WEDNESDAY 2/3
Brian Miller
Do not feed the artwork at Western Bridge.
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Music: Wednesday Night's All Right for the Piano Men
Elton John hasn't written anything worth shit since the '70s, and Billy Joel's once-stellar career careened into homeless-man's-Springsteen-on-the-ivories territory more than a decade ago. But when these two piano men—one gayer than face lotion, the other straight enough to land Christie Brinkley—get together, it's like peanut butter and chocolate. Collectively, Joel and John have written a ton of clunkers over the years, but alongside those are about three dozen of the best pop songs ever recorded. Though there are still tickets left for this show, rescheduled from November, John and Joel have established their now-regular pairing as one of the most bankable tours in America. They'll deliver the hits, doing more for man-love in the process than Obama has in his first year in office. KeyArena, 305 Harrison St., 800-745-3000, keyarena.com. $54–$180. 7:30 p.m. (Also: 7:30 p.m. Sat., Feb. 6.) MIKE SEELY
Visual Arts: Young and Yeasty
While the UW is renowned for its medical research and law school, this display of work from first-year students in its MFA program proves there's talent elsewhere on campus. "Introducing" features a wide range of media—painting, sculpture, video, photography, and more. The gallery entrance is adorned by the elaborately fermenting mead of Christopher McElroy's Cultural Equation. Bubbling through his multichambered glasswork airlock, its surface rises as high as the five-gallon container. The hauntingly crisp photography of Neal Fryett also stands out, offering a dusky self-portrait and the emotional Hope Place No. 2 and No. 5, saturated in cyans and magentas. All 10 artists represented here may be students, but their work is anything but juvenile. (Runs Wed.–Sat. through Feb. 13.) Jacob Lawrence Gallery (UW campus), Art Building #132, 685-1805, art.washington.edu/jlg. Free. Noon–4 p.m. NICK FELDMAN
THURSDAY 2/4
Comedy: Flight of the Sidekick
Bret and Jemaine who? On HBO's spacy musical comedy Flight of the Conchords, Arj Barker's Dave—the twosome's best friend—stole every scene he was in. A pawn-shop employee who still lives with his parents, Dave's defining trait is his constant muddling of reality, like his vague grasp of world geography and race relations. "It shouldn't matter where you're from when love's involved," he expounds to Jemaine in one episode. "It's like that movie Interracial Hole Stretchers 2—she was white; they were black. But it didn't matter in the end, did it?" As a stand-up comic, Barker really lets the high camp loose, approaching absurd ideas with a hilariously serious and pragmatic attitude. On his new live CD, LYAO (track listings include "<3" and "BFF"), Barker riffs on everything from the difficulty of pulling off jokes via text message (his solution? Tone-conveying fonts, like Sarcastica and Good Times Roman) to the oddity of living in the age of instant information to his memories of tearing it up with Ireland's finest pub crawlers, in a manner at once impertinent, guileless, and lovable. (Also Fri. & Sat.) <strong>Parlor Live Comedy Club, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Suite 300, Bellevue, 425-289-7000, parlorlive.com. $25–$35. 7:30 p.m. E. THOMPSON
Visual Arts: He's Got Your Goat
Euan Macdonald puts nature in its place for his show "A Little Ramble." Or puts it out of place. That tension is felt most acutely in the massive, two-story indoor installation that gives the exhibit its name: a fake, snowy peak adorned with taxidermy mountain goats. It's so large that you have to survey it from several angles, circle it downstairs, then peer at the goats from the loft. Especially during our presently mild El Niño winter, the frigid summit seems profoundly strange, but Macdonald—a Scotsman based in sunny L.A.—is intent on such environmental dislocation. His drawing The Tower seems an ordinary radio antenna until you realize its bulk is buried in ancient geologic strata, with only the tip above ground. Upstairs, his tabletop diorama 98134—the gallery's zip code—relocates the SoDo exhibition space onto another snowy mountaintop. It's like a still-life The Day After Tomorrow, calm scenes from after environmental collapse. Yet the quietest and most effective work, World Reversal, comprises a dozen simple drawings that can be read in two directions. Left to right, an empty frame slowly gives rise to a cruise ship. Reverse direction (i.e., reverse chronology), and the reading yields a more disturbing progression: The vessel bobs on an ocean that gradually evaporates until the stranded ship begins to rot and rust to nothingness, and all that's left are the dried-mud tiles of an ancient seabed turned to desert. (Through April 17.) Western Bridge, 3412 Fourth Ave. S., 838-7444, westernbridge.org. Free. Noon–6 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Dance: Once Upon a Dream
When Princess Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle and falls asleep, her godmother, the Lilac Fairy, arranges for her dreams to be full of other fairy-tale characters, to beguile her as she waits for a prince to wake her with a kiss. In Sleeping Beauty, choreographer Marius Petipa arranges for those characters to appear in the final act, to entertain us as well as Aurora during her wedding celebration. They perform a collection of solos, duets, and little ensembles that are as close to a compendium of classical style as we can find. These miniature essays on virtuosity are a notorious test of a ballet company's skills, and Pacific Northwest Ballet performs them with élan and expertise. (Ends Feb. 14.) McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St., 441-2424, pnb.org. $25-$160. SANDRA KURTZ
