A weeknight in January: sounds kind of bleak. But on this second Thursday of 2009, two of Seattle's most accomplished electronic-music producers threaten to turn Nectar into a hot, throbbing simulacrum of a bustling club in Berlin. The Sight Below chills with gaseous, pulsating tracks that wed sublime shoegazer rock to subzero techno. Caro (aka Randy Jones) offers a warmer, funkier brand of tech-house, proving that Caucasian instrument/software-inventor types got soul, too. (Nectar, 416 N 36th St, 632-2020. 8 pm, $8, 21+.) DAVE SEGAL

The first line of Kurt Schwitters's 35-minute-long performance poem, which is almost never performed, is "Fümms bö wö tää zää Uu." Now that's Dada: self-murdering nonsense. (Schwitters was his own outpost in Dada, staying marooned in Hanover, making his house into a curated heap of trash.) Actress and vocalist Kristen Loree will perform the complete text against a backdrop of Jack Ox's paintings. The paintings, based on Ox's translation of the poem, run continuously for 800 feet. Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom! (As Tzara would say.) (Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 789-1939. 7:30 pm, $5–$15 donation.) JEN GRAVES

21 Landings is a looped video of some sort of flying animal—Is it a monster? Is it entirely biological?—trying to land on the surface of an alien environment. The stop-motion animation is from the creature's perspective, so all we can see is something leglike, and all we can hear is a whooshing noise. This is a singular opportunity to wander into a movie theater—it plays all day, for free—and sit in the dark with a few other people and contemplate something not of this world. (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, 829-7863. 10 am–5 pm, free.) PAUL CONSTANT

Putting a long-overdue honky-tonk spin on the classic Pygmalion, 1984's Rhinestone stars Dolly Parton as a boobalicious Henrietta Higgins and Sylvester Stallone as the guy she has to turn into a bona fide country singer—and if she fails, she's got to have sex with Ron Leibman! This movie is terrible, and tonight we'll be watching it all the way through, hosted and casually annotated by me. (Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave, www.brownpapertickets.com. 7 pm, $7.) DAVID SCHMADER

Finally Punk are four young ladies from Austin, Texas, dedicated to keeping the "revolution girl style now!" turning at a frantic 45 spins per second. Their riot-ready punk rock is loud, brash, and unpretentiously fun, their songs blasted out short and sweet, and their ripping cover of "Negative Creep" easily out-sassed by original jams like "Missile" and "Boyfriend Application." With ideal local support from TacocaT, Flexions, and Talbot Tagora. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, 956-8372. 4 pm, $6, all ages.) ERIC GRANDY

At Crémant's weekend brunch—retardedly delicious; not that expensive; just go, and get the pork belly—there is this hot chocolate. The best hot chocolate. Chef Scott Emerick heats fancy milk and adds fancy chocolate, and a whole bunch of it comes to you in a white ceramic teapot that looks like a snowball. A SNOWBALL FILLED WITH CREAMY GODDAMN MAGIC! Sip with a friend and hold hands. (Crémant, 1432 34th Ave, 322-4600. 10 am–2 pm, $6.) LINDY WEST

It is what it says it is: a full screening of 1965's musical classic The Sound of Music—featuring nuns and Nazis, bitchy baronesses and lonely goatherds, adorable Julie Andrews and swoon-worthy Christopher Plummer—where the audience is actively encouraged to sing along. To help facilitate the group-sing, each song's lyrics are featured onscreen as subtitles. Warning: The screening is preceded by a 20-minute "interactive screenings for dummies" mini-lecture that you should stay in the lobby and drink through. (5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave, www.5thavenue.org. 7 pm, $18–$25.)

This restaurant is so far away from my house that it might as well be in the actual Shanghai. But I would happily travel to the actual Shanghai just for Chiang's Gourmet's homemade pan-fried noodles. I would travel to Shanghai on the back of a bad-tempered donkey. These noodles are my favorite food. They are chewy and salty and amazing. Get them with chicken. (Chiang's Gourmet, 7845 Lake City Way NE, 527-8888. 11:30 am–9:30 pm.)

Emerald City Soul Club is already three years old, and it's still one of the very best things about this city. The people are spiffed up (both vintage and au courant), the jackasses are scarce (usually), and the soul is rare and hot (one night, a DJ put on a Junior McCants record worth $16,000 for the floor's dancing pleasure). The line will be longer than the Lord, so come early and have a drink. Once you've achieved proper lubrication, get out there and shake a tail feather. (Lo-Fi, 429 Eastlake Ave E, 254-2824. 9 pm, $10, 21+.)

Decibel director Sean Horton never stints when he throws a party. Case in point: this elite, two-night showcase. Dubbed "Best of Bass 2008," tonight's show finds Berlin headliner Jesse Rose bringing his inventive, low-freakuency house music to banish your 2008 blues. Helping him to achieve this noble feat are Philadelphia electro-house seducer KiloWatts and L.A.'s Deru, who imbues glitch-hop with sensual textures and high-friction funkiness. Micro Decibel continues NYE with another potent lineup. Face it: You're going to be hurting come January 1. (Neumos, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467. 8 pm, $15 adv/$18 DOS, 21+.)

There is more than mere nostalgia at stake. An entire generation of children is being taught to ice-skate USING WALKERS, a trend that threatens to ruin skating forever. Are children more fragile than ever before? Has the pathetic little ice rink at Seattle Center been expanded to accommodate these new six-legged wuss-monsters? NO. Those of us on the side of right and the side of sense must go and do something. Make a scene. Take away a walker. Do whatever you must. (Fisher Pavilion, Seattle Center, 684-7200. 11 am–10 pm, $5 adult/$3 child plus $2 skate rental.)

How to shake off yesterday's Christmas-ness? How else but with a bunch of faggots dancing? Faggots and the people who love them have been dancing off all kinds of things at Comeback—Chop Suey's once-monthly non-hetero-normative dance night—for years. It's worth braving the cold for, but wear layers: You'll want as little as possible on you when you hit the dance floor. Usual lineup: DJ Colby B, DJ Fucking in the Streets, and DJ Pony Boy. (Chop Suey, 1235 E Madison St, 324-8000. 9 pm, $5 before 11 pm/$7 after, 21+.)

This is among the holiest of holidays in the Western tradition. What better day to get thee to a movie theater and worship at the altar of Meryl Streep? She is something on the order of a god, and fittingly in this one she plays a nun—a lying, vengeful, witchy nun. Doubt has everything you want it to have: a satisfying visual texture, a cold energy, a prurient central mystery, I-fucking-hate-you dialogue, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and very few characters (i.e., lots of Streep). (See movie times, www.thestranger.com, for details.)

"No songs about dreidels. No Israeli folk dancing." So proclaims Good for the Jews, the musical comedy collaboration of David Fagin and Rob Tannenbaum, back for one exceedingly well-selected night only at the Triple Door. The shtick is Jew-based musical humor and—most promisingly—the potential for audience offense is real enough that the show comes with a warning. Go for the lack of other options, stay for the Passover song "They Tried to Kill Us, We Survived, Let's Eat." (Triple Door, 216 Union St, www.thetripledoor.com. 7 pm, $20, all ages.) DAVID SCHMADER

Surf into Xmas on a wave of gooey '80s cheese with the Beta Society, the Seattle-based film collective behind this variety-style show of "very special holiday TV moments from the decade that brought us Full House, Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains." Among the delights: video offerings from Dennis "Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell" Haskins, John "Evening Magazine" Curley, and the titular Thicke himself. (Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, www.click4tix.com. 10 pm, $14, 21+.) DAVID SCHMADER

Today is the first full day—and second night, for those counting menorah candles—of Hanukkah, the annual festival of lights in which Jews celebrate a certain before-Christ miracle involving victory in battle and some very slow-burning oil. Also: food! As Angela Garbes noted in these pages in May, there aren't many places in this area to eat Jewish food, but two worth checking out are Goldbergs' Famous Delicatessen in Bellevue and Eats Market Cafe in Westwood Village. Also, a $3 box of Manischewitz matzo-ball-soup mix is its own special miracle. (Goldbergs' Famous Delicatessen, 3924 Factoria Square Mall SE, 425-641-6622; Eats Market Cafe, 2600 SW Barton St, 933-1200.) ELI SANDERS

The Godfather has topped best-of-American-film lists for so long that contrarians keep trying to pick it off, just for the thrill of the hunt. Fuck that shit. No movie comes close to touching The Godfather. There are a thousand examples of its perfection, and here's one: Nobody has ever made a cinematic death scene as towering, and as lonely and small, as the heart attack in the tomato garden. Added three-and-a-half-hour bonus: The Godfather Part II, cinema's greatest sequel, offering such a rich, dark, sprawling trip you'll be tempted to think it's better than the first, and you'll be wrong. Both films screen in lush new restorations. (SIFF Cinema, 321 Mercer St, 633-7151. Part one: 12:15 and 8 pm. Part two: 3:45 pm. $10. Through Jan 1.) PAUL CONSTANT

At first, you think it's all in the trees. Green and pink and orange and blue and brown leafless trees with dendrite fingers reaching in from the corners of each of 12 paintings, into the blank landscape, seen from above. Then you start to notice floating heads, cute, decapitated. Then the way the horizon line connects through all 12 paintings, around the three walls of the gallery. How this is one panoramic view of an irresistible imaginary place. Making this for you is what Claire Cowie has been up to. (James Harris Gallery, 312 Second Ave S, 903-6220. 11 am– 5 pm, free.) JEN GRAVES

Tonight, Seattle treasures the Cops and Blue Scholars both begin three-night stands, at the Sunset and Neumos respectively, and are supported by an embarrassment of local talent. The Cops' Rock 'n' Roll Circus features, on various nights, Cancer Rising, the Fall of Troy, Kinski, the Whore Moans, Spiral Stairs, the Sea Navy, Wallpaper, and others. Blue Scholars' run features Common Market, the Physics, Mad Rad, and Truckasauras. Every night of each residency is well worth catching, but I especially recommend Neumos on Friday and the Sunset on Saturday. (Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave NW, 784-4880, 9 pm, $10, 21+; Neumos, 925 E Pike St, 709-9467, 8 pm, $15, Thurs–Fri all ages/Sat 21+.) ERIC GRANDY

The last time Lawrence Weschler was in town, he chatted gamely about how erstwhile New Yorker editor Tina Brown would become sexually aroused by scandalous news stories. He also held forth on the peculiar slant of light in Los Angeles and how categorization destroys bookstores. Weschler—whose 1996 book Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder is a brilliant long essay on museums, freaks of nature, and the saving power of lies—returns tonight with two books about art. Soaking in his considerable intelligence is a rare, memorable pleasure. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600. 7:30 pm, free.) PAUL CONSTANT

For their final show of the year, the Get Loweded! gang gets apocalyptic with an old-timey religious revival/multimedia arts explosion exploring the ultimate battle of good and evil, or something. Helping out is an A-list of talents from Seattle and beyond, including the one and only Reggie Watts and gender-bending chanteuse Ade. (Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, 233-9873. 9 pm, $8/$6 in costume, 21+.) DAVID SCHMADER

When it comes to acting, Beyoncé can bounce (meaning, take a hike). But Jeffrey Wright, who plays Muddy Waters, can sure enough act, and so can Columbus Short, who plays Little Walker, and Mos Def, who plays Chuck Berry, and Eamonn Walker, who plays Howlin' Wolf. In fact, a very good reason to watch this film is to see Mos Def as Berry and Walker as Wolf. I will even go to the limit and say that Walker as Wolf (the blackest of black men) is more than enough reason to watch this movie about the fast rise and fast fall of a record label that helped launch the rock 'n' roll era in popular music. (See movie times, www.thestranger.com, for details.) CHARLES MUDEDE

You must see this work of art by Eve Sussman and a group of performers called the Rufus Corporation, because when you do, you will learn something about yourself. Rape of the Sabine Women is a huge, elaborate, sexy, self-important, beautiful movie layered with references to neoclassical paintings (Poussin, David, Rubens) depicting the mythical tale of the founding of Rome. It lasts 80 minutes and moves from a 1960s house party to an International Style airport to an elongated, smoke-machined, dancelike sequence of writhing bodies in an amphitheater. Will you love it, or will you hate it? (Henry Art Gallery, 4100 15th Ave NE, 543-2280. 11 am–5 pm, $10. Through March 22.) JEN GRAVES

Live shows by Hawnay Troof—the solo electro-punk project of explosive XBXRX frontman Vice Cooler—are wildly energetic spectacles, with Cooler rapping and dancing and leaping around. His beats move bodies, and his frank and sincere lyrics—about everything from explicit sexuality to the wonders of DIY—aim to free minds. Growing up in a repressive Christian household in Alabama, Cooler understands all too well the power of punk rock to save lives. With Little Party and the Bad Business, the Wiggins, and Talbot Tagora. (Vera Project, Seattle Center, 956-8372. 7:30 pm, $9/$8, all ages.) ERIC GRANDY