WEDNESDAY 9/22
NWFF
On Saturday, NWFF celebrates 15 years (including Brand Upon the Brain!)
Brian Miller
Lake Union Park springs to life.
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Books: A Raging Ex-Drunk
Following the publication of her critically acclaimed 2005 memoir of drunkenness, Smashed, Koren Zailckas is sober, successful, and...miserable. Having repressed her emotions, particularly anger, for years, she turns to counseling, homeopathy, even yoga. But she discovers her issues run too deep to be solved with the downward dog. In her follow-up memoir Fury (Viking, $25.95), Zailckas relates both her personal struggles with, and detailed research into, female anger. The journalism is well-informed, and her accounts of an unplanned pregnancy and family conflicts are harrowing. Readers may have less patience with her on again/off again relationship with a British musician she calls "the Lark." (One wonders: Does he have a single brother named "the Crow"?) But you can thumb past those pages and still admire this young woman's candor. She knows how to tell one hell of a story—one you'd rather read about than experience firsthand. Barnes & Noble, 2675 N.E. University Village St., 517-4107, barnesandnoble.com. Free. 7 p.m. ERIKA HOBART
THURSDAY 9/23
Extreme Eating: Facial Cream
Have you spent your life waiting for an eating competition that involves musically talented, heavily bearded men ferociously wolfing down pastries filled with sticky white cream? Of course you have. And tonight, hirsute rockers Matt Badger (of Ravenna Woods) and Andrew Chapman (of The Keeper)—joined by one lucky Seattle Weekly reader—will go mouth to mouth in the first-ever Beard Papa's Cream Puff Munch-Off, presented by our Voracious food blog. Whoever eats the most puffs within three minutes will win a gift certificate to Best of Seattle champ Gray's Barber Lounge and a $50 gift certificate to Beard Papa's bakery. Those rooting them on will gain a lifetime of memories, made even more indelible by the Hen's cheap, stiff drinks and pan-Asian (by way of Texas) cuisine. Little Red Hen, 7115 Woodlawn Ave N.E., 522-1168, seattleweekly.com/voracious. Free. 6:30 p.m. MIKE SEELY
Fashion: Locks and Frocks
Shawn Michael and Lauryn Grinnell are both popular salonists at Queen Anne's plush Intermezzo. (Grinnell's even done Lady Gaga's hair!) Tonight they're joining fashionable forces in the fight against domestic violence. All proceeds from the Runway to Freedom show will benefit local nonprofit New Beginnings, which provides 24-hour support for such victims. "We've given makeovers to some of the women in need," says Michael. "This was kind of a progression, the next step of what we could do for them." Three brands will showcase their designs at Ballard's Franco-chic Bastille: Zebra Club's urban casual, The Powder Room's girly boutique-wear, and Lina Cho, a fresh new talent whose sheer floral minidresses recently made waves at the Art Institute's spring fashion show. Appetizers will be available, as well as raffle tickets for salon products, dinners at Fare Start, and exclusive designer purses by Rian Handbags that will hit Nordstrom later this fall. And to ensure the party doesn't stop, neo-soul singer Portia Monique will perform. And the always-entertaining Macklemore and Ryan Lewis will host. Bastille Cafe and Bar, 5307 Ballard Ave. N.W., 724-7743, newbegin.org. $15-$25. 8 p.m. ERIN K. THOMPSON
FRIDAY 9/24
Comedy: Born to Kvetch
Nobody pisses off Larry David like his longtime BFF Richard Lewis. The two met as 12-year-olds at a New York summer camp. Today, on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lewis plays "Richard Lewis" as an aging, neurotic, black-clad, recovering alcoholic. He gets to trade insults back and forth with David, accusing the Seinfeld creator of everything from stealing his outgoing voicemail greeting to ruining countless romantic relationships (always with much younger women). "What are you eating, a lot of grains and nuts?" Lewis asks David in one episode, ribbing him about his frequent bathroom visits. "What are you, a Jewish squirrel?" Of course, Curb is only the latest milestone in Lewis' nearly 40-year career, which began in the New York comedy boom of the '70s and made him a staple of the Letterman and Carson shows and HBO specials. Despairing, oversharing, overwrought, convinced he's dying and unable to love—his stage persona as a tortured Jew is both familiar and a mask. Only after flaming out in the '90s on drugs and booze did he sober up, write a highly confessional memoir (The Other Great Depression), and—with David's help—begin a second chapter in his career. And more good news: Next year the resurgent performer will be filming Curb's eighth season with his old friend. Parlor Live Comedy Club, 700 Bellevue Way N.E., Suite 300, Bellevue, 425-289-7000, parlorcollection.com. $25–$35. 21 and over. 7:30 and 10 p.m. (Also Sat.) ERIN K. THOMPSON
Books: Fleeing the Bolls
Because we never grew cotton in this state and because we were admitted to the union 27 years after the 13th Amendment, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Random House, $30) might not seem to have much bearing on Seattle. In Isabel Wilkerson's sweeping, humane, impeccably researched history, we merit only one passing reference as a city where—along with many others—residents celebrate Juneteenth to commemorate the end of the Civil War. But there would be no CD without that migration, no Jimi Hendrix, no Quincy Jones, no Ray Charles playing lonely gigs in a strange, damp land. No Norm Rice or Ron Sims, nor the rededication of King County to a very different namesake. The forced mobility of African Americans was a direct result, after Lincoln and before LBJ, of a crumbling Southern agricultural "caste system" that sent six million migrants northward to Detroit, Philly, Harlem, and beyond. Wilkerson, a past Pulitzer Prize winner for The New York Times, personalizes her grand project through three individual stories spanning different decades of the exodus. In a sense, she Oprahcizes history, but in a manner I thoroughly recommend. How heavy is a cotton bag? How terrifying is a lynching for a 10-year-old asked to help cut the rope the next morning? How humiliating to drink water run from the same pipe to separate spigots? The book is suffused with such narrative detail (composited from the experiences of many other interviewees), always grounded in cruel economic logic. To go north was to face hardship, uncertainty, and subtler forms of discrimination. To stay meant subjugating oneself to a system where, a white woman once fretted, "If these Negroes become doctors and merchants or buy their own farms, what shall we do for servants?" Northwest African American Museum, 2300 S. Massachusetts St., 518-6000, naamnw.org. Free. 7 p.m. BRIAN MILLER
