(COMEDY) Jacqueline Novak's comedy show Get on Your Knees is about blowjobs. But if dozens of critics, and Novak's comedy peers are to be believed, that's just the tip...

Very popular British psychedelic-glam-rock trio Love and Rockets have no natural frontman and offer very little stage banter and showmanship. So it's a testament to the power of their music that crowd reactions at the Moore Theatre on Sunday night were often as loud as Daniel Ash's piercing guitar flourishes.

A trio with the enviable lineup stability of ZZ Top and Rush, Love and Rockets are back in the business of peddling nostalgia to (mainly) Gen Xers and Boomers. These guys engaged in similar machinations with goth-rock pioneers Bauhaus last year, and it was wonderful.

Wake up, bestie...a new batch of EverOut's top picks has dropped, with events from The National to The Cure and from Bagel Trot to Rosé Reunion: Calexico, Violet Chachki, and More.

TUESDAY

READINGS & TALKS

Justine Chan presents Should You Lose All Reason(s)
Chicago-born poet and former Zion National Park ranger Justine Chan will celebrate the release of her new tome, Should You Lose All Reason(s), which finds resonance with a Southern Paiute folktale to explore race, loneliness, landscape, and more. LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Third Place Books, Seward Park)

Seattle postal workers rally amid national union negotiations: "Dozens" showed up at Westlake Park Monday to show solidarity with mail carriers who've been negotiating a new contract since February, according to the Seattle Times. Workers are struggling with high turnover, long hours, and the postal services paying to settle contract violation grievances without improving conditions. For this post I looked up some "fun facts" about the post office, and the official site includes a note about how people can send bricks through the mail. Honestly, I hope they negotiate getting that taken down. Support your local postal worker, don't SeNd A bRicK!

Seven youths broke out of Echo Glenn's Children's Center: The King County Sheriff's Office continues to search for four of the kids, but law enforcement caught three of the kids in Burien Sunday afternoon, according to KIRO 7. The kids escaped from the youth prison in Snoqualmie earlier in the day Sunday. Weird time to mention it, but I wrote a story about juvenile justice Friday. Not a weird time to mention Echo Glenn's 2021 PREA report showing two cases of staff sexual misconduct against youth.

I’ve had a successful career as an artist and thousands follow my professional accounts on social media. My followers think they know me, but I am living a secret double life. What I’ve kept hidden is that I’m bisexual. I have hidden this fact from everyone: from my followers, from my family, and from the three ladies who married me believing I was the straight guy I pretended to be. All my marriages failed, ending in divorce with no children produced, thank God, and my ex-wives all went on to find real men who could father their children.

In 2016, knowing my success and investments meant I could live comfortably for the rest of my life, I quit my career in the arts and fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a hardcore gay porn slut. (“Slut” fits me much more closely than does “actor,” since what I do on camera is not an “act.”) I truly love the hot sex I've had with Alpha Males in the 250ish videos I've starred in so far. Truly, my only regret is not doing porn much sooner in my life, as I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.

Question: Should I continue pretending to be straight and keep the people who still follow me on Facebook and Instagram in the dark? Or should they be advised to google my full and actual birth name and the word “porn” so they can see the real me? (My full legal name and my professional name — as both an artist and porn slut — are the same.) I don’t want anyone’s life to be negatively impacted should it become known they follow a person who appears in hardcore porn and does things most people would regard as offensive and grotesque. It seems best that followers who are interested in my art be advised to google me so they are aware of what I am doing now and can unfollow me if they wish.

If you want to include my full legal name in your column, I’ll most likely say yes. And please feel free to give me hell because I understand the things I let men do to me are vile and disgusting.

[Full Legal Name Redacted]

I have no desire to publish your name...

Click here to read the rest of this week's Mini Savage Love (free-to-all).

Ethan Murrow is a Boston-based artist whose work examines historical narratives and absurdist landscapes in search of beauty, perseverance, and the value of optimism. He is a Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University where he specializes in Drawing and site-specific projects. In our interview, we talk about the nuances of various mediums, his great attention to detail, and the unwavering spirit of his fictional characters.

Let’s start with mediums, what are your primary tools and substrates?

(MUSIC/HISTORY) Queen Latifah, Lil' Kim, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte—even casual hip-hop fans can agree that women have played an integral role in hip-hop's history. My Mic Sounds Nice: Hip-Hop Feminism in History, curated by Adeerya Johnson, is a new and small but mighty collection of...

(FOOD) You read that right. At the Flora Bakehouse—Cafe Flora's perfect little bakery in Beacon Hill—you can get a golden, flaky croissant FILLED WITH...

(MUSIC) Karl Blau's 2022 release Love & Harm is the perfect record for these not-quite-summer days. It's warm, nostalgic, and beaming with Jon Hyde's pedal steel, which sounds simultaneously bittersweet and hopeful, like...

NEW OPENINGS AND RETURNS

Howdy Bagel
Husbands Jake Carter and Daniel Blagovich will open their long-awaited brick-and-mortar bagel shop Howdy Bagel in Tacoma at 7 am on Tuesday, May 30. After perfecting their bagel recipe in early 2021, the couple originally started their business as a subscription service and pop-up in West Seattle before moving to Tacoma that summer. Their bagels are hand-rolled, long-fermented, boiled, and baked, resulting in a soft, chewy final product with a glossy, crispy exterior. I've been lucky enough to try some of their bagels in the past and can confirm they're among the best I've had in the greater Seattle area—they're particularly good slathered with the "cowboy spice" schmear, with slow-cooked tomato jam, adobo chili peppers, and jalapeños for just the right kick of spice. I also love their cheeky gay logo, which is designed by Austin-based artist Keith Davis Young and features a nude male cowboy pinup in a hat and boots kicking back inside a bagel.
Tacoma
Pickup, dine-in

She stood on the sidewalk along a street that ran into a deep-green park. I was on a slow-moving train heading to Seattle from Vancouver B.C.. The location: Burnaby. The time: 6:02 pm, the 11th day of the present month. The sun: Beginning its last three hours in a sky that's gathering clouds. Then she did something that utterly baffled me. She waved at me. My first thought out of bafflement: She must be having a nervous breakdown and the passing train lifted her spirits a little. I waved back at her. My hand said: "I hope you get better. Things are not always as bad as they seem."

But then a kilometer or so down the track, a man walking a trail between a Burnaby park and the railroad's gravel, waved at me. Was he, too, having a nervous breakdown? Then another person waved, and another, and another. At this point, I had to abandon the nervous condition assumption. These people were just waving at the train. Maybe this was a Canadian thing? Canadians are famously friendly. You get the idea.

In a couple messy and shallow articles published several weeks ago, KUOW and the Seattle Times Editorial Board laid into King County programs designed to stop gun violence and to divert youth away from jail. Basically, the outlets argue that the county lost track of the programs, that the programs employ dangerous people, and that probation officers ran better youth diversion operations. 

However, both pieces lacked an honest assessment of the previous program’s failures as well as a clear understanding of the programs they critiqued–as the three corrections to the KUOW story attest. 

(MUSIC) Peer Pressure, the folks behind Frog Rave, want you to join them for a devilish pre-pride bash at Orient Express this Saturday: Love the Sinner, Love the Sin. I profiled the queer-friendly rave collective earlier this month and they're...

Nabihah Iqbal, “Dreamer” (Ninja Tune)

Everybody's initial pandemic months were rough, but London-based musician Nabihah Iqbal's were rougher than most. In early 2020, a burglar ransacked her studio and absconded with the follow-up album to her 2017 debut LP, Weighing of the Heart. This was in addition to her broken hand and mental burnout. Then, as police were assessing the damage, she found out that her grandfather in Karachi, Pakistan had suffered a brain hemorrhage. So she flew out to see her grandparents the next day. 

Away from the crime scene, Iqbal recalibrated. She bought an acoustic guitar and a harmonium and rebuilt her sophomore full-length from the ground up. The result is Dreamer, an enchanting hybrid of electronic dance music, atmospheric shoegaze rock, heart-on-sleeve balladry, and New Order worship. Regarding the latter, “This World Couldn't See Us”—with its massive, punchy beats, Peter Hook-y bass line, pastel, melancholy keyboard motif, and Iqbal's passionately deadpan vocals—is basically mid-'80s New Order recast as a sweeping, female-empowerment anthem.