Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

Your neighborhood streets on wry (hold the Sesame)

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"Who are the people in your neighborhood?" Wasn’t that the consciousness-raising question we were coaxed into asking as tots by the irresistibly catchy song stylings of public television? Well, if they’re the mix of humans and Muppet-esque monsters of Avenue Q, they’re strikingly but only superficially reminiscent of the denizens of that sidewalk utopia propagated by PBS children’s programming. After all, Sesame Street began way before anyone could stay shut up all day surfing the Internet for porn, like Trekkie Monster (Christian Anderson), let alone sing about it.

The inhabitants of Avenue Q are also the friends, allies, love interests, and fellow losers whom a recent college grad with few prospects and an elusive purpose — puppet protagonist Princeton (voiced and operated by Robert McClure) — can sort of maybe count on to get him through a disillusioning world that already seems downhill the moment one’s rolled off the university assembly line.

Such is the premise and highly qualified promise of Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s much-hailed musical comedy, which makes a vibrant San Francisco debut at the Orpheum Theatre in a Broadway touring production happily packed with energy and a talented, impressively versatile cast. Many jaded years after Big Bird was first through with watching you, Lopez and Marx’s reappropriation of such small-screen indoctrination serves up a deflated age writ Broadway large, an arch nostalgia tailor-made for an overeducated, underemployed population of thirtysomething slacker-searchers.

Avenue Q mines TV and Broadway in equal measure, with knowing references to each in a kind of pop cultural marriage overtly joined in one show tune–<\d>loving puppet named Rod, a closeted stockbroker who plays a kind of veiled Bert to sloppy but good-natured roommate Nicky’s Ernie. And if disappointment, humiliation, and an understated resilience are things everyone shares to varying degrees on Avenue Q (a run-down row of New York City brownstones with off-the-beaten-track rents — a decidedly grubby version of Sesame Street nicely realized by set designer Anna Louizos), they also come together in one neat, compact package that isn’t even Styrofoam based: Gary Coleman (voiced and operated by Carla Renata), the has-been TV child actor and ignominious tabloid fixture here turned, in one of many inspired touches, into the building super.

Smart, lively, and consistently funny, Avenue Q pretty well lives up to the heap of praise that brought the 2004 musical a small mound of Tony Awards. The show lags a bit in the second act (where, in medium-funny numbers like "Schadenfreude," the formula can begin to wear thin), but it’s never a bore. And if there’s inevitably a sentimental aspect to the "it sucks to be you and me" universality of its theme, it winds up on what is probably the best possible note — contained in the double-edged line "Everything in life is only for now" — which at the last moment smuggles in a defiant optimism clothed as ambivalence and compromise, much as throughout the play a certain felt reality (admittedly of a decidedly middle-class variety) comes agreeably filtered by felt puppets.

OTHERS MATTERS


Insignificant Others is a new musical comedy featuring its own assortment of lovable college grads unleashed in another big (or anyway biggish) city, by San Francisco playwright-composer-lyricist L.<\!s>Jay Kuo. It may not have anything like the budget of Avenue Q — and in truth doesn’t manage the tightrope walk between its sentimental theme and a cutting comic irony as smoothly either — but while uneven in both conception and execution, Insignificant Others nevertheless has some significant talent and inspiration behind it.

The story concerns a circle of five twentysomethings from Cleveland who relocate to San Francisco with hopes of embarking on lives of romance and adventure beyond the workaday world’s cubicle walls. At the center of these tales of the city is a buxom young firecracker named Margaret (the strong and winning Sarah Kathleen Farrell) on the lookout for Mr. Right — a designation given considerable latitude in a city with a scarce supply of heterosexual men, which becomes the excuse for three of the show’s most crowd-pleasing and clever numbers.

Friendships drift, but a crisis draws the characters together again, though this central thread comes over as both weak and overblown, and its resolution too pat and syrupy. Insignificant Others‘ best parts remain the more comedic ones, wherein Kuo’s generally polished lyrics and able if less consistently original music tend to reach their highest points.<\!s>*

AVENUE Q

Through Sept. 2, $30–<\d>$90

Tues.–<\d>Sat., 8 p.m. (also Wed. and Sat., 2 p.m.); Sun., 2 p.m.

Orpheum Theatre

1192 Market, SF

www.shnsf.com

INSIGNIFICANT OTHERS

Through Sept. 23, $35–<\d>$39

Thurs.–<\d>Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.

Zeum Theatre

221 Fourth St., SF

www.isomusical.com

Deep digs into rock’s catalogue

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DVD Chrome Dreams’ Under Review DVD series is one of the better things to happen for music geekdom since 180-gram vinyl or the twofer CD reissue. Where else are you going to find sober analysis of Captain Beefheart’s mid-’70s tragic band period or an in-depth discussion of the four Mott the Hoople albums that came out before All the Young Dudes (Columbia, 1972)?

My first brush with the series came a couple of years ago, with one of the earliest installments, Queen under Review: 1973–1980. This was followed by a similar album-by-album chronicle of Thin Lizzy’s career, on a different label, Castle Rock. This pairing led me to believe the format was somehow linked to the ’70s hard rock phenomenon — but not so. Chrome Dreams has steadily continued to churn out these things, surveying a broad and occasionally head-scratching variety of artists including Beefheart, Mott, Leonard Cohen, the Velvet Underground, the Smiths, David Bowie (his late ’70s Berlin trilogy), and the Who (pre-Tommy).

The format for these videos is pretty simple: get a bunch of critics, producers, and musicians together to break down a given artist’s catalog; interweave audio and video excerpts; then tie it all together with official-sounding narration. (It’s a British series, so of course the narration sounds official.) Copyright restrictions keep the producers from relying too much on video, although there’s some great rare footage to be glimpsed, from weird videos and promotional clips to obscure live excerpts that you won’t see on VH1. They rarely interview the bands themselves, and when they do, it’s usually peripheral members such as Velvets stand-in Doug Yule or Smiths second guitarist Craig Gannon. There are also celebrity interviewees such as the Clash’s Mick Jones (in the Mott video), ’60s Brit-rock producer Shel Talmy, and Factory Records loudmouth Tony Wilson — though, thankfully, no Thurston Moore so far.

Then there are the critics, many of whom are colorful in their own right, and not just for their Austin Powers–worthy teeth. Among the more enjoyable characters are Kerrang!‘s hyperanimated Malcolm Dome, Mohawk-sporting motormouth John Robb, and the soft-spoken but likable Nigel Williamson, a writer for Uncut who appears in nearly every volume. The idea of likable critics might seem like an oxymoron, but while one might not always agree with the opinions they express, it’s hard to fault the enthusiasm or passion they show for the music.

One of the best things about this series is that it doesn’t go "behind the music." Rather, it — gasp! — talks about the music itself without dwelling on who slept with whom or who did what drugs. Under Review’s incisive commentary won’t be found in dumbed-down VH1 documentaries or, for that matter, sterile rock ‘n’ roll museum presentations like those at the Experience Music Project. These people know what they’re talking about. And as a fellow music geek, I find it oddly enjoyable to hear others enunciate elusive truths about music that hasn’t been played on the radio for decades — whether it’s Williamson’s description of Beefheart’s failed crossover attempt Bluejeans and Moonbeams (Mercury/Blue Plate, 1974) as "the worst of both worlds" or Daryl Easlea’s assertion — regarding original Mott the Hoople vocalist Stan Tippens — that "groups with lead singers named Stan tend not to make it big."

Anyhow, I’m hooked on the series, and at this point I’d probably watch a video on Nazareth or the post-’70s Foghat catalog. Those aren’t requests, though. (Will York)

www.chromedreams.co.uk

Local Live

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LOCAL LIVE "I think we might have chosen the wrong drinks for tonight," my friend Damian remarked at the start of an inspiring set by local Appalachian-Gypsy-klezmer folk fusionists Karpov. As they transported us to the unmapped intersection where Kentucky and Romania meet, I could see my buddy’s point. There they were — mountain men spinning tar-black tales of loneliness and love run afoul over clarinet twists and robust churns of the accordion. And here we were — sipping away on cocktails! We had it all wrong: this was music for straight, pure, unadulterated liquor. Preferably whiskey or vodka, right out of the bottle, diluted by nothing other than maybe a few tears.

Performing songs from last year’s stirring self-released Soliloquy and previewing material intended for its follow-up, the quintet did a convincing job whisking us away from the Tenderloin and dropping us into the distant past in some remote backwoods. Boasting a wise-beyond-its-years voice similar to Will Oldham’s or David Eugene Edwards’s, Andre Karpov recalled the wandering troubadours of a preindustrial age, though here he was backed by a group akin to an Eastern European wedding band prone to brooding from time to time.

Karpov gazed out ruefully "into the distance, where not even my persistence could bring her back to me" on highlight "Further from Me," and the lament was cloaked in shifting shadows, thanks to painterly touches by Joe Lewis (stand-up bass), Jarod Hermann (drums), Sam Tsitrin (accordion), and Aaron Novik (clarinet). The ghosts of regret made other appearances, on "I Won" and "Under the Sun" — articulated to spine-tingling effect with snaking clarinet runs and sighing accordion over understated but commanding rhythms. Still, if this was any kind of wedding band, there had to be dancing, and Karpov set the audience’s feet a-stomping on rowdy numbers "Sorry World," "Soliloquy," and crowd favorite "To the Grave," which beckoned my two feet forward with its calls of "the fog has lifted, lifted away, so come on out children, come out and play." No problem there, Karpov. Next time, though, I’ll bring the whiskey. (Todd Lavoie)

Code unknown

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The CIA maintains a number of "black sites" around the world where suspected terrorists are "disappeared." You can get a recipe for Irish Eyes Chicken Pot Pie or instructions on how to commit suicide on the Internet. Thousands of starlings spontaneously converge in a suburb in Rome where Benito Mussolini once planned on holding an exhibition celebrating Fascism. I love having dreams. There are more than 130 revolving restaurants around the world.

These are all interesting tidbits. But what do they mean? While they may sound like the search results of indiscriminate Web surfing, all are factual elements found in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ "Dark Matters: Artists See the Impossible," curated by René de Guzman. Although organized around secrecy and the unexpected, this group exhibition deals more with what can be found than what is hidden.

Perhaps surrealist André Breton was predicting the future of curation with his juxtaposition of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table; today randomness rules, and connections are coaxed by the curator and forged by the viewer. This show exemplifies such a process. For example: Sergio Prego’s video Black Monday (2006) is a mesmerizing parallax view of a small explosive going off in the artist’s studio. You get every awesome angle, and the cloud is suspended midboom. (I always wondered if the tests at Bikini Atoll were done so more military personnel would have a chance to glimpse the aesthetic wonder that is the atomic bomb.) Kitty-corner from Black Monday is Heaven Can Wait (2001–ongoing), a video installation by artist team Bull.Miletic showing more parallax views, this time from revolving restaurants around the globe, including the Equinox at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. Was it Steve McQueen who starred in The Parallax View, shot from the revolving restaurant atop the Space Needle? Or was Breton predicting the Internet and how randomness is curated into blogs? What was I blogging? I mean, saying?

It’s well known that the CIA performs secret operations under fancy code names. Trevor Paglen has compiled a list — everything he could find, from Able Ally to Zodiac Beauchamp. "Dark Matters" includes a very tall wall full of them. The piece is called Codename (2001–07). Paglen told me he knows what a handful of the named operations are about, but if he talked to the wrong person, they might mistake him for a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Secret planes where? Extraordinary rendition what? Unmarked airplanes why? But Paglen is not a crackpot. He is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer. Information thus arranged and presented — what do we do with it? At this very moment, the CIA is torturing people at secret facilities in the name of our freedom. But what I want to know is, whatever happened to Bronski Beat? We do not want to think, much less believe, that the US government runs secret prisons. So we don’t.

Robert Oppenheimer once said — or wrote, I forget — "It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them." I thought I used that quote in some other art review because I liked it so much. So I Googled "kurtz oppenheimer." What I got instead was a live-sex webcam chat. How many degrees to Internet sex? Not many. Listening Post (2002–06), by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, demonstrates as much. Spinal columns of digital screens climb from floor to ceiling. A suite of seven programmed actions culls live chats from the Internet, which scroll across the screens. One is set to grab anything beginning with "I love" or "I like." It’s harder to determine the organizing principle of the other movements, but the very public exposition of very private conversations is discomfiting. And absorbing — all those desires scrolling by. And you thought you were the only one!

Did you know that there is no alpha leader in a flight of birds? What really occurs is democracy: when just over half of the birds begin to tilt in one direction, the rest follow. I saw that on the Internet somewhere. Richard Barnes, Charles Mason, and Alex Schweder were all in Rome, hanging out and making art. Unbeknownst to the others, each of them became fascinated with the mass starling convergence at Esposizione Universale di Roma. Murmurs (2006) consists of Barnes’s photography, Mason’s sound, and Schweder’s video. Starlings have binocular vision. Who knew?

Left on its own, information will eventually organize itself. What remains is the question of credibility. One of the things I named in the first paragraph is not found in the exhibition. Or maybe two. *

DARK MATTERS: ARTISTS SEE THE IMPOSSIBLE

Through Nov. 11

Tues.–Wed. and Fri.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.; Thurs., noon–8 p.m.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

$3–$6 (free first Tues.)

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

Meds and mads

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Is there any hope for my husband, who is not able to launch since he’s on tons of meds (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.)? He’s too embarrassed to ask the doctor, and asking would mean yet another pill. Could he be depressed? Are you the one to speak to?

Love,

Nothing Happening Here

Dear Haps:

I can be spoken to, but your husband is going to have to speak up for himself. The doctors should ask, but they often don’t want to or just don’t. Specialists especially tend to be interested in the parts they’re assigned to and may not remember that your husband has a penis or a wife or anything unimportant like that. If you’re concerned about something that just isn’t that doctor’s pet thing, you may have to nag a bit or call them and ask if they’ve looked into that thing they said they’d look into. (Doctors enjoy looking into things.) You may have to get a new doctor.

There may be hope for your husband (and you! don’t forget you!), but it may take a while to unsnarl things. Diabetes can cause erectile dysfunction all by itself, as can blood pressure meds. There’s another intriguing possibility that may be worth at least a mention: both forms of diabetes, although they are otherwise dissimilar, can cause low testosterone in men. It can be hard to determine because they have to look for "free" — unbound by the protein that carries sex hormones around in the blood — testosterone, which requires a special test, and the whole issue is still a little controversial, but it’s worth a look, since it’s a pretty simple fix. I found about a zillion articles on this by looking up "diabetes testosterone," and so can he, if he ‘s so inclined.

And finally, you ask, could he be depressed? Oh, very likely, I say, but if it’s situational it’s at least worth a try to fix the situation, isn’t it? It’s possible that there is no combination of meds that will help, or it may be that there is help but it is irksome and invasive, like a penile implant or shots. One thing I know for sure, though, is that sitting around feeling broken and hopeless never gave anyone a hard-on. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Somebody, somewhere. Sigh.)

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

It was love at first sight for my husband, but not for me. I tried to dump him but realized that I couldn’t live without him — he was the most wonderful human I had ever met, period. I still wasn’t in love, and he was OK with that. Sex was great in the beginning but quickly became a chore. I meet other men to whom I am attracted but never have been tempted.

The sex is bad because (don’t scream!) he’s overweight, really has no clue about basic things like kissing, and comes after three minutes. We talk about feelings and dissatisfaction constantly. I give clear instructions, but he forgets them immediately (funnily, we have exactly the same problem with cleaning!). But in every other way, he is beautiful, kind, and the person I was looking for all my life.

I make no effort because he lacks skills and endurance and can’t or won’t fulfill my needs. He swears he will get fitter and will try harder to fulfill me psychologically and physically. I know I have become a bit castrating, but he expects me to pick up where his mom left off in other parts of our lives, which is not helping our sex life.

I’m not sure that I can rebuild a hot sex life that barely existed to begin with. Maybe he just isn’t right for me and I can’t accept it. We need a sex therapist but have no idea of how to find one who’s legitimate. How do we repair something like this when we both have already talked ourselves blue in the face for several years?

Love,

Bored by the Bay

Dear BBB:

Oh, ugh, you’re not bored, you’re seething with resentment. Both of you. If this were just about skills or duration of erection, I wouldn’t be hearing about how he expects you to be his mommy or how fat he is. Nor would you ever have had great sex to hold up against the current lackluster offerings. Apparently he doesn’t clean the bathroom? And then he doesn’t keep a hard-on? And you yell at him about both of them? Stop that! Sit down together and comb over your budget until you find enough free cash to hire a housecleaner and a licensed marriage and family therapist. (You find the name of someone convenient and affordable in a referral database and ask them some questions and hire them if you get good answers or call somebody else. It isn’t rocket surgery.) Neither cleaner nor therapist needs to be a sex specialist. Husband can learn technique from books, or from you, but you don’t seriously believe he forgets every time, do you? This isn’t one of those forgetting-stuff movies. He’s mad at you.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Might makes wrong

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A couple of years ago, filmmaker Thom Anderson remarked to me that all films about war, even those that aim to show its injustice, are prowar.

War Made Easy might be the first film I’ve seen since hearing Anderson’s assertion that effectively counters such a claim. Admittedly, Anderson was likely referring only to dramatic movies, especially those produced by Hollywood. Yet even a contemporary doc such as Fahrenheit 9/11 not only takes the honor of military force for granted but spins it into a cause for voice-over dramatics. In contrast, War Made Easy codirectors Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp’s documentary uses Norman Solomon’s recent book to perform an autopsy on the now-zombified propaganda surrounding post-1940s US war.

Alper and Earp’s doc skips smart-ass sarcasm and the usual air of incredulity in order to make complex points clear, and it does so skillfully and quickly. It still has moments when horror and humor commingle, such as when various embedded TV reporters cream their business slacks or loaned camouflage gear during assertions of love for aircraft such as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the A-10 Wart Hog.

George Santayana’s famous statement that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it is proven without a doubt throughout War Made Easy. A parade of presidents mouths variations of the same theme, which goes something along the lines of “We love democracy and peace so much that we have to murder others to maintain it.”

With the passing of time, the words and phrases used to justify US military action have become increasingly debased and the puppets mouthing them more craven, until today, when we have George W. Bush repeating the word evil more often than an old metal album skipping on a turntable. Yet if evil exists, he and his cronies are exact embodiments of what they decry. Witness a moment in this movie when Bush describes Saddam Hussein as “a homicidal dictator addicted to weapons of mass destruction.” (Johnny Ray Huston)

Americans no longer like the war in Iraq. They know it is not going well. Still, most don’t really want to know how things got so bad. Ergo, there’s probably not much hope No End in Sight will join the ranks of those rare recent must-see documentaries involving penguins, Global Warming 101, or Michael Moore. That’s too bad, because Charles Ferguson’s film has no preaching-to-the-converted tone or snarky on-camera filmmaker.

Ferguson, a sometime lecturer at UC Berkeley, draws on heavyweight connections to show how the administration continually matched arrogant, ignorant policy with new staff, people who — not unlike Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld — lacked experience in combat and postwar infrastructure rebuilding, let alone knowledge of Middle Eastern history, culture, and relations.

“I don’t do quagmires!” Rumsfeld quips in one of several gag-inducing moments of news conference levity. It’s repeatedly noted that Bush didn’t read even the one-page summaries crafted for his wee attention span.

No End in Sight includes input from US and Iraqi scholars as well as former Pentagon, CIA, and White House staff, sorely disillusioned American military leaders, and grunts badly wounded by inept policy. This movie should be required viewing for all US citizens currently obsessed with gas prices, the wacky misadventures of Lindsay Lohan, and their navels. The DVD version is going to make a great Christmas present. (Dennis Harvey)

NO END IN SIGHT

Opens Fri/10 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

www.noendinsightmovie.com

WAR MADE EASY

Thurs/9, 7 p.m., $12

Grand Lake Theater

3200 Grand Lake, Oakl.

(510) 251-1332, ext. 102

www.warmadeeasythemovie.org

 

New! Odd! Fantastic!

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› Cheryl@sfbg.com

Rampaging genitalia, families of half-wits, towns shielding deadly secrets, and the end of the world — yep, there are good times to be had with the selection of new films in Dead Channels: The San Francisco Festival of Fantastic Film. The most buzzed-about title, Uwe Boll’s Postal (it’s a war-on-terror comedy that pokes fun at Sept. 11, among other topics; Seinfeld‘s Soup Nazi plays fun guy Osama bin Laden), wasn’t available for prescreening. But no matter — it’ll be far more rewarding to see the thing on the Castro Theatre’s giant screen, with the notorious Boll in person, at Dead Channels’ opening night Aug. 9.

Noteworthy picks include Canadian filmmaker Maurice Devereaux’s End of the Line, which offers more jolts per capita than much of Dead Channels’ other fare. A sinister dude on the subway is something just about every woman has encountered — but it only gets worse for a psych-ward nurse (Ilona Elkin) whose commute home coincides with an evangelical cult’s realization that the apocalypse is nigh. Piety has seldom been so gruesomely rendered. A more lighthearted look at the end of civilization is crystallized in Minoru Kawasaki’s The World Sinks except Japan, in which freaky natural events cause all the continents to sink into the ocean, save you-know-which island nation. World leaders and American movie stars swarm Japan, which is none too thrilled about playing host to so many refugees. The film is a tad overlong, but there are some juicy moments of satire, including a glimpse at a beleaguered Japan’s most popular television show — which basically involves a giant monster stomping on as many foreigners as possible.

More somber is Simon Rumley’s The Living and the Dead, which features a mentally challenged lead character (played with precious little showboating by Leo Bill) whose descent into madness is witnessed with horror by his bedridden mother (Kate Fahy). The location is a massive English manor house, as frightening and confusing a spot as End of the Line‘s subway tunnels. Some creative camera work, including the use of fast-motion footage to demonstrate what goin’ cuckoo feels like, makes for a more dynamic thriller than the film’s small cast and single setting would suggest.

The most conventional (not always a euphemism for "sucky") Dead Channels flick I watched was Harry Basil’s Fingerprints, dubiously notable for the presence of Laguna Beach hottie and US Weekly fixture Kristin Cavallari in a supporting part. (Hey, rolling your eyes expressively is totally what acting is all about!) Somber teenager Melanie (Leah Pipes) gets out of rehab and moves back in with her varyingly supportive family, who’ve relocated to a bucolic village still haunted by a long-ago train wreck that killed several schoolchildren. Possibly owing to her heroin-tastic past, Melanie proves supernaturally sensitive; after receiving some ghostly nudges, she sets about uncovering the town’s long-buried secrets. Fingerprints plays a little like a Lifetime movie with slasher elements, and it also employs the spooky-kid motif that was all the rage in scary movies a few years back. But besides the curiosity casting of Cavallari — unnecessary bubble-bath scene alert! — and Lou Diamond Phillips (as a sympathetic teacher), the film is actually pretty entertaining and solid, if inevitably derivative.

Fairly unlike any film you have ever seen before, or will after, is Hot Baby!, the seriously bizarre brainchild of Bay Area filmmaker Jeff Roenning. There’s a scene or two that recalls The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other don’t-get-off-the-highway chillers, but mostly it’s an over-the-top array of shifting tones and character arcs, with a high schooler (Adam Scarimbolo) curious about his long-absent mother at its center. Plus: sexual-predator hypnotists, vengeful hookers, and doughnut jokes! Maybe even weirder is The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon, writer-director-star Annette Ashlie Slomka’s take on a female mad scientist who conducts her sexually charged experiments with Herbert West–<\d>like focus. The film’s interesting premise is hampered by its amateurish execution, but it still features a rather horrifying penis monster — and what more can you really ask for?<\!s>*

Click here for reviews of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Welcome Home Brother Charles

DEAD CHANNELS

Aug. 9 – 16

See Film List for venues and showtimes

www.deadchannels.com

Two great cult movies

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Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (John Newland, US, 1973). As Grindhouse viewers or true grindhouse aficionados know, starting a title with Don’t was once a popular way to strike fear in sleazoids. The fact that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was made for TV would suggest it’s tame — that is, if the Don’t era didn’t coincide with the glory, rather than gory, days of frightening TV movies. In fact, this little number is at least as great as Dan Curtis’s 1975 Trilogy of Terror, with which it shares some knee-high shocks while being much less campy. Don’t Open the Fireplace might be a more accurate if less catchy title, especially since the dark — not to mention a soundtrack that layers sinister, gnomish voices into a chorus — is definitely something to be afraid of here. As lead character Sally, Kim Darby realizes this only after her incessant urge to remodel a mansion has taken on Pandora’s box connotations. In every dream home lies a heartache, and in every possessed old mansion lurks the doom of a nuclear family (as in Curtis’s 1976 Burnt Offerings) — or in this case, a frigid, childless couple. This movie is at least as creepy as any manifestation of Takeshi Shimizu’s Ju-on (Grudge) series, which updates its conceit. For an extra kick, imagine a remake with Martha Stewart in the lead role! (Johnny Ray Huston)

Fri/10, 11:30 p.m., Roxie Film Center. See Rep Clock

Welcome Home Brother Charles (Jamaa Fanaka, US, 1975). I once thought Jamaa Fanaka’s most outrageous movie was 1987’s Penitentiary 3. What could be wilder than Leon Isaac Kennedy’s character Too Sweet and übercutie Steve Antin as a sax-playing John Coltrane disciple in a prison overseen by Tony Geary, his receding mullet frazzled by peroxide, with drag queens and a crack-smoking, back-breaking sex dwarf named the Midnight Thud at his beck and call? Well, Penitentiary 3‘s psycho-racial-sexual parade marked only the baroque era of a one-of-a-kind directorial career that began with efforts such as this flick, a.k.a. Soul Vengeance, which has attained notoriety because it features a certain part of the male anatomy gone extra large and homicidal. There’s something crazily brilliant about the way Fanaka literally takes racist stereotypes to their illogical and logical ends. Though his material has been pure pulp, his career deserves to be viewed close to, if not alongside, those of UCLA peers such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, and Haile Gerima, none of whom has courted or been understood by white Hollywood. Look past the trouser snake, and you’ll see a moodily lit credit sequence with a score not dissimilar to Mick Jagger’s for Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother and a politicized, funny, angry, and loving use of the color red. Admittedly, most people won’t be seeking out this movie for a performance by an actress in a supporting role, but it must be said that Reatha Grey is a natural. (Huston)

Fri/10, 7 p.m., Roxie; Sat/11, 2:30 p.m., Roxie

Iron curtain in outer space

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Throughout its history, the Soviet Union felt like the final frontier to many Americans. What was happening on the other side of that iron curtain? The Russians wondered too. Since travel between the countries was so limited, their inhabitants often had to turn for information to the cultural products that made it — both ways — past Russia’s gatekeepers. How better to hide meaning than in fairy tales and outer space? The Pacific Film Archive celebrates an age of anxiety and this age of information with its marvelous series "From the Stars to the Tsars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema."

The films of "From the Stars to the Tsars" span the period from the 1912 short The Cameraman’s Revenge and Aelita, Queen of Mars — the 1924 silent classic that inspired Guy Maddin’s The Heart of the World — to 2005’s First on the Moon. The series’s other notable traversal is between high and low culture. Some entries were partly seen at drive-ins in the 1960s thanks to Roger Corman, who bought the rights to The Heavens Call (1959) and Planet of Storms (1961) and scavenged their footage; To the Stars by Hard Ways (1982; reedited 2001) made an appearance as Humanoid Woman on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Then there are the films more familiar to art house patrons; the two by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972’s Solaris and 1979’s Stalker, cemented his reputation, and the former was hailed as the Soviet response to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The rest of the series falls between these poles. Although their politics and plots vary, all the films share a joy in the medium’s magic and an affinity for dazzling and provocative visual effects, whether they be ridiculous, sublime (the signal that Stalker‘s mysterious Zone is ready for its visitors is a marvel of quiet beauty), or both.

Another obvious draw is these films’ Russian-ness. Ruslan and Ludmila (1972) is based on an Aleksandr Pushkin epic, and Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1961) is an adaptation of a story by Nikolay Gogol. There is no Soviet Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but some movies manage to work in anti-Western views. The Amphibian Man, shot in Cuba in 1962, offers a damning critique of capitalism in the person of its villain (Mikhail Kozakov), a dishonest, slave-driving, anything-for-a-pearl bastard who wants to marry the girl our hero loves — against her will, of course. Zero City, filmed at the height of perestroika, includes a speech by the town prosecutor (Vladimir Menshov) against European ideas, which he says are all the more fatal for their rationality and practicality.

This is not to say that the Soviet Union escapes its directors’ indignation. The clearest examples come at its end points, the start and finish of the great people’s experiment. Aelita shows class conflict and housing shortages; made more than 60 years later, 1988’s Zero City depicts the denunciation and rehabilitation of rock ‘n’ roll and its partisans as caprices all the worse for their life-destroying results. But the most transparent criticism comes in 2005’s First on the Moon. Made well past the fall of the USSR, the film is a look back, documentary style, at its country’s space program, which in this version beat the Americans’ to the earth’s natural satellite. There are winks to the fictionality of this exercise via sometimes too-cinematic shots, but the most obvious touches are images such as that of a group of children saluting with straight faces "the cause of Stalin and Lenin," then breaking into laughter. The government appears at its worst when it covers up the successful trip and spends years trying to contain the cosmonaut who made it, but the fact that the Soviets never did get to the moon — let alone first — is the movie’s strongest critique.<\!s>*

FROM THE STARS TO THE TSARS

Through Aug. 31, $4–<\d>$8

See Rep Clock or www.sfbg.com for showtimes

Pacific Film Archive

2625 Durant, Berk.

(510) 642-1124

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Show us the money

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

By 9 a.m. on July 28, 13-year-old Bay Area music-star hopeful Nyles Roberson, accompanied by a support group that included his mom and two other family members, had secured a coveted position at the very front of the line outside the doors of the Oakland Convention Center. A full 25 hours later, the doors would finally be opened by the producers of Showtime at the Apollo, who, visiting from New York for the day, would hold this year’s only West Coast auditions for the long-running American talent show that has, over a historic 73 years, launched the careers of such legends as Billie Holiday, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Usher, and Lauryn Hill.

In the next 28 hours, another 374 Bay Area Apollo hopefuls, 75 of whom would be turned away, would patiently fall in line behind Roberson, who goes by the stage name Yung Nittlz. And the music that Yung Nittlz would be performing? You guessed it: rap with a distinctly Yay Area feel. In fact, the majority of those assembled, many of whom had traveled to the large venue adjacent to the Oakland Marriott from all over the Bay after hearing about the tryouts on KMEL, would perform some form of hip-hop, mostly of the popular, homegrown hyphy school.

"There was a lot of rappers to choose from … even more than I expected," chief Showtime at the Apollo judge Vanessa Rogers said following the intense day of some 300 auditions, which wound up at 7:30 p.m. after each act had gotten about 90 seconds to show their stuff. For close to a decade, Rogers has been tirelessly judging thousands of performers for the famed weekly Apollo amateur night, both on the road in select US cities such as Houston and Detroit and back home in Uptown Manhattan. In May, at the most recent tryouts at the Apollo Theater, on 125th Street in Harlem, she judged another 300 hopefuls.

On the morning of the Oakland audition, GGH (Girls Gone Hyphy) from Fairfield jockeyed for position in line and were soon assigned audition number 262. The three confident, upbeat teens — Felicia, Tajarae, and Tajaniique — would dance, rap, and sing over a track produced by one of their moms. "We’re already getting famous. Most of our families are already there," Tajarae said, noting that among the trio’s extended family in the local rap industry are San Quinn, Black C, and Shag Nasty. Farther up the line — which was about 95 percent African American — that snaked down Oakland’s 10th Street was another 707 area code rap artist, Semaj (James spelled backward), who later accompanied himself on keyboards as he spit his original rhymes. In the meantime, East Bay MC Antonio (real name: Mario), who was number five and close to the top of the long queue, took the bold step of performing an a cappella rhyme that he "just wrote late last night" while waiting outside the tryouts.

Farther along the row were Trauma, a colorfully dressed 11-member hip-hop dance troupe who had driven from Stockton the day before. Also camped out from the night before were well-prepared Richmond rap crew Da Trendsettaz, accompanied by their manager-producer, Bay Area rap vet Rob J Official, ready with flyers and promo CD-Rs in hand. With a median age of 18, the quartet’s Mister Trend, Digg, Sticky, and Blank-Blank would pack a lot into their allotted 90 seconds: dwarfed by the cavernous venue and decked out in oversize white Ts, they delivered their entertaining Yay Area–<\d>flavored rap "Strike a Pose" while busting carefully choreographed moves that clearly delighted Rogers and the other two judges from New York, show producer Suzanne Coston and video tech person Joe Gray.

First, however, was Roberson, or rather, Yung Nittlz, waiting at the top of the line and ready to perform for the three judges. Citing fellow Berkeley High School students the Pack as an inspiration, the extremely ambitious and multitalented ninth grader looked older than his years — he writes all of his material and makes his own beats, boasting two albums’ worth on his MySpace page. Before the panel of judges, looking not at all nervous, the teen confidently performed his song "Money in the Air," adding a little carefully planned flavor midway through by throwing in the air a fistful of cool-looking promotional play money — oversize, full-color $5 bills with his image and contact info strategically positioned on both sides, designed at home on his computer.

The next day Roberson was feeling satisfied with the whole experience. "I thought the auditions were great…. I gave 110 percent and I felt like the judges liked my song," he said by e-mail — naturally — adding that "my dream and my goal is to get a record deal." Whether he’ll make it to the Apollo stage this fall remains to be determined. Rogers, who described the Oakland Apollo tryouts as "challenging" (seemingly because of the disproportionate amount of nonrappers the Apollo likes to showcase), said there were about seven acts she was pretty sure were ready for the big time but that her team would need a few weeks to carefully study the tapes back in New York before deciding who would make the trip from the Bay to Showtime at the Apollo.<\!s>*

Chin music, pin hits

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Drifting into a coma at last week’s lethargic Oakland A’s–<\d>Los Angeles Angels game, I suddenly woke with a snort, dropped my bag of peanuts, and realized what was missing. No, not some bargain-price rookie flamethrower, though that wouldn’t hurt. It was too quiet. I needed some screeching Queen songs to drown out the deranged A’s fans screaming behind me.

But it wasn’t just me — the A’s and their fans were suffering from a dearth of head-bobbing, fist-punching at-bat music, in addition to a real game. One lousy Nirvana snippet does not inspire high confidence or achievement, making it hard for the team to compete with the sleek multimedia machine of, say, the Giants, the Seattle Mariners, or heck, any other ball team out there blasting tunes at top volume to work up the crowd into a bubbling froth whenever a hometown hitter saunters to the plate or whenever the action lags. Of course, the selections have fallen into predictable patterns: Barry Bonds has tended to favor Dr. Dre minimalist power hooks to usher in his home-run hits. There are the inevitable Linkin Park, Metallica, and T.I. tunes as well as "Crazy Train," "Yeah!" and, naturally, DJ Unk’s "Walk It Out," beloved of so many athletes and audio staffers — although sometimes musicians have their say, as when Twisted Sister asked John Rocker and the Atlanta Braves to stop playing "I Wanna Rock" after the player’s racist, homophobic, and sexist mouth-offs back in 2000.

Maybe we’re just damaged, in need of a perpetual soundtrack to go with our every activity and our shrinking attention spans — though some might argue that baseball, like so many sports, needs an infusion of new but not necessarily performance-enhanced energy. We can all use some style to go with our substance, which might explain why presidential candidate John Edwards was said to be pressing flesh at the still-unfolding, long-awaited Temple Nightclub in SoMa last week. And why it wasn’t too surprising to get an invite on a bisected bowling pin to Strike Cupertino, a new bowling alley–<\d>cum–<\d>nightclub down south in Cupertino Square, a withering mall off 280 where the venue has planted itself on the basement level. Its neighbors: a JC Penney, a Macy’s, a Frederick’s of Hollywood, an ice-skating rink, an AMC 16-plex, and lots of darkened store spaces. I stopped to admire the wizard-embellished pewter goblets and marked-down Kill Bill Elle Driver action figures at the sword-, knife-, and gun-filled Armour Geddon — still open for all your raging goth armament needs.

Strike, however, was raging all on its own, without the skull-handled dagger it never knew it needed. In a wink toward the Silicon Valley work-hard-play-hard crowd Strike’s owners hope to attract, Angela Kinsey from The Office threw out the first ball in the black-lit, modish alley. A luxe bar dreamed up by Chris Smith, one of the team that designed Nobu, was swarming with guests clamoring for free Striketinis.

Apparently Strike Cupertino isn’t original: the first one sprung, after a full makeover, from Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village, New York City, in 1997, and went on, according to the press literature, to become the highest-grossing bowling alley in the world. Others are located in Bethesda, Md., Long Island, and Miami. But what, no Vegas? Strike seems perfectly suited for Sin City, with its bright, flash, well-upholstered decor — equal parts retro ’50s and ’60s, both American Graffiti and Goldfinger — and multiple massive plasma screens distractingly flickering the Giants game, ESPN, any game, above the lanes, the lounge, and every surface. Peppy, poppy ’80s rock and R&B — "Hey Mickey" and "Little Red Corvette" — coursed from the DJ booth next to the raft of pool and air hockey tables and the game arcade as upscale clubbish figurines, blue-collar bowling diehards, and Asian and Latino kids tried out the lanes and tables and some fair American and Asian finger food.

I stuck a kiwi into a chocolate fountain and spurted sticky brown stuff all over my white shoes and shirt and wondered, could this be the future of clubbing — or sports? Amusement parks for adults, lubricated with fruity but muscley cocktails? Or maybe this is as hellacious as it gets in drowsy Cupertino.

Still, I thought Strike was worth swinging by, if only to play on a sparkling, well-waxed, seemingly nick-free lane for the first time, in fresh, BO-free shoes, with immaculate, grimeless balls. Also, knowing how many miles per hour your ball is traveling is a trip, if somewhat discouraging for featherweights like yours truly. Yes, I know the $5 cover after 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays seems excessive for, well, a bowling alley, but Monday evening seems a deal with all-night unlimited play for a flat $14. Word has it that the nightspot also enforces a dress code — and that even Bonds would have to leave his cap at home — but I say perhaps just cut back on the supershort bowling-shirt dresses and fishnet stockings on the teenagey waitresses. We’re not in Vegas yet, Toto.

STRIKE CUPERTINO

Cupertino Square

10123 Wolf Road, Cupertino

(408) 252-BOWL

www.bowlatstrike.com

YOU SCORED

OLIVER FUTURE


The Los Angeles buzz band generates scratchy, acidic melodic rock with plenty of post-punk seasoning. With Boy in the Bubble and 8 Bit Idiot. Wed/8, 9 p.m., $7. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

ROBBERS ON HIGH STREET


Veering from tree cities to familial familiars, the NYC combo come with Grand Animals (New Line). With the Wildbirds and the Old-Fashioned Way. Thurs/9, 9:30 p.m., $8. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

GREAT NORTHERN


Melodic pop for modern-rock romantics. With Comas and Twilight Sleep. Sat/11, 9 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

MIKAELA’S FIEND AND SEXY PRISON


Driving punk tumult meets salacious death disco. With Mika Miko and Twin. Sun/12, 8:30 p.m., call for price. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

PELICAN


The Windy City instrumentalists skew shorter — seven minutes at most — and focus on songs on their new City of Echoes (Hydra Head). With Clouds and Garagantula. Sun/12, 8:30 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.musichallsf.com

Ocean of motion

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

What can one say about a producer who schedules four programs with a total of 20 world premieres and gives four evenings to choreographers, two of whom the audience most certainly has never heard of? At the very least, this shows guts and a willingness to trust the artists who’ve been engaged.

Joan Lazarus, the longtime force behind the WestWave Dance Festival, has always embraced risk. She has also shown a singular commitment to local dance, which has not always paid off. For the past few years, the event has struggled to find a new identity. But for this year’s 16th annual fest, Lazarus hit pay dirt. It had been a long time since WestWave attracted such diverse, enthusiastic audiences. Some organizers complained about the paucity of local dancers in the audience. But isn’t this exactly what you want in a festival: to reach beyond the usual crowd?

Not all of the new works, of course, will stand up to repeated scrutiny. If Martt Lawrence’s Rogue Conviviality was embarrassingly amateurish, Kerry Parker’s Aine hit the jackpot in banality. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Marina Fukushima thought that giving her dancers crutches and milquetoast movements would make Dancing to Dis/ability viable. Also disappointing was Paco Gomes and Chimene Pollard’s On Our Way to Somewhere Else. In the past few years, the Brazilian-born Gomes has shown himself to be a technically competent and fluid dance-theater maker with a distinct voice. Here he was treading water. Leslie Stuck, a well-respected composer and first-time choreographer (using movement material suggested by the peripatetic Alex Ketley), should probably stick to music. His Digression was disjointed and badly in need of a trajectory. But then, that’s often what risky behavior is all about.

WestWave featured four full-evening programs, each by one choreographer. The success rate was about par with the rest of the festival. The one real miss was by Christopher K. Morgan, apparently a substitute for a local choreographer who dropped out at the last minute. Morgan is a genially handsome performer with something of a knack for inhabiting characters, as evidenced in the otherwise maudlin The Measure of a Man. As a choreographer, however, his approach to transutf8g material with themes including race and gender into dance theater proved stupefyingly naive. Monica Bill Barnes’s short program hardly qualified for a full evening. However, her astute talent for creating deadpan gestures for two sad-sack women who stumble into Dean Martin’s lugubrious world marks her as a savvy comedian. Her Suddenly Summer Somewhere brimmed with pathos and laughter, a rare gift in dance.

No local comes close to approaching Amy Seiwert’s gutsy approach to new ballet choreography. During her first full-evening program, it was easy to appreciate how her reach has expanded and her artistry deepened in less than a decade. Seiwert showed two world premieres. Beautifully refined, Carefully Assembled Normality was indeed just that. Spooling off into separate trajectories, melting into unison, riding partners on, from, and above the floor, three couples wove through Kevin Volans’s score with the grace and ease of friends at play. Double Consciousness excellently set Charlie Neshyba-Hodges’s stocky virtuosity against the rhythm and the content of Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s poetry.

Formally, the original Kate Weare is a minimalist; she choreographs short solos, duets, and the odd trio. Yet emotionally, she paints on a large scale, exploring love, power, and womanhood. Intricately structured, her pieces started innocently but quickly turned gothic. A tango’s entanglements imprisoned both partners. A loner who thought he had the stage to himself was felled by three female ghosts. The discordant tones in the tender new Duet for the tall Weare and the tiny Leslie Kraus were hardly noticeable, but they were there. The second premiere, Trio, started in a silly, teenybopper mode (hops in unison, wiggled butts, flipped skirts, belly pats). But almost imperceptibly, the game turned nasty as one of the girls became the victim of a vicious play for dominance — so vicious it got to the point at which it was almost hard to watch. Weare should try tackling larger forms.

WestWave’s second set of programs offered a mixed repertoire of four approaches to dance: ballet, international, dance theater, and modern. The genres were loosely interpreted; nevertheless, they offered a pleasing, shape-giving frame to each evening’s quintet of works.

Setting his lovely In Fugue on five men and two women allowed Mark Foehringer to reverse common gender relationships. For once, the men starred, and the women supported. Though it started on a strutting, macho note, the piece quickly shifted to a mode of congenial partnering between equals, reminding us that men elegantly dancing with one another is common in many parts of the world. Also intriguing were Christian Burns whipping through seductive yet artificial beauty in Beneath Your Sheltering Hand; Kerry Mehling’s fiercely combative duet, Are You Emotionally Involved; and Stacey Printz’s spatially and emotionally nuanced Birds, Bees and Other Metaphors. The collaboration between video artist Austin Forbord and Brittany Brown Ceres, Corps de Co., resulted in a virtuosic and cheeky game about speed, scale, and timing.

Now for the bad news. WestWave’s budget was so tight this year that the festival could not pay any of the dancers. (Previously, participants shared the house.) Once again, it’s the artists who are the biggest supporters of the arts. Also, fest producer Lazarus has had it; she quit. Is she tired of dance? Of course not. Is she sick of fighting the money battle? You bet. One doesn’t like to think it, but if WestWave should fold for financial reasons, summers in San Francisco will be ever drearier than they so often already are. *

www.westwavedancefestival.org

Nerd resurge

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ZEITGEIST This year just may go down as the one when nerds finally ruled the school, scattering HP calculators, parentally purchased button-downs, and World of Warcraft guild master credentials as they tripped on their own shoelaces on their way into WonderCon or the Lick Observatory. The infestation of all screens big and small hasn’t been quite so intense since the Ronald Reagan–era ’80s, when nerds were regularly toasted on TV’s Happy Days, then found fame in the cineplex’s Revenge of the Nerds (1984). Freaks, geeks, grinds, dorks, and losers have come a long way from Andy Kaufman cohort Fred Blassie’s 1976 novelty tune, "Pencil Neck Geek," and even further along from George Jones’s 1993 track "High-Tech Redneck" and the emergence of Pharrell Williams’s NERD production squad. Freaks and Geeks, Ugly Betty, and Steve Urkel of Family Matters have laid the foundation for fall’s TV invasion, including Aliens in America, in which an Asian exchange student meets geek with his nerd host; The IT Crowd, otherwise known as "Dances with Dudes Who Keep Late Hours Serving Your Server"; and Chuck, whose title character oversees a so-called Nerd Herd at the local Best Buy–esque big-box retailer and dabbles in international espionage. Shoring up the projected sales for Benjamin Nugent’s book, American Nerd: The Story of My People, due out in 2008, are silver-screen nerd workouts like Rocket Science, which painfully, wittily details the trials of a stuttering, would-be school debater trying to beat the odds with lots of baggage. The hot nerd sport of table tennis will be sent up in the forthcoming Balls of Fury, and the awkward raunch of nerd-focused teen sex comedy returns with next week’s gut-busting Superbad, buttressed by costar Michael "Baby Beck" Cera, who pushes the nerdiness of his übergeek character George Michael in Arrested Development to new heights in this and on his online TV series, Clark and Michael. Despite the fact that Underdog may be truly speaking for downtrodden puppies everywhere, Superbad probably represents the apogee of nerdocity, being coproduced by current comedy master of the universe Judd Apatow, who has played not a small part in the hip-to-be-uncool movement with the aforementioned Freaks and The 40 Year-Old Virgin.

So nerds rock, but why? Chalk it up to a once firmly bitch-slapped and now somewhat resuscitated tech sector — or an infusion of energy and capital in Silicon Valley? Is nerd valorization part of a backlash against the hippie hotties of the early ’00s — and a back-to-the-future glance at Reagan social conservatism? Or is this simply where all our heads are these days, as a logical extension of a perpetually wired culture? Nerdiness has seeped so deeply into everyday life that everyone, even the brawny bullies who spindled pocket protectors in the past, must to pay due respect when faced with a blank monitor. (Kimberly Chun)

Curious and curiouser

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My straight (?) man who loves women and their curves and smiles and butts and legs, who loves me and my mom and his mom and all the pretty girls who pass us on the sidewalk, also really, really likes looking at transsexual porn. He likes really feminine-looking guys who have long pretty hair and soft girly curves. He tells me he has no interest in following through with what has been for him a very, very long-term turn-on. This fetish doesn’t really play itself out in the bedroom, where we are basically old-fashioned. Since he looks at this porn often enough for it to be more than curiosity, could you give me some information on it?

Love,

So Curious

Dear So:

What can I tell you? There is a huge market for porn featuring shemales, young, pretty pre-op or nonop transsexuals, a.k.a. "chicks with dicks." The answer to what I assume is your underlying question, meanwhile, does not exist, and I can prove it. I was feeling kind of bored with my own standard answer to similar questions and, in a fit of ennui, entered "he looks at shemale porn" into a search box. I got eleventy million porn sites and this, from the archives of the late and, I guess, occasionally lamented Google Answers:

Q: Why would a man in a committed, loving, sexual relationship use shemale and transgender porn?

A: There is no answer at this time.

So there you have it.

More seriously, there really can’t be an explanation for what all those straight guys are getting out of all that shemale porn — if you asked them, you’d get various answers, including "I dunno, I just like it." A lot of "I dunno, I just like it." The most obvious and, to the wives and girlfriends looking on anxiously from the sidelines, most troubling answer is, of course, "They’re gay, gay, gay," but honestly, it isn’t likely. Gay men tend to be attracted to men — sometimes little, slim, smooth-bodied men, sometimes big, hairy, muscle-bulgy men, but men just the same. There are, of course, exceptions — there are always exceptions — but most of the audience for this stuff (and the vast majority of customers for the vast selection of shemale-type sex workers out there) are as straight as you are. Some are obviously penis curious but, not being gay, would not be turned on by porn featuring big muscley guys named Rod or Steel or Steel Rod. Some just like stuff that feels forbidden or dirty. Some, I suppose, may be fantasizing that they are the shemale (a term, by the way, best reserved for sex workers and porn models, while just-regular-folks male-to-female transsexuals generally think of themselves as trans women of various op or nonop sorts).

Actually, I know an even better way to piss off a well-educated, politically aware trans person than to call her a shemale: use the word autogynephilia. Then duck. No, don’t call her a duck — I mean duck and cover, since she will want to punch your throat out.

Autogynephila is part of an alternative (in this case, alternative to the correct one, if you ask me) model of transsexuality in which male-to-female transsexuals are not women of any sort but merely gender dysphoric males or, if postop, men without penises, and in which those trans women who aren’t attracted to men (lots, in my experience) are not lesbians, bisexuals, or asexuals but autogynephiles, men who are turned on by the image of themselves as women. In other words, they spent masses of money, went through surgeries, changed their entire lives, and often lost family members, spouses, and jobs, all for a sexual thrill. This model seems too stupid to have gained any currency at all outside the crabbed little hearts of its three or four well-known proponents, but apparently you can still find it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, the most up-to-date version of the standard reference your psychiatrist or therapist uses to figure out what the hell is wrong with you.

So what does this have to do with your question? Oh, nothing much, I just thought it was an interesting — if slightly nongermane — footnote, and if you don’t like interesting if slightly nongermane footnotes, you probably don’t read this column.

I think your man who loves women and moms and fluffy lavender bunnies (I’m sorry, but you inadvertently made him sound a bit like, oh, remember that unaccountably heterosexual Peter Pan guy, the one with the Web site and the large collection of jerkins who’s forever looking for his Tinkerbell? That guy) has a fetish, plain and simple. The Web exists to give such people an outlet, and I may be naive, but I truly believe that a guy who loves you and is happy with you can easily satisfy his yen for exotica in the privacy of his home office and need never stray. You’ve already asked him about that. He’s already answered. I’d be inclined to shrug and believe him.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Holiest of holies

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If you’ve seen the late, great MTV sketch comedy show The State (look for the long-awaited DVD in October) or 2001’s summer-camp-movie parody Wet Hot American Summer, you can imagine what the Bible’s gonna look like in the hands of director David Wain. Or maybe not — in The Ten, Wain and cowriter Ken Marino interpret the 10 Commandments with typically off-the-wall (and thus completely unpredictable) humor. I recently spoke with Wain, who doesn’t fancy himself the next Cecil B. DeMille ("I never saw [The Ten Commandments], but I’m gonna check it out") but does have a firm grip on the funny.

On how The Ten fits into the slew of films about spirituality: "I certainly don’t think of it as a biblical film. It’s really just using the 10 Commandments as thematic launching-off points for 10 entertaining stories. We’re not out to make any particular point about religion. [Our takes on the commandments] are fast and loose — we’re like the Roger and Me of biblical movies."

On the script: "With each [commandment], we tried to attack it from a different angle and come up with something that was in a slightly different style and genre and yet sort of have a cohesive sensibility. We just said, ‘What is covet thy neighbor’s wife? Probably prison rape.’ And so on."

On the cast, which features members of The State and also several big-name actors: "We were huge fans of Winona Ryder and begged her to do it, and she said yes. We were very lucky, because I think actors saw that it was something different and not a big time commitment, so we were able to get a level of cast that we really never would have dreamed of."

And, of course, one you’ll have to see the movie to appreciate, on Oliver Platt’s Terminator impression: "Not only did he not have it [before the movie], he never got it. I mean, the average guy on the street does a better Arnold Schwarzenegger than Oliver Platt does. And I think that’s what’s funny about it." (Cheryl Eddy)

THE TEN Opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

Black and white and color

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One of the most exciting aspects of being a newspaper editor is recognizing a wave of activity that isn’t connected to government mind control or onslaughts of corporate-sponsored and mass-marketed art. This kind of spontaneous mass energy is happening via photography in San Francisco right now. August is known as a slow month, but the city’s galleries are alive with contemporary photos. Bill Daniel’s latest look at the US landscape is opening at RayKo Photo Center, the Daniel-influenced vagabond spirit Polaroid Kidd has his first Bay Area show at Needles and Pens, Greg Halpern’s moody views of Buffalo and Kelli Connell’s double-minted prints are up at SF Camerawork, and at City Hall — through the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery — the work of 32 local photographers is on view.

Baptized in arguments regarding its viability as an art form, photography remains as contentious as it is expansive. Witness a veteran such as Duane Michals sharpening his claws on the megapopular likes of Cindy Sherman in last year’s rant-monograph Foto Follies: How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank (Thames and Hudson). We live in an era when the ready availability of portraiture seems to have made its definition even more reductive; via MySpace and more explicit sites, people use cameras to readily package themselves as products. Yet when black-and-white and color and digital and film collide with unpredictable results, photo portraiture can be as varied and lively as the work you’ll find on these pages.

Thanks to fellow Guardian arts editor Kimberly Chun for suggesting, late in the selection process, a focus on portraiture. This decision necessarily narrowed the Bay Area photographers to choose from; there’s a wave of garden- and eco-driven work being done by Bill Basquin and others, while Dusty Lombardo, R.A. McBride, and Jackson Patterson are discovering tremendous depth in interiors. Thanks also to Basquin, Daniel, Glen Helfand, Chuck Mobley, Katie Kurtz, and Dave and Ray Potes for their suggestions.

Twelve years ago I interviewed therapist and author Walt Odets because he was bringing much-needed humanity to discussions of the AIDS crisis; to find out that he’s also a superb photographer whose subjects have included Jean Renoir and his wife, Dido, is a revelation. In distinctive ways, Vic Blue, Robert Gumpert, and Amanda Herman reveal what journalism usually ignores or renders shallow. The intimacy of Vala Cliffton’s photos makes one ponder her presence within the scenes she depicts. Matthias Geiger shows a city you might not have noticed even when it’s been in front of your face. Stan Banos has an eye for the many shades of gray within the multihued and the cuckoo. Job Piston is that rare Bay Area photographer whose work brandishes a sexual edge that isn’t obvious or predictable. Jim Goldberg’s urban work has been canonically influential since the publication of Rich and Poor (Random House, 1985) and Raised by Wolves (Scalo, 1995). Photography is just one aspect of Désirée Arlette Holman’s hand-fashioned fantasy world, a place that looks like a wicked satire of our own.

If you’d like to see more about some of these artists, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision. (Johnny Ray Huston)

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Stan Banos

NAME Stan Banos

TITLE The Marine

THE STORY "This photo was taken in San Francisco during Fleet Week in ’04."

INSPIRATION "I’ve always had a vague obsession with time and place, and the camera is the best-suited instrument to record such transient moments (particularly when you can’t draw). I generally try to incorporate whatever signs of irony life can offer within a rectangle."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS "I have more favorite photographers as an adult than I had favorite ballplayers as a kid: Bruce Davidson, Josef Koudelka, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Carl de Keyzer, James Nachtwey, Cheryl Richards, Henry Wessel, Elliott Erwitt, Martin Parr, Lee Friedlander … the list is endless."

SHOW "Our World," at SF Arts Commission Gallery’s City Hall space, through Sept. 21.

WEB SITE www.reciprocity-failure.com

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Victor J. Blue

NAME Victor J. Blue

TITLE Honduran immigrants, Detention Center Tapachula Mexico

THE STORY "I went to the Guatemala-Mexico border to photograph immigration there. These guys had been caught trying to ride the freight train to the United States. We only had a few minutes to take pictures inside. They were on a bus back to Tegucigalpa within a day, probably just to try again."

FAVORITE MONOGRAPHS The Mennonites by Larry Towell (Phaidon, 2000), Exploding into Life by Eugene Richards and Dorothy Lynch (Aperture, 1986), Kosovo 1999–2000: Flight of Reason by Paolo Pellegrin and Tim Judah (Trolley, 2002), Under a Grudging Sun: Photographs from Haiti Libere 1986–1988 by Alex Webb (Thames and Hudson, 1989).

WHAT ARE YOU SHOOTING NOW? "The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the people of San Joaquin County."

WEB SITES www.victorjblue.com, online.recordnet.com/projects/iraq/Jose/index.html

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Vala Cliffton

NAME Vala Cliffton

TITLE Unicorn

THE STORY "Unicorn is a portrait of my niece and my brother after their trip to Hawaii. My niece is in love with Hawaii and could not seem to detach herself from her scuba gear that afternoon. My brother was trying to catch a nap before dinner. The combination of elements in this unposed portrait captures an essential and intriguing aspect of their father-daughter relationship."

INSPIRATIONS "The Family of Man [Harry N. Abrams] was the first photography book I can remember picking up and being interested in. Photography was always a part of our family life. One of my projects while at the San Francisco Art Institute was to print the black-and-white snapshots taken of the family over the years."

WHAT ARE YOU SHOOTING NOW? "I have spent the past couple or years working as a filmmaker and producing music videos, some of which I have put up on YouTube at youtube.com/alavala11."

SHOW "Our World," at SF Arts Commision Gallery’s City Hall space, through Sept. 21.

WEB SITE alavala.com

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Matthias Geiger

NAME Matthias Geiger

TITLE Train

THE STORY Train is taken from Geiger’s "Tide" series, which he describes as "an examination of human presence" in "places of transit and momentary rest…. The technique of layering still images allows past, present, and future moments to appear simultaneously, reflecting the notion that each moment in time is a construct of our memories, our presence, and our projections."

INSPIRATIONS "Direct physical experience such as being outdoors, dance, and meditation, as well as readings on metaphysics."

WHAT ARE YOU SHOOTING NOW? A series on utopian subcultures.

SHOW "Matthias Geiger: Tide." Sept. 6–Oct. 20. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

WEB SITE www.matthiasgeiger.com

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Robert Gumpert

NAME Robert Gumpert

TITLE Untitled

THE STORY "For the past 13 years I’ve been doing an off-and-on documentary project called ‘Lost Promise: The Criminal Justice System.’ This image was done in August 2006 while I was documenting the closing of San Francisco County Jail No. 3. Built in 1934 and beset by a number of serious issues and several lawsuits ordering its closure, the jail was finally closed in August 2006, when inmates were moved to County Jail No. 5, built on land adjacent to the old jail."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS Don McCullin, Lewis Hine, August Sander, Leonard Freed, Gilles Peres, and Philip Jones Griffith.

WEB SITE www.robertgumpert.com

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Amanda Herman

NAME Amanda Herman

TITLE Untitled

THE STORY The image is taken from Herman’s most recent work, the short film Lost Island, which looks at the impact of Hurricane Katrina on one large family two years after the storm forced them from their home in Chalmette, La. Herman met the Morris family in Oakland while doing free family portraits for survivors at a relief day in October 2005, one month after Katrina drove them from their homes, and, she writes, "over time, I became interested in exploring the intricacies of one family’s experience with the disaster." Donations and income from the sale of the Lost Island DVD will go into a family fund to assist the Morrises as they rebuild their lives in Oakland.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS Seydou Keita, Allen Sekula, Susan Meiselas, Jeff Wall, Wing Young Huie, Wendy Ewald, Jessica Ingram, Eric Gottesman, and others.

SHOW "Inchoate," through Aug. 11. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 77 Geary, mezzanine, SF. (415) 788-5126, www.patriciasweetowgallery.com

WEB SITE www.amandaherman.com

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Désirée Arlette Holman

NAME Désirée Arlette Holman

TITLE Something Ain’t Right

THE STORY "This image is from a larger series of video and photo work depicting actors wearing crude, handmade (by me) chimp costumes. Something Ain’t Right was inspired by smoking chimps in zoos in South Africa and China. One zookeeper claimed that the chimps were smoking because they are frustrated. Could captivity make a chimp neurotic and lead it to smoke? Others claimed that the chimps were imitating tourists, recalling the cliché ‘Monkey see, monkey do.’ "

INSPIRATION "I am inspired by psychology, popular culture, figurative sculptures (including toys), art, and various types of fantasy and fiction making. I capitalize on the potential to create fantasy from realistic imagery through the use of the camera."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS Currently include Tracey Moffatt, Liza May Post, and Suzy Poling.

SHOWS "CCA: 100 Years in the Making," at the Oakland Museum of Art, and a solo show at San Francisco’s Silverman Gallery. Both open in October.

WEB SITE www.desireeholman.com

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Job Piston

NAME Job Piston

TITLE A Year Later

THE STORY "I was making portraits of young Hollywood and became interested in deconstructing glamour. This is a good friend of mine who was sent away to a facility for a long while. I took this picture the first time I visited him. Today popular figures openly go to rehab; it too has become glamorous."

INSPIRATION "Complicated personalities, intimacy in public spaces, secrets, the figure, and the fountain of youth."

SHOW "Our World," at SF Arts Commission Gallery’s City Hall space, through Sept. 21; "Evidence of Things Unseen," Peninsula Museum of Art in Belmont, through Oct. 21; solo show at Silverman Gallery in San Francisco in October.

WEB SITES www.jobpiston.com, book-of-job.blogspot.com

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Walt Odets

NAME Walt Odets

TITLE Greg Hoffspiegel, Palo Alto, California, 2007

THE STORY "Because it is so instantaneous, there is much chance in photography. This photograph seems to me about the gaze and emotion of the three figures, some combination of attention, reflection, loss, and pathos, as well as the visual organization."

INSPIRATION "I have taken pictures since I was 16. If I can use the camera in a way that forces deconstruction of what we normally see but do not observe, then I feel I have accomplished something."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS "Henri Cartier-Bresson, of course, and Ed Ruscha and Lee Friedlander, for their elegance and form, intellect, and relentless literal rendering, respectively."

SHOW An October 2007 three-person show at SF Camerawork, devoted to winners of the James D. Phelan Award for photography.

WEB SITE www.waltodets.com/photo

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Jim Goldberg

NAME Jim Goldberg

TITLE Untitled

PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY

THE STORY The image is drawn from "The New Europeans," a project Goldberg started around the time of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The series focuses on the journeys of refugees and immigrants from war-torn or economically devastated homelands in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and elsewhere to settle in Europe, specifically Greece and Ukraine. In June, Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris presented Goldberg with the HCB Award so he could travel to his subjects’ countries of origin and tell the complete stories of their migration.

SHOW "Jim Goldberg: New Work." Oct. 3–Nov. 10. Reception Oct. 4, 5:30–7:30 p.m. Stephen Wirtz Gallery, 49 Geary, third floor, SF. (415) 433-6879, wirtzgallery.com

The closer you get

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How does one begin to write about Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up (1990), a film as layered as an onion? I remember that when I first watched it, I felt touched by what I then perceived to be its affectionate ending. Later viewings not only changed my feelings toward the movie’s conclusion but also left me utterly perplexed.

About 17 years ago, when Hossein Sabzian misled a Tehran family into believing that he was acclaimed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Kiarostami was intrigued by the story and set out to make a film about it — or, to be more precise, he set out not to make a film about it.

Part of Close-Up‘s complexity arises from the way Kiarostami blends his material. Casting all the parties involved in the fraud as themselves, the filmmaker mixes commentary and footage of Sabzian’s trial with reenactments of Sabzian meeting the Ahankhah family and persuading them that he is Makhmalbaf. We see Sabzian explaining himself to the judge and performing in the reenactments. To complicate matters further, Kiarostami, while filming the trial, sets up a camera that is constantly focused on the accused and instructs Sabzian to address it anytime he feels like it. Through these devices, Sabzian gradually unfolds his acting talent, making it harder and harder for us to understand when he is performing and when he isn’t.

But Close-Up‘s motivation — beyond questioning Sabzian’s credibility — is more complicated than a desire to convince us of his guilt. In fact, the only thing we’re sure of is that the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred, if not rendered indistinguishable — a theme particularly dear to Kiarostami.

Things get even more convoluted in two films the director made after Close-Up; along with Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987), they form a trilogy. In And Life Goes On (1992), Kiarostami returns to Koker, a village in northern Iran, after a big earthquake practically destroyed it, in order to search for the protagonist of Friend’s Home. Using as his main character a director with the same mission, Kiarostami films his surroundings in a cinéma vérité manner, making us think that what we’re watching is a documentation of the earthquake’s aftermaths.

After And Life Goes On, Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees (1994), a film set in the same earthquake-devastated town, feels akin to a slap in the face. In it, he directs a filmmaker whose attempt to make a movie falls apart when two of his actors refuse to get along. Surprisingly, Through the Olive Trees concentrates on a scene that should feel familiar to anyone who has seen And Life Goes On. The suggestion is that perhaps the film the Through the Olive Trees director is making is none other than And Life Goes On. At least parts, if not everything, of what we’ve watched in the latter are revealed to be fiction. In Through the Olive Trees, Kiarostami has made a film about a director who is filming a movie about a filmmaker who returns to the village he once made a film in.

One might justifiably wonder, why all these self-referential layers? The answer comes in Taste of Cherry (1997), for which Kiarostami won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Throughout the film we follow a Mr. Badii in his desperate search to find someone willing to help him execute his suicide plan. At Taste of Cherry‘s most crucial moment, just as we are about to discover whether Badii actually committed suicide or not, Kiarostami cuts into footage taken from the making of the film. This footage presents him and the rest of the crew in an idyllic atmosphere while a tune that sounds very much like "Saint James Infirmary" plays in the background.

It is as if Kiarostami were constantly trying to remind us that what we are watching is only a film, that unlike Sabzian we should be able to separate fiction from reality, that unlike the Ahankhahs we should not allow ourselves to be deceived by some skillful manipulation of the boundaries between truth and imagination.<\!s>*

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: IMAGE MAKER

Through Aug. 30, $4–<\d>$8

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Still freestyling at 30

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The workroom of KUSF, 90.3 FM, has always looked just this side of combustible. It’s a second home to the radio station’s new-music volunteers, a tightly packed DIY office space papered with band posters from top to bottom. Ancient desks are pinned against each wall, one holding a beat-down stereo. Two huge metal-hinged lockers loom in the corner, monoliths stickered beyond recognition with archeological layers of rock ‘n’ roll’s past. I stare at them and try to remember the exact location of a Barkmarket sticker I myself put up more than 15 years ago. No dice.

Down the hallway — KUSF is crammed into a lone walkway in the basement of Phelan Hall on the University of San Francisco campus — Program Director Trista Bernasconi is helping a cultural producer get his next show sorted out. Putf8um records hang on the walls behind her, a reminder of the respect the noncommercial station has commanded from the musical community since its inception in 1977.

But high-caliber programming was almost no match for the university’s management, which sought to sell its license in 2006.

"Last year the university tried to sell us, and their main thing was that we were not connected to the students," says Bernasconi, a 10-year station veteran and former USF student. "It’s hard because San Francisco is expensive and [students] have to work so many jobs, but there’s been a major push to get more involved."

Coming back from the edge of the FM grave is an excellent reason to party and one that happens to coincide with the station’s 30th anniversary. After four months of celebration, the most impressive event occurs when Yo La Tengo perform a benefit for the beleaguered institution. "We wanted to celebrate in a big way and started thinking about a band that represents what KUSF is about," co–<\d>music director Irwin Swirnoff explains. "Yo La Tengo came into our mind because they’re a band that always progresses." Bernasconi echoes Swirnoff’s enthusiasm, seeing the benefit as a big step in on-campus visibility. "We have an exclusive," she adds, smiling. "There are even a couple of professors who like Yo La Tengo and are really into KUSF now."

But indie popularity and the fact that Swirnoff praises the group’s last three albums as its "three best" played only a part in making Yo La Tengo the top choice. Since 1996 the band has participated in Jersey City, N.J., noncommercial station WFMU’s annual pledge drive to support local, poorly funded radio.

Running a radio station with extremely limited funding is possible only because of the thousands of hours of volunteer work by people from the different departments of KUSF. While the university contributes half of KUSF’s operating budget, there are capital expenses, such as replacing the busted transmitter suffered six years ago, that the station and its volunteers must absorb. Swirnoff feels it’s a crucial distinction to make: "Every day that music is getting played and tickets are being given away it’s amazing, because besides a couple of paid positions, we’re all volunteers and somehow we figure out a way to get it done."

Swirnoff splits his duties with three other music directors — Miguel Serra, DJ Schmeejay, and Lenode — in an effort to combat the sheer volume of music that the station is expected to absorb. Another KUSF veteran, fundraising coordinator Jet, who along with Bernasconi holds one of the station’s few paid positions, explains that volunteering means never really being off the clock. "I have taken a pay cut to take the job," she says with a laugh. "So it’s a labor of love. I put in my volunteer hours as well, so I’m not only an employee, I’m also a volunteer, and I’m not only a volunteer, I’m still also a listener."

But what about the listeners? According to Arbitron, KUSF’s 3,000-watt basement transmitter is able to reach an audience of about 50,000, and luckily the station has managed to allocate part of its shoestring budget to broadcasting via the Internet radio network Live365.com, enabling listeners worldwide to tune in even if they’re beyond the reach of the transmitter. Still, the consumer landscape has changed radically since the station debuted. From the erosion of the major-label hierarchy to the digital explosion of the past decade, people are now drowning in musical options ranging from iTunes to DIY podcasts to satellite radio.

What lures the KUSF faithful through this technological glut is the content and, ultimately, the DJs who provide it. The cultural programming alone is enough to intrigue: where else in the country does the Hamazkayin Armenian Hour run back-to-back with I Heart Organics? New-music programming is no less varied, as DJs are required to pull half of their shows from the "currents" section of the library. While listening to Jacob Felix Heule’s show, which runs Wednesdays from midnight to 3 a.m., I hear dub combo African Head Charge, ’60s pop chanteuse Lesley Gore, and local band Rubber O Cement within 30 minutes. It’s the kind of schizophrenic genre jumping that has created the reputation KUSF enjoys today.

The station’s history lives on in the current new-music staffers. Every volunteer with an air shift has a story about a predecessor who introduced them to band X or taught them how to perform board function Y. Swirnoff, for example, first learned of the station after Sonic Youth cut a record in memory of then-music director Jason Knuth, and he remembers thinking, "I gotta get on KUSF." Jet says her station hero is legendary Rampage Radio‘s Ron Quintana — the guy who named Metallica.

As a former DJ and ex–<\d>promotions director, I recall an on-air mentor who would gesture toward Slayer’s Decade of Aggression, admonishing me to "always end with something apocalyptic." I’d follow her advice right here, but with volunteers who give so selflessly to keep the station alive, there’s a good chance that — at least for now — KUSF will keep the end times at bay.<\!s>*

KUSF’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY BENEFIT

With Yo La Tengo, Citay, and KUSF DJ Irwin

Fri/3, 9 p.m., $25 (available through www.KUSF.org)

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

(415) 474-0365

www.bimbos365club.com

Liege and grief

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FULL CIRCLE America is Rufus Wainwright’s scorned lover–<\d>cum–<\d>doomed horse-opera hero on his new opus, Release the Stars (Geffen), making Wainwright’s fifth album something of a postscript to the bipartite Want recordings (Dreamworks, 2003; Geffen, 2004). Departure comes as Wainwright turns his wry gaze beyond the cloister of his boudoir-proscenium to harness a polemical bent to his grandiose, lush, high-lonesome sound. This critic’s much-cherished Canadian singer-songwriter plays spook versus spy on Stars, bringing his hallmarks of sweeping arrangements and droll lyrics to an acute examination of America, the turbulent country that has fallen from grace — and lost the right to stroke up under his verdant lederhosen.

Herein, the Lower 48 equally fuels the male songbird’s romances and nightmares. MC Wainwright, the Queen of Hip-Popera, hits out this time with Neil Tennant as a suitably symbiotic and sympathetic producer for his Berlin record — not to mention the usual rogue’s gallery, including Teddy Thompson, Jenni Muldaur, and Joan Wasser, as well as Richard Thompson and actress Siân Phillips. Tennant somewhat tempers the proceedings’ opulence with rock and beat flourishes. Sure, Wainwright can be extravagant — and may well require an editor in years to come — but is this such a bad thang when his pimp hand is mighty mighty? The assured aesthetic with which Wainwright stepped into the arena in 1998, fully assembled, remains much in evidence, keeping real his cool pose as original glam gangsta and most legitimate pied piper of freak folk. Really, who’s more fantastical and anachronistic than he?

If the album art’s preoccupation with both the minutiae and monumental grandeur of German culture doesn’t make disaffection plain enough, then song titles such as "Rules and Regulations" and the lovelorn "Leaving for Paris No. 2" aptly sketch alienation from the new west. Nowhere among his extant oeuvre has Wainwright displayed such naked political sentiment as in "Going to a Town"’s lyrics: "I’m so tired of America<\!s>/ … I may just never see you again or might as well<\!s>/ You took advantage of a world that loved you well<\!s>/ I’m going to a town that has already been burned down<\!s>/ I’m so tired of you, America."

Not that our Rufus forgets the "I" in America. Check the gorgeous "Sanssouci," on which he claims, "I’m tired of writing elegies in general<\!s>/ I just want to be at Sanssouci tonight." Stars‘s highlights lie in the tension between the tattered utopian retreat of the titular Sanssouci and relatively universal songs like "Do I Disappoint You."

Wainwright is five for five with Stars, although only "Between My Legs" and the title track truly rival the Wants in their dizzying rigor. Ultimately, though Stars works from a jaded remove in not-so-fair Europa, Wainwright morphs into one of his strongest selves as a singing cowboy. He is the trickster western antihero lamenting the ruthless downward spiral of his formerly beloved range, spanning between 14th Street and Melrose.

Nobody’s off the hook, as the song title and lyric go, on this flickering silver screen composed of sounds — not Texan tyrants, not hotel room trysters nor Wainwright himself. And if it’s all a velvet bloodbath, rendered as one of the intensely homoerotic sequels to Sergio Corbucci’s Django, so be it. For don’t we all need a great big release in this land? This often explosive theme for an imaginary western definitely scores against that of Uncle Sam’s band.<\!s>*

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

With Sean Lennon and A Fine Frenzy

Fri/3, 7:30 p.m., $32.50–<\d>$42.50

Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium

1111 California, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

MIA way

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "This sucks."

Nope, we weren’t talking about Kelly Clarkson’s pandering public apology to Clive Davis — there’s an American idol to kowtow to. Or the minisnippet of the new Britney Spears single, "Get Back," all over YouTube, its title alluding oddly to a song by Paul "Latte Rock" McCartney’s old beat combo. Or Spears’s hoochie-widow getup for the tune’s video or her now widely reported dissolving personal boundaries, as she allegedly went pee-diddy with the bathroom door open, allegedly used designer fashion as an impromptu pooper scooper, and then allegedly absconded with enough borrowed photo-shoot finery to inspire the feel-good tab OK! to declare the pop star’s comeback moves totally "NOT OK!" in print. Get back? Why not get weirder and make like Cock ESP or Iggy Pop and start rolling around in glitter, broken glass, and mayo onstage?

Nay, sucking was the vibe as one MIA head nodded to the other, crunched in the aisles at Berkeley’s Amoeba Music, trading grime, and losing the buzz that had been building since fans started milling around the store the afternoon of July 28. MIA was in the house, but only a portion of the approximately 400 tanned, big-earringed, curly-headed baby Maya Arulpragasams, newsboy-capped dudes, arms-folded indie kids, and bobbing clubby-kins could see the Tamil Tiger spawn’s lavender cap bob in the distance — or even hear Arulpragasam’s politely low-volume raps skating over samples of the Clash’s "Straight to Hell" in Amoeba’s jazz room.

I’m straining to make out words, which are drowned out by the girl behind me, who’s complaining about the sound to a friend on her cell, and before you know it, four or five tunes and 15 minutes later, it’s all over, sent softly into the simmering Saturday sun with a toned-down little sing-along "Yah, yah, hey!" — a glance back to her first single, "Galang." Time for one of the most ethnically diverse audiences you can imagine in this, one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world, to queue up to have MIA sign their 12-inch or CD single of "Boyz," her new frenetic diss-ode to boy soldiers, stylish swashbucklers, and wannabe warlords.

About 15 minutes later, the beauteous Arulpragasam slips quietly behind a table. Her unruly pageboy is streaked blond — a far cry from the bright blue wig sported in the promo pics for her forthcoming album, Kala (Interscope), the playful new wave counterpart to Gwen Stefani’s Scarface coke-ho look of late — and her enormous eyes are open way wide, ready to take in her people, though she still needs periodic "Let’s give it up for M-I-A!"s to keep her signing hand strong as the line snakes through the aisles.

How relevant is MIA two years after her acclaimed Arular (XL/Interscope) emerged with its highly combustible, overtly politicized fusion of hip-hop, baile funk, grime, electro, and dancehall, seemingly unstopped by visa issues and MTV’s censorship of her "Sunshowers" video thanks to its PLO reference?

While Spears and Clarkson threaten to transform pop into one of the most embarrassing exercises in public self-flagellation imaginable, artists like MIA issue genuinely imaginative responses to the daily news, beyond dropping trou and racing into the surf. We actually need her voice — as slammed as it gets for clunky flow — more than ever now. And we need it for the masses who showed up at Amoeba rather than reserved for the few who managed to jump on the Rickshaw Stop tickets early on. Props to the store and MIA for making this brief appearance possible and free, but isn’t Arulpragasam breaking beyond club-size confines?

Because MIA’s appearances have been so scaled down, you have to wonder about Kala, as I did when I learned that previews have been kept for the few who can hear it at the Interscope offices in New York City or Los Angeles: does it suck too? A quick cruise online yields a clattering and polyrhythmic, wittily clucky "Bird Flu," a driving "XR2," and her infectious collabo with Timbaland, "Come Around," as well as the not-bad "Hit That," now trimmed from the disc. So why the secrecy? I thought the point of this revolution was to make it available to the people. And they continue to get it out there, regardless of the gatekeepers. *

TRUE SCHOOL

True West founding guitarist Russ Tolman ain’t bitter about the route his old Paisley Underground band took back in the day: breaking up and then re-forming without him, which is never a nice trick. He’s just happy the ’80s UC Davis combo can fire up its duel-guitar glory once again, fueled by the release of Hollywood Holiday Revisited (Atavistic). "I think some of the stuff is a little timeless," demurs Tolman, now the director of content programming at BitTorrent in San Francisco. "I’ve heard some people say, ‘Oh, is this a contemporary band?’ "

The reissue and the reunion took root last year when, Tolman says, "on a whim" they decided to play some shows. "The other guitarist, Richard [McGrath] — I thought he’d be the last guy who’d want to play with me again. He’s a great player, and I’m an OK player. But I think my role was to be the bee in his bonnet…. [Later] he said, ‘When Russ was out of the band, I was so glad that terrible guitarist was out, but then we sucked. All the chaos was gone.’ "

TRUE WEST

Sat/4, 9 p.m., $29.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

LEAVE HOME

PAGE FRANCE


Suicide Squeeze sweethearts make tender indie pop on their new Page France and the Family Telephone. With Bishop Allen and Audio Out Send. Wed/1, 8 p.m., $12–$14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

PTERODACTYL


Ushered in by bird chirps, these critters protest extinction with a flurry of noise on a recent self-titled Brah LP. With TITS, Big Nurse, and Ettrick. Thurs/2, 8:30 p.m., call for price. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

HIGH PLACES


Radness happens with the Brooklyn experimental twosome, backed by the fiery Lucky Dragons, Black Dice alum Hisham Bharoocha’s Soft Circle, and the Bay’s Breezy Days Band. Sat/4, 9 p.m., call for price. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org

MIKA MIKO


All-girl punk fury barely contained by a cute moniker. Sun/5, 8 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TWIN AND LESBIANS


Once King Cobra, now a two-piece progressive metal combo with the Need’s Rachel Carnes on vocals and drums, Twin come to Frisky for a once-a-year visit. Erase Errata vocalist Jenny Hoyston also unleashes her latest feminist band of exes, Lesbians. Tues/7, 8 p.m., $5. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. www.elriosf.com

Two for the road

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"This is the first day of my life<\!s>/ I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you." Yes, it almost feels like that in the afterglow of Kiki and Herb’s Alive from Broadway tour, which wound up a too-brief engagement at the American Conservatory Theater’s Geary Theater on July 29. As a longtime duo pulled from retirement after their 2004 Carnegie Hall farewell (and for purported septuagenarians), Kiki (Justin Bond) and Herb (Kenny Mellman) are in incredible shape. And their chosen form, the lounge act writ large, smells equally fresh these days, even as it did its brazen best to stink up the enormous stage at the Geary.

To begin with, Bond’s Depression-schooled Kiki: at first glance, her look, like the 1970s incarnation of a louche and dangerously idle Malibu mom, was enough to draw unconscious childhood traumas swiftly to the surface. Outfitted (by costume designer Marc Happel) in a chiffon explosion that brings to mind a giant multicolor drip candle balanced on two liquor bottles, Kiki stormed onstage evoking a perfect pastiche of iconic torch singers, celebrity chanteuses, and other glamour goddesses, belting out fearsome interpretations of (in her hands) immediate pop schmaltz from all quarters of the music charts. Not only the Bright Eyes number "First Day of My Life" but also other (eventually) recognizable ditties by the Wu-Tang Clan, the Mountain Goats, and Bob Merrill came tumbling out in renditions that have to be heard to be believed. Suffice it to say that, in its diabolical way, it all worked, much like the popular songs in a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms siege operation.

Kiki’s renowned stage banter — which included a recounting of the duo’s personal and professional history and a sodden, delusional tale about a stuffed animal and the manger where Jesus was born — came punctuated with tantalizing hanging pauses, of a duration no longer than that needed to fill a very large glass of whiskey. As the evening’s single act waxed on, Kiki treaded from tipsy to sloppy with the incomparable poise of a true showbiz lush. Her remarks ("I always say, if you weren’t molested as a child, you must have been an ugly kid") ranged from off-color to off the hook to, at least once, right off the stage (as a now decidedly tight Kiki found herself literally up an artificial tree).

Mellman’s blowzy Herb, meanwhile, piped in from behind the piano on a near-continual tidal wave of notes like a hideous mashup of Liberace and McCoy Tyner. Herb doesn’t just tickle the ivories; he fellates them with the gusto of a rising porn star. He turns the grand piano into the instrument of a grand mal. Over this outrageous cacophony and sustain-pedal abuse, Herb (a laconic underdog whom pal Kiki publicly pities as not only gay and Jewish but a technical "retard" to boot) barks out harmonies like a tuxedoed Tourette’s victim.

Music and mayhem this precisely, hilariously awful may require something approaching genius. No wonder Bond and Mellman, the real-life performing team who created Kiki and Herb after meeting in San Francisco 20 years ago, have been doing this sort of thing for a while. If a cabaret drag act in San Francisco is not what you’d call new terrain, Kiki and Herb remind one of the enduring strength of the form when in the right hands and shoes.

First of all, cabaret’s devil-may-care insouciance masks the premium it places on skill, and Bond and Mellman, extremely clever and agile talents, have skill to kill. Bond’s performance in particular dazzles. You could watch it nightly and still revel in every detail of its perfect execution, the arch beauty of its take on the atrocious. And his voice, notably powerful and supple in its coarse histrionics, never falters in delivering full-throated commitment to the task.

But cabaret since the Weimar Republic is also the theatrical medium most closely associated with eye-of-storm moments in ages of cultural decadence and political peril. Kiki’s brash social commentary, giving vent to, among other things, her bottomless contempt for George<\!s>W. Bush (whom her lawyer has advised her she must not wish mortal harm to from the stage) and all the rest of them, is frank, funny, and unforgiving — and it strikes just the right notes somehow, as her politics boil down to a slurred Rodney King–<\d>like sound bite that’s as sensible as it is unabashedly innocent: "Just be nice, for Chrissake."<\!s>*

www.kikiandherb.com

Man vs. room service?

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On the Discovery Channel show Man vs. Wild, Bear Grylls parachutes into remote wildernesses, from the swampy Everglades to the freezing Scottish Highlands, and finds his way out, seemingly on his own. However, in an article posted on the BBC News Web site July 24, survival consultant Mark Weinert alleged that Grylls spent some nights in a hotel during the Hawaii episode, among other solo-survival no-no’s. Whatever the case, Man vs. Wild is, in my opinion, the greatest nature-survival show since Marty Stouffer’s Wild America. The following is an abridged version of an e-mail interview with Grylls, which took place prior to the controversy:

SFBG How helpful do you think being a regular viewer of your show would be in a survival situation?

BEAR GRYLLS Well, hopefully it is pretty helpful! Really, the best survival advice is always to sit tight and wait for rescue. But having said that, the whole series is full of survival advice, with most of it quite out-of-the-box stuff, like using shoelaces to climb tress or drinking the fluids from elephant dung for water. I do get quite a few letters from people saying that they used something they saw me do on a show and it saved their lives. Whether they are making it up or telling the truth, I never know, but it is encouraging to read. When we first started filming, I used to think, "Will anyone ever watch this?" So it’s nice that they do!

SFBG What’s the one thing you’d recommend as indispensable training for anyone in terms of being able to survive in the wild?

BG Understand that survival is all about strength of mind, not body — hence in so many survival epics it has often been the ladies in high heels with no skills who have been victims of airplane crashes, etc., who beat the odds, whereas their fellow male survivors with all the gear and gung ho have crumbled. Why? Because their reason for staying alive was bigger — it drove them further, it made them think laterally, made them keep making decisions, never giving up and doing whatever it took to stay alive long enough to be found or get lucky. Those who stick it out are those who win.

SFBG What would you say was the single most challenging survival situation you’ve ever been in?

BG Losing my father when I was still young.

SFBG In this season of the show, what was the most difficult environment to survive in?

BG Scotland, ironically, was tough — classified as an Arctic landscape. I was there in winter in minus-40 degrees in a storm, with very little clothing. I would have been in real trouble if I had not found a deer carcass that I could gut and sleep inside. I have just returned from the Sahara for season two, where it was 140 degrees. I definitely was on the outer limit of my endurance, I felt.

SFBG Have you ever been close to throwing in the towel and asking for assistance?

BG Well, when it has been raining for 24 hours torrentially, I am lost, with limited food and water, no tent or mosquito net, in the Amazon, and I miss my family and two boys, it is okay to have the odd moment of "What the hell I am doing here?" I am not a robot. Being away from my wife and kids is the hardest part of all this for me.

SFBG Obviously, people are fascinated by the foul things you ingest in order to stay alive. Do you have a list of the most disgusting?

BG The top list is: goat testicles, raw (just wait for the new season!), sheep eyeballs (exploding goo of gristle and blood), grubs as big as fists (yellow ooze), and raw zebra neck. But that’s all for my work life. When I am home, I just love home cooking! (Duncan Scott Davidson)

To read the complete interview, go to dsc.discovery.com/fansites/manvswild/manvswild.html

Bound

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have been reading you forever and you are awesome! I have been too intimidated to write but decided to break the silence. I’m a 36-year-old single bisexual woman who is beautiful (or so I’m told). I’ve been attracting more than my fair share of inappropriate dudes and women. This past year, my cousin’s boyfriend came on to me, a married guy begged me to be with him, and a possessive Scorpio threatened suicide over me. I dated a 55-year-old who had eczema, a Buddha belly, and a flaccid penis after three pumps; a lesbian rage-aholic (my first); and a 32-year-old who nearly bit off my nipple (clumsy) and came after two seconds but who wants to marry me and have kids.

Part of me just wants to have some fun, get taken out to dinner, and be left to be free. Part of me wants a committed relationship, but every one so far has led to people wanting to control me. I believe that I can have it all — fun, freedom and commitment.

I notice I attract men who are in shit marriages, and I empathize and listen (which for some reason turns them on). Sometimes I think the most compassionate thing to do is to lay them. Other times I remember the pain my father’s cheating caused and feel they should make a real choice and leave, not default to me. Should I lay them or leave them alone? Is there a hormonal rage that happens after 35? Do you think that I’m attracting these sorts of people because, on some level, I don’t want a relationship?

Love,

Bad Girl

Dear Bad:

Wow, girl, you are one big messy mess. I’m seriously tempted just to sum up all your behaviors and all your questions with one big "Quit that" and go back to bed, but you were so nice to tell me I intimidate you (I never get to intimidate anyone anymore!), I feel I owe you a little more than that.

I don’t think your problems have a thing to do with being "beautiful" one way or the other, so put that part right out of your mind, if you can. (Covering the mirrors might help but might also attract lovelorn vampires, which is probably the last thing you need right now.) Also, when you said "inappropriate partners," I was, frankly, kind of expecting something sexier than the bunch of sad-sack suicidal needle-dicks catalogued above. Where are the drunken, occasionally abusive Irish poets? The girls who look like Gina Gershon did in "Bound" but throw violent fits if you so much as mention a long-ago ex? The guys who are cute and funny and fantastic in bed but refuse to meet your friends? You know: the hot, sexy, bad-for-you people? Surely if you’re such hot stuff yourself you can find a better class of losers to waste your time on.

I have a few new rules for you, since you seem, toddler-like, to be acting out rather brattily in hopes that someone will step in to set some limits and make the world make sense again. First, no sleeping with people you have no respect for. ("Buddha belly and flaccid penis"? OK then, don’t fuck him. Certainly don’t fuck him and then make fun of him.) Second, no married men (or women), period. Just because they "default" to you does not mean you must make yourself available. Third, even with better prospects than these, sorry, you cannot have it all, and not just because of where would you put it. You can’t have both complete freedom and complete commitment because, hey, they’re mutually exclusive. Once bound (note the word) to another person, even polyamorously (if you must), you will have to accommodate his-her-its needs and wants sometimes, even at the expense of your own. Anyone who does not understand this really is still operating as a sort of giant (albeit in your case very physically attractive, I’m sure) toddler. You need to grow up a bit, after which you may begin to attract more suitable partners — or at least learn, as toddlers must, that you don’t have to pick up every random thing, no matter how unsuitable, and put it in your mouth.

As for attracting whoever because you want or don’t want whatever, I think there’s a fallacy we all tend to fall for that is, like so many things, simply not as true as it sounds. I suppose that the most popular version — the one about how desperation is not attractive, so stop wanting a boyfriend or girlfriend, and one will magically appear — has a certain truthiness going for it, but it also both blames the victim and promises more than it can deliver. Personally, I believe neither that you’re attracting yucky people because you don’t want nice ones nor that the universe will deliver someone really neato as soon as you deserve him or her. It would be nice if things worked out that equitably for everyone, but in my experience, the universe is kind of shiftless and lazy and just doesn’t bother.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Church of Santino

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› johnny@sfbg.com

It’s no surprise that Santino Rice knows how to serve up a good quote. Five minutes into a phone conversation, the biggest antihero to emerge from TV’s Project Runway has already likened Nina Garcia, Heidi Klum, and Michael Kors to a "three-headed monster." Before the interview’s over, he’ll have quipped, "My everyday life and how it plays out is all the fictional stimulation I need." Since his everyday life includes an appearance at "Bad Boys of Runway" — a Castro Theatre event also featuring recent Runway winner Jeffrey Sebelia, a fashion show, and a screening of The Women (1939) — he isn’t exaggerating.

But what might surprise people who think they know Rice (though really, let’s just call him Santino) is how uninterested he is in playing up to his semivillainous, semiheroic, and oft-bitchy or cantankerous image from Project Runway‘s second and almost inarguably most dynamic season. Two years on from the experience, he’s easygoing — his baritone voice often giving way to a warm laugh — and quicker to praise than criticize. Make no mistake, this is still the same Mississippian who knew he loved Los Angeles when the Rodney King riots began the day of his first visit. "Everything clicked," he remembers. "I realized [L.A.] figured in so many things I loved, from old Hollywood films to gangsta rap, from [fashion designer] Adrian’s films and MGM to Ice-T and Ice Cube and NWA." But Santino’s days of doing free design gigs for "great exposure" are over.

"Now I don’t need any more exposure," he says, chuckling at the understatement.

Yes, the Santino of today is a sunnier Santino — though it helps that our major topic of discussion is movies. Santino knows and loves his cinema. He has a passion for some of the films that follow The Women in Marc Huestis’s Fabulous Fashion in Film Festival, such as 1946’s Gilda, in which (as he says) the undergarments worn and silhouette created by Rita Hayworth add to her "amazingly sexy" image. Even when discussing a selection he doesn’t care for, such as that of last year’s Dreamgirls, he’s diplomatic, observing that it "gets a free pass" yet doesn’t match the fabulous quality of 1975’s Mahogany, a different festival film he prefers.

A glance at Santino’s MiEspacia page reveals the importance of movies within his aesthetic. When I mention that I share his love for 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, he enthuses that "in her heyday, Catherine Denueve is the most beautiful woman ever" and proceeds to throw down for the lesser-known 1970 Demy-Denueve collaboration Donkey Skin. One mention of the flimsy yet highly imaginative fashions sported by Bobby Kendall in James Bidgood’s 1971 Pink Narcissus, and he’s ready with comments that could school critics. "[Pink Narcissus is] colorful, it’s erotic, it has surreal visuals," he observes. "The way it treats the subject matter of a male prostitute conjures up a lot of feelings. It kind of reminded me of some [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder films in the way that he can linger on certain details too long for comfort. The most recent film that’s given me that same sort of overwhelmed feeling is [Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973] Holy Mountain."

It’s a long road from Holy Mountain to Project Runway, and it ain’t yellow brick, but Santino has trekked it. And Project Runway may have scooped up three Emmy nominations, but Santino has already won a few Tonys — Tony Ward and Tony Duquette. In fact, the latter, who often collaborated with Adrian, is a major mentor, which makes Santino’s appearance at an event featuring a screening of The Women even more apt. After all, the centerpiece of the George Cukor classic isn’t Roz Russell’s motormouth routine, Norma Shearer’s sweet plain Jane act, or even Joan Crawford’s fierce shopgirl sexuality. It’s Adrian’s design work, on display in a fashion show sequence. "And it’s [the only scene] in color," Santino notes.

Some Project Runway devotees might be curious about the past nature and current state of Santino’s bond with Andre Gonzalo, but his tie with Ward, revealed within season two’s penultimate episode, is more compelling. Few people seemed to realize that Santino’s best friend Tony — the handsome quiet guy with the beach house — was Madonna’s lover during her wildest pop peak, the star of (and best thing about) Bruce La Bruce’s 1996’s Hustler White, and the muse of John Galliano, and is the cult figure who got into a spat with Marlon Brando when the latter was giving a zonked-out acting class late in his life.

"We met in odd circumstances," Santino says when asked about Ward. "We were flying back to Los Angeles, and the engine on the right side of the plane exploded. We had to emergency-land and had a long layover, and during that time we just talked about everything. A week after we got back to LA, he called and asked me if I’d want to create some pieces for his first fashion editorial [as a photographer], which was based on [Stanley Kubrick’s 1971] A Clockwork Orange. I made all these leather codpieces and other accessories. From that point on, we’ve hung out. He’s a great guy and a loyal friend."

My last question for Santino is a simple and direct one: what are you wearing? After an "Oh no!" punctuated by another easygoing laugh, he concedes an answer. "I have on a pair of shoes I got in Singapore that are Hiromu Takahara," he begins, slowly warming up to the query. "They look like Converse, but they fit like a cowboy boot — they zip up on the side. I’m wearing black Diesel jeans, skinny jeans, and just a T-shirt. And, of course, a hat — a black Bardolino hat."*

BAD BOYS OF RUNWAY

Featuring Santino Rice and Jeffrey Sebelia, with a screening of The Women

Fri/27, 7:30 p.m., $15–>$27.50 ($55 for preferred seats and reception at Mezzanine)

FABULOUS FASHION IN FILM FESTIVAL

July 27–<\d>Aug. 3

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 863-0611

www.castrotheatre.com

For a complete Q&A with Santino Rice, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

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