In the slightly disjointed and slightly bedraggled piece I wrote the day after returning from Art Basel Miami Beach last week, I called out Scott Lawrimore as a master impresario whose installation at the Aqua hotel ruled the day.

Yesterday, Lawrimore sent out images of said installation, complete with the bar he lugged down to Miami and stood behind, serving drinks and changing videos (showing under the bar's glass top); connective "n" sculptures by Cris Bruch, and the closet mess that accompanied Charles LaBelle's gritty LA street photo and found video. Since folks near and far have been asking me for images from some of the Miami installations (I only have images of works from galleries!), I thought I'd at least post these.

It'll be like you were there ...

That last one is a view of the Lead Pencil Studio video from their summer installation Maryhill Double, which I've written about extensively and which was a large part of why we gave Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo this year's Visual Art Genius Award. It's worth pointing out that MAN (blogger Tyler Green) is head over heels for these two Squire Parkers.

On that subject, I couldn't agree more with him. And as Betsey over at Hankblog pointed out, I couldn't disagree more with him on the subject of the "Red Eye" exhibition of LA art at the Rubell Collection in Miami. Peter Schjeldahl agreed with me in a piece The New Yorker put out yesterday. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't understand several of Schjeldahl's other conclusions (can someone please explain "money, like virtue, is as it does" and "I disliked the nineties. ... I missed the erotic clarity of commerce—I give you this, you give me that—and was glad when creative spunk started leeching back into unashamedly pleasurable forms. Then came this art-industrial frenzy, which turns mere art lovers into gawking street urchins. Drat"?).

Another Miami shout-out coming up.

If Oscar buzz is giving you tinnitus, it's often restorative to consider the noxious filth that was released to American movie screens in the past year.

Remember, as the editor of The Stranger's film section, I get to assign myself reviews. Therefore, I have probably avoided the very worst movies of the year. But I still managed to expose myself to ten movies I wouldn't advise my parents' deaf dog to see. They are, in descending order of evil:

1) What the Bleep?: Down the Rabbit Hole: STRANGLING NEWBORN BABY KITTENS EVIL (original review here)

2) Deck the Halls: BILIOUS VOMITOUS EVIL (original review here)

3) Wicker Man: OK, I actually haven't seen this one, but I believe Lindy West—NEIL LAPUKE EVIL

4) Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus: SLIMY HAIRBALL EVIL (original review here)

5) Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School: FLOURY COITUS EVIL (original review here)

6) Keeping Mum: VINYL THONG-WEARING FAKE-BAKED PATRICK SWAYZE EVIL (original review here)

7) Expiration Date: Local, but I'm sorry, CRINGE-INDUCING EVIL (hidden in Film Shorts here)

8) For Your Consideration: CRIMINALLY UNFUNNY EVIL AND CATHERINE O'HARA DOES NOT DESERVE AN OSCAR FOR APPEARING ON SCREEN WITH A BLOATED FACE EVIL (original review here)

9) School for Scoundrels: SCROTAL MASOCHISM EVIL (original review here)

10) Fast Food Nation: UNFORTUNATE INEPTITUDE EVIL (original review here)

Who saw John Tucker Must Die? Material Girls? One Night With the King? Does anything approach the evil of a science-distorting reincarnated Lemurian warrior?

Any Koreans—or Korea scholars—out there willing to explain the "ajumma" phenomenon to me? That is, apparently, one of the terribly offensive elements of the sketch comedy show, put on by Americans living in Busan, South Korea, that has gotten them in trouble with the law. (See yesterday's Slog post for the full story.)

The English teachers-cum-amateur thespians violated their visas by charging money for a small comedy show they put together—but that seems a minor infraction in proportion to the reaction of the Korean police (interrogation, drug testing, threats to fine and/or deport the offenders). Seems like the comedy—"ajumma," from what I can tell, seems to be some kind of middle-aged woman—hit a nerve. But, not knowing from Korea, I don't get the joke.

The online discussion pages among expats (like this one at Dave's ESL Cafe, which includes a newspaper report) indicate some nastiness in the comedy—as well as a strain of expat cultural relativism taken to a sad extreme: "You know, I don't doubt that the police were called because of the content, but I don't blame them." Yeesh. (As my Southern momma used to say: "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.")

Anyway: Who the fuck are the ajumma and how'd those cows get so sacred?

Over in The Stranger's book section, we don't really bang the drums NYT-style about "the best books of the year" and nonsense like that. (True, the current issue of a certain fashion magazine has me on record calling Charles D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum is the best short story collection of the year [it's true!].) But! Everyone's favorite reviewer-of-books/crasher-of-parties Paul Constant has come down with a verdict on the best book he read all year—and it isn't on that NYT list. It came out in hardback in January and it just came out in paperback, and... well, take it away, Paul:

I had no idea that this book was so good when it was released at the beginning of the year, and I'm so happy that I read it in December so that I can declare it the best thing I read in 2006.

The book is called The People's Act of Love. Yeah, the title sucks. You don't get cannibalism, a cult of castrates, or a silent assassin from that title. Constant's review is right here.

...and if you have the slightest inclination to see some theater this holiday, read this first. It's a very, very funny round-up of all the Christmas plays a'playing in Seattle right now, edited by the very funny(-looking) Brendan Kiley and featuring this newspaper's funniest writers (including its abosolute, bar-none funniest).

I just got this email from Chris Tharp, who once lived in Seattle and was part of the Piece of Meat Theater¹ and has been working as an English teacher in Busan, South Korea for the past two and a half years. Now Tharp and some other teachers are in trouble with the law over a sketch comedy show:

Since I've been over here, I've done a little performing in the expat community in this city. Two weeks ago, I produced a comedy show called Babo-Palooza! (babo means "idiot" or "fool" in Korean). We sold out two nights in a small theater where we took the piss out of ourselves and Korea as well, complete with fake puke and on onstage pissing (I tried infuse it with a bit of the old Piece of Meat aesthetic.)

The show was a big hit. People laughed hard and loud.

However...

This week, all of us involved with the show were detained by the local police. They had sent a couple of undercover detectives to watch the show. We were questioned for two hours, drug tested, and fingerprinted. They are accusing of breaking the law by violating our visas and not getting permission to perform the show. They are using this as a pretext to go after us because they were offended by some of the content.

Several of us are now facing large fines and deportation. The story is blowing up all over the Korean press—it's making the major papers and websites. Korea purports to be a democracy with free speech, and yet they are rounding up foreigners for the crime of performing a weekend comedy show.

Here's the story from the Korea Herald (where we learn, among other things, that the supposedly illegal, visa-violating comedians had applied for a city arts grant to offset costs).

Updates (hopefully) forthcoming.

1. Piece of Meat made extremely physical, dark, and gritty theater about desperate characters: moonshiners, drug dealers, hippie losers. They also used to walk around Bumbershoot half-naked, wrapped in bloody, muddy bedsheets, carrying rubber snakes, and canting out shitty spoken word. They had the audacity to call themselves buskers and ask for money. Seattle audiences had the idiocy to cough it up. My favorite Piece piece was The Still, which was in some tiny theater I can't even remember, and involved a fight scene involving cast iron skillets. Here is a review of one of their shows by sometime Stranger arts editor Eric Fredericksen.

Theater director held for robbery:

[He] is accused of robbing banks in Germantown, Md., on Sept. 17, Mountain Home, Idaho, on July 17, and the Washington Mutual Bank in Gold Hill on July 6. In all three robberies the robber passed a note implying he had a gun, and left with cash. Less than $1,500 was taken in the Gold Hill robbery.

He was a faithful theater artist to the end—always dealing in small sums.

(ALTERNA-CARTOONISTS) Two of Seattle's most beloved and accomplished cartoonists light up Georgetown's brand-new Fantagraphics Bookstore: Peter Bagge will screen rarely seen animated shorts produced by Sub Pop and MTV, and Ellen Forney will present her multimedia performance of I Love Led Zeppelin. Everyone will have a good time. (Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery, 1201 S Vale St, 658-0110. 6 pm, free.) DAVID SCHMADER

Um, I'm just going to point out that there are only three hours left in the Strangercrombie bidding and the So You Wanna Be a Writer package is only at $187.50. Gary Shteyngart, one of the, I dunno, five or six writers in America whose books are both praised to the skies by the literary establishment and bestsellers? He's like our Amis, or our Zadie Smith, or Amis and Smith stirred together, covered in butter, and baked in a piroshki. He'll read your short story (or 3,000 words of your novel) and give you his feedback—in writing! (Which writing itself is worth something!) Plus, a free class at Richard Hugo House, maybe Lyall Bush's upcoming one on Joyce? Plus a gift certificate to Epilogue Books? Plus a CD of literaryish sea shanties? Plus a case of Solaris wine, to drink yourself to death with?

(You don't know who Shteynhart is? You don't read The New Yorker? OK, here's the New York Times describing Shteyngart's latest novel as "burstingly sure of its barbaric excellence." Here is Shteyngart giving a reading and talk at The New Yorker festival two months ago. Here he is in an interview talking about the best novel he's read in a long time—The Sopranos on HBO. "It's amazing. It's like Flaubert or something...except it's obviously a television series.")

Anyway, there is no greater gift in the world for that aspiring-writer-who-has-everything on your list. Or for yourself. And right now it's cheap. Just sayin'.

(HILARITY) Roscoe is a boy inventor straight out of an Encyclopedia Brown book. His dog Scampers can talk. The two of them upset history by drunkenly driving a Timecycle through the past, accidentally killing Abe Lincoln, and causing a randy zebra to bugger the baby Jesus to death. It's horrible; it's wonderful. (Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave S, 800-838-3006. 8 pm, $14.) BRENDAN KILEY

The hotly anticipated film adaptation of Alan Bennett's The History Boys is here, complete with sexy boys (and one fat one), skinny ties (and one bow one), and a soundtrack full of New Wave classics (and two quavery renditions of "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"). Performance editor Brendan Kiley makes the audacious claim that "the best movie of the year is actually a play." How very heterosexual of you, Brendan.

Charlotte's Web is opening this week, and while it isn't a perfect movie, it does feature the adorable illustrations of Seattle artist and Stranger illustrator Kathryn Rathke. Here is one of her sheep:

Or perhaps you'd prefer the tragic tale of a Christian indie rocker overtaken by his glamorous protegé Sufjan Stevens. (By bizarre coincidence, Stranger news reporter Angela Valdez is featured in this documentary interviewing Stevens. You may not recognize her, however; Angela describes this phase of her life as the time "before I learned to be a girl.") Sean Nelson loves Danielson: A Family Movie to pieces here. (Plays at Northwest Film Forum for one week only.)

The final installment of Northwest Film Forum's Béla Tarr series is Werckmeister Harmonies, a strange and wonderful fake allegory about a prince and a whale and the stars. Very beautiful. It plays through Sunday.

Also opening: The kiddie fantasy movie Eragon (bleh, says Andrew Wright); Will Smith and his cute son Jaden in The Pursuit of Happyness (bleh, says Brendan); and Unknown (nifty (scroll down), says Andrew Wright).

_______________________

Check out even more reviews in The Stranger's Film Shorts, including the amusing Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds (I feel dirty just typing that), It's a Wonderful Life, and Santa Smokes.

And as always, our carefully compiled, lovingly updated Movie Times. You should probably call ahead to make sure the theater has power.

It takes a certain kind of person to derive pleasure out of people misusing "literally." (I am one of those people. As is Sean Nelson. Eli Sanders dissents via Slate.) That Lincoln one—the first link there—remains my favorite, although I just got a great one in my inbox, from a publicist of Anthony Swofford's second book, Exit A. (His first book was Jarhead, which later became a movie.)

In the middle of offering several story ideas, the publicist writes:

He was literally a small fry in the book world when JARHEAD came out...

Now please enjoy this picture of Swofford, followed by a picture of fries:

You know, there is a resemblance.

(CLOSING PARTY) Henry Art Gallery's exhibit on the work of Stranger Genius Award winners over the past four years is closing. To celebrate the departure of the riffraff, they're throwing a big party, packed to the rafters with performance (Sarah Rudinoff! Gabriel Baron!), dance (Velocity Dance Center!), art (SuttonBeresCuller! Susan Robb!), and a ritual "defacing" hosted by the exhibition's literary curator Matthew Stadler (and Rebecca Brown!). (Henry Art Gallery, 15th Ave NE & NE 41st St, 543-2280, 7-10 pm, $5.) ANNIE WAGNER

(LOCAL HIPHOP EXPO) It's common for the best hiphop produced in this city to be the hardest hiphop to find. Specs One's self-released EPs and his work with FOSCIL, BeanOne's volcanic creations with a variety of local rappers, and Silas Blak's 1986 are but a few examples of this unfortunate state of things. (Oldominion alone has a galaxy of hard-to-find CD releases.) What Dope Emporium offers, along with live performances from the best of the best, is an opportunity to access rare but excellent rap directly. It makes it easy for you to support local hiphop. Peace. (CHAC, 1621 12th Ave, 388-0500. Merchants tables at 6 pm, performances at 8 pm, free, all ages, cocktails for 21+ in CHAC lounge.) CHARLES MUDEDE

Since everybody's talking today about the non-figure released from various news outlets about total sales at the main fair in Miami, Art Basel Miami Beach—$200 million to $400 million, provided by sketchy unnamed sources (who couldn't even be specific!) and not by the fair's organizers, who are staying mum on the numbers—I thought I'd provide at least one cold, hard, happy-making number coming out of Miami.

The non-profit SOIL artist collective, based in Pioneer Square and represented at Aqua Art Miami, sold $43,000 worth of art down there, according to a newsletter sent out to the members late last night. Because SOIL is a collective that runs on dues, the gallery itself doesn't get a cut of the sales. The artists made the money.

Last year, SOIL only did $14,000 in sales, and members were thrilled. (Check the podcast.) For members, it's too bad that SOIL isn't invited to be part of Aqua next year. The fair has to turn over to be fresh.

Congratulations to all the artists whose works found homes, including Claire Johnson, Satomi Jin, Isaac Layman, Susie Lee, Buddy Bunting, and probably plenty more. Now you can turn back on your heat.

UPDATE: I lied. SOIL gets 15 percent of the sales.

Or does it look more like a halfhearted commission?

I'm reserving judgment until Bourgeois's male nude fountain (drawing here) is finished at the Olympic Sculpture Park next month, but this photograph of the father-and-son figures from her studio doesn't look promising. The figures are stiff, undistinguished, and utterly unpathological. Considering Bourgeois's legendary loathing of her father and fixation on her mother, she's a strange choice for this commission. And now that the men appear to be so neutral? I hate to even ask, but could it be that the nonagenarian artist isn't, well, terribly invested in this piece?

We'll see.

I second Josh's endorsement of Mutual Appreciation, though I wish there were more establishing shots—you get claustrophobic enough being so shoved into puny twentyish worldviews. Josh and I both loved the Patricia character. That's her smirking on the left:

Also notable: The avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison has a long cameo as the used-to-be-connected lunkish friend of the main character's father.

Here is a still from Bill Morrison's beautiful movie about floods and whiteness (The Highwater Trilogy):

On Sunday night, bored out of my mind, I perused the movie reviews, and despite this paper's tepid write up, I went and saw the 9 pm show of Mutual Appreciation at NWFF.

I went back again last night. Because. It's great.

I dragged Stranger film editor Annie Wagner along with because she's a brain about movies, and I wanted to see what she thought about it. I was having trouble figuring out why I liked it so damn much. Annie liked it too and offered this fitting capsule: "You're at the rock show."

Yes, you are! (There's a rock club scene in the movie that tops the famous Yardbirds scene in Blow Up or even the great Crime and the City Solution performance in Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire.)

And more important: You're on the couch, in the kitchen, in the car, on the phone, at strange parties, in the rumpled beds, and alone with the characters at all times. And mostly, in their faltering, hopeful, 5-D conversations.

Mutual Appreciation is a low-fi, DIY movie: black and white, 16mm, and obviously shot on location in a bunch of Brooklyn kids' apartments, at their jobs, and favorite bars. It "stars" an ensemble of the filmmaker's pals and the filmmaker, Andrew Bujalski, himself. Bujalski's previous movie—I haven't seen it—was apparently a similarly low-fi movie called Funny Ha Ha.

Thanks to the (improv?) real-time, realistic dialogue, the movie is winning comparisons to Cassavetes films. (I'd say it's Cassavetes shot through a PlaySkool Pixelvision!)

This might all sound a bit pretentious, but it's not a pretentious movie at all. And really, unlike Cassavetes, the movie doesn't try to hype its ambiguity with a sullen or pensive mood. It's kind of buoyant, actually. And rather than trying to turn the minimalist conversations into meaningful contemporary poems, the script is elevated instead through the idealism that peeks through these kids' slow-motion poses.

This is particularly the case for the lead girl character—Ellie, who's caught up in a floating-in-limbo flirtation with her boyfriend's longtime best friend, Alan. Ellie's persistent attempts to bring clarity to the whole situation by pushing it, rejecting it, and eventually trying to make sense out of her relationship with her kind (on paper, anyway) beau, are undermined by the other characters' languid and charming defense mechanisms.

Her moves are also tangled up in the litter of entertaining, oddball subplots. The non-theater-theater project being awkwardly organized by a mysterious woman named Patricia, for example, starts out as a hilarious bit that ultimately finds its way into the sad confrontation between Ellie and her boyfriend.

Anyway, 3 Cheers to NWFF for bringing this indie gem to Seattle. Everyone should see it. I'm going again. It's playing—shows at 7pm and 9pm—thru Thursday night.

I have always been a little ambivalent about Salman Rushdie. Would he really have been all that without the fatwa? Anyway, who knew he was such a player? Page Six, which has called him the Butterscotch Stallion, has this story on how he helps his son pick up chicks. Junior also thought the fatwa was cool.

Casino Royale (ESCAPISM) I closed my eyes during one of the two torture scenes in this film and therefore cannot review the entire work for its artistic merit. But! It's a movie so packed with plot twists, exotic locales, runaway gas trucks, and machete fights in casino stairwells that by the time everyone's dead except Bond, I could only vaguely recall what got them all in trouble anyway. Were there really Liberian freedom fighters in this film? (See Movie Times for more info.) SARAH MIRK

So I spent last weekend in Miami looking at acres and acres of art, and I'll be putting up sometime posts on artists I got hooked on down there. I'll start local: Isaac Layman and Claude Zervas, both of Seattle. In Miami, both were at the Aqua fair, Layman at SOIL and Zervas at James Harris.

I first saw Layman's bookcase photograph in SOIL's photography survey a few months ago. It is a digital pile of images, but also a portrait arranged physically, a face with as much outward presence and inward mystery as any person's (what are the subjects of these books? why are they turned away?). And then the digital sewing begins to show. There are seams everywhere, and once you spot one, you spot them all. Does this make things fall apart or come together? Not clear. Layman doesn't have gallery representation—yet—and I'm not sure when he'll have a show locally, but I'll keep you posted. Can't wait to see more of him.

Claude Zervas has been around for a while, and done photography, more traditional (and even humorous) sculpture, and probably other mediums that I'm not even aware of. But it feels like he has come fully into his own with these light sculptures that glow and dangle and drag and are named and molded after natural Northwestern occurrences such as rivers, pasages, shoals, and nudibranches (a kind of mollusk) (can you guess which above is which?).

The delicacy and commitment to white are affecting. In Nooksack (third down), referring to the Nooksack River and in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, Zervas lays the cords down unpreciously, but they do draw the basic curves of a river's ripples, or of the way it might meet land. The less determinate light coming from the pieces with slowly blinking LEDs is mesmerizing. Like Richard Tuttle's wire drawings or Eva Hesse's fleshy, dangling sculptures, Zervas's pieces have the feeling of utter contingency.

Stellina (LUNCH) The other day I ventured over to Stellina and had a curry vegetable potpie—less a potpie and more a bowl of vegetables in curry with a pastry hat. Delicious. The guys sitting next to me were real-estate businessmen who took off their hardhats as they sat down. That noise? The construction next door. The view? Another construction site across the street. The catch? Stellina's only open for breakfast and lunch—for now. (Stellina, 1429 12th Ave, 322-2688, 8 am—5 pm, closed Sundays.) CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

This charming little Moroccan landscape by Winston Churchill sold for the hefty sum of 612,500 pounds ($1.19 million) at Sotheby's yesterday.

The third movement of the third chapter of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets ,"Dry Salvages," comes to end with this:

"O voyagers, O seamen, You who came to port, and you whose bodies Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea, Or whatever event, this is your real destination.' So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna On the field of battle. Not fare well, But fare forward, voyagers.

The passage references the main section of the "Bhagavad Gita," which is part of the epic poem Mahabharata. In this section, two prominent families are on the battlefield, ready to fight over the throne. On one side, is the archer Arjuna and his army; on the other side, the enemy, the Karavas. Before giving the command for the battle to start, Arjuna looks across the battlefield, sees his relatives, people he has grown up with, on both sides of the war, and begins to wonder if the battle (if the fight for power and glory) makes any sense: What good can come out of brothers killing brothers? Krishna, disguised as Arjuna's chariot driver, sees the archer is in a moment of doubt and begins giving him advice. The advice turns out to be bad advice.

Krishna points out the Arjuna is a soldier and so it is his job, his karma, to fight. Not to fight is to go against his nature, his duty to his nature. Krishna also points out that Arjuna must act. He is in the world, and world demands action. Worst of all, Krishna tells Arjuna that the men about to kill each other on the battlefield are inconsequential; they are only the masks of reality and not reality itself. What is final is God, the all, the substance of reality, and not its manifestations, humans.

Arjuna was right to hesitate and recognize the waste of human life that his command would cause. His hesitation was human hesitation--only a considerate human could recognize the seriousness of the situation and provide it with serious thought. Arjuna was thinking forward, thinking about what matters most to the present, the future. In that moment of doubt, Arjuna was pro-life, pro-human.

Which brings me to the poem "Dry Salvages." Why does Eliot repeat Krishna's bad advice in the modern world of "periodicals and business letters"? Ancient Krishna was not looking forward but backward. His was a world dominated by forces outside of the world of human experience. Humans were mere victims of what Hegel would call "the cunning of history." Eliot studied Eastern philosophy and so very well knew the substance of Krishna's advice: The actual world has no real value, individuals are just illusions, death is an illusion that dissolves an illusion, and a man must act not in his own, particular interest but in the interest of the universal mind. Krishna was anti-human, anti-life.

There are sites in cyberspace that transport visitors back to medieval times--to the age of kings, bishops, and knights. The prototype of this virtual technology is surely Eliot's Four Quartets: By means of modern English, he sent readers back to a time when God (Brahmin, the prime mover unmoved) dominated the past and the future and society was obedient, managed by strict customs, and properly cemented (serfs, church, castle). Eliot hated humans.

Assuming that Jen and I aren't the only persons in our readership who care about opera, you can get even more of the scoop on Alagna's walkout at the fabulous new(ish) opera blog Opera Chic, whose tagline is "I'm a young American woman in Milan...and you're not. I go to La Scala a lot...and you don't."

She's got a sort of running log of all the events, from the prima, to the walkout, to the ensuing statements from Alagna ("I sang beautifully, I was bravissimo. Too bad for those who didn't understand."), to Alagna's little man syndrome (and his ridiculous platform shoes), to the Italian press' reaction, to the forthcoming lawsuits from La Scala and Alagna's record label, Decca.

You see, opera isn't antiquated or outdated. It's gossipy, nasty, hilarious, and pathetic—just like regular pop culture. There are sex scandals, terrifying autograph confrontations, stalking, bitchy queens, etc. I'm just waiting for the first operatic panty-less crotch flash.

I mean, srsly. Check out the nakedness, the codpiece, the lithe and nubile body of dancer Roberto Bolle. Oh, and yes—that is Donatella Versace (looking ever more like Jocelyn Wildenstein) and Rupert Everett (looking ever more his age). Ciel!

Never Swim Alone (THEATER) Two men—once childhood friends, now adult rivals pretending to be friends—face off in a game show broken into 13 rounds: "Power Lunch," "Business Ties," "Who Falls Dead the Best," etc. Their competition is scored and refereed by a young woman, a ghost from their shared past, and she takes unholy pleasure in announcing that one of these men has a gun. The acting is good and the script is great. This is what WET does best—tight, tense, and funny little plays that aren't boring. (Washington Ensemble Theatre, 608 19th Ave E, 800-838-3006, $10—$18, 8 pm.) BRENDAN KILEY

Love it.

Yes, I've been slogging this movie to death, but we like to see our annointed go on to worldwide domination.

James Longley, 2006 Stranger Genius in film, has won the best documentary prize at the IDA Awards for Iraq in Fragments. Congratulations!

You can't see the feature in Seattle any longer, but check out the Genius exhibit at the Henry, where Longley's short Sari's Mother is looping through this week.

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists

(MUSIC) Yes, the Juno reunion is exciting, but Ted Leo & the Pharmacists are a big part of this bill's appeal. Though adoration for the D.C.-based Leo has been spreading widely over the last few years, it wasn't until I caught him at the Touch and Go anniversary show in Chicago this year that I really understood how close this kid is to becoming a modern-day incarnation of Alex Chilton. With Juno, Junior Boys, and Cold War Kids. (Neumo's, 925 E Pike St, ticketswest.com, 7 pm, $20, all ages, balcony only.) HANNAH LEVIN

Van Smith, who created costumes and makeup for John Waters' films, and helped Divine refine her signature look, is dead at 61, reports The New York Times.

Mr. Waters had this to say in the Baltimore Sun obituary:

"Divine's look was totally Van's creation," Mr. Waters said yesterday, recalling that "he used portions of the film budget to buy an endless supply" of disposable razors to shave Divine's body.

He said that Mr. Smith "knew every thrift shop in Baltimore" as a source of costumes and that he swore by cheap cosmetics. Mr. Smith favored Maybelline Black Velvet eyeliner.

Mr. Waters said that his collaborator experimented with all sorts of fake breasts - including socks, rags, foam rubber and a bra filled with lentils. "Van thought the lentils were the best because they moved with Divine."

End of an Era (ART/BOOK) While Independent Curator Jess Van Nostrand's show at the Aqua Hotel in Miami this week represents members of SOIL Gallery during the art fair/megalopolis Art Basel Miami Beach, her last 20 exhibitions are being celebrated in a cozier way, at Joe Bar, over crepes and wine. Since 2004 at Joe Bar, Van Nostrand has done the hardest job in curating: nosing out talent without a stamp already on it. A tour of her choices—like Alice Tippit, Diem Chau, and Maija Fiebig—is on the walls, and there's even a full-color book out for the occasion. (Joe Bar, 810 E Roy St, 324-0407, free.) JEN GRAVES

As might be expected, I lurv, lurv, lurv Time Out New York's "Critiquing the Critics" feature this week, in which a panel of esteemed readers and artists bitch about and heap praise upon arts critics across the city. As the ever-loyal Carpetbagger points out, the TONY critics get ridiculously high scores, but at least the editors recognize that the polled artists might be flattering the hand that strokes them, and segregate the TONY critics from the regular rankings.

More hilarious: On an apparent 1-5 scale, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley gets a 5.1 score for "influence," with no comment. I mean, obviously he's the most influential theater critic in el mundo, but did he really break the scale?!

Nelson Sings Nilsson (MUSIC) In 1970, the popular singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson released Nilsson Sings Newman, an LP of songs by the less-popular singer/songwriter Randy Newman that introduced scores of listeners to the brilliance of the Newman songbook. Tonight singer/songwriter/Harvey Danger frontman Sean Nelson returns the favor with Nelson Sings Nilsson, a one-night-only evening of songs from the incomparable Harry Nilsson. Performed with a 24-piece orchestra and the band "Awesome," it's a win-win gimmick, drawing much-deserved attention to the Nilsson songbook while providing a most attractive setting for Nelson's simply lovely voice. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, brownpapertickets.com, 7 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages.) DAVID SCHMADER

Opening today: APOCALYPTO! Whatever you think of the man or the movie, that title suggests the best wanna-B movie since Snakes on a Plane. Brendan Kiley's take (bloodied thumb up!) is here. Behold:

Also in theaters: Blood Diamond (reviewed by Michael Atkinson), plus Driving Lessons (stupid, but okay), The Architect (smart, but bad), The Holiday (stupid, but Kate Winslet), Candy (smack, but Heath Ledger), Mutual Appreciation (Bujalski Buschmalski), Unaccompanied Minors (stupid, but stupid kids)—all reviewed here.

_______________________

The Stranger's Film Shorts (including a capsule review of Say I Do, a surprisingly good indie that's playing only at Lincoln Square in Bellevue, and the heads-up about tonight's Critics Wrap at the Frye Art Museum).

And our carefully compiled, lovingly updated Movie Times.

This video will only be funny to those familiar with R. Kelly's original 246-part hip-hopera "Trapped in the Closet," to whom it will be fucking hysterical. ("I said, 'What's this got to do with cupcakes?'")

Part one above, and here's part 2 and part 3.

Thanks to Zach Slow for the creation and Jake for the heads-up.

That beautiful rippled pencil sculpture reminds me of this project I saw in Craft magazine a few days ago.

Crafty math nerds at the "Institute for Figuring" are crocheting coral reefs, sea urchins and anenomes using hyperbolic prinicples.

Hott.

for this.

And yes, it is this guy singing.

It sure seems like it, doesn't it? We've written about it, Bumbershoot kills with it every year, and all of a sudden, major comedy acts seem to be touring in Seattle.

But, was this a national trend that had found a strong base in Seattle, or were we becoming producers in our own right? Producers we are, as proven by the Laffhole at CHAC Lower Level last night.

The event was completely sold out, if not oversold, and the first show appeared to also be a success (there were two, an all-ages event with a band at 8 and a 21+ show at 10 pm). This was unexpected, even though we posted about this event on slog yesterday. I had only heard one of the comedians before at the early show at Bumbershoot, and we don't have a comedy scene in Seattle, right?

Wrong! Every single comedian was funny, and each had a different style. Emmet Montgomery was a king of Steven Wright-style awkward straight faced delivery (Silliest joke of the night: "Did you ever notice that eyebrows and moustaches are just hair-hats for face-holes?"). Dan Moore delivered his jokes in a [pseudo?] southern accent that moseyed along until he launched into a falsetto to imitate children and preachers. The difference was jarring and hilarious.

Hari Kondabolu, the headliner, focused on making fun of the hypocrisy that is American culture and it's weird attitude towards people of color and immigrants, although his performance was almost certainly overshadowed by the appearance of 4 shirtless men who he proclaimed to be his adopted Finnish sons (and one of whom was our Hot Theater Intern, Tom. I repeat, Shirtless!).

In any case, I'm totally psyched for Laffhole. Even more so, I'm totally psyched for Seattle to have a comedy scene of quality. For people who kvetch as much as we do, I'm pretty sure we can find some humor in it.

You have two final chances to see Stranger Genius Award winner James Longley's Iraq in Fragments at the Crest: 6:45 and 9:10 pm tonight, for the sweet price of $3.

Today brings yet more Oscar buzz for this excellent locally-produced documentary—turns out that even though the National Board of Review picked Veep-backed juggernaut An Inconvenient Truth for the top prize in the doc category, Iraq in Fragments made the top five.

Phylicia Rashad (aka Mrs. Claire Huxtable) is coming to the Rep to make her directorial debut with August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean in April. On one hand, she's done a lot of theater—Broadway, Off-Broadway, Negro Ensemble Company, Lincoln Center—and she knows the play. Here's her as Aunt Esther:

On the other hand: her directing debut? On Gem of the Ocean—the production that will complete the Rep's 10-play Wilson cycle? Is this us being a provincial starfuckers, subordinating the play to the celebrity of the director? Or can she really do it?

I'm pulling for you, Mrs. Huxtable.

So I'm down here in the art capital of the world this weekend, Miami, and I'm walking through Museum of Contemporary Art Miami's Goldman warehouse space, where the show Artificial Light is up, when I realize the guards seem skittish. (This is about five minutes ago; I'm writing now sitting on the curb outside.)

I turn and see blue tape across the doorway into the piece I'm approaching. It's supposed to be a pitch-black room in which the only light is the purple neon of Chilean artist Iván Navarro's Black Electric Chairs—two chairs made entirely of neon tubing that reference utopic modernist design (they're based on the Wassily chair by Marcel Breuer) and punishment.

But instead I meet a guy standing just inside the tape, waiting for a trash can to be wheeled his way.

Because minutes before, an old lady tried sitting in one of the chairs. It shattered (maybe she did, too? she was nowhere to be found by the time I got there). When the man turned on the light before the doorway was boarded up, the piece lay in pieces on the black carpet next to the other chair.

A MOCA employee in a black cocktail dress began berating a guard who sounded like he was from an African country. He said he was doing his best.

"We're dealing with the situation," said the woman at the desk, and diverted me to MOCA's other location, where the Bruce Nauman show is up that's coming to the Henry next month.

Funny aside: yesterday at the main fair, Art Basel Miami Beach, I saw one of Craig Kauffman's orange transparent vacuum-formed wall pieces—the same piece (though a different one) that mysteriously broke earlier this year at the Pompidou. And you think your work is safe in a museum ...

I wish I'd been able to ask the old woman who sat in the chair what she was thinking. Was she hurt? What's her take on the piece now? Punishment, indeed. I imagine she thought the artist intended her to sit, even though the piece is overwhelmingly visual—the neon refuses to come into focus, recommending the chair to the eye rather than the body.

Then again: You have no idea what our feet are dealing with here. There are miles and miles and miles of galleries and art to see. This accidental vandalism constitutes the protest of an exhausted fairgoer! Who knew Pinochet and Art Basel Miami Beach would come together this way?

Poor MOCA. The showjust opened this morning, and its breakout piece is Growth (Survival) (2006) by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. It's a staghorn fern hanging in the middle of a dark room, relying for light on a row of ladders of lit messages by Jenny Holzer. Not only is it a terrific spectacle and a touching piece of work, it got me thinking it might spawn a whole new genre of recombinant art—art where artists use whole pre-existing works to create new work. I don't mean reproductions or collaborations or really even refashionings. I mean original works with original works, aura y aura. A real response from the art world to mashups.

I realize that those of you in Seattle can't see Artificial Light today. But as blogger Tyler Green has pointed out, it's basically the same show as Into Black at Western Bridge in Seattle, so head on down there. (Call first; the director is here, so I don't know about open hours.)

And now for more art ...