One to Watch

The Bridgetown Comedy Festival’s lineup this year is as strong and varied as we’ve come to expect from this annual giggle fest, replete with national names and local legends (June 1–5). And as the exodus of comedians from PDX to LAX continues, the good news is we’ve still got Anthony Lopez. The famously speech-impeded comic cohosts Earthquake Hurricane and writes for Late Night Action. He can also tell a snortingly funny Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles joke. 

The Book

Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two WWII Correspondents and Their Epic Escape Across the Pacific (Morrow/Harper Collins, June 21) by local author Bill Lascher tells the daring tale of revered US war correspondent (and Lascher’s own cousin) Melville Jacoby, his wife, writer Annalee Whitmore, and their race across the Pacific during World War II. “A gripping, impressively researched debut,” says Kirkus. He reads at Powell’s at Cedar Hills Crossing (June 23).

The Album

It’s slow-fi, say Alex and Sierra Haager of bed. (pictured top), whose EP Klickitat comes out this month on Bug Hunt (June 10). Their brand of chipper darkness brings the Breeders, the Delgados, and a sprinkling of the Pixies into close quarters, fuzzy Fender sounds overlaid with sweet harmonies that belie occasionally bleak pronouncements.

The Return

“So this is goodbye,” sang Moby in 1999 on “Porcelain,” the phenomenally successful single from the album Play that instead marked his arrival as a global music phenomenon. Now the ’90s musical icon revisits the heyday of New York’s club scene and his own rise through and beyond it in Porcelain: A Memoir. Hear him read from it (probably not the kind of Moby event you anticipated attending back in the day) at Powell’s City of Books (June 22).