Let's start this evening news round-up with a little hope: Perseverance will get you anywhere—even Mars! NASA's Perseverance rover made a successful landing on Mars this afternoon, joining the American Curiosity rover in studying the red planet. The Mars 2020 mission aims to investigate Mars's ancient environment, hopefully giving us more insight into possible past life. The New York Times has a good live blog from this afternoon. Here, look at Elon Musk's future home:

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Afua Kouyate, executive director of ADEFUA Cultural Education Workshop, is leading an effort to designate southeast Seattle as a creative district under the state's Creative District (CD) program. Having situated her arts organization within the community for over three decades, Kouyate sees the move as a way of "remembering what Rainier Valley is about and who we are."

The proposed CD's boundaries would stretch from John Muir Elementary School in the north to Rainier Beach High School in the south and get boxed in by the blocks surrounding Rainier Avenue. If approved, the Rainier Valley Creative District would be the ninth state-approved CD and the first situated within Seattle's borders. (The Capitol Hill, Uptown, Columbia City and Hillman City, and Central Area Arts & Cultural Districts are all city-designated, not state.)

"[The Rainier Valley Creative District] is really something that I believe will save us as a community," Kouyate told me in a recent interview. "It will save us as a people."

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The big story right now revolves around U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz traveling "to Mexico for a family vacation as his home state struggles with a weather crisis." CNN is pushing this story. Fox is, too. Many of Cruz's voters have been without electricity since last Sunday, and many have no conventional way of staying warm during a winter storm that anthropogenic, and many have seen pennies placed on the eyes of loved ones. Mainstream media is milking this new Cruz fiasco for all it is worth.

The story will appall those who provide the networks with center-left and center-right eyeballs. We can also expect the superstars of broadcast news—Don Lemon, Chris Wallace, Rachel Maddow—to be outraged, and to go all out to bring the GOP voters in the dominant Trump wing to their senses. Can't you see, they will say on primetime, these men—Cruz, Perry, Abbott—are not only incompetent but brazenly malicious. They stomp on your interests. They golf when you need their help. And so on.

Those on the center-left and center-right will eat this message up. But the obscene vacation, the outright lies, and the occult call for sacrifices to be made in the name of concentrating the wealth of public goods to the highest parts of society will have no impact on the voters who put Trump, Perry, Cruz, Abbott, and the like in power. They will most certainly vote for these goons again. Indeed, they love that Cruz is going on a vacation at a time like this because it frustrates/stuns the mainstream and moderates on the left and right.

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EverOut is The Stranger's new website devoted to things to do in Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest. It has all the same things you're used to seeing from Stranger EverOut and Stranger Things To Do, just in a new spot!

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The snow may have melted, but it's definitely still cold enough to bundle up for another string of movie nights, preferably with a steamy beverage and an array of snacks on hand. See our picks for this week below, from Shatara Michelle Ford's psychological-horror debut Test Pattern to every single season of The Muppet Show on Disney+ to the Netflix con thriller I Care a Lot, starring Gone Girl's Rosamund Pike. We've also included some films that are streaming online and playing in IRL theaters, like Chloé Zhao's Nomadland. Plus, Dan Savage's porn film festival HUMP! continues this weekend—and if you get inspired to make your own movie, don't forget that its sister festival, the stoner-centric SPLIFF, is accepting submissions through March 5! 

Streaming: Local Connection
17 Blocks
From 1999 to 2020, four generations of a Black family living 17 blocks from the Capitol in D.C. captured their daily lives on film (and agreed to be filmed professionally as well), chronicling two decades of racist gun violence through their own personal saga, which included the tragic death of a family member. "It’s rare that a documentary has the ability to take the kind of long view of events that establishes context and consequence," reads a Washington Post review.  
SIFF
Starting Friday

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At a press conference Thursday morning, Washington state health officials acknowledged the "still fairly high" daily coronavirus case counts statewide (nearly 314,000 confirmed cases and 4,759 deaths) but painted an optimistic portrait of the days ahead, albeit one complicated by winter storms that continue to slow vaccine deliveries and send Texas senators fleeing to Cancún. (Sorry, still cackling.)

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Writer and director Shatara Michelle Ford had to work hard to make their first film, Test Pattern, by overcoming institutional and structural hurdles to get it funded. Audiences can count themselves lucky that Ford was able to do so when it releases this Friday.

The film focuses on a couple, Brittany S. Hall as Renesha and Will Brill as Evan, who must grapple with the fallout of a sexual assault. It follows their journey as they attempt to navigate an uncaring bureaucratic medical system and exposes the underlying dynamics of power buried in their relationship to each other.

I got the chance to talk with Ford about getting their film made, being emotionally truthful, and the absurdity of navigating a system not built to provide justice.

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EverOut is The Stranger's new website devoted to things to do in Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest. It has all the same things you're used to seeing from Stranger EverOut and Stranger Things To Do, just in a new spot!

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For the latest installment of our "Tell Us Something Good" celebrity recommendation series, we chatted with creative partners, married couple, and professional funny people Ahamefule J. Oluo and Lindy West. We talked about their new movie, Thin Skin, which stars Ahamefule (or Aham, for short), features Lindy on its creative team, and was directed by The Stranger's Charles Mudede. They're screening it this Friday, February 19 through Northwest Film Forum, and they'll stay on after to discuss the film.

If you didn't catch Thin Skin's world premiere last August at the virtual Bentonville Film Festival, or its Northwest premiere at Portland's Time-Based Art Festival in September, don't miss it on Friday, as it's one of the rare chances you'll have to see it. As you'll read more about below, it's been a tricky distribution process for this Seattle-set, "music-infused, darkly comedic true story about keeping it together when you’re falling apart," which stars Aham as a corporate underling on the heels of a broken marriage who finds solace in late-night sets at a jazz club. The trailer is embedded below.

We also talked to the couple about what they've been up to lately—including stocking up on Laotian sausage from Vientiane Asian Grocery, reading Samantha Irby's newsletter, and watching a ton of Dateline, not to mention working on the third and final season of Lindy's Hulu show Shrill, partially inspired by her time on staff at our sister site, The Stranger. Read on for all of their recommendations and a sense of their delightful banter.

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Charlie Brydon, an early LGBTQ rights leader, died February 9, 2021 at age 81 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

From the mid-1970s through the 1990s, Brydon tirelessly networked with political and community leaders in Seattle to establish the LGBTQ community as an important constituency group in the public fabric of the city. At key points, Brydon took leadership roles in efforts to obtain anti-discrimination protections in Seattle and to defend against ballot initiatives that sought to repeal those protections.

Brydon also played a key role in organizing broad-based groups to further LGBTQ equality, resulting in organizations such as Seattle Metropolitan Elections Committee (SEAMEC), the Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA), Northwest AIDS Foundation (later renamed Lifelong AIDS Alliance), and the Pride Foundation, as well as taking on major roles in national organizations such as the National LGBTQ Task Force.

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Let's start our morning looking to the heavens: NASA's Perseverance rover journeyed 293 million miles over the past seven months to our twin red planet, Mars. It's scheduled to touch down on Mars's dusty surface at around 12:55 p.m. PST inside the Jezero Crater. It will apparently take seven minutes for the $2.4 billion rover to complete the landing process, what NASA has called "seven minutes of terror." Once it's landed (fingers crossed), Perseverance will search for signs of microbes, collect rocks in hopes of finding "biosignatures," and carry around a mini-helicopter for NASA to fly around for it's first controlled flight on another planet. The live broadcast starts at 11:15 a.m.!

Today’s the day. Trip to Mars, 99.9% complete. The most dangerous part comes last: the final seven minutes.

Watch my landing live starting at 11:15 a.m. PST / 2:15 p.m. EST / 19:15 UTC. #CountdownToMarshttps://t.co/EeLjRU9D3Z
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 18, 2021

356-foot fishing vessel in the Port of Tacoma erupted into flames last night: Firefighters battled the blaze on the Aleutian Falcon for several hours, extinguishing the majority of the fire by 5:15 a.m. Officials were concerned about the reported 48,000 gallons diesel fuel and 10,000 pounds of ammonia onboard the ship catching on fire, which thankfully did not. There have been no reported injuries.

Malia Obama and Donald Glover join forces: The eldest Obama daughter landed a writing role on one of Glover's untitled forthcoming projects, according to Vulture. This news comes after Glover reportedly signed an eight figure overall multiyear deal with Amazon Studios. Of course, the Biden cultural era would be shaped by an Obama.

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Here's your daily evening round-up of the latest local and national news. (Like our coverage? Please consider making a recurring contribution to The Stranger to keep it comin'!)

The only baby news we ever care about:

New baby born to L pod! The mother is L86, and this is her fourth calf. Southern resident orcas now number 75.
— Lynda V. Mapes (@LyndaVMapes) February 17, 2021

Some orcas were also spotted off West Seattle today. And in other whale news: gray whales have learned a brilliant way of feeding themselves in Puget Sound. RIP to the ghost shrimp.

Around 150,000 people are still without power in Oregon—a crisis now going into its sixth day following the snowy/icy weather that hit last weekend: Things are also not great for those needing the internet as Comcast says it could take up to a week or more (!!) to get services back to the 76,000 Oregonians who need it.

Enchanted Forest, a ‘disaster area’ after ice storm, still hopes to reopen March 19 https://t.co/FLzBzHuvIc pic.twitter.com/5tozrnejtm
— The Oregonian (@Oregonian) February 17, 2021

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The next few months of Nintendo Switch releases look a lot like the first few years of the 2000s. This afternoon, Nintendo gave us a little sneak peek at the biggest games hitting the platform this spring and summer, and while there are a handful of new titles in there (Monster Hunter Rise, yes, very exciting, very good), there’s also a lot of “hey, I remember playing that on PS1.”

For example, 1999’s Legend of Mana is back, with lovely art. Capcom’s giving us an "Arcade Stadium," available to buy today, which includes Forgotten Worlds, Bionic Commando, Ghouls n Ghosts, and so on. And jumping forward in time just a bit, we’re getting a re-release of Skyward Sword … and maybe this time they’ve fixed the control scheme so you’re not constantly frustrated by the motion control misunderstanding what you want from it?

Anyway, we can break today's reveals into two categories, “New Games” and “Games You’ve Already Played.” I’ve picked three of my favorites from each that I think are worthy of your attention.

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The number of hateful and threatening messages leveled at the Seattle City Council escalated in the last year as its members weighed in on police protests, endeavored to the reform the Seattle Police Department, endured the madness of the 2020 election cycle, and responded to the mob of right-wing insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol in D.C.

As per usual, the women on the council have felt the brunt of this hate. What's different about this year compared to years past, however, is how specific and detailed those messages have become. And of all the other members, Councilmember Kshama Sawant has received the greatest volume of threats, and also the most specific ones.

In the most recent high-profile incident, last month Councilmember Sawant reported a city employee for sending her death threats. Just last week, the Seattle Police Department arrested 2018's Seattle Firefighter of the Year, Andrew Finseth, in connection to those threats. (You might also recognize Finseth from his appearances on the cover of SFD's sexy calendars in 2004 and 2005.)

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