Tiny Picture Club

(FILM) Meet the Tiny Picture Club, Portland's own Super-8 heartthrobs, in Seattle for one night only to present 20 short love films: Reed "Blondie" Harkness is the group's resident dreamboat--too bad he likes butterflies and clouds more than girls! And watch out for Rad Chad: He's the espionage agent who will steal the secrets of your heart. Live musical accompaniment will be by the Halide Audio Test, a four-piece that features both musical suitcases and operatic voices in addition to guitars, accordions, and the like. JAMIE HOOK

Market Theater, Post Alley (in the Pike Place Market), 781-9273, 9 pm, $5.

Circa/5 Tangos

(DANCE) This week holds two wildly different tango-inspired pieces: Canada's Holy Body Tattoo made its name with driving, high-energy dances that, for my taste, took themselves a little too seriously (a Scottish paper described one piece as "a grueling ritual of hypnotic movement"). But word is the duo's new work, Circa, is all about pleasure and grace--and the tango was the obvious launching point. Meanwhile, Pacific Northwest Ballet presents four short dance works, including one--the title piece, 5 Tangos--inspired by the music of the legendary Astor Piazzola, choreographed by Danish choreographer Hans van Manen, making its Seattle premiere after garnering acclaim around the world. Find out how the steaminess of tango and the aloof cool of ballet come together. BRET FETZER

Circa: On the Boards, 100 W Roy St, 217-9888, Thurs-Sun at 8, $18-$20. One weekend only.

5 Tangos: Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Center Opera House, 292-ARTS, Thurs-Sat at 7:30, Sat at 2, $15-$110. Through March 24.

The Professor, the Puppet, and the Execution

(THEATER) Using his lean, elastic features, insinuative voice, and subtle intellect, Todd Jefferson Moore turned the potential dry topic of lumber-industry politics into a riveting human conflict in his solo show In the Heart of the Wood, compiled from interviews with loggers, lumber executives, activists, and more. His new show, The Professor, the Puppet, and the Execution, tackles a more immediately juicy topic: violence and capital punishment. Fusing interviews, clinical discussion, and jolting slapstick, Moore will take this grim topic apart and give you a surprising new perspective, delving into the contradictions of fear and desire. Moore is one of Seattle's most compelling and fearless performers; don't let the subject matter scare you off from what promises to be an astonishing show. BRET FETZER

A Contemporary Theatre, 700 Union St, 292-7676, Thurs/Sun at 7:30, Fri-Sat at 8, $6. One weekend only.

Hiphop for Walking

(MUSIC) Spring is on its way, and for true hiphop heads this means one thing: long walks while sealed within the headphone world of phat beats. Because we happen to be in Seattle, and hiphop music celebrates the city in which it is produced, local hiphop is best suited for these long walks. Indeed, Seattle hiphop is influenced by the very buildings, trees, statues, and streetlights we may chance to see during a late-afternoon stroll. So, if you want to maximize the pleasure of your walks then you will need local hiphop; and if you don't have any, here are four CDs I highly recommend you obtain as soon as possible: Silent Lamb Project's dazzling Soul Liquor is perfect for walking--with lots of turns and digressions--from the Space Needle to Pioneer Square (or vice versa). Jasiri Media Group's lush Word Sound Power is all you need for the entire length of Broadway. K Records' compilation Classic Elements is great for any street in the Central District. Boom Bap Project's The Circumstances Dictates EP is best for new or unexplored avenues. CHARLES MUDEDE

S.M.S. Project

(ART) In 1968, the painter and patron William Copley anticipated the alternative gallery movement of the early '70s by initiating the project S.M.S. ("shit must stop"). The impetus for this extraordinary populist experiment was opposition to the hegemony a few rich collectors and galleries held over the art world; Copley envisioned a more democratic distribution of art, for which he invited artists to create work to be replicated and sold in portfolios. As with the best Marxist model, the artists controlled the means of production, as well as the sales. Who knows why it didn't succeed? Perhaps the world rejected the idea of decommercialized art. At any rate, six of the portfolios have been recovered, and include representative work from a number of important 20th-century movements, including Fluxus, Pop, and conceptual art, with work by Marcel Duchamp (reciting his poetry), Yoko Ono, John Cage, and Christo, among others. Just the thing for an emerging arts culture like ours. EMILY HALL

Elliott Brown Gallery, 215 Westlake Ave N, 340-8000. Opening reception Sat March 17, noon-6 pm, with a talk by Susan Reinhold at 2 pm. Through April 14.

Tahiti 80, Poseur

(LIVE MUSIC) Every so often a day comes along when your patent response to the world would be "shut your big flapping mouth." These are not the kinds of days that French guys playing airy, horn-laden pop tunes reminiscent of the Zombies and the Byrds should make you declare the world a fine place to inhabit. Nor are they occasions upon which to smile in genuine happiness and acceptance in the direction of your flapping, fellow brethren. C'est la vie. Tahiti 80 blew me away on a night I felt like blowing the world away. The singer, Xavier Boyer, is impossibly charming and sweet, loves the Posies, and looks like a dream. Bad mood or no, you'll be happy you went to the show. KATHLEEN WILSON

Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave, 441-5611, 9:30 pm, $10.

Brian Evenson, Dave Memmott, Lance Olsen

(READING) I know how you feel. Recently, fiction is nothing but what Oprah sells, and the travel adventure "novel" craze has you puking in your gym shorts. Nothing will cure you of this malaise faster than an evening with dystopia's poster boys, the writers Brian Evenson, Dave Memmott, and Lance Olsen. This post-cyberpunk triumvirate writes fiction that exists at the edge of the collapsed world--and it's dark out there in the hinterlands. Evenson's most recent collection, Contagion and Other Stories, is full of gorgeous, horrifying tales highlighting the apocalypse in our mistrust of language and other humans. Lance Olsen, originally from Portland, may prove the comic relief of the evening; his novel Freaknest, engorged with the darkest absurdity available to the literary sci-fi-ish fringe, made me laugh out loud at times. TRACI VOGEL

Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600, 4 pm, free advance tickets.

Cursive, Damien Jurado, Raft of Dead Monkeys

(LIVE MUSIC) If there's no better outlet for aggression than playing your guts out through heavy, naked rock and roll music, then second best is to go and see someone else do it live. Especially when, in the case of Omaha's Cursive, the four men at the helm are dy-no-mite. Cursive shows are characterized by unparalleled emo dynamics--the good kind that occasionally sound overwrought on record, but carry live like a most welcome punch in the mouth. Cursive sweats to stunning effect, and if you are unfamiliar with the band, imagine what Seam would sound like if vocalist Soo Young Park just had a run-in with a hot branding iron, and was feeling genuinely unhappy about it. JEFF DeROCHE

Graceland, 109 Eastlake Ave E, 381-3094, 7 pm, $7. All ages!

The Mother and the Whore

(FILM) The Mother and the Whore plays out après le déluge, in that psycho-social trough that follows hard upon Great Events--for writer-director Jean Eustache, the French New Wave and the political/sexual revolution of the late '60s. Lacking a starring role to tackle with whole heart and mind, Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud, endearingly narcissistic New Wave icon) can't quite imagine himself. A bit of a dandy, he drifts from bar to bed, trying to spin significance out of wonderfully intellectual gab and fraught relations with women, especially the older, motherly type he lives with (Bernadette Lafont) and the promiscuous young nurse (Francoise Lebrun) he brings home. But this masterpiece knows exactly where it's going: Eustache's ironies deconstruct, for starters, the passionate lyricism generated by the ménage à trois in Truffaut's Jules and Jim, and the enraptured sanctification of one of cinema's holiest whores in Godard's My Life to Live. Such dead-end deconstruction led this French Cassavetes to suicide at 43. KATHLEEN MURPHY

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

Rich Jensen & Stacey Levine

(TALK) The Hugo Talks discussion planned for tonight, Jensen and Levine's "Toothpicks and Marshmallows: Advancing Theoretical Seattles via Dialogue," is third in the series called "Seattle and Its Meanings," and has been shrouded in a gooey kind of secrecy since the onset. What are we to make of the title, which combines a lovely verb, "advancing," with small objects of consumerist concern, yet purports to be about the city as a whole? We can only rest our faith in the reputations of the two lecturers, both of whom possess minds capable of turning the large and intangible into the small and tangible. Jensen, former general manager at Sub Pop, has published his essays in The Temple and Punk Planet. Levine is the author of My Horse and Other Stories and Dra--. TRACI VOGEL

Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, 322-7030, 7:30 pm, $7.

CoBrew & PA RT

(DANCE) I have my doubts about improvisational dance--in the wrong hands, it's about as exciting and immediate as a puddle of mud--but this two-part event has an abundance of exciting names attached to it. CoBrew features Sheri Cohen, John Dixon, Kristin Hapke, Peggy Piacenza, Crispin Spaeth, Maureen Whiting, and many more local dancer/choreographers who often get entire evenings unto themselves. Could be a case of too many cooks, but could also be a living kaleidoscope. PA RT is a duet by Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson, two of the biggest names in the world of improvisational dance. They've been dancing together since 1975, which means they've had a lot of time to learn and listen to each other's rhythms. Could be intuitive and lovely. BRET FETZER

Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway, 325-6500, 8 pm, $12-$18. One night only.