Water 1st—Beer 2nd: Everyone needs to set nutritional priorities at one point or another. And while beer might be pretty high on the list — especially a delicious, dark, malty beer — water most likely tops it off. Because, you know, we sort of need it to live and function (and to make beer, incidentally).
That's what Friday''s Water 1st-Beer 2nd event is about. But, no, it's not about drinking water; it's about giving clean water to people who normally have to travel absurd miles by foot just to get a dirty bucketful of the stuff. The charity hosting the event, Water 1st International, is dedicated to providing clean water and usable toilets to poor communities around the world.
Other than plucking those guilt strings in your heart, the event planners also know how to cater to first world needs: local craft breweries, including Hale's Ale, Mac & Jack's, and Elysian Brewing Company, will be supplying the event with all the sweet, golden drink you need. Also, after you get enough liquid courage in your stomach, there's dancing.
If you go: Seattle Center Fisher’s Pavilion, 200 Thomas St, Friday, March 2, 7 p.m., $35 (includes food and beverage), more info.
Sound off! Finals: It's like that high school battle of the bands you went to, only the music is better, and the no-name bands playing on the stage could be the next big thing. After all, artists such as Dyme Def, Sol, and Schoolyard Heroes all had a start at Sound off!, and surely more are to come.
The final contestants this year are The Deep Wake, Nude, Feet, and wild-card entry Special Explosion. They're all good bands, and, at this point in the competition, they're all winners on one level or another. So check them out, show some support, and get lost in all those special lighting effects in the Sky Church.
If you go: Sky Church at EMP, 325 5th Avenue North, Saturday, March 3, 7 p.m., $12 general/$8 student and member, more info.
Yorum Bauman, Stand up Economics: Let's face it, few people really understand economics these days. It's become so convoluted, jargon-filled, and injected with such mind-boggling logic that it has become the real life version of M.C. Escher's painting, "Relativity." (So, what stairway do we take to economic sustainability again?)
Enter our hero, Yorum Bauman, UW environmental economist and "the world's first and only stand-up economist." Recently he released the second book in a series, The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Vol. 2: Macroeconomics, which talks about all those things that we kind of but don't really understand: "unemployment, inflation, debt, how economies grow and why they collapse, the labor market, and the GDP," according to the Townhall website. A special treat for economic nerds, but also important for anyone affected by the economy ... which is everyone.
If you go: Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave, 7:30pm, Sunday, March 4, $5, more info.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure: Pee-wee Herman manages to do what we all wish we could do: be a kid, as an adult. Through the past two decades, the quirky, odd-voiced character has shouted himself into many's hearts through sheer optimism and, well, just by being himself.
Haven't gotten the proper dose of the lovable manchild in a while? Now is the time to get it, as SIFF Cinema is offering noon showings of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure." Prepare to laugh, to cry, and to shout, because the movie is so deep that to understand the beauty of it is, to borrow a quote from Mr. Herman, like "unraveling a big cable-knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting..."
If you go: SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N, Noon, March 3-4, $4, more info.
Pygmalion: "Poignant" accompanies George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" in just about every preview, review, and brief write-up (including this one) that's out there, and for good reason. Shaw tells a story that is both funny and satirical, driving a knife into the pretensions of proper English society and revealing it for the nonsense that it is. Seattle Shakespeare Company stays true to the original, without getting diluted by the Shaw-inspired musical, "My Fair Lady," according to a Crosscut review by Alice Kaderlan.
Kaderlan explains that the audience burst into spontaneous applause twice in the middle of the performance she saw — a rare occurence for a straight play lacking music. She writes, "Although some in the audience were perturbed by the interruption, to my mind it was a fitting tribute to two magnificent actors who brought new life to scenes that have consistently provoked huge belly laughs since the play premiered (oddly in a German translation in Vienna) in 1913."
If you go: Center House Theatre, 305 Harrison St, Runs through Mar. 11, $24-38, more info.
