Can't Miss It: Wednesday

PROJECTS ON THE SIDE: Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle) is touring the Western U.S. with his latest side project Puscifer. He released albums under the Puscifer moniker in 2007 and 2008 but this is the first time he's taking the act on the road since debuting it in Las Vegas in February. Sweethead, the new project of Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen is the opener. Our review will be up shortly.

8:00 p.m. // The Moore Theatre // $37.50-$195

THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD: Each episode of Literary Death Match features four authors who perform their writing (in eight minutes or less) before an audience and a panel of three judges. After each pair of readings, the judges take their turn at comedy with humorous commentary about each story, then select their favorite to advance to the finals. The two finalists then compete in the Literary Death Match finale to determine who takes home the Literary Death Match crown. The participants in this battle include author Aaron Dietz, playwright Kelleen Conway Blanchard, Stacey Levine (winner of the PEN/West Fiction Award for My Horse and Other Stories), and Danbert Nobacon (lead singer of Chumbawumba). All-star judges Paul Constant of The Stranger, former Arrested Development writer Maria Semple, and Jonathan Evison (All About Lulu) preside.

8:00 p.m. // Re-bar // $10

SLOW COOKING: In The French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller refers to the great challenge in cooking as being the ability "to maintain passion for the everday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane." For if one doesn't take pleasure in the act of cooking, it will surely be present in the quality of the finished dish. La Libertad follows a woodcutter named Misael as he spends his days chopping wood, transporting it, hunting and sleeping. Capturing every moment of Misael's monotonous daily routine, Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso's close concentration on the mundane, repetitive exercises of every day life is unrelenting. This film's title, Freedom, takes on new meaning as it asks us to question the significance of the humdrum activities that fill our own weeks, months, and years.

8:00 p.m. // Northwest Film Forum // $6-$9