Israel retaliates, strikes Iran: In a response to Iran's strike on Israel last weekend, which was in itself a response to an Israel attack on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria earlier this month, Israel launched a drone attack against a military base and nuclear site near the city of Isfahan. Israel's allies urged against this retaliation. Now, more world leaders are calling for both Iran and Israel to chill out, take some deep breaths, and not vault this thing into another all-out war in the region. 

Israel also sent drones to southern Syria: However, the drones caused only material damage. 

Meanwhile, on Friday, the Group of Seven foreign ministers chastised Iran for its attack on Israel earlier this week and dangled a threat of new sanctions.

Rap’s auto-tune auteur Future is coming to Seattle with Metro Boomin to support their second collaborative album, We Still Don't Trust You. Fresh off the Coachella mainstage with Lana Del Rey, Jon Batiste has announced a local stop on his Uneasy tour. Plus, corny dad joker Kevin Hart will attempt maturity on his Acting My Age tour. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

Tickets go on sale at 10 am unless otherwise noted.

ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 19

MUSIC

Alejandro Escovedo
The Crocodile (Sat July 27)

The Aristocrats: The Duck Tour 2024
Neumos (Thurs Aug 22)
On sale at noon

Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert
Moore Theatre (Sat Nov 9)

Oneohtrix Point Never, the moniker of Daniel Lopatin, may not be a household name, but you’ve likely heard his work. The Massachusetts-raised producer and composer is a longstanding pioneer of the electronic scene. Having created a variety of scores for heavy-hitting Hollywood scripts—including Good Times (2017), Uncut Gems (2019), and The Curse (2024)—Lopatin has climbed into the captain’s chair of his own genre. 

Lopatin credits science fiction, philosophy, and “all the strange moments from Beatles songs” as primary influences. Drawing upon shoegaze, jazz, hip-hop, and more, OPN offers a spiritual (and at times unsettling) experience. You won’t hear Lopatin’s voice too often and you may not even see his face, but you will certainly fall entranced by his cybernetic reality.

Stylistically, LA stand-up comedian/writer Logan Guntzelman is the anti-Jim Carrey, the polar opposite of Robin Williams. She doesn't manically gesticulate, doesn't contort her face, and she eschews impressions. Rather, she delivers jokes—sometimes quite dirty jokes—in a deep-voiced deadpan and with a poker face, succeeding on the sheer strength of her words and setups.

Guntzelman's lack of effect compounds the hilarity of what she's imparting in an act that's heavy on self-deprecation and worst-case scenarios (for her, mostly). It should be noted that in the venerable history of diarrhea jokes, Guntzelman has told the most solid one I've ever heard—and I've heard a lot. (Speaking of which, you can follow Logan on Instagram @placesitookashitthisyear.)

Weather: Who’s trying to have a frozen margarita on a rooftop tonight? WHO? Okay, maybe not frozen, but with the sun in full view and temperatures in the low 60s, I think outdoor drinking weather is truly upon us. Maybe Friday we can spring for the blended drinks since temperatures will be in the mid 60s. Check an actual weather website because this shit is subject to change as I’ve learned from spreading weather misinfo in Slog AM in the past. 

Around town: Of course, there’s other things to do around Seattle that do not involve a $16 alcoholic beverage in the sun. Check out EverOut for the best recommendations for how to fill your free time. Tonight you could go see indie rock band Sheer Mag at Vera Project or 4/20's Eve Eve Comedy Show at the Crocodile. 

My husband and I opened the doors of our home to you and your family. For years we were there for you. We gave you a job, helped you with your kids and your boyfriend. You lived with us until we helped you find a place of your own. Then we babysat for you for free. 

WEDNESDAY 4/17  

Oneohtrix Point Never: Again Tour

(MUSIC) Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin) is part of that elite club of challenging, electronic musicians who've gone on to score high-profile movies, which includes Mica Levi, Robert A.A. Lowe, and Bobby Krlic. (Even stranger, Lopatin also was the musical director for the Weeknd's 2021 Super Bowl half-time performance.) The Brooklyn-based composer's early work—desolate, alienating, oft-times abrasive—didn't exactly foreshadow a side hustle soundtracking big-budget Hollywood films such as Good Time and Uncut Gems, but here we are. These cinematic assignments revealed OPN's deft grasp of Tangerine Dream-like atmosphere-conjuring. This work has slowed OPN's solo output, but 2020's Magic Oneohtrix Point Never and 2023's Again demonstrate his growing interest in skewed synth-pop and rock, submerging uncanny melodies in disorienting structures, transmuting nostalgic memories of cheesy radio fodder into futuristically warped facsimiles of same. This show will focus on Again's 13 orchestrated oddities. "Modular princess" Arushi Jain, who fuses elements of Indian classical music with beautiful ambience, opens. (Neptune Theatre, 1303 NE 45th St, 7 pm, $35-$41, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

In a world where arts and culture is often devalued, there is truly nothing like going out to experience the transformative power of cinema at a festival. The vast medium boasts works that can move us to tears just as it does those that may melt your face off. This year, the 50th Annual Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) has films that do each of those things and, in extra special cases, both at the same time.

Taking place in theaters from May 9-19 and virtually May 20-27, SIFF's got a whole lot in store—261 films in total. Not only is it a really strong year of films, but the even better news is the SIFF Cinema Workers Union recently ratified their first contract after coming together to form a union last year. Now that they’ve got better working conditions and the full lineup is out, with tickets currently on sale for members before being available to the public starting Thursday (all of which can be purchased online through their website or at any SIFF venue), here are some of the standouts you won’t want to miss.

I did not know how Pacific Northwest Ballet could improve on its production of The Seasons' Canon, the ballet that took my head off when it premiered in Seattle a couple years ago, but improve it they did. 

Last time, PNB Artistic Director Peter Boal & Co. paired choreographer Crystal Pite's masterful, hyperkinetic meditation on nature with some very good but more or less disconnected ballets. This time, the program felt so cohesive it amounted to a religious experience—one that, incidentally, might best be experienced from the cheap seats. 

Pro-Palestine Google employees protest the company: Workers led sit-ins in Seattle and in other cities on Tuesday to stop Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Google CEO Sundar Pichai from providing technology to Israel. Demands included dropping a $1 billion cloud and AI contract with the Israeli military called Project Nimbus, and ceasing alleged intimidation, harassment, and retaliation against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim employees who speak out. Protesters claim numerous workers have quit Google because their mental health has suffered as a result of the company’s relationship with Israel.

All Alaska Airline flights grounded: In a press release, the company said it ran into a snag “while performing an upgrade to the system that calculates our weight and balance," the Seattle Times reports. Update: The planes are back in the air. 

Influenced more by beetles than the Beatles, the Baltimore-based duo Matmos have been underground electronic music's arch conceptualists for nearly 30 years. Every album they release revolves around a different framing idea and consequently, every tour they do presents different approaches and vocabularies of sounds.

Their latest LP, 2023's Return to Archive, finds Matmos repurposing Smithsonian Folkways' vast catalog of nature, science, and field recordings, and what the group's Drew Daniel calls "unclassifiably odd audio verité recordings" into discombobulated cuts that would have left late label founder Moses Asch spluttering in confusion. It was an adventurous way for a venerated company to celebrate its 75th anniversary, to be sure.

While speaking to a group of Pierce County Republicans in February of this year, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert declared that "marriage is between a man and a woman," expressing a stance on gay marriage we haven't seen from him since he proved himself as an anti-gay bigot in Congress. 

What's a little bit wild here is that Reichert went out of his way to provide this homophobic answer, as he delivered the line in the context of a larger transphobic rant spurred by a series of questions from Dawn Land, who ran an unsuccessful campaign to gather signatures to repeal a law that helps stabilize homeless youth and connect them with the care they need to survive.

At the meeting, Land asked how Reichert defines "a woman," and then she asked whether he supports gender-affirming care and allowing trans kids to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity, though she didn't quite use that language. Here's the full video of his chat with the Pierce County Republicans: 

It was kind of by accident that Taha Ebrahimi wrote a book. Especially an illustrated one about trees.

“This is a kismet, happenstance COVID project,” she told me. “Basically, during COVID, I had all this extra time, and I was always interested in trees, but I don’t have any background in illustration or horticulture. I always thought people who knew stuff about plants and trees, those were the people who had authority. I don’t know why! Those Latin names, they just give you this impostorism.”

Pro-Palestine protesters block Sea-Tac airport: At around 3 pm Monday, a group protesting the US-funded genocide in Gaza parked cars along the airport's expressway. Some locked their arms together and sat on the pavement. In response, the airport closed the road, cops hopped on bikes to confront the protesters, and trucks towed away the vehicle blockade as some travelers exited their conveyances to approach the airport on foot, according to footage from KOMO. The road to the airport reopened about three hours later, and police arrested 46 people at the peaceful protest. 

The airport protest happened in concert with demonstrations across the country, including in San Francisco (where they shut down the Golden Gate Bridge) and Chicago (where they blocked a terminal at O'Hare). In a statement, the Seattle group called out politicians for ignoring calls for a "permanent ceasefire" and approving weapons sales to Israel. The Seattle action aimed to hit companies such as Boeing (which builds weapons) and Alaska Airlines (which works with Boeing) in their pocketbooks. "While the full economic important of today's action is yet to be quantified, the blockade will cost the airport money in delayed flights as well as reduced commerce inside the airport," they wrote. An airport spokesperson described flight disruptions as "pretty minimal," according to the Seattle Times, thanks to the slow time of day and to Sea-Tac's rapid response plan.