WEDNESDAY 4/14
Canadian Film Centre
Daniel J. Gordon in Nurse. Fighter. Boy.
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Food: Eat at Your Own Risk
At our Voracious Tasting & Food Awards tonight, there will be food, alcohol, and live music. The alcohol will no doubt be very good: Bartenders from Tavern Law and Zig Zag (among others) will be mixing drinks. The food will be very, very good: Pretty much all my favorite places to eat will be represented. There will be live music, but I doubt they hired The Black Dahlia Murder to play, so I'm pretty sure I don't give a shit about the music. But what I DO want to see is the Iron Chef–style culinary battle royale between Emmer & Rye chef Seth Caswell and Spinasse's boy genius in residence, Jason Stratton. There will be a secret ingredient. Also, awards will be given out, but no one has yet mentioned what exactly the prizes are. So I remain EXTREMELY suspicious. And if you want to see a bunch of drunken writers and culinary types, be sure to get in early. It's going to be like a symposium of people who don't have health insurance! Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St., 682-1414, stgpresents.org. (Sold out.) 7 p.m. THE SURLY GOURMAND
THURSDAY 4/15
Stage: Hell of a Town
Leonard Bernstein wasn't Jerome Robbins' first choice to write the music for his one-act ballet Fancy Free (Morton Gould was), but the piece was a hit, which persuaded the pair to make a full-length musical out of it. They reused the premise—three sailors find luv and laffs on a 24-hour shore leave—but Bernstein turned out a brand-new score, not recycling a bar of the ballet, and the piece got a new name, On the Town. Premiered at the end of 1944, the musical was a smash, a pick-me-up for war-weary New Yorkers. Bernstein's brash, jazzy, exhilaratingly fresh music puts On the Town right up there with Show Boat and Oklahoma! as a game-changing milestone in the genre. Opening tonight, this revival begins the Seattle Celebrates Bernstein Festival, in which practically every local performing-arts group this side of the Early Music Guild will participate. Judging by Sarah Rudinoff's turn as wisecracking cab driver Hildy, showcased at a Festival kick-off revue a couple weeks ago, this production should be a corker. (Through May 2). 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave., 625-1900, 5thavenue.org. $22.50–$93.50. 8 p.m. GAVIN BORCHERT
Books: Sale or No Sale?
After all the anguish and analysis about why venerable Elliott Bay Book Co. left Pioneer Square, let's not lose sight of some retail fundamentals. If a bookstore can't pay the rent, its customers—meaning the lack thereof—are to blame. Not the lack of parking, not the panhandlers, not Amazon or its Kindle (or Apple's iPad). I'm looking at you, readers of Seattle. You can buy your books online, grab them while grocery shopping at Costco, download them in electronic form, or you can patronize our city's dwindling indie booksellers. But if you instead go to merely browse, or hear a visiting author without buying the book, or only purchase a muffin in the cafe, don't go whining about beloved cultural institutions dying. Bookstores aren't museums. They're not libraries. They're only as viable as their sales. And those who attend today's free block party, to celebrate EBB's reopening, should bear that in mind. In addition to the food and music, Anchee Min will read at 7:30 p.m. from her new novel Pearl of China, which imagines a friendship between Pearl S. Buck and a young Chinese woman that spans the late imperial period through the revolution. It costs $24 in hardcover. Because everything has a price. Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. Free. 4–7 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
SATURDAY 4/17
Film: Warm Colors
This year's Langston Hughes African American Film Festival begins with Nurse. Fighter. Boy, an affecting little Canadian drama that infuses its archetypes with Caribbean mysticism, folklore, and music. A Jamaican immigrant nurse is the single parent of a 13-year-old boy, a latchkey kid left alone to contemplate the paternal and spiritual void in his life. The film is color-coded: Mother and son live in a warm, reddish voodoo cocoon. Out in the cold blue world, a boxer (TV veteran Clark Johnson of The Wire and Homicide) fights for cash in the street until the three characters intersect. Later in the week are documentaries on interracial families, the early civil-rights struggle, jump-roping, and the festival-closing Still Bill, a profile of '70s hit songwriter Bill Withers, who wrote "Lean on Me" and other radio staples. (Through April 25 at Central Cinema and MoHaI; regular screenings $8.) Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., langstonblackfilmfest.org. $75 (series), $20 (individual). 7 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
Comics: Virtual and Insecure
Seattle cartoonist Peter Bagge continues the chronicles of Buddy—his bitter, aging grunge scenester—in the eighth edition of Hate, but he's also got a new graphic novel out, Other Lives (Vertigo, $24.99), which deals with weightier themes than squabbling suburbanites and '90s nostalgia. In particular, he's curious about those unhappy types who thrive as Internet avatars in virtual-reality games. Real-world neuroses and confessions keep seeping into the supposedly safe, alternative cyberworld. Misery and violence bleed through the screen in both directions. And even as one character in Other Lives scoffs at such delusional roleplaying, he himself cops to being a plagiarist and liar in his own life. Nobody's willing to be honest about themselves. True identities get lost in the clamor and posing of the Web, which Bagge depicts in a style that's less comic and rubbery than his usual linework. Tonight he's joined by former local artist James Sturm (Market Day), who also chronicled our '90s grunge heyday. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, 1201 S. Vale St., 658-0110, fantagraphics.com. Free. 6 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
