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Daly City Burmese, please

Andrew Lam
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We found it only a couple blocks away from the Daly City BART stop on the corner of John Daly Blvd and Mission St: Little Yangon. The Burmese restaurant was almost completely empty when we came in even though it was almost 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. A restaurant with one waitress, my plus one, and I. Here there was no next-door table conversation about non-profits, no street artist bros before me on the waiting list, no hipster babies crying, and no scary lesbians except for me and my dining companion — just deeply satisfying, affordable food.

The life of a Mission kid: it might start as something to brag home about, but living the dream isn’t always as all-fun-all-the-time as it sounds. When I first moved to the neighborhood, I delighted in the variety of cheap, amazing food. Cancun was what brought me here and Sunflower was why I stayed. But two years down the road, the places that once made me joyous have become sources of anxiety and malaise. I find myself making desperate choices, like going to We Be Sushi three nights in a row. And anywhere I go I fear that I will see my ex-girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, a previous employer, someone I spilled beer on the night before, or some combination of the three.

Time for a vacation. And just as the bridge-and-tunnelers feel that they must migrate to my neighborhood on the weekends, making it louder, dumber, and harder to live in, so too must I migrate to new restaurant territory. I ventured south and only a few BART stops away I found unexplored territory in Daly City.

Little Yangon’s dining room was lined with Southeast Asian tapestries, an electronic Buddha shrine with flashing neon lights rotating around its head, the soothing sound of Thai pop music swelling around us as we sipped Coronas and leisurely flipped through the menu. I already felt about a million times better. 

We ordered a feast: fried shrimp salad, prawn curry, biriyani, and the rainbow salad – noodles in a tamarind and yellow pea dressing. Most of the items on the menu are between $6.50 and $11. The rainbow salad arrived first and when I tasted it I knew I’d have to come back. The flavors in Burmese food are totally unique: a combination of citrus meets peanut meets warm spices – a variety that’s indicative of the fact that Burmese cuisine has roots in three different cultures.

Burma is bordered by Tibet, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India – anyone familiar with eating these countries’ different cuisines will be able to note the way that they all come together in Burmese dishes. Our curry and biryani were infused with traditional Indian spices like garam masala, along with a hint of tangy sweetness. 

My fellow gourmand and I agreed that the fried shrimp salad was by far the winning plate. It was the kind of thing you would never be able to replicate, or figure out how to make at home – a magical assortment of fried and whole shrimp, crispy noodles, onions, herbs, and a sweet-spicy dressing drawn from the kitchens of Vietnam, Thailand, and India in one fell swoop.

 

A rainbow salad, a waitress, and thee: recipe for a mellow evening at Little Yangon. Photo by Alex Fine

Our waitress and a few quiet cooks started closing up shop as my friend and I finished our meal. Does this sound snobby? I care about service. Not in a demanding way, I’m just saying that bad vibes can ruin a meal. But in this arena too, Little Yangon was perfect. The service was mellow, respectful, but attentive nonetheless. For someone used to being either totally ignored by restaurant waitstaff or obliged to engage in way too much overly-friendly chit-chat (and eye contact, shudder), Little Yangon was once again a welcome break.

As we left we thanked one of the cooks, who also turned out to be a sweet Burmese guy named Soe Naing, the owner of Little Yangon who does all the cooking and menu-planning with his wife and sister. Naing started out in the restaurant business immediately after moving to the States, washing dishes in a sushi restaurant. Soon enough, he was learning the art of sushi-making from his boss and moved on to start his own Daly City sushi business called Sunrise Sushi. Little Yangon is Naing’s newest restaurant, and he opened it to cook the food that he grew up eating in Burma. His spontaneous friendliness, kindness, and generosity shined through as he shared his hopes for the future of the business. “We’re getting busier!” he informed us excitedly, before walking us out and thanking us for coming in to eat. Try getting that kind of experience at Sunflower.

Walking back home from 16th and Mission, weaving between people with no pants on and pigeons covered in sludge, I was protected by my full-bellied shield, knowing that I had finally escaped the Mission, even just for one good meal.

 

Little Yangon

Mon 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.; Tues-Sun10 a.m. – 9 p.m. 

6318 Mission, Daly City

(650) 994-0111

Beer and Wine

MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Close-up: Lauren DiCoccio’s “Remember the Times”

John Elberling
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Lauren DiCoccio is interviewed in this week’s issue. One major element of “Remember the Times,” DiCoccio’s current exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is a trio of shelves on which objects are arranged in a manner that suggests vanitas paintings or memento mori (she’s even constructed a fabric skull) for endangered or near-extinct media and disposable or recycleable objects. Unlike paintings, though, DiCoccio’s works possess a three-dimensionality that allows one to hone in on details and view them from a variety of perspectives. Here are fifteen close-ups from the show.

Live Shots: Edwardian Ball, Regency Ballroom, 01/22/2011

Andrew Lam
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Photos by Erik Anderson

Edwardian Ball 2011: a journey into the abyss, the unknown, the festering macabre just inches from the surface of everyday society. You know what it is to which we refer — where the hell are these people getting their costumes? The truly creative — the guy whose head was encased in a glass globe filled with swimming goldfish counts and DJ Miz Margo’s eye-gouged baby doll stunner among them — surely made their own, but a trek beneath the ball’s crowded main floor revealed the secrets behind the mystery behind the enigma.

Yep, the vendors. Because if you were looking for extravagant millinery, feather implants, perhaps a multi-tiered carnival-gypsy-ballroom gown, it was all there for the well-moneyed and dapper among us. Though the Vau de Vire Society’s stun-tacular performance of Gorey’s The Eleventh Episode looped and somersaulted overhead, the bustling marketplace below spoke more about the true frippery-focused soul of the evening’s Edwardians. Looking for a place to wear that mink skull hair fascinator? Never fear, the Tim Burton Ball lurks just around the corner.

5 best, most deeply embarrassing ways to find a date

Andrew Lam
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They say that internet dating thing really works — especially if you’re a white male. But in the rush to OkCupid our lonely nights away, we may have missed a step. If you’re going for the artificially-constructed meet-and-greet, you may as well do it in person, right? Maximum awkwardness! That’s what the slew of alterna-dating events that are giggling and cautiously offering to buy you a drink this VD season are promising (no glove no love!). Below, five of the hipper – bikes! books! –options for those looking to be paired off before this warm snap ends and we all go back to our dens.

 

Literary Speed Dating

Finally, the library is doing something about your romantic travails! The public institution is freeing up from its mission to educate and entertain to host this book lover’s mix-and-mingle speed round. Singles in their twenties and thirties will get four to five minutes to biblio-chat about their fave bindings – books they hated, loved, or wanna bring up as a conversational flashpoint. 

Straight dates: Tues/1 5:45 – 7:45 p.m., free

LGBTQ dates: Weds/2 5:45 – 7:45 p.m., free

Pre-registration suggested

Main Library 

100 Larkin, SF

(415) 557-4400

www.sfpl.org


Love on Wheels Dating Game

Here’s an idea! Let’s pack new it-spot Public Works, put a curtain up and have singles ask each other prying questions regarding their transportational decisions in the search for love! Maybe the exhibitionism of the SF Bike Coalition’s Love on Wheels meat market-fundraiser isn’t for everybody. But it is for somebodies, and you may find love amongst the common folk audience members if you roll over to voyeur. Just hurry up if you wanna play the game, whydontcha – spots for straighties are already booked up and same sex cyclers should apply with the quickness to get on stage.

Weds/9 7 p.m., $5 for SF Bike Coalition members, $10 non-members

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.sfbike.org


Cupid’s Back

Because the pursuit of love is noble enough, but when you slap a healthy amount of fundraising for the queer historical society on top of your noble, your tail chase turns downright saintly! Such is this canonizing evening at Trigger, wherein those looking for someone to hold onto are pinned with a single bleeding heart with which to call upon Cupid’s help to locate love among boosters of the GLBT Historical Society. Open bar, gay community see-and-be-seen – this may just be the spot to find your new sweetie.

Fri/11 8 p.m. – midnight, $35-40

Trigger

2344 Market, SF

www.glbthistory.com


Singled Out on BART

Tie a ribbon around your ring finger (blue for menfolk, pink for womenfolk) and shoulder your messenger bag – you’re going hunting on BART today. Instead of subsisting completely on your interpretation of the odd sidelong glance, today there is an organized campaign to indicate one’s willingness to chat up a stranger on the Hallmark holiday. 

Mon/14 6 a.m. – 10 p.m., free

Bay Area BART trains

Facebook: Singled Out on BART


Queer Speed Dating

Well, Valentine’s Day has passed and what’s-his-name turned out to chew with his mouth open, so damn. Nonetheless, you have one more chance at finding love amongst the randoms. The Queer Love Connection is hosting this event as a fundraiser for Community United Against Violence, presenting a talk on “The Nueroscience of Love,” plus free food and drinks, and your chance to meet 10 different cute little things. There’s an “after-mingle” session too, so if you’re not down for a game of musical chairs come late. 

Sat/19 8 – 4 p.m., $20

Il Pirata

2007 16th St., SF

(415) 626-2626

www.cuav.org

 

Live Shots: Circus Center’s New Pickle Circus, JCCSF, 01/22/2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2

It seems that whenever I go to the circus, I leave the show wanting to join the circus. And I’m not talking about the desire to perfect my juggling skills or become an expert in improvised clowning. My circus ambitions lie in the urge to become a trapeze artist. That should be pretty easy, right?

If you happened to see the Circus Center’s New Pickle Circus this past weekend at the Jewish Community Center, you probably left the show with the same feeling.

What it really comes down to is that these gymnasts make it look so darn easy and downright doable, that it’s impossible not to want to be part of it. I mean, who doesn’t want to do three back flips in a row? Ok, I’ll stop gushing.

There were many other fabulous acts, that were also quite noteworthy. These included the Steve Martin look-a-like bubble man, who at one point actually stuck his hand into one of his soapy weightless spheres, and a pair of goofball clowns, that always seemed to be mopping up some mess on the stage. I also really loved the disco roller skate duo, complete with star-shaped glasses and skintight shiny bell bottoms.

Making its debut in the mid-’70s in San Francisco, the players of Pickle Family Circus are true veterans in the art of laughter and fun. They know how the circus works and you’re guaranteed a good time whenever you go see them. An outing to the circus is always so freeing and it’s never a bad time, unless you’re five and afraid of clowns (that used to be me). So what are you waiting for? Let’s go join the circus.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Jane, 16th Street and Valencia

Tell us about your look: “I like to be comfy, wear lots of layers and be prepared for whatever.”

Tell us how you met your snugglebunny — and win a $160 date!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Tell us how you met your snugglebunny — and win a $160 date!

Maybe your hands brushed while browsing the vinyl jazz bins at Amoeba. Maybe she caught up with you on the new Valencia bike lanes to compliment your ride. Or perhaps your kite strings got entangled on Marina Green one windy afternoon …

If you found your special someone in a very special way, enter our first annual SFBG Meet-Cute Contest! No matter how improbable, mystifying, funny, weird, or, yes, mushy, we want to know how you met your sweetie (or sweeties) for the Guardian’s Valentines Issue.

Tell us in 100 words or less your personal meet-cute story by Thursday, February 3. We’ll pick our 10 favorites and publish them in our Valentine’s Issue, coming out Feb. 9. One lucky participant, drawn at random, will win a date at Yoshi’s San Francisco worth $160! (Dinner and a live show with your honey — how can you beat that?)

CLICK HERE to enter and tell us your story!

 

 

*Entrants will be automatically added to our Guardian G-List newsletter

 

MUNI gets beastly, in a nice way

Andrew Lam
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A horde of salt marsh mice scurry down Market Street. Salmon leap across Divisadero traffic. Blue Mission butterflies cover your #22 Fillmore. If you haven’t been doing any wildlife-spotting recently, keep those binoculars close by. A new MUNI art program seeks to bring endangered species to the forefront of our transit consciousness — making our much-maligned buses prettier to look at, and bringing Bay nature back into our daily lives all in one fell swoop.

Visual artist Todd Gilens and an installation team wrapped four city buses with large-scale images of local endangered wildlife in their natural abodes as part of a project called “Endangered Species.” In a space normally reserved for advertisements for bail bondsmen or the new season of Real Housewives, you can now peep aforementioned mice broods and threatened fish and bugs. Gilens came up with the idea after the publication of a municipal transportation agency’s transit effectiveness project. The report used stats to measure the efficacy of SF public transit, but the visual artist felt that something was missing from the survey’s findings: namely, the community presence of our modes of public transportation. 

“I’m a ‘thing’ guy,” says Gilens. “Objects have lives and tell interesting stories. I wanted to think more about what buses are, beyond their technical character.” In the case of buses, Gilens thought it possible that they could be more than just people containers from here to there. “Endangered Species,” a project that took years for him to research and secure funding for, is his aesthetic reclamation of public space.

He eventually found a partner in The Bay Nature Institute, a Berkeley-based publication and project dedicated to celebrating and conserving nature and wildlife in the Bay Area. The group’s website is now the online home for  “Endangered Species,” and houses a bus tracker application that give fauna fans the current locations of all four Endanger buses.

It would stand to reason that the Endanger buses would have some direct conservationist agenda. But for Gilens, the moving art is only about calling attention to the natural beauty in and around the Bay Area. When asked if the project was meant to engage with the public on an ethical level, he said the Endanger buses purpose was really in the eyes of the beholder. “Art helps us to refine our noticing, and from there we can respond according to our capacities.” 

MUNI gets mousey. Photo by Todd Gilens

But Gilens choice to focus on the Bay’s circumscribed members of the animal kingdom might have another reading, one that strikes close to home for creative types being priced out of the city’s stubbornly sky-high rent prices. He made an interesting connection between art and endangered species: “Art is also not very ‘useful,’ perhaps in a similar way that a unique butterfly species or a marsh mouse is superfluous in their environment — But without them we have a flatter, duller, and certainly less robust world.”

Gilens hopes that seeing Endanger buses amongst the city hustle and bustle, will promote new ways of assessing personal experience – and one’s morning commute. “I hope that the beauty and unexpectedness of the images in different situations will invite playful associations. Perhaps the project will encourage a more connected and creative approach to everyday life,” he says. “Whether it’s allowing oneself to be moved by something beautiful, making room for another stranger on a bus, or becoming curious about even stranger life forms beyond urbanization.” Endangered artist or domesticated office rat, at least San Franciscans can agree that Endanger buses will be a refreshing sight to see amongst the city’s urban forest.

The Endanger buses will be out and about until April on different city lines each day. For more information on them – and how you can participate in MUNI’s bus-spotting game for prizes — go to www.baynature.org/endangerbus

 

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Herald and Biko, Dolores Park

Tell us about your look:

Herald: “Free”

Biko: “Pimpalicious”

The Performant: A dance named desire

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

Exploring personal myth with EmSpace Dance and Porchlight

Descending the wooden staircase into the basement performance space at Viracocha, one leaves the surface world behind and enters a parallel underworld of theatricality and allusion. Warm hardwood panels and golden lights, a distinct contrast to the concrete and glass-filled streets above, soothe the spirit — and unintentionally convey the crux of one Blanche DuBois’ obsession with creating a more beautiful reality from the one she’s been sentenced to. Prone to artifice and artfulness, Ms. DuBois is the central catalyst of the action in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire and its ultimate sacrifice. In EmSpace Dance’s adaptation (A Hand in Desire) however, the focus is spread more evenly among the five-person cast, both their stage personae and their “real” selves.


The likable cast, which includes a very present manifestation of Blanche’s (Rowena Richie) deceased husband Allan (Kegan Marling), jump from scene to scene guided by the chance provided in a custom deck of cards and an ongoing game of hearts. Some jumps make better sense than others and some scenes, especially the dance sequences, flow more smoothly, but the sheer gutsiness of the production makes it a compelling ride. Scenes in which the cast inhabited their everyday selves included a pair of interviews between Peter Griggs and Kegan Marling on the topic of repressed homosexuality, both Allan Grey’s and Williams’ own, and a pair of scenes in which one actor stood on a chair surrounded by the others and attempted to tell a great lie. Scenes straight out of the original play, set to dance, include Mitch’s (Christopher White) awkward courtship of Blanche, and Stella and Stanley’s (Natalie Greene and Peter Griggs) blowout fight and passionate reconciliation.

Any work, no matter how experimental, usually has at least one thread to bind the piece together, and the moody improvisational soundscape provided by musicians Josh Pollock and Chris Broderick did just that. With a few subtle effects, Pollock made his ukelele throb like a serious double bass and other instruments, while Broderick provided the flute, woodwinds, and the eerie tingle of a jaw harp.

Meanwhile at the special SF Sketchfest edition of the Porchlight story-telling series, local comics and writers also explored the themes of artifice vs. reality, and desire vs., well, reality, to a full house at the Purple Onion. Ali Liebegott told the story of a sequence of on-the-job lies she has told to keep sane (at a crappy waitressing gig: “Why aren’t you smiling?” “Because my mother has cancer”.) Matt Besser waxed un-nostalgic for his college obsession with losing his virginity. W. Kamau Bell dissected the myth/reality of “the big black dick”. Suzanne Kleid told a Snopes-worthy anecdote about her grandfather, a torn lottery ticket, and a tragically misapplied do-gooder’s instinct. Bucky Sinister examined his youthful naïveté and ambition to move to LA to be a screenwriter. At the heart of each story lay the wistfully human desire to believe in (or create) an artful truth, no matter how far removed from actual reality it might prove. Blanche DuBois, you are not alone.

Huge demand as Burning Man tickets go on sale

Sasha Cuttler
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Huge demand as Burning Man tickets go on sale

Burning Man 2011 got off to a big start yesterday as tickets went on sale, demonstrating that the 25-year-old event is more popular than ever. The demand for tickets at 10 a.m. was so strong that it crashed the servers for almost two hours, overcoming efforts to beef up a ticketing system that has functioned pretty well the last two years after being a frustrating hassle in previous years.

“People were happy with [the event] last year or they wouldn’t have pounded the servers trying to get a ticket,” Marian Goodell, the event’s communications director, told us. “The ticketing system had been tested pretty extensively, but the sudden demand for service was high that the ticket vendor had ever heard of before.”

More than 20,000 people snapped up tickets in the first 24 hours, outpacing last year and selling out the 9,000 tickets each at the first two tiers of $210 and $240. Goodell said that as many as 40,000 users appeared to be trying to log on yesterday, with many apparently not willing to endure a wait time of about six hours in some cases. Once the current tier of $280 tickets is gone, the price will be $320 until the event.

Last year, the population of Black Rock City – the temporary city that Burning Man attendees build in rural Nevada every August – peaked at more than 51,000 people on Friday night. Goodell wouldn’t make a prediction about this year’s population, noting that spring ticket sales are hard to predict, but she noted that many of the event’s marquee artists, such as Peter Hudson and Sean Orlando, are planning ambitious projects for this year that are already generating excitement.

“We’re very excited about this year,” she said.

For more on Burning Man and its myriad subcultures, you can find my past Guardian articles on the culture here or look for my upcoming book, The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture, being released next month by CCC Publishing.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Kate, Market and Van Ness

Tell us about your look: “I got this whole outfit in San Francisco. I’m visiting from Brighton in the UK.”

Enjoy tonight’s Full Wolf Moon

Mary Magee
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Enjoy tonight’s Full Wolf Moon

I thought the moon was full last night when I woke up in the wee hours (thanks to allegies possibly induced by the yellow flowers on the acacia trees) and saw its silvery light streaming through the window. And my cat seemed to think it was a full moon, too, judging by the way she was racing through the yard, tail erect, pouncing on moonlit leaves

But according to my Old Farmer’s 2011 Almanac, the moon hits fullness today, Wednesday. And it is classified as a Full Wolf.

“Full Moon names date back to Native Americans, of what is now the northern and eastern United States,” the almanac explains, noting that “tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full Moon.”

The Farmer’s Almanac also notes that January’s full moon was named a Full Wolf,  because “Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages.” And it lists the origins of names for all the other month’s full moons. These include March’s Full Worm Moon (“As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins”), July’s Full Buck Moon  (“July is normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur”) and November’s Full Beaver Moon (“This was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps froze, to ensure a supply of warm winter furs.”)

Obviously, life in San Francisco under a full moon is a little more hospitable, with folks known to go surfing, bicycling and kayaking by its silvery light.
And for those of you into gardening, the day after a full moon to the day before it is new again, is supposedly the best time to plant flowering bulbs and vegetables that bear crops below ground, according to my almanac. (Though January still isn’t a good month for planting, even in California, because of the possibility of frosts.)

Likewise, supposedly, it’s best to plant flowers and vegetables that bear crops above the ground during the light, or waxing, of the Moon, which is from the day the Moon is new to the day it is full.

“Plant flowers and vegetables that bear crops above ground during the light, or waxing, of the Moon: from the day the Moon is new to the day it is full,” my almanac states.

The idea is that with no or little moonlight, a plant’s root system strengthens, and with full or increasing moonlight, a plant’s stem and leaf system strengthens. I haven’t tested out this theory yet, so if you have any moon planting stories, please feel free to share. And if you want to read more about full moons, check out the Farmer’s Almanac’s treasure trove of information here. And if you have any theories on whether nocturnal birds like night herons tend to be more active hunters on full moons, also feel free to share. I’ve been watching a colony in the East Bay for some months now, and it seems that they come inland to hunt in a grassy field near where I live on new moons and high tides, and hunt in the mudflats along the Bay on full moons and low tides (like the conditions we’ll see tonight). But above all, enjoy the free moonshine.

Not your guru’s asana

Andrew Lam
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1
Not your guru’s asana

Why put 12 year-old aged balsamic vinegar from Modena, Italy into a chocolate truffle?  Well, because it tastes surprisingly great, for one thing. But also, according to Dave Romanelli, one of the presenters at last weekend’s flexibly diverse San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference, because it can heighten your yoga practice. Enlightenment through chocolate? We’ll take it.

New York-based Romanelli taught a class called “Yoga  and Chocolate,” and like many of the conference’s fifty presenters, he brought a yogic flavor to the conference influenced as much by his personal path to the mat as ancient teachings. In other words, fundamentalist ayurveda this was not.

Referred to as “Yeah Dave” by his friends (as in, “yeah, Dave, whatever…”), Romanelli has penchant for stoner-esque musings that eventually left him with the radical idea that to flourish in today’s fast-paced society, yoga should be made accessible to a broad audience. 

In the ’90s, Romanelli and a partner started At One, a chain of trendy yoga studios in Phoenix that Romanelli says in an interview with SFBG were meant to “bust through the stereotypes” that yoga is pretentious and unconnected to daily life. In 2009 he published a book called Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ in the Moment, an irreverent manual to enjoying life in the here and now. These days, he travels the country leading workshops that seek to initiate people into a yogic lifestyle through careful attention to the senses – which he engages with the help of wine and exotically-flavored chocolate provided by Yoga and Chocolate co-founder and master chocolatier Katrina Markoff.  

“Yoga and Chocolate” was one of over a hundred classes, guest lectures, all-day intensive workshops, and special events that filled the San Francisco Hyatt over the MLK Day weekend, ranging from fiery asana practices to contemplative journeys through yogic philosophy.  The scads of famous yogis in attendance included teachers like Ana Forrest, creator of the healing-based Forrest Yoga approach, Seane Corn, an internationally celebrated yoga teacher, activist and humanitarian, and San Francisco’s own Baron Baptiste, whose parents opened the city’s first yoga center in 1955 and who has shared his empowering vinyasa yoga with classes around the world.

With so many presenters — and with nearly half of conference attendees yoga teachers in their own right — the expo left the downtown hotel rife with pairs of groovy tie-dyed pants and hundreds of bare feet riding up and down the Hyatt’s escalators. In a city like San Francisco, it’s not surprising that the traditional Indian practice could draw such a huge audience – but the sight of so many modernized classes begged the question: Patanjali compiled the yoga sutras no later than 150 BC, and we’ve been mulling them over ever since. How much is really left to learn?

The answer is “a lot” if this year’s offerings were to be believed. Joining “Yoga and Chocolate” was MC Yogi’s “Ganesh is Fresh,” a hip-hop inspired retelling of the story of the elephant-headed deity Ganesh, remover of obstacles. (Fyi, if you’re a harmonious hip-hop head, it’s also the name of a track on MC Yogi’s 2008 album “Elephant Power.”) Another high-energy choice was “Bollywood Vinyasa,” a cardio-heavy yogic workout set to bright rhythms of bhangra and Bollywood music. 

“I never intended to be a yoga teacher,” said Hemalayaa, the class’ teacher and the Canadian-born daughter of Indian parents. “I started practicing as a way to guide myself, be a leader for myself,” she announced to the students before her. The seed of “Bollywood Vinyasa” was planted during darker days in Hemalayaa’s 20s, when she would come home and blast Bollywood music as a way of shaking out her troubles. After having grown to the lively beats, she was able to incorporate them into her study of yoga. “Now I teach as a way to continue my study. Being a leader to others helps me stay true to myself.”

Romanelli agrees on the importance of applying traditional yogic teachings in a way that’s applicable to our own life stories. He has no problem using his own life experiences – like having man-boobs and wearing too much cologne on prom night in pursuit of after-party action – to draw laughs and convince his students that self-reflection can be fun.  

His style is a definite departure from traditional yogic teaching (ashtanga yogis advocate pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses from external objects, as a means of attending to the inner self). But, in Yeah Dave’s opinion, sensual experience can be the first step toward getting people to pay attention and eventually journey inward.  

“In today’s society, how realistic is closing off the senses?” he asks. “People are afraid to be alone with themselves on a three by six mat.” He admits that people often need help to make the first step. “And if it has to be chocolate, then so be it,” he grins.

For information on next year’s Yoga Journal Conference stretch out to www.yjevents.com/sf

A fiction writer that beats FOX News for war coverage

Andrew Lam
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0

Kudos to the New Yorker for bringing Daniel Alarcón to the attention of the eastern rag’s audience. The Oakland writer is one of the three West coast scribes from the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 “young” writers anthology who will be reading at City Lights Books on Weds/19. I suggest you go check up on the event – if not for the magazine’s time-proven track record of tagging future lit stars, then because the more people in this country who read Alarcón, the less likely we are to plunge our country into madness.

Alarcón’s are war stories, but not in the sense that we grow up with in America, where the term brings to mind bombs and sharp, whizzing death. Alarcon draws on his cultural memory of home country Peru (where he left for Birmingham, Alabama when he was three years old) to speak of the more prosaic nature of conflict through the eyes of people to whom it is brought, not those that strap on uniforms and board helicopters to go to it. 

Take the novel he’s best known for, Lost City Radio (Harper Collins, 288 pages, $24.95). It takes place – in the grand tradition of Latin American epics — in a mythic town, or at least an unnamed city. A war has raged for years, resulting in the disappearance of radio star Norma’s husband, Rey. An orphaned boy from the city shows up and with him an end to her endless, ragged wonderings about what happened to Rey. Every one of the book’s characters is struggling to deal with the real nature of war: a messy business, sure — but not one where the women, children, and elderly are left at home, as they are in many of our country’s depictions of conflict.

There are few gunshots fired in Lost City Radio. Instead, the scene of war is rendered in social notes – illicit dance parties held after curfew, names you can and can’t say on the radio, acceptance of loss, confusion. The story that Alarcón contributes to 20 Under 40 is Second Lives, which tells the story of a Peruvian family who sends their eldest son away from inflation and civil war to America, where he promptly immerses himself in the American life, which is to say he starts water-skiing, job-hopping, and stops writing home to his mom, dad, and brother.

What would our wars — including the one we are waging on immigration — be like if the general populace of our country saw it this way, instead of through the clip art pyrotechnics of TV news channels? 

Plus, Alarcón is the only author I’ve ever heard to name-check a seminal tome from my childhood, The Phantom Tollbooth as being an influential one in his life. Plus, he lives in Oakland. The night’s other readers, Chris Adrian and Yiyun Li, both hail from the Bay too. The last time the New Yorker pulled this same anthology stunt in 1999 they pegged Junót Diaz, Jonathan Franzen, and Jhumpa Lahiri before their ascent into best-sellerdom, so it’ll be perfect if you’re the before-the-curve type about the national fiction scene.

 

20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker

Weds/19 7 p.m., free

City Lights Books

261 Columbus, SF

(415) 362-4921

www.citylights.com

 

The Performant: Do you SQUART?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Let it be resolved, improv-based speed-playwriting competitions involving queer performance artists, cake, fabulous spandex, atrocious wigs, adult diapers, bare bums, wind-up hamsters, and flasks of whiskey should always be bestowed a title which sounds like an uncouth bodily function. Because at the very least it leads to the humorous speculation of what particular bodily function that might be. Though hopefully your attention will mostly be on the crazed mish-mash unfolding onstage, because queer performance artists armed with cake, fabulous spandex, and all the rest, put on quite a show.

Or at any rate, they did at the one-year anniversary SQUART, which graced the SOMARTS stage on Sun/9. Conceptualized by Laura Arrington and co-produced by The Offcenter and SOMArts, Spontaneous Queer Art invites participants to create ensemble pieces in two hours abiding by specific criteria, and present the finished piece to a panel of local “celebrity judges”. This season’s theme was New Queer Baby, so the criteria included counting down, making resolutions, and giving birth. Pregnant themes, if you will, and ripe for interpretation.
 
After an awkwardly-timed round of oddience participation, the first of four groups took the stage, dressed to dazzle in glittering tops, tiaras, and a sparkling, assless jumpsuit. After a series of sketches: the birth of a hamster, a needy girl at a party, an impassioned singalong to “If I Could Turn Back Time,” they regrouped to devise a list of non-traditional New Year’s resolutions such as “I need more excessive celebration in my life,” and “I need to find a way to make more money.” Fun stuff, but group number two quickly eclipsed their joie de avenir with a strikingly confrontational piece that traded in “fear, loathing, and ecstasy”. Dressed in diapers and trailer-park drag, the group spent a good portion of the show compulsively adding to the layers of garbage strewn about the stage — condoms, salt, champagne, crumpled paper, shopping bags, a tank of helium — while from the oddience a belligerent “heckler” (Philip Huang) kept interrupting their banal patter with a volley of insults, and deliberately annoying behaviors such as pacing around the room, and throwing his chips at the judges. A climactic moment involving another singalong and a half-naked performer (Michael Velez) being pushed around the stage on the back of a
dumpster screaming “I’m God” to the apathetic masses was the most visually interesting tableau of the whole evening.
 
The exceptional cohesion of the winning group doubtlessly pushed them to the top, points-wise. A woman (Loren Robertson) with a microphone sat on the edge of the stage singing “100 Bottles of Beer” as the rest of the group enacted a fully-clothed orgy which resulted in the birth of one very naked man. Brought to Loren, his head in her lap, he began to nurse at her breast while she continued to sing. This scenario repeated itself variously, while the rest of the cast danced the Hora, and attended a “dance class” in spandex, until there were four wriggling, naked bodies attached to Loren and no more bottles of beer on the wall. Her world-weary acceptance combined with the boundless enthusiasm of her “babies” and the dancers was strikingly nuanced.

A great example of how “spontaneous” doesn’t have to mean “sloppy”, and makes me think SQUARTing more in the New Year could be a resolution worth sticking to.

Dan Witz gifts SF his finest S&M grates

Andrew Lam
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Given that he’s best known for his series of tiny, jewel-like airbrushed hummingbirds, it may strike his hordes of ardent fans as dissonant that street artist Dan Witz‘s latest offerings are so, well, fucked up. His current show at White Walls (on display through Feb. 5) is comprised of fake grated windows that Witz sneak-bolts onto buildings. The windows reveal chiaroscuro women with ball gags in their mouths and wasted man-prisoners. Witz, a classically trained artist, has rendered them realistically enough to invoke stomach-lurching concern in the onlooker. WTF, right?

But the artist, who I called up at while he was working at his chilly studio in dead-of-winter New York City, doesn’t see the birdies and the ball gags as being all that different. “Everything I do is an act of cultural aggression in some way,” he says. In 1979, when a young Witz airbrushed 40 of his now-famous hummers below 14th Street in Manhattan, their preciousness was a radical departure from the then-current trends in street art. Now, he says, his window grates onto depravity similarly represent what’s lacking in today’s milieu.

 

Keep your eyes on the road people — you can peep Witz’s highway pieces en situ above

 

“There’s a darkness and provocation that I think is missing from street art right now. Those uncomfortable moments, there’s just not much of it,” he reflects. Witz is a genius at creating, as my gallery-going companion at the White Walls opening on Saturday put it, “art that makes you feel something. Really any art that makes you feel something, I mean, that’s good.” 

Witz thinks the very act of making art that people don’t have to pay to enjoy – or be disturbed by, in the case of the grates he’s installed in undisclosed locations all over SF in anticipation of his White Walls show – is subversive. Y’know, the whole “taking the art to the people thing.” One of the problems about art today, Witz tells me, is that “as artists, we’re making art for rich people.” 

Wait – but the whole point of this article is that he’s having a gallery show in which his grates are being sold at prices that most people reading this article will not be able to afford (presumably, I’m actually kinda nervous to call and inquire – that whole “if you have to ask” business and all). I raise the point with Witzy, who tells me not to hate, essentially.

“We have to support this art. I think that’s mainly why people buy these pieces,” he tells me. Galleries are where Witz makes his bread and butter – otherwise how would he afford a life of donning maintenance worker outfits and affixing freaky photo-paintings of fetish models in shackles to buildings? It’s an argument that I’ve heard repeated a few times, by many different artists who’ve gained notoriety on the streets – public art is what inspires them, but without price tags and collectors, they’d be back to their day job. 

Plus, Witz informs me, the street is never far from his shows. At White Walls, great pains have been taken to locate the grates’ original use for the casual viewer – photos of them in their pavement-side locations abound, and each buyer of the indoor grates receives a photo print of their purchase’s al fresco twin, most likely made by Witz in the same batch of work. 

He says that as he ages, he’s become less concerned over what the art world’s opinions of his work is – but he’s created hundreds of the grates so far, to try to figure out which images snap the most necks, or as he puts it: “lie plausibly” on the streets. Indicative of the care, love, and reptilian focus that Witz injects into his work, this is a process in which he likens himself to a fertile mother sea turtle. “Those sea turtles, they lay a hundred eggs and only like two survive. I have to lay a fucking lot of eggs.”   

 

Dan Witz: “What the %$#@?”

Through Feb. 5

White Walls 

839 Larkin, SF

(415) 931-1500

www.whitewallssf.com

 

Turn to the left: Transgender threads hit the online runway

Andrew Lam
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Fashionable transsexuals are in the air, floating about on a current of gender smarts and well-fitting blazers and pant hips. Consider the evidence: on Friday, local trans rag Original Plumbing held a runway show at the Elbo Room to celebrate the release of its fashion issue, Justin Vivian Bond just issued a flowering proclamation of pronoun for those looking for a way to describe v (read it already), and now, a transpeople website that promises it will finally provide you with a dress that’ll fit right over those shoulders of yours. 

“This is a group of people that often need custom clothing and haven’t figured out how to get it yet.” Sarah Dopp is a transgender connector. The founder of Genderfork, a warm feeling-inducing collection of photos and stories from folks rejecting the binary model of gender from around the world, Dopp identifies as a “female, androgynous, genderqueer.” When we got the chance to catch up with her via phone last week, she told us that the idea for Genderplayful is one that she holds close to her own zipper.

Take, for example, her trip home for the holidays. Dopp’s well-meaning mom drew her aside one day before Christmas to talk presents with her. “She said she wanted to give me mine in advance because she didn’t know if I was going to like it and she didn’t want us to go through all that stress on Christmas Day,” Dopp says. The gift was a much-needed coat. Dopp, endowed with what she calls “a broad back but big hips,” can’t fit into most store bought clothes. “I just burst into tears. It’s just such an emotional subject for me, especially since I’m working on this project.”

Clothes that fit right are a common concern for a lot of transsexual individuals who are looking for a good Friday night frock – or even just an outfit to wear to work. Such sartorial endeavors often require a lot of time to search for the perfect fit, or as Dopp puts it, “a lot of money, and you better be comfortable talking with your tailor.” Plus, most stores are totally boring. “Conventional retail stores,” Dopp says, “just don’t have the most interesting clothing these days.”

On Genderplayful, she hopes to create a community wherein these kinds of concerns can be a source of empathy and DIY commerce instead of stress. Picture an Etsy stocked chockfull of transgendered buyers and sellers, only minus the limiting rules that all items exchanged be either handmade or over 20 years old to be considered vintage. Buyers will be able to describe their dream garment, and sellers will be able to display their broad shouldered-broad hipped coat designs (or tuxes with room for bosom, or robo-pirate-hipster-gypsy-goth wear — whatever the case may be) for a worldwide audience of eager fashionista/o/vs. 

Genderfork user Courtney submitted this fierce shot of beautiful-handsome hotness

Given the amount of interest already generated by the site, Dopp is hopeful that it will be a revenue-generator, not just a feel-good project. “We’re starting with the buyers, which I think is an interesting thing in a recession.” Handmade e-commerce seems to have dodged much of the financial ruin affecting the rest of the online retail industry – Etsy experienced a 65 percent increase in sales in December 2010 over last year’s figures at the same time, making it the site’s biggest month yet.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a little in Genderplayful’s coffers to get the online marketplace up and running, which Dopp estimates will take another three to six months. The site is currently fundraising – donors (won’t you be one?) can be a part of the magic until Sat/15. Added bonus: if you give money now, you can be a part of the site’s soft opening, checking out the transgendered transactions weeks before the regular public is allowed in. “If can we can raise $5,000 we will do it. If we raise $50,000 we will do it really well and awesomely,” Dopp explains.

“The wrong clothes can feel like trying to speak gibberish with conviction,” says a bespectacled dapper who weighs in on the darling video of testimonies by Genderplayful’s supporters-potential customer base. One can’t help but wish the plucky Dopp and her e-gang of genderqueered dandies well on their way to style glory and accessibility. Because the dressing room is a rough experience for many of us – even leaving aside the question of which one to go into. 

Street Threads: Sabrina

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Street Threads: Sabrina

Today’s Look: Sabrina, 17th Street and Valencia

Tell us about your look: “I own Density, and so I get a lot of my clothes from there.”

Expert opinion: how best to love your Oregon Ducks

Andrew Lam
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There are sports fans who watch every game, know all the stats, own all the gear, take it upon themselves to achieve championship-level drunk status upon every win and loss their team achieves — and then there are real sports fans. Those are the guys that cobble together high-quality parodic hip-hop videos with their buddies that become their football team’s anthem and Youtube blockbusters, getting them flown around the country to perform — and getting star-struck coeds to swoon at the tailgate.

That’d be Jamie Slade, Brian McAndrew, and Michael Bishop, whose Supwitchugirl team starred in and edited the Eugene, Oregon party anthems “I Love My Ducks” and “I Love My Ducks (Return of the Quack),” as well as a host of other tunes dedicated to frat juicin’ brobots and bathroom water conservation — even at the price of party foul.  Lucky us, SFBG had the inside line on these young bucks and got Jamie Slade, the group’s tallest member with its curliest hair, to email with us about ways you can be the ultimate Ducks fan at the team’s championship title run on Mon/10 against Auburn University — or front like you are, at least.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What’s the most important thing that someone unacquainted with them should know about the Oregon Ducks’ season this year?

Jamie Slade: This is Oregon’s very first run at the national title and last year was the first year since 1995 we went to the Rose Bowl so both this year and last year are monumental years for Duck football history. That’s why Oregon has been getting so much hype lately on TV — that and head coach Chip Kelly has only lost three games in his whole career — which has only been two years, but it’s still very impressive.

 

SFBG: An all-purpose line to make yourself sound like a real fan?

JS: I LOVE MY DUCKS

 

SFBG: The season highlight? Lowlight?

JS: The season highlight was beating Tennessee. They’re in the SEC conference, which is known for being the best conference, historically, in college football. Also, beating Oregon State and solidifying our spot in the national championship game. Also the Stanford game, they’re now the best one-loss team in the nation and WE beat them. They just won their bowl game which makes us look GOOD. Lowlight? I guess the Cal game where we only won by two points when we were favored to win by 30-plus.

 

SFBG: How can you tell who the Ducks fans are?

JS: We have the loudest stadium in college football — literally, the decibels in Autzen Stadium have been recorded as louder than a fighter jet taking off and that isn’t because of how the stadium is engineered and built, it’s because we yell our asses off. Duck fans are loud and will be happy to yell in your face if you’re an opposing fan.

 

SFBG: Have you met the team? Which player made the biggest impression on you and why?

JS: Yeah we’ve met the team, well most of the players at least. Two players that have been really nice to us has been DJ Davis, our wide receiver and defensive end Kenny Rowe. DJ Davis is just an all-around nice guy with a really sincere personality and Kenny Rowe is a really funny dude. Every time I see him he always says “Man, I wanna be just like you” even though he leads the Pac-10 in sacks and is a menace on the field.

 

SFBG: How’d Supwitchu Girl get together? What was the first video you guys made?

JS: We met in the dorms. Michael and Brian have been longtime friends and I met them when I was on the Oregon track team my freshmen year. Because of Saturday practices I would stay in the dorms on Friday nights and Michael and Brian coincidentally stayed in as well and our personalities just clicked. Our first video is called “Just Don’t Flush It” and it’s a music video about water conservation. It was an inside joke at first about how Brian would never flush the toilet in our tiny apartment during our senior year. 

 

SFBG: Are you super stars in Eugene at this point? 

JS: We’re more sex symbols if anything, Caitlin. Just kidding haha. I wouldn’t say we are super stars at all — we get recognized just because the video is so popular but we don’t get star treatment or anything, we still had to go to school and do everything else every other student has to go through. Sometimes people say “Hey are you that “I Love My Ducks” guy?” and I say yes…but we are so much more than JUST the “I Love My Ducks” guys.

 

SFBG: Do you have plans to extend your reign of terror to other college towns?

JS: NO. We are die-hard Duck fans. That’s where we find inspiration for these songs…out of true emotion and love for this team.

 

SFBG: Future video plans? Or are you done with the UO scene now that you’re graduating?

JS: Yep we have a video coming out after the BCS game called “Pogs” and it is about that childhood fad of throwing Pogs and slammers etc. Should be funny. But we all plan on travelling for a few months and reconvening afterwards to figure out what our next step will be.

 

SFBG: What line from your songs do you hear people repeat the most?

JS: From the first song: “Holy Moly, is that my boy Masoli?” From the second song: “Eatin chips ‘n’ dip with the brain Chip Kelly!”

 

You can yell your ass off (or get yelled at in your face) with the rest of the Oregon fans at The Independent (628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com), which will be playing the national championship game on their pull-down movie screen.


BCS National College Football Championship Game: University of Oregon vs. Auburn University

Mon/10 5:30 PST, FOX Sports

 

The Performant: Fresh Starts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Renewing ourselves with Right Brian Performancelab and Ween cover band Golden Eel
 
I spent my New Year’s Eve basically riding around in circles from shut-down party to shut-down party. (Let’s hear it for that War on Fun!) But I’m a big believer in the symbolic do-over that the first week of the year offers up as a recompense for the things left undone over the last one. Looking back and yet forward, Right Brian Performancelab’s one night reprise of September’s “The Elephant in the Room” served as a good example of how to straddle the line between past accomplishments and future ambitions. After a four-year parenting hiatus, Performancelab’s John Baumann and Jennifer Gwirtz’ reentry into the hybrid arts scene combined movement, text, shadow, and song into a piece both playful and poignant.

An invisible elephant, “ignored by the crowned heads of Europe,” graced the center of a low-rent circus ring. An elephant of course is a convenient metaphor for an unwieldy truth, hinted at obliquely throughout the piece. At times very large, at times very small, and at times created by the very bodies of the performers attempting to come up with its ultimate definition, the elephant inhabited its mutable space with the silent aplomb of a consummate pro. Meanwhile, the Performancelab cast — Baumann, Gwirtz, Laura Marsh, and Lisa Claybaugh — pinwheeled around it dressed like ragamuffin circus clowns, exploring the forces of gravity, fear, and dream. From a study in the anarchy of goofing off to a lone woman’s struggle against a headwind of unseen adversity, a comical interlude with Dr Suess’s legal team to a slow-motio Alice in Wonderland eat me/drink me sequence, a faceoff at the water cooler between “the counter-culture” and “ the establishment” to an ode to willful obliviousness, each small piece sparkled with sly intelligence, humor, and heart. It could have been just a tentative toe dip into the performance pool, but it felt more like an attempt to test the high dive.
 
It also seemed appropriate to the spirit of New Year’s to welcome the appearance of a new band to the barroom circuit on January 1st. Admittedly, it was a cover band. But sometimes all you want on a Saturday night is to drop five bucks at Benders and bliss out to a few favorite tunes, and for that, Ween cover band Golden Eel totally fit the bill. Playing a mix mainly from Chocolate and Cheese and The Mollusk, Cree Rider, Misisipi Mike, John Diaz, and Tony Sales demonstrated the enviable musical flexibility of their heroes while avoiding the temptation to attempt emulating studio recordings note for note. Their interpretations of “Baby Bitch,” “Push th’ Little Daisies,” “Piss up a Rope,” and “Buenas Tardes Amigo,” were particularly tight and full of fun. True they kept their instrumental jamming time way below the Ween standard, but 30-minute versions of “Poop Ship Destroyer” are probably best left to the pros anyhow.

Street Threads: Look of the Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Street Threads: Look of the Day

Today’s Look: Sasha and Alex, 16th Street and Valencia

Tell us about your look:

Sasha: “Nonpractical”

Alex: “I’m wearing Russian socks.”

 

The Performant: Deck this!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Aggro Yuletide fun with Will Franken and Satan’s finest

It’s a common misperception that the sensory-overload of the holiday season is an even greater irritant to the committed misanthrope than the ennui of the everyday, but I beg to differ. Actually the holidays are when misanthropes tend to shine: while everybody else is getting their longjohns in a bunch because of the line at the post office, the ever-increasing price of java logs, or Christmas carol earworms, misanthropes, accustomed to weathering the seas of perpetual annoyance, seem comparatively serene. Also, because everyone around them is suddenly on edge, their caustic observations and one-liners are more relevant to and therefore more appreciated by their usually more-sanguine acquaintances.


But like it or not, the holidays are still a time when even misanthropes yearn to come togetherin some fashion, and that’s what makes a show like Will Franken’s “Texas Chainsaw Yuletide” ideal for the Christmas curmudgeon. A refuge, if you will, for the defiantly unsentimental. A dazzling mirror-ball of sharp-edged vignettes, Franken’s show began with the unlikely appearance of a rat killer educated at the Sorbonne then morphed into familiar bits involving a pair of long-winded television commentators, that perennial favorite “The Condom Lady,” a pompous priest at Westminster Abbey presiding over the end of Christianity, a champagne-swilling fire chief, and a couple of gangland thugs, Sammy Salt and Petey Pepper.

A typically Frankenian evening of non-sequitur and contrarian observation, “TCY” nonetheless managed to sneak in a couple of twisted takes on home and hearth with a shaggy dog story about impersonating Michael Caine visiting his parents in “Talia Shire” (name that pop culture reference, kids!), and a surrealist homily about his own father taking twenty years to finish falling out a window. “I refuse to set foot on this earth,” is a quote he attributes to his old man, but taken out of context, beautifully encapsulates the essence of Will’s own approach to performance and to the status quo.
 
Pushing the surrealistic envelope even further, Karla LaVey’s 13th annual Black XMass at the Elbo Room featured a whole lineup of alternate-reality-makers, including the hard-to-categorize Los Murderachis and the even-harder-to-categorize Fuxedos, who are frankly the main reason I keep coming back to the Xmass every year now that they’ve stopped providing bacon-wrapped latkes (the devil’s food)!

Local boys Los Murderachis dressed in their Dia de los Muertos-inspired finery and played an eclectic mash-up of pseudo-salsa, mock-metal, and rogue rock, while The Fuxedos, clad in bloody tuxedo rags, played jazzy carnival music tinged with rage—a manic hybrid of Frank Zappa, Zippy the Pinhead, and The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. As frontman Danny Shorago churned through a truly staggering number of masks, props, and outfits, (“we’re prop rock” quipped a member of the band) the spandex-tight ensemble laid a solid musical foundation beneath the mayhem. And as a special treat, they even beat the crap out of Santa Claus onstage, which is really about as much holiday sentimentality as any misanthrope, congenital or seasonal, can bear by December’s end.

The Year in Film: Guardian critics on 2010’s best!

Sue Vaughan
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Dennis Harvey’s Top 20 of 2010

Note: because this was generally such a crap year, a “best” list seemed too much of a stretch. Ergo this is a Top 20 list, in no particular order, of films I enjoyed most one way or the other (The Killer Inside Me, Everyone Else, and I Spit on Your Grave definitely representing the other). No doubt The King’s Speech, The Social Network, and several other currently awards-baiting titles have finer qualities than some here, but they’re not what I’d gladly watch again right now.

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, UK/Netherlands)
The Tillman Story (Amir Bar-Lev, USA)
The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, USA/Sweden/UK/Canada)
The Desert of Forbidden Art (Tchavdar Georgiev and Amanda Pope, Russia/UK/Uzbekistan)
Mother (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea)
City Island (Raymond De Felitta, USA)
OSS 177: Lost in Rio (Michel Hazanavicius, France)
Daddy Longlegs (Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie, USA/France)
The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, USA)
Let It Rain (Agnès Jaoui, France)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G18Y-S8YrQ0

Anton Chekhov’s The Duel (Dover Koshashvili, USA)
Everyone Else (Maren Ade, Germany)
Babies (Thomas Balmès, France)
Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed, USA)
I Spit on Your Grave (Steven R. Monroe, USA)
Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, USA)
Get Him to the Greek (Nicholas Stoller, USA)
MacGruber (Jorma Taccone, USA)
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont, Canada)
[rec] 2 (Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, Spain)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_X2pDRXyY

Cheryl Eddy’s Top 10 of 2010

(1) Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, USA)
(2) Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, UK/Netherlands)
(3) Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
(4) The Social Network (David Fincher, USA)
(5) True Grit (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, USA)
(6) The Two Escobars (Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist, Colombia/USA)
(7) The Tillman Story (Amir Bar-Lev, USA)
(8) The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, France/Germany/UK)
(9) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, USA/UK/Canada)
(10) Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, USA)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm-mfxOiUXI

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ top films of 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks teaches Film History at the Academy of Art University and curates-hosts the film series “Midnites for Maniacs,” which emphasizes dismissed, underrated and overlooked films in a neo-sincere way.

(1) Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, USA)
(2) Another Year (Mike Leigh, UK)
(3) Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio, Mexico)
(4) Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France/UK/USA)
(5) Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, USA) and True Grit (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, USA)
(6) The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm, USA/France)
(7) Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham, USA) and The Freebie (Katie Aselton, USA)
(8) Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, USA) and Daddy Longlegs (Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie, USA/France)
(9) Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, USA) and Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, USA)
(10) White Material (Claire Denis, France/Cameroon)
(11) Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, USA)
(12) Machete (Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez, USA)
(13) 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, USA/UK) and Buried (Rodrigo Cortés, Spain/USA/France)
(14) Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, USA/UK/France) and Jackass 3D (Jeff Tremaine, USA)
(15) Cyrus (Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass, USA) and Greenberg (Noah Baumbach, USA)
(16) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, USA/UK/Canada)
(17) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
Thailand/UK/Germany/France/Spain)

bonus round…

(18) You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Woody Allen, UK) and Film Socialism (Jean Luc Godard, France)
(19) Please Give (Nicole Holofcener, USA)
(20) Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman, USA)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fnojZw54ls

Louis Peitzman’s Top 10 of 2010

(1) The Social Network (David Fincher, USA)
(2) Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, USA)
(3) Inception (Christopher Nolan, tk)
(4) Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, tk)
(5) Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
(6) Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, USA)
(7) The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, USA)
(8) Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, UK/USA)
(9) Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg, USA)
(10) The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, France/Germany/UK)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk-EoUb0nvg

Max Goldberg’s Top Films of 2010

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica, Romania)
Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman, USA)
Cold Weather (Aaron Katz, USA)
Foreign Parts (Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki, USA)
In the Shadows (Thomas Arslan, Germany)
The Oath (Laura Poitras, USA)
The Social Network (David Fincher, USA)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
Thailand/UK/Germany/France/Spain)
You Are All Captains (Olivier Laxe, Spain/France)
Wednesday Morning Two A.M. (Lewis Klahr, USA)/Union (Paul Clipson,
USA)/Pastourelle (Nathaniel Dorsky, USA)

Kimberly Chun’s Top 11 of 2010

True grit, girl style: Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, USA), Easy A (Will Gluck, USA)
True camp, with a heaving side of eye candy: Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, USA), Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe, France/Germany/Italy)
Indie family comedies for adults: Cyrus (Jay and Mark Duplass, USA), The Kids Are All Right, (Lisa Cholodenko, USA), Tiny Furniture (Lena Dunham, USA)
Indie crime family that eats its young: Animal Kingdom (David Michod, Australia)
Indie entrepreneurs run amok: The Social Network (David Fincher, USA)
“Made it, ma! Top o’ the world!” — border-crossing crime stories: A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, France/Italy, 2009), Carlos (330-minute version, Olivier Assayas, France/Germany)

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