A-Fest 2000
(ARTS FESTIVAL) An explosion of Asian/Pacific Islander art: International multimedia artists Mew Chang Tsing and John D. Pai, the Degenerate Art Ensemble, instrumental trio LOUD, Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, percussion troupe Seattle Kokon Taiko, live actor/puppet mixtures from Cry of the Rooster and Andrew Kim, autobiographical stories from the Cambodian Youth Project, sketch comedy from Pork Filled Players, dance from Michael Sakamoto, Ku'ulei Miura, Cheronne Wong -- the variety and abundance of stuff in A-Fest makes it as exciting and challenging as On the Boards' Northwest New Works festival. Take a dip in a different cultural pool. BRET FETZER
Theater off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave S, 340-1049; performance dates, times, and prices vary. Through May 28.
Sheila Klein
(ART) The pick of this month's First Thursday litter, Sheila Klein is best known as a public artist, particularly for a pair of L.A. commissions involving the new air traffic control tower at LAX and a subway station. Despite her jet-setty career, Klein currently lives on a farm in Bow, Washington, from whence she'll drive into town for this opening of textile wallworks incorporating found clothing and fabric. Klein tries out a variety of approaches: layering translucent fabrics in a collage-style composition, sewing fabric into the form of a sleeping bag, embroidering on the pants of her father and herself in a kind of dual portrait. Klein also will receive a solo show later this month at Consolidated Works, opening May 19. ERIC FREDERICKSEN
Esther Claypool Gallery, 617 Western Ave, 264-1586, www.estherclaypool.com, opening reception 6-8 pm.
Tony Oursler
(ART) Meanwhile, up in the U-District, you could also see an opening for video installation artist Tony Oursler, were it not scheduled at the exact same time as the First Thursday Artwalk. Oursler's a fine, smart, interesting artist who has received a great deal of acclaim -- including touring mid-career retrospectives -- without quite having achieved, in my opinion, a really great body of work. He's a good one to watch, mixing projected video with various sculptural forms. His typical approach involves projecting faces onto blank stuffed dummy heads -- one submerged in a tank of water, another lying in a jumble of sports trophies, and so on. For this show, part of the Henry's Future Forward series on technology and art, Oursler collaborated with a variety of UW faculty and students; his installation involves a magician's cabinet, glass devil heads in all the colors of the spectrum, and of course, a stuffed dummy. ERIC FREDERICKSEN
Henry Art Gallery, 15th Ave NE at NE 41st St, 543-2280, www.henryart.org, 6-8 pm.
Seattle Poetry Festival
(READINGS) It's big, it's bad (as in grumpy/hip/over-the-top), and it's Seattle's own Poetry Festival, running May 2-7 at various locations throughout town (see poetryfestival.org for schedule information). Tonight, you can catch performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes at On the Boards, along with an energetic lineup of lesser-known writers. But the real reason for going may be to catch Seattle superstars the Typing Explosion, whose manual word tricks will quickly whip you into doting obedience. Catch them before they move to New York. TRACI VOGEL
On the Boards, 100 W Roy, 441-4502, 8 pm, $12/$10 advance.
Glory Box
(PERFORMANCE) When acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller was nine, he proposed to a boy. For this, he was pushed down, beaten up, and had a Twinkie stuffed down his throat. Today, same-sex couples seeking legal marriage face an even bigger bully in the United States. Miller, one of the "NEA Four" who battled to protect funding for "indecent art" (read: queer), is back in Seattle with his new show, Glory Box, that recounts his struggles to keep his Australian lover in the country. The boyishly handsome Miller lubricates his progressive storytelling with humor, pathos, and the sort of delightfully gratuitous nudity that, hopefully, may one day induce a stroke in Jesse Helms. TAMARA PARIS
Open Circle Theater, 429 Boren Ave N, 382-4250. Fri-Sun May 5-7 only, 8 pm, $15.
Millennium Marijuana March
(WHOSE STREETS?!) It's no news that our nation's drug policy has been a miserably unjust failure, from the harsh prison sentences dealt to hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders all the way up to our very own Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, forced to carry out the duties of his office without any majestic crimson robe, bejeweled scepter, or czar-like accoutrements whatsoever. Join demonstrators from Albuquerque to Zagreb for a worldwide day of protest against the War on Drugs, including a noon rally and march to City Hall Park, as well as the debut of the spring line of hemp drawstring pants, now available in both brown and light brown. JASON PAGANO
Rally begins at Volunteer Park at noon, for more information visit www.seattlehempfest.com/mmm.
Sue Garner and Rick Brown
(LIVE MUSIC) The coming of indie rock's adorable chronic depressive, Cat Power's Chan Marshall, is no cause for celebration in this camp. If you ask me, not only is Cat Power a catatonic live show, but Marshall's simpering and blithering (both in song and in life) could make even Fiona Apple look like a real tough broad. Not so the unacknowledged headliner, Sue Garner, whose Still is just as lovely as anything Moon Pix or that comatose The Covers Record could offer up without turning your stomach with melodrama. Subtle and confident, Sue Garner, accompanied by husband Rick Brown, will blow away Chan Marshall like the featherweight she is. ERIN FRANZMAN
Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave, 441-5611, 5:30 pm (all ages), 9 pm, $12/$10 advance.
The Virgin Suicides
(FILM) First-time director Sofia Coppola's much-acclaimed adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' novel finally arrives in Seattle, sporting performances by young hotties Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, a dreamy visual representation of the suburban '70s, and a creepy soundtrack by French electronicists Air. The film is about a family of five dream girls (the Lisbon sisters) and the boys who adore and idealize them from afar. When one of the sisters kills herself, the Lisbons draw inward, leaving the boys with their speculation and shattered dreams. SEAN NELSON
Now playing at area theaters. See Movie Times for details.
Ex-Girl
(LIVE MUSIC) Ex-Girl are a quirky, poppy trio of young ladies from the land of the rising sun. They are touring with their second album, Kero! Kero! Kero!, proving that they like their frogs green and cute. When they started they couldn't play their instruments, but they're becoming more adept and trying new tricky things, with songs in English, Spanish, and Japanese. Besides obvious influences from famous Japanese noise bands and the pop of Shonen Knife, it sounds as if they might also like the Sugarcubes a lot, as many of their songs have an experimental quality to them. Which is to say: They sound weird. You should go. JUAN-CARLOS RODRIGUEZ
I-Spy, 1921 Fifth Ave, 374-9492, 9 pm, $7.
(WEBSITE) Dead people -- can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. They can be a handful sometimes, and tracking them down can be a downright chore. That's where findagrave.com comes in, with its database of over 2.5 million dead people, including brief descriptions of who they were and where they're buried. Orson Welles? Buried in an old well covered by flowers within the rural property of retired bullfighter Antonio Ordonez of Malaga, Spain. You can search by name, location, or birth/death dates, and the site also features a "Posthumous Reunions" link with info on such disparate dead folks as the Mayflower passengers and the cast of Hee Haw. For a potential Twilight Zone experience, though, why not search findagrave's database for your own name? SCOTT McGEATH
Satisfy your depraved and morbid curiosity at www.findagrave.com.
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
(FILM) A heart-tugging and carefully constructed documentary about the career of the great Jewish baseball player of the 1930s and '40s. Director Aviva Kempner lovingly reconstructs the seasons, games, and at-bats during which Greenberg led the Detroit Tigers to a handful of pennants and a couple of World Series victories, becoming a national hero to every Jewish kid in the diaspora along the way. Greenberg was proof that not only could such a kid be allowed to play in the big leagues, but he could also win MVP awards, lead the league in RBIs, and even, one fateful season, challenge Babe Ruth's home run record. It'd be easy to say Greenberg was the Jewish Jackie Robinson (in fact, when Robinson arrived, Greenberg -- by then a veteran and a star -- was quick to encourage him); the film makes the case that he was a hell of a ballplayer who happened to be a nice Jewish boy, too. Replete with testimonials from sources as diverse as Walter Matthau (a friend) and Alan Dershowitz (a fan), Kempner's film shines a grainy, sepia-toned light on an obscure and truly American story. SEAN NELSON
The Varsity, 4329 University Way NE, 632-3131, Fri-Thurs May 5-11 at (Sat-Sun 1, 3), 5, 7, 9 pm, $7.50.
