Mormons are totally fascinating. To wit: the success of Jon Krakauer's true-crime book Under the Banner of Heaven and Mitt Romney's entire political career. Tonight, Ebershoff reads from his newest novel, a sweeping epic called The 19th Wife. Ebershoff will hold forth on his years of research into topics like how fucked up Brigham Young really was and what the deal is with those magical Mormon underpants. (Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333. 7 pm, free.)

Although he proclaims Hegel as his ultimate hero, iek, the most popular philosopher of our time, has a mode much closer to Nietzsche. Hegel's work is all about ancient labor, Nietzsche's is all about modern dancing. Žižek philosophizes like a dancer, and he writes the way he talks: fast and funny. You almost never understand how all his thoughts fit together, but you are always entertained by the way he picks up this or that thing, analyzes it, and then drops it. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. 7:30 pm, $5.)

Tonight's concert marks the final night of the Dead Science's weeklong Festival of Culture to celebrate their new album, Villainaire. A week sounds like an excessive party, but it's appropriate for the album's treatises on decadent excess (and time and morality and the Wu-Tang Clan). Conceptual stunts aside, the Dead Science are at the height of their musical superpowers on Villainaire, and their live show is bound to be a spectacle of sophisticated rock bombast and avant jazz prowess. With allies Past Lives and Talbot Tagora. (Neumo's, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467. 8 pm, $7, all ages.)

Just in time to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Prague Spring comes this charming adaptation of the charming 1971 novel by Bohumil Hrabal, one of the great writers (along with Kundera, Havel, and Skvorecky) of that hopeful, doomed era. I Served the King is a gallows- humor comedy about a young man who just wants to own a fancy hotel and make sweet, sweet love to pretty young ladies. He is constantly battered by the forces of Czech history—Nazis, Communists—but never loses his light, scheming spirit. (See movie times, www .thestranger.com, for details.)

Magic Wheels is a black motorcycle club founded in 1974 in South Los Angeles by five young men who started riding motorcycles because gas was too expensive. The Seattle chapter, based in Georgetown, was founded in 1977. For one day only, it's opening its clubhouse as a fundraiser for Hot Grits, a new rock musical about four black women who form a punk band. Hot Grits will play, along with some other bands. Wieners and grits will be served. Go. (Magic Wheels Clubhouse, 5901 Airport Way S, www.myspace.com/dirtygirlprojects. 3–7:30 pm, $10 at the door, 21+.)

Every drag fan remembers the moment they fell in love with Miss Coco Peru. For many, it was her show-stopping bathroom monologue in the hit flick Trick ("It BURRRRNS!"). For me, it was the moment she laid back for the first of a couple erotic abortions in the camp classic Girls Will Be Girls. Tonight and tomorrow, Coco makes her Seattle debut at Re-bar, with a greatest-hits show culled from her decade-plus of exem- plary dragging. (Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, www .brownpapertickets.com. 8 pm, $25, 21+.)

For reasons nobody can explain, Seattle produces a disproportionate number of excellent solo performers. Two of them—Mike Daisey and Reggie Watts—will address Town Hall this evening, answering rarely articulated FAQs: Why am I here? What's the point? What's wrong with me? Reggie Watts is a beat-boxing marvel whose extemporaneous comedy sounds like an anthropologist from Alpha Centauri delivering a standup routine in Reno. Storyteller Mike Daisey rides two rails—tragic comedy and patriotic outrage—that identify him as a direct descendant of Mark Twain. Do not miss this performance. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 800-838-3006. 8 pm, $15–$18.)

Fools born after 1970 think westerns began and ended with Unforgiven, but there would be no Unforgiven—hell, there'd be no Clint Eastwood—without Liberty Valance's bracing ambiguity. Three of the greatest movie actors of all time push each other to some of the finest work of their careers, with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart playing against type as an oaf and a coward, respectively, and the always-brilliant Lee Marvin at his evilest. (Grand Illusion, 1403 NE 50th St, 523-3935. 6:30 and 8:45 pm, $8.)

The white guys and gals in the 1900s recall another ambitious Chicago rock band, the Fiery Furnaces, but without the proggy convolutions and dissonant keyboard embellishments. Rather, the 1900s generate a smoother brand of psych pop with more winsome melodies and amiable textures while avoiding obvious homage to their '60s forebears. The fact that the 1900s once served as a backing band for Belle & Sebastian member Stevie Jackson hints at their smart tunefulness—and at Jackson's fine taste in watermelon-sugary songcraft. (Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave NW, 784-4880. 9 pm, $7, 21+.)

Bumbershoot isn't even over yet, and there's a new festival to attend. To celebrate the release of their new album, Villainaire, the Dead Science are presenting The Villainaire Festival of Culture, a weeklong celebration including lectures, film, and art. It begins tonight with a dance party at Waid's, the underappreciated Haitian dance hall and restaurant. If the band's past dance nights are any indication, you can expect lots of Wu-Tang Clan, Prince, and crazy, drunken dancing. (Waid's Haitian Cuisine and Lounge, 1212 E Jefferson St, 328-6493. 9 pm, free, 21+.)

I know it's tempting to curl up and pretend that Bumbershoot doesn't exist—the crowds, the heat, the piles of fried rice you inevitably step in—but Bumbershoot is a necessary evil. Especially this year. Today's lineup is littered with acts that are worth your trouble, like thrashcore locals These Arms Are Snakes and the delightfully weirdo experimental solo act Final Fantasy. And assuming your Depends® aren't overflowing by 9:00 p.m., you oldsters can stick around for Stone Temple Pilots. (Seattle Center, www.thestranger.com/bumbershoot. 11 am–11 pm, $40, all ages.)

Bon Iver's Justin Vernon famously recorded his breakthrough For Emma, Forever Ago while holed up for four frosty months in an isolated cabin in rural Wisconsin. (Bon Iver is a bastardization of bon hiver, French for "good winter.") It makes sense that this press-sheet backstory has become the album's defining detail: Vernon's spare arrangements of voice and acoustic guitar feel absolutely solitary; his voice, which wavers between soulful croon (with shades of TV on the Radio) and broken whisper, practically fogs up in your ears. A good winter, indeed. (Neumo's, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467. 8 pm, $12, 21+.)

Drinking plus dancing equals Rords of the Froor, Seattle's infamous and heee-larious drunken breakdancing competition. Sixteen amateurs and 16 pros battle for the grand prize of $1,500, the dubious title of "World (Drunk) Breakdance Champion," one big-ass trophy, AND, if they choose, the option to puke on my shoes for a Drunk of the Week column. Whoop! (The War Room, 722 E Pike St, 328-7666. 6 pm registration and rooftop barbecue/9 pm battle, $10 before 10 pm/$15 after, 21+. Costumes required for battlers.)

Robert Bresson's most famous movie that is not about a donkey is a thing of minimal pretense and maximal refinement. In it, there are acts of petty crime spelled out with thrilling precision. There is a bare Parisian garret. There is a girl so perfect and serene you expect her to pop out a second Son of God any minute. But the component parts add up to something far more basic and bracing, something like cold water, or a punch to the gut. (Metro Cinemas, 4500 Ninth Ave NE, 781-5755. 7 and 9 pm, $10.)

Check out this heee-larious new reality show in which normal, everyday Democrats are videotaped and forced to live together for days in a filthy convention center. Watch as they ramble on incessantly about politics while drinking and screwing themselves silly. But here's the twist! Instead of winning a million dollars, one lucky contestant is eventually chosen to leave the convention center and lead the country for at least four years! (ABC/NBC, debuts Mon Aug 25.)

If you're expecting a movie as raging and ferocious as his aptly titled Head-On, you might be disappointed. But German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin's new movie—scheduled to play at the Varsity for just a week—is another kind of devastating. The braided narrative is about the disruptive urgency of sexual desire, the ties of kinship, and the faint tactlessness of requesting forgiveness. And I don't care if she never makes another film that reaches American shores: Nurgül Yesilçay is a goddamn movie star. (See movie times, www.thestranger.com, for details.)

Tapas: It's back. Opened in the last five minutes: Txori in Belltown, Ocho in Ballard, Tidbit near Roanoke, Bilbao in the University District, and Olivar on Broadway. Of these, Ocho is the most authentic: a small, crowded bar with superdelicious, inexpensive snacks meant to go with drinking. But the bar at Tango—a Seattle favorite for a billion years—comes close, especially at happy hour (Sun–Fri 4:30–6:30 pm) and especially on half-price-wine night (Mon). Chili-cinnamon carnitas, shrimp-and-avocado ceviche, and a bottle of Albariño equals a splendid summer supper. (Tango, 1100 Pike St, 583-0382. 5–10:30 pm.)

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn's voice is a thing of wonder—perfectly tuneful yet distinctly personal, able to tackle everything from klezmer to electropop to folk without ever sounding dilettantish. More impressive than her voice, though, is her songwriting, which is full of idiosyncratic humor, home-sewn pillow talk, and a depth of emotion that ranges from geographical longing to deeply internalized anxiety, all expressed with deft poetic language. Mirah is a treasure. With Tender Forever and Fences. (Neumo's, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467. 8 pm, $12, all ages.)

Indian Jewelry's Free Gold! combines gauzy, desert-rock drones with warped vocals that sometimes loop and melt as if playing from a record left too long in the hot sun. But beneath the heatstroke and haze, Indian Jewelry's songs are simply catchy, slightly sinister pop. From the far opposite end of the experimental spectrum come Eats Tapes, whose all-analog, acid-touched hyper-rave workouts should leave you adequately parched for the headliners. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, 956-8372. 7:30 pm, $5/$6, all ages.)

On the eve of the conventions, watch the best movie ever made about the people living, working, and agitating on the margins of America's grandest political theater tradition. Set during and filmed amid the chaos of Chicago 1968, Haskell Wexler's film is a heady mix of protest chic, Appalachian romanticism, and agony over journalistic objectivity. The phrase "medium cool" refers to Marshall McLuhan's theory that TV is a "cool" medium—one that invites viewer participation—in contrast to the "hot" quality of film, which sucks up all your attention and energy. Medium Cool may be hot, but it wants you to holler back. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 267-5380. 7 and 9:15 pm, $8.50.)

ANNIE WAGNER

Stranger books editor Paul Constant is interviewing this dude onstage, but I would have suggested this reading anyway. The Night of the Gun is an obsessively fact-checked memoir in which the compulsion to fact-check becomes part of the story, a signal of the anxiety with which David Carr—now a reporter for the New York Times—revisits his escalating addictions to alcohol and cocaine, his rocky journalism career, and his habit of hitting his girlfriends. The truths hurt. (Douglass-Truth Library, 2300 E Yesler Way, 684-4704. 6:30 pm, free.)

Ensconced in an astronomical tax bracket thanks to savvy decisions made in Hollywood, Ice Cube occasionally steps off movie sets to rap his gritty, witty lyrics on stages and in studios. It's magnanimous of the ex-NWA member to spit his socially conscious brickbats and guffaw-worthy sexual tales for the masses. While the new Raw Footage pales compared to Cube's peak work (AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, Death Certificate), the man is sure to entertain with scowling panache. Local lexicon tricksters Dyme Def undoubtedly will bring their A-plus game. (Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Ave, 628-3151. 8 pm, $35 adv/$40 DOS, 21+.)

Sweden is freaked out. By what exactly, it's hard to say. But a show of three Swedish artists at Howard House explores threat: the threat of filthy little pygmies and sadistic lower-class families ruining the neighborhood (Nathalie Djurberg's In Our Own Neighbourhood), the threat of burka-style wraps covering entire couples (Annika von Hausswolff's The 21st Century Transitional Object), and the dueling threats of boredom and escape (Johanna Billing's Look Out!). It's live-action video, animation, and photography. (Howard House, 604 Second Ave, 256-6399. 10:30 am–5 pm, free.)

Wittenborn's Pharmakon begins: "I was born because a man came to kill my father." It's a novel about a doctor in the burgeoning field of mood-altering pharmaceuticals. You'll want to read it because it recalls the best of John Irving, but you'll want to go to the reading to hear Wittenborn tell Pharmakon's secret story: The book is semiautobiographical. Wittenborn's father was an innovator in the field that would eventually create Prozac, and he was marked for death by a crazy student. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. 7:30 pm, free.)

Seattle's annual celebration of all things pot—from hemp sandals to octo-carb bongs—returns to Myrtle Edwards Park this Saturday and Sunday with live music, featured speakers (Rick Steves both days!), stoned strolling, and, if tradition holds, wonderfully laissez-faire law enforcement. Go, wander, inhale. And should it get too hot or rainy, the newly minted stoner classic The Pineapple Express is playing at the not-too-distant Pacific Place cinema. (Myrtle Edwards Park, 3130 Alaskan Way W, www.hempfest.org. 10 am–8 pm, free.)

Local metal/hardcore stars Himsa are playing their last show ever tonight. Someone's probably gonna get hurt. Their live performances are already screaming, boiling messes with nutso dudes going apeshit over shredding guitar and Johnny Pettibone's demonic vocals. The band's farewell performance is sure to be the craziest scene in Himsa history, so brutal some megafan is even flying in from Italy to see it! And to think you only have to walk down the street to get there. (El Corazón, 109 Eastlake Ave E, 381-3094. 9:30 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, all ages.)

Phil Elverum is one of the most singular, stunning songwriters ever to emerge from the Pacific Northwest—a place that permeates his music. In Black Wooden Ceiling Opening, Elverum applies his "organic" black-metal treatments to old and new songs of Mount Eerie, transforming raw acoustic numbers into ragged rockers. Live, expect him to ramble and improvise and render his songs almost embarrassingly intimate. Joining him are fellow Anacortes native and D+ collaborator Karl Blau, as well as Your Heart Breaks and Madeline Adams. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, 956-8372. 7:30 pm, $8/$9, all ages.)

Like life itself, this new play by local writer/director Scotto Moore is silly, in both the ancient (spiritually touched) and modern (frivolous) senses of that word. It is also serious (history has not changed the sense of that word). Set in an infinitely tall building—one that might resemble a new tower in Dubai or a tower Frank Lloyd Wright once imagined in a moment of madness—interlace is a tireless narrative machine that generates comic nonsense and cosmic concepts. (Annex Theatre, 1100 E Pike St, 728-0933. 8 pm, $12.)

CHARLES MUDEDE

Tintin is more than a comic about a boy reporter who travels the world to fight dictators, criminals, and bullies. It is also satire, anthropology, reportage (The Blue Lotus is an excellent primer on the Japanese invasion of Manchuria), and a pop-art fountainhead that influenced Lichtenstein and Warhol. Tintin et Moi, a 2003 documentary based on 14 hours of interviews with Tintin creator Hergé, discusses the artist's evolution from right-wing Catholic propagandist to secular humanist and defends Tintin as a definitive graphic record of the 20th century. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 267-5380. 7 and 9 pm, $8.50.)

The Alliance Française de Seattle is a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading Frenchness throughout the region, and those socialist cheese-eaters have finally discovered the way to our hearts: comic books. Fantagraphics Books cofounder Kim Thompson talks about 20 artists who've made French comics among the best in the world, and the slide show is followed by a free reception to kick off a week of French comics-related goodness, including multiple appearances by genius memoirist and comics revolutionary David B. (Alliance Française de Seattle, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 632-5433. 7 pm, free.)

"They're so fucking delicate, people," one of Jack's new friends muses after the two of them save a young girl from a car crash. You can't help falling in love with Jack's big brown eyes, eager face, and his sincere stammer. Jack grew up in an English prison after being party to a hideous crime as a boy. He's been released but isn't remotely free. The suspense telescopes into the past and the future as we learn what he did and whether he can live a normal life. The last three minutes of Boy A are mawkish crap, but everything else is perfect. (See movie times, www.thestranger.com, for details.)

It's actually called The Forty Part Motet (A Re-working of Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui 1573, by Thomas Tallis), and Canadian artist Janet Cardiff made it in 2001 by recording 40 amateur singers, both adults and kids, performing the 40-part composition. In the installation, one loudspeaker represents each singer. The 40 speakers stand in an oval in a soaring, 35-foot-tall gallery. Depending on where you stand, individual voices are buried in the group's great wash of sound, or the single, closest voice becomes all you can hear. It's sonic sociology. (Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave, 253-272-4258. 10 am–5 pm, $7.50.)

This magnificent documentary is about Philippe Petit, the charming, crazy French person who, in August of 1974, strung a cable between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walked and knelt and lay supine on his tightrope for 45 breathtaking minutes. Told through new interviews (Petit: "These twin towers are trotting in my head!"), archival footage, and elegant black-and-white reenactments, Man on Wire is 80 minutes of white-knuckled suspense followed by a surprisingly emotional climax. (See movie times, www.thestranger.com, for details.)

Joseph Knapp of Son Ambulance frequently finds himself in the shadow of that other Omaha singer-songwriter heartthrob, and he released his debut as a split with Bright Eyes. But he's worth closer attention in his own right: His latest album, Someone Else's Déjà Vu, is alternately sunny and somber, touched with swirling psychedelic pop flourishes, piano, and organ, and led by Knapp's clear, able voice. With Weinland, the Hunting Club, and Portland's soft-spoken acoustic ensemble A Weather. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, 956-8372. 7:30 pm, $7–$8, all ages.)

Last week, Implied Violence won a 2008 Stranger Genius Award: This is your chance to run down to an abandoned warehouse and see freshly minted genius at work. Eat Fight Fuck is the third part of a spectacular trilogy Implied Violence has been performing for the last three weeks with live orchestras, live baby chickens, unsettling sex scenes, Civil War–era costumes, fucked-up comedy where you least expect it, and buckets of blood. Part Wu-Tang Clan, part Gertrude Stein, Implied Violence makes an impossible thing: experimental theater you will enjoy watching. (A warehouse in South Lake Union, 801 Aloha St, 356-5948. 8 pm, $10–$20. Through Aug 16.)

"It takes a lot of money to look this cheap!" chirps Dolly, forever casting herself as Daisy Duke with a gee-tar. It's a ruse—a genius one—masking this hayride hussie's stature as one of America's great singer-songwriters. Beyond the voice and eternal songbook, Parton is the rare great artist who is also a great celebrity—her sexy-Muppet-with-a-heart-of-gold shtick was inverting sexploitation when Madonna was still in diapers—and even the shortest list of true American originals (Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Buster Keaton) simply must include Dolly Parton. (WaMu Theater, 1000 Occidental Ave S, www.ticketmaster.com. 8 pm, $39.50–$85

Sometime in the '90s, a Boston antique dealer bought a huge oil painting titled Lucy in the Field with Flowers—something, everything, was terribly wrong with it. He showed it to friends, who started collecting their own awful paintings, and the Museum of Bad Art was born. Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks is its catalog. At this book signing, you can find out from whence these visions sprung and nominate new candidates for the collection. (Stir, 216 Alaskan Way S, 264-0260. 6–10 pm, free.)

Now in its 10th year, the Columbia City Farmers' Market may not be the city's biggest, but it is one of the most vibrant. If you make it past the food stalls—tamales, quesadillas, some of the biggest burgers you've ever seen—without emptying your pockets, stop by La Medusa, the delightful "Sicilian soul food" restaurant for its $25 prix fixe market menu, available every Wednesday during market season. (Columbia City Farmers' Market, 4801 Rainier Ave S, 3–7 pm. La Medusa, 4857 Rainier Ave S, 723-2192, 5–10 pm.)

Impressively, Chris & Don opens up the romance between the English novelist Christopher Isherwood and the painter Don Bachardy without sensationalizing the particulars. Bachardy was 18 when he met Isherwood, almost 50, on a beach in Santa Monica in 1952. Bachardy was a fan of movie stars, a product of Los Angeles, thoroughly uninterested in books; Isherwood was the writer about whom Somerset Maugham said to Virginia Woolf, "That young man holds the future of the English novel in his hands." (See movie times, www.thestranger .com, for details.)

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela is known in America for two things: the instrumental "Grazing in the Grass," which reached number one on the Billboard chart in 1968, and his work with Paul Simon on Graceland. Masekela, however, is a god in black Africa. And only a god could capture the essence of the 20th-century black African experience in one song: "Stimela (Coal Train)." "This train carries young and old, African men/Who are conscripted to come and work on contract/In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg..." There is no heart "Stimela" cannot break. (Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave, 441-9729. 7:30 pm, $32.50, all ages.)

Filmed in the pre-museum, post-train station Gare d'Orsay in Paris, Orson Welles's noir adaptation of the Kafka novel boasts fantastic sets and vertiginous cinematography. With Anthony Perkins (Psycho) in the lead role, the subtext is exceedingly gay. You must see this film, if only for the sight of the painter Tintorelli's herd of girl groupies peering through the slats of his ramshackle apartment. In the book, they're all hunchbacks, but here, being stalked by an able-bodied little girl is frightening enough. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 267-5380. 4:30, 7, and 9:15 pm, $8.50.)

Approximately one billion debut novels are published every year, but it's rare to find a debut novel as assured as Doug Dorst's Alive in Necropolis. There's sex, violence, crime, oodles of head injuries, a half-assed practitioner of Zen, and a few supernatural happenings. Dorst is a young writer with a bright future ahead of him, making this a rare opportunity to catch a memorable writer early on the road to greatness. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 South Main St, 624-6600. 2 pm, free.)

California's Film School play gorgeous and dreamy shoegaze songs that are so perfectly dynamic and cinematic, all you have to do is close your eyes and let your mind take you anywhere you want to go. The music will carry you, weightless through the atmosphere, past the moon and planets. It'll float you down the river, gently, while you drift beneath the stars. Film School tap into the desires of the subconscious as well as any drug, without the dangerous side effects. (Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave, 784-4880. 10 pm, $10, 21+.)

The Features from the Black Lagoon series—which brings hilarious B movies to an inflatable screen in Cal Anderson Park—continues with an old-fashioned crappy horror flick. The 1972 film Frogs features a dysfunctional family on an ill-fated camping trip, extended stretches of menacing ribbits, and a young Sam Elliott in the tightest jeans ever worn by man. Added bonus: The culminating plague of murderous amphibians is campy enough for queers and goofy enough to not freak out the kids. (Cal Anderson Park, 1635 11th Ave. Screening starts at dusk—9 pm or so, free.)

The queen of Seattle's soul, Choklate, cannot exit this year without giving the people what they need: something new. Her self-titled CD—a local hiphop/R&B masterpiece—was released way back in '06, and '09 is just around the corner. We're waiting; we're waiting. If you can't take the waiting, if the pressure is too much, then go to her show, hear her sing, hear her band, and hear the sound that is this city's rhythm and blues. (City Hall Plaza, 600 Fourth Ave, 684-7171. Noon, free, all ages.)

Some dis Blanche, some dis Stanley, and everyone agrees that the sound design is a hate crime. Despite all its flaws, Intiman's Streetcar is the rare revival worth getting yourself to the theater for. Tennessee Williams's poetic potboiler is brought to gripping new life by an inventive cast (best in show: Chelsey Rives, whose Stella is a revelation) but the true star, as always, is Tennessee Williams. (Intiman Theater, 201 Mercer Street, 269-1900. 7:30 pm, $42–$47. Through Aug 2.)