Sweaters @ Valley of Roses and Lucky Vintage
Now that the frost of another unforgiving Seattle winter has descended upon us, it’s high time that all of us soberly take stock of our sweater situation before it’s too late. There are vintage stores scattered throughout our city and surely each deserves hours of perusing, but I’d like to direct your attention now to the Valley of Roses, where I’ve had excellent luck with sweaters. My gray hexagonal argyle, for instance, hails from these racks and it never fails to draw sounds of amazement and disbelief from those around me. Your next stop, for there should never be just one, is Lucky Vintage, just a few doors down. KRISHANU RAY
- Mark Kitoaka
A Christmas Story @ 5th Avenue
Brandon Ivie directs, and all the principal performers are fantastic, including Jessica Skerritt as the mom, Dane Stokinger as the dad, and Mark Jeffrey James Weber as the kid who just wants a BB gun for Christmas. I don’t even like dogs and children, but the dogs and children in this show are insanely well trained and actually funny. I hate to say it, but A Christmas Story has more laughs than Homo for the Holidays (sorry, it’s true!) and more stage magic than Mary Poppins (which is based on my favorite movie of all time). If you have family in town and you’re not sure what to do with them, you’re welcome. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
The Grouch and Eligh, Cunninlynguists, DJ Abilities, and DJ Fresh @ Showbox Sodo
Grouch and Eligh, two of the best-known members of LA’s Living Legends crew, have been undie-rap workhorses for what seems like forever (a quick internet check reveals it to be closer to a decade and a half—close to forever in rap years). Earlier this year, they released a triple album (!) called Tortoise and the Crow, and if you fuck with heart-on-the-sleeve wise-guy hiphop, you can probably recite half the lyrics from memory by now, as few do it better than these guys. If you’ve graduated beyond the backpack, there’s always dubious crossover attempts like “All These Lights,” in which perma-melancholy Eligh tries his damnedest to spit a party rhyme. Props to these dudes’ work ethic, but at a certain point rapping just to hear yourself flow gets a little stale—just ask the sober dude at your next late-night cipher. KYLE FLECK
Richard McGuire @ Central Library
In 1989, Richard McGuire published a very unusual 6-page piece in the comic anthology raw Raw. It consisted of a series of panels, each depicting a physical space (often times, a room) at various points in time. Each point in time was given a small, labeled frame within the panel, and when they were all laid out together, the effect was a composition of spatial continuity and chronological fragmentation. Now, a quarter century later, McGuire has completed his project to expand this piece into a bona fide 300 page graphic novel. This talk by McGuire is co-produced by Elliott Bay Book Company, and copies of his new book will be available for purchase on site. KRISHANU RAY
National Gallery @ Northwest Film Forum
In National Gallery, the great Frederick Wiseman points his camera at scenes in a major London museum. As with his other documentaries, Wiseman humanizes the institutional process. We feel, in the details of the gallery, the life of humans—their eyes, their art, their movements, their sitting, their listening, their silent thoughts. There is no explanation for this documentary, no obvious goals, nor a narrator to guide us. We just watch and listen. Also, National Gallery is Wiseman’s most beautiful documentary since La Danse, which is about the Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris. CHARLES MUDEDE