The Stranger

Ian Bell’s crowdsourced carnival of anonymity returns on a life-after-death theme. For the newcomers: Every three months, Seattle Confidential collects anonymous stories and gives them to actors to read. (Sometimes they add bells and whistles—PowerPoint presentations, charts and graphs, instant polls that the audience contributes to via text.) The confessional mode gives the writers a cloak to air their dirtiest, most hilariously awkward laundry, and everybody has a blast. It’s not only funny but comforting—we all have screwed-up stories, and laughing at them together feels therapeutic. (ACT, 700 Union St, acttheatre.org, 7:30 pm, $15) by Brendan Kiley

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It is time to talk about vaginas. We’ve just finished one of the ugliest anti-female elections since women’s suffrage became the law of the land, with Republicans arguing for rape and against basic women’s health programs. Wolf’s book Vagina: A New Biography examines the evolution and the biology of the organ that sends evangelical Christians across America into fits of fearful rage. America’s baked-in phallocentricity is a serious issue; we can overcome that kind of bias only by demystifying the body parts that have for millennia been hidden away behind walls of panic and hate. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, townhallseattle.org, 7:30 pm, $5) by Paul Constant

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Miranda July is across town at Seattle Arts & Lectures tonight, but that’s been sold out forever. So what else is happening? The final Silent Reading Party of 2012. You bring whatever you feel like reading and read silently to yourself next to a roaring fire while waiters bring you things. Manhattans: $5. Special guests: Stranger music editor Emily Nokes and comrade in arms Bree McKenna. Bonus: A man named Will Bielawski will be rocking a harp from 7 to 8 p.m. (Sorrento Hotel, Fireside Room, 900 Madison St, 622-6400, 6–9 pm, free, all ages) by Christopher Frizzelle

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The sea of women-only art shows this season presents a new problem—rather than being spread healthily across the calendar, the artists born with vaginas are all showing at once right now. In your newly difficult deciding, try not to miss Ladies’ Choice at Greg Kucera Gallery. Women he represents are showing their works alongside pieces by women they themselves admire and selected: Quilter Loretta Bennett picked fellow quilter Qunnie Pettway. “Doll” painter Sherry Markovitz picked embroiderer Allison Manch. Alice Wheeler picked The Stranger’s Kelly O, and their pairing of photographs of a dressed-up “princess bubblegum” and a row of porn mannequins is devastating. Victoria Haven and Dawn Cerny teamed up and made art together. They adopted the name Daft Kuntz. (Greg Kucera Gallery, 212 Third Ave S, gregkucera.com, 10:30 am–8 pm, free) by Jen Graves

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The Grand Illusion presents a night jam-packed with campy holiday delights. At 7 p.m., San Francisco’s Oddball Film + Video presents Christmas Mess, a 90-minute montage of films capturing the shamelessly commercialized nightmare of Jesus’s birthday. At 9 p.m., Scarecrow Video presents VHSXMAS II, a collection of rare Christmas footage—commercials, cartoons, montages, musical numbers—all drawn from Scarecrow’s VHS archives. At 11 p.m., Oddball returns with The Subject Is Sex, a 16 mm tour of cartoon smut, hygiene films, hillbilly porn, and “burlesque bits.” (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, grandillusioncinema.org, 7 pm, $8 per film) by David Schmader

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Today brings the first day of legal same-sex marriage in Washington State. To celebrate, The Stranger has teamed with Mayor McGinn and the City of Seattle to turn City Hall’s gorgeous lobby into a full-service wedding site, complete with marriage-pronouncing judges (offering their services free of charge), beautiful pop-up “wedding chapels,” and more good vibes than you can imagine. Afterward, there's a humongous reception party at Q nightclub hosted by The Stranger’s Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, and featuring a tearjerker first dance, goofy cake-cutting photos, and champagne toasts galore, along with the peerless DJ skills of Riz Rollins. Bring Kleenex. (Seattle City Hall, 600 Fourth Ave, 11 am–5 pm; Q, 1426 Broadway, qcapitolhill.com, 6–10 pm, free, 21+) by David Schmader

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