Wednesday 1/4 

A rhythm, a glow, a softening of surface: Carol Summers

(VISUAL ART) Before the first week of the year is up, scurry on over to Koplin del Rio and catch the final week of Carol Summers' A rhythm, a glow, a softening of surface. The exhibition features the late artist's innovative woodblock prints that are almost spiritual in the way broad swaths of color occupy each page. Summers made each print using his so-called Carol Summer Technique, which involved printing colors on both sides of each sheet and spraying each print's surface with solvent so the ink bled into the surface giving it a watercolor-like effect. Summers's vistas of volcanoes spewing multi-colored lava or his prints of a smattering of stars above the black ocean just before dawn will lift your mood better than any SAD lamp ever could. (Koplin Del Rio, 313 Occidental Ave S, Wed-Sat 11 am-5 pm) JAS KEIMIG

Thursday 1/5 

Courtesy of City Lights

Joyce Chopra in discussion with Jas Keimig

(FILM/BOOKS) On Thursday I have the distinct pleasure of hosting a virtual talk with director Joyce Chopra about her recently released memoir, Lady Director. The book details Chopra's six-decade career, from her early gigs with D.A. Pennebaker documenting quintuplets in South Dakota to her late-career work on network television movies and shows. She blasted onto the scene with her autobiographical documentary short, Joyce at 34, which featured the first live birth (her own!) on TV and her audacious first feature film, Smooth Talk, starring a young Laura Dern. The book is stuffed with juicy tidbits about Chopra's time in Hollywood, from her grounding relationship with Dern to the pugnacious antics of producers like Harvey Weinstein and Sydney Pollack. Lady Director is a candid examination of sexism in the film industry, the ways women balance careers with gendered expectations, and how Chopra helped clear the path for future generations of women directors. I can't wait to get into with Joyce! (This is a virtual event, 6 pm, free, RSVP here) JAS KEIMIG

Friday 1/6

An Evening With Climax Golden Twins 

(MUSIC) If you're into abstract, experimental soundscapes—aka weirdo music (meant as a compliment)—Chapel Performance Space will be your home base this weekend as the Wallingford venue hosts back-to-back performances from two of Seattle's most inventive acts. First, on Friday, Climax Golden Twins finally celebrate the long-awaited release of their latest self-titled album. The band, Robert Millis and Jeffery Taylor, will start the evening with "rare and unusual 78 rpm records and Edison cylinders on period equipment" and then they'll perform a live improv set with percussionist Dave Abramson and bassist John Seman. Then, the instrumental explorations continue Saturday night when cellist Lori Goldston performs two solo sets, one amplified and one acoustic. Goldston's music is expansive, at times otherworldly. She doesn't just show you the little universes she makes with droning, textured sounds, she builds them all around you. Close your eyes and enjoy the ride. (Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 8 pm, $5-$20) MEGAN SELING

A Week at the Movie House: Tribute to Dennis Nyback

(FILM) The Grand Illusion is devoting a week of films to the life of Dennis Nyback, a film archivist and historian who died four months ago in Portland, OR. Nyback, who collected films and screened them around the world, was, in the 1970s, a projectionist at the Grand Illusion. He also programmed a monthly at film series at Jewel Box Theater and, later, ran Pike Street Cinema. Grand Illusion's tribute, called A Week at The Movie House, includes short films from Nyback's impressive collection as well as classics like Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel and, a favorite of mine and Nyback, Akira Kurosawa Yojimbo. The dark, the dark, we all go into the dark. (Grand Illusion, through January 12, see the full schedule here) CHARLES MUDEDE

Saturday 1/7

Flying Saucer Cinema: Forbidden Planet Virtual Discussion

(FILM) Now look, there’s now way around this, and I say it with great affection: The 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet is extremely silly
 but it’s also very important. Featuring an unrecognizably young and hot Leslie Neilsen, it’s a pre-Star Trek precursor to many of the science fiction tropes we take for granted today. By today’s standards, it looks like pure camp with its bright colors, waddling robot, and keep-a-straight-face techno-nonsense. But it also, at times, aspires to Shakespearean tragedy, it popularized such ideas as faster-than-light travel, and it features the first-of-its-kind electronic score. Fully enjoying the film requires a little contextualization, and fortunately Scarecrow has arranged for sci-fi movie experts Mark Daniels and Eric Cohen to explain just what the hell is going on here. Daniels and Cohen will host an online discussion about the movie, unspooling the cinematic history that led to this retrofuturistic gem. Attendees are encouraged to watch the film first; should you settle in for a screening before the lecture, a little chemical alteration might make the experience all the more pleasurable. (This is a virtual event, 2 pm, free, RVSP here) MATT BAUME

Sunday 1/8 

EO

(FILM) What can't be doubted is the inspiration for this Polish film, which concerns a donkey. It is Robert Bresson's masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar. But that 1966 film is about an ordinary rural donkey. EO's donkey (called EO) is special. He has spent his whole life in a Polish circus, and so when he is liberated from the small world of entertaining humans, he enters and journeys through strange and cruel natural and cultural worlds. In this respect, the story is much like the almost unknown late Soviet-Era novel Faithful Ruslan. In that story, a guard dog accustomed to being cruel to human prisoners is liberated and sees and is confused by a less brutal human world. EO won the Jury Prize at 2022's Cannes Film Festival (Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave, Jan 4-8) CHARLES MUDEDE

Monday 1/9

The Simpsons Colonoscopy Party at Time Warp

Perform a colonoscopy, then treat yourself to some hot noodles! MB

(GAMES) When’s the last time you experienced an unlicensed Simpsons-themed colonoscopy game? It’s probably been a couple years, at least. Well, now’s your chance to indulge with an intriguing installation at Time Warp, a noodle bar and arcade on Capitol Hill. The Simpsons Colonoscopy Party is based on a real PSA about colon cancer that aired back in 2008, and was built by local artists Andrew Cole and Jeffrey Larson. Players are invited to manipulate a camera through a fleshy pink cavity with a joystick that controls the direction, yellow buttons that move the camera in and out, and black buttons that do absolutely nothing. All the while, a disembodied hand jiggles a cable atop pillowy yellow buttocks between which lies a surprisingly vortex-like hole. When you’re done with the game (there’s no way to win or lose, and the entire experience is about a minute long), there are plenty of other cabinets and pinball games to amuse you, as well as drinks and an excellent selection of hot noodle bowls. Nothing works up an appetite like getting a colonoscopy. (Time Warp, 1420 10th Ave, Mon-Thurs 2 pm-2 am, Fri-Sun noon-2 am) MATT BAUME

Tuesday 1/10

Salon of Shame #100: Celebrating 18 Years of Angst

(EMBARRASSMENT) I did it. You probably did it, too. Most everyone, at some point in their hormone-flooded adolescence, tried to make sense of the cruel, confusing world by putting pen to paper and writing it out. Maybe your teenage self had a journal filled with emo poetry or a spiral notebook of song lyrics for the band you hoped to start someday. Maybe you were one of the lucky kids that had a diary with a real deal lock on it to keep prying siblings at bay. For 18 years—and 100 shows!—Salon of Shame has given us a place to purge our most embarrassing adolescent screeds, on stage for an understanding audience. At each show participants bravely pry open those diaries and journals and read the most hilarious bits, shamelessly and armed with the knowledge that not the only one still holding on to pages and pages of teenage angst. Tickets to just sit back and enjoy the show are sold out, so the only way to get in to the show at this point is to sign up to be a reader. Don't be scared! It's fun as hell and weirdly cathartic. (Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave S, 8 pm, sign up at salonofshame.com) MEGAN SELING

You know what else you can do this week? Win free tickets! PRIZE FIGHT is where you battle it out with other Stranger and EverOut readers to win tickets to cool things. (And by battle it out we mean you enter your email address and we randomly pick a winner.) Here is this week's prize:

Spunkfest
January 7
The Crocodile
21+

Enter now!

Contest ends: 1/5 at noon