Tuesday is usually a bit slow, which may explain why millions of Americans are willing to stay home and ensure the survival of NCIS, a show whose appeal escapes me (but I won’t hear a word against The Mentalist, so check yourself).

Today, however, the Emerald City offers fine entertainment for all tastes.

Giant Magnet, formerly the Seattle International Children’s Festival, began this morning at 10. While I’ll admit I’m still scratching my head at the new moniker—is Giant Magnet really the best it got all day at the re-branding meeting? Really?—it doesn’t change the fact that the annual event is always a chance for discovery. And you don’t have to be a child, either: The Gentleman of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Friends, for instance, are a couple of young guys whose string band artistry (rootsy banjo, fiddle, et al) held the attention of the big kids at Austin’s South by Southwest music fest. See the full schedule and head on over to Seattle Center.

Tonight the Tractor’s got the magnificent singer/songwriter Leon Russell, whose “A Song for You” could crack the hardest heart and whose cracked sob of a voice may be a matter of taste—there’s a good reason he and Joe Cocker found kinship (Cocker croaked out a hit with Russell’s “Delta Lady”)—but is undoubtedly the authentic expression of one man’s soul.

To see two men express themselves in drag—which, when done right, is no less authentic—go check out New York’s Joey Arias and Sherry Vine performing in SINsational, their bawdy cabaret show at Re-bar. You won’t get “A Song for You,” but you will hear Arias’s uncanny, live vocal approximation of Billie Holiday as well as, if advance reports on the show are correct, Arias and Ms. Vine’s unrepeatable-in-mixed-company spoof of “All That Jazz” (wherein the jazz gets replaced with its closest verbal counterpart from the dictionary of human secretions. Oh, hell: They sing “All That Jizz,” okay? Happy now?).

Hey, stay home with NCIS if you want. I’m just trying to keep your options open.