Tools
The Blow
w/Velella Velella,
DJ Nordic Soul
Fri Sept 14, Central Library, 9:30 pm, free, 21+.
Khaela Maricich has been a genius since kindergarten. Her live show as the Blow—a pop song-and-dance punctuated by endearing, existentialist monologues—references Spalding Gray and Janet Jackson with equal affection and seriousness. Her most recent album, Paper Television, is a collection of songs about love, economics, and freaking out at Whole Foods.
Are you looking forward to playing in the library?
Stranger Personals
Yeah. I grew up in Seattle, so I have a little feeling, a small flame of pride, about this famous architect building it for us. One time, my friend Anna Oxygen took me there and was like, "It's a pick-up scene!" And it was totally a pick-up scene! People were sending little signals like they wanted to hook up. It was weird.
If you were to give out your own Genius Awards, to anyone, in any category, who would they go to?
Does it have to be someone in Seattle?
No, it can be anybody.
But the Genius Awards generally are given to people in Seattle.
Well, yeah, but this is make-believe, so we can do whatever we want.
Okay. So if the whole world was Seattle, and I was The Stranger... Well, there's an organization in Portland called Project POOCH. They work with kids at a high-security detention facility for boys, and they pair them up with dogs from shelters, 11th-hour shelter dogs that are about to be killed. The guys spend every day with the dogs, taking care of them and training them to be really good dogs that can be adopted. And it decreases the kids' likelihood of having problems in the detention facility, and they're way more likely to get out and not go back into jail. So it's good for the dogs, and it's good for the guys.
Also, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
One category The Stranger doesn't have a Genius Award for is music. Doesn't that seem like kind of a slight?
The art world, the theater world, the dance world—they can all be despicable, and certainly there's people everywhere that are just driven by their nasty little egos. But somehow the music industry ends up having a greater radiation of that sort of feeling. It ends up looking more like a business, and people don't have as much respect for it. As opposed to being an artist, you're just a singer or a singer and dancer—sometimes I think people think of me that way, which I think is funny. Or maybe The Stranger feels like it spends enough time writing about music that it doesn't need to offer a Genius Award for it.
Yeah, that's actually it exactly. But don't you think that's still kind of lame?
Yeah. My mom asked if I was good enough to get a Genius Award. I was like [puts on deflated voice]: "I feel like [performing] is award enough, Mom."
We should make some kind of consolation prize for the performers, like a plaque or a certificate or something.
Well, I am getting paid. How much are the Genius Awards worth?
$5,000.
Oh, yeah. I don't get that much.
Have you ever been recognized for genius before? Placed in a gifted program or anything like that?
When I was little, I remember my mom having a conversation with me. I was in kindergarten, and I was in the Zebras, and my mom asked me if I would like to stay a Zebra or if I would like to move up and become a Horse. Maybe it was the other way around. And I decided that I wanted to go up and be a Horse, which meant that I was smart enough to skip ahead a grade. So I was a Horse instead of a Zebra.
What did you get on your SATs?
I think I got an 1180. That's what I remember, but I could be wrong.
I did get a five on my AP English exam. Five is the highest possible,
and it's really hard to get. I haven't gotten tons of awards, because I
wasn't really "excellent." And then I went to Evergreen. I've always
been on sort of the "spaz" edge of things, and there's not a lot of
awards for being a spaz. 
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