Over the last year, Matt Taibbi was creating a satirical news site called the Racket. For various reasons (mostly having to do with moronic middle managers), the Racket collapsed, pushing Taibbi out of the editor-in-chief game and back into writing full-time. It’s for the best . The world doesn’t need another funny news site; the world needs Taibbi’s brilliant, incisive reporting on income inequality and how the deck is stacked in favor of the super-rich. Nobody else is doing this kind of entertaining, accessible writing about America’s class warfare. He’s right where he belongs. PAUL CONSTANT
S, Pete Quirk, Finch Wolfe, and Corey J. Brewer @ Chop Suey
I’ve been trying to think of another way to put it, but Stranger contributor Robin Edwards said it best when she wrote that S’s new full-length, Cool Choices, was “the breakup album of the year.” Jenn Ghetto is S, and S is real pain and emotions spilled out gracefully in hushed pop music. Bring a tissue and prepare to feel things for once in your life. When asked what we could expect of his set, local fortune-teller and musician Corey J. Brewer said, “I have a new album of gloomy triphop drone and I’ll probably play the whole thing.” He also promised “some trippy-ass visuals.” EMILY NOKES
Malick Sidibe and J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere @ M.I.A. Gallery
Sidibe (1936-) and Ojeikere (1930-2014) are West African black-and-white photographers, hailing from Mali and Nigeria, respectively. Sidibe is an established, beloved master; Ojeikere is finding worldwide audiences since his images of sculptural African hair were a hit at 2013's Venice Biennale. M.I.A. Gallery director Mariane Ibrahim-Lenhardt presents a thoughtful consideration of one of Sidibe’s favorite themes: looking at people from unexpected angles, with a special focus on women’s strong backs. A Sidibe show is a reason to come out in itself, but Ojeikere also has been shown very little on the West Coast, and possibly not at all in Seattle. JEN GRAVES
Pan Gongkai is bigger than he seems at the Frye. He’s a legend in China, an ink painter who also creates installations including video (as at the Venice Biennale in 2011)—and he’s a state functionary, heading up Beijing’s biggest art school. (His father, also, was an ink painting legend.) We see Pan in tight focus, in just a handful of mounted ink paintings ranging from window-size to architectural and made just for the Frye. The blooms of ink are unsketched and must be made all at once in a frenzy of focus, which freezes on the paper. JEN GRAVES
Brad Evans and Aaron Glass @ Central Library
Following a screening of 1914's The Land of the Head Hunters, the first feature-length film whose cast was composed entirely of Native North Americans, Evans and Glass will discuss their book, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters, which reassesses the film, 100 years later.
