WEDNESDAY 12/23
Horatio Law/Wing Luke Asian Museum
Law’s adoptees at Wing Luke.
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Music: Hits for the Holidays
The best pop stars know how to turn on the charm for the holidays. No one does "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" like the Boss. "Blue Christmas" remains one of Elvis' most soulful performances. And has David Bowie ever been more heartwarming than when he sang "The Little Drummer Boy" with Bing Crosby? Now it's your turn, with the Xmas Pops Sing-Along, to accompany holiday-themed music videos like Run-DMC's delightful "Christmas in Hollis," the Waitresses' irrepressible "Christmas Wrapping," or the Beach Boys' endearingly cheesy "Little Saint Nick." Stranger versions of traditional carols come from Billy Idol's No. 1 Rebel Christmas Album. And beware the cute/horrifying Olsen twins' performance of "Jingle Bells," complete with a rap breakdown ("You look good in a popcorn string/Shake these silver bells and make them ring"). Games and outdoor caroling will also provide an opportunity—finally!—to publicly belt out "All I Want for Christmas Is You," "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," or, everyone's favorite, Wham!'s "Last Christmas." Because nothing spreads holiday cheer like George Michael offering you his icy, broken heart. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $8 (21 and over). 9:30 p.m. E. THOMPSON
Visual Arts: Bubble Vest
A quintet of artists mount separate installations in "Cultural Transcendence," a curator's conceit that doesn't really unify the five galleries. In one, a video montage addressing the illegal internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In another, CG-created (false) memories of a childhood day spent near Mt. Fuji. Local Brent Watanabe hooks up an animated bird to a hand-cranked Victrola (very kawaii), while Portland's Horatio Law projects the faces of Chinese infants adopted by white Oregonians on a screen sewn from fabric petals. Lovely, but meaningless unless you read the explanatory placard. The biggest, most impressive gallery houses an interactive audio-visual vest of lights by South Korean artist Eunsu Kang, a Ph.D. candidate at the UW. In the dark room, as she recently demonstrated, LEDs in the palms of a long-sleeved jacket—cabled to the ceiling and driven by computer algorithms—trigger responsive pink bubbles projected on the floor and ceiling. By waving the arms or flapping the sleeves, a burbling, watery soundtrack shifts in sync to the scattering, careening bubbles. (It's a little like Surround Sound in a movie theater.) Stand still, and they whirl and eddy like a pond gradually calming. AV feedback is also created when the LEDs are directed at each other, or at the body wearing the high-tech vest. Kids accustomed to Wii will love the installation, called Shin'm, while adults may be too shy to try. Where is the culture being transcended here? Kang's work is cool enough that you won't care there's no answer. (Through Sept. 19.) Wing Luke Asian Museum, 719 S. King St., 623-5124, wingluke.org. $8.95–$12.95. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
THURSDAY 12/24
Visual Arts:Navigating by Memory
This ongoing winter group show "The There" seeks to bring the outdoors indoors. Among 10 local artists featured, Patte Loper places an incongruously colorful, cheerful '70s-style geodesic dome amid bleak gray wreckage. It's like a vacation home in a future apocalypse. Her smaller pencil sketches of abandoned huts in Antarctica are no less forbidding, suggesting the frigid hardships of Shackleton, Scott, and Perry. Jesse Burke's large-format print of a forlorn farmhouse in a snowy field conveys the same vernal desolation. But the show's standout is a map: William Powhida's huge, pencil-illustrated scroll Everyone I've Ever Met (That I Can Remember). If geography is the common theme here, a sense of place, Powhida reminds us that places (like faces) are often defined by imperfect recollection. The boundaries and features we ascribe to a favorite landmark may blur in the years after our visit. The there isn't fixed or permanent. And it may be unrecognizable on our return. (Through Jan. 2) Platform Gallery, 114 Third. Ave. S., 323-2808, platformgallery.com. Free. 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Pageantry: Satan's on His Sleigh
The supposed innocence of the Blue Moon's sixth annual Christmas Pageant and Midnight Mass begins and ends with the timing (Christmas Eve) and title, which turns out to be so tongue-in-cheek that tongue and cheek can no longer be discerned from each other. "Basically it's a Satanic parody of the whole Christian pageant," explains Blue Moon owner Gus Hellthaler. It's also "the drunkest midnight mass you've ever seen in your life," says Blue Moon booker Jason Josephes, who came up with the concept. Hellthaler explains that the event is "more performance art than a straight musical performance"—but there will certainly be music, courtesy of the Christmas Belles and others. Additionally, Josephes promises that the evening's proceedings will feature "a face-off between Jesus and Satan," a puppet show, $4 eggnog cocktails, and a pre-show happy hour with DJ Country Mike, who will be spinning Christmas classics. But even in light of this potential spectacle, it's hard to imagine this event will be more debauched than the Moon's traditional all-day happy hour on Monday, Jan. 4 (mark your calendars). It will commemorate, in Hellthaler's words, "the passing of St. Thomas Aquinas Carr," the outgoing city attorney, whom the Blue Moon blames for its near-shutdown in 2006. Blue Moon Tavern, 712 N.E. 45th St., 675-9116, myspace.com/bluemoonseattle. Free (21 and over). 7 p.m.–2 a.m. (or thereabouts). MIKE SEELY
