Top Things to Do This Weekend: July 16–19
A still from the new Jim Gaffigan Show (yup, he really has five kids). Image credit: TVLand.
COMEDY
Jim Gaffigan
Saturday at 7 pm and 9:30 pm, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
With best-selling books like Dad Is Fat and Food: A Love Story, the wise-cracking father of five—now the star of his own trueish-to-life TV Land series—takes no prisoners when it comes to America’s eating habits. (The king of clean comedy even predicted Dunkin’ Donuts’ glazed “breakfast sandwich.”)
FILM
Gus Van Sant Festival
Saturday at 2 pm, Clinton Street Theatre
Hand2Mouth's Time, A Fair Hustler, premieres on July 28; get in the mood with companion film series “Gus Van Sant: 30 Years,”which runs through the first week of August. The series features seven classics by the local auteur. Saturday's screening is a double whammy of PSYCHO (that's Van Sant's and Hitchcock's 1960 original).
BOOKS & TALKS
Portland Zine Symposium
Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm, Ambridge Event Center
Indie publishers, unite! Run by volunteers and free to attendees, this year’s DIY event, themed “Tools of the Trade,” gets poster illustration from local zinester and kombucha brewer Amanda England.
MUSIC
Backing the Ghostface Killah: these guys from Canada. Photo credit: Badbadnotgood.
Badbadnotgood and Ghostface Killah
Saturday at 9 pm, Crystal Ballroom
The front man: Staten Island’s master MC, formerly of the Wu-Tang Clan. The band: a trio of fresh-faced jazz nerds from Toronto, whose Riding in Cars with Boys Pt. Deux summer tour comes on the heels of winter album Sour Soul—a grimly elegant collaboration with Ghostface that thrilled critics from Billboard to the Guardian.
Cathedral Park Jazz Festival
Friday–Sunday, Cathedral Park
The oldest continuous free jazz fest west of the Big Muddy, this year’s smooth draws include Kung Pao Chickens, Hailey Niswanger’s PDX Soul, and the Paul Creighton Project. Add a lawn picnic under the arches of the St Johns Bridge? That’s our jam, baby.
This weekend at Zidell Yards: acts like Blondie, the Buzzocks, Aimee Mann, and Wampire (above). Photo credit: Aaron Rogosin.
Project Pabst
Saturday & Sunday from noon to 10 pm, Zidell Yards
Light lager, big names. The Milwaukee macrobrewery’s second annual “love letter” to Portland convenes acts including Weezer, Blondie, Wampire, Alvvays, and the Both (Aimee Mann and Ted Leo).
Graham Nash
Saturday at 8 pm, Aladdin Theatre
Since penning “Marrakesh Express” for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the prolific Blackpool-born singer-songwriter has rallied against nuclear energy, written a memoir, and acquired (and subsequently sold) Sotheby’s highest-grossing collection of fine art photos. The solo show will draw on five decades of songs to benefit the charitable, no-nuke Guacamole Fund.
THEATER
Soiree #1
Friday & Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2pm, Imago Theatre
An eclectic sextuple of artistic works graces the stage, ranging from an audio play turned theatrical production, to stop-motion animation on the subject of espionage, to silent, masked theater titled What’s in the Box? Other original titles include Two Poems from a Spleen and The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld.
Rehearsal for Portland Opera's The Elixir of Love: looks like a good time? Photo credit: Portland Opera.
The Elixir of Love
Friday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2 pm, Newmark Theatre
Snake oil, cowpokes, and echoes of Tristan and Isolde: this Wild West version of Gaetano Donizetti’s 1832 love story caps the Portland Opera’s golden anniversary season with a 10-gallon hat and plenty of bel canto from stars Matthew Grills and Katrina Galka.
Original Practice Shakespeare
Friday & Sunday at 2 pm, Saturday at 7 pm, various locations
Out to prove that the Bard can’t be tamed, OPS returns for its seventh season of rollicking outdoor shows—some all-male, some all-female, and some definitely not suitable for the kiddies—of classics including The Comedie of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, and (new to OPS this year) Richard III and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Various locations and showtimes.
VISUAL ARTS
CLOSING Gregory Euclide, Alex Lukas, Laura Vandenburgh
Thursday–Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm, Upfor Gallery
A gilt-framed pastoral spills its contents onto the floor; paper webs up walls like a live thing; intricate monotype decorates concrete fragments scattered in grass. In Urban Growth Boundary, artists Lukas, Vandenburgh, and Euclide ask where—or if—humanity observes boundaries today.
WORTH A TRIP
Northwest String Summit
Thursday–Sunday, Horning's Hideout, North Plains
Surprise! Yonder Mountain String Band headlines the annual acoustic confab. Also at Horning’s Hideout: the Del McCoury Band, Infamous Stringdusters, and Greyboy Allstars. Watch for Saturday’s light show from the “visual magicians” at Tyler Fuqua Creations (responsible, in years past, for a “Cosmic Space Frog” and “Imploding Peacock”).
