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Music

Tonight: Hear Sean Nelson, Kimya Dawson, Ben Gibbard, and More Pay Tribute to Leonard Cohen

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Thursday at 4:36 pm

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Tonight at 7 pm, Town Hall will hold its How The Light Gets In: A Celebration of Leonard Cohen event. It's sold out, but a limited number of standby line tickets may still be available.

Here's what music calendar editor Kim Selling has to say about it:

In sustained periods of great loss, we require people who are uniquely adept at converting the depths of our pain into something honest and communicable, so that we may still know ourselves despite unrelenting tragedy. When the loss in question is one of those translators, we must unite in piecing together their treatises with the hope of better understanding how to carry on. Leonard Cohen was an unmatched poet and songwriter, but most of all he deciphered and then mirrored every angle of humanity in equally soft and jagged shades.

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Music

Watch Hound Dog Taylor's Hand's Harrowing "Field Trip" Video

by Dave Segal • Thursday at 4:19 pm

Hound Dog Taylors Hand: Sharrock till you drop.
Hound Dog Taylor's Hand: Sharrock till you drop.

The video for the new track "Field Trip" by Seattle jazz-rock trio Hound Dog Taylor's Hand seems like an unintentional metaphor for America under the Trump administration. It's a harrowing plunge down a drain to a sewer main, scored (and scarred) by 102 seconds of primal, over-driven rock and fucking roll. This song zooms down the highway to hell with a ferocity not unlike some of Kinski's later releases.

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News • Indian Country

Breaking with the Norm, Native Leaders Chimed in on Controversial Youth Detention Center

by Sydney Brownstone • Thursday at 3:30 pm

Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, also serves as the president of the National Congress of American Indians.
Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, also serves as the president of the National Congress of American Indians. SB

Capping off a week of protests and one celebrity statement, the City of Seattle's Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) said it would not deny permits for a new controversial youth detention center earlier today. But lost amid much of the coverage was the intervention of a group of Native leaders in the youth detention center fight.

Last year, board members of the Huy Council, a non-profit focused on the needs of indigenous people in prison, submitted a letter to the Seattle City Council urging the council to consider alternatives to the detention center. The construction of the youth detention center is the first local issue that the non-profit has weighed in on, according to Huy chairman and lawyer Gabe Galanda, who tweeted out the group's letter again today.

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Savage Love

Savage Love Letter of the Day: New To America & Ready To Get Laid

by Dan Savage • Thursday at 3:19 pm

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I'm a 25-year-old immigrant who recently moved to the USA. For most of my life, I've been an introvert living in a small town and my interactions with girls and women has been limited. I'm not a shy person but my environment has been predominantly filled with males, and culture has been very strict in terms of male-female interaction. I've never been in a relationship and I'm a virgin. Now that I am in the United States, I seek to establish some sort or relationship with women both personally and sexually. I feel I might have delayed interaction for too long.

What do I do? Would peers here consider me a loser of some sort for being sexually inexperienced? Is that even a thing? What is a reasonable expectation I should have from women here? Am I even asking the right questions?

Newly Arrived Immigrant Very Eager

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Books

The 20 Moments in Books That Helped Us Survive 2016

by Sean Nelson and Rich Smith • Thursday at 3:00 pm

Sherman Alexie connects with a young fan.
Sherman Alexie connects with a young fan.

Read more of the 196 moments in music, art, books, theater, film, and TV that helped us survive 2016.

• This line from Ed Skoog's Run the Red Lights: "A lot of 20th-century business coming due / at once," in a year where a lot of 20th-century business seems to be coming due all at once.

• At Elliott Bay Book Company during Indies First, the day after Black Friday that celebrates buying books from independent bookstores, Eloise stood straight-backed in her fuchsia power-tutu, her hands on her hips, her eyes trained upward, not in fawning admiration of Sherman Alexie, but as a kind of challenge: He should be grateful for the opportunity to sign her copy of Thunder Boy Jr., Alexie's children's book released this year.

• In November, Sherman Alexie pulled his car over to the side of the road to talk with me about writing and Trump, which resulted in this perfect summation of the rhetorical strategies taken up by the US far left and the far right: "One side rooting for an America that never existed and one side rooting for an America that is never going to exist."

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Books

The Personal Is Historical in Quenton Baker's Debut Book, This Glittering Republic

by Rich Smith • Thursday at 2:40 pm

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In This Glittering Republic, Seattle poet Quenton Baker shows his work.

The first section begins with a quote from legendary poet and music historian A. B. Spellman, and the second section begins with a stanza from the woefully under-acclaimed poet Elouise Loftin. Shout-outs and dedications to contemporary masters such as Yusef Komunyakaa, Aimé Césaire, Anne Carson, Harryette Mullen, and Fred Moten are tucked under titles. Tim Seibles and local poet/artist Anastacia Renee provide the blurbs on the back.

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Sex

Savage Love: The Intern

by Dan Savage • Thursday at 2:15 pm

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Joe Newton
I'm having an issue with my boyfriend, and I don't know if I am the crazy, paranoid, controlling party here. We have been together for more than a year and a half. We had troubles early on because he has a low sex drive. It made me very insecure, and I think that's why, at the time, I became extremely jealous of his friendship with his very attractive intern. I fully owned up to my irrational jealousy and decided on my own that it was my responsibility to overcome that. She eventually stopped working with him, and they haven't been in contact for over sex months. Fast-forward to the present. On Monday night, I asked my boyfriend what his plans were on Tuesday. (I am studying for law school exams, so I knew I wouldn't have time to spend with him.) Around 8:30 on Tuesday, he texted me and asked how studying was going, and I asked him again what his plans were. He told me he was going to meet an "old coworker" at a bar for birthday drinks. I didn't think twice about it. Then, around 11:30 when I got in bed to relax, I saw on my Instagram feed that his old intern posted a photo of her birthday party at the bar. I became extremely upset, because instead of being up front and saying he was meeting HER for her birthday, he was intentionally ambiguous. I confronted him when he got home, and he admitted to being ambiguous to avoid a "freak-out." I told him that if he'd been up front with me, I would have been jealous but I would have also been mindful of my toxic feelings and not projected them onto him. I told him that as a result of how he handled it, I feel worse, I feel lied to, and I feel insecure. He acted like I was being ridiculous. He insisted it was a last-minute invite and he didn't want to cause any drama. We went to sleep, and I woke up feeling pretty much over it. But when he got into the shower, I looked at his phone and saw that she had actually invited him on Monday afternoon. So he lied to me when I asked him what his plans were on Tuesday, and he lied to me again when he said it was a last-minute invite. I am not upset with him for getting drinks with her—most of his friends are female and I NEVER feel jealous about them. I have a weird tic about this girl, though, and I've owned up to it. I don't want to control him, but I feel like I can't trust him now. Up until now, I've never once suspected him of being dishonest.

Am I Crazy?

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Things To Do

The 20 Best Movies Playing in Seattle This Weekend

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Thursday at 1:36 pm

Office Christmas Party: You had us at Kate McKinnon in an ugly Christmas sweater.
Office Christmas Party: You had us at Kate McKinnon in an ugly Christmas sweater.

This weekend, take a break from stuffing your face with cutesy sugar cookies and apple sauce-soaked latkes, and head to the movies. This way, at least your great aunt will have something to talk about (other than Killary's new sex-trafficking ring housed in the local Chuck E. Cheese's). See all of our film critics' picks below, including new releases like the adaptation of August Wilson's play Fences, the dark and funny Elle, and the inspiring drama Lion. Skip Passengers, which Erik Henriksen describes as "mostly crappy," and instead get around to watching the ominous, thrumming Arrival, the latest Star Wars installment Rogue One, or Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life. As always, check out our complete movie times calendar for more options, or our Things To Do calendar for all of the everything happening this weekend, including last-minute holiday events.

recommended Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play. recommended

THURSDAY
1. The Eagle Huntress
The Eagle Huntress looks amazing. The documentary’s images—featuring a grinning 13-year-old Aisholpan Nurgaiv as she holds a splendid eagle half her size—are the stuff of myths. I went in pumped up to see a girl-power/girl-falconer documentary with plenty of big, cool-looking birds, and I was not disappointed. First-time director Otto Bell accomplishes a level of visual beauty we associate with BBC nature specials or, IDK, Lord of the Rings? It’s breathtaking. SUZETTE SMITH
Seven Gables

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Film

Elle and Paul Verhoeven’s Twisted Return

by Andrew Wright • Thursday at 1:02 pm

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Paul Verhoeven's American phase was too nasty to last, really, with movies like RoboCop and Starship Troopers giving the audience what they initially thought they wanted, and then cranking up the vulgarity to hysterically uncomfortable levels. (Even Hollow Man, the Dutch director’s weakest project, had a main character who pervs out immediately upon receiving superpowers.) Verhoeven’s films outside of the states, however, tend to swap the 2x4 for a stiletto. Elle, his first feature since 2006’s Black Book, is a breathtakingly twisted piece of work, utilizing a tremendous central performance by Isabelle Huppert that bridges some markedly taboo fault lines concerning power and sexuality. And somehow the damned thing is also funny, usually at the least opportune moments.

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Visual Art

The 79 Moments in Art That Helped Us Survive 2016

by Jen Graves • Thursday at 12:26 pm

A work by Senga Nengudi.
A work by Senga Nengudi.

Read more of the 196 moments in music, art, books, theater, film, and TV that helped us survive 2016.

• When my baby son learned to howl at the moon in order to accompany the howlingly gorgeous drawings of wolves made by living Native Salish artists in the (best ever) 2014 board book, Goodnight World.

• Marina Abramovic making all of Town Hall scream.

• Comics artist E.T. Russian sitting high up in the stands at KeyArena, sketching hundreds of dental patients laid out down on the stadium floor receiving free, no-questions-asked treatment during the Seattle/King County Free Health Clinic.

• The loving audience-within-an-audience that Romson Bustillo preselected to encircle and inspire dancer David Rue while Rue performed at King Street Station during the art-and-tech festival 9e2.

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Music

Tomorrow Night: Hear Some Killer Electronic Music at Manatee Commune on Ice

by Donovan Farley • Thursday at 12:10 pm

Manatee Commune on Ice: Fri Dec 23 at the Neptune.
Manatee Commune on Ice: Fri Dec 23 at the Neptune. Bridget Baker

A December 23 extravaganza at the Neptune will serve as a victory lap of sorts for Grant Eadie, the 23-year-old producer and multi-instrumentalist who records as Manatee Commune.

Eadie's stock soared in 2016, after an EP and an LP on Brooklyn's Bastard Jazz label, and tours with the likes of Emancipator and Bonobo. Eadie told me the Neptune Theatre will be transformed into a snow globe for the event, which he's calling "Manatee Commune on Ice."

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News

King County Sheriff Instructed Investigators to Ignore a Colleague’s Rape Claim Against Him, Lawsuit Alleges

by Heidi Groover • Thursday at 11:45 am

King County Sheriff John Urquhart denies the allegations.
King County Sheriff John Urquhart denies the allegations. King County

New documents in an ongoing lawsuit against the King County Sheriff's Department allege that King County Sheriff John Urquhart told investigators in his department to ignore a woman who claimed Urquhart raped her, the Seattle Times' Lewis Kamb reports.

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TV

Watch and Marvel at the Teamwork Behind an SNL Set Change

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey • Thursday at 11:27 am

Is it possible for Americans to ever again truly work together? Well, anything is possible, as you'll see from this unusually exciting behind-the-scenes sneaky peek of an SNL set change in action. I suppose I just always figured that SNL was performed on a revolving stage... but as you can see from this cold opening from last weekend's episode, those huge set changes are accomplished by a team of super coordinated tech professionals. NICE TEAMWORK, PEOPLE! (And note to self: Never sit in the front row of an SNL taping.)

Music

Chance the Rapper and Jeremih Release a Surprise Christmas Mixtape

by Jessica Fu • Thursday at 10:45 am

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Soundcloud

Chance the Rapper, whose Coloring Book album is one of our favorite moments in music this year, has just released a Christmas mixtape with singer Jeremih.

Called Merry Christmas Lil' Mama, the nine-song project is dedicated to "all the girls back in Chicago for winter break." Listen after the jump.

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Film • TV

The 34 Moments in Film & TV That Helped Us Survive 2016

by Charles Mudede and Sean Nelson • Thursday at 10:33 am

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis in Black Mirror’s “San Junipero.”
Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis in Black Mirror’s “San Junipero.” LAURIE SPARHAM/NETFLIX

Read more of the 196 moments in music, art, books, theater, film, and TV that helped us survive 2016.

• The moment when, in Black Mirror's "San Junipero," "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" plays and Yorkie rounds the bend in her little red convertible and Kelly comes out to greet her and you realize that in this horrible Trumpian universe, good things can happen and love can live. And then you weep tears of relief and joy.

• At Northwest Film Forum, the producer Jennifer Roth explains why she was awarded the prestigious Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and had it pinned on her by the French ambassador to the UAE. We asked, "Do you have it on you?" "No," Roth said, "I wanted to bring it to the party, but it kind of hurts to wear it."

• The scene in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story where a dead Star Destroyer is slammed into an active one, and both crash toward a planet's force field.

• Sidney Lumet describing in the documentary By Sidney Lumet a gang rape he witnessed while on a Calcutta train.

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