The Weekly Wire: This Week’s Recommended Events

Thursday 10/15

Stage: Mix and Mock

Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith, like most artists today, are seeking the holy grail of "what's next" in the post-Aristotelian era of storytelling. Their satirical videos (see DumbFilms on vimeo.com) spoof conventions from romantic film montages of laughing couples to corporate sponsorship announcements, from superheroes to film noir. In over- or under-dosing us with narrative clichés (e.g., cute or climactic endings), they impugn the concept of audience entitlement. (You want a happy ending? Go rent The Proposal.) Transition, their latest multimedia show, unites "a Monty Python–like comedic sensibility" with video, movement, and some sort of customized live-performance technology that's being coyly kept under wraps. Can you bear not knowing? Both versatile creators have local roots: Watts is a Cornish grad and erstwhile singer for Maktub; Smith, now based in New York, grew up here and has had plays produced at Theater Schmeater and ACT. (Through Saturday.) On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 217-9888, ontheboards.org. $18. 8 p.m. MARGARET FRIEDMAN

Friday 10/16

Food/Books: MacGyver in Your Kitchen

Alton Brown is the cook/science-nerd star of the award-wining Food Network show Good Eats, where he demonstrates ingenious approaches to the everyday meal. He'll teach even the most cooking-averse how to whip up dinner using only the gadgets at hand. Brown is famously opposed to fancy, single-use cooking accessories, preferring the aisles of a hardware store, or the depths of his cluttered garage, to source his culinary tools. Thus, Brown has fun poaching chicken in a coffee maker, drying beef jerky via box fan, and tackling that most brag-worthy (and problematic) task: deep-frying your Thanksgiving bird. He's goofy, smart, and eminently watchable, and he's collected some of his crazy TV cooking-stunt recipes in Good Eats: The Early Years (Stewart, Tabori, $37.50). Bring your safety goggles tonight in case he gives a demonstration. (Ticketed event; requires book purchase to admit two.) Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way N.E., 366-3333, thirdplacebooks.com. Free. 6:30 p.m. ADRIANA GRANT

Film: Loot and Consequences

Before he won an Oscar for being all uplifting in Slumdog Millionaire, director Danny Boyle made his feature debut with the 1994 Shallow Grave, a lean and nasty bit of suspense about three Glasgow roomies (Ewan McGregor among them) who luck into a bag of cash left in their flat by a dead junkie. Only their luck brings no luck at all. Instead, the money's rightful owners—and by rightful, we mean vicious gangsters—come looking for the stash. After that, bodies pile up, hands are hacked off, and three fast friends turn against one another. Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge push the mood from witty and self-satisfied to gleefully dark. The descent into chaos and violence actually portends 28 Days Later (and The Beach, for that matter). Ordinary Scottish yuppies will do anything to survive, and the polite mask of manners swiftly gives way to feral behavior. (Rated R, runs through Thurs.) Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $6. 7 and 9:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

Saturday 10/17

Opera: Amor en Su Jardin

On the surface, Federico Garcia Lorca's 1928 one-act The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden might look like a comedy—an elderly husband, a scheming younger wife, love letters and disguises. But the ending stirs in a little Wagner: death and redemption. It's naturally an irresistible combination for opera composers, which led Seattle's Kam Morrill to adapt it into Love's Fool (or The Cuckold's Duel). A first draft was premiered 20 years ago at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute; as a student of Ned Rorem there, Morrill absorbed his teacher's predilection for the long line and his skill with lyrical vocal writing. The unveiling of this reworking, with a cast of six and a micro-orchestra of cello and piano, is sponsored by the Ladies Musical Club. Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St., 654-3100, seattleartmuseum.org. Free. 2 p.m. (Also at University House Wallingford, 4400 Stone Way N., 7:30 p.m. Sun.) GAVIN BORCHERT

Arts & Science: Micro/Macro

Charts and graphs can only get you so far. To communicate the effects of global warming, overconsumption, and excess waste, Seattle photographer Chris Jordan opts for a pointillist approach in his new show Running the Numbers. Using Photoshop and a large-format printer, he reiterates a tiny motif—a dollar bill, Barbie Doll, SUV logo—in direct proportion to some damning stat. Thus, Mt. McKinley is rendered in Denali Denial as 24,000 nameplates from a GMC Yukon Denali. Or the cost of the Iraq War, $12.5 million hourly, becomes a giant portrait of Benjamin Franklin—as in 125,000 Benjamins intricately collaged together. In a companion video, Jordan freely admits the show's activist theme. It's not representational, like his earlier photorealstic portraits of our trash, but symbolic—using "the austere lens of statistics" to illustrate environmental ills. But his didactic images aren't directly confrontational or scolding. They invite you in for a closer look. In fact, they require you to look closer to discern the visual kernel being replicated. And then, by extension, to look for it in your own life. (Through Jan. 3.) Pacific Science Center, 200 Second Ave. N., 443-2001, pacsci.org. $10–$17. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. BRIAN MILLER