sex

THE GUEST opens today! Plus more new movies!

0

FINALLY, clever, retro-styled thriller The Guest is here. Check out our interview with the filmmakers and star here, and then go see The Guest this weekend. You’re welcome. 

After you’ve TCB in that regard, you might also want to check out sleek new Patricia Highsmith adaptation The Two Faces of January (review here), family drama The Judge (interview with the director here), or journalism thriller Kill the Messenger. How to decide? Read on for reviews of these and even more films, plus trailers. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccai-E36BfI

Advanced Style Many successful blogs have been turned into books, but few make the leap to film. Street-style photographer Ari Seth Cohen’s online album of fashionable elders translates well to the big screen, as without exception all of the women featured in Lina Plioplyte’s doc are vivacious, quotable (“I’m an artist, and my art is dressing!” “Good style improves the view for everybody!”), and — obviously — wonderfully, uniquely put together. Although at least one subject, 80-year-old Joyce, is wealthy (witness her to-die-for vintage Chanel purse collection), the rest of the women eschew designer for the most part; one owns a vintage store (“Sometimes I’m building an outfit for seven years!”), one owns a boutique (“You either have it, or you don’t … but you can learn it!”), and others are artists, including a former Apollo theater dancer. All are close with Cohen, an access point that allows Advanced Style to dig beyond fabulous hats and into end-of-life issues, including health concerns among the women and their aging spouses. But mostly, this is an upbeat, inspiring look at women who are embracing their later years — and looking rather fab doing it. (1:12) (Cheryl Eddy)

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day In this Disney comedy based on the Judith Viorst children’s book, Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner star as parents to an 11-year-old struggling through, well, see title. (1:22)

Björk: Biophilia Live Those who saw one of Björk’s mind-boggling, futuristic spaceshows for her most recent full-length, Biophilia — performed at only a handful of intimate venues around the world — know the specialness of that experience. At the shows, Björk, everyone’s favorite chirping Icelandic wood-fairy, stood on relatively diminutive stages surrounded by a chilling blonde choir while a Tesla coil vibrated electric shocks of purple lightning. Now those who missed out on these very-special-Björk-moments have the luxury of viewing the full show with concert film Bjork: Biophilia Live. The album was heavily based around imaginative musical apps created for it, making the film an interactive experience as well (play along at home!) The film showcases the complete experience of Biophilia, which touches on nature, music, and technology, during Björk’s showing at London’s Alexandra Palace in 2013. While it would have been nice to see a few behind-the-scenes moments, Biophilia Live still brings up close rushes of electrifying sounds, glittering visuals, and a poufy red-orange cotton candy wig floating delicately above Bjork’s cherubic face. (1:37) Roxie. (Emily Savage)

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead Beginning moments after the events of the original 2009 Dead Snow, Tommy Wirkola’s sequel has that film’s sole survivor, Martin (Vegar Hoel), fleeing the resurrected Nazi invaders who laid waste to his seven fellow med school students on their holiday weekend. Crashing his car en route, he wakes up in the hospital, where there’s some good news — he’s alive — but also plenty of bad. For one thing, the infected arm he sawed off to escape zombie-bite infection has been replaced; that would be good, if he weren’t now the bearer of an arm belonging to none other than the nefarious Col. Herzog (Orjan Gamst); naturally, the limb has a malevolent mind of its own. Plus, the authorities laugh off his story of undead Nazi attackers, naturally assuming that he killed his friends himself. Worse still, Martin figures out that Herzog and company won’t stop killing (and “turning”) the living until they’ve conquered a sleepy town some miles away — thus completing their direct orders from Hitler 70 years ago. The first film took its time revealing the outrageous premise, poking along as a conventional slasher until turning into an increasingly berserk, hilarious black comedy midway. This follow-up makes an all-too-predictable mistake: It starts out at “over-the-top,” leaving the movie nowhere to go but further into slapstick gore and bad-taste jokes, all scaled bigger but just half as funny as before. (There’s also the really dismal addition of three zombie-obsessed American nerds, additional “comedy relief” presumably aimed at US audiences — but I’m not sure even a Norwegian could find these asinine cartoons amusing.) Dead Snow 2 has high energy and some laughs, but if you haven’t seen the original, that’s the place to start — and perhaps to end. (1:40) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her/Him The combined version, Them, was released earlier this fall; now, the individual films exploring a marriage in shreds arrive in theaters. Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy star. (3:19)

Dracula Untold Now it can be told: Dracula was super-duper into Game of Thrones! Between the tension-fraught banquet scenes, swordplay, intrigue, ornate costumes and armor, mop-topped children in peril, and dragon references — not to mention the casting of Big Daddy Lannister (Charles Dance) in a key role — the HBO show looms large over this lightweight but enjoyable vampire yarn, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Soulfully goth Luke Evans (the Hobbit series) stars as Count Dracula before, during, and after his transformation into the fang-bearer of legend; turns out he was a bloodthirsty dude even in human form (hence the nickname “Vlad the Impaler”), though the film lets him rationalize this battlefield behavior by pointing out it was an intimidation tactic designed to save lives by encouraging armies to surrender. Uh-huh. Some clever effects (bats galore!) and flashes of wry wit add to the fun of this mostly forgettable but seasonally-appropriate exercise. (1:32) (Cheryl Eddy) 

The Green Prince Nadav Schirman’s Sundance Film Festival audience award winner (and SF Jewish Film Festival opening night film) should make an impression well beyond the fest circuit; it’s edited and scored like a thriller, surging ahead with constant tension despite the fact that most of the movie consists of the same two talking heads. But what subjects: Palestinian Mosab Hassan Yousef, oldest son of a Hamas leader, and Shin Bet agent Gonen Ben Yitzhak, the man who recruited Mosab to spy on behalf of Israel. How this relationship came to be, the sensitive information it yielded, the incredible risks both men took, and how Mosab eventually ended up living in the United States and sharing his tale — for so long, a life-or-death secret — with the world, is an undeniably gripping tale of loyalty, trust, and a most unlikely friendship. (1:41) (Cheryl Eddy)

The Guest See “Go for Goth.” (1:39)

The Judge Crackling chemistry between Robert Downey, Jr. (as Hank, a hotshot Chicago lawyer who reluctantly returns to his rural hometown after the death of his mother) and Robert Duvall (as the stern title character, Hank’s long-estranged father, Joseph) elevates this otherwise heavy-handed look at a dysfunctional family forced to pull together when Joseph is arrested for murder. The rest of the cast in this more mature departure for director David Dobkin (2005’s The Wedding Crashers) ain’t bad, either; there’s Vincent D’Onofrio as Hank’s seething older brother; Vera Farmiga as Sam, the high school sweetheart Hank left behind; and Billy Bob Thornton as a gimlet-eyed prosecutor with an ax to grind. At two hours and 20 minutes, there’s a lot of opportunity for sentimentality, including a recurring narrative device of using home movies — a treasured hobby of Hank’s younger brother, Dale (Jeremy Strong), unfortunately scripted as a “childlike,” vaguely autistic type — to remind us The Way We Were When Things Were Good. And as if the drama of a murder trial wasn’t enough, there’s also Hank’s tentative reconciliation with Sam, relationship-building efforts with his own wee daughter (Emma Tremblay), a tornado, etc. etc. If The Judge tries to be too many genres at once (see also: Cameron Crowe’s lesser filmography), at least it has those marvelously acted Downey vs. Duvall tête-à-têtes — as well as one memorably hilarious jury-selection scene. For an interview with Dobkin, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (2:21) (Cheryl Eddy)

Kill the Messenger Based partly on former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb’s 1998 book, Dark Alliance, and partly on a posthumous 2004 biography of Webb written by SoCal reporter Nick Schou (from which the film takes its title), Kill the Messenger recounts a grim tale of single-minded muckraking, professional betrayal, and how the federal government’s dubious War on Drugs took an extra-grim turn during the Reagan administration. As the film opens, Webb (Jeremy Renner) is working for the Mercury News, having moved to the Bay Area with his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) and three kids after some marital trouble back east. In the course of covering a drug dealer’s trial, he gets tipped to a story connecting the CIA, the US funding of the contras in Nicaragua, and the crack cocaine that began pouring into Los Angeles and other American cities in the mid-1980s. Michael Cuesta, who since his directorial debut with L.I.E. in 2001 has been mainly working in television (Homeland, Six Feet Under), attempts to combine an All the President’s Men-style journalistic crime procedural with a portrait of the man who broke the story and was in turn broken by it — or rather, by the CIA and the mainstream press, which turns on him with the vengeance, it’s implied, of a handful of prestigious papers of record that got majorly scooped. The portrait, with Renner giving a nuanced, painfully sympathetic performance, comes out better than the procedural, which feels blurry in places from the speed of the discoveries. (1:52) (Lynn Rapoport)

Kite Based on Yasuomi Umetsu’s cult anime, known for its fetishy sex and violence involving a young girl assassin with a penchant for traditional Japanese school uniforms, South Africa-set sci-fi action indie Kite begins with a bang — and a hail of bone fragments and gray matter splatter when an explosive bullet connects with a baddie’s skull. Set in the dystopic near future, after a global financial meltdown, Kite picks up in the middle of an all-too-familiar seedy scenario: an out-of-it teen hooker in a body-con mini and neon wig is getting dragged into the elevator by a trashy sleazebag. His unnecessary cruelty to an elderly lady sharing their lift forces the damsel to break cover and unleash those exploding bullets. It turn out Sawa (India Eisley) is far from your traditional hapless victim — rather she’s a brutal assassin out to avenge her parents’ murders and jumped up on a military drug designed to dull the pain and memories related to PTSD, administered oh so helpfully by her father’s old law-enforcement partner Aker (Samuel L. Jackson). The catch: a mystery man (Callan McAuliffe) who threatens to disrupt the smooth flow of bloody mayhem with his promise to dredge up Sawa’s past. Kite‘s acting talent — in particular Eisley and Jackson — and cinematographer Lance Gewer do what they can, painting the screen with lurid hues and just as over-the-top emotive moments, with pulpy material that’s high on the ultra violence (and salacious kicks for those into little girls with guns) but low on originality. (1:30) (Kimberly Chun)

One Chance Dramedy about the unlikely rise of Britain’s Got Talent breakout Paul Potts (played by James Corden, who just replaced Craig Ferguson as host of The Late Late Show). (1:43)

The Two Faces of January See “Con and On.” (1:38)

Stage Listings: Oct 8-14, 2014

0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

The Dumbwaiter Unscripted Theatre Company, 533 Sutter, SF; http://therabbitholesf.com. $25. Opens Fri/10, 8pm. Runs Sat/11, Mon/13, and Oct 16-18, 8pm; Sun/12, 2pm. Through Oct 18. Rabbit Hole Theater Company performs Harold Pinter’s sinister farce.

Not a Genuine Black Man and The Waiting Period Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $30-100. Opens Thu/9, 8pm. Not a Genuine Black Man runs Thu-Fri, 8pm; The Waiting Period runs Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 22. Brian Copeland performs two of his autobiographical solo pieces in repertory.

Pastorella Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Thu/9, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 25. No Nude Men Productions presents Stuart Bousel’s “play about un-famous actors,” a comedy set backstage at a small theater production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

Shocktoberfest 15: The Bloody Débutante Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Opens Thu/9, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat and Oct 28-29, 8pm. Through Nov 22. Thrillpeddlers promise “an evening of horror, carnage, and song” as part of the company’s annual Grand Guignol extravaganza of short plays.

Wrestling Jerusalem Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.theintersection.org. $25-30. Previews Wed/8-Thu/9, 7:30pm. Opens Fri/10, 7:30pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 26. Aaron Davidman returns to Intersection with his hit solo performance, an exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

BAY AREA

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $19-74. Previews Wed/8-Fri/10, 8pm. Opens Sat/11, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm (also Oct 29, 2pm); Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Nov 2. TheatreWorks performs Stephen Sondheim’s grisly, Tony-winning musical.

The Woman in Black Dragon Theatre, 2120 Broadway, Redwood City; http://dragonproductions.net. $10-30. Previews Thu/9, 8pm. Opens Fri/10, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 2. Dragon Theatre performs Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s horror novella.

ONGOING

Absolutely Fabulous Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.eventbrite.com/e/absolutely-fabulous-abfab-tickets-12641718721. $15-35. Thu, 8pm; Fri, 11pm. Through Dec 12. The hit British sitcom takes the stage thanks to the Royal British Comedy Theatre — despite its name, an SF company with a cast that includes Terrence McLaughlin, ZsaZsa Lufthansa, Annie Larson, Dene Larson, and Raya Light.

Adventures of a Black Girl: Traveling While Black Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 26. Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe performs her funny, poignant exploration of the impact of African migration.

The Barbary Coast Revue Sub/Mission Gallery, 2183 Mission, SF; www.barbarycoastrevue.com. $20. Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 29. Join Mark Twain on an interactive musical tour of Gold Rush-era San Francisco.

Cock New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed/8-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 2pm. English playwright Mike Bartlett’s 2010 Olivier Award-winning drama is a sly form of theatrical bait-and-switch, a play less about gay relationships, sex, or cocks per se (though it does unfold inside a cock-fighting pit) than about the web of power and need in which we can find ourselves ultimately defined — and thus owned — by others. The central character is John (a gradually sympathetic if energetically high-pitched Stephen McFarland), the only character whose name we actually learn, though that (and the generic name itself) amounts to ironic underscoring of his lack of personhood. He’s just left his longtime live-in boyfriend (Todd Pivetti) and begun a romance, for the first time in his life, with a woman (Radhika Raq). But the relative freedom and respect, as well as sexual adventure, he finds in this new relationship competes with the pull of his old ties and he soon waffles in a muddled identity crisis he finds it difficult to articulate — so others do it for him, in a battle of wills that includes John’s boyfriend’s recently widowed father (a sure and subtle Matt Weimer), full of paternal fight and truly crushed by the threatened demise of a relationship he’s long since accepted and now counts on. Director Stephen Rupsch’s production for New Conservatory Theatre Center suffers from uneven performances and takes some time getting started, but the play’s straightforward ideas crystallize nice and chillingly by the end. (Avila)

Die! Mommie, Die! New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Fri/10, 8pm. Opens Sat/11, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 2. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Charles Busch’s campy comedy.

Do I Hear a Waltz? Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstmoon.org. $25-75. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm (also Sat/11, 1pm). Through Oct 19. 42nd Street Moon opens its 22nd season with this 1960s-set tell of a lonely American tourist (Tony nominee Emily Skinner) vacationing in Venice.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Ideation San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-120. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 8. SF Playhouse performs the world premiere of Aaron Loeb’s darkly comic suspense thriller.

The Late Wedding Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $15-35. Wed/8-Sat/11, 8pm. Crowded Fire Theater performs a world premiere commission by Christopher Chen, a “journey of the soul” inspired by the work of Italian fabulist novelist Italo Calvino.

Noises Off! Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 25. Shelton Theater performs Michael Frayn’s outrageous backstage comedy.

Old Hats ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-120. Wed/8-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 2pm); Sun/12, 2pm. This is a show I could watch every night: death- and age-defying master clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner in an evening of updated and re-envisioned vaudeville-style shtick, supported by the bright and irresistible charm of singer-songwriter Shaina Taub and her versatile band (Jacob Colin Cohen, Mike Brun, Mike Dobson, and Justin J. Smith). Steppenwolf Theatre’s Tina Landau directs this buoyant Signature Theatre production, which returns Irwin and Shiner to the Geary after ACT’s 2001 production of Fool Moon. It’s can’t be easy to instill so traditional a formula with this many surprises and genuine laughs, but Irwin, Shiner, and company sure make it look that way. (Avila)

Pippin Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor, SF; www.shnsf.com. $45-210. Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 19. This new production of Roger O. Hirson and Stephen Schartz’s 1972 musical won the 2013 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical.

Ransom, Texas Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.tidestheatre.org. $10-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 18. Virago Theatre Company performs William Bivins’ Texas-set tale of escalating tension between a father and son.

Semi-Famous: Hollywood Hell Tales from the Middle New venue: Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 19. Don Reed’s latest solo show shares tales from his career in entertainment.

Slaughterhouse Five Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $20-50. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 3pm). Extended through Oct 26. Eric Simonson’s adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 classic, performed by Custom Made Theatre Co., could prove a bit of a nonlinear whirlwind for any theatergoers who haven’t read the book. Like Billy Pilgrim (in “a constant state of stage fright … because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next”), the audience plummets to the futuristic planet of Tralfamadore, flashes back to the gruesome Dresden bombings, even further back to Billy as a fragile and temperamental little boy, and then forward to Billy in a mental hospital. Each of the show’s 11 actors takes on a variety of roles, and scenes last just a few minutes, with abrupt transitions marked by a loud, futuristic thrumming signal that demands attention even during breaks in the action. Minimalist set design and mimed “props” urge audience members to fill in the gaps and use their imaginations, with further enhancements offered by three large panels displaying animated versions of Vonnegut’s line drawings. Among the actors, the supporting cast is particularly effective, including the multifaceted Sal Mattos (as a ferocious German soldier, an American prisoner of war, and a mental patient), and Stephanie Ann Foster, as both Pilgrim’s emotionally eager wife and a compassionate, fatherly prisoner. Sam Tillis also has a nice (if sociopathic) turn as a vengeful war prisoner who promises to murder everyone who has crossed him. (Haley Brucato)

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.sfneofuturists.com. $11-16. Fri-Sat, 9pm. Ongoing. The Neo-Futurists perform Greg Allen’s spontaneous, ever-changing show that crams 30 plays into 60 minutes.

Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; www.rayoflighttheatre.com. $25-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 25 and Nov 1, 2pm). Through Nov 1. Ray of Light Theatre performs the West Coast premiere of the new rock musical by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann (Urinetown).

BAY AREA

An Audience with Meow Meow Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-89. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Oct 16, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Oct 19. This self-styled “musical play” by a winking “post-post-modern” diva (the vocally and comically talented Australian chanteuse Meow Meow) is in fact much thinner than either category suggests — more like a tired music hall variety act. Written by Meow Meow and adapted and directed by Kneehigh’s Emma Rice, the routines are premised on the imperiousness and insecurities of a soi-disant megastar whose band and stage crew gradually abandon her, leaving her alone with her adoring audience. While there are one or two musical moments worth perking up a little for — in particular a vocally potent version of “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” and a mood-shifting rendition of Hans Eisler and Bertolt Brecht’s “The German Miserere” that feels incongruous here, like part of another and better show — the going is otherwise tough, the narrative forced and clunky in the extreme. Rice’s staging not only lacks inspiration but comes with a dismal abundance of low-hanging call-out-the-audience participation laughs. Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna (presumably an inspiration here) could get away with this get-the-guests approach, being a weightier and far wittier character. But here it comes across as a desperate attempt to sell a poorly written sketch supporting some unevenly appealing musical numbers. (Avila)

Fire Work Live Oak Theatre, Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Oct 19. TheatreFirst presents the world premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s romantic comedy.

Lovebirds Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Oct 18. Marga Gomez brings her solo show to Berkeley after runs in SF and NYC.

The Whale Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $35-58. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm; Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 26. Marin Theatre Company performs Samuel D. Hunter’s drama about a 600-pound man who reconnects with his troubled teenage daughter.

Year of the Rooster La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; http://impacttheatre.com. $10-25. Thu/9-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 7pm. Impact Theatre performs Eric Dufault’s comedy, told from the point of view of a rooster that enters cockfights.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason, SF; www.improv.org. $20. This week: “Improvised Twilight Zone,” Fri, 8pm, through Oct 24; “Zombie Horror Serial,” Sat, 8pm, through Oct 25.

“Blush Comedy” Blush! Wine Bar, 476 Castro, SF; (415) 558-0893. Wed/8, 8pm. Free. With Stefani Silverman, Ben Feldman, Jessica Sele, Drew Harmon, Steve Lee, and Emily Epstein White.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/11, 16, 26, 6:30pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

Doc’s Lab 124 Columbus, SF; www.docslabsf.com. This week: “Learn From Me: Comedy Showcase,” Thu/9, 8pm, $8-10; comedy with headliner Laurie Kilmartin, Sat/11, 9pm, $15-90; “Doc’s Comedy Open Mic,” Tue/14, 7pm, free.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/8, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: “Broadway Bingo,” Wed/8, 7pm, $15; Joey Arias, Fri/10, 8pm, $25-40; Marlena Shaw in “California Soul,” Sat/12-Sun/11, 7pm, $35-50.

“Hell in the Armory” Armory, 1800 Mission, SF; www.hellinthearmory.com. Tue-Sat, 7pm-midnight. Through Nov 1. $45. Kink.com celebrates Halloween with this decidedly adult, immersive, BDSM-themed haunted-house tour.

“Hubba Hubba Revue’s Pirates!” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. Fri/10, 9:30pm. $15-30. Burlesque and variety show with a pirate theme.

“Jump Ship Mid Way” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri-Sat and Oct 16, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 19. $20. Kegan Marling’s new performance (with Mica Sigourney) explores image struggles in the gay community.

“Lakansyel: Fifth Annual Haitian Dance, Music, and Arts Festival” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm. $25. Visiting and local artists perform in this celebration of Haitian culture.

Living Arts Playback Theatre Ensemble Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun/12, 7:30pm. $18-20. Improvised theater works created from personal stories shared by audience members.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Out of Line Improv” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; outoflineimprov.brownpapertickets.com. Sat, 10:30pm. Ongoing. $12. A new, completely improvised show every week.

Portals Tavern Open Mic Comedy Portals Tavern, 179 West Portal, SF; (415) 731-1208. Mon, 9pm. Ongoing. Free. Locals perform at this comedy night hosted by Justin Alan.

“Red Hots Burlesque: Burlesque in Your Neck of the Woods” Neck of the Woods, 406 Clement, SF; redhotsburlesque.com. Thu, 8-10pm. $10-20. Ongoing. Dottie Lux and company bring burlesque to the Richmond District for this weekly show.

San Francisco Comedy College Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.purpleonionatkells.com. Ongoing. $5-15. “Weekly New Talent Shows,” Wed-Thu, 7pm. “Purple Onion All-Stars,” Wed-Thu, 8:15pm. “The Later Show,” Wed-Thu, 10pm. “The Cellar Dwellers” Fri-Sat, 7:30pm.

“Terminator Too: Judgment Play” and “Point Break LIVE!” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. Nov 7 and Dec 5, Terminator at 7:30pm; Break at 11pm. $20-50. The raucous, interactive staged recreations of two of 1991’s greatest action films return to the DNA Lounge.

“Walk the Plank Comedy Competition” Neck of the Woods, 406 Clement, SF; www.neckofthewoodssf.com. Sun, 7pm. Through Oct 26. Free. With host Danny Dechi.

BAY AREA

Bay Area Flamenco Festival La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; http://bayareaflamencofestival.org. Thu/9, 8pm. Additional events held Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm, Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, SF, and in Santa Cruz (check website for details). $30-50. Top flamenco performers from Seville, Spain take the stage; the fest also includes workshops and master classes.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“Paul C.’s Homeroom Journal” Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat/11-Sun/12, 8pm. $15-30. Dance Up Close/East Bay presents this dance theater collage choreographed and performed by Stranger Lover Dreamer. *

The Selector: Oct. 8-14, 2014

0

WEDNESDAY 8

 

King Khan and BBQ Show

King Khan is perhaps best known for his work with his garage-soul-punk outfit The Shrines, a tremendously noisy and riotously fun group of talented musicians. But it is his collaborations with Mark Sultan, a.k.a. BBQ, that will make you laugh, mist up, shake your groove thang, and fall in love. The pair has been working together since the late ’90s, first in Canadian punk band the space Spaceshits, and then again as a rock duo. Though the relationship has been tumultuous, there’s no denying that King Khan and BBQ are musical soul mates. Their (extremely) unique blend of doo-wop, punk, garage rock, and potty humor will steal your heart and sell your soul. (Haley Zaremba)

With Isaac Rother, The Phantoms

8pm, $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell St

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

THURSDAY 9

 

Shocktoberfest 15: The Bloody Débutante

Horror and carnage! Songs and…chuckles? Local theater menagerie Thrillpeddlers — beloved for its hugely successful revivals of Cockettes musicals — never disappoints when it comes to putting a uniquely bawdy yet gore-gushing spin on Halloween entertainment. In addition to the trademark “Spook-Show Finale” (you may laugh yourself silly during the prior acts, but this part is genuinely freaky), the 15th Shocktoberfest boasts a titillating quartet of short plays. The title entry is by composer and music director (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn; there’s also a circa-1903 entry from Paris’ legendary Grand Guignol, the Poe adaptation The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather, and two black comedies: Deathwrite and The Taxidermist’s Revenge. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Nov 22

Opens Thu/9, 8pm; runs Thu-Sat and Oct 28-29, 8pm, $30-35

Hypnodrome

575 10th St, SF

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

 

Imelda May

Taking the sounds of traditional rockabilly, blues and jazz and giving them an injection of her own infectious energy and style, Irish chanteuse Imelda May’s sultry and sumptuous voice can make listeners swoon at a ballad or jump up to the searing rockers that pepper her excellent new album Tribal (Verve), which was released last month in the United States. May has been rocking stages for well over a decade in the UK, and is finally gaining the popularity here that she and her talented band so rightly deserve — this is your chance to see the Dublin-born singer belt it out in a venue truly befitting her timeless tunes. (Sean McCourt)

With The Rhythm Shakers

8pm, $29.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-3000

www.thefillmore.com

 

FRIDAY 10

 

Arab Film Festival

The 18th annual Arab Film Festival, which focuses on independent films from the Arab world, opens tonight at the Castro Theatre with writer-director-star Cherien Dabis’ May in the Summer, about a Jordanian American writer whose impending marriage to a Palestinian shakes up her family. Alia Shawkat — yep, Maeby Fünke from Arrested Development — co-stars as her straight-talking sister. The rest of the fest sprawls across the Bay Area, with documentaries, shorts, and more; Tangiers-set drama Rock the Casbah closes it out Oct. 23 at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Oct 23, most shows $12

Various venues in SF, Oakl, Berk, and Palo Alto

www.arabfilmfestival.org

 

 

Shonen Knife

Shonen Knife first materialized in Osaka in the early ’80s. Working against the backdrop of J-pop, at the time a burgeoning movement, Shonen Knife drew equally from sunny ’60s-style pop and raw, ’70s punk. Using simple, solid songwriting and light-hearted lyrics in both English and Japanese, Shonen Knife have managed to remain a beloved mainstay in DIY and punk scenes around the world. Fans included Fugazi and Kurt Cobain, both of whom invited the band to open for them. (Shonen Knife did a whole European tour with Nirvana just before the band released Nevermind.) One of very few all-girl bands to come out of Japan in their era, not only are Shonen Knife (literally translated as Boy Knife) girl-punk pioneers, they are musical and feminist role models — with kickass haircuts and killer riffs. (Zaremba)

Death Valley Girls, Great Apes

9:30pm, $14

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

 

Bay Area Book & Cover Design Exhibition

Litquake will sprawl across the city for another year of festivities to appreciate the written word, where, “against the backdrop of a technology-crazed San Francisco, writers [are] still drawn to the city.” For the 12th year, book lovers will have their cravings met, and this week-long exhibition will showcase the best in book and cover design from Bay Area publishers with books published between 2010 and mid-2014. This is a unique chance to take a closer look at the art and design that enclose masterpieces of text. The designs will be displayed at Chronicle Book’s Metreon store as well the SF Public Library Main branch.

Through Sat/18

6pm-8pm, free

Chronicle Books

165 4th St, SF

 

SF Public Library

100 Larkin, SF

(415) 369-6271

www.litquake.org/events/booksxdesign.com

 

 

Carmen Ledesma

The 9th annual Bay Area Flamenco Festival will debut Spain’s own Carmen Ledesma to the Bay Area as she celebrates the unique Gypsy flamenco traditions of Utera. Her performance is a representation of Sevilla’s legacy of female dancers and will be accompanied by a group of professional flamenco artists — including guitarist Antonio Moya and singer Mari Peña of the legendary “Pinini Clan.” Ledesma has performed with Spain’s National Ballet and is known as one of the “best flamenco dance teachers in Andalucía today,” so take advantage of her workshops during the festival, where you will get your chance to learn from one of the best.

8pm, $30-$100

Cowell Theater

2 Marina, SF

(510) 444-2820

www.bayareaflamencofestival.org

 

SATURDAY 11

 

Berlin and Beyond Autumn Showcase

Hot on the heels of the SF Silent Film Festival’s “Silent Autumn” comes another seasonal mini-fest: the Berlin and Beyond Autumn Showcase, showcasing a quintet of films ahead of the main B&B fest in January. First up is a 35mm screening of documentary Megacities, a tribute to its Austrian filmmaker, Michael Glawogger, who died of malaria earlier this year while working on a new project in Africa. Another doc, Enemies/Friends: German Prisoners of War, makes its North American debut, as does Dreamland, a Zurich-set ensemble drama. There’s also a repeat from the ongoing Mill Valley Film Festival — Volker Schlöndorff’s World War II nailbiter, Diplomacy — and Banklady, a based-on-true-events tale of a young woman who hones her bank-robbing skills in 1960s West Germany. (CherylEddy)

First film at 11am, $12 (full day pass, $50)

New People Cinema

1746 Post, SF

www.berlinbeyond.com

 

 

4th Annual Yerba Buena Night

Wander the streets in the heart of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena district and see it come alive for just this night. Music, video, art, and dance — you name it. The festival is back and better than ever with over 40 performances scattered across five stages. Kicking off the night will be the Yerba Buena Alliance Artwalk, where you can look in awe upon giant video projections, interactive installations, and explore galleries and exhibits for free. And later, if you’ve never seen live aerialists perform, now is your chance. Not to mention local buzzworthy bands like Ensemble Mik Nawooj, Roem and The Revival, Rin Tin Tiger, Robot Dance Party…the list goes on. For the first time, Off the Grid will make an appearance; you can also keep the festivities going late into the night — long after the streets have emptied — as neighboring businesses will offer all kinds of food and drink specials.

4pm-10pm, free

Multiple Locations

760 Mission, SF

(415) 644-0728

www.ybnight.org

 

SUNDAY 12

 

Bay Area Ladyfest Presents: Feminist Porn

Bay Area Ladyfest, a four-day smorgasbord of performances, DIY workshops, film screenings, and house shows celebrating the art and work of all self-identified women, will close out the festivities Sunday evening with um, a bang. “Feminist Porn and Self Pleasure: A Dialogue and Screening,” co-presented with Fucking Sculptures (which creates sex toys that double as fine art), will include a discussion with Fucking Sculptures’ owner, followed by screenings from local independent queer and feminist porn purveyors. Afterward, meet the performers and tell them just how much you enjoyed their work! (Emma Silvers)

18+, 6pm-10pm, $5 suggested donation

701 Bancroft, Berk.

www.bayarealadyfest.tumblr.com


TUESDAY 14

Culture Collide SF

For the first time in SF, the originally LA-based Culture Collide is bringing more than 35 bands from all over the world — Peru, Israel,the Netherlands, Turkey, Japan, in addition to the US — to venues throughout the Mission, all for a very-easy-on-your-wallet $20. This 21+ fest has bigshots like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Cloud Nothings, locals who are in the process of blowing up like GRMLN, and a whole slew of buzzy international folks we’ve been hearing about — the Netherlands’ Go Back to the Zoo, the UK’s Nothing But Thieves, Costa Rica’s Alphabetics, at Mission venues the Chapel, the Elbo Room, Mission Workshop, and Amnesia. Plus, comedy, music industry panels (SF’s Different Fur will host the Elbo Room stage), and events billed as “Beers of the World,” “Spirits of the World,” and “Best Mission Burrito” (if you don’t want to take the NYT’s word for it.) Best of all — no passport necessary.

Through Wed/15 3pm-12am, $20-$30

Venues through the Mission, SF

www.culturecollide.com

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 835 Market Street, Suite 550, SF, CA 94103; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

By George

0

FILM/LIT It’s anyone’s guess how many films and videos George Kuchar made before his death in 2011 (Portland’s Yale Union is valiantly attempting a comprehensive retrospective, which they estimate will take seven years), but there’s material for at least a hundred more in The George Kuchar Reader (Primary Information, 336 pp., $27.50). Tracing a singular life in movies from the Bronx-bound 8mm melodramas Kuchar made with his twin brother, Mike, on through the boundlessly nutty video conflagrations emerging out of his classroom at the San Francisco Art Institute, the book collects handwritten screenplays, letters, underground comics, meteorological observations, and UFO diaries. Reader editor Andrew Lampert will be in attendance at two special screenings in the coming weeks to report on these deep-sea dives into Kuchar’s self-described cinematic cesspool.

That Kuchar’s literary artifacts should be hilarious and not a little wise is no surprise, but it’s worth pausing to note the extent to which the writing itself illuminates Kuchar’s creative methods. Take the letters of recommendations he wrote for his SFAI students — an obligatory form of writing if there ever was one, but for Kuchar an occasion for uninhibited characterization: “This winged spirit, reared in semitropical heat, can banish the chill that has descended upon your patrons; so turn up the heat and witness what only equatorial nearness can nurture”; “His unbridled lust for livid living endows the fruits of his labor with intoxicating incense. Sniff these works at your own risk as the aroma reeks of secret scents from a Garden of Eden gone mad with flower power”; “He’s a lone figure swimming upstream to a different drumbeat.” No cliché is safe. Kuchar’s persistence in slugging it out with these once familiar figures of speech surely says something about the way he approached a dramatic scene.

Implicitly skewering heroic strains of avant-garde poetics, Kuchar’s accounts of his own filmmaking almost always turn on the body. Take this metabolic account from a 1964 article for Film Culture:

“Many nights I lay awake in my sheets burning with the fever of a new movie script … Sleep only comes when extra sugar is pumped into my body due to the excessive emotional tension that grips me during these celestial periods. The sugar makes my body hot thereby opening its big pores. Then the sweat of my ordeal seeps out in a stink of creativity and new germ has been born. A germ that will grow into the virus of 8mm movies. In the morning I awaken, fresh, vibrant, but constipated with the urge to release a lump of cinematic material.”

So filmmaking is fever, open pores, sweat, stink, germs, and viruses; the film itself, a load of shit. One begins to sense that the many Joycean digressions on “exciting gastric distress” peppering these pages are less a matter of any particular tummy trouble than Kuchar’s underlying conviction that the creative muse is ineluctably bound to more basic drives.

Bodily fixations notwithstanding, Kuchar was plenty canny about film aesthetics, whether pinpointing the underlying motivations for “these gigantic, moving billboards” (“IT WAS LOVE AND OBSESSION”) or situating his own fortuitous ascendancy in the 1960s avant-garde: “You’d develop them [8mm films] cheap at the local camera store and in five or 10 years the emulsion would crack and chip in time for the 1960s, avant-garde film explosion. No need to bake your footage in an oven like so many artists were doing: your home movies had already deteriorated into art.” Not that Kuchar wasn’t grateful: An early letter to Donna Kerness evinces little enthusiasm for his work as a commercial artist but adapts a more familiar exuberance when describing his latest 8mm production about a brawling ménage-a-trois.

The final 50 pages of the Reader are dedicated to a poignant last testament stitched together from the “endless emails of unexpurgated excess” Kuchar sent Kerness in 2010-2011. Even in his teenage letters to Kerness, it’s clear that Kuchar felt unusually at ease writing to the star of his Corruption of the Damned (1965). Describing an earlier melodrama, he writes with unusual candor how “I was very inspired by Arlene and her kin. They are very mixed up and sometimes they are damaging their lives but I like them anyway probably because I’m just like them.” Fifty years later, sick with love and cancer, Kuchar treats Kerness more as a confessor than a confidante. “Anxious to reveal secrets I usually kept under wraps,” Kuchar doesn’t spare any detail in describing his yearning for a long-time “midnight caller” named Larry: “Instead of realizing that he’s just what you call a sex buddy, I turn the whole thing into a live or die, Victorian romance.”

Even in his hour of darkness, Kuchar couldn’t help but seeing his own trials as material for a grand melodrama. “Being the egotistical movie director that I am, I want the motion picture of my life to be an X rated, inspirational saga of the nerdy Bronx kid who walked the red carpets of Hollywood while flirting with the red light districts of Sin City.” In a more reflective mood he writes to Kerness, “Expressing all this in certain chosen words and constructed sentences made the mental and medical troubles take a back seat to creative engineering: an arrangement of letters and punctuations to coalesce the chaos that contaminated my cranium.”

Kuchar writes of depressive anxiety, rampant insecurity, sexual hang-ups, and plenty of confusion in the face of “getting old and dreaming young” — but not a word of boredom. “Since I’m an actor anyway, I see the personal issues I penned (or typed) as emotional motivations in an ongoing (for a time anyway) B-movie.” B-movies aren’t really a wellspring of inspiration; that was all George. A final photograph shows him standing in front of a Denny’s, eyes on the skies like always. 2

 

OFF THE SCREEN: MOVING PICTURES AND WRITTEN WORDS: CELEBRATING THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER

Oct. 15, 7pm, free

Exploratorium

Pier 15, SF

www.exploratorium.edu

A CRIMINAL ACCOUNT OF PLEASURE: THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER

Oct. 18, 7:30pm, $8-10

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

Head First: Explosive Sexual Healing hurts so … good?

0

I’ve got a lot of repressed issues, and I came to San Francisco to try to get them resolved. But I never imagined a possible solution to my problems would be to have some guy finger me while his wife does reiki over my naked body and I scream bloody murder. 

But this kind of thing is an option in the Bay Area, and it’s called Explosive Sexual Healing (ESH). The practice uses things like pain, pleasure, breath work, spiritual alchemy, vocal therapy, and g-spot massage to access emotions and trauma stored in the body. The idea is that once these deep-rooted issues are discovered, they can be dealt with and ideally released. 

ESH isn’t more than a few years old and there are only a few practitioners in California. I did a session with Becky and Cory Center — a husband and wife team that got married four months after meeting each other. When they met, Cory had been released on probation from having been in prison for bank robbery for three years, and Becky was transitioning from her life as a math teacher to a spiritual healer. They met at Landmark Forum, they clicked, and now they’re ESH practitioners. 

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think this practice was weird. But would that stop me from trying it? No way. I was down to sexually explode.

When I arrived at their home office in Alameda, I sat with them at a table in their entryway and we started the Awakening Session — which involved an alchemical card reading by Cory. He pulled out three cards that he drew himself with marker, laid them on the table in front of me, and told me of my past, present, and future. The reading was pretty accurate, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the detailed form I filled out earlier about my personal history and future desires could have aided in his fortune telling.

Next, they gave me a description about what to expect in the session — explaining that there would be both pain AND pleasure. They asked me about what I wanted healed, and I said that I wanted to stop feeling guilty for feeling satisfied with my accomplishments. I also said I wanted to feel like my brain was just as valuable as my body. They then asked me to come up “affirmations,” which were positive statements that I’d like recited during ESH that would reprogram my brain to think the way I want it to.

“They should be as simple as what a child would say,” Cory said. “As long as they ring true for you.”

So after a lot of back and forth, we came up with the basic statements: “I am free,” “I am wanted,” “I am desired,” “I am important.” These are all nice things to think about, but I thought they were a bit too vague to mend anything specific going on in my head.

Next, they led me into their living room where there was a massage table, psychedelic music, and a blue and green peacock painting above the fireplace. I kept my clothes on and lied on the table.

They taught me how to do what they call “the big draw” — which involved me breathing in and out really fast, tightening my body up into a vertical crunch, then relaxing back onto the table. 

After that, I flipped over onto my stomach.

They told me to relax and breathe while Becky did reiki over my body. 

“Something is telling me you’re ready, Krissy,” Becky said. “That doesn’t have to mean anything to you. Just know it’s saying ‘You’re ready. You’re ready.’” 

When I was finally good and relaxed, Cory started to knead his hands into my muscles — and not in an “Ahh that feels good” way, but in an “I’m gonna leave marks” way. I knew there was going to be pain, I just underestimated how much. I clenched my jaw. They made it clear that I could tell them to stop touching me whenever I wanted to, but I wanted to commit to the experience, so I hung in there.

They told me to scream, but I’m not much of a yeller when something hurts — I’m more of a grunter. I let out a few shouts that weren’t quite to their satisfaction. Becky told me to scream louder, so I did until my throat hurt.

After the process went on for many minutes, my body started reacting to the heat, the pain, and the screaming. I felt like the table was vibrating, and my hands kept cramping up into fists from all the stimulation. Becky told me to kick my legs and pound my hands into the table to get the tingles out. It was both terrifying and embarrassing. But what could I do? I wanted my hands to stop cramping. So I kicked around like a child having a tantrum until my fingers relaxed. 

Finally the pain part was over, and I flipped over onto my back. They blindfolded me, then ran their hands over my body and crotch to top off all that pain with a little pleasure. Then they told me it was time for me to go reflect on my own.

They sent me off for a dinner break. I ate a sandwich and sat on the steps of a building outside — feeling really confused and a little lost. I didn’t think it was responsible of them to leave me alone like that for an hour after such an emotional beating. But I was willing to believe it was a part of their strange methods, and I let it slide.

When I got back, I talked to them about feelings and thoughts that were coming up for me – like how I felt kind of high and had trouble writing in my notebook on account of loopy-ness. 

Soon, I stripped naked and was back on the table, face down. 

“Ow, shit,” I said as Cory shoved his elbow hard into my ass muscles. 

“How would you rate your pain right now?” he asked. 

“Ugh, an eight?” I said. 

“Well, your voice is at a three.”

Becky told me to scream as loud as I could. So I sucked in a deep breath and screamed. 

“Your scream is coming from your throat right now,” she said. “Do it from your belly.” 

Becky told me to match her volume, and she started screaming. So we were both wailing while Cory pressed hard into every part of me he could find — even the inside of my crack.

“Who do you want to speak to?” Becky asked.

I said nothing at first because I had no idea.

“Who? It can be anyone,” she said.

“Men?” I was really guessing. 

She told me to shout what I wanted to say to them. Fortunately, I had let go of my shame much earlier on in the session, so I started yelling shit.

“READ A BOOK ON CUNNILINGUS!” I shouted. “STOP TRYING TO FUCK ME IN THE ASS!”

The point of this part of the session is to find physical pain held in the body and then release it. And as weird as it was, when I screamed like a banshee and cussed at dudes, the pain actually did stop in my ass — even though Cory was digging into it with his elbow. 

“We moved the pain right out,” he said, a satisfied tone in his voice. 

It was time for the pleasure part.

I got up to take a piss, then returned and lied down on my back, exhausted as fuck. I was blindfolded again and Cory slipped and slid his fingers over my sweat drenched body.

“Finally,” I thought. “Time for an orgasm.”

I was wrong.

It was actually time to endure a 10 minute tease session, where I was getting fingered and brought to the brink of orgasm without being allowed to come. And on top of that, they made me say my affirmations while I was trying to get off. So I was screaming, “I am free!” and “I am wanted!” at the top of my lungs while trying to focus on having an orgasm. Finally, I had one, and it was pretty good (definitely juicy). But then it was time for another 10 minutes of teasing, and they brought me right up to the brink of coming, and then stopped me. I did the “big draw” and collapsed back onto the table. They left me alone for a bit.

After awhile, I slowly sat up, feeling like I’d just slept for three days and like I weighed an extra 30 pounds. 

I went back to the entryway and sat down at the table with them. They were kind and checked in with me and my emotions. I felt high, tired, but weirdly alert, confused, and at the same time, relaxed. I was in glass case of emotion.

A few days later Cory called me for a follow-up to check in on me. The two of them recognized that ESH can be jarring, and they were there to make sure I was okay — which I appreciated.

I think the intensity of sensation during the session induced heightened states of awareness which led me to have deep thoughts. Did those deep thoughts help me to stop feeling guilty about being satisfied with my accomplishments? No. Do I feel like my brain is just as valuable as my body? No. But to be fair, to fully heal, you’re supposed to do six sessions, not just one.

ESH could potentially open someone’s mind to new things, and I could see how it would be helpful to a person stuck in a mental or emotional rut. But I don’t think I’d go back for another rendezvous any time soon. I think I prefer a healing experience with more sex and less explosion.

Festival-sized doses of art, food, and technology at Portland’s TBA fest

0

As the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) presented the 12th iteration of the Time-Based Art Festival September 11-21, two newer festivals (Feast Portland and XOXO) also peppered the Rose City with foodie events and tech talk galore.

TBA, under the artistic direction of Angela Mattox, formerly the performing arts curator at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, emphasized music and vocal experiments in this year’s program. The international festival is distinct in its presenting platform and density of experimental performance, making it well worth the hour flight to Oregon from San Francisco.

The rather utopian format of a 10-day art binge features rigorous lunchtime conversations about artist processes and concepts, a stacked lineup of daily performances, visual art, and film at venues across the city, and a beer garden for late-night gatherings and conversation, serving as a hub for artists and attendees to mix and digest the work. Additionally compatible with certain Bay Area sensibilities are the possibilities of experiencing the festival by bike and sampling the city’s somewhat precious cuisine, coffee and beer. (Of course, Portland loves to start happy hour at 3pm.)

There’s a choreography to the festival, allowing a sequence of works to rub against each other. After an initial weekend featuring music, sound, and body-based performance, Sept. 15 brought the first text-based work of the festival via a one-woman show. The week moved into personal and self-reflexive modes of storytelling and rounded out with productions of experimental theater tackling rather epic themes such as human evolution and post-traumatic societies.

“We are here for such a short time. We are not supposed to be struggling in our flesh,” Tanya Tagaq commented during her artist conversation. She discussed the release of control as a healing process and her performance was the walk to her talk. Tagaq, who last appeared in San Francisco with the Kronos Quartet in 2012, expanded the Inuit art of throat singing during a highly improvised performance in concert with Robert Flaherty’s seminal silent film Nanook of the North (1922). Tagaq, with violinist Jesse Zubot and drummer Jean Martin, appeared barefoot, frequently assuming a wide stance as she projected her forcefully rhythmic and breathy vocals. Her fully embodied song responded to the vintage footage of an Inuk family projected behind the musicians. The semi-documentary illuminates the harmony and struggle of living off the Arctic land with images of seal hunting, igloo building and child rearing.

Maya Beiser was among the abundant female artists in this year’s festival lineup. A founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Beiser performed Uncovered: electric cello arrangements of cover tunes including Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. Like Tagaq, the glamourous Beiser employed the moving image, playing downstage of a film by Bill Morrison. 

These highly visual music performances bookended a sold-out performance by Tim Hecker, a Canadian noise artist who performed in a darkened house, his arms on the soundboard barely visible. (Gray Area Art and Technology presented Hecker’s San Francisco debut in July.) The darkness amplified visceral and sonic elements of his drones and melodies, a sound bath which rattled the shirt on my body. Hecker’s immersive stasis and wall of sound provided a deviant TBA moment. Resonance over meaning. I wanted to be closer and standing.

The life stories of seniors, both speculative and real, were also featured. Mammalian Diving Reflex’s All the Sex I’ve Ever Had illuminated decades of true stories about intimacy, old age and life milestones revealed by a handful of willing Portland seniors. Cynthia Hopkins’s A Living Documentary took the form of a solo musical in which Hopkins played an elderly experimental performing artist reflecting on her lifetime creating art in a capitalist society. 

“It’s called show business, not show vacation!” Hopkins wailed. Her narrative about labor, resource, and occupation situated artists at the center of the festival, providing the lens of an elderly maker. She was a hobo. Ingredients of the lifestyle included vodka, birth control, and antidepressants. Hopkins brilliantly employed the palatable storytelling devices of the musical — an underdog who moved through adversity — to tell a depressing story audiences may not want to hear. Hopkins’s character mused about her “impulse to do something not about survival” but rather purpose, meaning and identity.

Costume and makeup changes occurred seamlessly onstage. She shined as a rousing motivational consultant telling artists to grow some “spiritual testicles” as they navigate their business. In the end Hopkins walked away from her art, however there are no clean breaks from trajectories lived for decades. 

The Works served as the site of Jennifer West’s PICA-commissioned Flashlight Filmstrip Projections installation. During the performances, which activated the work, a team of artists carrying flashlights illuminated the suspended filmstrips to Jesse Mejia’s live synthesizer soundscape. The flowing white dress worn by Connie Moore performing Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance in the center of the space served as an additional projection surface. A deep sense of ritual and archive emerged with the cinematic fragments and live re-performance of a historic choreographic work.

Also at the Works, San Francisco artist Larry/Laura Arrington instigated an iteration of SQUART! (Spontaneous Queer Art), which challenged community participants to rapidly create a work performed the same evening. Bay Area artists including Jesse Hewit, Jess Curtis and Rachael Dichter were among the participants. The routines, which included a jump rope, a small dog and plenty of other tasks and antics, were evaluated live by a team of judges from the art world.

Returning to my bike from Pepper Pepper’s glitterfied Critical Mascara “A Post-Realness Drag Ball” at the Works, I passed another warehouse, the Redd, with similar outdoor food vendors, twinkly lights, and a beer garden atmosphere. This hub belonged to the XOXO Festival. Now in its third year, the conference (Sept 11-14), founded by Andy Baio and Andy McMillan, bills itself as “An experimental festival celebrating independently-produced art and technology”.

Further up the street at Holocene I encountered XOXO attendees gathered for evening music programming. They flashed their orange badges to listen to a lineup of bands including Yacht, John Roderick and Sean Nelson, Nerf Herder, Vektroid, and DJ Magic Beans. XOXO is a closed affair, selling out tickets months prior. According to the Verge, “The number of people who experience XOXO in person is small: the festival is limited to 1,000 attendees, including 750 with all-access passes, and 250 who attend nighttime events but not the talks during the day.”

It was clear after speaking to several delegates at Holocene that few were aware they were blocks away from the dense batch of experimental artists at TBA. I can imagine these guys (and yes most of them were guys) enjoying sound artists like Tim Hecker presented by PICA this year. If XOXO is truly interested in cross field collaborations and self-identifies as an art and technology conference, I hope they consider how to work in conjunction with some of the risk-taking artists with wild imaginations at the simultaneous art festival, TBA, which has been running four times as long in Portland with an international reach.

Trendy food items like pork and the Negroni had moments in the spotlight at a third September festival, Feast Portland, presented by Bon Appetit Sept. 17-20. Founded in 2012 by Mike Thelin and Carrie Welch, Feast Portland highlights local culinary leaders and the bounty of the Pacific Northwest along with top chefs from across the country. And may your conscience be clear while you are possibly pigging out on pig – net proceeds of Feast go toward ending childhood hunger through Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon and Share Our Strength.

Talent came from as far as Dallas and Atlanta to compete among 14 top chefs facing the challenge of the Widmer Brothers Sandwich Invitational at downtown Portland’s Director Park. Before the lines got long, I visited local favorites including Lardo’s Rick Gencarelli and Salt & Straw’s Tyler Malek (who was making a PB and J with brioche, jelly, and peanut butter ice cream). With three festivals providing such a dense convergence of art, food and technology, one thing’s for sure: September in Portland was made for San Franciscans.

For another take on the 2014 TBA Festival, check out Robert Avila’s piece here.

Where are all the vanilla sexuality events?

0

I moved to the Bay Area this year with the intention of diving head first into kinky chaos. As far as repressed small town chicks go, I guess you could say I’m a daredevil. When I expressed my desire for sexploration to the locals, they had helpful suggestions ranging from fucking a sybian to getting hung from ceilings with rope.

And even though all that sounds fun (a little porny, but fun), I couldn’t help but notice people weren’t concerned with easing me into things. (Where’s the foreplay, guys?) And in all the excitement surrounding sexual possibility, I realized I hadn’t explored good old-fashioned, vanilla sexuality. So I decided to find an event that covered the basics of sexual energy and human connection. Easy right? Actually, no.

It’s surprisingly difficult to find a sex gathering in the Bay Area that doesn’t involve kink, fetish, or some sort of spiritual sex magic. I searched for weeks, and just when I’d about given up hope, I discovered sex educator Elisabeth Bolaza’s SexyHuman Workshop. It was advertised as a singles event, but it wasn’t a matchmaking mixer, and it was the first gathering I’d seen where people weren’t expected to learn how to meditate, grope, or fuck each other.

Like me, Bolaza is a transplant to SF; she moved here from a somewhat conservative town in southern California four years ago. Even though she adores the sex community here, she’s noticed that wild events dominate the scene. She thinks “alternative” events are awesome, but recognizes that most people don’t relate to sexuality that way. If people don’t understand the lure of sex parties or BDSM, they can feel like disempowered prudes in SF’s hyper-sexual community.

“In the Bay Area, there’s a lot of sexuality work being done. For more private folks, it’s a little bit scary,” Bolaza said. “So I’m trying to bring people into that conversation in a way that feels safe.”

So I went to the SexyHuman Workshop with the intention of taking a breather from my outrageous sexploits and getting back to basics.

The workshop was held at The Hub in Oakland — a creative alliance-esque place where you can rent meeting rooms and collaborate with artists. The room where the workshop was taking place had sexy ambiance, with deep blue walls, soft lighting, and a snack table with figs and chocolate covered gummy bears. 

There were less than 20 people in attendance — partly because this was the first SexyHuman event ever and also because Bolaza was cautious and didn’t want to overwhelm anyone with a crowd. The attendees were diverse in both gender and race, but all of them looked equally uncomfortable. Many of them had never been to something like this before despite the fact that they were natives.

To start, Bolaza asked everyone to share why they were there. A 23-year-old copywriter expressed her desire to learn what she wants from sexuality in general. A lady with long brown hair asked how it’s even possible to fit sexuality into her life when she’s so busy. An older gentleman revealed that he’d just gotten out of 22-year marriage and didn’t know what it was like to be sexual outside of a relationship. And a 20-something guy said he wanted to stop being a “love retard” and actually pick up on erotic energy from women when he meets them. 

None of these people seemed like they were ready to try bondage or attend an Intro to Tantra class. They just wanted to learn what sexuality meant for them.

At the beginning, Bolaza got a few eye rolls when she told everyone to pretend to hold imaginary balls of energy in their hands and share them with the people next to them  —  but she was quickly forgiven for that hippie moment when she started her lecture.

Bolaza was wise to the discomfort of her audience and kept the language concise and to the point. She borrowed ideas from ancient philosophies, but kept the words tailored to the everyman and taught the basics.

She talked about how extra stimulation and intensity aren’t actually the keys to orgasm, no matter how much our culture and city may hype up whacky sex positions and fancy vibrators. She explained that men come off creepy when they hit on women because they haven’t learned to connect their minds with their crotches. She even talked about how it’s okay to be attracted to someone, even if the feeling isn’t reciprocated.

All of these ideas may seem obvious to some, but in the discussions that followed, people admitted to never thinking about these things. The workshop only touched the tip of sexuality, and the topics may seem banal to sexual veterans. But to those in attendance, these ideas were brand new — even to those who’ve lived here all their lives. If natives don’t know this stuff, then there’s a need for this kind of education.

I’m not saying that SF doesn’t offer ANY vanilla events outside of speed dating (I’m sure they exist) — but I definitely had trouble finding them. The SF sex culture is so appealing to outsiders like me because it’s supposed to have a space for everyone. Either newbie sex events need better advertising or SF needs to make room for the sexually tame. Let’s add some vanilla to that swirl.

 

Head First runs on the SFBG Sex SF blog every Thursday. Readers can contact Krissy and view her previous work at www.krissyeliot.com.

 

Dave Chappelle kept me up until 5am this morning and I’m still trying to process what just happened

0

The first time I saw Dave Chappelle perform live was 10 years and three months ago, in a large, echo-y gymnasium at UC San Diego. It was my 20th birthday and I was so excited

This was June of 2004, and the comedian was at the absolute peak of his Chappelle’s Show fame, which meant he suddenly found himself performing for sports arenas full of college kids who had neither the patience nor the decorum (nor the sobriety) to actually sit and listen to a standup comic performing material, choosing instead to holler “I’M RICK JAMES, BITCH!” or “WHAT!” and “YEAH!” in Lil Jon voices at random — in reference, of course, to their favorite Chappelle’s Show impressions. They did this without provocation or logic. They interrupted him constantly. They did not care. He was pissed. Every audience member who wasn’t doing it was super pissed.

Two weeks later, encountering a similar audience in Sacramento, he left the stage for two minutes, then came back and said: “This show is ruining my life. This is the most important thing I do, and because I’m on TV, you make it hard for me to do it. People can’t distinguish between what’s real and fake. This ain’t a TV show. You’re not watching Comedy Central…You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you’re not smart enough to get what I’m doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid.”

Less than a year later, mid-production, he took off for South Africa and the show came to an abrupt end.

I have always felt a strangely personal guilt about this. I’m sorry about the idiots at UCSD, Dave, I have wanted to tell him. To this day, I can’t think of another instance in which such an intelligent brand of comedy has amassed such an astoundingly high percentage of morons as its fan base.

This being the case, I went into Dave Chappelle’s midnight performance at the Punch Line in SF last night (the fourth of four gigs in two nights announced Tuesday morning; he’ll do another one tonight at 10:30pm) with, well — I don’t want to say great expectations. But it’s a small club; I’ve heard great things about his smaller shows in SF over the past year or so, and I was ready for something like a redemptive Dave Chappelle experience.

“All of those 20-year-old idiots have grown up,” some part of my brain believed. “These shows sold out so quickly. These are super-fans. This will be great.”

You know what happens to drunk 20-year-old idiot college kids who get an ego boost from yelling stupid shit at standup comedians? They do grow up. They get jobs. They move to SF. They buy expensive collared shirts. And they become drunk 30-year-old idiot startup bros who get an ego boost from yelling stupid shit at standup comedians.

“DAVE who’s the hottest celebrity you’ve slept with!” (“That question assumes I’ve slept with a celebrity.”)

“DAVE you lift, bra? You lift!” (“No, this is actually just a really small shirt.”)

“Hey Dave! HEY DAVE! Are you gonna get the iPhone 6?” (Blank stare of disbelief. “Uh, probably.”)

Have you ever cringed so hard in a public place that it takes all your strength not to actually pull your shirt up over your head and crawl under your chair? Imagine a club full of people sharing this feeling. Now sit with it. For four hours. Now add a two-drink minimum and stressed-out waiters serving mandatory drinks that mandatorily must be downed within the next 10 minutes because it’s 1:45 in the morning.

To be fair: Chappelle was asking for it, quite literally. He opened with some SF-centric bits — a story about how he got mugged for the first time ever in San Francisco, and it was by a gay man. There was a quick, sweet anecdote about hanging out with the “startlingly funny” Robin Williams at the Punch Line, followed by a thought about Joan Rivers (“Joan Rivers was a great comedian, the problem is, she died a couple days after Robin Williams. Great comedian, but that’s bad timing.”) And then the evening became a neverending Q&A session, with very loose interpretations of both Qs and As.

“What do you guys wanna talk about?” he repeated at least a half-dozen times, leaning forward on his barstool in a short-sleeve black button-up shirt (looking, yes, noticeably buff), chainsmoking an entire pack of yellow American Spirits that he stubbed out in succession on his sneaker, drinking tequila and Coronas, and, at one point, ordering shots for a couple in the front row.

Fresh from appearances the past couple months at the traveling Oddball Comedy Festival, Chappelle — who, most of the year, lives in a farmhouse in Ohio with his wife and three kids — acknowledged that he was using this handful of last-minute SF performances as “practice” before heading to Chicago this weekend, where he’ll host Common’s Aahh! Fest, with Lupe Fiasco, De La Soul, MC Lyte (!), and others. And either he was plain sick of repeating material he’d performed three times in the last 48 hours, or he doesn’t have any new material, because most of what he did last night — sorry, what he did this morning, from 12:30am until just shy of 5am — is not what most people would refer to as “material.” This is also likely one reason the most sober he appeared all night was in the couple instances he caught people holding their cell phones, which were strictly and clearly prohibited from the moment he walked on stage. (“YouTube ruins comedy.”)

Also to be fair, Dave Chappelle is one of the few comedians alive who could get away with straight-up, absolutely non-planned riffing for that long — on current events, on domestic abuse and football, on race relations, on Ferguson, on run-ins with OJ, on sex, on marriage, on fame and its perils — and actually, for the most part, hold an audience’s attention.

For all his sloppiness (the last half-hour or so was largely Chappelle realizing and vocalizing how badly he needed to pee), the man possesses a spark of something undeniably genius, and it’s most visible in his social commentary, when he lets himself get dark — like the running gag of him being a “quinoa-eating” black person, the kind that makes white people feel safe. Or like when he unleashed a lucid torrent of facts about the shooting of unarmed young black men in the US over the past three years, including the grossly under-publicized killing of 22-year-old John Crawford III by white cops in a Walmart in Chappelle’s home state of Ohio last week. Crawford had picked up a BB gun inside the store — a gun that was for sale, naturally, at Walmart.

“The store never closed! They haven’t even shown the tapes!” Chappelle said incredulously. “And the worst part is that you’re allowed to carry a gun in Ohio. I’ve gone to Denny’s packing a gun! (Pause.) I’ve had a lot of cash on me at certain points in my life.”

At times you could almost see the sharpest version of him shining through the beer and weed haze, gauging the audience’s temperature, seeing how much more serious and guilt-inducing shit a mostly white audience would tolerate, before bringing everybody back in with his (still excellent) white suburban neighbor voice or a dick joke punchline. 

Around 4am, after maybe half the audience had left (“What if I just wait all of you out? I’m going to be the last one standing”) and Chappelle became less and less articulate, the pauses in his riffing got longer, as he (and we) sat listening to the sound of cars driving through freshly rain-washed streets outside. Everybody had gotten their dumb questions out, or else had gotten too drunk and indiscriminately yelled for a while and then had their embarrassed friends drag them home. It was awkward the way any straggler-at-the-party-at-4am interaction is awkward. A little bit like a hostage situation, but with an incredibly funny and intelligent albeit unfocused kidnapper.

“It will take you years to understand what happened here tonight,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh, as someone asked about his show tomorrow (tonight). “Oh yeah, it’ll be great,” he said. “You should come. Based on how it went tonight, you won’t hear this shit again.”

Q: “Bring back the show!”

A: “Problem with that is, when you quit a show the way I did, networks don’t exactly trust you ever again. You realize I didn’t tell anyone I wasn’t coming in, I just left. So it’s like ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll see you Monday…'”

Q: “What’s the funniest insult you’ve ever heard?”

A: “My 5-year-old kid told me that I had a vagina on my back, with a butt for a mouth, with a hot dog in it. Five years old! I was like, the force is strong with this one. My wife got mad at me for laughing, but come on…I wasn’t even gonna laugh until the hot dog bit. He got me with the hot dog.”

Head First: On “dysfunction,” freaking out, and my huge, THC-fueled orgasms

0

I have very little experience with marijuana — mostly because I’m from a small, East Coast town where such a substance is referred to as “the Devil’s lettuce.”  So when Mathew Gerson, founder and inventor of the THC lube, Foria, offered me the opportunity to test out his new product, I was intrigued. 

Foria is supposed to enhance female sexual pleasure. I’ve personally never had issues with orgasms (I can hump a chair and come), but I was interested to see how some oil could make them feel even better. So I decided to try it.

Foria is THC and coconut oil mixed together. The THC functions as an aphrodisiac that relaxes you, and the coconut oil smells nice and helps to keep the PH balanced in your vagina. On Foria’s website, the product is advertised as an “all-natural plant-based medicinal.” When I asked Gerson about what inspired him to create Foria, he said that 49 percent of women in American culture report some kind of sexual disorder, and he wanted to lend a hand (or two fingers, if you will).

There aren’t sufficient facts to prove that female sexual displeasure is a physical malady, even though medical companies have been trying to sell women bullshit medication for decades (see the documentary Orgasm Inc. for the details on that heinous scheme). I think that if women have problems with arousal, the dysfunction lies in the failings of society (i.e. “pussy pounding” in mainstream porn, religious slut-shaming, etc.) and not in their physical bodies.

When I questioned Gerson on the terminology, he said: “I’m not a scientist or a physician. I use [dysfunction] hesitantly. It’s more about dissatisfaction,” said Gerson. “[The word] ‘dissatisfaction’ feels better because it’s more addressable directly, without medical intervention. If you’re dissatisfied, you feel more empowered to do something about it, but if you’ve got a dysfunction, then you feel like you have to go see an expert.”

So the language is sticky. It’s a new company. He’s a nice enough guy. I decided to let it slide… into my crotch.

The first time I tried Foria, I followed the directions to a T. I spread eagled on my bed, applied the smallest suggested dose (four sprays), massaged the Foria into my crotch, and waited 30 minutes for the THC to soak in. Then, I masturbated for 20 whole minutes and… nothing happened. Well, nothing different than usual, anyway.

The second time I tried it, I used six sprays, then masturbated for 20 minutes and… nothing happened. I even squirted four spritzes into my mouth to see if it would take the edge off. I didn’t feel any different and didn’t orgasm any harder. 

I sent Gerson a text to tell him that the Foria bottle was faulty, to which he replied: “Expectations create residual stress in the body that actually inhibit plant medicine from doing its thing.” 

So if I was thinking or worrying too much about orgasm, then Foria would have no effect? Isn’t this product for women who are worried about or can’t have orgasms? 

I was convinced the bottle was shoddy. So in my confident bout of ignorance, I sprayed the highest dose of Foria (8 sprays) into my mouth, convinced it would have no effect.

Let me take a moment to offer you some advice: If you’re a small town chick with little to no experience with drugs of any kind, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES  spray 16 mg of THC into your mouth when you’re alone in your house on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Why? 

Because you will panic and call your ex-girlfriend who you haven’t spoken to in years and she won’t be in the mood to walk you through a bad high. You will open all of the drawers and cabinets in your house and trip over them in your daze. You will try to eat fruit salad, but because you’re so high, the watermelon will taste like rubbing alcohol. You will freak out and let your brain trick you into thinking you’re having a heart attack (you’re not). And you will keep telling yourself that no one has ever died from pot until you stick your finger down your throat and puke for 10 minutes.

So, yeah, the bottle wasn’t faulty. Hindsight’s a dick, isn’t it? I decided to give the Foria one more go. 

The next night, I sprayed on the oil, waited a whole hour, and then my boyfriend and I had sex. Really, really good sex. And finally… something happened. 

I had a super long orgasm. It lasted around 45 seconds, when usually my orgasms last about 10-15. My boyfriend’s wrist and tongue started cramping. When I finally stopped coming, my abs hurt and I was so out of breath that I told my boyfriend to wait a couple minutes before continuing. So we took a break, and then we did it again. And again. And again. And then I was so tired from having orgasms that I thought I would pass out.

The third try was a charm. 

I believe that all women can have fully functioning orgasmic vaginas with nothing but patience, a loving partner, and a map of the clitoris. But since Foria actually worked for me (eventually) to produce longer orgasms, then I can only imagine how it would help to enhance the sexual experience of someone who can’t come at all. I don’t think that women should permanently rely on a substance to get them off, but I see no reason why Foria can’t be used as a tool to help women begin to connect with their bodies.

Plus, giving people the opportunity to get high off pussy encourages the act of cunnilingus — and Lord knows society needs more practice with that.

Head First

0

HEAD FIRST I never liked anything in my ass until I spent a couple hours with Charlie Glickman. I met him at a party in Oakland while I was complaining about 20-something guys and their tendency to try to spear my anus with their dicks. Having spent most of my life in suburban America, I was only exposed to boys who had nothing but Internet porn and impatience, so even though I’d been interested in trying butt stuff, I never had the opportunity. I was close to giving up hope.

So in a small huddle of party goers, I voiced my desperation for someone who knew how to touch an asshole. I needed an expert. A hero.

“You know I wrote a book on that, right?” Glickman chimed in, holding his paper plate of vegetable kabobs out in front of him. He had a confident grin. So a few weeks later, I gave him the chance to back it up.

I didn’t know there were such things as sexological bodyworkers. But apparently, there are people certified by the state of California to stick their fingers inside of you and figure out why you can’t come as hard as you’d like. Glickman is one of those people. Don’t get it twisted, though: body workers are like private tutors for people who want to have better sex and experience more pleasure in their bodies. Their aim is to teach. They’re not prostitutes.

A few weeks post-party, I was sitting in his office, which is a small room with a window, a couch, and a massage table draped in a white sheet. Before I arrived I’d spoken on the phone with him about what to expect during the session and had filled out an intake form about my sexual history. We sat on the couch and talked about how we could do anal massage for relaxation only, but we could also do an erotic massage (with orgasms), if I so chose. And I did indeed choose.

He took my hand. It was time to practice consent.

“Tell me to take my hands off you,” Glickman said.

So I did. Then I told him to put them back. This was his way of showing me I had control over what happened in the session. I wasn’t worried.

He instructed me to sit on the massage table and told me he was going to teach me to breathe through my ass, which meant pushing out with my butt hole.

“I want you to try to kiss the table with your anus when you inhale,” Glickman said. He breathed in and out with me as my asshole made out with the table’s surface. My body relaxed with each breath of my badonk.

I took off my clothes and lied face down on the massage table, wondering if he saw the pimple next to my nipple. I shrugged. This guy probably gets poop on his gloves. My zit is the least of his worries.

If you think it’s strange that I’d put myself in such a compromising position after having so many bad experiences in the past, I don’t blame you. It’s not like I forgot the burning sensation of many a helmet head diving into my foxhole. So why risk putting myself through more misery?

Though some may see my tenacious try-try again attitude as ignorant, I’d like to see my curiosity not as something to kill the cat, but something to nurture the sex kitten within. If all the women who had endured some kind of sexual abuse just closed their legs and asses up for good, the human race would probably be doomed. The world needs brave ladies.

Plus, I came to San Francisco to try the things that small Maryland towns can’t offer. I came here to do the things other women don’t have the courage to try. I came here to be the ray of sexual hope in the dark hole that is this universe.

So there I was, ass out on the table, ready to take one for humanity.

Glickman rubbed me down with some coconut oil and massaged me a bit before putting on a pair of purple, non-latex gloves. He asked me if it was okay if he touched my ass. I gave him an “Mhm.”

Glickman ran his finger around the outside of my asshole for awhile to get my ass to relax, explaining that the external sphincter muscles were the ones I could control. After asking if I was ready, he started to rub the inside, telling me that he was touching the internal sphincter muscles, which I had no control over.

“Is that why this feels like I’m taking a shit?” I asked.

“It can mimic that sensation,” he replied.

The littlest movement of his finger created huge waves of feeling in my butt. Sometimes, without warning, my ass would clamp down defensively on his finger like a bear trap. The idea that dudes just wanted to immediately cram their dicks into that tiny hole became even more unbelievable as Glickman moved his finger inside of me. I wanted to smack all those dumb 20-somethings upside their heads. Like, what the fuck, guys?

We did the relaxing anal massage for awhile, and Glickman asked me if I wanted the session to get erotic. I was down. So I flipped over onto my back.

He handed me a mirror and I held it between my legs so he could show me what he was doing. He did things that no man or woman had ever done to me, and he taught me to do them to myself. (By the way, there’s this particular way of rubbing the insides of the outer labia that makes your crotch freak out in a good way. FREAK…OUT!)

All of it felt so good that before I knew it, I was ready for a finger all the way in my ass. Then there were fingers in my vagina. Then there were fingers on my clitoris. Then there were TWO fingers in my ass. It felt like there were fingers everywhere. “How many fingers does this guy have?” I thought, as I had a bunch of big, sweaty orgasms.

When the session was over, he left me to bask in the aftermath of coming a lot. I slowly sat up and stared through the back window at a few construction dudes throwing lumber into a truck in the parking lot below. I felt completely relaxed and grounded in my body. My hands and feet tingled. I got up to take a piss.

So now I know that I can have an orgasm with something in my ass, but only when someone is stimulating my cooch. (The clitoris will always be the MVP.) Ass play isn’t a hopeless venture, but any guys who try to rip me a new one certainly are.

As I slinked out of the bathroom and curled up on the couch, Glickman said I looked like a cat who’d eaten something delicious. I nodded and smiled, and he had a look of pride, like he’d saved a stray in need. He proved that fingers in the ass ain’t bad — I took two for humanity.

You can read Krissy Eliot’s Head First column every Thursday on the Guardian’s Sex SF blog (www.sfbg.com/sexsf) and read her past work at www.krissyeliot.com.

Family fish fry

0

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Ireland’s exceptional Enda Walsh may have gained wider attention and a bigger paycheck for his stage adaptation of indie film Once, but his real work for the stage is in more intricate little plays — far darker, funnier, and more polyphonous dramas like 1996’s Disco Pigs and 2007’s The Walworth Farce, the latter seen in Berkeley in 2009 when Cal Performances hosted Druid Theater of Galway’s superb production.

The New Electric Ballroom, currently up at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage in a Bay Area premiere, is something of a companion piece to The Walworth Farce. Written around the same time, it too revolves around the twisted and twisting routine of a vicious familial regime. This time it’s a fishy tale of three sisters in a kind of Chekhovian-Irish blend of suspended animation, crammed together in a tin-roofed shack (rendered in expansive detail by ever-impressive scenic designer Erik Flatmo) where together they replay the glorious promise and ignominious catastrophe of a night two of them experienced as teenagers and the other never experienced at all.

Claustrophobic and (presumably) foul-smelling, their little shack nevertheless transforms regularly into a paradisiacal nightclub as they relive its intoxicating crush of bodies, “and its tide of badly suppressed sex,” from the vantage of partial and incomplete memories.

Ada (Beth Wilmurt), at 40 the youngest sister, seems to sublimate her own deeply repressed desires in spurring on a longstanding feud between her older 60-something sisters, the racier Breda (Anne Darragh) and the still innocent Clara (Trish Mulholland), each of whom had eyes and more for some big-handed young man in the parking lot of the titular local nightclub of their youth. Together, they’re the ABCs of sex, though maybe in reverse order, enacting the daily ritual that is their torture and their solace, a purgatorial pause in the merciless flow of time.

Village loner and oddball Patsy (Kevin Clarke), meanwhile, forever proffering a tray of the day’s catch to this hostile household of shut-ins, is literally fishing for compliments, the poor bastard. In his rubber boots and rough clothes he presents himself with decorous care and insistent charm, like a seriously underappreciated only child.

But that’s in keeping with this little sadomasochistic community of private hells, in which characters take turns spilling out their lives to a mostly indifferent room. Indeed, you could almost think of the play as a series of monologues — beautifully written ones. Walsh has a gift for a subtly heightened vernacular. Unlike the self-conscious falsetto lyricism in so much new drama, it never cloys but rather sings out plainly in a gritty, open-throated pitch. These monologues are attention grabbers. But nearly as striking are the ominous, rueful, anticipatory silences they set off, like dark and slow-roiling waters tugged by the moon.

Although the play has a streak of wild and easy humor running through it, director Barbara Damashek leans toward the more serious side of things in her interpretation, emphasizing the dark corners to the point that they tend to look not all that dark. It might look otherwise were the humor more foregrounded and intense. The play seems to demand a manic, barely contained intensity that registers only weakly here — even the sight of older women made up in garishly exaggerated makeup and parading around in teenage garb lacks some of the macabre, obscene humor and pathos you feel it wants to contain. And it makes the play feel thinner, a bit reedy. Her actors, while highly capable, only intermittently produce the kind of deeply etched tensions between them that you’d expect from these obsessive and long-festering relationships.

This is still a worthwhile show, though, with solid acting doing service to a lively litany of punishing doubts and irrepressible hopes — until the flotsam of lost time finally washes ashore, electrifying (briefly) an otherwise dull, ruthless, and necessary domesticity. *

 

THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM

Through Oct. 5

Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (Oct. 5, show at 2pm), $20-$30

Ashby Stage

1901 Ashby, Berk

www.shotgunplayers.org

Polly’s sexual (r)evolution

0

steve@sfbg.com

There’s been more than one Polly, the author and namesake of the new memoir Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary. That may be true for each of us as we engage with different interests and identities during our sexual development, but Polly has distilled her psychosexual journey down to three distinct personas that she assumed along the way.

The Polly I’ve known for years is Polly Superstar, the fabulous hostess of Kinky Salon parties in her luscious and sprawling former Mission Control pad, community-minded sparkle pony in the Burning Man world, and a mindful feminist promoter of various sex-positive entrepreneurial ventures in San Francisco (including this independently published book, which took a massive Kickstarter campaign to get into print).

But the Polly I know passed through two previous Pollys — the Polly Whittaker she was born as in London in 1974 and the Polly Pandemonium that she became when she arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago on Folsom Street Fair weekend — on the way to becoming the woman she is today. And that woman was feeling very vulnerable as we met for lunch recently.

“I’m terrified,” she told me as she prepared to speak at Bawdy Storytelling that night and anticipated the general release of her book on Sept. 22. “I feel really exposed, I wonder what my motivation was to be so raw and open with this.”

A book that began four years ago as essentially a sassy guidebook for the Kinky Salon events that have now spread to another half-dozen cities around the world at some point turned far more serious and personal. Sure, we get to follow Polly through her crazy sexual antics, soaking in the sexy world of Mission Control.

“The crisp silhouettes of their bodies showed every detail: how the woman on all fours took his cock in her mouth, how the second guy traced his finger around his lover’s nipple, how the woman tucked underneath gently explored the body above her,” Polly wrote about a scene from Kinky Salon. “There were no wanted wandering hands, no staring eyes making me self-conscious. I became overwhelmed with a sense of pride. Fuck yes. This feels right. It feels good. These are my tribe — these crazy pleasure seekers. These brave pioneers of love.”

But those aren’t the “raw” bits that Polly referred to. No, as she wrote this book, Polly came to place her father’s slow and painful death from a brain tumor while she was a teenager at the center of the narrative, an event that propelled her subsequent sexual journey, for good or ill. She sought comfort and pleasure in the pain of the London BDSM scene, continuing that path here in San Francisco before morphing her fetish parties into sex parties that were more artsy and playful. Yet this sexual superstar still couldn’t achieve orgasms with her partners, a secret source of shame before she dealt with it more openly and honestly, helping other women along the way.

This memoir is less a wild tell-all by a high-profile libertine than intensely human story about a woman raised in a sexually liberated household (her mom was a sex therapist, her dad a hot-air balloonist, many of their friends swingers) who nonetheless struggles with her own sexual identity and ambitions against the backdrop of personal tragedy and smaller set-backs.

Polly relays and celebrates San Francisco’s storied history as the center of the American sexual revolution, from the old Barbary Coast days through the North Beach strips club, free love in the Haight-Ashbury, and gay liberation in the Castro, to the AIDS crisis, rise of BDSM, and creative ways of expressing sexuality.

But even for Polly and others who make their sexuality such a central part of their lives and personal identities, sexuality is still a nuanced, evolving continuum that regularly raises challenging questions and issues.

“It’s a complicated, really complicated, issue, and it’s at the core of the cultural shift that is happening around sexuality,” Polly said of the delicate balance between female sexual empowerment — which she’s all about — and sexual objectification, which this feminist strongly resists.

Growing up in the fetish scene and becoming a latex fashion designer, Polly can happily play the alluring sex kitten, as long as it feels playful and fun. But she’s quick to tear into scenes or situations that display women as sexual objects just to turn the boys on or sell products.

“I think one of the biggest problems on the planet is the sexual objectification of women,” she told us, noting the fine line she’s walking as she promotes a sex book with deeper themes. For example, at her book launch party, “We’re going to have a burlesque show, but you’re also going to get the lecture about sexual objectification.”

And even today, with her Kinky Salon community taking center-stage in her book, that community has been uprooted by the same forces of gentrification and displacement that are roiling the rest of the city (the monthly rent for their Mission Control space tripled after they got ousted).

“The sexual revolution didn’t happen in Oakland, it happened in San Francisco, and we are part of that lineage,” Polly tells us, noting that Kinky Salon, now rotating among temporary underground spaces, is still having a hard time finding a new home.

“If Kinky Salon has to move to Oakland, that will be telling of the state of San Francisco sex culture.”

UP THE REVOLUTION: LAUNCH PARTY FOR POLLY. With Porn Clown Posse, Trash Kan Marchink Band, DJ Fact50, and more Oct. 4, 9pm, Venue 550, 550 15th St., SF, www.pollysuperstar.com

Good bad things

0

arts@sfbg.com

SEX Most of the college-aged gay guys I’ve met aren’t terribly into music, so I’m generally the one to pick the sexy-time jams. Toward the beginning of my sophomore year, I finally met a dude who was at least something of a music geek, at least in the sense that his music taste resembled that of a reasonably hip and musically open-minded straight guy. I was thrilled — until one night he had the bright idea to put his “chill mix” on shuffle while we were getting it on. The results were, to say the least, interesting. Here’s how it went, um, down.

Toro Y Moi – “Blessa.” Toro Y Moi’s Causers Of This is an album I generally associate with comfortable situations, such as walking through a park or sitting quietly on a couch in some comfy stoner den. It was the first song to appear on shuffle, and though it was awesome for when we were tearing each other’s clothes off, it honestly could have worked at any point throughout the night.

Flying Lotus – “Physics For Everyone!” I don’t know what this song was doing in a “chill mix,” but I’m (mostly) glad it was there. With its high-energy rhythm and weird, suction-y effects, it’s practically the sonic equivalent of a good blowjob, and as such, I gave the best head of my life as it was playing. I got the sense he was slightly turned off by the fact that I was doing it to the rhythm, but how could I not?

Madvillain – “Raid.” This is where things started to get really wacky. Madvillain’s MF Doom is one of those artists I generally associate with straight guys, and a very particular set of straight guys at that — the ones in my high school math class, almost all of whom I wanted to fuck and many of whom thought of me as the class “retard.” If only they could see me now, I thought as my partner went down on me and the rapper who once devoted an entire song to dissing gay superheroes spat fire from the dorm-room speakers.

Bon Iver – “Holocene.” For the duration of Bon Iver’s slowest, most starry-eyed ballad, we consciously trying to avoid one of those cheesy “moments” where we lock eyes and think about how much we like each other. Maybe if we were actually a couple I might have been OK with it, but we were strictly fuckbuddies and content to keep it that way. On the bright side, at least it wasn’t “Skinny Love.”

Wu-Tang Clan – “C.R.E.A.M.” I hear “C.R.E.A.M.” at parties so much I barely even noticed what was playing for about two minutes. When I finally processed what we were listening to, I found it hilarious — not only because it might be the all-time Straight College Boy Anthem (give or take “’93 ‘Til Infinity”), but because it was one of the best songs I’ve ever fucked to. Good sex music should be unobtrusive but still set the mood, and “C.R.E.A.M.” was the perfect accoutrement to my environment. I was on a college campus — why wouldn’t I be listening to “C.R.E.A.M.?”

Andrew Jackson Jihad – “Bad Bad Things.” If you haven’t heard “Bad Bad Things” (or are unfamiliar with Andrew Jackson Jihad and the band’s typical subject matter), it’s a song about a dude killing another dude’s family. I’ll never forget how awkwardly his boner flopped around as he ran across the room to change the song.