmaking voyage of self-dislater resume their military careers in surplus old covery—after “a lifetime of lies”—recalls the locally aircraft purchased despite an American arms made A Lot Like You, seen at SIFF ’11, by Eliachi embargo. As octogenarian L.A. native Lou LenKimaro. Here Schwartz tenderly reaches toward art recalls with due irony, he and his fellow flyers a family reconciliation that may never come. (6:30 ended up in German-designed fighters, wearing p.m. Thurs., March 19.) secondhand Luftwaffe uniforms, battling the On a national scale, reconciliation also seems Egyptians’ superior British-made planes. The impossible in the evenhanded Holy Land, filmed odds were completely against them. On the by Peter Cohn in the occupied West Bank ground, before and after the first Arab-Israeli during 2011–12. At the film’s start, there’s the war, there was enough black-market intrigue fresh optimistic glow of the Arab Spring, as to warrant a feature film: fake airlines, illegal Palestinian villagers seek redress in Israeli courts arms shipments, and bored, horny pilots boozagainst the illegal land-grabs of Israeli settlers. ing and carousing from New York’s Copacabana In Wisemanesque fashion, Cohn allows both nightclub to Panama to Rome before they even sides to speak for themselves: the Arabs grouse reached combat. An affecting and unexpected about water and electricity shortages; the settlers cameo comes from Pee-Wee Herman (aka Paul exude a kind of Aquarian zealotry. Meanwhile Reubens), whose Hollywood stunt-pilot father a dogged Peace Now activist tries to usher both was shot down in combat. Dangling in his parties into judicial process; and we see how parachute, speaking not a word of Hebrew, that the inevitable stones-versus-tear gas protests pilot saved his skin from Israeli groundfire in an can have fatal consequences. Then the positions incident that almost plays like a comedy routine harden into a frozen conflict that seems destined when read by Reubens from his father’s diary. to outlast the Cold War. A smiling, hippie-dippy Nancy Spielberg—yes, sister of Steven—is the L.A. settler casually dismisses “some Arab mob” film’s producer. (1 p.m. Sun., March 22.) in racist shorthand; and a cheerful, tech-savvy Steven Spielberg’s own family is famously young Palestinian blogger finally joins the enraged diverse and inclusive, though more intentionally Islamist protesters at a cousin’s funeral. You’re left so than that of the middle-class Schwartz clan with the grim sense that integrating North and in liberal Woodstock, New York. There, the only South Korea will be child’s play compared to this. child in a Jewish household, Lacey Schwartz (8:20 p.m. Sun., March 15.) eventually grew curious during the ’90s as to A more personal but frustratingly elusive view why—apart from her father’s supposedly dark of Israel’s violent birth comes from Write Down, Sicilian lineage—her skin tone didn’t match I’m an Arab, a rather too laudatory profile of the her parents’. As we see Little White Lie, director Palestinian revolutionary poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008). Displaced as a child by the Schwartz has surely experienced some of the 1948 nakba, Darwish was later a PLO member same mixed-race confusion of her fellow Har-

Following along with Ellsworth’s work takes a lot of doing—her short bio describes her as a “dancer, choreographer, video maker, writer, cartoonist, and web designer.” (The long form includes even more skills.) Her work, which links kinetic expression to culture commentary and historical investigations, includes enough intellectual references to make you reach for the nearest encylopedia. But her multimedia presentation sweeps you along with the narrative until you’re convinced that you really do know what she’s talking about. Her latest invention sounds like a hybrid of a casino and a classroom: She’s performing inside a box made of screens and projectors, surrounded by video footage triggered by the audience during the show. The content is equally complex—Clytigation #3 is a speculation about Homer’s Clytemnestra, and what she’d do in a post-9/11 world. (Through Sat.) On the

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

udaism, like any major religion, has too much history to digest readily. For that reason, while the Seattle Jewish Film Festival includes far more than its documentaries, they provide bite-sized morsels—or approaches, really—to an ancient, amorphous whole. First, however, let’s stipulate that the 20th SJFF includes social and musical events, fun profiles of composer Marvin Hamlisch and comic performers David Steinberg and Sophie Tucker, plus acclaimed new dramas that open and close the fest (Hanna’s Journey and Mr. Kaplan, respectively). But among 30-plus films screening over 10 days, here’s an historical, nonfiction selection.

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 17

SIMON MEIN/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

arts&culture»

Pope frames Turner (Spall) as a fisherman.

» FROM PAGE 17 spective, the misdeeds include adultery, murder, robbery, trespassing on a national monument, blackmail, identity theft, serial killing, cross-dressing (well, nothing wrong with that these days), the irresponsible use of a crop-duster, and human taxidermy. I’ll leave it to you to sort out the various wrongs among Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Dial M for Murder. Tonight the minifest begins with the elaborate ruse and mind-fuck that is Vertigo, in which Jimmy Stewart’s San Francisco cop falls for Kim Novak’s femme fatale (twice, no less); followed by the black-and-white shocker Psycho, with the famous shower scene, Anthony Perkins in drag, and a swamp full of victims unlucky enough to have checked into the Bates Motel. (Through Sun.) SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff. net. $7–$12. 6:30 & 9:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MARCH 11 — 17, 2015

The Vertiginous Thrill of Forsythe

William Forsythe and his ballets attract extreme adjectives—the choreographer has been extending what we understand about virtuosity since he started making work in the 1980s. Building on George Balanchine’s neoclassical experiments, Forsythe’s dancers move farther and faster—the thin red line of the classical tradition is still there, but it’s stretched to new limits with each new work. Pacific Northwest Ballet has been dipping into this volatile universe for several years, but has now accumulated enough dances to make a full evening. With three works being presented, two new to Seattle, the result may send everyone into orbit. (Through March 22.) McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St. (Seattle Center), 441-2424, pnb. org. $30–$184. 7:30 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ

SAM Remix

Having opened last month, Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art From the Diker Collection doesn’t exactly put you in a festive mood. This is a history show, running through May 17, comprising artifacts, costumes, baskets, blankets, carvings, pottery, beadwork, etc. from all over North America (Canada included). Since the private trove amassed by New York collectors Charles and Valerie Diker ranges from snowy Inuit climes to the Navajo culture of the desert Southwest, it can be a little hard to maintain focus among the 122 objects. We’re more used to a narrow view of Pacific Northwest coastal art (represented, too, by SAM’s smaller companion show). Valerie Diker, during her

opening-day remarks, said the couple was drawn simply by beauty, not any specific regional, historical, or ethnographic interest. So my advice is to forget about context and surrender to eclecticism. In that spirit, tonight’s party includes music by DJ Doc Adam, art-making activities led by Wendy Red Star and Alicia Betty, food and drinks, and something called Kisima Ingitchuna (or Never Alone), a computer game based on the lore of Alaska’s Iñupiat tribe. Also, lest you think everything is old and sad in Indigenous Beauty, its 2,000 years of history run right up to the present decade. Be sure to see the Canadian artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ large comicbook panels excerpted from Red, which he calls a Haida manga. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $12–$25. 8 p.m–midnight. BRIAN MILLER MONDAY, MARCH 16

Mr. Turner

Now I have no objection to Emmanuel Lubezki having won the Oscar—his second in a row, after Gravity—for his amazing and seemingly seamless lens work in Birdman. Yet I was rooting for English cinematographer Dick Pope, who took the opposite approach in filming Mike Leigh’s gorgeous biopic about the painter J.M.W. Turner. The grouchy, selfish, yet charismatic artist (17751851) saw the world from a mostly static perspective, as Pope frames it. Turner (played by Timothy Spall) visits various corners of Europe with his sketchbook; he spends hours at the easel back in his London studio; and his buyers have the expectation of displaying his landscape and maritime scenes in grand rooms where visitors will admire them for decades to come. There’s no rush or bustle to this process (unlike the frantic backstage players in Birdman), which is why Leigh and Pope often pause their film’s action for us to see 19th-century views as Turner did: lambent light on a Flemish canal, the sun filtered through harbor mist and sails, locomotive steam bursting into a halo above the green countryside, and—this shot made me gasp—The Fighting Temeraire, a famous battleship being towed up the Thames to be rendered as scrap. That latter image is something of an art-history joke, since we’re seeing Turner’s famous 1839 painting come to life. It’s gorgeous trickery, not unlike Birdman, since the warship’s a digital creation. Though Pope’s of a different century and medium than Turner, he’s an artist who also hides his impeccable technique. SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff. net. $7–$12. 7 p.m. BRIAN MILLER E

» Performance

Opening Nights

is the latter’s description of love and marriage—which to her can be mutually exclusive. Carey Wong’s minimalist set design lends further focus to such emotionally naked moments among the laughs. Hwang, who earned a Tony for his 1988 M. Butterfly, isn’t out to write a serious meditation on U.S./Chinese economic relations. Nor is Chinglish a full-on farce. Rather, he relishes—as we do—scrambling words in a sentence just as much as misplacing an unassuming Ohioan into a foreign culture. IRFAN SHARIFF

PChinglish ARTSWEST, 4711 CALIFORNIA AVE. S.W., 938-0339, ARTSWEST.ORG. $15–$34.50. 7:30 P.M. WED.–SAT., 3 P.M. SUN. ENDS MARCH 29.

The Chinese term guanxi, at a basic level, can refer to networking, connections, or relationships. More deeply, to a native speaker, it denotes the mutual responsibility owed between two people or groups. In the fast-growing China of David Henry Hwang’s 2011 comedy, it’s imperative to understand guanxi. And as protagonist Daniel (Evan Whitfield) warns, always bring a translator.

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The Flick 12TH AVENUE ARTS, 1620 12TH AVE., WEARENCTC.ORG. $15–$35. 8 P.M. THURS.–SAT., 7 P.M. SUN. ENDS APRIL 4.

International confusion: Hsieh and Whitfield.

MICHAEL BRUNK

Annie Baker’s Pulitzer winner—a magical mingling of Pinter pauses, Ibsenesque naturalism, and flashes of Pirandello—causes me cognitive dissonance. Written about the Twitter Generation, though with a run time exceeding two and a half hours, The Flick proves an imperative piece of modern American theater. Brevity is not one of its selling points, but the script takes chances that this New Century Theatre Company production, directed by MJ Sieber, does finally redeem. Working in a dilapidated old single-screen movie theater, ushers Sam (Sam Hagen) and Avery (Tyler Trerise) and projectionist Rose (Emily Chisholm) discuss film, the transition from 35 millimeter to digital, and life in general. The three both crave authenticity and confront their full-of-shit contradictions. (The latter prove more entertaining than the former.) On the stage facing us are rows of empty movie-theater seats where the play’s action—and inaction—occurs. As Sam and Avery clean up the mess left by filmgoers, their work is punctuated by an abundance of silences that are both irksome and utterly slice-of-life. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they just quietly do their job. A millennial David Mamet, Baker captures, like, the speech patterns of Generations X and Y, and keenly conveys the universal experiences—and rants—of peons in the service industry. Even during moments of uncomfortable quiet, oozing with subtext, this cast elicits empathy. Hagen’s Sam, too old for his menial job at 35, inspires compassion upon declaring “I am that douche” (while comically confessing his double standard about bringing food into the theater). Chisholm’s green-haired nonconformist is all too human as she clumsily dances to seduce the pitifully passive and anxiety-laden Avery. Like Rent, The Flick will not resonate with everyone. It’s a generational statement of sorts, in which Baker beautifully depicts the human condition through her trio of underachievers. Though a test of patience, the play is worthwhile for both ardent theater lovers and those theateraverse members of Generation Me, who so seldom find themselves represented onstage. And about that stage: Andrea Bush’s set achieves an engulfing, painstakingly detailed, mise-en-scène effect. We enter what seems a real cinema, complete with posters and popcorn on the floor, and the sound design (by Rob Witmer and Evan Mosher) incorporates trailers from Jaws, American Graffiti, and other movies cited. We in our seats stare at the three discontented souls in theirs. Instead of a movie screen between us, there’s a mirror. ALYSSA DYKSTERHOUSE E stage@seattleweekly.com

Launch Your International Career Lunchtime Information Session Thursday, March 19 12 to 1 p.m. Peace Corps Seattle Office Westlake Tower Building 1601 Fifth Avenue, Suite 605

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Stephanie Nys will discuss how you can make a difference overseas and return home with the experience and global perspective to stand out in a competitive job market.

Life is calling. How far will you go?

855.855.1961 | www.peacecorps.gov

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

Dejected Daniel has fled recession-afflicted Cleveland to try his luck in in China, where he gets tangled in a web of guanxi and misunderstanding. Trying to sell bilingual signage, he’s pegged as being honest and innocent by Xi Yan (Kathy Hsieh), vice minister of a small—only four million!—inland city. She isn’t so innocent; and her gall, desire, and ambition will gradually be revealed. Daniel hires English tutor-cumconsultant Peter (Guy Nelson) to broker a deal between his firm and the Minister of Guiyang (Hing Lam). Daniel argues that his signs can help avoid embarrassing mistranslations—for instance, “deformed man toilet” for “handicapaccessible restroom” or “slip and fall carefully” for “be careful not to slip and fall.” But enter guanxi. Peter and the minister have a secret past: Peter tutored the latter’s son and got him into the University of Bath. Peter is owed a favor, though the minister has no desire to award Daniel a contract. Meanwhile, harboring her own ulterior motives, Xi keeps Daniel in town by instigating an affair that will upset Guiyang’s current regime. Chinglish is quick-paced, quick-witted, and brimming with humor. Nearly one-quarter of the play is spoken in Mandarin (with projected subtitles that we trust are being translated appropriately). What makes us chuckle, though, are the mistranslations and communication breakdowns among Hwang’s characters. It’s like that game of telephone, where children whisper a single phrase around the room until it’s mangled and unrecognizable. Also being mediated from one idiom to another is some underlying pathos. Director Annie Lareau helps us to see genuine feeling between Daniel and Xi. Particularly poignant

arts&culture» Performance Stage OPENINGS & EVENTS

AUGUST WILSON MONOLOGUE COMPETITION High-

school actors vie for cash and a trip to the national finals in NYC. Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center, 4432222, seattlerep.org. Free. 7:30 p.m. Tues., March 17. CARNIVAL An innocent young woman joins a French circus in this musical based on the film Lili (not to be confused with Carousel, based on the play Liliom). Carlson Theater, Bellevue College campus, 3000 Landerholm Circle S.E., Bellevue, 800-838-3006, brownpapertickets.com. $10–$12. 7:30 p.m. Wed., March 11–Sat., March 14. CAROUSEL The 5th Avenue’s Rising Star Project education program gives students the opportunity to produce and perform a show on the mainstage. 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave. ,625-1900, 5thavenue.org. $15–$25. 10 a.m. & 7 p.m. Fri., March 13, 2 p.m. Sat., March 14. THE COMPARABLES Strong and glamorous high-end real-estate agents Bette, Monica, and Iris are faced with a tough decision after Bette’s reputation is questioned in a new play by Laura Schellhardt. Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center, 443-2222. $17–$102. Opens March 11. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sun. plus some Wed. & weekend matinees; see seattlerep.org for exact schedule. Ends March 29. FAMILY AFFAIR Jennifer Jasper’s “hilarious, twisted, and ultimately relatable” cabaret on the theme of family. JewelBox Theater at the Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave., jenniferjasperperforms.com. $10. 7:30 p.m. Wed., March 18. HOUSE OF THEE UNHOLY This rock/burlesque extravaganza celebrates the ’70s. The Triple Door, 216 Union St., 838-4333, thetripledoor.com. $20–$45. 7 & 10 p.m. Wed., March 11–Sat., March 14; 5 & 8 p.m. Sun., March 15. (Early shows 17 and over, late shows 21 and over.) HUMAN IDENTITY Christopher Vened’s solo show asks the questions “What does it mean to be human? Who am I?” Oh, is that all? Annex Theatre, 1100 E. Pike St., annex theatre.org. $22. 8 p.m. Fri., March 13–Sat., March 14.

BLOOD/WATER/PAINT Live Girls! premieres Joy

JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL & LIVING IN PARIS Well, he was when this revue celebrating the

Belgian songwriter opened in 1968. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $15–$49. Preview March 11, opens March 12. 7:30 p.m. Tues.–Wed., 8 p.m. Thurs.–Fri., 2 & 8 p.m. Sat., 2 & 7 p.m. Sun. Ends May 17. MARCH IS CABARET MONTH Classic cabaret from a variety of artists; see ballardjamhouse.com for lineup. Egan’s Ballard Jam House, 1707 N.W. Market St., 7891621. $15 for one show, $25 for both (+ $10 food/drink min.). 7 & 9 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends March 28. PURPLE RAIN The Prince movie is sent up as part of the Brown Derby Series: “ridiculously staged readings of your favorite screenplays—heavily edited and immaturely adapted.” Re-bar, 1114 Howell St. $20–$25. 8 p.m. Thurs., March 12–Sat., March 14. SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS A stage version of David Guterson’s Puget Sound-set play. Bainbridge Performing Arts, 200 Madison Ave. N., Bainbridge Island, 842-8569, bainbridgeperformingarts.org. $19–$27. Preview March 12, opens March 13. 7:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat., 3 p.m. Sun., plus 7:30 p.m. Mon., March 23. Ends March 29. TARTUFFE Seattle Shakespeare Company is resetting, to 1947, Molière’s enduring farce about swindlers and hypocrisy. Center House Theatre, Seattle Center Armory, 733-8222. $25–$48. Previews March 17–19, opens March 20. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat. plus some weekend matinees; see seattleshakespeare.org for exact schedule. Ends April 12. Y-WE SPEAK A theater piece built from the personal stories of 13 teenage girls. Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center, 443-2222, seattlerep.org. Free. 2 p.m. Sat., March 14.

CURRENT RUNS

AVENUE Q (SCHOOL EDITION) From what I remember

of this show, a version with the diciest stuff removed would last about 12 minutes. I may be wrong. Youth Theatre Northwest, TPS Studio 4, Seattle Center Armory, 232-4145 x109, youththeatre.org. $10–$17. 7 p.m. Fri.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends March 22.

The Accidental Seer Until recently, Jean Sibelius’ great acclaim in America during his lifetime (1865–1957) probably did him more harm than good. Being embraced by arch-conservative critics as the one contemporary composer they could get behind made him no friends BY GAVIN BORCHERT among the avantgarde, nor did his popularity in the (shudder) mass medium of radio. And these style wars obscured Sibelius’ genuine innovativeness, which has nothing to do with its surface dissonance level—as in the angst-laden tangles of Schoenberg or the dry crunch of Stravinsky. What makes his best music sound so remarkably unlike anything written earlier lies deeper—in its rhetoric. Fragmentation, isolation, discontinuity: These were his strategies, deployed on a broad, even heroic, canvas. Take the opening of the finale of his second symphony: a main theme all of seven notes long (and even this incorporates two distinct threenote cells); then a trumpet fanfare; an upheaval of horns; a breathlessly climactic string scale. All these separate gestures are bound only by a hypnotic grinding in the basement of the orchestra—and the result is uncommonly stirring. Inspired by the environment of his native Finland, Sibelius’ materials and methods evoke, above all, natural processes—in painterly terms, they’re landscapes without figures. (Another example: Present in practically all his orchestral music is rushing string figuration that, like a snowmeltflooded brook, is constantly in motion but never escapes its banks—never goes anywhere.)

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MARCH 11 — 17, 2015

HELSINKI CITY MUSEUM/DANIEL NYBLIN

EARSUPPLY

That he could clothe all this in a harmonic language that never lands too harshly on even the tenderest ear made him both beloved and reviled. Today, at last, we’re able to appreciate his individualism without aesthetic side-taking getting in the way. And those strategies of fragmentation? They turned out to be the foundational tenets of postmodernism—and thus your average orchestral work of 2015 sounds a lot more like Sibelius than like his then-progressive contemporaries. Who’d have guessed? For the next three weekends, the Seattle Symphony is marking the composer’s 150th with a minifestival: all seven of his symphonies, two or three a weekend, plus tone-poems, his Violin Concerto, and a special chamber-music concert on March 15. Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. & Union St., 215-4747. $20–$120. March 12–28; see seattle symphony.org for exact schedule.

McCullough-Carranza’s drama about baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave. S., 800-838-3006, lgtheater.org. $15–$22. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends March 14. CHINGLISH SEE REVIEW, PAGE 19. CIRQUE DU SOLEIL “KURIOS—Cabinet of Curiosities” asks “What if by engaging our imagination and opening our minds we could unlock the door to a world of wonders?” Marymoor Park, 6046 W. Lake Sammamish Pkwy. N.E., Redmond, 800-450-1480, cirquedusoleil.com/kurios. $35–$156. 8 p.m. Tues.–Sat., 4:30 p.m. Sat. (& some Fri.), 1:30 & 5 p.m. Sun. Ends March 22. THE FLICK SEE REVIEW, PAGE 19. THE GOD OF HELL Outraged by the Bush administration, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, etc., Sam Shepard hastily composed this absurdist and somewhat awkward farce in 2004. In a plot combining elements from FOX News and Star Trek, the uncomplicated existence of Wisconsin dairy farmers Frank (Edwin Scheibner) and Emma (Maureen Miko) is upended when they host Mr. Haynes (Keith Dahlgren), a presumed scientist on the run from a secret U.S. plutonium project. In pursuit, masquerading as a door-to-door salesman hawking patriotic products, the government henchman Welch (Gianni Truzzi) comes knocking. From there we are taken on a rugged route reconnoitering torture, politics, and democracy. Near the end, long after Verfremdungseffekt has morphed into unmitigated indifference, Frank says sincerely, “I miss the Cold War.” Yet every epoch has its atrocities and political rationales to ridicule, as the playwright (and theatergoer) knows. Why doesn’t God of Hell (directed by Joanna Goff Sunde) raise my hackles in the year 2015? Perhaps because it does not incite the intended ire; and, damn it, I wanted to be outraged—not bored by more partisan sniping. ALYSSA DYKSTERHOUSE Stone Soup Theatre, 4029 Stone Way N., 633-1883, stonesouptheatre.org. $15–$25. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends March 14. GOOD MORNING CAMPERS Jet City Improv “lets audiences relive the wonders of summer camp without any of the homesickness.” Yes, you will sing along. 5510 University Way N.E., jetcityimprov.org. $12–$15. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Fri. Ends March 20. GOODNIGHT MOON Based on the bedtime book by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, this musical debuted here in 2007. Now a new wave of kids can enjoy it. Seattle Children’s Theatre, Seattle Center, 4413322. $20 and up. Runs Thurs.–Sun.; see sct.org for exact schedule. Ends April 26. THE HOSTAGE Brendan Behan’s play about a British solddier held to be exchanged for an IRA prisoner includes slapstick, satire, and musical numbers. Jones Playhouse, 4045 University Way N.E., 543-4880, drama. washington.edu. $10–$18. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends March 15. I LOVE YOU, YOU’RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE Joe DiPietro’s long-running off-Broadway hit about the vagaries of love. Burien Actors Theatre, 14501 Fourth Ave. S.W., Burien, 242-5180, burienactorstheatre.org. $7–$20. 8 p.m. Fri.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends March 22. THE LONG ROAD/NINE Two gripping one-act dramas, presented by Arouet. Eclectic Theater, 1214 10th Ave., 800-838-3006, arouet.us. $12–$40. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends March 14. NEXT TO NORMAL A “typical” American family is anything but because of the mother’s 16-year battle with manic depression. SecondStory Rep, 16587 N.E. 74th St., Redmond, 425-881-6777, secondstoryrep.org. $27. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. plus 2 p.m. Sun., March 15. Ends March 15. SEVEN WAYS TO GET THERE Here’s an earnest new comedy of hybrid parentage: Dwayne J. Clark, a local businessman, is the newbie fictionalizing his past experiences in a men’s therapy group; writer Bryan Willis is the stage professional who helped him shape that circular sharing into a two-act structure. (John Langs directs at a brisk, welcome pace.) With a female shrink running herd on seven neurotic dudes with various maladies, the laughs here ought to come quick. This is a situation verging on sitcom, where you need the experienced joke-smithery of a Neil Simon. Yet the writing just isn’t there; instead we have easy male put-downs, talk of a porn co-op, the guys bursting into pirate banter, spontaneous dance parties, even a fart joke or two. Therapist Michelle (Kirsten Potter) implores her rather typical patients to open up and take more risks. Would that the play did the same. BRIAN MILLER ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676. $20–$65. Runs Thurs.–Sun.; see acttheatre.org for exact schedule. Ends March 15. TEATRO ZINZANNI: THE HOT SPOT Frank Ferrante and Dreya Weber return for TZ’s new show, in which “love and magic in the digital age collide.” Teatro ZinZanni, 222 Mercer St., 802-0015. $99 and up. Runs Thurs.–Sun. plus some Wed.; see zinzanni.com/seattle for exact schedule. Ends June 7.

Dance ICHELLE ELLSWORTH SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 17. • M NB: THE VERTIGINOUS THRILL OF FORSYTHE • PSEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 18. AJNC DANCE Amy Johnson has a quirky sense of

humor—her new Believe Me or Not should give her plenty of scope for silliness. 12th Avenue Arts, 1620 12th Ave., 800-838-3006, brownpapertickets.com. $15. 8 p.m. Fri.–Sun. Ends March 14. INTERNATIONAL BALLET THEATER Alice in Wonderland is guaranteed to enchant. Meydenbauer Center, 11100 N.E. Sixth St., Bellevue, 425-284-0444, ibtbellevue.org. $25–$40. Noon & 3 p.m. Sat., March 14–Sun., March 15. CARMONA FLAMENCO Traditional music and dance. Cafe Solstice, 4116 University Way N.E., 932-4067, carmona@ comcast.net. $15–$20. 8 & 9:30 p.m. Sat., March 14.

Classical, Etc.

UW CHOIRS The Chamber Singers and University Chorale

perform. Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, music. washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Wed., March 11. SEATTLE SYMPHONY SEE EAR SUPPLY, THIS PAGE. OLGA KERN From this pianist, music by oddball hypervirtuoso Charles-Valentin Alkan, plus Beethoven, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff. Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, uwworldseries.org. $40–$45. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., March 12. UW CAMPUS PHILHARMONIA UW’s energetic new orchestra for non-majors plays Mozart, Rossini, and Schubert.. Room 130, Kane Hall, UW campus. Free. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., March 12. NORTHWEST SINFONIETTA Cuban jazz with pianist Aldo Gavilán and the Harlem quartet. Benaroya Recital Hall, Thurd Ave. & Union St., 215-4747, northwestsinfonietta. org. $20–$55. 7:30 p.m. Fri., March 13. HANS-JÜRGEN SCHOOR From this German harpsichordist, Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations. Christ Episcopal Church, 4548 Brooklyn Ave. N.E., 633-1611, salishseafestival.org. $15–$25. 7:30 p.m. Fri., March 13. UW SYMPHONY Winners of the student Concerto Competition perform Fauré, Reinecke, and more. Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, music.washington.edu. $10–$15. 7:30 p.m. Fri., March 13. TORCH This quartet is “poised between progressive jazz, post-rock, and contemporary classical.” Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. $5–$15. 8 p.m. Fri., March 13. THE MET: LIVE IN HD Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez, two of today’s biggest bel canto stars, sing Rossini’s La donna del lago. See fathomevents.com for participating theaters. 10 a.m. Sat., March. 14, encored 6:30 p.m. Wed., March 18. NORTHWEST SYMPHONY Sean Osborn is the soloist in Gerald Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto; Anthony Spain also conducts music by Peter Seibert and Vaughan-Williams. Holy Rosary Church, 4142 42nd Ave. S.W., 242-6321, northwest symphonyorchestra.org. $12–$15. 8 p.m. Sat., March 14. COPPICE This Chicago duo of bellows (i.e., pump organ) and electronics performs, sharing a bill with Mathieu Ruhlmann & Joda Clément (from Vancouver) and John Teske & Neil Welch (Seattle). Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. $5–$15. 8 p.m. Sat., March 14. GALLERY CONCERTS Chamber music by Bach’s contemporaries. Queen Anne Christian Church, 1316 Third Ave. W., 726-6088, galleryconcerts.org. $15–$30. 7:30 p.m. Sat., March 14, 3 p.m. Sun., March 15. CATALIN ROTARU Music for double bass from this Arizona State faculty musician. Brechemin Auditorium, School of Music, UW campus, 685-8384, music.washington.edu. $15. 2 p.m. Sun., March 15. SEATTLE YOUTH SYMPHONIES All four orchestras perform. Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. & Union St., 362-2300, syso.org. $15–$48. 3 p.m. Sun., March 15.

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SEATTLE METROPOLITAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Wind-quintet music from SMCO players. Kent Lutheran Church, 336 Second Ave. S., Kent, seattlemetropolitan chamberorchestra.com. $12.50. 3 p.m. Sun., March 15. MUSIC NORTHWEST Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet and Mozart’s divertimento for string trio. Olympic Recital Hall, 6000 16th Ave. S.W., 937-2899, musicnorthwest.org. $16–$18. 3 p.m. Sun., March 15. NORTHWEST CHAMBER CHOIR/CONCORD CHAMBER CHOIR Frank Martin’s Mass for Double

Choir, plus Gorecki, Messiaen, and more. Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, 7500 Greenwood Ave. N., 3 p.m. Sun., March 15; and Bellevue Presbyterian Church, 1717 Bellevue Way N.E., Bellevue, 7:30 p.m. Sat., March 21. $12–$22. northwestchamberchorus.org. B Y G AV I N B O R C H E R T

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» Visual Arts

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DAYA ASTOR AND CAROLYN GRACZ The artists

present work under the rubrics Quotidian Urban Geometry and Perspective. Shift Gallery, 312 S. Washington St. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), shiftgallery.org. Noon-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Ends March 28. SHERI BAKES Her oil paintings capture light and motion in nature. Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave S., 622-2833, fosterwhite.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends April 1. BELONGING The show explores the cultural and political climate leading up to the Immigration Act of 1965. Wing Luke Museum, 719 S. King St., 6235124, wingluke.org. $9.95-$14.95. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sun. MARK BENNION AND MARITA DINGUS The artists exhibit New Works and The Girls. Traver Gallery, 110 Union St., 587-6501, travergallery.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m-5 p.m. Sat. Ends March 28. GALA BENT AND BLAKE HAYGOOD Their work explores complex themes through watercolor, acrylic, and graphite on paper. G. Gibson Gallery, 300 S. Washington St. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 587-4033, ggibsongallery.com. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Ends April 18. SQUEAK CARNWATH Songs collects the Oakland painter’s large, bright new works, many of them covered in text culled from her favorite music lyrics. Also on view, Taking Form: Quality in Clay. James Harris Gallery, 604 Second Ave, 903-6220, jamesharrisgallery.com. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Ends March 28. DIRTBAG SISTERS Karie Jane and Jess Bonin contemplate the pursuit of happiness in a conceptual show called Happily Never After. Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 621-1945, punchgallery.org. Noon-5 p.m. Thurs.Sat. Ends March 28. EQUILUX Featuring the art of Jon MacNair, Lauren Napolitano, Talia Migliaccio, Bunnie Reiss, and others. Flatcolor Gallery, 77 S. Main St., 390-6537, flatcolor. com. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Ends March 28. JOSEPH GOLDBERG His current paintings focus on weather and abstracted landscapes. Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., 624-0770, gregkucera. com. 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Ends March 28. BY D IA NA M . LE

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Openings & Events Babeland, Ghost Gallery, Photo Center NW, and The Pine Box. See capitolhillartwalk.com for full roster of attractions. 5-8 p.m. Thurs., March 12. EINSTEIN’S BIRTHDAY Artists indlucing Darren DP Palmer, Duff Hendrickson, and Peter Oppenheimer celebrate the birthday of the pioneering astrophysicist. Vermillion Gallery, 1508 11th Ave., 709-9797, vermillionseattle.com. 5 p.m.-1 a.m. Sat., March 14. CHARLES EMERSON AND GUY ANDERSON The two painters take inspiration from the Northwest landscape. Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Thurs., March 12. Sisko Gallery, 3126 Elliott Ave., 283-2998, siskoworks.com. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sun. Ends May 3. FAERIE III For the third year, artists from all over the world create their visions of Faerie. Opening reception, 6-9 p.m. Sat. during the Georgetown Art Attack. Krab Jab Studio, 5628 Airport Way S., 715-8593, krabjabstudio.com. 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Ends April 4. GEORGETOWN ART ATTACK Fantagraphics presents Guy Colwell’s Inner City Romance Part 2. The new exhibition space at Machine House Brewery showcases paintings from David Teichner. Augie Pagan offers new paintings at All City Coffee. Window on a Dream depicts the nightmarish world of dreams at Eight and Sand. And as usual, Equinox Studios is full of artists and makers working in every medium. Downtown Georgetown, georgetownartattack.com. 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Sat., March 14. ROBERT HARDGRAVE On display in a one-off exhibit called To Be Determined is a 48-foot-long horizontal scroll that will fill the new gallery. Calypte Gallery, 1107 E. Denny Way, 304-6782, calyptesings.tumblr. com. 5:30-9:30 p.m. Thurs., March 12. OUR DAILY HOMAGE New work from gallery artists Eric Carson, Mark Daughhetee, and Jenny Fillius features altars, icons, and figures of devotion. Opens Thurs., March 12. ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., 938-063, artswest.org. 1:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. Ends May 2. REBEKAH SLAVIN In her show Repetitions, she uses reflective materials and other media to explore the notion of reiteration in space. Opening reception 6-11 p.m. Thurs. during the Capitol Hill Art Walk, March 12. Vermillion, 4 p.m.-Midnight. Tues.-Wed., Sun. 4 p.m.-2 a.m. Fri.-Sat. Ends April 4. VENUS RISING An all-female art show includes Krissy Downing, Jewels Foster, Corianna Garrels, Megan Noel Smith, and a dozen more. Push/Pull 8537 Greenwood Ave. N., 384-3124. 6-10 p.m. Fri., March 13.

“SIX TALES OF APOCALYPTIC REVENGE. THE YEAR’S MOST FEARLESSLY FUNNY FILM. ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST FILMS.”

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Maybe it’s because of BAM’s ongoing biennial show, Knock on Wood, or because all the trees are sprouting leaves and blossoms, but that material is very much on my mind this spring. (Oh, there’s also BY BRIAN MILLER John Grade’s tree-cast arboreal carapace Middle Fork hanging at MadArt in SLU.) Another such timber creation lies on the floor in Flat Fall, which Cornish professor Ruth Marie Tomlinson made from a downed tree in Two Dot, Montana (great place name, btw, which is based on an old cattle brand), where she keeps a studio. Apparently the old cottonwood came down in a windstorm; then Tomlinson meticulously salvaged and sectioned it, numbering the pieces, and later trucked it over to Seattle for supine reassembly. Now covering most the of the gallery floor (step carefully!), the 337 component pieces are a kind of memorial for the once-living tree. While Grade’s art represents a year’s growth of a hemlock (through fabricated with a lattice of cedar), Tomlinson hews to the original—or rather, she’s hewed the original. Middle Fork will eventually be returned to biodegrade at the site of its inspiration, while Tomlin-

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son’s could end up anywhere (even back in Two Dot). Sections might be sold, I suppose, like giant coasters for you and 336 oversized guests, but Flat Fall couldn’t really be recycled into furniture, since cottonwood is so flimsy and cheap. A gallery portrait shows Tomlinson resting in the crook of the living cottonwood. That was one phase of the tree’s life cycle; art is the next; and its final traces might take the form of woodsmoke wafting from a chimney. (Tomlinson will give a talk on the piece at 6 p.m. Thurs., March 19.) Method Gallery, 106 Third Ave. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 223-8505, methodgallery.com. Free. Noon–5 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends April 11.

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ences tracking down and talking to Atlantis obsessives. Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. 7 p.m. Weds., March 11. TREVIS GLEASON Chef Interrupted is his travel memoir after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way N.E., 366-3333, thirdplacebooks.com. 7 p.m. Weds., March 11. JESSICA HAGY The author of a Webby Award-winning blog releases her book, The Art of War Visualized. University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, bookstore.washington.edu. 7 p.m. Wed., March 11. DAN DIMICCO He discusses economic restoration in American Made. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., March 12. REIF LARSEN He discusses his hefty new novel I Am Radar. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Thurs., March 12. JASON SCHMIDT A List of Things That Didn’t Kill Me is his coming-of-age memoir. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Fri., March 13. CAT WARREN She explores dogs with jobs in her book What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Fri., March 13. ELIZABETH AUSTEN AND DIANE RAPTOSH The poets read from their books American Amnesiac and Every Dress a Decision, respectively. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Sat., March 14. DR. GEORGE BAXTER-HOLDER His new Drugs, Food, Sex and God is a mix between memoir and self-help. University Book Store, 6 p.m. Sat., March 14. ABIGAIL CARTER She reads from her latest, Remember the Moon. Elliott Bay, 3 p.m. Sun., March 15. (Also: Third Place, 6:30 p.m. Fri., March 20.) DENIS HAYES & GAIL BOYER HAYES In their new book Cowed, the local authors discuss sustainability and America’s long-running relationship with cows. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Mon., March 16. (Also: Third Place, 7 p.m. Wed., March 18.) DENNIS LEHANE His new crime thriller, World Gone By, is set against a World War II backdrop. Elliott Bay, 3 p.m. Mon., March 16. SASHA MARTIN Life from Scratch is a food memoir, chronicling the 195 weeks during which time the food blogger attempted to cook and eat a meal from every single country. Third Place, 7 p.m. Mon., March 16. ROBERT SCHEER The managing editor of Truthdig discusses his book, They Know Everything About You, on data-collecting. Town Hall, $5. 7:30 p.m. Mon., March 16. VALENTINA GIAMBANCO She reads from her spooky new book, The Gift of the Darkness. Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St., 587-5737, seattlemystery.com. Noon. Tues., March 17. ADAM SOBEL The atmospheric scientist discusses his new book Storm Surge. UW Campus (Foege Auditorium), 7:30 p.m. Tues., March 17. GARRY WILLS The eminent historian, in conversation with local writer Rebecca Brown, discusses his book, The Future of the Catholic Church With Pope Francis . Town Hall, $5. 7:30 p.m. Tues., March 17. PAUL BEATTY He reads from his new novel, The Sellout . Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. 7 p.m. Weds., March 18. JOHN NEELEMAN Logos: A Novel of Christianity’s Origin is his historical fiction debut. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Weds., March 18. DAVID VANN He discusses his new book, Aquarium . Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Weds., March 18. TIMOTHY WILLIAMS He signs The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe . Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Noon. Weds., March 18. ALMA ALEXANDER Random is a part of her Were Chronicles YA fantasy series. University Book Store, Thurs., 7 p.m. March 19. JANE HIRSHFIELD Come, Thief is her latest book of poetry. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Thurs., March 19. FARZANA MARIE She discusses Load Poems Like Guns , an anthology of Afghan women’s poetry she translated and edited. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Fri., March 20. FERRETT STEINMETZ His new book Flex imagines a world where narcotics let you bend reality. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Fri., March 20.

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» Film

Opening ThisWeek PBallet 422

Beloved Sisters Last year brought a lot of chatter about cinema’s obligations to historical accuracy. Did Selma distort Lyndon Johnson’s role in the civil-rights struggle? Did American Sniper sanitize the Iraq War’s most lethal sharpshooter? Whatever the answers, we can conclude that the further we get from the historical period in question, the less discrepancies seem to matter. Which is why few people will fret over whether the historical characters in Beloved Sisters actually got it on as a threesome. There’s no definitive proof that German writer Friedrich Schiller was snuggling up with his wife’s sister, but this movie certainly likes the idea. In the film, set in the late 18th century, Schiller (the callow Florian Stetter) meets future wife Charlotte (Henriette Confurius) when he is still a threadbare playwright. Charlotte has the luxury of marrying for love, because her older

sister Caroline (Hannah Herzsprung) has already married for wealth, thus propping up the fortunes of Charlotte and the sisters’ shrewd mother (Claudia Messner). But both sisters are close to the writer, and his erotic attention is clearly divided. Charlotte is less formed and apparently somewhat uncomplicated, but Caroline is a complex woman and a talented writer herself. Schiller publishes her serial novel in his magazine, a story that becomes the talk of the literary world for a few months. The casting itself tips the balance in Caroline’s favor: Herzsprung, an actress of hooded eyes and smoldering demeanor, is a richer performer than the out-pointed Confurius. With its heavy-breathing material, Beloved Sisters has possibilities, but veteran director Dominik Graf swerves recklessly between the arthouse and soap opera. The thing stretches out to 170 minutes, which makes for a lot of pretty costumes and houses but not much momentum. I ended up enjoying the movie, in part because Graf arranges the entire story around letterwriting. He’s surely cribbing from François Truffaut’s Two English Girls, another love-triangle period piece that featured actors addressing the camera as they narrate their passionate letters to one another. The device gives Beloved Sisters an antique quality that lifts it from the humdrum realm of the average miniseries. ROBERT HORTON

Charming in the forest, where he claims to be a humble apprentice working at the palace. Ella’s also been given more agency. Unlike most adaptations of the Perrault folk tale, this Ella is hardly embarrassed by her low station. She soon adopts a strong take-me-as-I-am attitude, surely designed to appeal to girls raised on Frozen. After being christened “Cinderella” by her evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and stepsisters, she chooses to reclaim the demeaning nickname and make it her own. Is that the best message for how to respond to bullying? Perhaps not the worst. It’s fair to say that no one does Cinderella quite like Disney. My circle still speaks in hushed, reverent tones about Disney’s racially diverse 1997 TV adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Cinderella starring Brandy, with Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, this bubblegum version doesn’t inspire quite the same adoration, though it features my favorite color palette: shades of sparkle. And the new Frozen short that precedes the film is alone worth your $12 ticket price. DIANA M. LE

Kung Fu Elliot OPENS FRI., MARCH 13 AT SIFF FILM CENTER. NOT RATED. 88 MINUTES.

Cinderella OPENS FRI., MARCH 13 AT ARK LODGE, MAJESTIC BAY, VARSITY, AND OTHER THEATERS. RATED PG. 105 MINUTES.

At the preview for Disney’s live-action retelling of its 1950 animated favorite, I saw both young girls and grown women decked out in gowns and tiaras. The fans are ready, and, when the mood strikes me, I also can be swept up in watching two beautiful people fall in love. And beautiful they are: Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden as Prince Charming (in some very flattering tight pants) and Downton Abbey’s Lily James as the demure and free-spirited Ella, who wears butterflies in her hair because that’s just her brand of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. (Let’s also here bestow the praising-hands emoji upon James’ eyebrows, the boldness of which is unprecedented by any other Disney princess.) The familiar plot has been gently tweaked. Prior to the fateful ball, Ella now meets Prince

Should we take Scott seriously or not?

In the geek-show school of documentary, strange pockets of humanity are uncovered so we can laugh at the foibles of people who are not us. Either you feel bad for laughing, or you reject that sort of condescending approach altogether. (Or you feel superior to other people, I guess.) Kung Fu Elliot invites audience mirth at the expense of its collection of Nova Scotia oddballs, but you might not feel so guilty about your laughter by the time the movie reaches its bizarre, late-hatching revelations. There’s some creepy stuff going on in Halifax, folks.

P’71 OPENS FRI., MARCH 13 AT GUILD 45TH & MERIDIAN. RATED R. 99 MINUTES.

For young soldier Gary ( Jack O’Connell) and most of his British squad, Northern Ireland is more than another country. Dispatched there to patrol the volatile frontline between Catholic and Protestant factions is like being sent to the moon (a mission then only two years past). Is Belfast even part of the UK? Gary and his mates aren’t sure. None have passports or any education. The Army is just a job, and we shall later learn that naïve Gary used it to get out of an orphanage (where his kid brother still resides). In Belfast, the Irish are utterly alien and hostile—savages, seemingly, like Hollywood Indians. On Gary’s disastrous first patrol, at the sight of his convoy, all the women on a republican street begin slamming their trash-can lids to the pavement in warning—like tribal drums. That warning goes unheeded. Twenty-five minutes into the picture, directed with brutal, kinetic grace by Yann Demange, Gary finds himself running for his life. No rifle, no backup, no idea where he is, behind enemy lines. IRA bullets fly around his head as he races down shoulderwidth alleyways in a panic, camera pell-mell behind him, until he finds brief refuge in a backyard privy. (This is Ireland, and indoor plumbing is still a luxury in 1971.) There poor Gary sobs in fear, the smell of shit and his own blood in his nostrils; and you can’t help thinking of the similar ordeal O’Connell’s aviator endured in Unbroken.

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

RUNS FRI., MARCH 13–THURS., MARCH 20 AT GRAND ILLUSION. NOT RATED. 170 MINUTES.

Caroline (Herzsprung) has eyes for Schiller (Stetter).

THE ORCHARD

Jody Lee Lipes’ documentary isn’t so much about a dance as about the process of making one. We follow choreographer Justin Peck from rehearsals to meetings and back again, watching him as he watches his dancers, scribbles in a notebook, listens to the score, and talks with the myriad collaborators who are all a part of the project. It’s like a job-shadowing assignment. By the end of the film, we know much more about Peck’s life as an up-and-coming dancemaker than we do about the ballet we’ve seen him make. Paz de La Jolla is Peck’s third work for New York City Ballet, but it’s the company’s 422nd new commission—hence the film’s title. More than any company working today, NYCB is organized to create and present new ballets. And as Lipes’ camera threads its way through the warren of hallways at Lincoln Center, we see the legion of artists and technicians required to run that institution. Costume and lighting designers, rehearsal assistants, musicians and conductors, physical therapists and makeup artists—all have an integral part to play, and Peck calls on them all. Between those logistical meetings we see bits and piece of the ballet as it comes together. Lipes has made a doc in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman: Rather than utilizing interviews and explanatory narrative, we are left to sort out the various locations and situations for ourselves. This uninflected style fits Peck’s calm demeanor. He’s making a complex ballet, full of virtuosic dancing, but he seems to keep any emotional outbursts in check. As time counts down to opening night, he only gets more serious. If anything is missing from Ballet 422, it’s an extended look at the dance itself. We see phrases in rehearsal, and the inevitable tweaking of details, but we don’t really view the ballet in a full run-through. Even during its premiere, we still watch Peck watching his dance. The camera is focused on the choreographer, dancers reflected in his glasses. SANDRA KURTZ

MUSIC BOX FILMS

OPENS FRI., MARCH 13 AT SUNDANCE CINEMAS. NOT RATED. 75 MINUTES.

At first the movie comes on like the Canadian answer to American Movie, that portrait of a hopelessly incompetent indie filmmaker (a geek-show doc par excellence). Our central figure is Elliot Scott, an out-of-condition martial-arts practitioner. He lives with (or off ) his girlfriend, Linda Lum, who exists in a mode of deadpan exasperation and is also a producer, photographer, and driver (“because I have a car”) for Elliot’s moviemaking exploits. He seeks to be the Jean-Claude Van Damme of Canada, though thus far his two selfmade features are being sold outside video stores. The documentary tracks the progress of Blood Fight, Elliot’s newest kung fu flick. Incredibly, he actually shoots some footage in China, when his acupuncture class visits there. Elliot’s feeble martial-arts demonstration in front of an actual Shaolin monk is one of the movie’s indicators that Elliot’s bravado might not be founded in reality. In short, Elliot starts looking less like a selfdeluded dreamer and more like a sociopath. Directors Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau play the audience quite skillfully here, as the story gradually goes down a disturbing road. It’s like watching the career of Ed Wood unfold in time-lapse quickness: from gung-ho promoter to ham-handed moviemaker to sleazy purveyor of soft-core (and possibly hard-core) porn. It’s a strange game for a documentary to play, and it leaves behind a faintly sour taste; you feel especially bad for the people sucked into Elliot’s high-kicking vortex. (One Blood Fight actor, hung out to dry by Elliot and the doc filmmakers alike, seems to have sprung from the Waiting for Guffman ensemble cast.) I’m mostly sure Kung Fu Elliot is for real; if not, somebody went to a lot of trouble to create the trailers for Elliot Scott’s past DVD efforts, such as They Killed My Cat. Search that one online, and revel in the campy realm of human absurdity. ROBERT HORTON

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 24 23

arts&culture» Film

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Don’t get out of the car! Sbaraglia in the “Road to Hell” episode in Wild Tales.

» FROM PAGE 23 The rest of ’71 is a pure, thrilling, suspenseful chase movie—the best thing I’ve seen thus far in the new year. And though running from monsters is a cinema standby (think of Aliens), the treacherous neighborhood politics are what makes Gary’s overnight odyssey so harrowing. Briefly protected by a Protestant militia-connected boy his brother’s age, the lad quizzes him about faith. (Here subtitles would help.) Are you Catholic or Protestant? he asks. Gary doesn’t even know; he was raised in a children’s home; his parents—if he ever knew them—are never mentioned. He’s totally disoriented, stunned from punches to the head, later concussed by a bomb. His age and innocence make him a hapless pilgrim (or potential martyr) in a place as terrifying as Fallujah today, like being caught between Shia and Sunni militias. Demange and his screenwriter—Black Watch playwright Gregory Burke—have obviously seen the 1947 classic Odd Man Out, to which ’71 bears due comparison. But James Mason’s fugitive was there a man who knew his own sins, while O’Connell’s Gary has yet to commit any. (After his first act of violence, stunned by that moment, he reaches out to console his victim.) The politics swirling around Gary are meanwhile a moral murk: He’s double-crossed by his superiors and sheltered by his supposed adversaries. What he learns about his military— and government—is best expressed by an Irish ex-Army medic who stitches up his wounds (without anesthetic, of course): “They don’t care about you. You’re just a piece of meat to them.” By that time, Gary certainly looks it: bloodied, quivering, helpless. ’71 doesn’t pretend that better times are near (Bloody Sunday is just a year ahead), though it does finally proffer a few shreds of humanity against a future we know will be terribly bleak. BRIAN MILLER

Wild Tales OPENS FRI., MARCH 13 AT SEVEN GABLES. RATED R. 122 MINUTES.

The opening sequence of Wild Tales sets up a Twilight Zone-style series of revelations, compressed into just a few minutes. Passengers

riding on a suspiciously underfilled plane begin to realize that there might be a reason for their presence there, beyond the obvious business of getting to a destination. Writer/director Damián Szifrón wants to get his movie started with a bang, and he does—in fact, the rest of this anthology feature doesn’t live up to the wicked curtain-raiser. But there are enough moments of irony and ingenuity to explain why the Oscar voters made this Argentine entry one of the five nominees in the Foreign Language Film category (it lost to Ida). Along with the airplane opening, modes of transportation figure prominently in the stories. In one, a lone driver (Leonardo Sbaraglia) has a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, which allows the slowpoke he antagonized earlier to stop by and exact revenge. In another, an explosives expert (Ricardo Darín, the star of The Secret in Their Eyes) becomes enraged by a parking ticket—rage that leads him to lose everything. But there’s a twist. A lot of these segments rely on a twist, a technique that doesn’t quite disguise how in-your-face the lessons are. The twists also can’t disguise the way some of the tales rely on illogical behavior to allow their plots to develop. The long final episode suggests that the illogical behavior can be chalked up to a strain of magical realism. Here a wedding reception goes on far longer than it would in the real world, when the bride (Erica Rivas) melts down after learning something rotten about her groom during the party. The story goes off the rails, but also hits a crazed pitch that results in some unpredictable highs. Szifrón’s targets are macho culture and the lizard-brain need for revenge, although mostly he’s into savoring the sardonic juice he can squeeze from his greedy characters. Sometimes that means sitting through 20 minutes of buildup just to get to a single amusing plot reversal, as in a segment about wealthy folks trying to cover up a family crime by buying off the people around them. Wild Tales is a showy exercise (you can see why Pedro Almodóvar signed on as a producer), and Szifrón has undoubtedly punched his ticket for bigger and better things. He’ll have to deliver something more than a scattering of gotchas next time. ROBERT HORTON E film@seattleweekly.com

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mentary salutes the influential but undersung English band, with admirers including Jonathan Franzen, Luc Sante, Greil Marcus, and Fred Armisen of Portlandia, the latter having once been married to singer Sally Timms. (NR) Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 5233935, grandillusioncinema.org. $5-$9. 7 p.m. Thurs. & 2:30 p.m. Sat. SATURDAY SECRET MATINEE Hosted by The Sprocket Society, this Saturday matinee series features the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, preceded by various vintage cartoons and shorts. Total program length is about two hours. (NR) Grand Illusion, $5-$9. 1 p.m. Saturdays through March 28.

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AMERICAN SNIPER Clint Eastwood’s deliberately

neutral take on this real-life war tale is a measured approach likely to disappoint those looking for either a patriotic tribute to the troops or a critique of war and its effects. Chris Kyle (ably played by a hulked-up Bradley Cooper) was a sharpshooter whose action in four Iraq War tours reportedly made him the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history. His life had a lurid ending—a terrible irony that reframes his story in a larger context of troubled veterans and PTSD. The film, scripted by Jason Hall from Kyle’s memoir, has some standard-issue military bonding and uneven dialogue. What really works is the way it’s structured around parallel sequences, nowhere more intensely than the repeated images of the sniper at his gun, scanning the world for insurgents. One such sequence is the film’s most unnerving: As Kyle idly looks through his gunsight at passersby on the street below, he talks to his wife (Sienna Miller) on the phone, half a world away. Their conversation could be taking place in an Applebee’s, or a suburban backyard, but the finger stays on the trigger and the eye searches for threats. In other places in the film, Eastwood’s uninflected approach has a flattening effect. Here it creates one of the most chilling scenes in recent American film. (R) ROBERT HORTON Admiral, Lincoln Square, others BIRDMAN A movie star in a career skid since he stopped playing a masked superhero named Birdman back in the ’90s, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is preparing his big comeback in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver stories, funded and directed by himself. Obstacles abound: Riggan’s co-star (Andrea Riseborough) announces she’s pregnant with his child; his grown daughter (Emma Stone) is his assistant, and not his biggest fan; a critic plans to destroy the play. And, in the movie’s funniest headache, Riggan must endure a popular but insufferable stage actor (Edward Norton, doing a wonderful self-parody) who’s involved with the play’s other actress (Naomi Watts). This is all going on while Riggan maintains a tenuous hold on his own sanity—he hears Birdman’s voice in his head, for one thing. To create Riggan’s world, director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki present the film as a continuous unbroken shot (disguised with artful digital seams). Birdman serves so many heady moments it qualifies as a bona fide happening. It has a few stumbles, but the result is truly fun to watch. (R) R.H. Sundance, Ark Lodge, others CHAPPIE Though hugely anticipated, the new sci-fi movie from Neill Blomkamp (of District 9 and Elysium) turns out to be hugely unwieldy, if not quite a flop. Again filming in a gritty, near-futuristic Johannesburg, Blomkamp and his co-writer (and wife) Terri Tatchell have concocted an R-rated fairy tale of sorts. There’s too much crime, bad language, and shooting for kids who otherwise might appreciate how the artificially intelligent robot Chappie (created by Dev Patel’s programmer) swiftly undergoes an innocence-toexperience process of maturation not unlike their own. The movie works best and most sweetly in its cryptoparenting scenes, with the overprotective Patel pitted against the larcenous Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser (from the hip-hop duo Die Antwoord). Chappie’s hard-wired to do no harm, per Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics, but he’s also tempted—teenage rebellion soon arrives—by the thug life. The rest of the plot is a mess, a stripped-bolt fusion of Frankenstein, RoboCop, and A.I. Blomkamp and Tatchell crib from many sources, but they can’t have it both ways. The corporate intrigue about commercialized crime fighting—cue Sigourney Weaver and Hugh Jackman—demands a grown-up treatment, satire advanced beyond the Brothers Grimm. Chappie himself eventually becomes a genius savant incapable of original thought, a fitting mascot for the movie. (R) BRIAN MILLER Sundance, Cinerama, Pacific Place, Thornton Place, Kirkland, Lincoln Square, Pacific Science Center, Bainbridge, others

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An aesthetic experience as much as an intellectual one. More visually sumptuous than most narratives you’ll see this year.”

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“A

A TREAT. FASCINATING. “

Director Lipes is in the mold of Albert Maysles and Frederick Wiseman.”

delightfully immersive look at how a ballet is created.”

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TURAN, LA TIMES

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BALLET 422 An unprecedented look behind the curtain at the New York City Ballet featuring choreographer Justin Peck

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SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

century philistines, before the cataract of existential glamor that is Red Desert, just when you forgot how cool modernist despair could be. As a kind of capper to the white-hot Italian’s alienation “trilogy,” this famously Technicolor 1964 odyssey finds muse Monica Vitti lost in the supermarket of life, an unstable young mother wandering the fabulously gray industrial wastelands of Ravenna’s shipyards and entertaining the seductions of trenchcoated engineer Richard Harris. Intimations of infection loom (ships pass waving polio quarantine flags) and sexual games are played, but Antonioni was then the most obsessively compositional filmmaker alive, and the movie is all about the scary, foggy, metaphysical negative spaces. The face of ’60s unhappiness, Vitti still fascinates, while Harris, all dimply and young-Dennis-Hopper-ish, seems dropped in by helicopter—but both are subservient to the imagery, which desaturates, beautifully, when the world isn’t simply painted neutral, as with the enigmatic gray fruit glimpsed on a vendor’s cart and the mountains of streaming ash that could, if you’re of a mind, represent Everything. (NR) MICHAEL ATKINSON Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum. org. $8–$12 individual, $35–$54 series. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through March 24. CINEMA ITALIAN STYLE Federico Fellini’s 1986 Ginger and Fred is pretty much a love letter to his wife, Giulietta Masina, and favorite leading man, Marcello Mastroianni, who play aging vaudeville performers reuinited during the garish new era of Italian television. (NR) Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $63–$68 series, $8 individual. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through March 19. THE CUTTING EDGE D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly star in this fondly remembered ice skating rom-com from 1992. Fun fact: This was the first produced script by Tony Gilroy, who later wrote Michael Clayton and most of the Bourne movies. (PG) Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 7 p.m. Fri.-Weds. & 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun. matinees DWARVES KINGDOM Director Matthew Salton will introduce his doc about a Chinese theme park where dwarves are the sole and star attraction. (NR) SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. 8 p.m. Thurs. EVA A late addition to the SIFF calendar, this Spanish scifi flick has Daniel Brühl messing around with androids and artificial intelligence. Apparently the cute little Eva robot becomes his Frankeinstein’s monster. (NR) SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7-$12. Opens Fri. FIRST PERIOD Director Charlie Vaughn will introduce his high-school spoof, full of nerds, outcasts, and crossdressers. (NR) Central Cinema, $7-$9. 8 p.m. Thurs. GROWING UP BAUMBACH With his new midlife comedy While We’re Young due later in the year, here’s a helpful career overview for writer-director Noah Baumbach. Beginning the series (Weds. March 11) is 2005’s The Squid and the Whale, about which our Tim Appelo wrote, “Baumbach’s exhilarating evisceration of his literary-critic father (here named Bernard and wonderfully played by Jeff Daniels) is set in Brooklyn’s Park Slope in the mid-1980s, as their family is breaking up. Mother Joan (Laura Linney) upsets the family dynamic by taking up writing in midlife and instantly selling stories to The New Yorker. She also takes up lovers including a tennis instructor (winningly, grinningly limned by Billy Baldwin). Not that Bernard is a monk himself—he kinkily invites his slinkiest student (Anna Paquin) to move in with him and Walt (the director’s surrogate figure, played by Jesse Eisenberg). Because Squid is about hyperarticulately selfish Manhattan neurotics, the flick fetches rote comparisons with Woody Allen, but Baumbach is his own man. Daniels uses every artful flicker of his wounded, wounding eyes and each twitch of his nerdy beard to convey the fraudulence of Bernard, yet we actually sympathize with the schnook.” Following are Kicking and Screaming, Frances Ha, and a sneak preview of the Ben Stiller-starring While We’re Young. (R) SIFF Film Center, $5. 7 p.m. Wednesdays through April 1. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL James Ellroy’s guilt-soaked crime novel, set amid the thoroughly corrupt LAPD of the 1950s, received a suitably tough and tawdry treatment in Curtis Hanson’s 1997 adaptation. Kim Basinger won an Oscar for her glamorous, doomed moll, and Russell Crowe had his American breakthrough as hardnosed cop Bud White. (Ellroy has retained that character, like others here, in his second new L.A. Quartet.) The bench runs deep here, with Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and the late lamented James Cromwell. (R) Central Cinema, $7-$9. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Mon. & Weds.

REVENGE OF THE MEKONS Joe Angio’s recent docu-

$5 for TWO events! (3/10) UW Science Now Dan Grinnell Protecting the Dairy Industry’s Labor Force

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(3/10) Denis Hayes and Gail Boyer Hayes Saving the Romance Between Cows and Humans TOWN HALL CIVICS SCIENCE ARTS & CULTURE COMMUNITY (3/11) The Hallowell Todaro Center: Dr. Edward Hallowell A Strength-Based Approach to ADHD

SE AT TLE 4500 9TH AVE. NE • 206-633-0059

(3/11) ACLU-WA presents Chris Soghoian Reining in Our Surveillance Society (3/12) Dan DiMicco Bringing Back American Manufacturing (3/13) Talk of the Town UNDERGROUND

Two Ways To Save At Sundance Seattle

(3/14) LUCO presents Chamber Music Cabaret

Monday is $6 ORCA Day Show Your Orca Card and ALL Seats are $6 ($7.50 for 3D).

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(3/15) Short Stories Live ‘Best of’ Edition

Tuesday is Girls Movie Night Out!

(3/16) Sustainable Path: Putting a Price on Washington’s Climate Pollution

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(3/16) Robert Scheer Safeguarding Our Privacy from Corporations, and Government

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(3/17) KCTS Television: Barak Goodman: ‘Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies’ (3/17) Garry Wills with Rebecca Brown Redefining the Catholic Church’s Future SCIENCE & CULTURE COMMUNITY (3/18) ISBARTS Panel: Tipping Points WWW.TOWNHALLSEATTLE.ORG in Environment and Climate TOWN HALL

CIVICS

(3/19) Swedish Medical Center: Dr. Ira Byock: Transforming End of Life Care (3/20) Artist in Residence Juan Alonso-Rodriguez Scratch Night (3/21) Saturday Family Concerts Zulaika (3/22) Seattle Festival Orchestra Orchestral Showpieces (3/23) Firland Foundation: World Tuberculosis Day 2015

SEATTLE WEEKLY • MARCH 11 — 17, 2015

(3/23) David Bonior Unpacking the Myths of Free Trade

(3/24) Friends of Cooper Island: Forty Years of a Melting Arctic 40th Anniversary Celebration with George Divoky (3/25) Town Music Deviant Septet (3/26) Global Rhythms g all Playin KS Hamsaz Ensemble W Iran Through the Centuries SEAHA NF

and Mes! Gam

arts&culture» Film » FROM PAGE 25 INTO THE WOODS Cue the irony that this sly modern

classic musical (songs by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine) has been taken up by Disney, history’s busiest purveyors of the happy ending. Its fairy-tale happy ending comes halfway through the action, then Cinderella and company must decide what to do next. Into the Woods presents a crowded roster, with Meryl Streep earning top billing as the Witch, the blue-haired crank who sets things in motion with a curse. (James Corden and Emily Blunt play the baker and wife who want a child; also on hand are Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, and Johnny Depp as various familiar fairy-tale characters.) The blend of rustic locations and studio-built woods is eye-filling, especially when the characters cross the border from the realistic realm to the enchanted forest. In general, though, director Rob Marshall (who guided Chicago to its dubious best-picture Oscar) brings his usual clunky touch, hammering home the big moments and underlining subtlety with a broad brush. The singing tends toward the Broadway-brassy, although Blunt and Corden— working in a more casual style—are completely charming. A bit of the 1987 show’s subversive message still peeks through, making this an unusual blockbuster to unleash at Christmastime. (PG) R.H. Crest A MOST VIOLENT YEAR Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) sports a handsome camel-hair topcoat. He’d like to achieve success the honest way, and that immaculate coat is like his shining armor. Problem is, this is 1981-era New York, the business is heating oil, and nothing stays clean for very long here. Writer/director J.C. Chandor is skillful with these details—this is a very intricate story—and quiet in his approach. Abel’s jacket is the flashiest thing about the movie, where the essential plot is him trying to put together a deal to buy a choice piece of East River waterfront, where he can land oil barges. Assisting him is his fierce wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), the daughter of a local mobster, whose take on life is a little worldlier than his. The actors are a splendid pair: Isaac, of Inside Llewyn Davis, captures the immigrant’s go-go drive for success; and the only problem with Chastain in this film is that she isn’t in it enough. Chandor’s first two films, Margin Call and All Is Lost, were more startling and original. But he does manage the game with dexterity, and the re-creation of a grungy, now-distant era is completely convincing. (R) R.H. Crest QUEEN AND COUNTRY John Boorman’s 1987 Hope and Glory advanced the revisionist argument that—to uncomprehending children, at least—World War II was like a huge thrilling holiday. His sequel, set in 1952, again follows the Rohan family, whose only son Bill (bland, smiling Callum Turner) is again Boorman’s stand-in in this autobiographically inspired account. It’s a pleasant, nostalgic movie that didn’t need to be made (a memoir written, maybe), chiefly because he has nothing new to say about the postwar era. If WWII was, in childish Bill’s eyes, fun, the Cold War is here a fairly bland affair. There’s talk of fighting in Korea, dropping the A-Bomb, and even catching venereal diseases in the brothels of Seoul, but the movie barely leaves the barracks where conscripted Bill and his pal Percy (Caleb Landry Jones) are teaching soldiers to type and confronting their inflexible superiors. No one knows, apart from Boorman, how swiftly the sun is setting on the British Empire. Bill, certainly, is oblivious: He’s only intent on an unobtainable dream girl (Tamsin Egerton). Leave it to old pro Richard E. Grant, as the eye-rolling base commander, to signal how little any of this will matter in the following decade. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance THE SALVATION This Western shot by a Danish crew in South Africa never quite overcomes that sense of being assembled from different directions, but—with the help of two charismatic stars—it does conjure up its share of evocative genre moments. The hook is set early, as a terrible act of frontier violence and instant retribution blows apart the world of Danish immigrant Jon (Mads Mikkelsen). Now Jon and his brother are targeted for revenge by a very bad hombre whose henchmen have the usual traits of bad hygiene and lousy marksmanship. There’s also a woman, played by the thankfully ubiquitous Eva Green, who does not speak. A wordless role is no problem for this French actress, who looks as though she might set fire to the entire worthless town with a glance. I can’t say why The Salvation exists, exactly, except that Europeans are very fond of this most American movie genre, and periodically get the urge to “do” a Western. The very cool Mikkelsen, star of TV’s Hannibal, is perfectly comfortable in 1870s-era surroundings. His chiseled looks and laconic style were just waiting for a Western to come along, and for that reason alone The Salvation earns a look. (NR) R.H. SIFF Cinema Uptown

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THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

The plot devices in this sequel are so stale that the movie itself loses interest in them halfway through its dawdling 122 minutes—and this is a good thing. By that time the contrivances of Ol Parker’s script have done their duty, and we can get to the element that turned the film’s 2011 predecessor into a surprise hit: hanging around with a group of witty old pros in a pleasant location. There are many worse reasons for enjoying movies. Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) mostly allows Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, and Penelope Wilton to float around on many years’ worth of accrued goodwill. (New to the expat ensemble is Richard Gere.) Especially fine is the spindly Bill Nighy, whose shy Douglas is a hesitant suitor to Dench’s Evelyn, a still-active buyer of fabrics. Even when the story has him fulfilling sitcom ideas, Nighy maintains his tottering dignity and sense of fun. Second Best will be a hit with its original audience, and maybe then some. The languid mood is laced with an appreciation for getting to the End of Things, especially as Smith’s formerly snappish Muriel mellows into a melancholy leave-taking. (PG) R.H. Sundance, SIFF Cinema Egyptian, Ark Lodge, Majestic Bay, Kirkland, Lynwood (Bainbridge), Meridian, Lincoln Square, Thornton Place, others SONG OF THE SEA Dazzling in its visual presentation, though not so thrilling in its conventional storytelling, the Irish-animated Song features a plot is drawn from Celtic folklore, specifically the tradition of the selkie, those mythological shapeshifters who can live on land or sea, as humans or seals. Our hero is Ben (voiced by David Rawle), a young lad whose mother vanishes under dramatic circumstances the night his mute younger sister Saoirse is born. They live on a wee shard of an island with their mournful father (Brendan Gleeson), a red-bearded lighthouse-keeper, but a series of marvelous events lead Ben into a secret world of magical creatures and spell-spinning songs. Director Tomm Moore lets the movie’s forward momentum run aground at various moments, but he and the Cartoon Saloon crew seem more interested in creating the gorgeous vistas that occupy virtually every frame. The character designs follow circular, looping patterns, and the visual influences seem inspired by anime and the line drawings of 1950s-era UPA cartoons (Mr. Magoo is not forgotten, people). (PG) R.H. Guild 45th STILL ALICE Adapted from the 2007 bestseller by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is like experiencing only the second half of Flowers for Algernon: high-functioning start as Columbia professor, wife, and mother of three grown children; then after Alzheimer’s diagnosis at age 50, the brutal, inexorable mental degradation and loss of self. An academic, Alice (Julianne Moore) plays word games and self-tests her memory. She types constant reminders into her iPhone, which soon becomes her adjunct memory and, eventually, her intellectual superior—even the auto-correct feature seems poignant. And finally she records a video on her laptop addressed to her future self, conveying detailed instructions, that will later allow Moore to play both sides of a scene with herself: crisp professionalism versus foggy incomprehension. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (Quinceañera) mostly avoid the sap, despite the score’s twinkly piano pathos. The filmmakers do add gauzy, sunny beach flashbacks to soften the sting, but mainly we’re left with the relentlessly linear narrative of decline, which isn’t very interesting to watch. (PG-13) B.R.M. Sundance, Kirkland, others WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS The premise is ’90s-stale: basically MTV’s The Real World cast with vampires, presented as direct-address documentary. This droll comedy comes from the brain trust behind 2007’s Eagle Vs. Shark: Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi, who play neck-biters Vladislav and Viago, respectively. Our three main vamps are a hapless lot. They can’t get invited into any of the good clubs or discos—ending up forlorn in an all-night Chinese diner instead. After all the aestheticized languor of Only Lovers Left Alive (and the earnest teen soap opera of Twilight), the silly deadpan tone is quite welcome. Clement and Waititi know this is a sketch writ large (forget about plot), so they never pause long between sneaky gags. The amsuing and essential conflict here is between age-old vampire traditions and today’s hook-up customs. Things have gotten to the point, Vladislav admits, where they’re even cribbing from The Lost Boys. (NR) B.R.M. Sundance, SIFF Cinema Egyptian

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BY B R IA N M I LLE R

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» Music

Talib Kweli’s Five Most Incendiary Moments

Using his musical platform to evoke social change, Kweli frequently arouses discussion. Here are some memorable instances. BY DAVE EINMO

rooklyn rapper Talib Kweli is one of hip-hop’s most outspoken artists. The eldest son of two college professors, he’s built a career on educating his fans about social consciousness. As a solo artist and half of Black Star (with Yasiin Bey, aka Mos Def )— Kweli has used his mike and music to raise awareness about racial inequality and police brutality. His marriage of old-school beats and poetic rhymes about social issues has made him an underground hip-hop superstar. Yet Kweli brushes off the idea that he is the king of “conscious rap,” a term he feels pigeonholes him into a box that’s easier to sell. His messages may be strong, but his musical talent is just as potent. He times his lyrical delivery with nuance, crafting his rhymes over a wide range of beats. His collaborations stretch even wider, including artists such as Hi-Tek, Nelly, Busta Rhymes, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye, Madlib, and more. As Kweli’s arrival in Seattle nears, we reflect on some of his more-public commentary, and pick our Top Five Talib Kweli Moments.

in This Bring T And ge n o p Cou Tizer e p p A one 2 oFF! For 1/

Hip-Hop for Respect In 2000, Kweli helped

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

organize this project, a collaborative recording featuring Common, Mos Def, and many others, which brought attention to police brutality— specifically the 1999 police shooting of unarmed Amadou Diallo, who was fired on 41 times.

Ferguson and CNN Kweli joined protesters on

Last October, Kweli helped launch the Ferguson Defense Fund via crowdfunding site Indiegogo to raise money for the livelihood and legal funds of peaceful protesters. To date, the fund has raised more than $112,000. Criticism of Rick Ross and Lil Wayne Kweli called out Ross in 2013 for the rapper’s lyrics to the song “U.O.E.N.O.” “Rick Ross condoned rape in that song . . . and he should apologize, and his apology that he offered was unacceptable,” explained Kweli in a Huffington Post interview. He also criticized Lil Wayne for referencing Emmett Till’s kidnapping and murder, suggesting Lil Wayne should apologize to the Till family. Wayne eventually did write them a letter, which the family claimed failed to actually apologize. The conversations about Ross and Wayne went on to spark debate about lyrics and an artist’s personal responsibility. Black Star inspires a generation In 1997–98, Kweli collaborated with Bey and producer HiTek to release the pivotal album Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, delivering one of underground rap’s finest moments. Old-school beats and lyrical intensity motivating social awareness emboldened a generation of hip-hop artists and fans. The album continues to land on several critics’ “essential listening” lists.

Other significant Black Star moments include the duo’s collaboration with John Patton and Ron Carter to record “Money Jungle” for the Red Hot + Indigo compilation. The Red Hot Organization’s tribute to Duke Ellington raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease. Kweli joins activists In addition to the Fergu-

son demonstrations, Kweli has supported many protesters who share his political views: In May 2005, he gathered with supporters demanding the federal government drop the bounty on former Black Panther Assata Shakur. In 2011, he visited the Occupy Wall Street camp. He spoke at a 2012 New York rally to urge the NYPD to end its stop-and-frisk policy. The rapper also traveled to Tallahassee, Fla., in 2013 to spend a night with the Dream Defenders, a student group organizing a sit-in at the governor’s office to protest the state’s stand-your-ground law. E

music@seattleweekly.com

TALIB KWELI With Immortal Technique, NIKO, IS, CF, Hasan Salaam, and guests. The Showbox, 1426 First Ave., 628-3151, showboxpresents.com. $25 adv./$28 DOS. All ages. 9 p.m. Tues., March 17.

Mar. 25, 2015

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August 19, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo., following the police shooting of Michael Brown. When the national media descended, Kweli was invited on CNN to air his views, then criticized host Don Lemon live for the network’s coverage of the protests. The rapper took issue with a headline on CNN’s homepage, “Ferguson streets were calm until bottles fly,” arguing that the cable channel’s reporting was inaccurate. “I was there that night, and that’s not what happened,” Kweli explained before Lemon constantly interrupted him. Then things got personal. In one of CNN’s more awkward interviews to date, Kweli shouted over Lemon, “I would listen to you if you had the decency to greet me. You didn’t even invite me. Nicole invited me. You didn’t even say nothing to me. You were on your phone the whole time. You asked how to pronounce my name. You don’t have respect for who I am.” As they yelled over each other, Kweli threatened to leave. Lemon then paused just long enough for Kweli to rip into him. “What I saw with my own eyes—that’s not what happened,” he declared. “I saw the bottle fly. You know when the bottle flew? After cops said they are gonna blow my f ’ing head off. After the cops put on riot gear, and put up their shields and took out their batons and lined up on the streets. And then when they got into position, a bottle comes out of a peaceful protest?” a visibly frustrated Kweli asked. “That don’t make no sense. So what I’m saying is the headline should’ve said, ‘It’s calm until the cops agitated the people.’ ”

arts&culture» Music

Sustained Flight

Frontman Meric Long’s turbulent journey with the Dodos could have rendered any other band extinct.

COURTESY OF CANVAS MEDIA

BY DAVE EINMO

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started considering ways to write new songs with nlike the flightless bird of the Reimer. Whether they would be new Dodos same name, the San Francisco duo known as the Dodos has persevered material or something else, Long wasn’t yet sure. But he says he was certain he wanted to write to outlast many peers. new tracks with Reimer, excited to explore where “The more we work at it, the more we see it would take them as songwriters. what is possible,” says guitarist and singer Meric Then Reimer suddenly passed away in his Long of his band’s longevity. sleep. Long and Kroeber looked to each other For a decade, Long and drummer Logan for strength. They flew to Calgary for the funeral Kroeber have attracted a devoted following for in what Long described as an “intense” period their physical, rhythmic interplay: Long’s maniain his life, and then returned to San Francisco to cal acoustic-guitar strumming unites with Kroeplay the Noise Pop festival that same week. The ber’s intricate drum patterns to lift each other two were already considering going on hiatus to a higher plateau. The result is a kinetic sound prior to the show, but distinctly their own. then they reflected on Yet Long concedes he has no control over how Together they play with a the recent events. “I was really lookthe music industry cateing forward to writing gorizes his band. “Labels visceral, reckless abandon Chris, and now he are kind of a like a pet that appears to give them with wasn’t there any more,” that is out of our control Long relates. “It felt like and it goes crazy on each more power. it would be weird to not you,” says Long. “You do anything, especially can’t do anything about after just going to the funeral and playing that it. It was your pet, and now it’s run off into the show. It felt like we had to do something. After wild, and it’s out of your control.” This says a lot about Long and Kroeber’s musi- touring with Chris there were things that I really respected about him as a person and also as a cal partnership. They seem less concerned about musician. And I borrowed a lot of that. When I outside distractions, instead focusing inward on came home after that tour, I was messing around each other’s strengths. Together they play with a lot with the electric guitar and sounds that a visceral, reckless abandon that appears to give he would get out of the guitar. Trying things them each more power. Such musical interout and trying to emulate things that he did, reliance may be the key to their resilience, as the so when it came time to start writing another two have experienced a few untimely events that Dodos record, I had it in my mind that we’d would have derailed most ensembles. After releasing four albums and touring nearly make a record that he’d be stoked on.” Long and Kroeber went on to record Carrier nonstop as a duo, the Dodos recruited Canadian using many of these ideas. Asked if Reimer’s guitarist Christopher Reimer to bring new sonic death influenced the album, Long emphasizes a textures to their live shows on the No Color tour. distinction: Reimer’s musicianship rather than The addition proved inspiring, and Long says he

his passing influenced Carrier. “Before he passed away, I was trying to write parts that he would be excited about because I thought we’d be working on the record together. So after he passed away, I continued to do that. I wanted to make sure this was something he’d be into.”

COURTESY OF NEUMOS

The Dodos at lunch.

music@seattleweekly.com

THE DODOS With Springtime Carnivore, Posse. Neumos, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9442, neumos.com. $15. 8 p.m. Wed., March 11.

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

In spite of Reimer’s death, he and Kroeber were so inspired making Carrier that they didn’t want the recording process to end when they finished it, and so immediately launched into the next album cycle. “I wanted to record more songs. It felt like we were just getting started,” says Long. “There were a lot of sounds and combinations of things—guitars and amps—that we were really happy with, and I wanted to write songs based on those sounds.” Despite not having any songs written, the Dodos returned to Tiny Telephone studio and rejoined with engineers Jay and Ian Pellicci to begin work on the band’s sixth and most recent album, Individ. Soon afterward, Long’s father passed away. Describing the experience, Long pauses. “This record was really therapeutic. It was a relief of a lot of things in terms in what was going on with my dad at the time,” he says. “I kept a lot of the stuff that was going on in my personal life outside of the recording process. And it was good, because the recording process was really fun, and it was a time for me to not think about other stuff and focus on the task at hand, which was recording and making music.” In light of everything, there’s still optimism in his voice. Most bands would have been defeated by the emotional strain of losing people so close to them during pivotal moments of their career. Yet for Long and Kroeber, the studio provided healing, and ultimately inspiration. Finding solace in recording, Long had the time and space to work through his grief. Individ ’s lyrics point to darker themes on songs such as “Goodbyes and Endings,” where Long sings “Like a memory I remember only in this, goodbyes and endings.” Yet Long says the session was filled with happiness. “Making the record wasn’t a sad thing,” Long recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. “There was so much joy because we were having so much fun.” He’s equally enthusiastic about incorporating the synths and electronic equipment his dad left for him in his future work with Kroeber. “He played synths and quietly had this hobby, and now it’s all ended up in my hands and it’s all sitting in a pile at my place,” says Long. “I’m excited to go home and learn how to use all this stuff. That’s the next thing for me.” E

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arts&culture» Music

Corea and Hancock Duet Again Nearly 40 years since their last tour together, two jazz legends bring their dueling pianos back to Seattle. BY DAVE LAKE

hey just don’t make jazz artists like Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock anymore. Both are jazz-piano legends in their mid-70s, both had major crossover successes, and both are still on the road—on this tour, playing duets for the first time since 1978. And while most of their peers are relegated to tiny jazz clubs, Corea and Hancock will perform at the 2,800-capacity Paramount to start a six-month world tour, each seated behind a grand piano aimed at the other. “Herbie arrived on the New York scene before me,” Corea told Seattle Weekly about his first memories of Hancock in the mid-1960s. “I was still in Chelsea, Massachusetts, listening to Herbie play on his first recordings with Miles. I loved everything I heard, and he was immediately an inspiration and positive influence on my pianistic and musical approach.” But it wasn’t until the pair met face to face on Davis’ landmark jazz-fusion LPs In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew that a friendship began to emerge, even after Corea replaced Hancock as the piano player in that band in 1968. “There’s not a shred of competition, never has been with us,” Corea says. “That’s one of the pleasures of our duet: Anything goes. Of course we do joust and surprise one another in a spirit of play. It’s the adventure of it all that we both enjoy.” When they last toured together nearly 40 years ago, both artists were riding high on the success of their electric bands, making their decision to unplug and get back to basics feel particularly bold. A pair of well-received live albums captured the occasion: CoreaHancock and An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea: In Concert. Though the pair has played on each other’s projects since, Corea says they always knew they’d eventually duet again on the road. The pair has an ambitious run scheduled. Corea says there will be no rehearsal and no prepared set list, which suits the pair well given their improvisational roots. “We never had traditional rehearsals,” Hancock wrote in his memoir about his early gigs with Davis’ band. “We just did some brainstorming and every night was a high-wire act, with each of us soloing without any limits.” Indeed, each man’s penchant for musical exploration has served him well over a long career. Both are electric jazz iconoclasts who played piano in Davis’ band before finding success as a bandleader. Hancock is a pioneer in jazz and funk, while Corea’s musical versatility and compositional aptitude have solidified his songs’ place in the jazz canon. Each artist has also had success outside the genre: Corea’s Return to Forever appealed to open-minded rock audiences in the ’70s, while Hancock’s “Rockit” became a 1980s hip-hop touchstone that propelled his Future Shock LP to platinum status, a rare sales plateau for a jazz artist.

COURTESY OF STG

tractor

Corea and Hancock plan to perform with no rehearsal or set list.

The pair also share a passion for spirituality: Corea is a Scientologist, Hancock a Buddhist. “It helped me discover my humanity and that of others,” Hancock told Investor’s Business Daily last month. “The value of this can’t be overstated in a connected world. Its values of collaboration and living in the moment are also central to jazz.” Between them, they have an astounding 36 Grammy awards. Corea is the fourth mostawarded artist of all time with 22, including two in 2015 for his album Trilogy—so many it has become hard to keep track of them all. “My sweet wife Gayle keeps the Grammys,” he admits. “There’s a few here and a few there. I used to hide them. She loves to display them. Now I just try to accept the awards on behalf of all musicians and artists who have a tacit mission to uplift spirits and bring pleasure and creativity.” One reason Hancock and Corea have been so honored and influential is their ability to narrow the gaps between genres, splicing them together and seguing from one to another seamlessly. “There doesn’t seem to be any genre anymore,” Corea offers. “Maybe there never was. Audiences love to enjoy an artistic communication. Herbie and I both love to try to deliver that no matter what style or groove the particular performance may be in. I think it’s something we both share.” The pair has also had a front-row seat for several seismic shifts in the music business since they first began playing on albums some 50

years ago. “The old business model for music is dead,” Hancock said. “Records used to pay the bills, and tours were a way to promote them; now they’re almost loss leaders to support concerts. But the cool thing is that people are finding new ways to create attention through things like Instagram and Twitter.” When the pair started in the business, the vinyl LP was king, and though several formats have since come and gone, vinyl is one of the few areas in the music business seeing growth. Jazz aficionados have long trumpeted the LP as the premier way to experience music, and now a new generation of fans is finding favor with the format. “I love vinyl and am jazzed to see it become popular again,” Corea says. “Trends go in circles. Digital downloads can become so impersonal after a while. Let’s bring turntables back!” Corea and Hancock, 73 and 74 respectively, show no signs of slowing. With such a dazzling matchup when they last toured together, one can only imagine the kind of chemistry that will be on display when they reunite. “I’m really looking forward to it,” Corea says excitedly. “And by the way, [we] have no idea what’s going to happen, except that it will be great fun and a big adventure.” E

music@seattleweekly.com

CHICK COREA AND HERBIE HANCOCK The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 682-1414, stgpresents.org/paramount. $41.25–$81.25. 8 p.m. Sat., March 14.

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KELTON SEARS

Sims, Kuckelburg, and Foss.

reopen in El Corazon, but Foss and Kuckelburg will join Sims as co-managers and co-owners of the El Corazon building as well, a role that makes the team their own landlords. That was key in Foss and Kuckelburg’s decision to join forces with Sims, having had front-row seats to one of the city’s most emblematic cases of gentrification. As portrayed in Ryan Worsley’s 2014 documentary Razing the Bar, the Funhouse developed a storied legacy, stretching back to 2003, as a weirdo uptown punk refuge for freaky touring and local bands. In 2012 it was forced to close by developers to make way for condos. “Every day I drive into work in this neighborhood and there’s more and more cranes, more than you can count on your hand,” Sims says. “It’s just like, it’s nice to know the Boogeyman isn’t coming for this building.” The new Funhouse won’t be exactly the same— the basketball court, for example, is not coming back. But the emphasis on booking outsiders and oddball acts while providing a space to develop local bands will remain its core philosophy. “You can’t replicate a thing like [the Funhouse],” Kuckelburg says, “but we aren’t trying to do the same thing again.” “One of the new things that’s exciting,” Foss says, “is that bands I’ve worked with in the past that got too big for the Funhouse, like Black Lips or Thee Oh Sees—bands that have since gone on to play much bigger local rooms—I can book them now in El Corazon’s main room while still taking gambles on shows at the Funhouse in the smaller room.” The April 1 date, which the owners assure us isn’t a joke, will mark the official metamorphosis of the El Corazon lounge into the Funhouse, but the owners say the transition won’t be immediate. “It will be a gradual evolution from the lounge into what will become Funhouse land,” Sims says. While the date for the official Funhouse reopening show/Brian Foss beard-shaving party is not yet set, one thing is sure—the Funhouse’s infamous Spike the Clown mascot will show his top-hatted, toothy skeleton face once again. “He’s been living in my yard this whole time,” Kuckelburg says. “Ask my neighbors if they’ll miss him. I’ll give you a hint: They aren’t going to miss him.” E

ksears@seattleweekly.com

ECHOSMITH with THE COLOURIST

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DARK STAR ORCHESTRA

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SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

hen I sit down with booker and KEXP DJ Brian Foss at the Victory Lounge to chat about some exciting news, he’s sporting an enormous beard. “About a year and a half ago, I made a drunken pledge to my friends and my wife that I was going to grow this beard out until I found a new place for the Funhouse,” Foss says. “I pledged that on reopening night, I’d shave it off onstage. I’m happy to say that there will soon be a beard-shaving party.” Thanks to a new three-way partnership—Foss, his longtime Funhouse business partner Bobby Kuckelburg (who also owns Victory Lounge), and 10-year El Corazon owner Dana Sims—the Funhouse will reopen April 1 in El Corazon’s side lounge room. Foss will book both all-ages and 21-and-over shows in the new Funhouse, continuing its legacy as a refuge for fringe musical freaks. “We’d been using the smaller room for shows more and more, and it seemed like all the shows that would’ve been at the Funhouse were coming to our lounge anyway,” Sims says. “I asked for a meeting with [Foss and Kuckelburg] about a year and a half ago, and I said, ‘Hey, we can turn the Funhouse into the lounge and bring it back and work together, and we can also do bigger shows at Corazon.’ And Bobby said, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea! But we just signed papers on a place where we are putting the new Funhouse!’ Literally, as we were talking, someone was delivering papers to him to sign. So I wished them luck and I went on my way again.” As fate would have it, the deal—to take over Bogart’s on Airport Way, where Foss had been booking shows—fell through. “We basically had to reset because another buyer swooped in and the owner had to sell immediately,” Foss says. Not long after, Sims read an article in this paper on Seattle’s changing music scene (“Sound Effects,” Oct. 8, 2014) and noticed a quote from Foss that got the gears going again. “I saw Brian saying something like, ‘Oh, I’ve been booking shows around town, but I really wish the Funhouse was around again,’ and I suddenly went, ‘Oh, wait! I guess the deal didn’t happen!’ ” Sims immediately called the duo, and they’ve been meeting regularly ever since to concoct their plan. The trio say that not only will the Funhouse

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El Corazon www.elcorazonseattle.com

109 Eastlake Ave East • Seattle, WA 98109 Booking and Info: 206.262.0482

WEDNESDAY MARCH 11TH MIKE THRASHER PRESENTS:

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THURSDAY MARCH 19TH MIKE THRASHER PRESENTS:

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JUST ANNOUNCED 4/28 - ORGY 5/10 - SÛLSTAFIR 8/24 - INSOMNIUM UP & COMING 3/22 - BRIEF LIVES 3/22 LOUNGE - THE FAMES 3/23 LOUNGE - KAUSTIK4 3/24 - TIM BARRY 3/25 - JARABE DE PALO 3/26 - STEVE TAYLOR & THE PERFECT FOIL 3/27 - METALACHI 3/27 LOUNGE - SLUMS OF UTOPIA 3/28 - PANCAKES & BOOZE ART SHOW 3/29 - LEX 3/29 LOUNGE - HEAVYWEIGHT 3/30 LOUNGE - MARMOZETS 3/31 - TANTRIC 3/31 LOUNGE CHRYSALIS 4/1 LOUNGE - KEVIN SECONDS 4/2 LOUNGE - SAVIOURS 4/3 - BLACKLIST UNION 4/3 LOUNGE - YONATAN GAT 4/4 - THE COLOR MORALE Tickets now available at cascadetickets.com - No per order fees for online purchases. Our on-site Box Office is open 1pm-5pm weekdays in our office and all nights we are open in the club - $2 service charge per ticket Charge by Phone at 1.800.514.3849. Online at www.cascadetickets.com - Tickets are subject to service charge

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SEATTLE WEEKLY PROMOTIONS WIN TICKETS TO KITTY, DAISY & LEWIS

STG presents: Thursday, March 26, 9pm, The Crocodile. Kitty, Daisy & Lewis return with their first new album in three years since their acclaimed Smoking In Heaven. Themes of fresh adulthood and lost loves run throughout.

TICKET GIVEAWAY!

YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND SEATTLE WEEKLY • MARCH 11 — 17, 2015

STG presents: Friday, March 27, 8 pm, NeptuneTheatre. For nearly 17 years,Yonder Mountain String Band has redefined bluegrass music, expanding the traditional acoustic genre beyond its previously established boundaries.

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STG presents: Saturday, April 4, 9:30 pm, Tractor Tavern. The breakthrough single ‘Is This How You Feel?’ catapulted the five-piece from Sydney’s worst kept secret to Australia’s freshest music export.

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arts&culture» Music

TheWeekAhead

Wednesday, March 11

After a two-decade hiatus, THE JULIANA HATFIELD 3 is back on the alt-rock radar with the recent release of its sophomore album, Whatever, My Love. And though the band—singer/guitarist Hatfield (Blake Babies), bassist Dean Fisher (Thudpucker), and drummer Todd Philips (Moving Targets, Bullet LaVolta)—will play a few new tunes at this show, a majority of the night will be spent celebrating the 21st anniversary of the band’s debut LP, Become What You Are, which the trio is playing in full. The simplicity and realism of Hatfield’s lyrics, especially on singles “My Sister” and “Spin the Bottle,” was praised after Become’s 1993 release and still resonates with today’s listeners. With Unlikely Friends. Tractor Tavern, 5213 Ballard Ave. N.W., 789-3599. 8 p.m. $20. 21 and over.

Thursday, March 12

R&B singer LISA FISCHER released her first album, So Intense, in 1991, and though she won a Grammy for the single “How Can I Ease the Pain” (in a tie with Patti LaBelle), her career has been most notable for her work just behind the spotlight. The powerhouse vocalist, who was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, has worked as a backup and session singer for musicians including Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé, Aretha Franklin, Nine Inch Nails, and the Rolling Stones, with whom she’s toured since 1989. But even when she’s sharing a stage, Fischer’s voice and presence make her impossible to ignore. Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave., 441-9729, jazzalley.com. 7:30 p.m. Thurs. & Sun., 7:30 & 9:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat. $39. All ages. TWEEDY is the ultimate form of Take Your Child to Work Day. The band—singer/multi-instrumentalist Jeff Tweedy, of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco fame, and his oldest son, Spencer—came together after Spencer played percussion on demos for Sukierae, which Jeff first intended as a solo release. The duo, which played its first show four days after Spencer’s high-school graduation, keeps things up-tempo on the first half of the double album and takes a more mellow, folkier route on the second. Spencer, who also performs with the Blisters and played on Mavis Staples’ One True Vine, which his father produced, holds his own throughout Sukierae. Jeff must be one proud papa. With The Minus 5. The Neptune, 1303 N.E. 45th St. 682-1414, stgpresents.org/neptune. 8 p.m. SOLD OUT. All ages. Arrington de Dionyso has an instantly recognizable voice. After studying a book on sound effects by Police Academy’s Michael Winslow as a kid, de Dionyso stumbled upon the art of throat singing, which, to describe it simply, makes it sound like he’s singing into a fan. It must be heard to be appreciated, especially when de Dionyso, who also sang in Old Time Relijun, is fronting his trancepunk band MALAIKAT DAN SINGA, which means “Angels and Lions” in Malay. De Dionyso’s full range of vocal tics, including yelps, grunts, and his trademark throat singing, is showcased on the band’s latest, Open the Crown. With Deep Creep, The Pop Group. Neumos, 925 E. Pike St., 709-9442, neumos.com. 8 p.m. $25. 21 and over.

Friday, March 13

CHOP SUEY GRAND RE-OPENING Chop Suey fans

have been on quite the roller-coaster ride over the past few months. Booker Jodi Ecklund told us in November that she was to cease booking in January, leading many to believe that the venue was either being remodeled or closing. Turns out both were true. After a farewell show, the Capitol Hill staple closed for heavy renovations, which include a new digital soundboard, a bigger stage, and, in the main room, decor to reflect the venue’s past as an auto-parts shop. But with this new look, and new owners, in place, Chop Suey is reclaiming its spot in the local scene with a two-night Grand Opening event. With Dead Moon, Girl Trouble. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 3248005, chopsuey.com. 9 p.m. Friday: SOLD OUT. Saturday: $20 adv./$25 DOS. 21 and over. THE BITTER ROOTS’ vocalist/guitarist/bassist Jeff Stetson drew lyrical inspiration for Noise Vibrations and Fumes, his fourth album with drummer, bassist, and keyboardist Ben Koostra, from a variety of scenarios: the repetition of a family name (“Too Many Freds”), meeting his wife (“Dairy Queen”), his son’s love of Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House (“Butterfly Baby”), paparazzi (“The Precious”), abuse within the Catholic Church (“Habemus Papam,” “Go”), and society’s reliance on technology (“Paper World”). And, for good measure, the album title is inspired by the seemingly endless construction in Seattle. It’s a hodgepodge of topics, but the duo’s alt-rock sound is consistent. With the Lonely Drivers, the Ram Rams. Skylark Cafe, 3803 Delridge Way S.W., 9352111, skylarkcafe.com. 9 p.m. $7. 21 and over.

Kate Finn approaches KATIE KATE in the same way I imagine pop singer Marina and the Diamonds saw Electra Heart, the character she created for her album of the same name. Kate is an alter ego of sorts, a bolder extension of Finn. Kate packs on the attitude and isn’t afraid to get in someone’s face, while Finn seems to be more subdued. Her latest, the self-released Nation, is a collection of dark hip-hop tunes, some of which further the idea that Finn and Kate are not one and the same: “I am not of the earth/I teleport,” she raps on “Buffalo.” With Vox Mod, Murder Vibes. Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave. N.W., 7844880, sunsettavern.com. 9 p.m. $10. 21 and over.

Saturday, March 14

Whether playing his own tunes or covering classics like Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow,” Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” and Helen Parker’s “Akaka Falls,” JAKE SHIMABUKURO pushes the ukulele to its limit on his latest release, Grand Ukulele. The album was tracked live with a 29-piece orchestra and a rhythm section, but the acoustic instrument still stands out from the rest. Impressive, yes. Surprising? Not really. Shimabukuro has been playing since he was 4, so he could command an audience’s attention in his sleep. He recently finished recording a new album, so expect a new batch of uke tunes soon. Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N., 425-275-9595, edmondscenterforthearts. org. 7:30 p.m. SOLD OUT. All ages. On its latest release, the double album Berkeley to Bakersfield, CRACKER pays heartfelt homage to its past and present. Berkeley features vocalists/guitarists David Lowery and Johnny Hickman, band members since its 1990 inception, plus the rest of the lineup from Kerosene Hat, Cracker’s most popular album to date, for punk-rock jams. The twangy Bakersfield, on the other hand, touches on the band’s country influences and features Lowery and Hickman backed by guest musicians, at least one of whom is now a touring member. At this show, Lowery and Hickman will perform tracks from both albums acoustically. Tractor Tavern. 6 p.m. $20. 21 and over.

Sunday, March 15

The last five years have been interesting, to say the least, for blues-rock sixpiece WIDESPREAD PANIC. The band released Dirty Side Down in 2010. The album, which featured originals as well as covers of Jerry Joseph’s “North” and Vic Chestnutt’s “This Cruel Thing,” was a welcome addition to an almost-30-year discography, but just two years after its release, the band went on hiatus. The break lasted less than a year, but even after the band resumed playing together, the only releases coming from the Panic camp were live recordings. It looks, though, like Widespread Panic is finally back on track: According to a Facebook post, the group has been spending time in the studio. The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 682-1414, stgpresents. org/paramount. 7 p.m. $41. All ages.

Monday, March 16

According to his press bio, when deciding to track his latest album, The Man Upstairs, live, English musician ROBYN HITCHCOCK reasoned that since he only gets one shot at playing a song onstage, he should apply the same make-or-break attitude to the recording studio. With that in mind, Hitchcock and producer Joe Boyd recorded most of Upstairs’ 10 tracks in just one or two takes. The album, which contains original songs and covers of tunes by the Psychedelic Furs, Roxy Music, Grant-Lee Phillips, I Was a King, and the Doors, is smoother than expected given its rapid creation—though that’s not surprising coming from such a seasoned performer. With Emma Swift. Columbia City Theater, 4918 Rainier Ave. S., 723-0088, columbiacity theater.com. 8 p.m. $22. 21 and over.

Tuesday, March 17

Country singer JESSICA LYNNE’s latest single, “Calling Me Home,” is, in a nutshell, her experience in pursuit of the American Dream. On the track—recorded last year as part of London Tone Music Group’s “52 x 52: A Year in Your Ear” campaign—Denmark native Lynne talks of feeling an “eerie wind blowing from the cool Northwest” that’s calling her name. The more Lynne tries to ignore it, the louder this wind gets; eventually Lynne takes the leap and answers its call by moving to Seattle to work as a musician. That move has certainly paid off for Lynne, as her schedule has been packed with local shows ever since. Hard Rock Cafe, 116 Pike St., 204-2233, hardrock.com. 5 p.m. Free. 21 and over. BY A Z AR IA C . P O D P LE S K Y

Send events to music@seattleweekly.com. See seattleweekly.com for more listings.

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D.C.’s decriminalization law is a particularly big deal because of the massive racial biases behind marijuana arrests in the city. According to the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, nine out of 10 people arrested for drug offenses in D.C. between 2009 and 2012 were black. And while blacks make up slightly more than half of the city’s population, surveys show they’re no more likely than whites to use marijuana. The craziest fact of all, according to The Washington Post: White folks are more likely than any other race to be selling drugs. Let’s just say it loud and clear: The War on Drugs is a war on black Americans. Beyond that, the new D.C. law is largely symbolic, as sales of any kind are not allowed (which also means they won’t be collecting any of those sweet tax dollars). Individuals are allowed to possess and cultivate up to six plants, but only three can be budding in the government’s backyard at a time. District residents can’t fire up on federal land (yes, that means the Lincoln Memorial), in bars or restaurants, or in public housing. Medical marijuana is allowed (it was passed in D.C. in 2010), and if you’re feeling particularly generous, you can “gift” an ounce to friends, family, and fellow residents, so long as they’re over 21. (“Mr. Speaker, I hereby offer this peace-doobie to break the gridlock . . . ”) The road to national legalization will be paved with setbacks, scare tactics, and a social conversation about what it means to be high. As with moonshine, civil rights, and same-sex marriage, we’ll have to tinker a bit to get it right. Nebraska and Oklahoma are taking Colorado to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming legalization is causing massive drug-enforcement problems, with too many pickups full of Denver ganja entering their backyards. Last week all nine former DEA heads joined the brief. It points to red state/ blue state differences, and serves as yet another reminder that, yes, marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. But in a sign that we can all get along, a man walked into the Sixth District police station in D.C. last Monday and asked for his previously seized weed back. (He’d been arrested for a charge unrelated to drugs, and, along with a belt and a wallet, had his stash taken during processing.) As possession of two ounces or less is fully legal, an officer gave him his baggie of marijuana. Progress, apparently, comes in small doses. E For more Higher Ground, visit higher groundtv.com. BRIANNA CASHIN

very single day there’s breaking news in the marijuana movement. Alaska officially legalized weed on February 24, making it the fourth state in the Union to toss aside the chains of prohibition, and the next day, at the stroke of midnight, our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., followed suit. #CommanderInSpleef ! But if ya think the “Just Say No” Nancy Reagan types are gently stepping aside, and the taxation and HIGHERGROUND regulaBY MICHAEL A. STUSSER tion of cannabis are going along swimmingly, you’ve been smoking too much of the recently legalized chronic. In the District of Columbia, an hour before the city officially made recreational ganja legal, Republicans in the House of Representatives tossed a little fear-mongering into the mix. “You can go to prison for this,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told The Washington Post—and the citizens of D.C. who overwhelmingly approved the initiative. ”We’re not playing a little game here.” Reps. Chaffetz and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) sent a memorandum to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, threatening that if the city chose to move forward with pot in the District, “you will be doing so in knowing and willful violation of the law.” The right-wing reps were trying to nullify legalization—and the will of the people—through riders they’d previously attached to the unrelated trillion-dollar Congressional spending bill. The letter went on to demand that Bowser create a list of all D.C. employees who participated in the enactment of the ballot measure, fork over their timecards, and share their salaries, apparently in an effort to create a sort of Green List. Joe McCarthy would be so proud. Bowser’s no pushover (hell, in D.C., mayors often smoke crack just to deal with the toughness of their constituents); she let the world know she would do what more than 70 percent of her residents made clear they wanted when they passed the measure last summer. “My Administration is committed to upholding the will of DC voters,” she tweeted. “We will implement Initiative 71 in a thoughtful, responsible way.” Police Chief Cathy Lanier is also on board, telling the American News Women’s Club, ”All those [marijuana] arrests do is make people hate us.” She added, “Marijuana smokers are not going to attack and kill a cop. They just want to get a bag of chips and relax. Alcohol is a much bigger problem.”

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4HAULING 4EXCAVATION 4BACKHOE & 4BOBCAT WORK 4Lot Clearing HConcrete & Asphalt Removal HStump Removal HSmall Bldg Demolition HNo Job Too Small

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Landscape Service Reliable Yard Clean-Up, Lawn Mowing, Tree Trimming, Moss Removal

Call 206-453-1118 for a Free Estimate WA Misc. Rentals Rooms for Rent Greenlake/WestSeattle $400 & up Utilities included! busline, some with private bathrooms • Please call Anna between 10am & 8pm • 206-790-5342

Announcements

NORTHEND MASSAGE FOR YOUR HEALTH LAURIE LMP #MA00014267 (206) 919-2180

STACK LAUNDRY Deluxe front loading washer & dryer. Energy efficient, 8 cycles. Like new condition * Under Warranty * Over $1,200 new, now only $578 or make payments of $25 per month

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Pickup Trucks Ford

Flea Market

WARHAMMER 4 Box Necron Battle Set. Prebuilt $75. Dwarven Forge Dungeon Set $75. (206)661-5068 Auto Events/ Auctions

ABANDONED VEHICLE AUCTION Thursday 03/19/15 Preview 8:00 AM Auction 9:00 AM A-Seattle Towing, LLC 13226 1st Ave S. Burien 206-856-1388 www.towseattle.com

BIG D TOWING Abandoned Vehicle Auction Tuesday 03/17/15 @ 11AM. 1 Vehicle Preview 10-11am. 1540 Leary Way NW, Seattle 98107

1996 F250 XLT 4WD EXT CAB sleek glossy black! Canopy, Banks exhaust system, Banks shift kit for pulling heavy loads, New wheels, tires, brakes. All fluids changed/flushed. Ready to roll for summer Pristine mechanical & cosmetic condition! Line-X Bed Liner. Non smoking. 96,000 miles. $9,995/ Negotiable. 253-3355919.

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Flea Market

GHOSTBUSTERS Proton pack with metal frame mount, lights up and makes sounds, $150. 206-661-5068

@weeklyevents Do you have PTSD and alcohol problems?

@ CenturyLink Field

Housekeeping Job Fair March 12th, 16th & 17th from 10am-12pm Come to the NE VIP • Detail Workers located on the north • Event Worker side of the stadium. • Post Event Workers Questions call 206-381-7570 • PT Housekeeping Positions

Seeking free treatment? Paid research opportunity. Call the APT Study at

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WYNDHAM VACATION OWNERSHIP

Appliances AMANA RANGE Deluxe 30” Glasstop Range self clean, auto clock & timer ExtraLarge oven & storage *UNDER WARRANTY* Over $800. new. Pay off balance of $193 or make payments of $14 per month. Credit Dept. 206-244-6966

KENMORE FREEZER

Repo Sears deluxe 20cu.ft. freezer 4 fast freeze shelves, defrost drain,

interior light *UNDER WARRANTY* Make $15 monthly payments or pay off balance of $293. Credit Dept. 206-244-6966

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Prepare to Go Places! Looking for a Career? Reserve your SEAT Today for the Hiring Event Wednesday, March 18th at 6pm, Seattle, WA. Fortune 500 Company, World’s Largest Vacation Ownership and Hospitality Company, Top 100 Companies for working families

People Make the Difference.

At Wyndham Vacation Ownership®, we have the best job in the world — providing people with an opportunity to enjoy a lifetime of memorable vacations. And, we are good at what we do. With more than 800,000 owners and more than 160 resorts across North America, Mexico, the Caribbean and the South Paciﬁc, Wyndham Vacation Ownership is the largest vacation ownership company in the world. The primary purpose of the Marketing Agent is to solicit prospective guests in high traffic tourist locations, booths, events or other designated locations in the Puget Sound and downtown Seattle while providing customer service; qualify them to assure that they meet the guidelines for the sales presentation; if qualiﬁed, invite them to attend a vacation ownership presentation; and register them properly.

Highly Competitive Pay Plan, Dynamic Paid Training, Great Vacation Perks and so much more!!

just $9 per line per week (or less if running long term) Contact 206-623-6231 classifieds@seattleweekly.com

Limited Seating, reserve your seat today by contacting us at (425)498-2745 or email Recruiter john.kennedy@wyn.com and apply at wvojobs.com

What does it take? Drive

Self Discipline

Listening Skills

Passion

Perseverance

Career Minded

Wyndham Vacation Ownership is a proud member of Wyndham Worldwide (NYSE: WYN) family of companies. EOE.

The choice is yours ... ... choose to succeed!

CAREER TRAINING

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FOR MORE DETAILS, VISIT US AT: seattleweekly.com/freestuff

T Appro T Appro T Revis

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Financial aid available for those who qualify. Programs and schedules vary by campus. For useful consumer information, please visit us at www.everest.edu/disclosures.

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there’s more to

than depression. When symptoms persist, there may be more you can do.

All eligible study participants will receive at no cost: Consultation with study doctor

Study drugs

Study-related care and visits

TO LEARN MORE:

Summit Research Network (Seattle) LLC 206.315.1065 Whether or not you are currently taking an antidepressant, you may be eligible to participate.

Walk-ins Welcome

On-Line Verification Available Providing Authorizations in Accordance with RCW 69.51A

$99 includes Authorization and Card Doctors available Tuesday 2 - 6 • Thursday 11 - 3, Friday 11 - 6

Also Open Sunday 12 - 4

4021 Aurora Ave N. Seattle, WA 98103 • 206-632-4021 www.medicinemanwellness.com Now accepting all major credit/debit cards!

SEATT LE W EEKLY • M ARCH 11 — 17, 2015

If feelings such as depressed mood or lack of energy are keeping you from the things that matter to you, you may be eligible for this research study. It’s evaluating an investigational drug designed to work with antidepressants to see if it can help address unresolved symptoms of depression.

MEDICINE MAN WELLNESS CENTER

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