FOOD ORGY: Get thee to the Seattle Center this weekend for the annual Bite of Seattle. Over a hundred booths, multiple beer gardens, cooking demos, live entertainment... all in the name of of good, local eating? Sounds like a great weekend event to us! Take advantage of the Just A Bite area, offering mini versions of local restaurant specialties for $3.75 a serving. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri & Sat; 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun // Seattle......

If you're planning on hitting up Sub Pop's three-day 20th anniversary celebration, you best be getting those tickets now. Friday's comedy extravaganza at the Moore (featuring funnymen David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Eugene Mirman, and Todd Barry) just sold out, and tix to Saturday's event at Marymoor Park are long gone. That leaves you with two options for Sub Pop-related revelry this weekend: the Gutter Twins and Brothers of the Sonic Cloth at the Showbox Saturday......

We seem to be covering the benefit beat lately--Wednesday night David Schmader takes over the Triple Door to "annotate" Paul Verhoeven's "film" Showgirls. It's to raise money for the the Urban Rest Stop, a "hygiene center" downtown. We're for a free place for people to freshen up, don't get us wrong. It's just funny to have the Showgirls tie-in, in that the one and only time we watched it we had to take a long......

CHARITABLE INDULGENCES: If you're not too hungover from tonight's couture cocktails with Jack Mackenroth at Product Runway, something beautiful involving imported beer and fine Scotch is happening in Fremont both tonight and tomorrow: the HopScotch Spring Beer and Scotch Festival. The festival's a benefit for NW Folklife, so think of your purchase of extra tequila tastings as an act of springtime charity. 5 p.m.-12 a.m. Friday, 1 p.m.-12 a.m. Saturday // Fremont Studios, 155 N.......

If we learned anything at Pacific Northwest Ballet's Laugh Out Loud Spring Festival last night, it was that pointing your fingers while dancing en pointe is hee-larious. Ba-dum-ching. We'll be here all week. The fest, another genre-busting divergence from the norm by director Peter Boal, aims to celebrate all that is wacky and funny about ballet. They mean funny "ha-ha" but there's some funny "strange" thrown in as well. We caught Program A (there's a......

ECO-CHIC: Bike, walk, carpool, or take the bus to Girl Power Hour. This time they're exploring the intersection of sustainability and style. Highlights include Seattle's first green DJ, getting tips on a greener life, a "live" trunk show with sustainable fashions, and refreshments: organic cocktails, wine and food. It all happens at the Sole Repair Shop, a sustainable event space 6:30-9:30 p.m. // Sole Repair Shop, 1001 East Pike Street // $10 at the......

We clued you in to this last October, but now it's official: Sub Pop Records is celebrating its 20-year existence with a three-day comedy and music festival July 11-13. And the (initial) lineup, though weighted more heavily in the hipster-ish now, features a few super acts from the label's big then. Per yesterday's press release: The SP20 activities will commence with a comedy show on July 11 at The Moore Theatre. Among the performing......

Last night, Bumbershoot announced the first set of acts slated for this year's festival. So far, there's a name or two that could draw us to Seattle Center this Labor Day weekend. Beck? Hell yes! A reunited Stone Temple Pilots? Not so much. Beck / Stone Temple Pilots / Lucinda Williams / Neko Case / Ingrid Michaelson / Jakob Dylan / Del Tha Funky Homosapien / !!! / Lee "Scratch" Perry / Saul Williams......

Drop your cynicism at the door and get ready for childlike, wide-eyed delight. The Moisture Festival, now in its fifth year, has the same friendly feeling as the Oregon Country Fair. No surprise, since the festival's founders are long-time performers there. Each evening is a true variety show, with an eclectic mix of unpretentious performers who jump onto the stage and let their talent amaze us, rather than relying on lights and set. Cirque-du-fancy-pants-Soleil......

ALL-STAR PANEL: The Hugo House 2007-2008 Literary Series presents "Answered Prayers and Other Tragedies," a colloquium with authors Sherman Alexie and Michelle Tea, the Stranger's man-about-town David Schmader, and musician Sean Nelson. All are responding artistically to the question, "Is the only real tragedy getting what you want?" Ben Blum, the winner of the Hugo House New Works Competition, will also be there, wondering if this is what he really wanted. Friday, 7:30pm //......

Eco-Theatre: Keep the Light On at Annex is human-powered theatre -- bicycling literally keeps the lights on. The collection of three dystopic one-acts includes Foxy Populi ("a hilarious, sharp-fanged satire on the downfall of Western civilization, through the meltdown of a crazed blond pop star"), 1001 ("a skein of surreal scenes spun by a Scheherazade-like delivery boy who tangles with a one-eyed pharmacist, a homicidal client and a lisping Mexican widow") and ElectriCity (a......

From the buzz circulating the budding career of Josh Blue, we thought his Saturday evening performance at the Kirkland Performance Center would be full of self-deprecating and occasionally awkward humor. It was not. Let’s start with the facts. Blue has Cerebral Palsy. He is a stand-up comedian. He is funny - no, he is hilarious. He is a Nike-sponsored striker for the U.S. Paralympic soccer team. Finally, he feels compelled to use anything with......

Evergreen State College alumni and fourth-season winner of Last Comic Standing, Josh Blue is coming to the Kirkland Performance Center (KPC) this Saturday. We're looking forward to an evening of self-deprecating humor, as Blue’s comedy stems from his personal experiences of living with cerebral palsy. Blue hopes to dispel stereotypical myths about the "disabled" through stand-up comedy and what he calls "reverse teasing." (His comedy routine is not recommended for children under 16 years old,......

This morning we were glancing through the Going Out section of the Seattle P-I when we ran across these two questionable entries:"War and Peace": 1 p.m. Sergei Bondarchuk's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel (part one screens today) is widely considered to be one of Russia's greatest achievements. Right up there with Ivan Drago and those wooden dolls that open up to reveal a bunch of smaller wooden dolls. SIFF Cinema, Nesholm Family Lecture Hall, McCaw......

Back in 1981, Mike Nichols directed a famous version of Waiting for Godot at the Lincoln Center in NYC, starring Steve Martin and Robin Williams. We recall that at some point in college, we saw an interview with Steve Martin about that production, and Martin said something memorably apt: "We decided to serve the comedy of the play, because the ideas would serve themselves." Steve Martin's intuition was on our minds Saturday, while sitting......

Trouble in Tahiti / Rita: Seattle Young Artists Program @ CHAC 8-10pm, Nov. 16-17 // CHAC // Tickets $20 in advance Friday and Saturday, Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program perform at CHAC with an unusual double-feature. We buttonholed our friend Jonathan Dean, the Education Department's Artistic Administrator, and peppered him with hard-hitting questions to get to the bottom of all this. MvB: You're doing two shows, one by Leonard Bernstein, one by Gaetano Donizetti. What's......

Nothing ages as poorly as sketch comedy television. You remember it being it hilarious, but when you sit someone down in front of a "Mr. Show" or "Kids in the Hall" or "Ben Stiller Show" DVD, invariably, the first episode passes in uncomfortable silence before you have to admit that, at the time, it was hilarious, but maybe it would have made more sense to watch a few clips on YouTube instead of buying the......

The third annual 826 Seattle benefit People Talking and Singing will fill the seats at Town Hall next Thursday. Comedian Patton Oswalt had to cancel, but the event still features host John Roderick of the Long Winters, Dave Eggers, comedians Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman, New Yorker music critic (and current blogosphere gadfly) Sasha Frere-Jones, local songstress Rosie Thomas, and Geologic of the Blue Scholars. People Talking and Singing has become the must-see annual......

Mateo Messina, a Seattle native, has been composing television and film scores and penning symphonies for 10 years. His most recent score is for the upcoming, buzz-magnet comedy Juno. His latest symphony will be heard tonight at Benaroya Hall's (sold out) Symphony Legacy concert. (That's him above, at last year's show.) Messina's Symphony--a benefit for Seattle Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center--features the combined musical talents of the Northwest Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest......

Bumbershoot 2005 hosted the inaugural People Talking and Singing show, where 2,800 festival attendees packed McCaw Hall to see Dave Eggers, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Mike Doughty, Sarah Vowell, and Death Cab for Cutie, all the while raising $18K for 826 Seattle, the youth writing center in Greenwood. Last year's event, also at Bumbershoot, was hosted by Daily Show Resident Expert™ John Hodgman and singer Jonathan Coulton. Eggers, Handler, Gibbard, and Vowell were back......

Seattle Shakespeare Company's Pericles is awash in contradiction. It's the rarely performed Shakespeare play that Shakespeare may not have written. It's a comedy about a singularly painful life. It's fueled by strong performances -- Reginald André Jackson's Pericles is every minute compelling -- but marred by a directorial misstep that plagues the whole production. We don't recommend it as anyone's first Shakespeare play, but if you have never seen Pericles before, this production is a......

When we heard that Vern recently released a book called Seagalogy, we were perplexed. Why would the voice of badass cinema write a book about NFL cheerleaders? Then we noticed that it's not Sea Gal-ogy. Seagal. As in Steven Seagal. More badass, less hotpants-clad ass. To quote Vern's PR email: More than 5 years in the making, the new book SEAGALOGY by Vern is the first serious analysis of the films of Steven Seagal. Using......

Seattle Rep's The Murderers is three monologues, one after the other, that thankfully get more entertaining as the show goes along. Each monologue deals with a murder (or murders) committed at the Florida retirement community, and sends up a different view of senior citizens -- as old moneybags who keep their heirs on tenterhooks, as randy old goats, as cash cows for the unscrupulous. It's a mildly dark series of "I-dun-its" for Matlock's urban audiences......

Bad Monkey Productions' presentation of Rebecca Gilman's Blue Surge opened quietly at the Chamber Theater at Ninth & Pine a week ago. Or maybe we just weren't paying close enough attention. Whatever the case, the play--about the unlikely relationship between a small-town cop and a hooker he busts--has attracted plenty of notice since. Writing in the Seattle P-I, Joe Adcock compliments the play for "explor[ing] economic class identity and interclass animosity -- what both......

Sometimes when you start going off about how *hysterically funny* someone is, people take it as a dare not to laugh. But Lauren Weedman cracks us up, and we don't care who knows it. Tonight she's reading from her new book, A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body (Tales from a Life of Cringe). It's a free reading, 7pm at Neumos, 21 and over only. If you want to prep beforehand, here's a Seattle Times......

Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays wrap up tonight at the Paramount -- the redoubtable Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ -- with a trifecta of Charlie Chaplin shorts from 1917: The Cure, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer. Tickets are $12. The show starts at 7pm, but if you get there early, you can hear Freehold Theatre's George Lewis talk about Chaplin's contribution to the field of physical comedy. In the first short, an alcoholic......

In the middle of Steven Pinker's talk at Town Hall last night, the lecture morphed into some surprisingly blue comedy. We'll warn you now: what follows is adult language content. Talking about an FCC ruling (on Bono's infamous "This is really fucking brilliant!" live outburst after winning a Golden Globe award), Pinker noted that the way the FCC saw it, Bono was employing "fucking" as an adverb modifying the adjective "brilliant" -- but "did not......

Seattle Rep's Twelfth Night, which they're nerdily calling Twelfe Night as per the First Folio, is nearly shipwrecked by dull production design and the cast's inability to make anything of the esoteric wordplay that audiences once found witty, or at least clever. But the portrayal of life lived to excess is still gripping drama, and Frank X.'s steward Malvolio burns with a self-importance that veers from comic over-stepping to something much eerier. Tickets start at......

Somehow, in between day jobs, practices, live shows, and recording their second album Beehive Sessions (produced by the Posies' Jon Auer), everybody's favorite performance group/art collective/pop band "Awesome" has found the time to put together a new theater extravaganza for all ages. And though it's kid-tested mother-approved, there's still scads of local talent involved: Here's What Happened is directed by WET's Jennifer Zeyl and has a different guest narrator each night--actor Charles Leggett, Almost......

When you become as popular on the local music scene as "Awesome", it’s good to give back to the community, and do a little something for the kids. Hence Here's What Happened, which the band describes as a children’s show with an adult brain. We asked to the band members to pass along some advice to the children-- who will always be our future. John Ackerman—"Keep playing no matter how old you get." "You......