“I’ve never been to a drag show,” said my friend Cailey last week. “WHAT?!” I shouted.
She had to be kidding me. Attending a drag show belongs in the top 10 things everyone has to do when they move to SF. I got on it and found the next available performance we could get our butts to, which just happened to be the twice-weekly Heklina, Lady Bear, Trixxie Carr, and D’Arcy Drollinger show of Sex and the City.
Let me just say, it was the perfect choice for my drag queen virgin! I came prepared to dodge flying cosmos, since there was an incident a few years back where my camera bag was generously splashed with milk after an especially energetic Trannyshack competition.
But this time I was pleasantly surprised to be able to sit back comfortably, and enjoy a hilarious show with fantastic fashion (costume changes with every new scene) and just the perfect amount of bare man booty.
The show covered two actual SATC episodes, with a few extra flourishes added in for good measure. I loved Carrie’s voiceover moments, just like on the TV show, and all the sweet costume details, flashing a Chanel scarf here and a Gucci bag there. Way to keep it authentic ladies! The whole cast did a fantastic job, but I must give special props to D’Arcy Drollinger for her downright sexy performance as Samantha and of course, to Heklina as Carrie, who was truly fabulous.
The queens plan to keep the episodes coming, switching things up every few months, so make sure to go check it out!
As we left, Cailey turned to me and said “I need to see more of that!” Let the education continue!
Easily the greatest screening event at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Jane Campion’s multi-part miniseries Top of the Lake, a co-production of the Sundance Channel, BBC Two, and UKTV in Australia and New Zealand.
Though it was made for TV, this 353-minute, Twin Peaks (1990) meets Silence of the Lambs (1991) extravaganza was shown on the big screen, which gave it even more impact. Not that it needed much help: when intermission came at the end of the third episode, audience members filed out for lunch with similar (stunned, shocked, obliterated) expressions on their faces.
When the series concluded, it was clear that Top of the Lake was one of those Sundance experiences that bonds people together for the rest of their lives. (It happens. Trust.) The cast of this haunting psychological thriller is headed up by a stunning Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men); also of note are supporting turns by Holly Hunter (re-teaming with Campion 20 years after her Oscar-winning turn in 1993’s The Piano), Peter Mullan, and Michelle Ang.
Luscious New Zealand landscapes provide the backdrop for a tangled web of dark and troubling things — hence the thematic comparisons to David Lynch (there’s a bit of 1986’s Blue Velvet in there too). Campion uses her usual finesse to explore Top of the Lake‘s uncompromising subjects — though unlike her two most recent films, the underrated Bright Star (2009) and In the Cut (2003), she has the luxury of six hours to flesh them all out. (You can catch Top of the Lakeon the Sundance Channel in March, but don’t read too much about it, since most reviews seem to unnecessarily spoil some major key points.)
The epic screening concluded with a nearly 75-minute Q&A complete with the full cast and crew, and we’d all probably still be in that theater if they hadn’t kicked us out. Hopefully people will stop categorizing Campion as merely a great female filmmaker and start recognizing her as one of the greatest living directors, because Top of the Lake proves just that.
With much fanfare, the San Francisco Brewers Guild annual SF Beer Week popped its cork at the Concourse last Friday night, and the Bay Area has been awash in a tsunami of beer ever since.
Unable to attend the grand gala opening celebration, I got the lowdown from beer-tasting buddy Cee Jay, who took a few for the team in his quest for the perfect snifter of suds and got him to wax eloquent on Sierra Nevada’s new line of barrel-aged beers (“The barrel-aged Bigfoot is the tastiest brew I’ve had in a long time,” he gushed) and weigh in on the collaboratively-brewed Brewers Guild malt liquor Green Death — a brew apparently inspired by one of my secret nostalgic faves Rainer ale, a dubious beverage I have fond albeit very fuzzy memories of. One this subject Cee Jay vacillated between calling it “well-balanced” yet possessed of a “split personality,” code words for “he don’t like it” (decide for yourself at the “Meet the Brewers” event at Speakeasy on February 13).
As I peruse the schedule for the week ahead, all I can say is “thank goodness beer week lasts 10 days”. Because otherwise I don’t know how I’d fit in all the beers that sound too good to pass up.
With over 400 events to choose from all over the Bay, you’d be hard pressed to avoid Beer Week altogether, which makes my strategy of sticking to bars I’d probably be going to anyway but coinciding it with a tap takeover of a brewery I’m keen to further my familiarity with, either sheer genius or maybe just laziness. San Diego night at the Sycamore on Monday was a perfect example of this welcome synchronicity of will to explore and comfortable location. Breweries represented included Ballast Point (whose Sculpin IPA is a big favorite) and Green Flash (whose Black Saison “Friendship Ale” was particularly tempting), and since the Sycamore is within literal stumbling distance of my home, the fact that it was a “school night” did not matter much. Incidentally Sycamore is also hosting a promising-sounding Dogfish Head night on the 12th, which will be a great opportunity to taste some special rarities.
Toronado, naturally, will host two of my real must-do’s, the Russian River ‘Tion night (Tues/12), where some 20 Russian River beers (though ironically NOT the highly-anticipated seasonal release, Pliny the Younger) will be served from 6pm onward, and the not-technically-Beer-Week-but-still-imperative 20th annual Barleywine Festival from the 16th-18th during which over 50 Barleywines will be available on draft. Incidentally, Toronado is also your best bet for scoring the aforementioned Pliny the Younger — just show up on your lunch break through the 25th, they’ll be serving limited supplies of the scarce stuff until they won’t.
Other Tap Takeovers that look promising to me are a couple at Kennedy’s Irish Pub and Curry House in North Beach (Heretic on Wed/13, and Ommegang on Fri/15), Triple Voodoo and Ninkasi at Rosamunde Sausage Grill also on Wed/13 and Fri/15 respectively, Danish Mikkeller at Oakland’s The Trappist on Thurs/14, and the “Band of Gypsies” takeover of Rosamunde’s Oakland outpost on Wed/13. The “gypsies” — eight nomadic local brewers including Lucky Hand and Bison Organic — have collaborated on a Belgian-style Quad (“Belgian Tramp”) brewed with candy sugar, Mission Figs, raisins, and dates which clocks in at a respectable 10.5% abv and sounds like dinner, dessert, and drinks all in one tasty combination.
And speaking of dinner with drinks, I haven’t even touched on all the foodie-worthy events lined up on the Beer Week calendar, but buzzed-about bets include beer-infused Dynamo Donut and Humphrey Slocombe confections, Butchers and Beers on Fri/15 featuring meats from 4505 paired with tasty brews from local “farm-to-bottle” darlings, Almanac Beer Company, Almanac’s special beer-pairing dinner at Central Kitchen on Wed/13, the already sold-out Sau and Brau fest at Drake’s Barrel House in San Leandro, and a Valentine’s Day, four-course, prix fixe dinner and beer pairing at La Trappe Café. Oh la la! In short, life’s short, and beer week is passing by more quickly than you might think. Catch it now while you still can, your liver will forgive you eventually. I promise.
At Sundance 2013, no other category could compete with the NEXT programming. NEXT was initiated in 2010; its aim is to highlight “pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling. Digital technology paired with unfettered creativity proves the films selected in this section will inform a ‘greater’ next wave in American cinema.”
Matthew Porterfield’s I Used to Be Darkershowcases Ned Oldham (brother of indie fave Will Oldham) as a father-husband-musician whose teenage daughter starts to drift away as his marriage dissolves. Wonderfully awkward and trying moments arise from every suburban-hipster angle, making Darker not only a disturbing blueprint of divorce among the indie-rock generation, but — with three fully performed songs — a reminder of why so much music from this time period remains utterly relatable. (Clearly, not everyone agrees; I overheard a group of SLC locals calling Darker their “least favorite movie of all time.”)
Yen Tan’s surprisingly powerful Pit Stop and “Best of NEXT” winner Chad Hartigan’s This is Martin Bonner both showcase quiet and emotionally implosive relationships; both also have such well-earned conclusions that I was confused as to why they weren’t in the Dramatic Competition category instead. Tan’s interwoven structure reminded me of Megan Griffiths’ overlooked gem The Off Hours (2010), while Hartigan’s slow burner was excitingly reminiscent of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight (1998). Remember their names, because these filmmakers are about to have major breakthroughs.
But the two NEXT entries that have already achieved “major” status in my mind already are Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (USA) and Alexandre Moors’s Blue Caprice (discussed in Thu/7’s post). Oddly enough both films inspired extremely aggressive Q&As, in which an audience member attacked the film and filmmaker with the very first question.
Mumblecore master Bujalski, who studied under minimalist Chantal Akerman (1975’s Jeanne Dielman), walked up onto the stage after his mind-numbing, purposefully janky, addictively hilarious, and ultimately transcendental psychedelic mind-fuck. First question right out of the gate: “Would you explain three or four concepts from your film, so I know what I just watched?” Though some audience members groaned, Bujalski made a valiant effort to respond. (After a few moments, he asked, “Is it okay if I come back to that one?” “No!” was the angry response.)
Bujalski shot the film on old Portapak video cameras from the late 1970s he’d purchased on eBay; he meticulously edited the video to look and feel as if it had been made on a linear editing system though it was done on Final Cut Pro. By trading in his beloved 16mm cameras from his previous three films — Funny Ha Ha (2002), Mutual Appreciation (2005), and Beeswax (2008) — he has captured the look and feel of the early video era.
Computer Chess not only gets its techie vocab right, it also captures the spirit of the entire era (aging hippies and emerging New Agers mingling with proto-nerds), and does so without being mean-spirited. In fact, it was so scientifically spot-on it won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at this year’s festival — an award given to the best feature film that focuses on science or technology as a theme, or depicts a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character. Computer Chess was also my favorite feature at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I wanted to watch the film again as soon as it was over.
I pictured writing a different sort of response to last Friday’s Oakland Art Murmur and accompanying street festival. The fatal shooting of an 18-year-old, however, taints the memory of the evening and retroactively adds a hint of menace to the crowded streets.
In OAM’s responding statement, what begins as condolence, transitions into a reaffirmation of the monthly festival’s aims: “The Oakland Art Murmur and the First Friday Street Festival are the products of communities coming together to showcase the best of what people create together.” As questions surround the future of the event — most pressingly, can it continue as before? — it is important to remember this.
The mood on the streets before the shooting was celebratory. In the stretch of street closed to traffic, random pockets of activity testified to the joyful and creative possibilities contained within a diverse crowd of thousands.
On Telegraph Avenue, I saw an eclectic group dancing in front of a DJ booth; a block later, a man banged on his bike with drumsticks to accompany a small drum circle (whose members found it as strange as the onlookers did); and a pint-sized child rapped along to music on the back of truck that had been converted into a stage. Another wonderful surprise came in the form of the best pork bun I’ve ever tasted from the food truck, The Chairman (apparently I’m behind on food truck culture). The music, food, and general merriment on the streets occupied much of my time. And it was a great time.
But before I stray too far from the event’s original purpose seven years ago, I should mention that I also saw some compelling art and visited some intriguing spaces. My favorite stop of the evening was the antithesis to the raucousness between 19th and 27th Streets, the store and gallery Umami Mart on Broadway and 8th. Started by high school friends from Cupertino, Yoko Kumano and Kayoko Akabari, the pop-up shop (and hopefully soon-to-be mainstay) exhibits art and sells kitchen-themed goods that all reflect the stark elegance of the Japanese aesthetic.
Brother-sister duo Aya and Sylvan Brackett added to the warmth of the space. Raised in Nevada City, Calif. in a traditional Japanese home, the siblings each filter elements of their background into different arts in the Bay Area — Sylvan through food and his catering business, Peko-Peko, and Aya through her photography. Umami Mart showcased samples of both arts with udon noodles meticulously prepared from scratch at a stand in the corner, and striking photos on the wall surrounding the heading, “Home is Oakland; Home is Japan.”
The familial atmosphere in a store whose every surface revealed a delightful intersection of California and Japanese culture amounted to an excellent example of “the best of people create together.” So did the food trucks, the spontaneous dancing, and the different music flooding the street every half block. After last week’s event, the future of the Oakland Art Murmur raises complicated concerns. But I hope that it will continue to allow more positive examples to arise in the future.
First things first: the San Francisco Independent Film Festival kicked off last night and runs through Feb. 21 at various venues (mostly the Roxie). Check out my interviews with local shorts directors here, and some top picks throughout the festival here.
Also this week: cult director Don Coscarelli’s John Dies at the End (my chat with Mr. Bubba Ho-Tephere), Amy Berg’s West Memphis Three doc, West of Memphis (check out Nicole Gluckstern’s review here), and the Vortex Room’s love-ly new series (Dennis Harvey’s take here).
What’s more, 1986 action classic Top Gun gets the 3D IMAX re-release treatment (because any list of things that are better when they’re bigger, louder, and more in-yo-face include Soviet MiGs, Tom Cruise’s teeth, and Kenny Loggins jams). Reviews of comedies Identity Thief and Shanghai Calling, plus Steven Soderbergh’s maybe-swan song Side Effects, below the jump.
Identity Thief America is made up of asshole winners and nice guy losers — or at least that’s the thesis of Identity Thief, a comedy about a crying-clown credit card bandit (Melissa McCarthy) and the sweet sucker (Jason Bateman) she lures into her web of chaos. Bateman plays Sandy, a typical middle-class dude with a wife, two kids, and a third on the way. He’s always struggling to break even and just when it seems like his ship’s come in, Diana (McCarthy) jacks his identity — a crime that requires just five minutes in a dark room with Sandy’s social security number. Suddenly, his good name is contaminated with her prior arrests, drug-dealer entanglements, and mounting debt; it’s like the capitalist version of VD. But as the “kind of person who has no friends,” Diana is as tragic as she is comic, providing McCarthy an acting opportunity no one saw coming when she was dispensing romantic advice on Gilmore Girls. Director Seth Gordon (2011’s Horrible Bosses) treats this comedy like an action movie — as breakneck as slapstick gets — and he relies so heavily on discomfort humor that the film doesn’t just prompt laughs, it pokes you in the ribs until you laugh, man, LAUGH! While Identity Thief has a few complex moments about how defeating “sticking it to the man” can be (mostly because only middle men get hurt), it’s mostly as subtle as a pratfall and just as (un-)rewarding. (1:25) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
Shanghai Calling Hotshot lawyer Sam Chao (Daniel Henney) is his NYC firm’s top choice to be their man in Shanghai — much to his chagrin, since he puts the American in Chinese American. But off to the bustling, rapidly-expanding city he goes, knowing exactly only one word of Chinese (“fart”), and a classic fish-out-of-water comedy follows. His first day on the job, he bungles a billion-dollar deal, and spends the rest of the movie trying to set things right for his prickly client (Alan Ruck) — with the help of his ambitious assistant (Zhu Zhu), a perky relocation expert (Eliza Coupe), a fried-chicken mogul who runs an American-style bar (Bill Paxton), and a reporter who goes by the improbable moniker of “Awesome Wang” (Geng Le). Along the way, of course, he does some personal soul-searching, realizing there’s more to life than fancy-restaurant reservations and a high-stakes career. Writer-director Daniel Hsia’s Shanghai Calling doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s an undeniably entertaining tale of culture clash, backed up by an appealing cast to boot. (1:40) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGe2ZE0prGg
Side Effects Though on the surface Channing Tatum appears to be his current muse, Steven Soderbergh seems to have gotten his smart, topical groove back, the one that spurred him to kick off his feature filmmaking career with the on-point Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) and went missing with the fun, featherweight Ocean’s franchise. (Alas, he’s been making claims that Side Effects will be his last feature film.) Here, trendy designer antidepressants are the draw — mixed with the heady intoxicants of a murder mystery with a nice hard twist that would have intrigued either Hitchcock or Chabrol. As Side Effects opens, the waifish Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), whose inside-trading hubby (Tatum) has just been released from prison, looks like a big-eyed little basket of nerves ready to combust — internally, it seems, when she drives her car into a wall. Therapist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who begins to treat her after her hospital stay, seems to care about her, but nevertheless reflexively prescribes the latest anti-anxiety med of the day, on the advice of her former doctor (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Where does his responsibility for Emily’s subsequent actions begin and end? Soderbergh and his very able cast fill out the issues admirably, with the urgency that was missing from the more clinical Contagion (2011) and the, ahem, meaty intelligence that was lacking in all but the more ingenious strip scenes of last year’s Magic Mike. (1:30) (Kimberly Chun)
This month, you can observe Black History Month by attending a filmmaking discussion, a childrens dance class, by going to a lecture at USF — check out this and this event rundown for inspiration. And given how food-oriented we are as a region, it was only natural that eventually you’d be able to eat and drink while celebrating African American heritage, not to mention the black culinary geniuses that add to it here in the Bay.
Sample wines poured by the Sterlings of Esterlina Vineyards (top) and bites made by Michele Wilson of Gussie’s Chicken & Waffles at sf|noir’s Feb. 23 gala
The organization that is sponsoring the four-day extravaganza was born one afternoon at North Beach Jazz Festival, the nine-day affair that Herve Ernest organized for eight years. He realized that the crowd in attendance was really, really white.
“There was an African American band on stage, but I could count on two hands the amount of black faces I saw,” he tells me in a phone interview. He realized that if African American culture was going to remain a presence in a city where black people were being rapidly displaced, concerted efforts would have to be made.
“That’s when the conceptual idea for what became sf|noir started happening,” Ernest continues. He started the organization, which sponsors read-ins, dance, and concerts, not only to get superlative cultural programming to black audiences, but also to “ensure the presentation of black arts and culture in San Francisco” — a city whose black population has dropped from 12 to less than three percent in the 19 years since Ernest first settled here.
This year, his group is offering days of events that highlight some of the area’s most successful black food entrepreneurs. “It’s something that is very relevant here,” says Ernest. “It’s a foodie town, food events happen all the time. We thought it was high time to create a food and wine event that looks at African American cuisine.”
Three mixologists — including Otis bartenders Phil Shell and Damon White — present cocktails found throughout the African diaspora. Entry is free, you have to pay for your own drinks though.
Feb. 21, 6-9pm, free. Otis, 25 Maiden Lane, SF
Wine tasting with Omar White
After 15 years at Chez Panisse, believe that wine consultant White has some knowledge about local vinos. He’s lent his expertise to Pizzaolo and the East Bay’s Hibiscus and is here today to teach about the in’s and out’s of the wine tasting process. Register in advance for this one — participation is limited to 25 thirsty souls.
Feb. 22, 6-9pm, $20. 18 Reasons, 3674 18th St., SF
Food from nine restaurants well-versed in African American cuisine (Farmerbrown, Cedar Hill, and tomorrow’s brunch host Miss Ollie’s for starters), 20 local and international winemakers, and two dessert specialists — The Brown Sugar Lady and PieTisserie — are all serving up at this four-hour dinner party.
Feb. 23, 7-11pm, $60. The Atrium, 101 Mission, SF
Oakland Jazz Brunch
Hibiscus’ chef Sarah Minton has a new project in this Old Oakland corner restaurant. She’ll be offering up the place’s Carribean-toned menu for brunch today, while the Marcus Shelby Trio helps you finish the sf|noir series strong.
Feb. 24, 11am-3pm, free entrance, a la carte menu. Miss Ollie’s, 901 Washington, Oakl.
After last year’s big Burning Man ticket freakout, it’s strangely quiet this year during the brief registration window now underway to buy tickets to this year’s event. The lion’s share of 40,000 tickets will be sold on Feb. 13 to those who register between yesterday and this Sunday. That follows the fairly smooth offering of 10,000 tickets that were made available through core theme camps and art crews on Jan. 30.
Contrast that with last year’s controversial ticket lottery system, created in reaction to the event selling out for the first time the year before, when everybody was freaking out about now. That was because initial demand for tickets far exceeded supply, the result of some combination of increased popularity, ticket scalpers, hoarding, and people simply being worried about not getting a ticket.
This year, the core members got first dibs, unlike last year’s on-the-fly changes in the ticket system to ensure the infrastructure and art of Black Rock City got built. And the new ticket system this year also required pre-registration and makes another 1,000 tickets available shortly before the event in August, both designed to undermine scalpers and ease people’s fears.
“I think we’ve hit on a process that will reset the button on people’s perception of the ticket scarcity issue,” Black Rock City LLC board member Marian Goodell told me. And it was just a perception given that even last year, there were plenty of tickets that became available for face value in August.
And as much as veteran burners like to complain about this and that aspect of Burning Man, and to fantasize about all the things they might otherwise do with that time and money, the prospect of getting shut out of this beloved event still seemed to freak people out.
“People were forced to imagine they might not be able to go to Burning Man,” Goodell said.
She wouldn’t say whether all 10,000 offered tickets got bought on Jan. 30, but she did say, “The group sale went really well. We’re happy and the participants are happy.” Also helping ease the anxiety over buying tickets is the fact that Burning Man ditched the tiered pricing system, making all tickets $380. So, right or wrong, the widespread perception is that anyone who has the dough can make it to the playa this year without worrying about finding a ticket.
Festival veteran Jesse Hawthorne Ficks files his third report from the 2013 Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals.Read his first two reports here and here.
British filmmaker Sean Ellis’ Philippines-set Metro Manila took home the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic at Sundance. It’s a gritty, neo-realist journey into Manila’s Catch 22‘d slums that’s every bit as shocking as it is hypnotic. When I saw it, the entire audience (myself included) was left gasping for air while wiping their tears — it’s ruthlessly realistic, insanely inspired, and a taut thriller to boot.
Metro Manila is a perfect precursor to Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, a 320-minute exploration of 70 years of corruption in the small town of Wasseypur — the coal capital of India — that has to be one of the most monumental political action films ever made. I’ve now seen it twice, and its attention to detail is so precise that in certain scenes, if you can recognize the Hindi movie posters on the alley walls, you’ll be able to pinpoint what month and year the film has splintered into.
Given Gangs‘ brutal violence and slang-filled dialogue, Kashyap admitted he was surprised that it was not banned in India, since his previous films had been. (More props for the director: he showed up for a 1am festival Q&A.) This towering achievement will no doubt excite fans of Ram Gopal Varma’s gangster films; it’s a jaw-dropping, Godfather-esque odyssey that’s both historical allegory and unstoppable action flick.
Shifting focus to urban America: Alexandre Moors’ Blue Caprice (part of Sundance’s NEXT programming, highlighting “impactful” indies screening out of competition; more on the NEXT films in an upcoming post) is inspired by Washington DC’s 2002 sniper attacks, specifically focusing on the two shooters as they meet, diabolically prepare, and eventually execute their plan. The first post-film question, vehemently asked, was “Why didn’t you make a film about the victims?” But its point of view is what makes Blue Caprice so profound; it encourages the audience to attempt to understand the attackers, much like Fritz Lang’s classic murder tale M (1931).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5tIVbZTgEg
Director Moors and lead actor Isaiah Washington (as John Allen Muhammad) do an astounding job leading us through an absolutely terrifying story, and they are able to do so without resorting to broad strokes. Interestingly, with both the US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award: US Dramatic going to Oakland filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s wonderfully executed yet disappointingly one-dimensional Fruitvale, it seems that many audiences are not prepared for such a brave and complex film as Blue Caprice. It’s a film based on a real-life tragedy that asks a lot of questions, pushes a lot of buttons, and offers no answers.
Has your cat spit fire recently? Exhibited fluency in multiple languages simultaneously? Levitated? Flown? If so, your furry feline may be experiencing the troublesome symptoms of housing a demon. And fire can really do a number on those expensive drapes.
Luckily for you, occult expert Paul Koudounaris is coming to SF this Friday, and as part of David Normal’s “Crazyology” art exhibit will be shedding light on the dark world of demonry in his lecture series, looking at both historical and modern accounts of devilish domestics.
Koudounaris stumbled upon this cryptic world of bedeviled kitties during research for his upcoming book Heavenly Bodies. Initially seeking evidence of angelic cat spirits, like the fluffy white Swiss apparition rumored to protect both the town Bürglen and the remains of St. Maximus, Koudounaris realized that the wealth of information on supernatural kitties was located on the dark side.
Even the goddess Bast, one of the most enduring Egyptian cat figureheads, was revered for her dark side. According to records from Herodotus, Koudouanris explains in an email interview with the Guardian. “Debauchery was part of the celebration of Bast. One source I found indicated that rapes and assaults were totally acceptable during the celebration of Bast, because it was believe that the spirit of Bast had taken over the perpetrators during the festival. ”
While the how’s and why’s of cats becoming possessed remain unexplained, accounts of these Luciferian faring felines are centuries-old.
And given the responses to Koudounaris’ lectures, still relevant today. “I started doing this lecture as a kind of series” he says, “People who had not been to it would come to me and say, ‘oh, you should talk about my roommate’s cat, that thing is a total demon.’ But [they didn’t] mean bad kitty, [they meant] possessed by demons, or at least suspected of it.” Throughout his research Koudounaris has seen enough bones that he doesn’t spook at just any apparition.
After completing his Ph.D. in art history at UCLA in 2004, Koudounaris was left waiting for some kind of otherworldly inspiration to direct and supplement his extensive training. Inspiration struck in 2006, in the seedy lobby of a Czech hostel.
“I had spent a day in Melnik , where I visited an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul,” wrote Koudounaris on his website, “It was gritty and dirty — decidedly not sanitized for tourists — but the arrangements of the bones showed genius, not just in formal artistic principles, but also in their understanding of philosophy and theology.”
For the next four years, his interest in the bizarre left him mausoleum-bound and underground, photo-documenting his journey into innumerable holes, crypts, and churches around Europe.
The Empire of Death, his recently-released book, documents this journey in rich color printed photographs, visually raising from the dead the largely forgotten history of ossuaries.
While he’s by no means a bone collector, Koudounaris, is certainly an archaeologist of sorts, exhuming the forgotten, the unbelievable, and even the seemingly bizarre. His work breathes new life into forgotten chapters of history, like that of devil cats.
One such chapter belongs to the United States, and a cat that haunts the Presidential homestead.
D.C., short for the District of Columbia (but also Demon Cat) has been purportedly haunting the White House since the Civil War days. Legend has it that General Nathan Bedford Forest, who was also the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, was responsible for invoking this common cat with demonic duties. D.C. was “initially related to the death of Lincoln,” says Koudounaris, “hence the suspicion that the confederacy was involved, apparently as an attempt to undermine the Union through a decidedly guerrilla tactic of sending in a demonically-possessed cat.”
D.C.’s historic haunting’s have even garnered him his own Wikipedia page. According to Koudounaris, D.C. “has a tendency to reappear and presage national disasters — the last account of it was right before the 9/11 attacks. It also appeared before Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, when it appeared and told JFK to “go fuck off.”
Koudounaris muses, “Do you think they have to brief every new president? ‘Sir, now that you have taken the Oath of Office, there is something we must tell you. If you happen to see a black cat that metamorphs, disappears, and speaks to you in tongues, it’s a demon, sir.'”
Humor is clearly unfiltered when one deals with darkness daily.
A cat owner himself, he notes that chances of actually encountering a demonically-possessed cat is rather rare, but rogue demons have been known to take form in even the most docile of kitties. ‘I don’t consider this something most of us should be worried about. But if your cat starts spitting fire–well, get the hell away from it.”
It’s February—feeling a little love in your heart? Srutih Asher Colbert’s been feeling the love all year long. She’s a Bay Area yoga teacher (and hairdresser) who raised $24,000 in one year through grassroots fundraising to fight sex trafficking in India, where she’ll be going next week to volunteer her time to the cause.
Om Front talked to her about how, and why, she undertook the challenge.
SFBGWow. You raised $24,000 in one year. Tell us about the organization you raised the money for.
COLBERT Off The Mat and Into the World is a yoga-based organization [founded by internationally-acclaimed yoga teacher/activist Seane Corn]. It initiates different projects around the world to create sustainable change. The idea is that people take their yoga practice “off the mat and into the world” to become leaders in their community and use that leadership to make a difference. Every year, Off the Mat conducts something called the Seva Challenge, in which people everywhere are challenged to raise at least $20,000 for a particular cause. If you can raise the money, you are invited to go on a trip with Off the Mat to volunteer your time to that cause.
SFBG What inspired you to do the 2012 Seva Challenge?
COLBERT The cause this year is to stop sex trafficking in India. Sex trafficking is happening all over the world, but there are over 3 million girls in India alone that are being held prisoner and being raped on a daily basis. Some of them have been tricked by being promised a job in the factory and then they end up in a brothel. Some of them have been sold by their own parents. There are so many ways they can be coerced. I have two daughters and it hit close to home to think that my eight year old daughter could be trafficked for sex. I wanted to see if I could help stop that kind of action. I didn’t think I’d be able to raise $20,000 but I thought I would try!
SFBGSo, how did you do it?
COLBERT I reached out to everyone in my yoga community, students and teachers, and planned all of these events. I don’t know how I did it, but it all added up in the end. Some of the events I held were a benefit Kirtan [chanting event] with Ananda Rasa and Prajna Vieira at the Sivananda Yoga Center; a yoga-DJ-dance party at Equinox in Palo Alto, where I teach; and a Thanksgiving benefit class at Namaste Yoga in Oakland with Vickie Russell Bell. I sold Stop Slavery Now tee-shirts, and held a cocktail party and a silent auction. Also, [legendary kirtan singer] Krishna Das did an amazing fundraiser in NYC on the Bhajan Boat and he donated his whole portion to me for the cause. It was incredible.
Thanksgiving benefit class at Namaste Yoga in Oakland with Vickie Russell Bell
SFBGWhat was the biggest fundraiser?
COLBERT It was actually at my hair salon, Monica Foster Salon, in Palo Alto. I got everyone to work on a Monday when we’re usually closed, and they all donated their proceeds, over $4000 altogether, to Off the Mat.
SFBG So you’re going to India then?
COLBERT Yes! I’ve never been to India and I am so thrilled that I get this opportunity. We leave on February 17 for 10 days in Kolkata. We’ll be working every day with the local charities that are partnered with Off the Mat to help rescue girls, and teach them trades like jewelry-making. We’ll also be helping to build a new room onto a dance-and-yoga therapy center that helps these girls transition back into society.
It’s an interesting time to be going to India to do this work. After the recent gang rape in India, there’s been an uprising of women banding together saying we’re not going to stand for this anymore. It feels really good that we can be part of that timing and affect some social change.
SFBG Is your fundraising effort over?
COLBERT Technically, yes, but people are still giving me cash and writing me checks! We’re asked to bring a donation bag over with us filled with first aid supplies, art supplies, and things to draw with, that we can give to the different charities—so I’ve been using the additional funds for that. Once that bag is full, I’ll give the remaining money to Off the Mat.
Colbert with yoga teacher Vickie Russell Bell (left) at Namaste Yoga
SFBGWhat has this year of fundraising taught you?
COLBERT That I am not in control of anything. Every fundraiser, I would think it would go this way or that way—and it was never like that. I would think there would be 75 people there and in walked 12. Or I thought a person was going to give me $5 and he gave me $500. I had to learn to not try to control things, and to just be in the present moment with what is.
SFBGYou’re leaving on February 17. Nice timing for Valentine’s Day, eh?
COLBERT Yes, but every day should be Valentine’s Day! Every day we should all be giving each other as much love as we can, helping each other and holding each other up.
Karen Macklin is a writer and yoga teacher in San Francisco — her On the Om Front column appears biweekly here on SFBG.com.
It’s All About Love Yoga and Spirituality Listings by Joanne Greenstein Seven Month Chakra Awakening Intensive with Anodea Judith Open your heart through the chakras. Award winning author and internationally renowned teacher Anodea Judith is coming to the Bay Area to lead a series of seven workshops on the seven chakras over seven months. Each month will focus on one of the chakras, offering asana practice, bioenergetic exercises, breathing techniques, guided trance journeys, chanting, art, music and more to clear blockages and active chakra energy. Workshops will be supplemented by weekly emails. Sat 2/9 – Sat 2/13, 1:00 – 5:45 PM, Yoga Kula SF, 3030A 16th, SF with 2 sessions at Yoga Kula Berkeley, 1700 Shattuck, Berkeley, $90/workshop or $560 for all 7. Livestream also available at $45/sessionor $285 for all sessions. yogakula.com/chakra-awakening
Valentine’s Day Contact Yoga Class with Alok Rocheleau and Anjuli Mahendra Open your heart through touch. Connect physically, emotionally and spiritually through partner yoga, contact improvisation and Thai massage. Thurs/14, 7:30 – 10:00 PM, Mindful Body, 2876 California, SF, $70 per couple in advance/$80 at the door. www.themindfulbody.com/main/workshopsevents.htm
Celebration of Heart with Deborah Lee Open your heart through movement. Flow through a series of poses designed to help you release tension, improve your posture and connect to your heart. Sun/10, 2:00 – 4:15 PM, Yogaworks, 1823 Divisadero, SF, $20 in advance/$30 at the door. More info here.
Kirtan with David Newman (Durga Das) Open your heart through song. David and his wife Mira will lead a fun, joyous evening of call-and-response chanting letting you access your heart space. Fri/15, 8:00 – 10:00 PM, Urban Flow, 1543 Mission, SF, $20 in advance/$25 at the door. www.urbanflowyoga.com/workshop.html
Tantra & Massage Valentine’s Workshop with Dee Dussault Open your heart through connection. Explore and deepen your relationship through these workshops for couples. On day one, learn tantric practices to enhance the intimacy, energy, communication and sensuality in your relationship. On day two, improve your love-making through tantric massage, breathing and visualization. Day two is clothing optional, with a non-genital focus. Tantra Workshop: Expanding Erotic Energy Sat/16, 1:30 – 4:30 PM, 548 Fillmore, SF, $45 Sensual Massage: Conscious Intimate Touch Sun/17, 2:00 – 5:00 PM, 548 Fillmore, SF, $45 More info here.
Wandering around Polk Street before the Super Bowl on Sunday, I was seeing red — but not from stray elbows or overserved sports boors. Team-inspired fashion is usually a pretty simple affair: a hat, a T-shirt with a logo, maybe a jacket. But this is San Francisco, where we don’t do common and the Niners’ presence in the Super Bowl was one more excuse for residents to show off their flair for dramatic costuming.
But though I was out looking for the over-the-top, the Niners gear I did managed to capture ended up being mainly on the tasteful side of things. I spotted a woman and pup in matching red gear, a cute couple subtly sporting Niners colors without sacrificing J. Crew-crispness.
That aside, my favorite was a man in a gigantic red and gold poncho. As I began to introduce myself, the gentleman spotted my camera and tipsily exclaimed, “you don’t even have to ask!” He grabbed his buddies and struck a pose. I’m betting he was probably pretty upset after the game. But least he was already wearing his security blanket. Not to mention, swathed in love for his hometown, win or lose.
Training with foolsFURY for the stage and for life
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a round-up of some of the theatre companies in the Bay Area who offer classes and actor trainings for professionals and non-professionals alike, but since there are far more companies than I had word count with which to cover them, I could only feature a representative few, and therefore focused mainly on smaller, more underground companies specializing in one or two specific disciplines or techniques.
One company I regretted not having space for was foolsFURY, whose devotion to training their own actors has given rise to an extensive schedule of workshops open to the public since 2006. I finally caught up with associate artistic director Debórah Eliezer to get the details.
SFBG: What is foolsFURY’s main goal in offering actor trainings?
Debórah Eliezer: Our trainings offer a window into the world of ensemble-theater creation, which is very process-oriented and specific to those in the room. It’s our hope that the general public and artists alike gain skills they can take away to create their own life as a work of art, back to their own profession to influence team building.
SFBG:How closely do the classes you offer resemble the rehearsal/creation process foosFURY uses in creating its own works?
DE: All the workshops we offer are a “way in” to our signature training process. That is to say that everything we teach we use as a platform for making work. Our Vital Act two-week intensive (June 2013) remains our signature program of foundation skills and includes a compositional element to give students a taste of what it’s like to create work as we do in ensemble.
In rehearsal for a play, foolsFURY will always use the Viewpoints to massage our understanding of character relationships, location, and text, or just plain blow off some steam and get together as a group. We’ve found the Suzuki method to be the single quickest way for actors to get present and focused. It’s also a constant reminder of the theatrical potency of rigorously challenging oneself. We always incorporate vocal training and improvisational circle singing even if there is no singing in the production.
Some by-products of our training reflected in our work would be characterized as very clear body awareness. To us, theater, voice, and dance are very closely connected. By the time we bring a show to production, we’ve made deliberate choreographic choices about our bodies in time and space — what the audience sees is a distilled “best of” our process spent weeks and sometimes years in rehearsal.
SFBG: You mentioned earlier that you felt that performing arts training was “training for life” not just for art. Care to expand on that?
DE: I teach and personally follow the belief that theater training informs how I live my life and, life informs my theater training. The same principles of space, time relationships, and creative strategy are applicable and translatable for both making compelling theatrical experiences and having a rich, satisfying life.
SFBG: Care to hazard a guess as to how many students in total have taken at least one foolsFURY training/workshop?
DE: Our adult programs serve 125-200 students per year, depending on if we’re also teaching workshops outside of SF and if we’re offering a festival that year. That number includes our internship program, which serves about 10-15 young artists per year. Swivel Arts, our youth spring and summer camp program, which ran from 1998-2010, offered two-to-six weeks of camp per year and served about 150 elementary and teen kids each year. In total, over the years? This would have to be well over 2000 students!
Festival veteran Jesse Hawthorne Ficks files his second report from the 2013 Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals.Check out his first report here.
The most controversial and inspired film amid this year’s Utah fests actually screened at the Slamdance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Sparky Award for a Narrative Feature. The Dirties, by 28-year-old Canadian writer-director-star Matthew Johnson, is an utterly brilliant, unstoppably hilarious found footage entry that follows two high school cinephiles as they try and make a documentary about “bullying,” while they themselves continue to get uncomfortably bullied at their own school.
Both characters use their real names in the film and have bedrooms filled to the brim with movie posters, comic books, and Magic: The Gathering cards. Johnson and co-star Owen Williams are such self-aware and self-referential movie geeks that you might feel as if you are watching a documentary about your own high-school experiences.
While I could tag the film nicely as Dawson’s Creek meets Man Bites Dog (1992), I’m betting Johnson’s already thought of that one. So what I want to stress is the level of honesty, originality, and terrifyingly timely subject matter this filmmaker brings to this incredibly contemporary story. His 10-episode Canadian web series, Nirvana: The Band The Show(2008), showed his knack for frenetically exposing a teenage boy’s passion. The Dirties digs a whole lot darker and deeper. Could he be the male counterpart to Lena Dunham? Make sure to watch the Red Band teaser trailer (above); it’s as chilling and funny as the film itself.
The Exploratorium is in the middle of an epic move to its new home at Pier 15 — its new location is set to open April 17th at 330,000 square feet, five times the size of its former digs at the Palace of Fine Arts. But while staff is busy nesting the Explainers, the museum’s science-savvy youth docents, have been hard at work. The volunteers have been hosting pop-up exhibits around the city. Needing a science fix, I stopped by their event last week at the Tenderloin National Forest.
There are two kinds of Explainers: the diverse group of high school Explainers, the museum’s youngest paid employees who engage visitors at exhibits, lead demonstrations, and help run various museum operations. Field trip Explainers perform the same tasks, but as experienced young educators, take more leadership roles.
Both were present on the afternoon of Jan. 31, when I enter the Tenderloin National Forest. I’m greeted to the slice of urban wilderness by the familiar Exploratorium logo printed on black flags, and by lots of friendly folks in orange vests — the Explainers themselves, who had transformed this pocket of urban wilderness into a wonderland of interactive science exhibits.
The first thing that catches my eye was a fruit and flower dissection demonstration, meant to teach about the various parts of a plant. Senior field trip explainer Kat Stiff asks the students, “does anyone know what a flower is made out of?” One boy in the back proudly shouts, “Cauliflower?”
Most of the students seem more interested in the giant magnifying glasses on the table than the lesson. As I watch Stiff’s demonstration, a girl with a magnifying glass comes up to me and starts to sift through my hair with her newfound tool. I ask her if she spots anything and to which she responds, “yes. Hair.”
Across from the plant dissection workshop is the outdoor cart – which has gone with the Explainers to most of their recent events. The cart bears a poster illustrating different clouds, and a plastic soda bottle that helps you create your own cumulus formations. Before I can get started on my own personal sky, high school Explainers Zakiya Percy and Terrance Gee quiz me on my cloud knowledge.
What is a cloud made of? I should definitely know this… I know that water is involved… After I fail to pick up on their hints for the other two ingredients, they reveal that a change in pressure and the inclusion of dust particles is also necessary.
Gee does a demonstration for me. With about a half-cup of water at the bottom of the plastic liter soda bottle, he lights a match, blows it out, and places it upside-down over the opening of the bottle. He does this, he says, to add dust particles to the water. Gee caps the bottle, and I help by pumping air into it until it’s about to pop. He takes the cap off, and dollhouse-sized clouds float out. I am then quizzed again on what type of cloud we just made. The answer: fog, because of our low elevation.
As I head towards the back of the forest, Phanna Phay, a high school Explainer supervisor, is sitting down doing card tricks. Smack dab in the middle of the space is a brick oven where Explainers are helping kids heat up pizza donated by Inner Sunset favorite Arizmendi Bakery. All the way in the back, kids paint wooden veggie cut-outs, which will to be used to decorate the nearby Hotel Senator’s rooftop garden.
These pop-up Explainer exhibits have appeared at the Ferry Building and Civic Center farmer’s markets, and even aboard a ferry bound for Jack London Square.
Senior field trip explainer Lia Frantti tells me about these previous events. “We were doing our fruit and flower dissection [at the farmer’s market], so that people who are shopping for those fruits and vegetables can stop and think about where they are coming from and how they are growing. We were on the ferry boat talking about navigation and finding north.”
When I ask Frantti about the benefits these pop-up exhibits have brought to the Exploratorium she explains, “it’s been really nice because people often put us in this hole of a children’s museum – which we’re not. Adults and children can definitely have an equally amazing experience at the Exploratorium. At some of the other spots we’ve been at, we have had more adults stopping by. So that has been a little bit different to have less youth and more adults spending time with us.”
Looking forward to the museum’s new digs? When it re-opens, the Exploratorium will have triple the exhibition space, and double the number of classrooms. Acclaimed San Francisco chef Loretta Keller of Bon Appétit will head a sidewalk café on the west side of the pier, and there will be a waterfront café on the east side. The event in the Tenderloin was the last full scale Explainer exhibit until the Exploratorium settles into its new space. But the group will be holding outdoor events featuring the plant dissection table, mainly along the Embarcadero.
Festival veteran Jesse Hawthorne Ficks files his first report from the 2013 Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals.
This year’s Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals were both outstanding, so I did my best to pack my schedule as full as humanly possible (sacrificing sleep in the process). With close to 50 programs achieved, I can assure you it’s gonna be one helluva year for cinema. Make sure to mark some of these titles down for 2013.
Filmmaker Sebastián Silva brought two new entries to Sundance, and they both happened to be two of my most cherished experiences. Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic were filmed in Chile at the same time, and showcase the almighty Michael Cera — who learned Spanish just for these projects. If you are able to avoid the countless spoiler-heavy reviews (this isn’t one of them) and enter these films at your own risk, you will be treated to Silva’s masterful, even transcendental, slow burn.
As he did in The Maid (2009) and Old Cats (2010), Silva allows his “unlikable” characters to reach some surprising conclusions — meaning audiences should leave any snap judgments at the door. Delivering a pair of typically charismatic performances, Cera is the ideal choice to guide viewers into Silva’s bold and often profound terrain. (Audiences who continue to dismiss Cera as playing the same character over and over need to get over themselves. Should we also ridicule Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, and Woody Allen for not being Daniel Day-Lewis caliber? Cera knows how to use his strengths, and perhaps is even able to use them against us.)
Cera’s co-stars are also worthy of note: Gaby Hoffman (in Crystal Fairy) and Juno Temple (in Magic Magic). Both give stunning and heartfelt performances that may downright mystify many modern misanthropic maniacs. Crystal Fairy, in particular, perfectly explores the side effects of the modern drug scene, though quite a few critics around me seemed to misunderstand the protagonists’ motives. These responses baffled me, since both movies feel like updated versions of late 1960s counterculture flicks like Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969). Yep, you read that right: Jesse saw nearly 50 programs this year. Stay tuned for his next report!
I first heard of Kier-La Janisse when a film she’d compiled, Metal Storm: The Scandinavian Black Metal Wars, screened at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2005.
Her talent as a writer is backed up by House of Psychotic Women, a unique tome that melds Janisse’s autobiography — troubled childhood, turbulent relationship with her parents, teenage rebellion, a brief marriage — with her film fascination, tying films that focus on “female neurotics” (and there are a lot) into the events of her own life; there’s also a section of lurid posters and ads for these films, and an appendix highlighting notable films in the genre, mainstream (2010’s Black Swan), classic (1940’s Rebecca), and cult (1982’s The Entity) all-inclusive.
Janisse heads to San Francisco Fri/8 to host a pair of screenings as part of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival: Linda Blair-goes-to-reform-school TV movie Born Innocent (1974), and demented exploitation entry Toys Are Not for Children (1972). I spoke with her over the phone from Los Angeles, where she’s screening House of Psychotic Women-appropriate films like 3 Women (1977) and Secret Ceremony (1968) at Cinefamily before and after her IndieFest visit.
San Francisco Bay Guardian: In House of Psychotic Women, you admit that the book took 10 years to write. When you started out, did you have any idea that it would take shape as an autobiographical film guide?
Kier-La Janisse: The idea for the book came from the fact that I used to have this fanzine, and I would write a lot of reviews and essays about films like this. Originally, I thought the book would be a compendium of essays, some of which I’d already written, and some new ones that I would write just for the book. But as I started writing, my interest in academic writing started waning. I had been in school for a few years, and I loved dense, academic writing. Within a few years, I started to look at a lot of it as being really pretentious and unnecessary, so I veered toward more colloquial writing again. And that whole ten years of working on it wasn’t constant. Several years of that was not working on it at all.
[The format] changed many times. At first, I was just going to have the personal stuff be these little anecdotes that would be sidebars, but not integrated with the text at all. And then at some point I had even approached my dad about writing it with me [laughs]. Luckily, that went nowhere. And then, with the internet becoming such a wealth of great film writing — I mean, there’s lots of shit on the internet too, but there’s lots of really good film-journal stuff on the internet. But I was just like, “Now all these films are way more accessible, there’s way more people writing about them. What do I have to say that’s going to be different?”
So that was when, I was having a bit of crisis of confidence about it, and some friends were saying, “You relate to these movies so personally. Why don’t you just write about it from that perspective?” I thought that sounded really self-indulgent. Like, nobody’s gonna care about my personal story. But then I realized that I really like reading trashy autobiographies and stuff, so I thought, “Maybe people really will get into it, from that angle.” And once I decided to do it that way, the rest of writing it was really quick.
SFBG: You’re obviously someone who has seen a lot of films, and there are clearly a lot of films about “psychotic women.” How did you decide which films to discuss in the book?
KLJ: It was never supposed to be comprehensive. Originally, I was going to write the narrative part with the movies intertwined with my life stories, and then I was gonna have the appendix be 100 essential crazy-woman movies. But then, I couldn’t pick. I kept thinking, “Well if I include this, I have to include that…” The appendix itself has very little methodology to it at all.
As I was writing I found it really hard to let go of certain film and cut them out in order to stick with the 100 movies. So I just ended up sticking everything in there that I could think of at the time. I gave myself up to a certain point — in January of 2012, I was like, “That’s it! I’m not considering anything any more, even if I’ve forgotten something.” I couldn’t keep writing. I had to stop.
So the movies that are in the narrative part are movies that, when I was watching them, they reminded me a lot of these personal stories or of characters from my own life, or helped me explain the behavior of people from my own life. And then, the appendix is just kind of a mish-mash. A lot are not movies directly related to incident from my life. They’re just movies that I thought, if people are interested in the subject matter, then they should check them out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX4eZD3GiL0
SFBG: Has your family read the book? What do they think of it?
KLJ: My dad, “Oates” [a nickname given to him by Janisse, due to his resemblance to actor Warren Oates], has read it. Once the publisher had agreed to publish it, I sent it to my dad, before it got printed, so that he could know what was coming. He didn’t talk to me for a couple of months, but after that he was just like, “I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m proud of you that you wrote something, and I think it’s well-written, but I don’t want to talk about it.” He shares it with people, though. He sends out Facebook messages about it: “Oh, my daughter was in the paper!” And I’m like, “Dad, it kind of defeats the purpose of me giving everyone a fake name in the book if you’re gonna tell everyone it’s you.”
My grandmother, I think, started reading it. She was very upset that there was a picture of my mother in the book. But the family’s been surprisingly supportive. Some of them, even when they were kind of mad about it, after they’d said their piece to me, it was fine after that.
SFBG: When I first started reading it, I assumed the book would focus on the exploitation heyday of the 1960s and 70s, maybe some 80s. But it also includes contemporary films, like Black Swan and 2008’s Martyrs. How do you think the role of the “psychotic woman” has changed in films over time, or has it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO-TNfPzh_k
KLJ: I think it’s changed a little bit. But if you look at a movie like Antichrist (2009) or The Piano Teacher (2001) — some people are like, “Why are they in there? Those are, like, art movies!” [laughs]. I honestly don’t see the difference. The feeling I get watching those movies is the same as I get from watching, like, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971). To me, they’re the same.
I have all sorts of movies [like Jessica in the book]. But if you look at movies like Antichrist and Possession (1981), they’re very dense in terms of the psychology of their characters, and how far into the dark abyss they go. A lot of the movies in the 1970s, they didn’t even think they were addressing female neurosis as much as they were, whereas Antichrist and Possession know flat-out that they are characterizing their women as neurotic, and they want to talk about it.
A lot of the earlier films, I suspect, it’s not that well thought-out. It’s just that those were types that existed and they used them in the movies. If you look at All the Colors of the Dark (1972), where the Edwige Fenech character is being medicated by her husband and she’s losing her mind, I don’t think people at the time would have given the movie as much thought, in terms of how she was written, as they would when Possession came out, the way they would look at Isabelle Adjani. Those roles have always been there, but the roles themselves were more dismissive back then. When that was the topic of the movie in the early 1970s, it was very tied in with, “Well, it’s just part of the times.” Inevitably that bleeds into the movie. Whereas with a movie like Possession and Antichrist, it’s not just a part of the times. It’s the subject that the director wants to talk about and it’s very clear.
I do think there’s kind of a weird thing happening in movies right now, where it seems misogyny is making a comeback. I feel like people are like, “Well, we know about feminism now, so it’s OK. Well, we’re all feminists now, so it’s OK to kill a bunch of women in a movie, because we know better.” All of these things, I think, are ongoing discussions. I think now, the discussion around that kind of imagery is being revived. It’s like, just keeping vigilant over things.
A lot of people find [Antichrist director] Lars Von Trier’s characterizations of women to be really misogynistic. But I love his movies and I love his female characters.
SFBG: You’ve been hosting screenings in conjunction with House of Psychotic Women in various places, including Los Angeles. I noticed the films you’ve selected differ, for the most part, from place to place. What made you choose Born Innocent and Toys Are Not for Children to screen at IndieFest?
KLJ: Born Innocent I picked specifically because I knew that the Cosmic Hex archives in San Francisco had an uncut print of it. It was a way to tie into a local organization that already exists and do something fun with them and their archives.
And then Toys Are Not for Children, that’s a movie that I’ve been trying to push at all the other venues I’ve done events at. I’m always like, “Play Toys Are Not for Children, that movie’s totally disturbing!” And everybody’s like, “Aw, I never heard of that. I don’t want to play it.” But Jeff [Ross] at IndieFest was the one guy who was like, “OK. Sure!” I’ve seen it in a theater a couple of times in Austin, and the crowd just gets so squirmy. It’s just such an uncomfortable, inappropriate viewing experience. It’s a super-sleazy exploitation film, but I love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Et5nhIk4k
Spotlight on House of Psychotic Women with author Kier-la Janisse Born Innocent, Fri/8, 8pm, $12; Toys Are Not for Children, Fri/8, 11:45pm, $12 Vortex Room 1082 Howard, SF www.sfindie.com
You could practically hear the sharpening of claws in the Guardian office when the Last Gasp-published Hi Fructose Collected 3 boxed set arrived on our proverbial doorstep. For fans of quirky, dark arts, this was the motherload: a tidal wave of a book stuffed with visual artists from around the world, all accompanied by a sweet bear (sheep? I say sheep. There was debate) mask by Mark Ryden, ready to be fastened on one’s face with a lightly-colored ribbon. There was a velvet-flocked triptych by Martin Ontiveros, Skinner, and Junko Mizuno. A fantasy city on a poster. Stickers. All of it.Count on us then, to be lined up to have our copy signed at YBCA tomorrow (Tue/5) during the museum’s free day. Our fave freaky Bay Area cake artist Scott Hove and a host of others whose work is in this magical bundle will be signing books, all while Swiftumz plays a DJ set. We caught up with Collected 3‘s editors to gush and ask stupid questions.
Behold, the answers by Hi Fructose’s Annie Owens and Attaboy. And some pretty art thangs you’ll find in the boxed set.
Fuco Ueda
SFBG: I wonder what kind of language you use to describe the work Hi Fructose profiles? I know I’m seeing something distinctive, but dammit if I could put a genre on it.
Annie Owens: ‘New contemporary’ seems to be a good catch-all umbrella for most things under the high art radar, but even high-art is a line we cross sometimes.
Scott Hove
SFBG:Draw some lines for me — who are some artists who would never appear in Hi Fructose? Someone who you’ve never worked with that would be a fantastic inclusion. Living, dead, mythic beasts are all acceptable answers.
Attaboy: We’ve got some mythic folks lined up for the coming year, don’t want to ruin the surprise.
AO: Never say never. Even Thomas Kinkade has his appeal! [Artists we’d like to work with include] Hieronymus Bosch, Charles Addams. As for live ones, we’ve had the pleasure to have some of our favorite art legends, who we won’t mention here, say yes to an upcoming project so there’s that!
Gabriels
SFBG:Please recommend a usage for the mask enclosed in box set.
A: On someone’s else’s face. So you can poke fun of them.
Yes you can find time to see a movie this otherwise football-y weekend. The ongoing Noir City and Sketchfest still have a lot of great upcoming programming, Sly Stallone is back in evocatively-titled action flick Bullet to the Head, a zombie finds love in Warm Bodies (review below), and all the Academy Award-nominated shorts are now available for big-screen viewing, for anyone who takes winning the office Oscar pool as seriously as … the Superbowl.
And speaking of the big game, the Roxie will be hosting its annual “Men in Tights” viewing party, a benefit for the theater and the upcoming SF IndieFest. So you can have your pigskin, and eat your popcorn too. GO NINERS!
“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Animated”If you caught Wreck-It Ralph, nominated in the Best Animated Feature category, you’ve already seen John Kahrs’ Paperman, about a junior Mad Men type who bumbles through his pursuit of a lovely fellow office drone he spots on his commute. Or, if you saw Ice Age: Continental Drift, you’ve seen Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare, starring Homer and Marge’s wee one as she grapples with the social order at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. Among the stand-alones, Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog features a quick appearance by Eve, too, but the star is really the scrappy canine who gallops through prehistory playing the world’s first game of fetch with his hairy master. Two minutes is all PES (nom de screen of Adam Pesapane) needs to make Fresh Guacamole — which depicts grenades, dice, and other random objects as most unusual ingredients. The only non-US entry, UK director Timothy Reckart’s Head Over Heels, is about an elderly married couple whose relationship has deteriorated to the point where they (literally) no longer see eye to eye on anything. The program is rounded out by three more non-Oscar-nominated animated shorts: Britain’s The Gruffalo’s Child, featuring the voices of Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane; French art-thief caper Dripped; and New Zealand’s sci-fi tale Abiogenesis. (1:28) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8SbmPhavhs
“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Documentary” Selections include San Francisco filmmaker Sari Gilman’s poignant study of a Florida retirement community, Kings Point; Cynthia Wade’s Mondays at Racine, about a beauty salon that provides free services for women who have lost their hair to cancer treatments; Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s Inocente, a profile of a young, homeless, aspiring artist; Redemption, Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill’s take on New York dumpster divers; and Open Heart, Keif Davidson’s look at Rwandan children who travel to Sudan for high-risk surgery. (3:29)
“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Live Action” Selections include Bryan Buckley’s Asad, about a Somali boy who must choose between fishing and piracy; Sam French’s Buzkashi Boys, about two young friends coming of age in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan; Shawn Christensen’s babysitting yarn Curfew; Tom Van Avermaet’s supernatural love story Death of a Shadow; and another (sort-of) love story, Canadian Yan England’s Henry. (1:54)
Sound CityDave Grohl adds “documentary director” to his ever-lengthening resume with this tribute to the SoCal recording studio, where the grimy, funky décor was offset by a row of platinum records lining its hallway, marking in-house triumphs by Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Neil Young, and others (even, yep, Rick Springfield). Top acts and producers (many of whom appear in the doc to dish and reminisce) were lured in by a unique recording console, installed in the early 1970s, whose legend grew with every new hit it helped engineer. Despite its reputation as a hit factory — and the attraction of its laid-back vibe and staff — old-school Sound City began to struggle once the highly-polished sound of digital technology overtook the music industry. That is, until Grohl and Nirvana recorded Nevermind there, keeping the studio alive until the unstoppable march of Pro Tools hammered the final nails in. Or did it? Sound City‘s final third follows Grohl’s purchase of the studio’s iconic console (“A piece of rock ‘n’ roll history,” he proclaims, though he installs it in a swanky refurbished space) and the recording of an album featuring luminaries from the studio’s past … plus Paul McCartney. The resulting doc is nostalgic, sure, but insider-y enough to entertain fans of classic rock, or at least anyone who’s ever sneered at a drum machine. (1:46) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)
Stand Up GuysCall it oldster pop, call it geriatricore, just don’t call it late for its meds. With the oncoming boomer elder explosion, we can Depends — har-dee-har-har — on the fact that action-crime thrillers-slash-comedies like 2010’s Red, 2012’s Robot and Frank, and now Stand Up Guys are just the vanguard of an imminent barrage of grumpy old pros locking and loading, grousing about their angina, and delivering wisdom with a dose of hard-won levity. As handled by onetime teen-comedy character actor Fisher Stevens, Stand Up Guys is a warm, worthy addition to that soon-to-be-well-populated pantheon. It grows on you as you spend time with it — much like the two aging reprobates at its core, Val (Al Pacino) and Doc (Christopher Walken). Val, the proverbial stand-up guy who took the fall for the rest of his gang, has just completed a 25-year-plus stint in the pen. There to meet him is his only pal, and former partner in crime, Doc, who has been leading a humble life but has one last hit to commit for their old boss Claphands (Mark Margolis), who’s inexplicably named after a Tom Waits song. Sex, drugs, and some Viagra commercial-esque bluesy guitars are in order, but first Val and Doc must find their drive, in the form of their old driver buddy Hirsch (Alan Arkin), who they break out of a rest home, and, perhaps, their moral compass, which arrives with the discovery of a victim (Vanessa Ferlito) of baddies much less couth than themselves. The pleasure comes with following these stand-up guys as they make that leap from craven self-preservation to heroism, which might seem implausible to some. But to the cast’s, and Stevens’s, credit, they make it work — and even give the sentiment-washed finale a swashbuckling buddy-movie romanticism, the kind that a young Tarantino might dislike and an older Tarantino would be loathe to begrudge his lovable louses. (1:34) (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FVyUL1Q06M
Warm Bodies A decade and a half of torrid, tormented vampire-human entanglements has left us accustomed to rooting for romances involving the undead and the still-alive. Some might argue, however, that no amount of pop-cultural prepping could be sufficient to get us behind a human-zombie love story for the ages. Is guzzling human blood really measurably less gross than making a meal of someone’s brains and other body parts? Somehow, yes. Recognizing this perceptual hurdle, writer-director Jonathan Levine (2011’s 50/50, 2008’s The Wackness) secures our sympathies at the outset of Warm Bodies by situating us inside the surprisingly active brain of the film’s zombie protagonist. Zombies, it turns out, have internal monologues. R (Nicholas Hoult) can only remember the first letter of his former name, but as he shambles and shuffles and slumps his way through the terminals of a postapocalyptic airport overrun by his fellow corpses (as they’re called by the film’s human population), he fills us in as best he can on the global catastrophe that’s occurred and his own ensuing existential crisis. By the time he meets not-so-cute with Julie (Teresa Palmer), a young woman whose father (John Malkovich) is commander-in-chief of the human survivors living in a walled-off city center, we’ve learned that he collects vinyl, that he has a zombie best friend, and that he doesn’t want to be like this. We may still be flinching at the thought of his and Julie’s first kiss, but we’re also kind of rooting for him. The plot gapes in places, where a tenuous logic gets trampled and gives way, but Levine’s script, adapted from a novel by Isaac Marion, is full of funny riffs on the zombie condition, which Hoult invests with a comic sweetness as his character staggers toward the land of the living. (1:37) (Lynn Rapoport)
In the end, it was the women who saved us — and we, in turn, helped save them.
As a gay man, this was one of the lessons I took from Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman’s brilliant, sometimes harrowing film, United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP, which I caught yesterday at the GLBT History Museum in the Castro, and which screens again tonight Fri/1 at 6pm at the San Francisco Art Institute. The 93-minute movie, bristling with mindblowing archival footage, swiftly but effectively traces the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power movement from its rambunctious beginnings in 1987 in New York, through its major actions like the die-in inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the storming of the NIH headquarters in Maryland, to its eventual, sad dissipation under the weight of endless death in the mid-1990s. There is a lot of great retro fashion in this, btw.
But what sets United in Anger apart from other AIDS-related documentaries is its special attention to the broader sociological implications of a movement that united not just middle-class white gay men looking to save themselves (a commonly held view of ACT-UP that is specifically addressed throughout the film) but also lesbians, people of color, the poor, the homeless, trans people, and straight men and women people in general. Still, as firm as it is in its convictions, it’s never strident, letting the facts and footage carry the case in incredibly moving and sometimes, frankly, aesthetically beautiful ways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ZacAyc4b8
One particularly effective narrative thread is that of how many women were involved in ACT-UP, who have basically vanished from the common telling of the story. (Another excellent AIDS doc, the SF-centric We Were Here, also directly addresses this point, but not as broadly).
Those women knew this would happen, of course. They even called themselves “Invisible Women.” In United in Anger these women are not just given a voice, in effect the whole movie is turned over to them, fantastically, as it documents not just the early movement when hundreds of lesbians and straight women (mothers, sisters, lovers) joined ACT-UP, but the grueling, four-year struggle to get the Centers for Disease Control to redefine the meaning of AIDS to include the related diseases that women with HIV were experiencing, thus granting those women disability and social security benefits, along with better access to treatment. It’s worth it to remember that for years women died of HIV, but not officially AIDS — mostly because AIDS was then considered a white gay man’s disease, and “womens’ symptoms” were anathema to that stereotype.
This successful attempt at redefinition, which many devoted their last days to making, had huge implications for the fight for universal healthcare (indeed, footage shows some ACT-UP descendants rallying for it in 2007, with an unspoken glance towards Obamacare) and is firmly set in the lineage of women’s rights and the fight for abortion access.
Another revelation for many will be the conscious inclusion of people of different backgrounds and means in ACT-UP — Asians, African-Americans, the poor, the homeless, the freaks — who are not just highlighted in the film, but shown to be, in the end, ACT-UP’s major impetus. United in Anger doesn’t shy of implying that ACT-UP was an expression of the great liberal impulse to fight for equality and visibility, linking it not just to the Civil Rghts movement (from which ACT-UP explicity borrowed such effective strategies as affinity groups and canny press manipulation) but the epic historical battle to wrest power away from the wealthy yet ignorant and award it back to the people. And ACT-UP did have its practical personal triumphs. As one interviewee says, “I wouldn’t be here — the medicines I take now to stay alive wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t been dragged screaming across the street by police 20 years ago.”
The best part of the movie, for me, was that it takes the time to give every activist it shows a name — and (its own suspense) a set of birth-to-death dates appears all too frequently beneath that name. But beyond immortalizing its players, United in Anger shows ACT-UP to be a classic and inspiring convulsion of the liberal spirit, brought on by tragedy, eventually fading away like a cloud of human ashes, yet living on as an example of what can happen when people join together out of anger and compassion. And it ain’t preachy about it, either.
“The difference between art and vandalism is permission.” So said Dwight Waldo, retired San Bernadino cop, at the Zero Graffiti convention earlier this month in San Francisco. The event drew law enforcement officials from multiple countries, convening them for lectures on graffiti prevention, on street art’s connection to gangs and hate speech, and on ways to apprehend graffiti artists (“the Internet” figured prominently here, judging from the talks I managed to catch during the convention’s public portion.) In his talk, Waldo prided himself on shutting down a graffiti-inspired legal art show because it was being organized by an illegal graffiti artist.
But it would appear that the art community isn’t satisfied with allowing those that hold the anti-graffiti wipes to be the arbiters of taste. The folks at Guerrero Gallery have branded their show opening Sat/2 with Zero Graffiti’s imagery to put scrutiny on San Francisco and other cities’ efforts to repress graffiti.
“As for stopping graffiti… we should nourish it,” wrote gallery owner Andres Guerrero to me in an email. “The city’s effort to rid us of graffiti is a concern but graffiti will always be around. It’s an inspiring form of creativity that all demographics have accepted and have supported. It’s a growing culture that should be embraced and developed with the help of local communities. It’s a leading contemporary movement.”
The convention’s program, including ad for “spraycan sensor” that SF DPW officials confirmed have been purchased by the city. It’s been announced that next year’s conference will take place in Phoenix
The exhibit’s artists, Tim Diet and Remio, are both established gallery artists who got their start doing illegal graffiti. “It’s an exciting show for all of us at the gallery and they also represent a progressive intelligent community,” wrote Guerrero.
Given the dire state of arts education in the San Francisco Unified School District, perhaps city officials should start looking at graffiti artists in a different light. After all, if young people can’t find canvases elsewhere, why shouldn’t they make their mark on their neighborhood?
Project One opens “Project One Walls,” an indoor mural show, on Feb. 7. It’ll feature the work of current and former street artists and looks real cool.
Here’s the Guerrero Sat/2 opening’s featured artists, both of whom started developing their art on the street:
Norweigan-born artist Remio’s cluster faces still drip — but they’re emblematic of his transition from street work to showing in galleries
Bay Area artist Tim Diet’s “Sorry I Party” still embodies the chaos of work born in public space
“Man In Transition” and “This is Me”: Remio and Tim Diet
“SPANK!” and “Sex and the City: Live!” heat things up a little
The Regency Ballroom is awash in estrogen and vodka martinis, overrun by neatly-coifed former sorority sisters sheathed in tasteful rayon suits and drop earrings. The few men in attendance fall into two distinct camps—balding bruisers wrestled into button-down shirts, and fidgety-looking younger men who know they have just been dragged into the theatrical equivalent of a chick flick. One only hopes that a reciprocal arrangement involving the Super Bowl or some racy bedroom activity was reached earlier on, the latter being the most appropriate to the occasion — an evening of E.L. James-inspired comedy, “SPANK! The Fifty Shades parody.”
Apparently not to be confused with “50 Shades! The Musical,” nor “Fifty Shades of Grey: a XXX Adaptation,” “Spank!” bills itself as a musical review, and features just three performers as writer E.B. Janet (Amanda Barker), “smoldering” anti-hero Hugh Hanson (Drew Moerlein) and the painfully two-dimensional ingénue Tasha Woode (Michelle Vezilj).
As Soft Cell blares from the Regency’s imposing bank of speakers stage fog begins to drift across the stage and Moerlein bursts through the giant red curtains, gyrating to the music with the practiced wink-and-nudge finesse of a Chippendale. Eventually the two others join him, Vezilj dancing, and Barker drinking Chardonnay from a giant wineglass, her constant companion. Barker is our narrator and guide into the world of grey we are about to descend into.
She’s also about the best thing in the play — with a flirty dirty attitude and brazen laugh, she controls the stage far better than the supposedly dominant Moerlein, whose “dark” character is likened multiple times to that of Batman, but whose goofy antics including a pitch-perfect Gilbert and Sullivan song, instead bring the Tick to mind. He does get a moment where he strips all the way down to his Wonderoos, by far the raciest vignette in the otherwise bare-bones, vanilla-beige show, which still appears to satisfy its target oddience, who laugh at all the appropriate moments and even inject their own humor into the event during the potentially-awkward participatory bits, ring-led by Vezilj. And isn’t it the potentially-awkward participatory bits what we remember most in life? In love?
Speaking of bits, fan favorite, live action glamour-com “Sex and the City: Live!” is staging a revival down at Rebel, with all-new episodes and plenty of costume changes for all you drag-fashionistas. Dragonistas.
Starring the redoubtable Heklina as Carrie, Lady Bear as Miranda, Trixie Carr as Charlotte, and D’Arcy Drollinger as the best-known cougar since Mrs. Robinson, Samantha, the “Sex” crew promises to be as racy and raucous (if not more so) as the televised version. “Airing” on hump day Wednesdays, at both 7 and 9 p.m. each performance features two episodes, highlighting themes of promiscuity, dirty talk, romantical quandaries, and expensive shoes, a campy cocktail of fun escapism to get you through the week. And for the risk-adverse, fear not, the only participation the “Sex” ladies demand of you is laughter. Now that’s hot!
Sex and the City: Live!, open-ended run 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Rebel 1760 Market, SF $20 www.trannyshack.com
Photographer Liz Caruana has put Bay Area fashion designers on the other side of the lens – and they look pretty damn good. Select photographs Caruana shot for her new book, The Bay: Creators of Style were unveiled last Friday at the book launch and opening reception for her solo exhibit at Valencia Street’s Carte Blanche Gallery, on display through Feb. 13.
Caruana’s new book is a beautifully curated collection of 61 intimate black-and-white portraits of Bay Area designers. In true San Francisco fashion, the photographs capture some distinct personas. An eye-catching image of Olivia Griffin of Paul’s Hat Works has immortalized a hand brushing up against her face, a perfectly tilted hat, a mysterious woman who is far off in thought. To her left, Paulina Berczynski of FluffyCo is pictured looking shy, covering up most of her face with an old arts and crafts book. The biggest and perhaps most memorable portrait in the gallery is an image of Gangs of San Francisco‘s Laureano Faedi – the book’s cover model. Faedi looks like he is up to no good, gifting the camera a mischievous smirk.
In addition to the striking portraits, The Bay: Creators of Style features short bios about each designer and their company. You will also find words from select designers on their influences, their inspiration, and their thoughts on what the phrase “Made in America” means to style mavens today.
Some of the city’s most stylish arrived to pick up their copy of the book Friday night — you can get yours at Carte Blanche, or through Caruana’s website — eagerly flipping through the pages to search for their spread. Caruana was greeted with a congratulatory hugs from those featured.
All the portraits have an air of ease and about them, but as Caruana explained to the Guardian, shooting people who are usually on the other side of the lens can be a challenge.
“Some people were incredibly shy, like this woman here, [milliner] Jasmine Zorlu. She was the most shy but I feel like her image is so welcoming and open – that it is nothing like what it was when she [entered the studio.] I allotted two hours for everyone but we spent an hour and a half talking and only a half-hour shooting.”
The photographer eventually quieted down the crowd for some thank you’s and reflections on her experience creating the book. Between glances at her notes she boldly told her guests, “We [the Bay Area fashion community] do not try to design to impress other cities. We design to impress ourselves. We have a different climate, a different mood, and a different culture. This difference is what has created our community in fashion design. The designers I chose to be apart of this project are the ones I feel best represent the Bay Area. They are the ones that have been around the longest and that represent haute couture to ready-to-wear.”
It was my fault for working on my laptop behind the plate glass window of a 24th Street cafe when the Niners won… whatever game that was, last Sunday. But it is entirely your fault for spitting at my face through the plate glass window, you sad little hag of a Mission District twenty-something (sup George, remember when I interviewed you about your art a few years ago?) after screaming “DIE YUPPIES” or whatever in the door of said cafe.
So yeah, I’m not so stoked on Super Bowl (or as my friend Kelly Lovemonster put it, “the football game during the Beyonce concert.”) The amount of aggression generated by even a victory for our home team is mind-blowing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pumped for the Niners and for adorable, positive football fans — like novelty rapper and six-year old Sarah Redden — but I’m not trying to catch a burning bus about it. If you’re not either, come hide with me here:
Smell the magnolias at the SF Botanical Garden
Bury yourself in these in-season pink-and-white blooms, sure solace for the streets of shoulder-checking outside the park. Check out the Garden’s daily, free 1:30pm docent-led tour, or just wander about the gorgeous vegetation, liberated from half-time hullabaloo and lines at the bar. Check out the Garden’s full line up of magnolia-themed entertainment for other things that will make you happy.
Swell with pride for your city in a non-sports-related way with our new poet laureate
We love San Francisco’s sixth poet laureate Alejandro Murguia more than many things — we even gave him a Guardian column! — so we’re stoked for his inaugural address this week. He plans to address the state of the Latino community in San Francisco, lyrically no doubt.
Sun/27, 1-3pm, free. Main Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sfpl.org
Drift away with young East Bay classical musicians
As far as you can get, perhaps from the Tracy Morgan Kraft ad (or the teaser of said ad, that’s a thing now) — the 75 young players of the Oakland Youth Orchestra will take you away on the wings of their percussion, wind, and brass steeds. Get your Dimitri Shostakovich, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Rachmaninov fix here, at the group’s winter concert.
In the middle of it all — the red and gold beach towels, the cops pouring out champagne into the gutters on 16th Street — you will feel sad. Luckily, doorperson-like-you-wouldn’t-believe Dee Dean Leitner has assembled a passel of drag divas to belt out the shittiest odes to amore tonight at the Stud for a show lovingly dubbed “Worst. Song. Ever.” It starts early for drag, so you will be able to go more or less directly from whatever hole you’ve been hiding from, long before the last rowdies have hopped home on CalTrain.
Sun/27, 7-10pm, $5. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.studsf.com
Stay in bed with cats
Win or lose, fireworks, and the pussies may be scared. You can help.
