WEDNESDAY 10/21
Cori Chandler-Pepelnjak
JoJo, in a rare moment, acts her age.
Brian Miller
Corson’s retreat.
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Photography: Streetwise
Cori Chandler-Pepelnjak recalls being mesmerized the moment she laid eyes on the girl smoking on the steps of New York's Union Square. "She was so beautiful," says the photographer from her Minneapolis home. "But I couldn't tell how old she was or what she was thinking." So she asked if she could take the teen's picture, resulting in her ongoing photo-documentary project "JoJo." We see the 14-year-old careening about town in a miniskirt and fishnet stockings, chatting with cab drivers, cuddling in bed with her boyfriend, and playing with her dog. In one frame, she looks like a gorgeous 20-something socialite; in another, she's just another awkward teenager with greasy hair and pimples. But in none of the photos does she appear to be truly happy. These candid snaps raise countless questions about JoJo's existence—#1 being Where the hell are her parents? Is she homeless, a runaway, or what? Chandler-Pepelnjak intentionally omits important details: "I don't want it to be a reality show. I want to maintain a level of curiosity, so I only reveal little pieces of her life." (Through Nov. 25.) Photographic Center Northwest, 900 12th Ave., 720-7222, pcnw.org. Free. 9 a.m.–9:30 p.m. ERIKA HOBART
THURSDAY 10/22
Comedy: The Upside of ADD
David Letterman, naturally, said it best: "One thing about Tom Arnold...he's nuts." This is true. But he is also very funny, something the Iowa native rarely gets credit for. Most famous for being the former Mr. Roseanne Barr, Arnold has built a career of playing "the fat white sidekick" in close to 70 movies (True Lies, Nine Months, etc.). This year, however, he decided to return to his roots in stand-up comedy. Anyone who has seen Arnold's riotous recent appearances on The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live know that his act is basically his life. Expect stories of his wacky Iowa family, revelations about his married life (four times and counting!), and scandalous tales about his big-shot Hollywood friends, all of it told in a manner so kinetic and jumpy that it makes one thing clear—even in his drug-binge days with Roseanne, Tom Arnold was a tremendous waste of cocaine. Snoqualmie Casino, 37500 North Bend Way, Snoqualmie, 425-888-1234, snocasino.com. $20–$40. 8 p.m. BRIAN J. BARR
Dance: Rhythmic Dissent
Modern dance began as a revolutionary art form, yet it's also been a source of social commentary. The UW's Chamber Dance Company is dedicated to presenting the best of that heritage, and "The Shape of Dissent" (through Sun.) is drawn from the legacy of protest dance. Its credo: Movement can move us to act. The program starts in the 1930s with Jane Dudley's Dust Bowl–inspired Harmonica Breakdown and Charles Weidman's Lynchtown, an indictment of intolerance. Discrimination in a more contemporary vein is the subject of Bill T. Jones' D-Man in the Water, about the fight against AIDS. All five dances on the bill try to pull hope out of despair. As Jones has said, "This is about life throwing down the gauntlet and you rising to the occasion." Meany Theater, 4001 University Way N.E., 543-4880, meany.org. $10–$18. 7:30 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ
MONDAY 10/26
Music/Conversation: Are We a Pair?
Starting his career at the late-'50s tail of the Broadway musical's golden age, Stephen Sondheim, an Oscar Hammerstein protégé, turned out to be just the man to lead it into its next phase. Actually, he pretty much was its next phase. Hair and its self-conscious "relevance" was a fluke; what the musical needed was the urbanity of the earlier Gershwin/Porter generation, mixed with unsentimentality, bittersweetness, bravura verbal adroitness, and what in our Daily Show era seems like a very prescient sense of irony. Though he never quite obtained, or sought, the mainstream popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber and his Broadway-as-theme-park school of musicals, Sondheim has earned most every other accolade—Oscar, Pulitzer, and multiple Tony Awards. In his first Seattle visit, Sondheim will chat and reminisce toniiiight, toniiiight with Frank Rich, an avowed fan once known as "the Butcher of Broadway" for his New York Times theater reviews, and just as stinging today as Sunday op-ed writer. (Warm up on Sunday afternoon, as the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival presents a subtitled sing-along screening of West Side Story, with Sondheim's lyrics: 2:30 p.m., Cinerama, seattlequeerfilm.com.) Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. and Union St., 215-4747, benaroyahall.org. $48–$78. 8 p.m. GAVIN BORCHERT
Books/Climbing: Ascent Odds
To assess the risks of climbing a mountain whose name is partly a number, let's consider these numbers: On Everest, where commercially guided parties abound even after Into Thin Air, the ratio of successful climbers to fatalities is 19:1. On K2, subject of far less media interest, it's 4:1. Bainbridge Island mountaineer Ed Viesturs was quoted last summer in The New York Times when 11 died on K2, but that wasn't even the peak's worst season. Thirteen died in 1986, when Viesturs was still guiding on Rainier. Six years later, with Seattle's Scott Fischer, he took his chances on the Karakoram killer, which nearly claimed their lives in an avalanche, as he relates in K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain (Broadway, $26). Viesturs uses K2 as a prism to examine what he did wrong in '92—not turn around when his instincts told him to—and what other expeditions did wrong (mostly) and occasionally right in the past 70 years. Local legends like Pete Schoening ('53) and Jim Whittaker ('78) figure in these historical accounts. The famously methodical Viesturs confesses that he never again climbed again with the "freewheeling, let-it-happen" Fischer, who perished on Everest in '96. And while he returned to Everest that year to make an IMAX movie, and again this summer to promote a new line of Eddie Bauer clothing, K2 remains a peak that neither Viesturs nor any other serious mountaineer wants to repeat. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
