THURSDAY 2/15

Chuck D

(LECTURE) In rap, you have three career possibilities: (1) enjoy a long and prosperous presence in the recording industry; (2) vanish after one or two hit records; (3) transcend the music business and evolve into something new and wonderful. Very few accomplish the first, almost all experience the second, but only Chuck D of Public Enemy has achieved the third. After P.E. creatively and financially crumbled in the early '90s, Chuck D successfully became an Internet advocate, seeing programs like Napster as an opportunity for artists to liberate themselves from the powerful clutches of the recording industry. Now that Napster has become a part of the very industry he is against, it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about the future of independent music in cyberspace. CHARLES MUDEDE

P.A.C. Mainstage, Western Washington University, Bellingham, 360-650-6146, 8 pm, $8.

FRIDAY 2/16

SUBlimina

(ART) Here's work by artists you may or may not know. If you read Artforum and follow New York/Los Angeles/ London gallery news, you may. If you wait for the artists to show up half-nude in Vanity Fair or on David Letterman, you may not. But now you have a chance, courtesy of the Altoids Curiously Strong Collection, to see their work and bring Seattle's cultural literacy up a notch. The minty-fresh Altoids people troll among the hottest emerging artists and buy about 20 new works a year; this year's crop includes E. V. Day (whose exploded Marilyn dress was one of the highlights of last year's Whitney Biennial), Stephanie Syjuco (who showed a few months ago at James Harris Gallery), and Rev. Ethan Acres. And it opens with a groovy party. One day we may be hip after all. (Bring your breath mints.) EMILY HALL

Consolidated Works, 410 Terry Ave N, 381-3218. Through April 8. Opening reception--with djfloorma@ and food--7 pm-midnight.

Sergio Leone Shootouts

(FILMS) There are some quite good films in this series--The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly actually is one--but really, they all merely tremble at the feet of Once Upon a Time in the West, a film so harrowingly excellent, so utterly uncompromised that it will forever eclipse all other films in its genre--which is not, as you might think, the Western so much as it is the revenge fantasy. Look, it's as simple as this: Henry Fonda being bad, Charles Bronson's eyes filling the wide screen, and (be still!) Claudia Cardinale at 31 years old. Not to mention Ennio Morricone's most elegantly operatic score. Oh, we're lucky they're showing this film on the Egyptian's huge, wide screen. If you tell me on Friday that you missed it on Thursday, I will spit in your face. JAMIE HOOK

Egyptian, 805 E Pine St, 323-4978. See Movie Times for details.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

(FILM) Ben Gazzara plays a smalltime strip-bar owner who runs up a gambling debt that he can repay only by performing a murder. He's onscreen in almost every shot, and you can see why actors loved to work with John Cassavetes. Yes, it's indulgent, but if anybody ever deserved to be indulged, it's Gazzara, with his tight little knot of a face and his ability to register disgusted disbelief 147 ways. The movie also features the great, great Meade Roberts, as Mr. Sophistication; half a dozen of the prettiest strippers ever (big breasts were so nice in the days before augmentation); and a shaggy-dog chase in an abandoned building that leaves me just dissolved in admiring laughter every time. Who needs drugs when we have Cassavetes? BARLEY BLAIR

Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, 523-3935. See Movie Times for details.

Amy Rigby

(LIVE MUSIC) Amy Rigby's latest album, The Sugar Tree, is a stunningly understated portrait of a fortysomething single mother trying to have a romantic life and measuring her losses against her experience--which in Rigby's case includes playing in the Shams and the Last Roundup. Rigby has grown from strength to strength over the span of her three solo albums, mixing the pop craftsmanship of Marshall Crenshaw with a country-rock sensibility that brings to mind another underappreciated crooner--Syd Straw. The material Rigby tackles is not standard rock fare: She sings about the women shunted aside by the machismo and overblown perpetual adolescence of rock and roll posturing. That she manages to do it with tart-tongued humor and musical flair is victory enough. NATE LIPPENS

Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave NW, 784-4880, 8 pm, $5.

SATURDAY 2/17

Harlem Globetrotters

(BASKETBALL) This Saturday, the vastly overrated Harlem Globetrotters square off with the New York Nationals' stifling defense at KeyArena. Expect hard fouls and a low-scoring game as the two teams pound at each other. The Globetrotters may have dominated the league for the past 75 years, but the Nationals, just six years old (replacing the now-defunct Washington Generals), have the goods--and the talent--to match the Globetrotters head-on, making for what is sure to be an exciting, edge-of-your-seat battle. My call: the Nation- als by eight. BRADLEY STEINBACHER

KeyArena, 628-0888, 1:30 pm, $12-$75.

SUNDAY 2/18

Janeane Garofalo

(COMEDY) Janeane Garofalo: a sullen, caustic presence in movies generally not as good as her performance (Dog Park, The Minus Man, 200 Cigarettes, Cop Land) and good movies made better by her presence (Romy & Michele's High School Reunion), capable of exploding into an incredibly sexy smile that leads fans of her sullen, caustic wit to swoon. Also an outspoken presence on talk shows and in magazines, often speaking smartly about how Hollywood can't perceive a woman as sexy unless she verges on skeletal. Also a really funny standup comedian performing at the Paramount, where she will regale the audience with sullen, caustic observations of the world, and, if we're lucky, a glimpse of that dazzling smile. BRET FETZER

Paramount Theatre, Ninth and Pine, 628-0888, www.theparamount.com, 7:30 pm, $19.50-$39.50.

Mind Control and Propaganda

(READING/DISCUSSION/DOCUMENTARY) Who controls the news? Who pays the "experts" on TV? Who says toxic waste is good for you? The public relations industry, that's who! Come see John Stauber, author of Trust Us We're Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, talk about propaganda, corporate influence, and the elusive P.R. industry as part of Media Democracy Day. If you're all worked up and paranoid after hearing him, head over to the Independent Media Center for a screening of Fear and Favor in the Newsroom--a one-hour documentary about corruption in journalism narrated by Studs Terkel, followed by a lecture by Stauber and a panel discussion. What a perfect way to spend a Sunday. PAT KEARNEY

Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600, 1 pm, free tickets available at store. Film and panel discussion at the Independent Media Center, 1415 Third Ave, 262-0721, 3 pm, donation.

MONDAY 2/19

hi, D

(SKETCH COMEDY) Hi, D plucks its personnel from a variety of other ventures, including Samuel Beckett's House of Horrors, Ballyhoo, Soup Talks, and Maktub, among others--making it Seattle's first sketch comedy supergroup! Now, as we all recall from the 1980s and '90s, most supergroups suck, largely because the only reason the members got together was because they were so impressed with themselves they thought their combined efforts would be overpoweringly cool... and thus were born the likes of Asia. But John Osebold (from the Habit and Player King) says hi, D was formed to perform material that was too odd for its members' regular gigs--and that sounds like a good reason to pull some talented people together and play around. Expect pointless, incoherent, and willfully obscure sketches that make you laugh anyway. BRET FETZER

Re-bar, 1114 Howell St (at Boren), 323-0388, Mon-Wed at 8, $6. Through Feb 28.

TUESDAY 2/20

Lighthouse Uniform Company

(OUTFITTER) The laboriously hand-lettered sign reads, "Home of the Fallen Firefighter Dress Uniform Program." Behind this naive but compelling mural, brothers Steve and Brian Cohen run the bustling uniform company their father started more than 50 years ago. Firefighters, police--even the movies shop here. "We did An Officer and a Gentleman, we've done The X-Files," says Brian, a charmer with the mustache of a professional authority figure. They even invented the "hidden-agenda jacket"--remember that scene in The Fugitive when Tommy Lee Jones rips down his F.B.I. flap? That's their patented baby! So whether you love a man in uniform or you need some fresh Dickies, pop on in. And for the record, the boys will send for burial purposes a "Class-A Dress Uniform" to the family of any firefighter killed in the line of duty--absolutely free. Just cuz it's the right thing to do. TAMARA PARIS

Lighthouse Uniform Company, 1532 15th Ave W, 800-426-5225, www.lighthouseuniform.com. Open Mon-Fri 8 am-4:30 pm.

WEDNESDAY 2/21

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

(DANCE) As a child in Texas, Alvin Ailey divided time between picking cotton with his mother and attending minstrel shows. His rise to fame is a wandering and remarkable tale--one charmed by encounters with such famed choreographers as Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham, and hindered by Ailey's own mounting psychological difficulties. His spectacular piece Revelations, which debuted in 1960 and is still performed by his company today, drew from Negro spirituals and jazz, bringing to American dance an expression of faith that altered the language of movement itself. This week, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater stages A Musical Retrospective of 40 Years of Dance, in six performances. TRACI VOGEL

Paramount Theatre, Ninth & Pine, 292-ARTS, www.theparamount.com, Wed-Fri at 8, Sat at 2 and 8, Sun at 2, $20.50-$43.50.