Results tagged “spokenword”

Hitch up your Gumby trousers and polish those silly walks, as John Cleese is coming to town. Best known for his work in Monty Python [adjusts glasses] Cleese also co-wrote and starred in Fawlty Towers, which is the funniest sitcom ever. The ticket presale for his November 3 show at the Moore begins tomorrow at 10 am. This will be the ticket link--the promo code is "dance". Tickets are $45-55.

EARLY DISMISSAL: All over the Puget Sound, schools are releasing their charges early today, in celebration of Thanksgiving so teachers can drink their way through an entire happy hour. If you have kids, make a special point to pick them up on time--letting them fend for themselves is one thing in spring, but it's cold out. Also, and we speak from personal experience, they take being forgotten at school personally.

Last Friday we were at Shorecrest High School after-hours for "Coffeehouse," an open-mic put on by the school's literary journal Tattoo. It was our second time around, so we had a better idea of what to expect: the cafeteria was packed to the rafters. Seriously, Friday night and this is what the kids of today are up to? Near the end of intermission we were looking over the art gallery in the hall when this girl ran past us, calling to her friends, "Hurry, it's about to start again!" Which is the first time we've heard someone say that about an open-mic event when they weren't running away.

The artists behind Buttrock Suites uniquely combine the dramatic force of '70s and '80s arena rock (AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Boston) with choreography. It's a hard music dance revue, plus plenty of hairspray. Last year, Seattlest interviewed co-founder Diana Cardiff, who told described the choreography as:

The local act opening for Dolan and Buck 65 was Rudy & the Rhetoric, now out on CD-R. They sound clean, rehearsed, and synthy; the MC (Rudy, we presume) looks freshly scrubbed and straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, one of the outdoorsy pages, where the guys are fully clothed. We had no idea Ken dolls could rap, but he was pretty good, and the DJ (the Rhetoric?) did some cool scratching. Overall, they were surprisingly polished but we had a hard time taking them seriously, especially since the MC kept wincing at the crowd's lukewarm reception.

Musical hyphenate-extraordinaire Shawn Smith has been fronting bands and playing solo in Seattle for about 15 years. As recent, local music history goes, he’s as seminal a figure as Kurt Cobain—and more prolific—though not nearly as high-profile. He should be.

CALL 911! CALL 911!: Political and economic commentator and White House strategist during the Nixon administration, Kevin Phillips talks about his book, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Phillips traces the set of related causes that caused the downfall of historical world powers. That same combination of ills he says -- global over-reach, militant religion, resource problems, and ballooning debt -- is at work in the U.S. today.

Through May 6, tickets $10-$48

SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES: Art Spiegelman's 1992 Holocaust tale Maus (based on a true story) won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a comic book. Its success paved the way for the graphic novels thriving today and led to Spiegelman's ten years on the staff of the New Yorker. In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) gathers his recent broadsheets of disenchantment with the war on terror.

On Saturday, they will rock you. In advance of their first show ever in a bonafide rock club, Seattlest asked Buttrock Suites co-founder, producer, choreographer, dancer, and lead head-banger Diana Cardiff how exactly they combine Poison and Bon Jovi with grand jetées and pointed toes. However they damn well please, it turns out.

Music: The electronic talent of Guillermo Scott Herren's Prefuse 73 show at Chop Suey tonight comes highly recommended from every quarter of the Seattle media scape, and after listening to some of his work you can see why.

This weekend, the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center is having an Open House, while Cooper Artist Housing is having Open Studios. We know this because some old friends of ours are Cooper cultists and they sent us a postcard. How droll! How last century!

Friday night's performance by Dorky Park at On the Boards was surreal on many fronts. Seattlest was running late for the show, and as we screamed past Queen Anne Ave N. on Roy street with zero idea where we'd be able to park, someone pulled out of a street parking spot one block from OtB. We slid into the spot and then into the theater, where we promptly scored a seat dead-center in the fifth row (the primary benefit of attending anything solo, there' s usually an orphaned seat like that). The lights dimmed, and came back up on a stunning dark-haired woman, center stage wearing a bombshell red dress with matching red heels. It all went to hell from there.

A while ago we brought up Tuning the Air...um, was it April? Last night, we finally made it out to Ballard to check out the circular guitar ensemble and were not disappointed.

SIFF runs a tight ship. Even though their Face the Music party at Neumo's last night had a bajillion bands on the bill---all of whom were doing ~20 minute sets chockful of covers, as a tribute to musicians featured in films at the festival--- somehow they were actually running ahead of schedule. How often does that happen at a regular rock show, let alone one with eleven musical acts? Somebody must've been cracking the whip. Truly, this slavedriver should be commended.

In Seattle the markers indicating the change in seasons go beyond the weather and blooming cherry blossoms. It's spring, and it's time for the course catalogs to start arriving at your door. We didn't receive our personal favorite from the Experimental College until last week, but it's been online since March 2. You can register online March 16th and you better be on the ball about it this semester if you don't want to get shut out of that sushi class once again.