Go Girls Go

(DANCE) Let me project for a moment: You may be chock full of divided opinions about women-centric art and theory, about the Annie Leibovitz show of photographs of women--who the hell knows, maybe about women themselves. But this is no reason why you should, as you usually do, steer clear of SAM's Thursday After Hours because you get an icky feeling from the enticing sweet chaser of performance offered as a bribe for the bitter pill of art. This week, After Hours features the never-less-than-amazing work of 33 Fainting Spells, the dance troupe founded by Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson (not sisters in the blood sense, but in the ideological sense, perhaps). Athletic, funny, vigorous, and sexy, they have changed how a lot of people feel about dance. With a performance by the Roosevelt High School Cheerleaders, about whom you could say a lot of the same things. You'll go. You'll love it. EMILY HALL

Seattle Art Museum, 100 University St, 654-3100, 5:30-7:30 pm, free with museum admission: $7 general, $5 seniors.

Police Inquests Proceedings

(FORUM) The deaths of Aaron Roberts and Nelson Martinez--both shot by cops in King County this past year--have required inquest hearings. These hearings are designed to investigate law-enforcement-related deaths, but since county inquest juries usually find police shootings justified, their efficacy has come under question. This community forum, hosted by the King County Civil Rights Commission, the Seattle Human Rights Commission, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Mothers for Police Accountability, will be held to educate King County residents on inquest procedures and the proposals of how to change them. AMY BARANSKI

Mt. Zion Baptist Church, 1634 19th Ave, 7 to 9 pm; call 296-8610 for more information.

On the Side

(DANCE) Rockhopper Dance launches its new season with a cornucopia of short works by local choreographers, including names more associated with other dance troupes. The copious list includes Freya Wormus from BetterBiscuitDance, Richard Ayres of A Contemporary Movement Ensemble, Pablo Cornejo (about whom a friend of mine recently said, with a husky, lascivious edge in her voice, "That's a sturdy, grounded dancer"), Alethea Adsitt, Lynn Carpenter, newcomer Amelia Reeber, Debbie Toth from San Diego, and Rockhopper's own Jenny Gerber. This kind of sampler is a great way to get a taste of the variety and abundance of Seattle dance; these choreographers may well become the next decade's Mark Morrises and Pat Graneys. BRET FETZER

Rockhopper Dance at Freehold Theater, 1525 10th Ave (Oddfellows Hall, Second Floor), 325-6500, Thurs-Sat at 8, $12/$14 at the door. Through Sept 22.

Toilet Boys

(SILLY MUSIC) This isn't anything like Wendy O. Williams, make no mistake. And who cares if it's anything like Hedwig and the Angry Inch? (Aren't you sick and tired of all that noise by now?) It's silly, anthemic glam metal from a gaggle of New York City gays (and some straights), fronted by a drag queen who looks like Amanda Lepore minus collagen injections. And the best part is, the Boys are actually really good at what they do. Whether 1987 L.A. revisited (and gender-bent) sounds like your cup of tea or not, plenty of beer, booze, and ass-shaking should make this show one of the silliest and most enjoyable evenings out this week. JEFF DeROCHE

The Breakroom, 1325 E Madison St, 860-5155, $7.

Quasi

(SAD MUSIC) Quasi, the Portland pop duo of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss, has just released The Sword of God, its finest, darkest album to date, on Chicago's Touch and Go label. While the record is as harmoniously crafted and catchy as anything the band has yet put out, the lyrics are stronger and blacker this time around. Seattle was treated to the new material at a recent Capitol Hill Block Party performance, which displayed Weiss' talent for prettifying Coomes' pinched plaint, while both members created a sound much bigger than two voices, a keyboard, and drums. This is bleak wisdom with a very pretty bow around it. JEFF DeROCHE

Showbox, 1426 First Ave, 628-3151, $10.

Dark Holler

(RADIO) Oh, what to do with the desolate stretch the night nurses call the dying hour--the long hours in the late night when the sick simply give up the will to live. Whether lingering in an oxygen tent or simply too drunk to pass out properly--alcoholic insomniacs and hillbilly lunatics alike will surely benefit from the bitter-roots medicine of Dark Holler. From two to five in the morning, recent Albuquerque transplant and EMP employee Iaan Hughes conjures up moody, murky, and heartbreaking honky-tonk, bluegrass, old-timey country, and cowpunk on a haunting radio show whose unofficial theme is taken from the Robbie Fulks quip "Country isn't pretty." Maybe so, but some nights it has just enough beauty to give even the loneliest people a reason to hang on till dawn. TAMARA PARIS

KBCS 91.3, 2 to 5 am.

Stay Home

(NOTION) Are you having trouble sitting through movies? I am. Despite the fact that we're all desperate for a chance to think about something other than the terrorists and the coming war and the assholes on TV who are even worse than we ever suspected, it's proven almost impossible to focus on something as trivial as a movie--because everything now seems so fucking trivial, especially the job of watching and writing about movies (as if it didn't seem trivial enough before)--for more than a few minutes. So if you're having trouble trying to pick a movie to take the edge off things, I submit to you something that no one needs to be told: stay home, gather with friends to discuss the emotional complexity of this all-encompassing situation, and call your mother. Movies will become important again when the massive gaps in information are filled in and the real darkness of the immediate future comes to light. SEAN NELSON

Your living room, bedroom, or kitchen.

Billy Liar

(FILM) Of course, if you are going to the movies, you should see Billy Liar, a funny, sad 1961 picture by John Schlesinger. Tom Courtenay is unstoppable in the lead role as a dissimulating young Brit who compulsively lies to everyone--his parents, his bosses, his two fiancées--because he can't stand the oppressive small-town bleakness of life in post-war England. A reciprocal to the Angry Young Man dramas which were then pouring out of West End theaters and onto movie screens, Billy Liar is a sweet little film about a sweet little guy who rebels not by acting out, but by turning inward. SEAN NELSON

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

Another American: Asking and Telling

(SOLO SHOW) Though average Americans are growing more and more comfortable seeing homosexuals on sitcoms and movies, they still get the willies about sharing group showers with them--so the military remains a high-stakes barometer for the current state of sexual politics. Marc Wolf has followed the Anna Deveare Smith method of turning transcripts from one-on-one interviews into a series of monologues that provoke thought and controversy. Characters range from a Midwestern Jewish lesbian officer to a hard-bitten Marine who flatly insists, "Marines don't kiss." Wolf won an Obie and was nominated for other awards when he performed this show Off-Broadway. (He also played a cross-dressing rapist/murderer on Guiding Light, though his publicist doesn't emphasize that.) BRET FETZER

Seattle Repertory Theatre, 155 Mercer St, 443-2222, Tues-Sun at 7:30, Sat-Sun at 2, $10-$44. Through Oct 26. (Previews through Sept 23.)

Joan Didion

(READING) For those of us who have experienced the blissful paralysis that sometimes comes with reading Joan Didion--those of us who have clutched marked-up copies of Slouching Towards Bethlehem or The White Album, devouring Didion's words as if our lives depended on them (and indeed, sometimes they did)--attending tonight's event will feel as if we are, in a sense, going home. In a rare West Coast appearance, the worshipped novelist/journalist/icon will read from and discuss her latest collection of essays, Political Fictions (Didion's sixth work of nonfiction). In Bethlehem's preface, Didion revealed that after being haunted by "points of reference" from a Yeats poem--in which "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold"--she was moved to write what has gone on to be what The New York Times calls "some of the best prose written today in this country." I can't think of a better time than now for Didion to speak. MIN LIAO

Benaroya Hall (Nordstrom Recital Hall), 200 University St, 7:30 pm, $15. Call Seattle Arts & Lectures at 621-2230 or Elliott Bay Book Company at 624-6600 for more information.

Jim Blanchard, Glenn Barr

(ART) There is a whole body of work out there made by people who stole supplies from their office jobs when they couldn't afford paint. I can't tell you if Jim Blanchard is one of them, but his sticker paintings are not only eye-popping and crazy and cool, but also a testament to the human spirit... I mean a testament to what you can do with very little. They're enormous, and usually feature either typical heroes, atypical anti-heroes, sexpots, or famous drunks: Dickie Nixon, Clint Eastwood, Brigitte Bardot, Dean Martin. Also showing is Glenn Barr's Corridor of Lust--luminous paintings with B-culture roots. EMILY HALL

Roq la Rue, 2224 Second Ave, 374-8977, free. Through Oct 13.