the CAB - arts news & notes

It's nice to get outside...and go inside a performance venue.

This is a tribute

Tonight at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard, City Arts and Gibson Guitars present a Tribute to the Kinks as a part of the Heineken Green Room Sessions series. Hosted by DJ Taco Supreme, this homage to the iconic band includes acts like Guided by Dan, Gavin Guss, Erin Jorgensen, The Raggedy Anns and more.

Music

If you enjoy the occasional in-store show at Easy Street Records, head over to West Seattle on Friday to see LeRoy Bell, the folk rock musician known for exploring his soulful roots. Bell is on the verge of releasing his fourth album, Traces. He’ll be playing at 7pm, and admission is free.

Visual Art

Saturday, Tacoma Art Museum brings you the Best of the Northwest community festival, featuring Northwest art, local music and plenty of activities (including the Frost Park "Chalkie" team taking over Tollefson Plaza). It’s free, too!

Theatre

The time has come again for the world’s quickest theatre festival, 14/48. For two weekends, a group of actors, playwrights, musicians and directors come together to write fourteen ten-minute plays the night before they perform them. The festival is taking place July 30 and 31, and August 6 and 7 at Theatre Off Jackson. Read more about it in an earlier edition of Catch This.

Film

If you feel like checking out the Kurt exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, I suggest you stick around tonight for a screening of the 1998 film Kurt and Courtney, directed by Nick Broomfield. Film starts at 7:30pm.

Poetry

SoulFood Books in Redmond hosts an art exhibition and reception on Saturday for Loopy Mind by Natalia Jarmick. Poetry and spoken word starts at 6:15pm, complemented by a limited open mic and a live band.

Thanks to the portable victoria on Flickr for the pic.

Last night at the Off Hours was the first time I was ever encouraged to treat a poetry reading as a drinking game. 

And no, this was not inspired by friends of low character who were bored because they weren’t watching sports; the suggestion came from featured poet Matthew Nienow, himself.

Nienow (above) was concerned that because most of his poems were “downers,” he might spoil the beautiful summer evening (evident in the lovely light streaming in through the venue's large windows). So he suggested that, for each downer poem he introduced, we should take a drink. The crowd happily obliged.

That’s how it goes at the Off Hours, where emerging poets and writers give readings in an informal and friendly setting. If you have ever been reticent to attend a reading, because you felt it might be too stuffy, too boring or remind you too much of school, this is the event for you. 

Read more after the jump.

This has nothing to do with the arts, but I have to hand it to Woodland Park Zoo. Their press releases tend to cheer me up. Yesterday they announced that nineteen western pond turtles were released into a wild refuge site in Pierce county, the culmination of project that seeks to restore a fragile population in the Northwest.

I rescued a red-eared slider from the road in Houston once. It escaped its box and sort of hissed at me a few times. I released it at Armand Bayou. It never looked back.

More info about the western pond turtle program from the press release after the jump.

If you haven't attended an installment of the Seattle reading series, The Off Hours, yet, this is one to try.

Series founder Lacey Henson will join the lineup of readers for the first time tonight. And she surely won't disappoint. Lacey's writing draws clear parallels with the irresistible Lorrie Moore.

Joining her tonight are poets Don Mee Choi and Matthew Nienow and writers Ian Sherman and Elissa Washuta. Fellow writer Colleen O'Brien hosts.

Another first: the series has finally made its way to Capitol Hill. The reading starts at Sole Repair at 7:00pm; and a post-show party continues there until 11:00pm or so . . .

Tickets are $5 each. (All proceeds go to the readers.)

Sole Repair is a private event space on 10th in Capitol Hill, near 10th & Pike. It's just behind Quinn's and opposite Neumos.

Seattle Public Library will host a preview of Seattle Opera’s upcoming production of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde today, starting at 12:00pm in the Microsoft Auditorium. The production features soprano Annalena Persson as Isolde and tenor Clifton Forbis as Tristan. Listen to an excerpt of the music on Seattle Opera's Web site. And read about Tristan rehearsals on the Opera's blog.

Library previews are free and open to the public.

More info about the show after the jump.

Forget to pick up your copy of City Arts this month?

Read the July issues of City Arts from Seattle, Tacoma and the Eastside online now. In particular, don't miss these stories:

"The Band that Got Away"
Seven years dead, Carissa’s Wierd comes back to life with its trademark heartache intact and a fan base that never really knew them.

"Future Imperfect"
In his latest novella, Ted Chiang paints a future that is much more complicated, realistic and riveting than anything Hollywood could ever come up with.

"Book Case"
Tacoma's Mark Lindquist made it in Hollywood as a novelist and is now the star prosecutor of alleged murderers. The secret of his success is always the same: riveting storytelling.

"B.C. (Before Coffee)"
One of the first Starbucks baristas in history spills the beans on Howard Schultz’s voodoo power and gives his opinion of the place’s metamorphosis as only an anonymous writer could. 

Plus: a "Ballardian" in our style profile, a look at local retail art, the underground zine La Norda Specialo and more.

1. Marinate that $20 steak in orange soda for one hour before you grill it. You won’t be disappointed.

2. Look up Orange Crush on Google images; you will happen upon pictures of things that are definitely not soda or an R.E.M. album. Thank you, Google, for my continuing education.

3. The perfect date is sometimes made up of a just a picnic blanket and some fruit. And many cookies.

4. The bathrooms at Gas Works close after dark. This may be common knowledge, but sometimes, it is very bad news.

5. You can tie a yellow bandanna on “Juno” and call her a “dream architect,” but she’s still going to come across as boxy, boyish little Juno. Now get her out of Inception so I can see more of Tom Hardy (I’m with Lindy on this one). Also, I think, Leo’s nose is getting smaller.

6. It may be more sensible to leave my car doors unlocked from now on. At least then I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to get a lock fixed, just so some idiot can browse through my CD's.

7. I was wrong in last week’s Illuminating Things. I can be that happy. Because there is a “Double Rainbow” remix:

I'm guessing this is what 14/48 feels like.

14 plays. 48 hours. It's been called odd, hilarious, tender, exhausting and compulsive; a marathon of chaotic theatre. All I know is that I've never experienced the 14/48 festival, and as a former theatre student, I'm intensely curious.

Winner of the 2008 Mayor's Arts Award, critics are suprised that 14/48 has been able to survive well past it's birth in 1997. This brainchild of Michael Neff and Jodi-Paul Wooster throws out casting and rehearsals for the adrenaline rush of ten-minute plays written one night and performed the next, accompanied by a band whose members have never worked together. You can read more about the festival in "The Big Picture" in our September 2008 Seattle issue or at 14/48's site, which has their stamp of personality all over it.

Not only has the festival survived, it has grown rapidly in its popularity. It's so popular, in fact, that All-Fest tickets sold out in less than 24 hours, but individual tickets are still available. The show runs for two weekends, July 30th and 31st and August 6th and 7th, with showtimes at 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. If you're up for 14 world premieres, you should try going to both.

Image: Tracy Hyland douses Brandon Ryan in the January 2009 festival. Photo by Matt Larson.

Theatre Off Jackson, 409 7th Avenue South

Jean-Paul Belmondo is an icon of cool.

Though, to really appreciate the mid-twentieth century French actor, you have to be familiar with a few French films.

While he has done major films throughout his career, he solidified his status as Michel, the smooth, eager-to-be-loved and sometimes violent con-artist in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film, Breathless.

In Léon Morin, Priest, or The Forgiven Sinner, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, however, Belmondo stars as a priest, serving his small community under Nazi occupation in WWII. While seemingly a film about the struggles of wartime, Leon (Belmondo) is experiencing serious temptation: the women of his town, bereft of men thanks to the war, are turning their romantic interests towards the humble, yet surprisingly cool, priest.

Here's the trailer:

So if you want to be cool (and you do want that right?), and see a film that embodies the French psyche during WWII, check out this film at the Northwest Film Forum now through Thursday.

Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave.