The Grand Illusion presents a night jam-packed with campy holiday delights. At 7 p.m., San Francisco’s Oddball Film + Video presents Christmas Mess, a 90-minute montage of films capturing the shamelessly commercialized nightmare of Jesus’s birthday. At 9 p.m., Scarecrow Video presents VHSXMAS II, a collection of rare Christmas footage—commercials, cartoons, montages, musical numbers—all drawn from Scarecrow’s VHS archives. At 11 p.m., Oddball returns with The Subject Is Sex, a 16 mm tour of cartoon smut, hygiene films, hillbilly porn, and “burlesque bits.” (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, grandillusioncinema.org, 7 pm, $8 per film)
David Schmader—former weed columnist and Stranger associate editor—is the author of the solo plays Straight and Letter to Axl, which he’s performed in Seattle and across the US. His latest... More by David Schmader