WEDNESDAY 8/18
Courtesy Emerald Downs
Returning champ Assessment will contest Sunday's Longacres Mile.
Renee McMahon
Sunday's Incredible Feast features chefs Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi of Joule.
Related Content
More About
Books: Zero Gravity
So far as Mary Roach is concerned, there is no such thing as TMI. In her prior compact bestsellers Stiff and Bonk, she's burrowed into the queasy particulars of death and sex, making them ridiculously readable in the process. She's got a short, breezy style cultivated in magazineland; her chapters are perfectly apportioned like a good New York Times Magazine feature—you learn something, you laugh, and you gain a precious, weird little kibble of trivia to relay at the office water cooler. (Do you know how many orgasms a gerbil can have in one day...?) Sure to be a success for all these reasons, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (Norton, $25.95) is like an irreverent younger sister to The Right Stuff. Enough of the NASA heroics, says Roach—let's hear about the astronauts' shit and piss and sex lives in the zero-gravity realm. Whether or not we should spend the money to send a manned mission 400 million miles to Mars, then back, isn't really her concern. At what point the human brain emulsifies after ejecting into a supersonic shock wave—well, she wants to tell you all about it. Though space voyagers who eventually take the two-year trip to Mars might be advised to pack Proust instead. Kane Hall, Room 210 (UW campus), 634-3400, bookstore.washington.edu. Free. 7 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
THURSDAY 8/19
Books: Humor in the Hospital
A book that opens with a graphic description of the author's in vitro fertilization faces some major obstacles in reader appeal. When it goes on to detail the in utero death of one of the author's twin fetuses, the 15-weeks-early birth of her surviving daughter, and the family's subsequent months in the hospital, one has to wonder if perhaps the memoir was underwritten by antidepressant manufacturers. But Alexa Stevenson, the Minnesota author of Half Baked (Running Press, $14.95) finds humor along with poignancy in this difficult material. You might not think there's anything funny about the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, but when Stevenson describes her experience as "the zombie movie of pregnancies," you'll change your mind. That's not to say there aren't tearjerker moments, but when you raise a tissue to your eyes at this reading, you're just as likely to be crying from laughter as sadness. University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, bookstore.washington.edu. Free. 7 p.m. REBECCA COHEN
Stage: Baby, It's Warm Inside
Opening tonight—heh, heh, I said "opening," get it?—My Time With the Lady, Ron Richardson's first-person account of five years working at The Lusty Lady, follows that First Avenue peep show's recent closure. And there's nothing sexy about closing. Even if you never ventured inside the landmark smut shop (1977–2010), you read its clever changing marquee and groaned at the puns. (Groan—get it?) Beginning in the late '80s, Richardson served up front as cashier, janitor, and bouncer, watching as the new SAM signaled rising property values along the seedy old strip. (Four years ago, the Lady's landlord earned $850,000 for selling the air rights to the luxury hotel/condo being constructed next door.) To help shape—get it?—the show, dancer Kirsten Lauzon will gyrate onstage, and, on a more erudite note, SW contributor John Longenbaugh serves as co-writer and director. If you ever wondered what transpired on both sides of the glass in those steamed-up cubicles, this show should provide that satisfaction. Get it? (Through Aug. 29.) Little Red Studio, 400 Dexter Ave. N., brownpapertickets.com and mytimewiththelady.com. $15. 8 p.m. T. BOND
Visual Arts: Metal Memories
It's impossible to peel back the foil lid on a cup of instant noodles crafted by Lynne Yamamoto, because she's rendered the ordinarily cheap, disposable container in vitreous china. Elsewhere in her solo show Genteel, there's a Spam can made of the same material, its key forever unable to turn. Born and raised in Hawaii, then later trained at Evergreen State College, the Massachusetts artist is exploring her Pacific Island heritage in the exhibit. Hawaii only became a state in 1959, but it's long been a melting pot for different cultures—including Yamamoto's Japanese-American family. (Or our president's, for that matter.) Peoples, traditions, and their foodstuffs arrive by boat; Yamamoto is particularly interested in the canned and prepared foods that became ubiquitous in Hawaii during the World War II years. And after the war, all those army surplus materials helped build and transform the islands. Grandfather's Shed, for instance, is modeled on a humble garden shack made of corrugated metal, which would rust away in a decade. Only here it's been scaled down to white marble—an "ambivalent memorial" to the past, in the artist's words, which will last for centuries. (Through Oct. 2; the artist also gives a talk Saturday at noon.) Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave. S., 624-0770, gregkucera.com. Free. Reception 6–8 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
SATURDAY 8/21
Classical: Road Trip, Molto Lento
If you're headed from Seattle to the Olympic Music Festival via the Edmonds-Kingston ferry, which looks on paper to be the most direct route, be sure to schedule plenty of travel time. You'll need to get your car in line two or three ferries prior to the one you actually want to take, which I learned the hard way trying to get over to the peninsula for the Sequim Lavender Festival a few weekends ago. Traffic, perhaps, was extra-heavy that weekend, but the trip was four hours to Sequim and five back. Arrive late to the festival site (in a repurposed dairy barn off Route 104 among lavender fields and fruit stands) and you'll miss a candy-box miscellany of music for clarinet, viola, and piano by Rossini, Schubert, and others. (Also Sun.) 7360 Center Rd. (Quilcene, Wash.), 360-732-4800, olympicmusicfestival.org. $18–$30. 2 p.m. GAVIN BORCHERT
