Arts & Culture Archives — Page 202 of 279 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Arts & Culture

Going topless

November 4, 2008

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

(Andrea’s on vacation! Check out this oldie but goodie, originally published in the Guardian 7/5/06).

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend is really into BDSM. At first I tried and played a convincing (I think) top/dom, but it just wasn’t hot for me, so I looked some stuff up to get inspired. As I was reading/watching, I would really get off on it, but the sex with my girlfriend still wasn’t hot. Then I realized that when I was masturbating to all this, I was fantasizing about subbing. Oops. I am way in love with my girlfriend, but she is a bottom, period. She might switch it around if it meant a lot to me, but I would know that it wasn’t really making her happy. I don’t know what to do. Can I become a top? Can I teach myself to like it? I’m going to do it either way, but I really want to get into it, so please help! I want us to be good in bed together, but two bottoms don’t make a top. Help!

Love,

Topless

PS: We’re lesbians, if that matters.

Dear Tops:

It sure doesn’t, but thanks for the info!

I was just thinking about this last night when a friend was catching me up on her latest dating adventures. She was lamenting that some potential dates seem to come equipped with a set of kinks perfectly matching her own, and although that sounds good, it is, of course, no use at all.

As you have discovered to your frustration, one wants a date with a complementary set of kinks, not a matching one. It’s not an uncommon problem, and its most common manifestation is exactly the one that’s driving you nuts: there are too many bottoms in this world and nowhere near enough tops to keep them satisfied. Why this is (beyond the fact that topping is hard work), I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I bet any number of eager grad students are currently proposing theses on the subject to bored advisors who have read enough similar stuff already.

Here’s my theory. There are people for whom BDSM is a core part of their identity, running as deep as, say, homosexuality or monogamy. Some may always have recognized this element in themselves, even before they had the language to express it (these are the kids who always want to play pirates or whatever game involves somebody getting tied to something or the intentional infliction/receiving of pain, even when the other kids are long since ready to move on). Others don’t realize it until they’re exposed to S-M in some more adult context, but then it just clicks in, key into lock, and they know. Your girlfriend sounds like one of those BDSM lifers, who tend, in my experience, to be pretty set on their preferred role even if they do switch experimentally on occasion (a good idea, if only to find out how painful/exhausting it is to experience/produce any particular sensation).

Then there are the "anything goes" people who are happy to pick up a flogger or don a dog collar, what the heck, as long as it’s fun. This type of player may not identify as an S-M person per se, but may enjoy a little power exchange on the occasional Friday night, no biggie. You may fall more on this end of the spectrum, but even "what-the-heckers" usually discover some sort of preference, as you have. The perfect 50-50 switch is almost certainly as rare as the perfect 50-50 bisexual.

Plenty of people find something to like in either role, and I think you can develop an appreciation for topping and get some satisfaction out of a job well done (there are resources like The New Topping Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, to help you). But you can enjoy and get good at it without ever really becoming a top the way both of you are currently bottoms. Be careful about taking on a role that isn’t really "you." Nobody loves a martyr, and you’re still going to want to bottom sometimes. I worry about you starting to resent your girlfriend for getting to have all the fun.

I have a suggestion that might save your relationship or might strike you as all sorts of wrong and make you hate me, but here goes: you two find a willing top, maybe somewhere in your social circle, maybe online or in a BDSM social organization, and bottom together sometimes. This kind of shared adventure can be hot, hot, hot and very bonding, sort of like getting lost in the woods together and surviving through mutual trust and inter-reliance — but a lot more fun. I think if you do that sometimes, and play top sometimes, and stick with the vanilla sometimes, you’ll probably be OK, provided you both take care of getting your itches scratched. Love conquers … much.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

The Thousand Faces Ball

November 4, 2008

PREVIEW Imagine the unsavory digs of the Mos Eisley Cantina of Tatooine stormed by a horde of previously barred droids and miscreants and forced to hold a variety show to stave off certain destruction — it’s a scene reminiscent of those generated by San Francisco’s OmniCircus, which has been simultaneously thrilling and troubling audiences for two decades. Founded by local surrealist artist and roboteer Frank Garvey, first as a film project, then as a live performance troupe, OmniCircus combines the high tech with the lowdown, propagating an environment where down-and-out robot performers and their human counterparts can come together under one roof, creating a spectacle part Transmetropolitan, part Captured! By Robots, and part The Black Rider. No mere vehicle for cream pies and contortionists, this darkly subversive one-ring circus has all the hallmarks of an ecstatically apocalyptic experience: music, mayhem, and mechanical mendicants. The Thousand Faces Ball marks the latest incarnation of the project, introducing the Moth nor Rust band starring OmniDiva Joan Loon, and retaining the talents of longtime DeusMachina collaborators, including Daniel Berkman and Geoffrey Pond, as well as an army of robotic riffraff: junkies, beggars, street preachers, and whores. Billed as the world’s first robotic theatre ensemble, OmniCircus is nevertheless no ephemeral vision of the future, but a thorough examination of the present through an unsentimental, yet curiously life-affirming lens.

THE THOUSAND FACES BALL Sat/8, 8 p.m., $10 donation. OmniCircus, 550 Natoma, SF.

(415) 701-0686, www.omnicircus.com

Alice Russell

November 4, 2008

PREVIEW When I see the name Alice Russell, I think first of Alice Coltrane and Arthur Russell before I think of this Brighton, UK, blue-eyed soul revivalist. And I’m aware that this may unfairly predispose me to her music, which is not without its charms.

The two other major UK soul vocalists to make an impact stateside, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, arrived as self-generating publicity machines whose public images matched their respective styles. In contrast, Russell’s music is up without being overtly rebellious. The posturing’s explicitly enthusiastic, without the attack of Winehouse or the reggae-pop concision of Allen, on Russell’s fourth LP, and first bid for a wider audience, Pot of Gold (Six Degrees/Little Poppet), which are at their best and most unique on songs like "Let Us Be Loving," which stitches together a dubby, tumbling rhythm and gives Russell some space disco ethereality.

But the album also has moments of superfluity. I don’t get the sense that Russell felt compelled to cover Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" because she could coax some radical reading of it. Instead, it’s plunked down in the disc’s otherwise-decent closing stretch, as if another anchor wouldn’t do a better job of giving listeners a sense of how Russell stands apart from the nu-soul pack. In this light, it’s hard not to see nu-soul as a rockist backlash against the perceived inauthenticity of nu-rave, which ultimately isn’t inauthentic enough to bother anyone.

ALICE RUSSELL Mon/10, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com

Dungen

November 4, 2008

PREVIEW Calling all Invisibl Skratch Picklz: one of your most unlikely acolytes is dying to meet you — and perhaps someday even be like you: Gustav Ejstes of Dungen, Sweden’s premier psych-rock band. "I’m a huuuge fan!" exclaims Ejstes by phone from the offices of his label, Kemado. "They’re definitely not underrated. I realized this when I went to a record store in New York. I was looking for scratch records, and this girl said, ‘No one listens to that anymore,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t care!’ This is the shit. I love it."

Scratching his hip-hop itch was the shaggy-haired band leader’s sole comfort after an intense bout of touring following the US release of Dungen’s much-praised Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds/Kemado, 2004). "I went to this house and practiced scratching for a year and only did that!" he marvels. Only later did he get a piano from his grandmother and started playing during breaks from his scratching exercises. He started writing songs and soon realized, "’OK, here’s another album. Now I feel like I really enjoy this again.’"

The end result was 4 (Kemado): a passionate and, yes, piano-based recording brimming with eloquent, stretched-out jams and jazzy coloration, spattered by guitarist Reine Fisk’s touches of shred and aching, airborne lines of flute and strings, both played by multi-instrumentalist Ejstes. A new approach to songwriting and recording might have contributed to the disc’s loose and spacious bright sound. Instead of impatiently recording each tune the same day he wrote it, much as he had in the past, Ejstes let the songs breathe and mutate before bringing them to the rest of the group. These days he’s far from precious about the process — or many other things, for that matter. Asked about the bare-bones 4 title — for Dungen’s fifth album — Ejstes stammers, "I just felt like this was the fourth, the fourth piece of shit," before howling with laughter. "I have to write that down."

DUNGEN With Women and Social Studies. Mon/10, 9 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

Vampire romance

November 4, 2008

REVIEW If you see but one preteen vampire romance this year, make it Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In. Rumor has it that Hollywood is looking to remake Alfredson’s adaptation of a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, with Cloverfield‘s Matt Reeves in the director’s seat. While Reeves might bring boffo box-office numbers, it’s safe to assume that he’ll either overlook or sledgehammer Alfredson’s sleight-of-hand talent for finding the art in pop iconography and vice-versa — areas where Alfredson rivals Bong Joon-ho. He brings fiery Carl Theodor Dreyer undercurrents to a Spielberg revenge of the nerds scenario, mining the dark heart of childhood with the same revelatory and musical assuredness that fellow Swedish director Lukas Moodysson (1998’s Show Me Love; 2002’s Lilya 4-ever) exhibited before falling into a digital black hole.

The story is simple: loner outcast Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) falls for Eli (the superb Lina Leandersson), a pale girl with a big secret. The pleasure of Let the Right One In resides in its flair for surprise, from the uncanny performances of the lead actors to humorous surreal motifs such as an enormous white poodle lapping at a plastic jug of blood abandoned in a forest. In one standout set piece with direct connections to the film’s title, Alfredson reverses the genuinely creepy window-tapping found in the original 1979 TV version of Salem’s Lot. Throughout, he explores the subversive age-spanning love scenarios in Lindqvist’s story with just the right amount of restraint, so that instead of provoking outrage, he unsettles assumptions. He’s not bad at executing decapitation and immolation scenes, either.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN opens Fri/7 at Bay Area theaters.

“Relay”

November 4, 2008

REVIEW Those of you who can remember them know that cassette tapes aren’t exactly sturdy. Forever getting tangled in car stereos or being left to bake on dashboards, during their commercial heyday they practically advertised their obsolescence — Maxell ads be damned. But anyone who has managed to wrest the audio from within a warped plastic shell knows that the metamorphosed sound can be strangely beautiful. Composer Daniel Basinkski has made a second career out of looping the death rattles from his magnetic tape archive, and Kevin Shields nearly bankrupted Creation Records while trying to make his guitars sound like so many corroded C-90 tapes.

Dan Nelson invokes the cassette’s history of planned obsolescence in "140 Ways to Make a Cassette Tape Unlistenable," his contribution to "Relay," a modest group show of sound-related art at the LAB. Nelson is no stranger to lists, as attested to by his handsome grimoire All Known Metal Bands (McSweeney’s, 300 pages, $22). Here, though, he catalogs his repeated and sometimes frustrated attempts at destruction rather than posterity. Lining the walls are vitrines and photographs displaying the remains of cassettes: encased in cement, mobster-style; wrapped in electrical tape; atomized from hammer blows; power-sawed in two. There are letters documenting Nelson’s attempts to send tapes over Niagara Falls and into outer space on a NASA rocket. Most hilariously, a missive to the Gagosian Gallery pleads for one of Nelson’s cassettes to be interred with Ed Ruscha when Ruscha passes on.

Nelson’s installation mines its laughs and its conceptual heft from a self-deprecatory stance: cassettes have long been declared a dead medium, despite whatever nostalgic eternal return may be planned by the Urban Outfitters cultural industrial complex. The ridiculous length to which Nelson is willing to pursue his mission only further underscores this fact. The flogging of a dead horse is rarely so much fun to watch.

RELAY Through Nov. 15. Wed.–Sat., 1–6 p.m. The LAB, 2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-8855. www.thelab.org

The trouble with hairy

October 29, 2008

HALLOWEEN SCREENING What’s most shocking about Oliver Stone’s W. — beyond anything in the too-mild movie itself — is that it’s simply dramatizing a still-seated US president. That still feels like a breach in our near-extinct public decorum, however much Shrub has degraded the office’s dignity.

Yet there’s precedent: one prior era brought a slew of movies about its Disaster-in-Chief. Once Watergate broke, filmmakers from late radical-left documentarian Emile de Antonio to future Roller Boogie (1979) director Mark L. Lester weighed in with parodies.

Little-noticed then, these films have only grown more obscure since. But one gets revived as the Pacific Film Archive’s Halloween choice this year. Despite all its flaws, it remains one of the more hilarious metaphors ever for political corruption. We’re talking The Werewolf of Washington.

Werewolf was the second and last feature by writer-director Milton Moses Ginsberg, whose Coming Apart (Rip Torn as a psychiatrist having sex with his female patients) created a minor splash in 1969. That film was an early exercise in faux-found footage narrative à la The Blair Witch Project (1999). By contrast, his hairy 1973 follow-up looks as stylistically square as the Nixon White House, last bastion of political Lawrence Welk-dom.

This is one of those movies hinged entirely on a crazed lead performance. Dean Stockwell, old-Hollywood child actor turned counterculture collage artist turned weirdo cult actor (1986’s Blue Velvet, 1984’s Dune) plays Jack Whittier, youngest member of the White House press corps. Sweetheart to the president’s daughter, Whittier jilts her by taking an assignment in Hungary — where something not-quite-human bites his ass. Returning stateside, he’s recruited as press secretary to a president (Biff McGuire) unlike Tricky Dick in look or manner.

But Werewolf‘s satire is indirect, if not exactly subtle. Despite pleas to be fired — even arrested — Whittier keeps getting kicked upstairs. He’s too much an asset to a paranoid administration under scandalized fire. That value is not unrelated to mysterious man-beast slayings of various loudmouths exposing the administration’s ethical canyon-gaps. Victims include critical journalists, inconvenient political wives, and ill-fated DC residents who stumble across supernatural murder scenes.

The Werewolf of Washington is crude, sloppy, aesthetically ugly, and deliberately ridiculous. But Stockwell is hilarious, particularly during those twitchy lycanthropic transformations where he turns shock-white haired and fanged. This genius turn floats an otherwise flimsy film.

THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON

Fri/31, 8 p.m., $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

No-brainer

October 29, 2008

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW The title of David Szlasa’s peculiar, compact, and appealing new work suggests one ready avenue of flight from a world gone mad, but in fact fantasies of escape take more than one form in My Hot Lobotomy, now up at CounterPULSE. And while escapism is exactly what the piece concerns itself with, the import is anything but apathetic or disengaged. A cheerfully quirky, Beckett-like duet wrapped in luxurious silences, snatches of recorded dialogue, short blasts of song and free-style dance, and a dreamy videoscape of environmental disintegration, My Hot Lobotomy is full of restive thought.

Like Szlasa’s installation-performance work on the atomic bomb, 2004’s GADGET, My Hot Lobotomy pokes at that psychic terrain joining the human capacity for denial with man-made catastrophe. In this case, the catastrophe is the rapid warming of the planet, which remains stubbornly just beyond the necessary concerted and rational response. But Lobotomy‘s approach is both more traditional and more oblique than the environmental strategy employed in GADGET, which had audiences wandering around a noisy club-like atmosphere enveloped by video projections and spotted with localized audio segments.

Quietly trained on the internal and external minutiae of its main character — a mute and semi-vegetative post-op named Joey (Erin Mei-Ling Stuart) — the play never feels crudely weighty or political, let alone like a piece of agitprop. Instead, it unfolds like a loopy, semi-looping trance, a restless and sardonic ditty, or a closet poem stashed away in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Lobotomy‘s low-key faux naiveté bristling with caged energies and subversive instincts — much as Joey’s shiny turquoise sneaks, popping out from under a bland ensemble of sports coat and chinos, hints at dormant life beneath a numbed surface.

The play acts to slow us down almost immediately — almost as much as Joey, who does nothing for the first several minutes but stare back at us blankly from a chair in the center of the stage. This mirror effect, uncomfortably amusing, grows in significance when we learn that Joey — in shades of the Ramones — has given himself a homemade lobotomy. Well, you might ask, who hasn’t? Szlasa gives us plenty of space to ponder the question, gradually unfolding the method and motive behind Joey’s condition as we share in the meditative, vaguely bemused mood he projects.

It’s a knock at the door that disturbs this waking slumber. A guy (Spencer Evans) enters delivering a pizza, a slice of which Joey chews with silent satisfaction. The man then returns with a boombox and a cassette tape, careful to demonstrate to Joey how they go together. On the tape, Joey speaks to himself with prerecorded words of instruction, clarification, and encouragement. The delivery guy, we learn, has been paid in advance to bring all Joey will need in his new, streamlined life. Returning to the stage with a guitar, he also delivers something to the audience, at odd moments and even odd angles: a series of witty songs — variously contributed by Carrie Baum, Cody James Bentley, Sean Hayes, and Joshua Lowe — telling the story of Joey in terms that slyly critique what they describe.

The limited world Joey has structured for his new self — with its prerecorded, too certain insistence that everything is "gonna be really, really great" — eventually unravels among a clutter of pizza boxes and, more alarmingly, a series of fraught dreams, as the unstructured world outside, which appears as a video montage of global warming over a gentle cloudscape at the back of the stage, slips in with growing insistence. The increasing dissonance provokes another transformation in Joey, and another attempt to scurry for cover. It’s a rush of new life whose meaning may be ambiguous, but hardly empty-headed.

MY HOT LOBOTOMY

Through Nov. 2

Thurs.–Sat. and Nov. 2, 8 p.m., $25

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

1-800-838-3006

Bonjour joie

October 29, 2008

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Zut alors, where is the joie, mademoiselles? Judging from the current pop charts, rage is all the rage: girls just want to "start a fight" is the message from Pink, Brit, and Katy Perry, even as pop’s queen Beyoncé, a.k.a., Sasha Fierce, chooses the somber rather than ferocious path with "If I Were a Boy."

Maybe it’s too much to ask for a recession-wracked America to find a battered vein of real happiness. And perhaps that’s why I’m looking for bliss overseas. You have to be a crusty old croissant to not succumb to the wholesomely sexy, gallic-girls-just-want-to-have-fun charm of Yelle, née Julie Budet. In a year when every pop thang coming out of Francophone music-makers seems to exude a freshness that escapes rage-aholic American pop, along comes Yelle with the cutest bob this side of Rihanna and those prep-cool dancing boys in "A Cause Des Garçons." Not for nothing does Budet’s acronym nom de plume stand for "You Enjoy Life." Could this be the new yé-yé?

Resembling a sprightly Feist onstage, the jeune fille also coughed up the catchiest bit of whistle(-along) bait since Peter Bjorn and John’s "Young Folks": "Ce Jeu." Yelle’s palpable ’80s-throwback aesthetic crossed with the twirly-girly, smiley-faced nouveau-rave dancefloor vibe in the "Je Veux Te Voir" video — squeaky-cute aerobics, girl-gang dance moves, and a crayon-bright pop aesthetic, oo-la-la — evokes the seemingly last microsecond of dance-pop innocence when Her Madgesty, Salt-N-Pepa, and J.J. Fad ruled the school canteen. Who needs to speak the language when confronted with the inexorable, happy-sad-but-mostly-happy sizzle of "Tristesse/Joie," given a Reebok commercial makeover this past summer?

So why France and why now? According to Budet, "maybe because France is well-located between English pop, German electro, and American production! It’s geography!"

Mais oui, Budet enjoys life — and exclamation points! Though our trans-Atlantic phone tête-à-tête didn’t materialize, I managed to connect via e-mail with the Bretagne-born vocalist, who’s more comfortable answering questions in writing when she isn’t slinking around onstage like a T-shirted electro-pop whippet. Of course, she isn’t quite as wholesome as she might appear: her first MySpace hit — "Short Dick Cuizi," a poke at Cuizinier of French hip-hop group TTC and an early incarnation of "Je Veux Te Voir," famously samples the bassline of "Short Dick Man." "The songs are about our lives and our productions," she writes. "I think about everything in Pop Up [her new debut on Source Etc/Caroline/EMI]: dildos, but death, too."

Some fans might be taken aback by Budet’s live appearances, which are low on the diva-esque antics and high on the every-girl bounce. "We naturally worked hard on our show," she writes, predicting ghosts onstage for her Halloween appearance. "It’s normal for us to give a real show, not only the songs like on the album. Drums bring a lot of energy, and we build our live set like a DJ set, mixing the songs together, adding production. We have a compromise that seems to work: we rock the dancers and we dance the rockers!" So get your fill of Yelle because 2009 will be "the year of the break," Budet suspects. "We have to take time at home or people are gonna hate us, ahah!"

YELLE

With Passion Pit and Funeral Party

Fri/31, 9 p.m. doors, $20–$25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS

Forget Uncle Sam: the post-punk superstar among us, Blixa Bargeld, needs you. The Einsturzende Neubauten frontperson, onetime Bad Seed, and current San Francisco resident has a new project — this after his wonderfully wry, dry-humored Rede/Speech performance here in 2006: The Execution of Precious Memories. Bargeld composes a new libretto for each performance, using memories gathered from questionnaires filled out by anonymous denizens of the performance site. To create this piece in its tenth iteration — and for the first time since 2001 — Bargeld plans to collaborate with the musicians of Nanos Operetta and the dancers of Kunst-Stoff. "It’s a poetical process," says Bargeld by phone. "There’s something fictitious about memories. The moment you give away a memory and fix it in a form and have it seen by someone else it becomes a piece of fiction. It’s not connected to yourself any longer." So let go and risk seeing intimate memories transformed: Bay Area residents are invited to go to www.blixa-bargeld.com/VKESF to fill out the 50-question survey — give it at least 30 minutes, cautions Bargeld — before the Nov. 1 deadline.

NO REST

THE SPINTO BAND

The revered indie rockers definitely weren’t sprinting when it came to getting out Moonwink (Park the Van/Fierce Panda). Sat/1, 10 p.m., and Sun/2, 9 p.m., $12–$14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

DIPLO, ABE VIGODA, TELEPATHE, AND BOY 8 BIT

Eclecticism? OK! The "Mad Decent" tour mixes the DJ-producer with NorCal’s art-punks, Brooklyn art-dreamers, and a London minimalist beatmaker. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

SECRET MACHINES AND THE DEARS

How do you turn a backlash around? Give a listen to the ambitious new space-psych Secret Machines (TSM). And the Dears continue to endear with Missiles (Dangerbird). Mon/3, 8 p.m., $22. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.independentsf.com

HUBERT SUMLIN

The blues guitar legend made a lasting impact on rock thanks to his work with Howlin’ Wolf. With Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, Buddy Guy, and others. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $45–$79.50. Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

Future present

October 29, 2008

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"I remember in the beginning I used to fuck around and not care about anything at all," says Steven Ellison, who records under the guise Flying Lotus. "But now it’s, like, Thom Yorke likes my music, dog. Now I think, oh shit, will Thom like this beat?"

It must be a happy conundrum to wonder if one of the world’s biggest rock stars will like your new song. Tinkering around his studio in Winnetka, a sleepy suburb in the San Fernando Valley, Flying Lotus works on a long-distance project with Burial. When he’s done, he’ll send the track over to the United Kingdom for the junglist producer to tweak. News of Flying Lotus collaborating with Burial, two of electronic music’s freshest new stars, will probably make some fans smile with pleasure. From Radiohead’s Yorke and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow — who recently noted in an interview with Remix that Flying Lotus makes "pure, mad music" — to the beat heads who ravenously scoop up any new Lotus material, everyone seems to love FlyLo.

So how did Flying Lotus become the so-called Chosen One? Los Angeles teems with a renaissance of kindred spirits. Carlos Niño (whose range includes Gaby Hernandez’s progressive folk valentine When Love [Armed Orphan] and Lil Sci’s rap treatise What’s the Science? [Shaman Work]), Daedelus (who blends early 1990s zoo rave with film soundtrack compositions) and Nobody (whose Nobody Presents Blank Blue: Western Water Music Vol. II [Ubiquity] eyes ’60s-ish psychedelic pop) all use electronic music as a starting point for forays into various genres.

Andrew Meza, who hosts BTS Radio on CSU-Fullerton and was an early champion of Flying Lotus, compares the scene to the vaunted "New Hollywood" wave of American directors in the early ’70s. "It’s a really small group of people doing really cool things," he says. In his opinion, Flying Lotus stands out in part because of his studio techniques. Although the artist records in a bedroom, his music sounds as polished as a major label product.

"People used to say this about Dilla — and I’m in no way comparing him to Dilla — that [when he finished beats] it sounded like everything was already EQ’ed and mastered," Meza says. "With [Lotus], his shit seems so much louder and bass-y."

Now, as a leader of the flourishing beat movement, Flying Lotus has launched a digital label, Brainfeeder, to issue projects from like-minded friends such as Samiyam and Ras G. To promote the label, he’s throwing a Brainfeeder Festival Nov. 8 at 103 Harriet St.

The best music often sounds like everything and nothing before it. Flying Lotus’ work evokes comparisons to J Dilla and Madlib and fits neatly into flavor-of-the-moment trends like 8-bit and dubstep, yet it is also excitingly unique. He utilizes standard bedroom production equipment, including a MacBook Pro and a Novation 25 MIDI controller, to make hauntingly fluid and improvisatory sounds. "My whole setup is probably less than a couple of Gs, man," he says by phone from Winnetka.

He samples other people’s work, then renders the sounds so unrecognizable he often can’t remember what they originally were. On Los Angeles (Warp), Flying Lotus pays homage to his late aunt, the great jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, by appropriating material from her 1968 debut, A Monastic Trio (Impulse!), for "Auntie’s Harp." "I tried my best to transform all the harp stuff so it didn’t sound like the original, but still had the essence," Flying Lotus says. "SexSlaveShip" builds on a more obscure source: ambient/acoustic folk artist Matthew David’s Spills (Plug Research). Another track, "GNG BNG," draws inspiration from DJ Shadow’s breakbeat experiments of the late ’90s.

As a result, Los Angeles, released in June, is part modern-day homage to California’s holistic vibes and progressive utopianism, and part science-fiction film, making for an arresting future present. "It’s the classic hero’s journey kind of thing, basically a story like a film," Flying Lotus says, adding that the movie that initially inspired him was Ridley Scott’s classic 1982 dystopia Blade Runner. "It’s the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist."

The recording’s mood ranges from the deeply reflective vibes of "Golden Diva" to the steel drum-speckled techno funk of "Parisian Goldfish." There are a few vocal pieces on Los Angeles, particularly the lushly sensuous "RobertaFlack" with Turkish artist Ahu "Dolly" Keleslogu, whom Flying Lotus met online. For the most part, however, its liquid hip-hop instrumentals sing louder than words. As FlyLo puts it, "I wanted to make music that didn’t need a voice."

BRAINFEEDER FESTIVAL
With Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer, Kode 9, Hudson Mohawke, Ras G, Samiyam, Kutmah, and Martyn
Nov. 8, 9 p.m., $15 advance
103 Harriet, SF
www.blasthaus.com

Welcome to my dreamscape

October 29, 2008

Here’s the curse of deep sleepers: they never remembers their dreams. As someone who snaps out of bed in the morning without one recollection of what happened behind shut eyes, I’ve always been envious of folks who can recount the vivid details of their dreams. Instead, I’ve taken to filling my awake time with art that sends my neurons firing in similarly seemingly random configurations. If I can’t do it myself, I might as well find people who can help do it for me.

This is where local singer-songwriter Michael Zapruder comes in. As a champion of blurring the lines between the banal and bizarre, of sticking the unexpected into the most familiar settings, the smooth-baritoned storyteller has more than a few dreams to spare for the rest of us. His most recent disc, the appropriately wobbly-monikered Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope (SideCho), thrives on spinning long-lingering images — spiders on ice cream cones, lovers transformed into pieces of hay — into songs that remain rather confessional in tone. At their core, these could be considered folk numbers, but Zapruder adorns them with not only with psychedelic wordplay, but with glowing electronics and an indie-rock-spirited willingness for experimentation. It’s a balancing act of tremendous agility, reutf8g tales at once earthy and strangely disorienting.

"My goal is to write songs that work as extended hypnotic vignettes. That’s my realm," Zapruder explains over the phone from Mojave, en route to the next stop of his cross-country tour. After completing the much-publicized "52 Songs" project at the end of 1999 — he wrote, recorded, and posted online one tune per week for an entire year — the vocalist realized that these dream-state compositions were among his most successful. Several projects have followed, but Horoscope could be his finest expression of erasing the lines between sleep and wakefulness.

Opener "New Year," with its twinkling atmospherics and rolling brushed-drum rhythm, joined by Zapruder’s intimate hushes at the mic, feels like some of the more recent output from art-popper David Sylvian. The song has all the hallmarks of a late-night confessional, but a closer listen reveals a fever-rush of paper dragons, broken beds, and cowboys. "Ads for Feelings" carefully, steadily mesmerizes with a light pulsating tempo, soft-spoken keyboard sighs, and a recited vocal melody — only to shake the listener from the trance with delirious twirls of flute. Zapruder hardly sounds like he’s among the ranks of the awake, yet he insists, "I couldn’t sleep, I was watching the night / It was throwing little pebbles at the back of my head."

The album’s focal point is the nine-minute "Black Wine," a spellbinding torrent of interwoven images of family gatherings and ugly mayhem, coolly and methodically delivered over a slow blues. Here, otherwise-benign references to bread and wine commingle with blood and bones while a pair of wraithlike female voices warn of impending doom. The dreamlike whimsies of elsewhere have instead been replaced with something considerably more nightmarish in spirit. Asked about the origins of the song, Zapruder lets out a hearty laugh: "I just wanted to juxtapose the idea of a normal holiday meal with a monster story. So I stepped into that world and looked around for a while."

MICHAEL ZAPRUDER
With 1090 Club and the R&B Freejazz Gospel Supreme 80
Nov. 5, 9 p.m., $8
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com

Exuberance with bite

October 29, 2008

They once were distant from the excitement, 40 blocks beyond 82nd Street — a dividing line that Erik Gage dramatically refers to as the "Berlin Wall of culture" in Portland, Ore. He and his bandmates in White Fang grew up in the PDX ‘burbs round 122nd Street, starting a CD-R — or, rather, "CD-Gnar" — label in high school. As popular as they were round the cafeteria — they’d hop up on the tables and sing — the attention they’ve lately received is even more impressive: MTVnews.com, XLR8R, and Billboard have all knocked at Gage’s phone line, over which he gladly engaged with the Guardian shortly before the launch of the band’s national fall tour.

Of all the coverage, the write-up that Gage, now 19, seems most proud of is the review they got in The Oregonian, which gave their new Marriage Records debut, Pure Evil, an A-. "My girlfriend’s mom read it," he exclaims. His enthusiasm speaks to White Fang’s whole deal: if they can excite those right around them, whether the numerous friends’ bands Gage mentions or his lady friend’s mum, they’re happy. This earnest eagerness was particularly striking at their summer gig at the Lobot Gallery in Oakland, where a crowd of less than 10 got utterly whomped with a two-drummer, extra-intimidating lineup including second kit-man Chuck Hoffand. White Fang’s core membership — guitarist Kyle Wolfgang, drummer Jim Leslie, and Gage, who sings — have had several members pass through their ranks, lately counting six members for their touring group. Only one drummer this time out, but Gage promises it’ll be great.

"It still gets pretty damn crazy every show," Gage says, citing a gutter-punk fistfight at a recent house show as a particularly frenzied example of this. Fang used to be more mild-mannered, he explains, playing "twee-ish, K Records-type stuff," before they picked up electric guitars to channel their "African tribal drum music" influence for "Pterodactyl," a contribution to the guilty pleasures-themed Grown Zone comp on States Rights last year. "Twee-ish" has since given way to Pure Evil, with a freewheeling energy that takes mere moments to adore: "Breakfast" hobbles from Black Flag riffing into an exuberant, infectious three-chord collapse.

After the tour, they’ll record an LP titled Cheerful Poetry of the Cosmos for States Rights, and alongside Gage’s Gnar Tapes and Shit label, Fang will initiate a new imprint under Marriage’s wing: Chips, which will be dedicated to releasing split singles. Evil? More like pure genius.

WHITE FANG

With Mount Eerie, Thanksgiving, and Common Eider King Eider

Sat/1, 8 p.m., $8

Million Fishes Art Gallery

2501 Bryant, SF

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

Magazinester

October 29, 2008

My heart’s made of paper and held in place with two staples: I’ll always love zines. Recent issues of David Brazil’s and Sara Larsen’s biweekly roundup Try include Dana Ward’s languorous thoughts on feeling and some playful lyricism courtesy of Julian Brolaski (e-mail trymagazine@gmail.com.). Runx Tales #1 is a collection of comics by Matt Runkle (runkle.matt@gmail.com). Lots to enjoy: an exploration of why straight marriages are so gay; a well-spun tale about a town named Coeur d’Alene; nicely-rendered portraits of recent romantic obsessions; an account of dancing to ABBA on a gay pride float; and a memory of a wet, hot American summer. Runkle has Lynda Barry’s ability to capture a personality in one panel, and he draws himself to look a little like Jiminy Cricket.

Speaking of thumb-size icons, Mr. Peanut is back on the scene and looking debonair in an ad (for a show by Haim Steinbach) within the new Artforum. The same issue brings the disquieting news, also via advertisement, that Mr. Pharrell Williams has a show in a Parisian gallery. Bleh, I’d rather dream of buying a brand-new New York Post needlepoint pillow by under-sung and influential OCD artist Brigid Berlin.

Madonna and Guy’s divorce rules the glossy tabloids. "Tears, Lies, and Money," declares the front of OK!, while Us Weekly opts for a similar-but-different yellow-hued trilogy of ingredients: "Lies, Cheating, and Abuse." Esquire declares Halle Berry "the Sexiest Woman Alive," while L’ Uomo Vogue presents Tilda Swinton, looking more handsome than she’s managed on any recent red carpets. James Franco is kissable as ever on Man About Town, while Q touts its new design alongside a photo of world’s-oldest-schoolboy Angus Young.

Last, fate decreed that the 700th issue of Fate: True Reports of the Strange and Unknown — complete with a contents-inspired cover illustration of an alien, a wolf, a droid, Sasquatch, and Jesus in front of a pyramid — arrives in the mail today. Eerie!

Speed Reading

October 29, 2008

WOLFGANG VOIGT — GAS

By Wolfgang Voigt

Raster-Noton

128 pages with CD

$46.49

One of many noms de guerre of Kompakt Records founder Wolfgang Voigt, Gas represented the vanguard of a techno-ambient hybrid that flourished throughout the 1990s. The cryptic methodologies of Stockhausen, the operatic pretensions of Wagner, and the libidinal energies of Deleuze were bandied about in this subculture of citation and pastiche. The result was an interdisciplinary flourishing of art beyond the strict borders of musical formatting into mixed media.

Voigt’s newest release — a book of photographs taken throughout the forests surrounding his native Cologne — is finally gaining international renown for the record boss, composer, and aesthete. The book is a cousin to the landmark Nah und Fern box set released earlier this year by Kompakt. As with Nah und Fern, Voigt’s photography centers on the forest and the sky — potent artistic and political signifiers of nature in the German psyche.

"Gas is Hansel and Gretel on acid … a seemingly endless march through the under woods — and into the discotheque — of an imaginary, nebulous forest," Voigt has said. In reality, Voigt’s images are much less jejune or ambulatory than such a quote might imply. The dense forest tableaux combine the beauty of Lee Friedlander’s desert brambles with the sinister fluorescent emulsions of Warhol’s "Death and Disaster" series. The ingress of techné that — through serial repetition and fractals — dominates these images in turn triggers a surreal aura: the natural and mechanical blend effortlessly in Voigt’s lens. To say these representations of the magic forests of Germany are disturbing is an understatement. But they are also meditative and inspiring. (Erik Morse)

THE BOOK OF LISTS: HORROR

By Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley

Harper Paperbacks

432 pages

$14.95

Calling The Book of Lists: Horror a reference book seems a bit unfair, if only because that designation makes it sound like something you don’t read front-to-back — something that probably doesn’t have a section titled "Eli Roth’s Ten Nastiest Horror Movie Genital Mutilations." Roth’s ouchfest is only one of the many such lists the book offers in its five sections. Film and literature receive special attention, but other horrific areas don’t go ignored. The result is a playful, comprehensive, and immensely readable work. Seasoned horror gurus will appreciate veteran list guru David Wallechinsky’s annotated look at a half-dozen overlooked horror films, while anyone who’s not too sensitive can enjoy "James Gunn’s Nineteen Favorite Reason God Made Humans So Squishy."

Authors and editors Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley have attracted an impressive array of talent to make contributions: Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and a posthumous Johnny Ramone all make appearances, and most have something interesting to say. With so many lists, not all can be as entertaining as "Davey Johnson’s Account of the Involuntary Reactions of Ten Dates to Ten Horror Movie Moments." But since the format allows for plenty of skipping around, misguided entries can be easily avoided. If there’s one real complaint to be levied against The Book of Lists: Horror, it’s that the visual content is underwhelming. Images should certainly accompany lists like "Steve Niles’s Top Twenty Horror Comic Covers." Sure, you’d have to lose some text, but it’s like they always say — one picture of disembowelment is worth a thousand words. (Louis Peitzman)

Bump(s) in the night

October 29, 2008

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In the new animated horror film Fear(s) of the Dark, artistic director Etienne Robial convened some of the most influential graphic artists of the modern era and dared them to respond to a simple question: "What scares you?" Working under minimum guidelines of time limit and color (monochrome was required), the selected comic and graphic novel artisans — including cartoonist Charles Burns, The New Yorker illustrator Blutch, British designer Richard McGuire, and others — produced highly personal vignettes that were woven into a Sigmund Freud-meets-William Gaines omnibus. But as with 2006’s celebrity smorgasbord Paris, je t’aime, the ambitious conceit of Robial’s film exceeds the individual contributions, which often drift into misguided forms of pop-psychology and self-conscious pleonasm. Never more terrifying than The Interpretation of Dreams, and never more enlightening than Tales from the Crypt, Fear(s) of the Dark is nonetheless an interesting exercise in atmosphere.

Structured as a frame story of sorts, the film begins with a pack of four voracious hounds, tethered to a sadist, who set out across the countryside in search of blood. Positioned along the backdrop of this chase are four vignettes of horror that center on popular phobias. The opener, created by Charles Burns, follows a social outcast whose childhood fascination with entomology comes to haunt him as a young man. When maladjusted student Eric finally meets the girl of his dreams, Laura, the creepy twitch of insects from his bed threatens to wreck his chances. Burns’ beautiful comic-book drawing style, a black and white relative to Lichtenstein’s panochrome creations, perfectly captures the frenzy of young lovers destined for doom.

The second tale, by far the most underdeveloped and least satisfying, centers on a young Japanese girl possessed by an Edo samurai. Drawn in the fast-paced anime style, Marie Caillou and Romain Slocombe’s use of proleptic slippages — although common in the anime genre — are often more confusing than frightening and gives the sequence the overall sense of an abridged sketch. In contrast, Lorenzo Mattotti’s contribution is much more mysterious and subtle in tonality, using a less op-art form of shading and pencil strokes. His story focuses on a young boy whose town is terrorized by a nocturnal beast, a literal bête noire. When a school chum claims to know the monster’s location, he suddenly disappears and the boy joins a search party to slay whoever or whatever is responsible.

The fourth vignette, contributed by Richard McGuire, deserves special attention for its innovative use of silence and darkness to instill a particularly effective kind of horror. A man stranded in the middle of a blizzard forces himself into a darkened house for shelter and finds a mysterious presence waiting for him. Forgoing the loquacious first person device used in other chapters of the film, McGuire explores the muted setting of the house itself, which may or may not have its own sinister character. The genius of McGuire’s piece rests in its celebration of the virtual and inanimate through mere suggestion — the creaking of the stairwell, the slamming of a door, the momentary pall of a silhouette. Inspired by the likes of James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932) and Roman Polanksi’s The Tenant (1976), McGuire seems keenly aware that the trope of the haunted house is as indebted to the semiotics of the domestic as it is to the novelty of the transmundane.

As the highlight of Fear(s) of the Dark, this final vignette actually challenges many of the oedipal motifs that imbue the bulk of the film. The recurring use of first person confessional lends the vignettes in question a trademark French patina of Godardian psychoanalysis à la King Lear without any real artistic consequence. In other words, Fear(s)‘s theoretical misstep lies in its linking phobia with strategies of therapy — declaration, repentance, and ultimately, resolution — the hallmarks of the "healthy" adult, not the fantasizing child. Its redeeming beauty only arises when the collection of haunted scenarios aims for the viewer’s callow spine rather than his existential brain.

Fear(s) of the Dark opens Fri/31 in Bay Area theaters.

XXX-tant love

October 29, 2008

Platonic buds Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) live together, are completely devoted to each other, and yet loudly maintain that they are just friends — until they decide to sleep together on camera to pay off their debts. Oh, and sleep with other actors too, because that’s what you do in a porno. Ah, nothing like white-hot jealousy to make a long-dormant heart start beating, eh?

Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Kevin Smith’s latest, reminded me of his previous feature, 2006’s Clerks II. It elicited the exact same equally powerful, and seemingly contradictory, reactions. During the film’s first half, I guffawed at such moments as Zack and Miri’s discussion about sex toys for men versus those for women, during which Zack refers to his ability to pleasure himself with the help of two Popsicle sticks and a rubber band, like "a filthy MacGyver." But the off-color hilarity is all but buried by the film’s final third, which is full of typical romcom misunderstandings and mush. Writer-director Smith stands alone in his ability to create films that contain equal parts raunch and sap — and while Zack and Miri has a few shining moments, overall it never quite (ahem) comes together.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno opens Fri/31 in Bay Area theaters.

The booness

October 29, 2008

› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Happy Slutoween, librul terrorists. Now that the Castro Street celebration has been officially buried, there’ll be more terrific parties than tired Sarah Palin costumes haunting Halloween night. Below are 13 batshit surefires, all taking place Oct. 31, night of the living-undead pro-life governor of Alaska. Trick or trick!

ALL HALLOW’S EVE

Goth equals deathly perfect — insert exhausted "every day is Halloween" joke here — as 18-plus clubs Death Guild and Meat team up to paint it black with DJs Decay and Melting Girl and "techno opera singer" Diva Marisa.

9 p.m., $13. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

BITTEN

A French bordello Halloween masquerade ball seems right up any horny black cat’s alley — especially with an acrobatic performance by the ever-sexy Vau de Vire Society and lofty tunes by DJ Ean Golden.

10 p.m., free with costume. Harlot, 46 Minna, SF. (415) 777-1077, www.harlotsf.com

BLOOD PACT

An 18-and-up, gayish underground "dark places" extravaganza with vampiric DJ vamps Honey Soundsystem, Rchrd Oh?!, and Lord Kook, and promoters Homochic and Tantra, plus a slashing guest spot by Los Angeles’ A Club Called Rhonda.

10 p.m., $15. SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF. (415) 552-2131, www.homochic.com

BLOW UP HALLOWEEN

Those gorgeous 18-plus electro hipsters will never settle for anything less than horrifyingly bangin’ style — with terrific, terrifying rap trio HOTTUB, and evil genius DJs Richie Panic and Jeffrey Paradise.

10 p.m., $15. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.myspace.com/blow_up_415

CHARLIE HORSE HALLOWEEN THING

Two whole hours of the trashiest drag performances the nether regions of Polk Street have to offer? Sounds heart-stopping, but hostess Anna Conda will pump you back up with the cheapest drinks — and "outfits" — in town.

10 p.m., free. The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF. (415) 776-4162, www.myspace.com/charliehorsecinch

COOKIE’S HAUNTED HALLOWEEN

Ecstatically kooky drag princess Cookie Dough hosts a night of haunted whores, with ghoulish electro-goth duo Ejector live, DJ MC2, alarming numbers by Landa Lakes, Glitterella, and more.

8 p.m., $8. Octavia Lounge, 1772 Market, SF. (415) 863-3516, www.cookievision.com

HALLOWEEN: A PARTY

This one’ll be pure crazyboots, as Heklina of Trannyshack literally rises from the dead to join Midnight Mass’ Peaches Christ in hosting a dark diva drag extravaganza, with bloody insanity from Kiddie, Fauxnique, Renttecca, Raya Light …

9 p.m., $20. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. (415) 703-8965, www.peacheschrist.com

HAUNTED TEMPLE

Unholy deeds will abound in cavernous club Temple’s sacred spaces, with insane décor on two levels, howlin’ DJs Paul Hemming, IQ!, and Jaswho?, plus a $500 costume contest.

10 p.m., $20. 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

MONSTER HALLOWEEN

Ghoul’s night lip-sync battle-a-thon! DJ Scottish Andy and glamazon hostess Juanita More exhaust the hipsteratti queens and friends on the mic at the manly Truck bar for exotic "prizes" (i.e., drunk sex).

9 p.m., $5. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. (415) 252-0306, www.juanitamore.com

NIGHT OF THE LIVING BASS

Burner faves Opel get with Evil Breaks for an endless night of sheer funky drum ‘n’ bass madness, with a little techno freak-out on the side. With DJs Meat Katie, the Rogue Element, and Kid Blue.

10 p.m., $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com

RE:CREATION

A hip-hop, old-school electro, and freak beats spectacular, as ArtNowSF and Euphoric Conceptions present a platter’s worth of head trip performers like Mochipet, the New Deal, Pleasure Maker, and Sleepyhead. 9 p.m., $20. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. (415) 531-6953, www.clubsix1.com

STILETTO: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

No San Francisco club is sharper fashionista-wise than theme-driven Stiletto. Gasp as too-cool zombies arise from the depths of loveliness with DJs Mario Muse, Eric Sharp, and runway madness from Flock, plus photo booth!

10pm, $8, AsiaSF, 201 Ninth St., (415) 255-4752, www.myspace.com/stilettosf

Z-TRIP

The inexhaustible mix-master must have some sort of magic potion in his vinyl cauldron, because the mash-up and intel hip-hop kids still flock to his politically oriented, mind-blowing shows after several centuries. Scary!

9 p.m., $22.50. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. (415) 348-0900, www.blasthaus.com

A friend in need

October 29, 2008

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I don’t know if this is really considered a problem or just a modified version of a commitment issue. I recently have become very interested in having a G-spot orgasm. I feel the sensation and know the orgasm is literally and figuratively just outside my reach. I have found the toy that does the job (the Nubby G from Babeland) and I know I am on the verge. The only problem is that I need to be thrusting the toy in and out at a fast rate to really get me to the peak, and right before I am about the come, the sensation is so intense that I lose some strength and control in my arms. I know this could be rectified with a partner doing the heavy lifting, but is there a toy or a technique you could suggest for someone who is confined to solo play?

Sincerely,

G-spot Blue balls

Dear Blue:

Commitment issue how? Do you feel like your sex toy is somehow failing to fulfill a promise it made to you? (I can sort of see this, actually.) Have you told it that you Need To Talk?

It seems that your real problem is not that the vibrator cannot deliver, but that you literally can’t hold on long enough to give it a chance. It’s not it, it’s you. Maybe it’s just not the right toy for you at this time in your life. You need to let it down easy.

I think you need something that you can use hands-free, some kind of G-spot Bluetooth device. At first I looked on the few sex-toy guides specifically geared toward people with disabilities, figuring that even though your hands officially do work, they don’t work when it counts, so why not? There isn’t a lot out there, though. I pondered the many long-necked and flexible G-spotter devices, all of which look uncomfortably medical but most of which work pretty well — or so say the reviews — but eh, I couldn’t see how even adjusting the ergonomics was really going to do it for you. There’s still a smallish handle or base, and you’re still going to end up with the same old problem, or close enough. Same goes for the complicated in-and-out-and-round-and-round numbers (the Rabbit Pearl and its successors in faux-discretion, the oscilutf8g wombats and so on). They do some of the work for you, but you still have to hang on. No, the answer for you, I think, was available all along on the very same site where you found your well-meaning, if finally disappointing, current squeeze, Mr. G. They are dual stimulation devices with names like the Rock Chick (you insert it and you … rock) and the Snugglepuss. They stay in and leave your hands free to do whatever they need to do, whether it’s make shadow-puppets or do a Liza Minnelli impersonation or clutch your heart and go "Oh God oh God oh God." Whatever. The important part is, they do the G thing without your having to do any pumping. Of course it’s always possible that even as loyal and steadfast a companion as the Snugglofugus is, it might let you down — but there’s a good chance it won’t. Open your heart and let yourself love again.

Of course, should you have tons of money and no compunctions about tossing demi-tons of it at a matter of personal consequence but no world-shaking import, there are always ride-on sex machines like the original, the Sybian (look it up at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybian). There is something about these devices that always struck me as kind of ’70s, like something that would have had its own VIP room at Studio 54. Actually, the Sybian was invented by a very earnest guy named Dave, about whom little biographical information seems to exist, although it appears he really was just trying to help. It took considerably less earnest pioneers like Howard Stern, who seems to have regularly popped female guests onto the studio Sybian (which was hopefully sanitized between uses), to give it the unsavory aspect it has today. Well, that and the Sybian dealers currently accessible via the Web, like the one whose site makes this claim: "The female will learn how to have better and bigger orgasms. She will literally explode on it."

But I’m assuming you weren’t in that market anyway. No, what you need is either the hands-free insertable doohickeys described above, or something like what you’ve got already and a way to immobilize it so you can crouch on it, as with the Sybian, but less explodey. You could try one of those harnesses that attach a dildo to the partner’s knee or, in your case, to random household furnishings. Either way, be sure to tell any new sex toys how you really feel, and practice active listening. Communication is the key, you know. *
Love,
Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Xbox activism

-

October 29, 2008
0

> a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW The day after the last 2008 presidential debate, the stock market rollercoastered, however tenuously, to a high point, and oil prices plummeted. One would think those would be hopeful omens — on NPR, a woman interviewed on the street claimed lower gas prices were akin to a miracle. Yet the current ability to get the news the moment it happens — where would we be without e-alerts regarding daily Wall Street dramas? — has conditioned us to believe tomorrow might offer a radically different story. When OPEC calls an emergency meeting, and the US feds hold a global economic summit, who knows which side of the economic seesaw we’ll occupy at sunset?

Right now, you could say the economy is a form of conceptual art writ large, with real world implications. The numbers are based on shifts in mood and degrees of confidence, rather than anything you could really put your finger on (like cold hard cash). Apparently the idea that the earth’s thermostat is dialed up to a higher temperature is similarly conceptual. A surprising number of Americans — about 50 percent in a Pew Research Center poll taken last summer — believe there’s no such thing as global warming, and if there were, its causes cannot be scientifically determined. (Say bye-bye to the king penguin.)

Volatile situations have a way of generating free-floating cultural anxiety, and perhaps one of art’s jobs is to assuage it, or at least render it in unexpected terms and media. Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s Internet-based game project Gas Zappers does both. Using a colorful cast of characters wrested from online news outlets, it maintains a brash, interactive appeal as it tackles the implications of global warning and shifty petroleum economies. An animated digital collage, it takes two forms — a single-channel digital video, and a series of interactive computer games that can be viewed and played on a large flat screen monitor. It’s also accessible online.

The most attractive aspect of Gas Zappers‘ video version is its amped-up lucidity. Hung may be trafficking in environmental activism, but his vision of green takes on the gloriously corrosive hue of antifreeze. The piece is rendered in a color scheme you could describe as a toxic chemical rainbow. Art with social intent is often deemed didactic, but Hung steers clear of such charges with unabashed satire that plays like John Heartfield — the master of Hitler-hating WWII photomontage — meets South Park on YouTube.

Gas Zappers‘ appeal stems partly from the zeal with which Hung tosses cultural and political references. A polar bear, cast from its frozen habitat, navigates through a global landscape of energy issues — and celebrity spokespeople. Leonardo DiCaprio’s there, as is George W. Bush (as a barbecue grillmaster) and Al Gore (in a polar bear costume accessorized with Nobel bling). Al gags the prez on a compact fluorescent bulb and then sits on his face, issuing a forceful invitation: "Try my greenhouse gas, sucker."

Hung, who studied at San Francisco State University and showed an equally brash Internet-critique piece in Bay Area Now 3, is an artist of our moment. With this project, he has devised perhaps the perfect, time-filling, politically astute work for Berkeley tree-sitters — and those of us who wish we had the time and gumption to get up off our asses and make a difference.

GAS ZAPPERS

Through Feb. 8, 2009

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

www,bampfa.berkeley.edu

www.gaszappers.com

Yaelisa and Caminos Flamencos

-

October 28, 2008
0

PREVIEW How many outside the flamenco family — a sizable one in the Bay Area — realize just how special an artist Yaelisa is? In a less ghettoized genre, this Emmy-winning and always expanding and deepening performer and choreographer would be considered a superstar. Yaelisa foregoes some of the showbiz antics of her colleagues for performances that are no less captivating and, frequently, more intelligently planned and presented. Her monthly Café Flamenco sessions — every third Sunday of the month and currently at Theater Artaud — have become a Bay Area staple.

The Yaelisa and Caminos Flamenco ensemble includes Melissa Cruz, Christina Hall, Mariana Elana, and Fanny Ara. Each of these women is a soloist in her own right. For the company’s new program, Canciones, Yaelisa and her dancers are stepping beyond their comfort level into non-flamenco music — not exactly a new idea, but one that apparently Yaelisa has wanted to explore for a long time. The impetus came from a 2006 collaboration with tap virtuoso Savion Glover that involved Brazilian funk, Miles Davis, and Dave Brubeck. Canciones — with guest dancer Timo Nuñez — includes music by Iron and Wine and the Spanish pop group Ketama and live sounds by Sonikéte, as well as more traditional compositions by Isaac Albéniz. Latin percussionist Michael Spiro and vocalists Felix de Lola and Miguel Rosendo join music director and master flamenco artist Jason McGuire.

YAELISA AND CAMINOS FLAMENCOS Sat/1, 8 p.m., and Sun/2, 7 p.m., $15–$60. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org>.

Devin the Dude

-

October 28, 2008
0

PREVIEW: When the Mayan apocalypse hits in 2012, Devin the Dude will have been at this rap stuff for two decades. Although the new Landing Gear (Razor and Tie) is the fifth solo album he’s released since 1998, it’s the first since 2007’s Waitin’ to Inhale (Rap-a-Lot) upgraded his status from "underground rapper" to "underground rapper people know about." With hip-hop shrinking proportionally to the idea of a mainstream, it’s the right time for a rapper like the Dude to emerge: he’s from Houston, and the tracks have less syrupy roll than crate-digger haze, less of UGK’s hard-assed shit-talk and more chuckling self-deprecation.

Like its predecessors, Landing Gear isn’t "conscious" hip-hop. Devin’s priorities on the recording are, in order, getting high, getting over heartbreak, and getting laid. That said, musically, a corner of the disc is dipped in the same juice that Erykah Badu’s year-making New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War (Motown) stews in: check the subtle earbud phase and Garageband multitrack cooing on the sleazeball come-on "Let Me Know It’s Real." If there’s a difference between Landing Gear and Waitin’ to Inhale, it’s the latter’s willingness to go places the former doesn’t. Revenge fantasy "Just Because," off Waitin’, is as funny as it is disturbing. And the fact that Devin doesn’t exempt himself of responsibility for his fantasies makes it compelling. Landing Gear isn’t any less vivid in approaching similar feelings, though alongside "I Don’t Chase Em" an obligatory bid for airplay the stakes feel smaller. But that’s just fine. Devin still has a couple releases before the apocalypse.

DEVIN THE DUDE Wed/29, 9 p.m., $18. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 255-0333, www.slims-sf.com

Parts and Labor

-

October 28, 2008
0

PREVIEW The hiss and garble of a psychedelic seeker mid-acid trip, the righteous fury of a dad scolding a litterbug, and the sodden sadness of paranoiac who suspects secret agents are tailing him. All these sounds unexpectedly, remarkably crop up on Parks and Labor’s new Receivers (Jagjaguwar).

When I last caught the band, clobbering all in earshot with a propulsive, post-punk power-skronk, at South by Southwest a few years ago, I never imagined the Brooklyn-Union, N.J.-Milwaukee, Wis., combo would be going into interstellar overdrive and taking a page from the starlog of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (Capitol, 1973). In creating Receiver‘s prog-orchestral sound, Parts and Labor referenced not only the exploratory courage of Wire’s Chairs Missing (Harvest, 1978), but Dark Side‘s use of samples. Its overarching inspiration: the general glut of digital information, which spurred the group to invited listeners to submit samples for Receivers via its MySpace page. The combo used all 650 or so, of them — altering, pitch-shifting, and morphing the contributions along the way — vocalist-bassist BJ Warshaw assures me by phone from Indiana.

"We always got friends to appear on recordings, so Dan [Friel, vocals and electronics] and I thought, why limit this?" he recalls. "Why not ask the world and see what comes of it?" It led to an "intense but fun" mixing job. The satellite noise, say, at the onset of Receivers was created by playing every sample simultaneously. Still, one’s enjoyment of the album doesn’t depend at all on one’s appreciation of the band’s technical and conceptual machinations, which climax with the hurtling "Solemn Show World." And the world can continue to experience the disc’s sampling project on the road: "We’ve got a toll-free phone number [1-888-317-5596] that people can call, and we’ve been improvising, working the calls into the live show, which has been really fun," Warshaw says. "We’ve got 20 sounds so far, and it’s only the second day of the tour."

PARTS AND LABOR With Gowns and Curse of the Birthmark. Sat/1, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $6. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

“Halloweird”

-

October 28, 2008
0

PREVIEW The short films showcased at Independent Exposure’s "Halloweird 2008" are mostly more bizarre than they are spooky, but that doesn’t mean they’re not holiday appropriate. There’s something deeply unsettling about many of the offerings, which offer a more lingering impression than your standard scares. Loka "Tabernacle 1" is haunting precisely because we’re given so little of the overall picture. As the camera glides gracefully alongside gorgeous violins, we find a glowing, floating man, with no explanation. By the Kiss is similarly devoid of context: a woman pressed against a wall greets a sequence of suitors who — quite literally — smother her with kisses. It’s hypnotizing but wholly unpleasant. Of course, with 17 films on the agenda, there are bound to be some clunkers: Mama, which features a ghoulish woman crying "mama" for two-and-a-half minutes, might be disturbing if it weren’t so annoying. Kaltes Klares Wasser is also overlong. But hey, "overlong" is a relative term here, and it’s worth zoning out for a few minutes to make it to the best films. Here, the real standouts are firmly planted in the comedy genre: Transrexia, a short but sweet stop-motion animation about a T-Rex’s love for a pterodactyl, and Fantaisie in Bubblewrap, in which individual Bubble Wrap bubbles are alive and rather chatty. That is, until they’re popped.

"Halloweird 2008"

Wed/29, 8 p.m., $6

Bollyhood Café, 3372 19th St., SF

www.bollyhoodcafe.com

1...201202203...279 Page 202 of 279