Kids

Late Night Picture Show

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Midnight Mass, held at the Bridge Theatre, may be the sparkling, dressed-to-the-nines jewel in Landmark Theatres’ cult-movie crown. But with a newly invigorated programming focus, the Clay’s Late Night Picture Show (and its aimed-more-at-college-kids Berkeley equivalent, the Shattuck’s Midnight Special) is also holding it down for folks who’re willing to sacrifice their sleep in the name of offbeat cinema. Curated by the self-dubbed Late Night Picture Show Films Committee (among its members: Clay manager Chris Hatfield; Peaches Christ’s alter ego, Joshua Grannell; and Late Night host Sam Sharkey), the series’ spring 2007 edition featured after-hours classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) as well as more esoteric choices, including a two-night run of Cannibal Holocaust (1980). For the upcoming fall season, the committee hopes to book Suspiria (1977) and (fingers crossed!) both the original and the remake of The Wizard of Gore (1970; 2007).

"In its mission statement, the Late Night Picture Show is more oriented towards classic cult films and more high-brow fare," Sharkey says. "We did Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle [1995–2002] — films that we feel are important but don’t necessarily get shown at midnight screenings."

While the programming definitely reflects a sense of fun (1985’s Re-Animator, 1973’s Enter the Dragon), the Late Night Picture Show offers a different filmgoing experience than Midnight Mass’s signature antics. "Our original intentions were to screen interesting films that we find have more critical merit and could also appeal to that midnight crowd," Sharkey explains. "Additionally, instead of having a full preshow, we’ve had special guests and people that talk before the films. Like last fall, when we did Phantom of the Paradise [1974], we had Paul Williams in person, who wrote the music. We did The Monster Squad [1987], and we had all the kids from the cast appear. Barry Gifford, the author of the Wild at Heart book [Grove Press], was there when we did a weekend [of David Lynch films]. I was proud of that stuff that we were able to do with that, as far as getting important guests." (Cheryl Eddy)

www.landmarkafterdark.com

Midnight Specialists: Midnites For Maniacs

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Ask Jesse Hawthorne Ficks what his favorite movie is, and he won’t hesitate: it’s Ski School. Ficks, who programs and hosts the Castro Theatre’s monthly Midnites for Maniacs triple feature, interprets "favorite" literally: the 1991 raunch-com might not surface on any highbrow top-10 lists, but it’s likely no scholar loves Citizen Kane (1941) as much as Ficks loves Ski School.

"I’ve always been upset with people who talk about guilty pleasures," Ficks explained when I paid him a visit at the Ninth Street Film Center. As the Frameline31 box office manager, he was overseeing ticket sales from a room decorated with posters from past Maniacs selections The Legend of Billie Jean (1985) and Joysticks (1983). "There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. If you love something, you should genuinely love it. You can have some of that campiness — ‘Oh my god, Nicolas Cage’s acting in The Wicker Man [2006] is so bad, it’s hilarious’ — but you’re not cooler than the films that you’re watching. You’re actually in love with the movies that you’re watching. And you can maybe laugh at the movie, but ultimately there should be no mean-spiritedness in it."

Anyone who’s checked out a Midnites for Maniacs event knows the depths of Ficks’s cinemania. But even if you’ve never seen the gleeful host in action (typically he’ll toss out trivia questions and reward winners with prizes like out-of-print soundtracks, sometimes in cassette form), you need only peruse a list of Midnites past to get a sense of his passion — the "Aerobicize Triple Feature" (Staying Alive [1983], Flashdance [1983], and Heavenly Bodies [1984]); a 3-D night that included the third Jaws and Friday the 13th films as well as the Molly Ringwald sci-fi nugget Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983); tributes to latchkey kids, punk girls, Dolly Parton, and the underage Jodie Foster; and May’s "Vertically Challenged Monsters" night, which I can safely say will be the only time in recorded history that Gremlins (1984), Howard the Duck (1986), and Troll 2 (presented in rare 35mm prints) share a bill at the Castro. Or anyplace.

Troll 2, a horror comedy that was barely released in 1990, is a prime example of Ficks’s programming technique. He doesn’t pluck flicks from obscurity to amuse snarky audiences; he’s hoping to entertain on a more meaningful level. "I was really concerned that people were going to come out purely to destroy the film as opposed to embracing it for all of its faults," he said. "No one can define that style of acting in Troll 2. It’s not even bad acting. It’s a different style. But I think it had more to do with people being embarrassed of loving something and being so guilty. Their film professors don’t let them love Top Gun [1986]. Midnites for Maniacs is not just [about watching] films that we forgot, but also embracing them and loving them and rooting for them. Not beating up on them."

Ficks’s personal tastes expand beyond underdog obscurities. When he’s not overseeing box offices on the local festival circuit, he teaches film history at the Academy of Art College ("We have a nice exploitation chapter that’s not in the [text]book"). He grew up obsessed with Freddy Krueger in Salt Lake City, where he started coprogramming a midnight series at 16. He also exploited the serendipity of geography to soak up as much Park City as he could. "I grew up at [the] Sundance [Film Festival]. I went to Slacker [1991], and that totally changed my life," he said. "I worked at Sundance from 1994 through 2002. Every year, wherever I was, I’d go back to Sundance and work in different areas of the festival."

A self-taught cinephile, Ficks dropped a film history course at Portland State University after a professor misidentified The Untouchables (1987) as a Martin Scorsese film. After graduation he moved to San Francisco and began working at the 4 Star Movie Theatre, where he learned to be a projectionist and launched Midnites for Maniacs in 2002. At first the series chiefly drew from owner Frank Lee’s impressive stash of martial arts films — until a certain masterwork known as The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) came along.

"I had been looking for 35mm prints at the time, and I ran into this Garbage Pail Kids print," Ficks remembered. "Frank let me play it, but he had no clue what it was. This very first screening of Garbage Pail Kids, we had 250 people — and the theater only holds 198. It blew his mind! Garbage Pail did so well that he just started giving me free rein."

Ficks’s cardinal rule for his screenings — which actually start early in the evening, with the final film unspooling at midnight — is that every film must be shown on 35mm. "You can have a billion ideas of ‘I think we should do summer camp movies.’ But the director of Sleepaway Camp [1983] cannot be found, and he has the only print. So until I can track him down, there’s no way to screen Sleepaway Camp. I know that you could screen it on video or DVD, but I think it makes it part of the challenge and the excitement that everyone’s coming out to see an antique. You’re part of the history."

Midnites for Maniacs made its Castro debut in January 2006, when a packed house cheered Ficks’s triple bill of roller-skating movies: Roller Boogie (1979), Xanadu (1980), and Skatetown, USA (1979). "It was unbelievable, and I was thinking, ‘Maybe only in San Francisco.’ "

Ficks sees the city as big enough — and full of enough diverse film fans — to support all of its various midnight gatherings. He has only praise for Midnight Mass’s Peaches Christ, though on occasion their events have fallen on the same night.

"Peaches is amazing at her performances," he said. "You can get caught up with a reenactment of the swimming pool [scene] in Showgirls [1995]. And it’s unbelievable." He views San Francisco as "a true midnight culture. There are so many films in San Francisco at midnight. I think it’s totally reinventing the culture."

And, for the record, what is it about Ski School that makes it this ultimate film fan’s ultimate favorite? Talking about the movie — which he’ll probably never get to show at Midnites, since it’s only available on video — makes Ficks reflective. "I think I’m always interested in that movie you were obsessed with as a kid. We’re the video generation. We have access to so many more films than anyone else before us. We create these weird personal theaters in our house, with these videos we can rewind and watch over and over again. So Ski School, and movies like it, I go to those movies when times are rough. They’re just like a record, or like a song. And it’s an hour-and-a-half song."

Ficks — who said he’s only walked out of one film in his life, As Good as It Gets (1997), for being "so middle of the road it didn’t matter if I watched it or not" — is determined to carry his Ski School philosophy over to his film series.

"I think when people come out to Midnites for Maniacs, it’s way more important that they have a personal relationship with the movie. It really doesn’t matter what I think about the movie — it’s most important that someone’s coming to a film, [maybe even a film] that they’ve never heard of, and they’re finding something really special." *

MIDNITES FOR MANIACS

"SUMMER CAMPy Triple Feature": Little Darlings (1980), Meatballs (1979), and Revenge of the Cheerleaders (1976)

July 20, 7:30 p.m., 9:45 p.m., midnight, $10 (all three)

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.midnitesformaniacs.com

Up there

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea,

I’m a muff-diving dyke, sort of. The first few times with my new girlfriend, I enjoyed her taste. However, most recently she tasted much different — and, frankly, worse. I almost blurted out that she might have a yeast infection (luckily I caught myself before completely ruining the mood). Curious, the other day I tasted myself, and I had a similar terribly pungent, unappealing taste. I know my body well enough to know I don’t have a yeast infection! So now I’m wondering, is it related to menstrual cycles? Previous physical activity? Sharing of bacteria and yeast?

Love,

Wannabe Diver

Dear Muffy:

Could be any of those, with yeast less likely since it doesn’t like sour things itself. Of course, I could be misinterpreting "terribly pungent" to mean terribly sour, or maybe you meant … OK, stop me there. See, this is why even proper medical personnel are discouraged from attempting to diagnose things in absentia — you don’t want them to do it wrong, and frankly, you don’t want me doing it at all.

The pH of the vagina does change over the course of the menstrual cycle, getting higher (more neutral) at ovulation, when the vagina welcomes sperm whether or not its owner thinks that’s a good idea (and whether or not there are any sperm present or expected, like, ever), and more acidic at either cycle end, when any sperm that wandered by would be doomed anyway, so we might as get it over with. The thing about menstrual cycles, though, is that they’re cyclic, so whatever she tastes like on, say, day twenty, she’d have tasted that way last month too. I’m not diagnosing, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you had a mild, mutual bacterial infection, but you’ll never know unless you get it checked out. You could sneak off discreetly and get fixed up, of course, but that’s not going to help her any, so, much as you might like to gloss this over in the interest of romance and mood maintenance, I’m afraid I can’t let you off that easily. You’re going to have to do the "Hey honey, I couldn’t help but notice …" thing, but hey, so what? It’s all in a day’s relationship work, is it not? And you are in one of those, are you not?

I ask because I couldn’t help noticing something myself, and unlike you I am not loathe to bring up uncomfortable truths, no matter how conversation-stopping. So hey, dudette, how come you could recognize your girlfriend in a blind taste test, while she wouldn’t know you from, you should pardon the expression, Adam? Is this lack of reciprocity part of some larger plan, or is she being kind of a piglet about this? And if it’s the latter, well, don’t you have more to talk about than who tastes nasty all of a sudden?

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My gyno prescribed estrogen cream (Estrace) to combat chronic yeast infections apparently brought on by vaginal dryness he says may be associated with my long-term use of the pill. He said it wouldn’t have any effect on my male sex partner, but then he also said an IUD was more effective than tubal ligation, so I don’t know whether to believe him. The Rx insert says nothing; the Mayo clinic suggests that estrogen cream could have an effect on my partner, and also that it is harmful to condoms (which we use in addition to the BCPs because I really don’t want kids). Plus, you know, there was that House episode a few weeks ago where a guy ‘s hormone cream seeped through his skin and made his kids sick.

Love,

Bad Medicine

Dear Med:

Wow, really, there was nothing in the insert? Because while I couldn’t turn up anything superspecific, there is no question that the Estrace people themselves say to "avoid exposing your male sexual partner … by not having sexual intercourse right after using these medicines. Your male partner might absorb the medicine through his penis if it comes in contact with the medicine." Unless you’re both some kind of demented, round-the-clock, insatiable sex monkeys, it really shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out the time of day that you’re least likely to find yourself suddenly and spontaneously exposing your partner to conjugated estrogens, and apply the cream then. As for oral ingestion, dunno, but it should be equally avoidable. Apply in the morning, get head at night, or vice versa.

The creams are indeed harmful to condoms, just by virtue of being greasy, and I’m appalled that your doctor wouldn’t mention that, or any of this, really. He isn’t really wrong about the IUD, incidentally, but he’s very wrong not to mention sex when prescribing something you put up your lady parts. He may be wrong about more than that — any chance you could see somebody else? As for the doc on TV, well, I adore the show for the quips and the sexy crip, but you could get better medical information from This Old House or maybe Animal House. Estrace has a 1-800 line, you know.

Love,

Andrea

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

Never mind the steampunk

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION If someone were to hold a knife to your throat and ask what the aesthetic sensibilities of the computer age are, you’d probably babble something about the iPod and its curvy, candy-colored precursor, the iMac. You’d think of the typical PC laptop, dumb and square and black, and you’d wonder whether this question about aesthetics was actually a trick. Because there are no computer age aesthetics.

Of course I’m exaggerating. There are a million interesting designs for consumer electronics and computers, but most don’t call attention to themselves. Computer aesthetics say "I am functional" — even the iPod Shuffle’s, whose colorful clip-on version kids attach to the gold chains around their necks as techno-bling.

But your Gateway computer, with its stalwart rectangular tower, is not the last word in how technology can look. Think of the crazy dial phones from the 1920s, with their curlicues and shiny brass and polished wood handsets. Or recall early radios, with their curving wooden exteriors meant to look like fancy furniture. And if you really want to see some seriously decorated machines, just check out pictures of devices from the 19th century, when everything from radiators to dynamos was covered in filigree and iron flowers and stamped, embossed shiny crap. For the record, I fucking love embossed shiny crap.

I think the search for an over-the-top tech aesthetic is driving the current craze for steampunk, a design and fashion style that combines Victorian sensibilities with contemporary gizmos. The ideal steampunk device would probably be a coal-powered cyborg, such as the creatures found in the novels of British fantasist China Miéville. In the real world, one of the most popular steampunk tinkerers is Jake von Slatt, who recently rebuilt his desktop computer as a vision in brass, marble, and old typewriter parts. He even offers a step-by-step guide to making your own functioning steampunk computer on his Web site, the Steampunk Workshop. Whenever von Slatt produces a new creation — a telegraph sounder that taps out RSS feeds, for example — pictures of it are always wildly popular on social news site Digg and elsewhere on the Web. Geeks who might not know what the word aesthetic means are instinctively drawn to the way von Slatt has made artifice from functionality. I expect to see cheap, knockoff steampunk computers for sale any day now.

As steampunkish critic John Brownlee has pointed out in several articles on the topic, steampunk designers tend to reverse-engineer ordinary electronics — say, a computer keyboard — and enhance them with parts that look antique. The idea is not just to create machines whose beauty goes beyond functionality. It’s also, Brownlee contends, to recall an era when amateurs could contribute meaningfully to the development of science and technology. We live in a time when no single human being can fully comprehend the Windows operating system. No wonder we’re nostalgic for the days when beachcombers could be naturalists and tinkerers could invent the telephone.

I think the popularity of steampunk also expresses our collective yearning for an era when information technology was in its infancy and could have gone anywhere. In 1880 we hadn’t yet laid the cables for a telephone network, and computer programming was just an idea in Ada Lovelace’s head. Nineteenth-century technology was often operated by factory laborers, and it meant backbreaking work and the ruination of healthy bodies. Information technology, to the 19th-century mind, would be something that set us free from brutal assembly lines.

One hundred years later, I wish it were so. Information technology has its own brutal assembly lines, mind-numbing data work that cripples our fingers with repetitive strain injuries and mangles our backs with the hunched postures required to work at a computer all day long. Seen from this perspective, steampunk is an aesthetic that tells the truth about us. We are no better off than our Victorian ancestors, bumbling into the future with crude technologies whose implications we barely understand. But let’s make our devices pretty, at least. Let’s remember the days when the machines that now cage us promised liberation. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose flat is full of servers and anaglypta.

When she comes

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Turns out I have an aptitude for accidental deletion. My most recent masterpiece entailed the loss of three weeks’ worth of all-day, every-day home recordings, 11 songs and about 10 gigs of GarageBand files: gone and unbacked-up. In fact, to illustrate my flair for spectacular failures, it was in the act of attempting to back up the files that I deleted the whole folder.

In other words, I’ve spent the last month neglecting my friends, missing deadlines, and annoying the bejesus out of Weirdo-the-Cat for nothing. When I finished hyperventiutf8g, I went outside and sat with Houdini.

Yep, that’s the one, my last-left chicken I was telling you about, the escape artist and egg eater I meant to have for dinner months ago.

I’ll be traveling for most of July and August, and then again in the fall, so there’s no restocking my flock until probably next year. In the meantime, I can’t even give Houdini away, in good conscience, on account of her antiestablishment ways. And it’s not like she’s gonna taste any good, either.

She’s an ugly fuck, half plucked already from entanglements with fences, flower gardeners, and realism in general. Dusty, ragged, balding, thorn-stuck, and stinking, she is all the way out of this world.

Other day, to give you an example, I saw Houdini in the coop, pecking hay, and I safetied her up for the night. I closed the chicken door, locked the people door, checked the egg-get hatch. Everything was secure, I swear, and in the morning when I went to let her out, she was already there — out — standing on a log, looking at me like, "What?"

"I love you," I said. And I opened up her coop so she could go in and get water.

Still don’t know how she did it, and neither do any of the skunks, weasels, foxes, possums, and bobcats who scratch and circle and knock every night, looking for a chink in the armor, a breech of security, a chicken-farmerly slip.

So this time I was sitting on the log with her, head in hands, warm, woodsy evening. Right behind us the smoker was smoking, barely — my dinner long ready. In light of what had just happened indoors, however, appetite was out of the question.

"You do realize," I said to Houdini, "that you are dead."

She looked up at me in that quizzical, twist-necked, tilt-headed, one-eyed way that chickens have. "And you?" she said.

"I’m going away," I said.

She looked at me like, "Ah, ‘going away,’ as they say."

"I mean it," I said. "I may be dead, but you are dead dead." I sang "The Midnight Train," "Ghost Riders in the Sky," "The Lonesome Valley," and "Oh Death" but stopped short of "St. Louis Blues," because that’s always the last little ditty I sing to my chickens, when the water’s aboil and the ax is sharpened. Believe me, if you’re a chicken, you shudder to hear the Chicken Farmer sing, "I hate to see … that evening sun go down."

I did "go away" (as they say), next morning. But it was only a practice run up to Oregon. Garden party, and a backyard barbecue for mostly kids. Sad and distracted the whole time, I became probably the first person ever to burst into tears during "Coming ‘Round the Mountain." And it wasn’t even the "kill the old red rooster" verse that got me, "when she comes."

It was the one about having to record all those bass lines and uke parts, steel drum, harmonies, and tissue-comb harmonica solos all over again, and you don’t even have no friends left to back-pat you ’cause you blew them all off all month, "when she comes."

At least that’s what I thought he was singing. My brother does make up stuff. (Runs in the fambly.)

On the way back home to Houdini we hit Granzella’s to cheer up a bit. This is that famous Italian joint with the long wooden porch in Williams, up in olive country, off I-5. It’s a restaurant, deli, and sports bar, and I don’t care how hot and humbled and beaten you are from the air-conditionerless road, if you can’t get cheered up in a triangle like that, then Jack, you dead.

Pesto pizza with roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, and fresh tomatoes. And they got muffuletta spread at the salad bar! Where you camping this Fourth of July? If it’s up north, check out my new favorite restaurant. *

GRANZELLA’S

Daily, 6 a.m.–10 p.m.

451 Sixth St., Williams

(530) 473-5583

Full bar

AE/DISC/MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

Icky parts

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I don’t like the amount of vaginal discharge I produce. It isn’t really abnormal, and it doesn’t smell, but I just don’t like seeing it in my underwear. I use the Nuvaring, which can change a woman’s discharge, but I don’t think that’s it. Is there a way to limit this stuff? The vagina’s a mucus membrane, and I’ve heard that dairy increases mucus; should I drink less milk?

Love,

Not a Drip

Dear Drippy:

Definitely, but only ’cause milk is gross. Personal taste aside, though, not only do I promise that milk is not mucus forming, I found a real, peer-reviewed journal article called "Milk Consumption Does Not Lead to Mucus Production or Occurrence of Asthma" to prove it to you. (I wasn’t even thinking about asthma, but while we’re at it, milk is apparently not asthma producing either. Good to know.)

There are many things one does do not wish to see in one’s underwear, many of which do not bear mentioning and none of which can be willed away by the power of positive thinking. I suggest not looking.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

You mentioned guys who wear "manties" as opposed to something more manly like boxer shorts [5/9/07]. I’m well aware that women generally find boxer shorts sexier than manties or briefs. My problem is, I’m susceptible to jock itch, (tinea cruris), and find that boxers don’t wick moisture away efficiently, which leaves me vulnerable. Therefore, I (gulp) usually wear briefs or manties (and yes, I use talc as well). What I wonder is, do women ever get jock itch? Even more to the point, could it be considered an STD? If a man has a moderate to severe case, it looks like you’ve got leprosy down there, and it seems like the interested party would want to know what the hell is going on. I’ve never heard a woman complain about jock itch or catching it from her partner.

Love,

Itchy Pants

Dear Pants:

Women certainly do get something similar — no doubt you’ve known at least one woman who not only feels comfortable discussing her yeast infections in public but also seems utterly uninterested in shutting up about them. One thing I can say for men — OK, I can say many things for men, but not now, I’m busy — is that they rarely bring up their crotch rot (actually ringworm, which is actually fungus) in mixed company. Yay, men.

Women can and do get all manner of "feminine" itchies but are generally less susceptible to jock itch and athlete’s foot (just lucky, I guess). It can happen, though, and ringworm is transmissible skin to skin as well as by "fomite" (shared towels and the like). Isn’t it funny, then, that it’s never classified as an STD, STC, or STI? Just another handy illustration of how the entire concept of sexually transmitted disease is socially constructed and has little biological validity, I guess. But that is another lecture, as is the one where I implore you to tell your partners what’s going on down there and not force them to politely pretend they didn’t see anything.

What I really wanted to say here is that not even you, Itchy McCrotchrot, need wear "manties" in the sleezy-shiny-skimpy bikini banana-sling way that I define them. I’m not entirely sure you ought to be wearing tighty-whities either. They may be more comfortable by virtue of being more absorbent, but are you sure absorbency is really what you’re looking for in an underpant? If I were you, I’d hike myself down to REI or some other place specializing in outfitting you for the sort of activities that require fancy moisture-wicking underwear and buy some. They even make boxers, callooh, callay!

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

You might have suggested to Itchy that Scratchy [5/9/07] grow a beard. It’s natural, and many women and men find it most exciting to have a beard between their thighs.

Love,

Hairy Krishna

Dear Hairy:

Rilly? Have you spoken to many of them personally?

There is, of course, a niche market for beards. My biggish, beardedish husband and I dragged my family of origin to the Russian River, a very, very gay resort area, last summer, at the same time the Bears (oh, look it up) were having their annual Teddy Bear’s Picnic and Hootenanny or whatever, which led to many hijinks and much hilarity and confused my father thoroughly.

There are women who specifically dig beards as well, but most either dig the guy who wears the beard, agree that a particular beard looks nice on a particular guy, or love the man but hate the beard. Few love the beard more than the man — let’s put it that way — and "it’s natural" is not altogether persuasive, considering the many things that are natural but don’t look nice stuck to your face. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Love,

Andrea

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

Rock ‘n’ read

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Anyone who’s thumbed through the oodles of zany organ, squealing chipmunk, and queasy-listening albums from the ’50s onwards knows this to be true: every generation has its version of Muzak, whether its members like it not — thanks to clueless parental units. And the class of 2025 will undoubtedly have vibe ‘n’ synth instrumental renditions of "About a Girl," "D’yer Mak’er," and "Cherub Rock" dancing in their heads — no thanks to the Rockabye Baby! series on Baby Rock Records that appears to be multiplying like bunnies monthly. What next — sleepy-time Mentors? But what would baby lend an ear to once he or she started dabbling in books, student-body politics, and witchcraft? In other words, WWHPLT — what would Harry Potter listen to?

Boston’s Harry and the Potters have been working off that premise for the past three years, touring the country’s finest libraries. After outgrowing San Francisco’s main library and drawing several hundred to their show at the Civic Center last year, they’ve decided to get booked, adult-style, at Slim’s, alongside Jurassic Park IV: The Musical, which dares to pick up where the last dino blockbuster left off.

So, I tease, you’re doing a real tour this time? "Why is playing libraries not a tour?" the older, seventh-year Harry, Paul DeGeorge, 28, retorts by phone as he hauls T-shirts into the cellar of the Tucson Public Library, the site of that night’s show. "It’s actually a lot more work, because we set up our sound system every day."

He may be playing in a basement, but DeGeorge and his brother Joe, who appears as fourth-year Harry, aren’t playing to our baser instincts. "I thought this would be a great way to play rock to a whole new audience that doesn’t experience that," he explains. "If Harry Potter had the cool effect of getting kids to read more, maybe we can get kids to rock more too!"

The proof is in his now-20-year-old sibling. DeGeorge started feeding his younger brother Pixies, Nirvana, They Might Be Giants, and Atom and His Package CDs when the latter was nine, and apparently the scientific experiment paid off. "I could see the effect immediately. By the time Joe was 12, DeGeorge says, "he was writing songs about sea monkeys that referenced the Pixies" — and popping up in the Guardian in a story about early MP3.com stars.

And what about the silly kid stuff on Baby Rock Records? "I’d rather hear the original songs," DeGeorge opines. "Instead of Nine Inch Nails for babies, I’d just make a good mixtape for my baby. You can do ‘Hurt’ and just lop off the ending. It’s supereasy — anyone can do it!" Read it and weep, Trent.

SERPENT SPIT "So the proctology jokes remain." Thus came the news from filmmaker Danny Plotnick that Nest of Vipers, his freewheeling podcast highlighting the wit and storytelling chops of such SF undergroundlings as Hank VI’s Tony Bedard, the Husbands’ Sadie Shaw, singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet, and Porchlight’s Beth Lisick, was now officially off the KQED site and fully independent (and available through iTunes). "I had a contract for six episodes to be distributed by KQED," Plotnick e-mailed. "Ultimately they released eight episodes. They didn’t renew the contract because the show was too edgy for them."

Unfortunately, that also means the customer-service episode that triggered those treasured proctology-convention yuks, which was supposed to go up on the public station’s Web site on June 15, has been delayed till July 1 as Plotnick figures out new hosting.

But at least the assembled vipers will continue to writhe unchecked. Inspired by Plotnick’s favorite sports talk shows, Nest of Vipers aims to issue a weekly breath of venomous, randomized air in an ever-constricting radio landscape. "So often on radio there’s a bunch of experts pontificating about whatever," he told me earlier. "This is more about real people talking about real experiences," or like hanging with the gritty raconteurs at your favorite dive bar. The next episode, for instance, sounds like a doozy: Bucky Sinister talks about working the phones at PlayStation on Christmas morning, and Bedard has a yarn about biting into a Ghirardelli chocolate bar and finding a maggot — thinking it’s his big payday, he returns it to the company. You have been served! *

HARRY AND THE POTTERS

With Jurassic Park IV: The Musical

Fri/29, 8 p.m., $12

Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF

(415) 522-0333

www.slims-sf.com

NEST OF VIPERS

www.nestofviperspodcast.typepad.com

www.myspace.com/nestofviperspodcast

GET INTO THE BAND

CAVE SINGERS


Seattle Matador starlets break out the rustic initial Invitation Songs. Wed/27, 9 p.m., $8–$10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

ORGANIZED GRIND


Jamin and J-Dubber combine protest gangsta with ye olde funk and minihyph on Grind Pays (Organized Grind). Thurs/28, 10 p.m., call for price. Fourth Street Tavern, 711 Fourth St., San Raphael. (415) 454-4044

BRIAN ENO’S 77 MILLION PAINTINGS


Partake in the Hot Jet’s imagescape of "visual music." Fri/29–Sun/1, 8 p.m.–2 a.m., $20–$25. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

ALBUM LEAF AND ARTHUR AND YU


Incoming Korg attack! James LaValle’s gorg dream orchestrations cavort with Lee and Nancy–esque vocals. With Under Byen. Sat/30, Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333, www.slims-sf.com

AUDRYE SESSIONS


The Oakland combo parties over its new CD — after vocalist Ryan Karazija spent a very unlucky Friday the 13th in April being brutally mugged and left in a pool of blood with a fractured skull after a Minipop show at Mezzanine. Sat/30, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

RACCOO-OO-OON


On Behold Secret Kingdom (Release the Bats), the night critters generate a fine squall of free jazz, noise, drone, and jungle psychedelia. Knocking over trash cans never sounded so intentional. Tues/3, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

When cute animals attack

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(Nintendo; Nintendo DS)

GAMER Continuing my current tendency to gravitate toward games involving cute animals, I recently became addicted to the latest Pokémon installment, Pokémon Diamond. Pokémon Pearl is the same game with some different Pokémon.

My first Pokémon experience came during a long road trip in 2000, when I got hooked on Pokémon Gold. I made myself popular with every grade school kid on the block because I was an adult who knew that Pikachu evolves into Raichu.

In the Pokémon games, you grind to level-up your small army of cute creatures in turn-based battles against random Pokémon who hang out in grassy areas. You also capture new Pokémon. Pokémon are stored in small spheres and are released to fight, after which they get sucked back into their Pokéballs. And you thought non-free-range chickens have it bad.

There’s a plot, something about stopping a team of gangsters called Team Galactic from using the powers of Pokémon for evil, and you shame them into submission by using your small, cute animals to rough up their small, cute animals. You use the same technique to earn badges at the gyms scattered throughout the game’s world.

These titles are all about the exploring and the collection. You collect Pokémon, Pokémon battle techniques, and gym badges. So if you like to play collection games, Pokémon will take over your life.

What’s different between these installments and the one I played when I first got hooked on Pokémon in 2000? About 100 colors. I’m just eyeballing it. Also, a new online mode allows you to trade Pokémon with other users. To be honest, I haven’t gotten the chance to use this, but I’ve heard from one of my coworkers that it is "full of dumb kids who want to trade their level 100 Geodudes for my ultrarare Mewtwo!"

These two are the first non-spin-off Pokémon games on the Nintendo DS, and the series is well served by the platform. Being able to choose moves for my Pokémon by touching the screen is natural. That said, the game could have done a lot more with the hardware. I would like to see the Pokémon world or the battles in 3-D, like in Animal Crossing: Wild World, as opposed to the top-down view. The battles have surprisingly minimal effects and animation. This was OK on the Game Boy Color but seems a bit cheap on the DS. The series hasn’t changed much at all, and that’s good, because the game play is as fun and addicting as ever. But it’s bad in the sense that the latest installments in the series have almost nothing new to offer.

Hot Secs

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

Since every third column I’ve run recently has harked back to one I wrote about the movie Secretary a couple of years back, I thought I’d bring it full circle, and then let’s all move on to something else. Here’s the original (published in fall 2005).

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My manager is leaving at the end of the month. I’m pretty sure from hints that he’s dropped that he’s into S-M, particularly whipping. I’m attracted to him and I believe it’s mutual. I’m not interested in pursuing a dominant–submissive relationship with him but am definitely interested in having a one-off because a) he’s my boss, b) he’s kinky, and c) he’s my boss. I’d like to initiate an encounter between us, preferably on his last day at the office, but I am new to the scene and I’m not sure how to go about it.

Love,

Ms. Secretary

Dear Sec:

Two things come to mind when I think about Secretary and its stars, the unaccountably attractive Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has a face like a none-too-bright, six-month fetus, and creepy-sexy James Spader, who is at this point indistinguishable from the waxwork simulacrum of himself that undoubtedly exists in some museum somewhere, although I kind of dig him anyway: a) it was hot, and b) it was fiction.

I was listening to a colleague-friend give one of my favorite talks this weekend, the one about acceptable and unacceptable objects of desire and how they shift over time and space, and I thought about Secretary too. "Think about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky," my friend says. "Where we are right now [San Francisco in particular, but any blue-state bastion with a women’s studies department will do], the socially acceptable response was, ‘Oh! She’s just an intern! Think of the power imbalance! Uncool! Unclean! How could she give consent when he was so powerful and she was so lowly?’ But what do you think was really going on for 22-year-old Monica, on her knees in front of Superpower Man, the one and only leader of the free world? What do you want to bet that the power imbalance was exactly what was hot for both of them?"

More fantasy, of course. We have no idea what was really going through either of their heads (well, hers, maybe, but — hey! — that’s not what I meant!), and it doesn’t really matter, since we’re just using them as puppets called "Bill" and "Monica," not seriously examining the ethics of seducing interns or flashing your thong at the leader of the free world, depending. I liked your list (he’s my boss, he’s kinky, he’s my boss) and certainly trust you to know what’s hot for you and why, but let’s remember that this is neither a quirkily erotic indie movie nor a puppet show; it’s part of your actual life, and his, and it has consequences. Hot as a last-day quickie may sound to you, chances are he will be a little busy that day, plus, until all the paperwork is done, he is still your boss, and it could still go rather poorly for him to be found in the supply closet, whaling on the clerical staff with a … what? Unless he’s far kinkier than we ever suspected, he will not have his gear with him, so unless you want to get spanked with a three-hole punch while bound with extension cords and blindfolded with Post-its (wait — this is sounding kind of hot, isn’t it?), maybe you’ll want to wait.

Look, give him a break. Let him pack up his stuff and make his good-byes like a grown-up, and then corner him very late in the afternoon, just as he’s leaving, and tell him you’re sorry to see him go and you wonder if he’d like to get together sometime. Ask if he likes indie movies. Tell him you really dug Secretary. Really, really dug it, you know? That should work. To tell you the truth, I have some reservations about a boss who would drop hints about his kinky sex life around the office — that seems kind of, well, actionable to me, really, plus just kind of indiscreet in an icky way, but hey, he’s your fantasy, not mine.

One thing people who know nothing about S-M (I’m not necessarily talking about you here, Sec) might miss about Secretary is that the way Gyllenhaal’s character, Lee, is initiated into the joys of submission isn’t exactly the way it goes down most of the time. In real life, at least where there’s an organized "scene" with rules and regs and a public image to maintain, no mysterious and compellingly attractive Mr. Grey would, all unannounced and uninvited, order our heroine to bend over for a spanking, thus unleashing her deep longing to find freedom through submission and so on. Instead, he would have invited her to a "munch," where they could negotiate their scene, choose a safe word, and exhaustively disclose their physical limitations ("I have hypoglycemia — you’ll have to feed me." "I had tennis elbow but I think it’s better now"), emotional vulnerabilities, and time constraints. Then they would shake hands and agree to meet at his place on Friday evening to "play." Safer, more ethical, and much, much more boring.

Love,

Andrea

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

Suburban stasis

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Colma is not Daly City. Apparently I’m the only San Franciscan who’s failed to comprehend the pronounced distinctions between these neighboring municipalities, outside the selection of merch at their respective Target stores. Daly City has Serramonte Center and the rows of houses made famous by Malvina Reynolds’s anthem to architectural sameness, "Little Boxes" (the song that opens Showtime’s fabulous stoned-in-suburbia sitcom, Weeds). Colma’s got car lots and a few square blocks of single-family dwellings, enough for the approximately 2,000 residents who live surrounded by a whopping 17 graveyards, most catering to specific ethnicities, if not deceased pets. According to the Colma civic Web site, the price of an average home here is a grounding $280,000. Necropolis is too harsh a word — there’s something truly adorable about a town whose official motto is "It’s great to be alive in Colma."

I learned this on a drive through the town with Richard Wong, the director of the wonderfully assured Colma: The Musical, a film that uses this unlikely and oddly ordinary community as a font of artistic inspiration. For Wong, who grew up in San Francisco, the burg recalls childhood trips to Toys "R" Us after visiting family tombstones at the Chinese cemetery. He brings me to the surprisingly expansive Colma Historical Association, a museum charting the town’s lore with binders on each of the memorial parks. Then we coast through the self-contained pocket of homes and the location where Rodel, one of the three restless, fresh high school grad protagonists of the film, fictionally resided. Wong notices a bit of improvement to the place — new brick-patterned siding spruces up the garage — and a couple of houses under construction at the end of the block. Other than that, nothing’s changed, he says.

"One of the inspirations for the film came from the idea of a small town — one that doesn’t really change much — next to one of the most progressive cities in the world," Wong remarks. "Colma is almost exactly the same as it was when the houses were first built."

Colma is a character in the movie — a collaboration with Wong’s college pal H.P. Mendoza, who wrote the script and songs and capably plays Rodel — whose opening musical number, "Colma Stays," is a peppy celebration of suburban stasis. It takes Wong’s expert use of split screen to enliven the carless boulevards and the encroaching sense of teenage ennui. (Befitting its location, Colma: The Musical does wonders with its garage-sale budget and rumpus-room laptop audio- and video-editing marathons.) Billy, another of the main characters, points to a rare new feature on the landscape: a just-built police station. It’s difficult to imagine the crimes the cops must contend with.

The film, however, vividly illustrates how three Colma youths occupy themselves: crashing generic college parties, working at the mall, and hitting the bars with fake IDs. (Wong had to excise a drug-use reference — another stereotypical suburban teen activity — in order to gain permission to shoot a moody musical number in the Italian cemetery.) The fog that envelopes Colma serves as an almost too-perfect metaphor for the insularity of dead-end streets, which engender the claustrophobia of neighborhood inertia in the characters. "There’s no conflict in their lives, and that’s the problem," Wong explains. "They just don’t have that much going on." With nothing to do, people can get bitter — or they get out. The two guys manage that — Rodel, shunned by his family because he’s queer, heads to New York to pursue his dream of being in the musical theater, while Billy, an aspiring actor, packs his car to move to San Francisco. Their female cohort Maribel, the tart character who holds them together, plans to stay — though her motivations are self-deprecatingly ambiguous.

There is a genre of suburban films that usually involves teen suicide, superdepressed moms, or scary skeletons in the linen closet. If this were a Larry Clark film, the kids would be shooting up or shooting themselves. If it were a John Hughes picture, there’d be prom-related antics in the McMansion. In Colma, they sing their suburban sorrows. Wong suggests his film might be a regional music-theater production of a suburban drama, and it’s a wacky idea that’s far more satisfying than you might expect.

Mendoza, in a phone conversation, admits that he prefers films that have some empathy for tract-house dwellers. He feels that Napoleon Dynamite sneers at its characters. "I did not want that for this. I find Colma endearing," he says. "This is not an indictment — it is a locale. We’re just portraying these kids saying it’s boring." Mendoza lived in Colma during his high school years, moving there after growing up in the Mission. "At that time, all the Filipino families moved to Daly City so their kids could go to Westmoor High."

While it finds comedy in the notion of living in a generically small locale, the film exudes an affably focused sense of place. Mendoza tells me that his best friend in high school cited a particular Colma cul-de-sac as his favorite place because it had a great view of the mall. He reveals his own beloved spot, an underpass at the intersection of an up-and-coming Filipino street and a dicey neighborhood. On the sloped, stagelike hill, Mendoza and his pals would have water-balloon fights and — "This is so gay," he warns — reenact scenes from Little Shop of Horrors. Given his movie, that makes wonderful sense.

The image also fits the satisfying, hometown-boys-make-good narrative of the film’s critical success. Since Colma: The Musical scored on the festival circuit, Wong has hooked up with the more seasoned director Wayne Wang, with whom he’s currently working. Future collaborations with Mendoza are imminent, including a Colma sequel: Serramonte: The Musical. That narrative will follow, in song, Maribel’s future in retail. As a career path, that may seem like a dead end, but for Wong and Mendoza, creating a movie about it affirms that their little town of graveyards is ripe with artistic joie de vivre.

The Queer Issue: Back to the future?

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› culture@sfbg.com

I’m supposed to meet my editor, Marke B., to talk about this piece at noon at some cheap Mission restaurant that won’t bankrupt my lousy checking account. I arrive 15 minutes late; he’s running at least 30 behind. As I sit and wait for him, I can’t help but laugh — queers are always late. As a queer with a drag-queen alter ego, Felicia Fellatio, I know this is especially true — that hoary old chestnut about "running on drag time" has the ring of solid validity. Trannies are like Muni: we’re never on time.

But a growing body of scholarly queer literature suggests that the underlying cause of our tardiness may be more than simply wanting to be fashionably late. In fact, our predictable lack of punctuality might be a symptom of what many psychologists see as the gay community’s prolonged adolescence; there may be a sense of time unique to homos that exists outside heterosexual norms.

WIND IT UP


Put simply, queer temporality theory says that because our lives can’t be completely legally or socially mapped out according to the heterosexual model (getting married, having kids, sharing retirement benefits, expecting inheritance), we feel less pressure to conform to other aspirations (completing a degree, saving for a house, planning retirement) in the stereotypical Game of Hetero Life. Basically, tardiness is a form of subconscious queer rebellion. This can manifest itself as a rejection of all schedules, however quotidian. It can also lead to a profoundly different view of what the future means to queer people, especially in terms of freedom of choice. Well-known queer theorist Judith Halberstam elaborates on this theory, from a transgender point of view, in her book In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York University Press, 2005).

Some studies also posit that, because many of us grappled with the whole coming-out thing at the same time we were going through puberty, our adolescent maturation period was extended, thus stretching out our psychological development — and effectively slowing down our mental clocks. We just need more time to process things and act on them. Other queer temporality theories focus on the psychological effects of AIDS, which instilled in our community a sense of imminent mortality that negated the future and focused our attention on the present. Rather than making decisions based on what may be, we began to concentrate on what is, creating art and culture that offered immediate transcendence through humor and rage, rather than any abstract hope for the future. "AIDS quickens that sense of needing to and actually being able to draw forth from one’s spirit that work which will have resonance for other people," the late, great filmmaker Marlon Riggs said, and the recent work of performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz tries to show how queers have incorporated that sense of "quickening" into their lives and actions.

SPRUNG FORWARD


Of course, we may just run late for things because we’re busy, either at work (most of us rely only on ourselves for financial stability) or at play (our culture is still pretty party-centric, so we have a lot of hangovers to deal with). Plus, putting on all that makeup is practically a full-time job for us queens. Cut us a little slack so we can look fabulous. And all of the theories above seem awfully generalized — some may bristle at the suggestion that we be cast as supposed victims of a pathology that prolongs our adolescences and screws with our mental clocks. It’s not as if there aren’t queer people living as much as they can according to the hetero model, especially now that legal restrictions against same-sex marriage and adoption are relaxing in some areas.

In fact, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way in terms of the queer rebellion against the straight timeline. As noted by broadcast journalist Tovia Smith last month on National Public Radio, in her piece "Marriage Causes Shift in Gay Culture," it seems that queers have gone "from a radical movement bent on challenging societal norms to a community now eagerly embracing those conventions as their own."

Smith drew her conclusion based on an interview with an upper-middle-class white gay couple from Cambridge, Mass. — the type of control group against which queers have traditionally defined themselves. Whatever negative connotations the phrase "prolonged adolescence" may conjure up, a case could be made that this is precisely what allows queer culture to thrive. Adolescence is when a personality is at its most fluid, and queer identity is the essence of fluidity. Halberstam sees queer temporality as a positive, radical reaction to heterosexual society’s mores, pitting it against the "time of inheritance," whose purpose is merely to shore up "the historical past of the nation" and protect "national stability." In the ’90s, a vibrant queer culture of artistic expression, political activism, and social and sexual interaction embraced the notion of prolonged adolescence.

FALLING BACK


Queercore bands like Pansy Division and Tribe 8 co-opted the in-your-face, live-fast-die-young aesthetic of punk, inviting listeners to throw off the shackles of heterosexual society’s expectations and, in the words of Pansy Division, "join the cocksuckers club." Homocore fanzines reveled in childlike graphics and gleefully reinterpreted teen fan magazines like Tiger Beat, giving them a decidedly homosexual spin. The hallmarks of puberty — geeky awkwardness, swoony crushiness, questionable outfits, wanton partying, sexual exploration — became queer fashion statements. Prolonged adolescence was also a means of connection in a time of grief and frustration, a flashpoint where queer history met the present. The AIDS Quilt used a common symbol of childhood comfort to unite and console mourners, and activist organizations like ACT UP and Queer Nation energized their members with the élan of belonging to a rebel schoolyard gang.

But that was the past, and there’s no denying that, with more access to the heterosexual lifestyle opening up for queers, the future is upon us. HIV is no longer a death sentence (for people who can afford the meds), and any evidence of necessary rebellion is awfully hard to find in young gay people these days, at least on the face of it. Prada and Beyoncé have replaced vintage clothing and queercore as coins of the young gay realm, and the psychological and social effects of the current lust for consumerism and mainstream pop culture on queers today will be for future theorists to puzzle out. To me, it represents a sad trend that aspires more toward societal acceptance than political subversion, an adjustment of our internal clocks to tick to the tired straight beat. Call me nostalgic, call me behind the times — just don’t call me late for cocktails.

Singin’ and shillin’ with the Muppets

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I had a revelation while watching Muppets Music Moments: Statler and Waldorf are the reasons I became a film critic. As a li’l Muppet-freaked kid in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I lived for their curmudgeonly peanut-gallery zingers. But there’s plenty of stuff I didn’t remember from The Muppet Show, or that I couldn’t pick out as examples of Jim Henson’s wonderfully offbeat sense of humor — like, say, a brigade of pigs in full leather-daddy garb singing "Macho Man." And surreal numbers, like that same brigade of pigs dressed as Eskimos, belting out "The Lullaby of Broadway," or a sequence in which Kermit’s hospital-room tableau morphs into a full-on jungle scene (complete with witch doctors) as the ensemble rips into Harry Nilsson’s "Coconut." Also, there’s plenty of just plain weirdness — like, did you ever notice that the Swedish Chef is the only Muppet with actual human hands? I don’t have to say any more, except that this program is essential viewing for anyone who worshipped The Muppet Show cast albums ("Menah Menah," anyone?) — or for folks with kids who are too young to have otherwise developed outrageous Muppet nostalgia.

More for grown-ups but no less entertaining is the foray into Henson’s Commercials and Experiments. An early Kermit prototype shills for pork sausage and bacon (wherefore art thou, Miss Piggy?); another spot highlights singing gas-pump nozzles; an RC Cola ad features a bird puppet muttering, "I hate folk singers with messages!"; and a spot for Muppet toys offers a group of mini-Kermits sweetly intoning, "If you don’t buy us, we’ll bite you in the leg!" There are also snippets of Henson appearing on talk shows and demonstrating his puppetry techniques, as well as short films that are entirely puppet free — including some psychedelia, such as a delightful sound-and-image collage starring the impish Henson himself. (Cheryl Eddy)

COMMERCIALS AND EXPERIMENTS Sun/24, 7:30 p.m.

MUPPETS MUSIC MOMENTS Sat/23, 2 p.m.; June 28, 7:30 p.m.; $6-$8. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Bars of mystery

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Sometimes you just want to get into trouble: drink too much, dance too crazy, see the sun rise on a workday, do some ill-advised flirting, steal a kiss (or more) in a bar bathroom, follow a shot of Patrón with a cocaine back. It isn’t too hard to get into trouble in this city, where the only rule seems to be that there are no rules (except that last call’s at two, sigh). But sometimes you need a little push — and a little unpredictability — to explore the outer reaches of your comfort zone. A few weeks here and you already know a hundred places to get your drink on: swanky places, divey places, places with good music or music so bad it feels good. It’s hard to remain anonymous, however, when you’re sipping Fat Tire and smoking spliffs on the same outdoor patio you visit every Friday, or ordering Maker’s on the rocks from the bartender who’s best friends with your last lover. And when it comes to enjoying a bit of mischief, anonymity is key. You need the unknown. A puzzle unsolved. A night stretching out before you whose story has yet to be written — the most important element being that its setting has yet to be, well, set. Which is where I come in.

Just call me Nancy Drink, Cocktail Detective. My mission? To scour the city for bars of mystery: those places you’ve passed but never entered, places whose very names are enigmas, and places so random, so hidden, so far away or just plain weird that you’ve never heard of them at all. The places where no one would think to look for you.

CLUB WAZIEMA


This story starts with the enigma that is the Western Addition … oh sorry, NoPa. Which is it? The "scary" neighborhood of yore? Or the latest example of gentrification? Judging by Club Waziema, a charming Ethiopian restaurant and bar that’s a favorite of locals and virtually unknown to everyone else, the answer is both. There’s something decidedly laid-back, eclectic, and a little low-key — that is, a little Western Addition — about the place, with its red and white velvet wallpaper, low lighting in front, and a back room with a pool table that feels more like a hostel rec room than a hipster bar. But the family-run business is keeping up with the neighborhood’s growth, and hints of NoPa are creeping in: for example, the menu of microbrews listed alongside Ethiopian imports (skip the malty stout if you’re not a fan of Old English 40-ouncers; try the harrar instead). Still, this place isn’t exactly on the scenester radar yet — and it’s better for it. You’re really here for the fantastic eat-with-your-hands food and the spot’s off-the-beaten-path, what-happens-at-Club-Waziema-stays-at-Club-Waziema feel.

543 Divisadero, SF. (415) 346-6641, www.clubwaziema.com

FORBIDDEN ISLAND TIKI LOUNGE


With a name like Forbidden Island, I figured this must be just the joint to get into delightful, delicious trouble. I wasn’t wrong. Sprouting from an otherwise quiet street was a beacon of bamboo and booze, with a thatched ceiling and a menu of fruity rum drinks organized by strength. Enough Banana Mamacows or Macadamia Nut Chi Chis and there’s no telling what one might do — maybe even something as daring as smoking on the back patio past 9 p.m., when a neighborhood noise ordinance necessitates its closure. Nahhh … this place is still a bit too tame, a bit too Disney-does-Hawaii, for such bold moves. But a young’un celebrating a 21st birthday with a drink in a bowl could certainly do some damage.

1304 Lincoln, Alameda. (510) 749-0332, www.forbiddenislandalameda.com

BOW BOW COCKTAIL LOUNGE


What a strange, strange place. Where Forbidden Island’s kitsch is calculated, Bow Bow’s is completely organic. The tiny Chinatown joint has the size, shape, and ambience of a lunch counter — white walls, neon, and all. It also has karaoke, which you wouldn’t even know until you heard some drunk fucks at the end of the bar singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" … oh wait, those drunk fucks were my friends and I. There’s no stage. The screen showing lyrics is suspended between the bathroom doors. And the only person there who can sing worth a damn is the man in charge of the karaoke book (with English and Chinese selections, by the way), with a voice like Harry Nilsson’s. Everyone else seems to stumble in already drunk and high, ready to do in public what they’d normally only do alone in their car.

1155 Grant, SF. (415) 421-6730

LI PO COCKTAIL LOUNGE


Could this be the Bow Bow’s older, more sophisticated, yet seedier cousin? Perhaps. It’s just up Grant, casting its crimson glow onto the street. Inside, an homage to Buddha punctuates the L-shaped bar. Extra booths and a back room hide from the foyer. The usual alcohol selection shares shelves with unfamiliar liquors in small bottles with wooden tops, the ingredients written in Cantonese. The house drink is the mai tai, which is the color of roses and tastes like sweet tequila. And on the night that I visited, there on a cracked red bar stool, watching Asian television on the flat-screen TV, was the karaoke man from the Bow Bow. Coincidence? Was he following me? Or is there really some kind of connection between the bars?

916 Grant, SF. (415) 982-0072

RADIO HABANA SOCIAL CLUB


Some of the best mysteries are those hidden in plain sight. Like Radio Habana, the hush-hush restaurant-bar nestled sneakily into a corner at 22nd Street and Valencia. Radio Habana has no sign — and it’s particularly obscured by some new construction on Valencia. But if you keep an eye out for the intentionally skewed windowpane and the metal cockroach pinned to the door, you’ll find exactly the kind of place where time stands still, where novels are written, and where stories worthy of novels are perhaps played out. The highlights? Dioramas featuring Barbie dolls, cockeyed pictures, framed homages to John Lennon and Kafka’s Metamorphosis, homemade sangria, and delicious Latin-inspired food (from a quaintly small menu) served on gorgeous, long, rectangular plates.

1109 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-7659

DOGS BOLLIX


There’s nothing about the name of this bar that sounds appealing. I don’t want to enter a dog’s anything, much less drink in it. The consonants alone, rolling around in your mouth, taste bitter. So the mystery is, why give a place such a name? And why go here at all? Turns out this Irish bar’s moniker is a version of the across-the-pond phrase dog’s bollocks, which means, roughly, "the best ever" (though it does also translate as canine testicles). And though it’s rumored to be overrun by Marina-type college kids and sometimes smell like urine, I found it delightful late on a weeknight: dark wood, frothy Guinness, a pool table, a large, long bar where you can chat with the friendly, attractive (though Scottish!) bartender, and small nooks for more intimate conservations.

408 Clement, SF. (415) 752-1452

HIDDEN VINE


It was a dark and stormy night … no, wait, that was the Dark and Stormy cocktail I had at Le Colonial across the street after trying — and failing — to visit the Hidden Vine, a place so very hidden that it wasn’t even open. Apparently there was "no hot water." A likely story. Surely something unseemly was going on behind those closed doors. Nothing like a wine bar in the dark to inspire criminal activity. But that would have to wait for another investigation. I was on a very particular mission and couldn’t be distracted by just any old cries from the city’s dark underbelly, even if it was an underbelly filled with pinot noir.

1/2 Cosmo Place (at Taylor), SF. (415) 674-3567, www.thehiddenvine.com

BARLEY ‘N HOPS


Barley ‘n Hops is the kind of place you’d never stumble on. You’d have to know it was there, tucked away on the second floor of the 55 Parc Hotel. It has bright lights and carpet and an airport-lounge feel. Also a sports theme, with Angels autographs on the walls, a Giants helmet on a pedestal, and televisions blaring news and sports. But I’m not fooled by such sterile-seeming ambience. I know this is a place to make secret deals, to order a hit, to plot the overthrow of an evil dictator. Or to down a few shots of Patrón and get out before I’m tempted to thwart a coup.

55 Parc Hotel, 55 Cyril Magnin, SF. (415) 392-8000

WOULD YOU BELIEVE?


The first time I drove by this bar, I was on one of those strange adventures involving interpersonal dynamics and unreal drama that can’t be written about in a nonfiction format. The kind of day when my answer was, "No, dear bar, I wouldn’t believe." So of course, I had to return to this Richmond enigma as part of my search for tippling treasure. What is it, I wondered, that the bar didn’t think I’d believe? Turns out it’s that the place is so … well … normal. A bit divey, a bit upscale. Ridiculously attractive bartenders juxtaposed with middle-aged clientele rolling dice on the bar and locals playing pool in the sunken foyer. Perhaps I also wouldn’t believe that I’d find myself there on a Wednesday, swing dancing to the Rolling Stones and sipping a fantastic mojito and an impressive Godfather (whiskey and something …) before seeing dawn on yet another workday. But now, I believe. I believe.

4642 Geary, SF. (415) 752-7444

PHILOSOPHER’S CLUB


Those in the know call it "the Philly." I knew it only as the lone beacon of light in the otherwise dark and quiet West Portal neighborhood near the tunnel. From its name, you’d expect an interior wreathed by curls of smoke rising from cigarettes held by fedora-wearing men discussing Nietzsche and Kant. But the place is much more like a neighborhood pub. Unpretentious. Friendly. Comfortable. The light hanging over the pool table resembled a ’50s surfer station wagon. "Why is it called the Philosopher’s Club?" I asked the bartender, who’s also the owner. His answer, appropriately Socratic: "Why not?"

824 Ulloa, SF. (415) 753-0599

BAR 821


"If you found us, do not tell others." That’s the Bar 821 golden rule, a rule just begging to be broken if you’re a spirits sleuth like Nancy Drink. The forced speakeasy theme seems painfully pretentious — until you actually visit the tiny NoPa (yes, folks, where Club Waziema is headed, Bar 821 has already arrived) haunt. The spot offers affordable champagne cocktails, plenty of Belgian beers, and a small, swank, but surprisingly unsnooty interior perfect for intimate conversations. Get there early, though. The place stops letting people in at 11 p.m. Whether the bartenders kick you out then, though, is a nightly mystery …

821 Divisadero, SF. www.bar821.com

Welcome to Summer Scene 2007

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Click here to go to Summer SCENE 2007: Our Guide to Nightlife and Glamour

It’s almost summer, and I feel shamelessly trendy. Not Bobby or big sunglasses trendy — or even Lindsay gray hoodie or Paris orange jumpsuit trendy (well, maybe a little). No, I wanna know. What’s going on in the wide and wicked world of fashionable nightlife? Make me care, dammit.

In New York, the wild, proudly heterosexual rich kids who run the überpopular Box are talking about opening an after-hours bathhouse. We can’t do that in San Francisco (it’s still illegal), but I love that the little downtown brats are hauling wet-het sleaze from their gilded water closets. In Syria, according to the New York Times, gentlemen’s clubs — and there really isn’t any other kind of club in Syria — have started Iraqi refugee–themed stripper nights. No, thank you. And in Europe, there are so many seven-foot-tall Danish, Turkish, and Ukrainian drag queens ruling the dance charts right now, it’s like some flamboyant aural Amazon gypsy carnival exploded. Stevie Nicks was right!

But what about here in the Bay? It seems like dance music is still going through what hip-hop went through 15 years ago — digging up the past, mixing it up with the future, dropping golden nuggets on the playlist. Pairing that turquoise off-the-shoulder cable knit with a fuzzy pink mini, tucking our leopard-print stockings into our pixie boots. Only now, at last, we’re edging our way slowly into the ’90s, with brassy neu rave air horns, sly acid bass lines, and e-fueled hyphy goofiness sidling up to the frosty early ’80s and offering to buy her a double Manhattan. My edge-of-’90s deep-dish DJ wish list for summer 2007: Leila K, "Got to Get"; Mory Kante, "Yeke Yeke"; Nicolette, "O Si Nene." And anyone who can find a way to slip on Guru Josh’s "Infinity (1990s: Time for the Guru)" with a straight face wins my vote for Queen of the Rave-iverse.

Yet things aren’t totally bass-ackward in clubland, although I fondly hope that the recent giant Vivienne Westwood fashion retrospective at the de Young fills the dance floors with gorgeous beaded corsets, golden safety pins, padded asses, ostrich feathers, crazy harlequin prints, and deconstructed plaids for years to come. (Did anyone else shed a tear when they came upon the famous sparkly platforms that made Naomi Campbell tumble to the runway? Tragic. I nearly threw my cell phone in sympathy. But that would be expensive.)

Techno’s making a huge and forward-looking comeback, ripping an electronic page from the mashup scene’s playbook and going live, helped by mind-boggling new software. It’s complicated, but it’s lovely. Indie rock DJs, like techno DJs before them, are discovering contemporary classical ("new music") and throwing rough street sounds and angular, alien textures into their sets. The dub scene is also booming, mixing high-tech breaks and ragga beats with Southeast Asian instrumentation and more than a little African flavor. And the queer kids? We’ve ceased embracing our inner Beyoncé so much and are turning to live bands and smoky cabaret to get our kicks. Rawk.

All of which just means anything goes. And lover, it’s going well. So make this summer work for you — however, whyever, whenever. It’s almost like democracy!

Poach the crowd,

Marke B.

marke@sfbg.com

X-treme Mugler

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Remember Angel? Remember flab, the folds, and the sticks and stones we called my bones? Thierry Mugler – the fashion designer who went all the way with shoulder pad fascism and added the scent of chocolate (with sublime results, if we might say so ourselves) to perfume – has evidently gone completely ape for adrenalin and weird bulgy veins in strange places, and has turned himself from a “renowned courturier to muscle-bound beast.” This according to the WOW Report.

thierrymuglerbuff-tm.jpg
Doesn’t Thierry Mugler’s head look Photoshopped onto some odd prefab Frank Frazetta-style Conan bod? Courtesy of the WOW Report

WOW continues: “We reported that the 59-year-old French designer and perfumer had been lifting weights to such an extent that he bulked himself into an unrecognizable creature that required a whole new identity. Thierry now wants to be called Manfred. ‘He’s been incommunicado since he closed his couture house,’ said a former friend. ‘What he’s done to his body is totally scary.’ We didn’t realize the extent of the damage until a friend e-mailed us a photo of the buffed and bare-naked Manfred.”

Zut alors! It’s like a big wake-up call to step away from the ‘roids, kids. If it’s real… Wake me up when it’s over.

Eat on the beat

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Once upon a strange, overly prepared, possibly paranoid post-9/11-related time not so long ago, I’d bring my lunch to shows at Shoreline Amphitheatre, then–Concord Pavilion, and all those other mammoth Sleep Train–sponsored yet intrinsically antisnooze behemoths. I’d pack a heaving Dagwood of cold cuts and assorted cheeses and energy bars into a backpack for random spates of balls-out rockin’ in burbs and office parks. What was I thinking? Guess I felt goofy partaking in those pricey, once-no-frills concession stands o’ paltry choices. Will it be a $7 Bud or $12 Corona, milady?

My only point in this pointless universe of sunburn, service fees, and loud, loud music is that it looks incredibly silly to come too correctly sometimes, especially when one takes in all-day musical twofers like the Harmony Festival and BFD in one fell weekend, hoping to study the cultural disconnect.

Still, the disjunction started way earlier, while at Harmony, cruising the many-splendored superwheatgrass concoctions, nut ices, and organic brown-rice-and-veggie-bowl stands (here somewhat more affordable than making a meal at a movie theater) and sticking out like a black-garbed Trenchcoat Mafiosa amid the dreadlocked sk8ter bois and Marin wealth gypsies with perfectly crimped hair. So too at BFD, playing arcade basketball backstage, studying Interpol and the Faint as they attempted to summon dark magic in broad daylight, and feeling peckish and jaded for noting the all-male standard-issue modern-rock lineups dominating the main stage.

I just didn’t go far enough in packing num-nums for all-day summer music lovin’ — after all, when in Rome and paying Rome’s hefty ticket prices, why not dress, smell, and quaff like those kooky Romans do? (And why not get a brain transplant while you’re at it?) As author Kara Zuaro might say, "I like food, food tastes good," but I also like saving nonexistent moolah and embedding myself seamlessly clad in average fan camouflage.

Hence a modest proposal for blending in at and sneaking grub into this summer’s shed performances:

THE SHOW: The Police, the Fratellis, and Fiction Plane. Wed/13, 6:30 p.m., $50–$225. McAfee Coliseum, Oakl. www.ticketmaster.com.

THE LOOK: Blond wig, placenta facial, an afternoon in the spray-tanning salon, tantric sex charm bracelet.

THE FLASK: Guinness-laced nut milk shake to please the food police.

THE SHOW: Gwen Stefani, Akon, and Lady Sovereign. Tues/19, 7:30 p.m., $25–$79.50. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. (650) 967-3000.

THE LOOK: Blond wig, stunna shades, ab-baring lederhosen, and a pout.

THE LUNCH BOX: A single Ricola in sympathy with Stefani, who claims to have been dieting since she was 10.

THE SHOW: Vans Warped Tour, including Bad Religion, the Matches, Flogging Molly, Pennywise, and Tiger Army. July 1, noon, $29.99. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. (650) 967-3000.

THE LOOK: Black T-shirt, faux-hawk, and black low-top Converse or checkerboard Vans — why not one on each foot?

THE BROWN PAPER SACK: Not Dog, PBR, Ritalin.

THE SHOW: Ozzfest, including Ozzy Osbourne, Lamb of God, Static X, Lordi, Hatebreed, Behemoth, and Nick Oliveri and the Mondo Generator. July 19, noon, free. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. www.ozzfest.com

THE LOOK: Black T-shirt, stunna shades, floppy shorts.

THE FANNYPACK: Seitan, cheddar cheese Combos, a quart of Gorilla Fart No. 666.

THE SHOW: Bone Bash VIII, with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Pat Traves, and Laidlaw. July 20, 5:45 p.m., $10.77–$59.50. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. (650) 967-3000.

THE LOOK: Uh, blond wig, floppy shorts, ab-bearing lederhosen.

THE TRUNK: Rice Chex and raisins, leftover tuna noodle casserole, Arkansas Buttermilk.

THE SHOW: Projekt Revolution Tour, including Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, and Placebo. July 29, 12:45 p.m., $24.50–$70. Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. (650) 967-3000.

THE LOOK: Floppy shorts and tantric sex charm bracelet.

THE PLASTIC SACK: Fried ramen with faux duck, Kit-Kat, Sparks, and Tylenol.*

HIGH THERE

Pills and purists might accuse Sean Rawls of appropriating Aislers Set for his reggae-scented SF party supergroup Still Flyin’ — or simply appropriating Jah lovers’ rock sans the spirituality — but that doesn’t bum out the ex–mover and shaker of Athens, Ga.’s Masters of the Hemisphere on the June 5 release of an EP, Za Cloud (Antenna Farm): "Some people hear Still Flyin’ described to them and automatically think that it’s such a horrible idea for a band, which I can understand. But what we’re trying to do is just have a good time. Most bands aren’t into that."

When Rawls moved to SF in 2003, he simply asked everyone he knew — including AS’s Yoshi Nakamoto, Alicia Vanden Heuvel, and Wyatt Cusick — to join his new band. He didn’t think 15 unlikely suspects from groups like Maserati would accept.

After an East Coast tour this fall, Rawls aims to record an album of even dancier material, provided more instruments don’t get stolen by fans, as they have been in Sweden. "They also steal our beer. Either way it sucks," Rawls says. "We’re partying hard, and beer is a vital ingredient."

STILL FLYIN’ WITH ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI Sat/16, 9 p.m., $16. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365

GET THE BREAD OUT

BOTTOM AND TARRAKIAN


The Bay’s metal maidens meet the Totimoshi spinoff group, as the latter toast a new EP, The Swarm (No Options). Fri/15, 9 p.m., $7. Annie’s Social Club, 917 Folsom, SF. (415) 974-1585

LADYBUG TRANSISTOR


Following the sad passing of drummer San Fadyl, the Brooklyn nostalgia rockers carry on, twanging sweetly on Can’t Wait Another Day (Merge). Fri/15, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455

NO DOCTORS


The Docs are in with their third album, Origin and Tectonics. With Wooden Shjips, Fuckwolf, and Sic Alps. Fri/15, 10 p.m., $6. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. (415) 552-7788

SCISSORS FOR LEFTY


The SF combo skipped pants at BFD. Fri/15, 9 p.m., $13. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422

COOL KIDS


The Chicago duo kick out the streamlined boom-bap. Tues/19, 8:30 p.m., $8–$10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016

SCARY MANSION


No creeps — just poignant, eerie rock from the Thunderstick-wielding Brooklyn trio. Tues/19, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

Take another letter

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I just saw Secretary yesterday, and then read your column that mentions the same movie and similar sentiment ["Thwang," 5/30/07]. My situation is a bit different because I’ve known how I feel for a while but never seen or experienced it. Also, I’m a stripper and rarely have sex but am extremely sexual. I’ve got a serious lust affair with the eroscillator but think I’ve maybe given up on a love that will be feminist but dominating and aggressive, too. In the movie, Maggie is looking through classifieds for a partner, and that is way too dangerous for me. How do I quiet the arguments between feminism and being truly submissive? Also, having to be seriously up-front about wanting some serious kink might kill the whole deal for me. Do these relationships actually happen in real life? How?

Love,

Sub Grrrl

Dear Grrrl:

Right. There was a moment when every other conversation, magazine article, and academic conference was devoted to exploring the conflicts and connections between radical feminism and radical sexuality. It was called "the ’80s." You probably missed it owing to not being born yet, but that stuff is still in print, and whatever isn’t is gathering dust in the sorts of used bookstores heavily populated by overweight cats and should be easy to find. Most of the best-known pro-kink feminists of the time were very, very lesbian (see Gayle Rubin on the academic side and Pat Califia for "literotica"), but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have anything to say to straight women.

Obviously, of all the possible permutations, male dominant–female submissive is likely the most discomfiting to you. But, happily, the flip side of the "this weird sex thing goes against every political, ethical, or religious principle I consider right and true" coin is so often the Big Hot. Go to any upscale S-M party (yes, these really do exist) in San Francisco or Seattle, and at least half the women crawling around their master’s boots begging to be punished ’cause they’ve been very bad are in real life junior partners at onetime all-male law firms, or teach gender theory at small but prestigious liberal arts schools. In other words, they are quite fully "empowered," thanks, which doesn’t keep them from voluntarily surrendering said power come Saturday night, and may in fact add to the appeal. The classic, even clichéd, old-style S-M enthusiast, after all, is a member of Parliament who reports like clockwork to the bawdy house every Thursday afternoon for a brisk caning …

Um, yes. Where were we? I’m not sure where you, who perform naked for sexually aroused strangers for a living, got the idea that playing the personals is particularly dangerous. Perhaps from the same episodes of Law and Order in which a few pieces of S-M gear stashed under a suspect’s bed signal that a severed head in a shoe box cannot be far off? I would never suggest that you meet someone for coffee and immediately go home with him to check out his cool dungeon. Far from it. But the meeting-for-coffee part is perfectly safe. After that, you proceed as normal, which includes sharing your interests and aspirations … which is the next place we’re going to have some trouble, I see.

If being up-front about your weirditude is a potential deal-breaker for you, then I suspect you are a spontaneity freak. They are common, but many or most can have the need to proceed by whim or fancy beaten out of them by a stern application of reality. Spontaneity is fun and sexy, but it’s also responsible for most of your unwanted pregnancies, a vast number of STD transmissions, and who-all knows what other havoc. It’s also inconsistent with S-M at any level more technically advanced than the (admittedly often completely satisfactory) bend-over-and-spank variety. If you do go ahead with this, and you do find someone worthy of your submission, you are going to have to talk about it, whether you want to or not. Not only is it unsafe to do S-M with people you know nothing about, it isn’t even fun. What if you want to wear a neat little skirt and heels while bending prettily over nearby furniture, while he wants you to be a bad puppy and sleep in a kennel in the kitchen? What if your idea of submission is saying, "Yes, sir," a lot, while his idea of domination includes branding irons and cattle prods? Can you see how this could get ugly?

In romantic fantasy, the heroine meets the rough but passionate and shirtless master of the manor when she fetches up at his door as a penniless et cetera. In real life, I’m sorry to tell you, she meets him online or at an S-M "munch" or through kinky friends or at a party. And then they talk. I’m sure you’d rather toss your hair tempestuously while a dark and stormy stranger bends you over his knee and yanks down your pantaloons, but you’ll get over it.

Love,

Andrea

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

Club sprockets

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This year’s Frameline is bursting with documentaries about legendary nightlife personalities. Call it the Party Monster effect. Following the release of two films about the tragedy of Michael Alig’s breakneck rise and murderous fall, filmmakers have become more attuned to the significance of clubs in gay life — or else they’ve realized that featuring outrageous club kids in their movies is a shortcut to notoriety.

Only available via online clips, the blaxploitation homage Starrbooty features an over-the-top RuPaul as a supermodel-spy who must go undercover as a New York City street hooker to rescue her kidnapped niece from an evil arch-nemesis. Pavlovian scenester stimuli Lady Bunny, Lahoma van Zandt, and Candis Cayne are on hand to spice up the (admittedly, a tad tired) proceedings. A cameo by heavily accented porn god Michael Lucas is priceless for its awkwardness.

From the other side of the country, and the comedy spectrum, comes Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother, which documents the transgender transformation of Los Angeles scene star (and actor!) Alexis Arquette. We follow Alexis exhaustively — as she shops, clubs, and dishes on her future vagina — until she throws a bitch fit at the end about the intrusiveness of the cinematic project (how postmodern). La-la Land drag luminaries Jackie Beat and Candy Ass (what, no Chi Chi Larue?) offer comments throughout.

The Godfather of Disco purports to tell the story of Mel Cheren, the storied gay West End Records founder who presided over such dance music innovations as the 12-inch single, the instrumental B-side, and the DJ dance mix and the release of groundbreaking disco nuggets like "Sesso Matto" and "Is It All Over My Face." Three decades’ worth of superstar DJs and club promoters enthuse over their favorite West End releases of yore, but director Gene Graham gives us only snatches of the songs and little information about the commentators. Still, those in the know will find it hard to resist glimpses of old Paradise Garage flyers and photos and quick chats with nightlife doyens like Johnny Dynell of Jackie 60, DJs Louie Vega and Nicky Sano, and producer John "Jellybean" Benitez. Plus, there’s a galloping stream of zingers delivered by the Village People’s cowboy, Randy Jones.

Dynell also pays tribute to one of NYC’s hottest clubs of the past decade in Motherfucker: A Movie, which follows six months in the lives of Motherfucker’s four touchingly self-important promoters. Director David Casey works hard to import something other than sublebrity worship into his pic, giving us some beautiful camerawork, lessons about the inner workings of club promotion and operation, and a wealth of cameos by partiers both weathered and nubile, from Sylvain Sylvain and Bob Gruen to Willie Ninja and Moby to the Juan Maclean and Peppermint Gummybear.

It’s all cool, but also a little pointless — a slew of tipsy polysexual hopefuls grinding to the latest slick club music, hardly an ounce of genuine artistic inspiration or dangerous cultural exploration in sight. (To his credit, Casey allows some of the older commentators to make this point explicitly.) "We’re all just doing our thing, waiting for the next revolution," one of the participants says. Hmm. (Marke B.)

ALEXIS ARQUETTE: SHE’S MY BROTHER (Matthew Barbato and Nikki Parrott, US, 2007). Fri/15, 7 p.m., Victoria

THE GODFATHER OF DISCO (Gene Graham, US, 2007). Sat/16, 3:30 p.m., Victoria; Tues/19, 4:30 p.m., Castro

MOTHERFUCKER: A MOVIE (David Casey, US, 2007). Tues/19, 7 p.m., Victoria

STARRBOOTY (Mike Ruiz, US, 2007). June 23, 8:30 p.m., Castro

The man whose head exploded

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FILM Recently, my eyeballs were among the first to be skewered by the finished print of Hostel 2. As torture and black humor unspooled on the big screen, director Eli Roth — last seen working on Grindhouse, both as an actor and behind the camera for the Thanksgiving trailer — prowled about, gauging audience reactions to his third feature film. The next day I met Roth to discuss all things horror. He talks fast. Here are some excerpts.

On the Metreon audience’s response to Hostel 2: When you’re making a film, you’re literally going on instinct. I know my gore stuff is gonna work, but it’s the other stuff, those moments where you’re, like, "No, don’t, don’t, don’t!" — in editing, you’re just hoping the audience will feel that way. And I thought that every moment hit the way I wanted it to. Even in a fan-based audience, sometimes they’re, like, "All right, impress me, Roth. Let’s see what you got." I wanted people to be cheering and screaming and going wild the way they were at the end of the first one, and I really felt we got that.

On emuutf8g the grand old Italian B-movie tradition of killing kids: I wanted to take risks in the movie. I wanted things where people would go, "Oh, you can’t do that." Not just to offend, but I wanted to live in that danger zone. After I made it, I saw this film directed by [Narciso Ibáñez] Serrador called Who Can Kill a Child?, which I think is genuinely one of the single greatest horror films. I love those early 1970s Italian movies like Torso, Night Train Murders, and To Be Twenty, by Fernando di Leo. Have you seen To Be Twenty? At the end of this movie, my jaw was on the ground. It was so horrific that they pulled every single print from the theaters. But in all three of those films, it’s a group of college-age girls that are all going on a trip somewhere. The girls all make intelligent decisions; there’s nothing that they do that’s like a dumb movie moment. And there’s a real, palpable sense of dread in those movies. I really wanted to build that sense of dread for everybody [in Hostel 2].

On getting Ruggero Deodato, director of 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust, to cameo: I went to Italy to do press for Hostel, and this journalist was producing behind-the-scenes interviews for No Shame DVDs. We drove an hour outside of Rome to the set of a TV show that Deodato was shooting. I brought my Cannibal Holocaust poster for him to sign. And he was so funny and so cool, and I was, like, "I got a cameo for you that I think the American fans would love." And Deodato is just a huge slice of ham. This guy loves being on camera. He’s so funny. And when he showed up on set, I got to ask him questions like, how do you direct people that live in trees, like in Last Cannibal World? It was great to hear his answers.

On his rivalry with the Saw filmmakers: I’m friends with all those guys, and we always call each other when we get a kill scene done. It’s almost like this bleeding contest we have. The Splat Pack — we all love each other’s movies. But there’s always that side of you that wants to have the rep of having the nastiest kill. We joke all the time: "We’re running out of body parts!"

On his inspiration for torture scenes: All you have to do is go to the Museum of Torture in Prague. The stuff you see is so shocking you couldn’t even film it. [In my films] it’s a combination of looking at history and what’s actually already been done and sort of walking around Home Depot and looking at tools. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter what I think of — what makes the scene horrifying is whoever’s in the chair. It’s the actor. That’s what makes it really scary.

His response to people who think his films glorify violence: I say, don’t see them. I’m not making movies to appeal to everybody. I’m making movies for fans of this type of movie, and I want to stay true to that.

HOSTEL 2

Opens Fri/8 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

Gunning for Boots

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Where have all the outlaws gone? Now that Paris Hilton seems like the highest-profile sorta-one-hit wonder to run afoul of the law, it’s easy to believe that pop’s rep for rebellion is seriously in question. (And with Warner Bros. jettisoning the overexposed jet-setter, who knows if she should even make the tally?) Yet just how disturbing or subversive is it to glom on to corporate punks like Good Charlotte or hitch your fortunes to soaking-in-it onetime gangstas like Snoop "Soul Gravy Train" Dogg? How revolutionary is it to play music your parents might approve of, à la white-bread soul poppers Maroon 5?

But those petty pop-crit worries wane on hearing about the Coup mastermind Boots (né Raymond) Riley’s Memorial Day misfortune. In the early-morning hours, long before most locals were firing up the grill and chugging microbrews, Riley was looking down the wrong end of a San Francisco Police Department gun barrel while innocently attending a get-together at a friend’s warehouse in SF’s Dogpatch-Waterfront zone. Why? Likely for nothing more than driving while black.

Riley had just parked his car near the warehouse when he was blinded by flashlights, and he realized that he was surrounded by cops. "They were saying, ‘Don’t fucking move, don’t fucking move,’ and came straight at me," Riley told me from his Oakland home, where he had just fed his kids their Sunday breakfast. "They put my hands above my head, searched me, and searched my car, even though they were looking for someone who was stealing tires. You know, if they had a description of a light-skinned black man with a big Afro and sideburns, maybe they should have taken me in. But they were yelling, ‘Are you on probation? Do you have a warrant?’ And every time I said no, they said, ‘Don’t lie to us. Don’t fucking lie to us.’"

Neighbor Hoss Ward had been walking his dog by the warehouse when he spied officers with flashlights lurking between parked cars amid the trash on the street. "I thought that was weird. They didn’t question me, but I’m a white man," he said later, verifying that Boots parked, got thrown against his car, and had guns pulled on him. "It’s not unusual for someone to pull up in a beater car," Ward said. Yet this incident smelled like racial profiling: "That’s what the vibe felt like."

"I walked over there and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’" recounted Riley’s friend Marci Bravo, who lives at the warehouse. Eventually Riley was released, but, Bravo continued, "It was really messed up. We fire off fireworks, burn things in the street, and there’s been no problems with cops. They’ve actually come and hung out before.

"It’s just a nasty case of police profiling."

In the end, Riley said, the officers didn’t even check his ID. At press time, police representatives had not responded to inquiries about the incident, and Riley was planning on filing a grievance with the city watchdog agency the Office of Citizens Complaints, a process that the longtime activist is, unfortunately, familiar with. After a 1995 Riverside performance with Method Man, Riley and kindred local hip-hoppers Raz Caz, E-Roc, and Saafir were pulled over and pepper-sprayed in their car seats following a yelling argument at a club. Then there was the incident during the Coup’s 2006 tour around, ironically, their Epitaph album Pick a Bigger Weapon. Shortly after the tour manager urinated next to a semi at a Vermont rest stop, the tour vehicles were stopped by plainclothes officers who claimed to be surveilling a cocaine deal in the truck. "Half the band woke up with guns in their faces," the Coup leader recalled.

Riley’s experiences in and out of our enlightened — for some — city bring home the ugly, everyday reality behind the entertaining anecdote with which the Arcade Fire’s Win Butler regaled the Greek Theatre crowd June 2: he was almost arrested for the first time that day when Berkeley police dragged him out of a rec facility for arguing over the use of a public basketball court. "They called for backup and everything," Butler marveled onstage.

"There are stories all the time," Riley offered matter-of-factly. "Everyone knows you used to get fucked with in San Francisco and Berkeley."

"Usually it’s not anything with me specifically being a rapper," he continued. "I might have even more protection because of that. Like at this get-together, somebody came up and said, ‘Don’t you know who this is? This is Boots Riley.’ They might not have known who I am, but they realize this isn’t the regular case where they can do whatever they want." *

ALIGN YOUR CHAKRAS, CAMPERS

Talk to underground trance DJs, and they’ll point to the Harmony Festival as the hot spot forest ravers will be orbiting. Indeed, one of the main organizers, Howard "Bo" Sapper — who, along with Sean Ahearn, Scott McKeown, and Jeff Kaus, is putting on the 29th music and camping fest — agrees that a healthy, fire-breathing portion of the expected 40,000 at the three-day event will be die-hard burners drawn to the seven-year-old techno tribal night. Sapper also points proudly to the diversity of the musical lineup, including Brian Wilson, Erykah Badu, Rickie Lee Jones, the Roots, Common, moe., and Umphrey’s McGee. "I’m not sure if we’re going mainstream or the mainstream is coming to us," Sapper said, listing the green exhibits and this year’s theme, Promoting Global Cooling. "It’s part of the paradigm shift going on in America."

OVERNIGHT MUST-HAVES


•Earplugs

•Air mattress

•Plenty of water

•Patience

HARMONY FESTIVAL

Fri/8–Sun/10, $20–$500

Sonoma County Fairgrounds

1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa

www.harmonyfestival.com

The suggestions

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am writing to quibble with your response to Imagine ["You May Find Yourself …," 11/8/06], the fellow in college who complained that after "a couple of rounds a day for a few months," he had difficulty reaching orgasm without either fantasizing about another woman or taking matters into his own hands. You suggested that he might just be someone who needs a certain amount of novelty or fantasy to get up and over, and you left it at that.

The reason I felt driven to write is that he described exactly how I feel when I try to have sex too often. Even back in college, I was never voracious sexually — once a day is just dandy. If I try to have sex twice a day for several days in a row, I can still get erections but have difficulty achieving orgasm. The only way to get up and over is to introduce something novel or to switch to masturbation (because, like most men, I am the world’s foremost expert at getting myself off).

So, I would counsel Imagine to try going cold turkey for a day or two. If a sexual hiatus miraculously (but temporarily) cures the problem, then it’ll prove he may just be trying to have sex more often than his body really wants to.

Love,

Just Me

Dear Just:

Yeah, OK.

A few weeks ago I ran a column I called "The Corrections" [5/2/07], mostly because I’d finally got around to reading that book that everyone else in the universe read like five years ago. But I get as many suggestions as I do corrections, so what the heck? Here’s yours.

I agree with you actually. Dude was probably not only a little bored (yes, even college boys can get bored during sex!) but physiologically fatigued. I’m going to assume this is no longer a problem for that particular college boy, though, since it was a few months back and sadly (or happily, depending), "Help, we’re having too much sex!" tends to be one of those self-limiting relationship problems.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I have some advice for the guy who was too tall to do it doggy-style with his short partner [5/23/07]. Doggy-style is my favorite position also. I’m a tall guy, and one thing that works great is standing by the side of your bed while your woman presents to you near the edge. While it takes more energy since you’re vertical, you can bend your knees and her waist to make it a pleasurable experience for you both.

Love,

Tallboy

Dear Tall:

OK, then! Indeed, for lots of size-discordant couples a "he stands, she crouches" position will work handily. Not dignified, mind you, but any activity that allows your dangliest dangly bits to not only hang low but to wobble to and fro has little claim to dignity in the first place.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Readers:

The last thing I wanted to cover is not so much a suggestion as a follow-up, except insofar as I suggest that interested parties check it out ASAP: the Food and Drug Administration approved the "never have to have a period again" pill. The Red Tent is no more. We can have a female president now.

Well, let’s not get carried away.

While a large majority of women in a large number of recent studies (there’s a good run-down of recent research at the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals site, arhp.org) would like their menstrual cycles to be different, this includes women who’d merely like them to be less painful or more regular, and really, big duh. Still, it appears that most women asked have some interest in at least occasional menstrual suppression. Women surveyed at six sites across the United States seemed overwhelmingly, even shockingly eager to abandon the old moon goddess entirely. According to that poll, 59 percent said they "would be interested in not menstruating on a monthly basis," and one-third said they "would choose never to have a period." I don’t recall seeing them say that they’d choose never to have a baby, but presumably that exception was addressed somehow or other.

Unsurprisingly, women in the military seem most eager to jump. I was likewise unflabbergasted to see that Dutch and German women seemed a little less eager to embrace a novel, high-tech body-mod that’s radical and (perhaps excessively) clean-freakish — aren’t these the same women who were famously late (if ever) adopters of leg and pit shaving? — but even they were pretty intrigued by the possibility. And finally, just to prove menstruation’s ickiness and expendability is almost entirely a matter of cultural perspective, Nigerian women who were asked about menstrual suppression wanted nothing to do with it.

How about you?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question!

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s too bad that acting superintendent Gwen Chan didn’t want to stick around a bit longer at the helm of the San Francisco public schools. She brought a lot of stability to the district after the insanely acrimonious final years under Arlene Ackerman (who won’t go away and is still suing the district for back pay, which is disgusting considering all the money she took out of the district).

But I ran into school board president Mark Sanchez at the Progressive Convention June 2, and he was all smiles about the guy the board seems ready to hire for the job. The almost-new superintendent is Carlos Garcia, who was the principal of Horace Mann Middle School from 1988 to 1991 and most recently was the head of the Las Vegas school district.

I have a son going into third grade and a daughter going into kindergarten, and I’m an unabashed fan of and advocate for public education in San Francisco. So I hope he’s everything the board members say he is.

But since he’s not taking press calls right now, I’m going to give him a little free, and public, advice.

There are real, lingering problems in the local schools, the biggest of which is the achievement gap. White kids and Asian kids and kids from wealthier families do far better than black kids and Latino kids and kids whose families don’t have much money. That’s unacceptable, and the new superintendent needs to make resolving that problem a priority.

He also needs to understand some facts of San Francisco life.

For starters, this city doesn’t like or tolerate arrogance or secrecy. The schools chief needs to be accessible, approachable, willing to listen, and willing to admit mistakes. Not everything you try will work, Mr. Superintendent; when you screw up, you can’t get your pants in a wad and refuse to say you’re sorry.

You’ve got some tough decisions to make, and they won’t all be popular. People are going to shout and protest and complain. Some of those people will be your own school board members. We like to air our disputes in public around here; it’s a political town, and we expect the people who run community institutions to work with their critics and their friends alike. It’s hot in the kitchen; get used to it before you arrive or this isn’t going to work.

And do not — do not — continue the previous superintendent’s policy of building a wall between the press and the district. Ackerman had a gag order in place and wouldn’t allow staffers to talk to reporters without her prior consent. Scrap that — publicly — your first day. Make it clear you have nothing to hide: records are open, your door is open, and your public relations staff exists to promote the schools, not your personal career.

Remember when you walk in the door: There’s a lot wrong with the district, but there’s also a lot right. There are some brilliant principals and a lot of wonderful, devoted teachers. Don’t make their lives any harder than they already are.

And please: for the sake of all of us, don’t make the San Francisco schoolkids lab rats for your pet educational theories. This isn’t a social-science experiment or a doctoral thesis you’re taking on. These are people’s lives. Have a little respect for that, and we’ll get along fine. *

Kid tested, Bono approved

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By Sean Manning

Bono once alleged that Radiohead could be changing the way kids listened to music if only they weren’t so darned esoteric (obviously an extremely relative concept…) and if they just made themselves a little more appealing to the masses: No more death bears and no more blip-bloop-bleep solo albums. sm_Arcade_Fire_k_N5E9300.sized.jpg

Well, Radiohead’s probably not going to change on Bono’s account. But it’s no wonder why the man flipped his shit so thoroughly over Montreal’s Arcade Fire. The band is the super earnest battering ram to indie culture’s ill-advised irony obsession and penchant for witlessly appropriated kitsch. And as their pair of shows at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre this weekend showed, the kids are listening.

No longer trembling newcomers, the band took the stage confidently, playing through their two albums’ worth of material the way David Byrne cherry-picks the best of the Talking Heads’ output for his solo shows. Of course, that kind of assured showmanship is probably a lot easier when the crowd is screaming—screaming—your words back to you, but you can’t exactly fault them for that. Material from this year’s Neon Bible fared well; it constituted much of the group’s main set—but it was the one-two of “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” and “Rebellion (Lies)” from 2004’s Funeral that was the evening’s long, glorious money shot.

The Arcade Fire is a cool band, to be sure. But they’re the kind of cool band whose show you can take your little brother to—or your mom, for that matter—and that fact doesn’t make them any less cool. At the same time, there’s a sense that this band is saying something, too. It doesn’t take a theologist to see that Neon Bible has some serious underlying commentary on the way religion is culturally appropriated, though the band may not be as blatant about it as Bono would like. But the message is there, and people are listening. And that’s what’s important.

Grape loss

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER As the Summer of Love turns 40 with a whiff of the haven’t-we-been-here-before birthday blues and a soupçon of marketing bluster — if you can’t trust anyone over 30, as one boomer so succinctly put it, well, doesn’t 40 seem beyond the pale? Look out, big five-oh! — one wonders less about where all the good times went than how we can look ourselves in the eye while we try to resurrect a past, now conveniently viewable through the rosy-hued granny glasses of nostalgia, after writing off the real thing. ‘Cause the reality isn’t always as pleasant, sexy, or sensationally deadly as, say, the post-’67 summer bummer of Altamont.

Witness the real final years and quiet death of Skip Spence, now considered the Bay Area’s Syd Barrett and one of the most notorious songwriters in Moby Grape, still regarded as the best combo from the SF rock scene to meet the least success — the overly hypey simultaneous release of five singles from their self-titled ’67 debut (San Francisco Sound/CBS) is said to have damaged their cred. What kind of fanfare did Spence, the original Jefferson Airplane drummer and onetime member of the Quicksilver Messenger Service who inspired Beck, Robert Plant, and Tom Waits to cover his music on More Oar: A Tribute to Alexander "Skip" Spence (Birdman), receive around the time of his South Bay death in 1999? On the occasion of the release of Listen My Friends! The Best of Moby Grape (Legacy) — the title cribbed from the rousing, flower-strewn Spence-penned boogie anthem "Omaha" — and a tentative Grape date at the Monterey Pop 40th-anniversary event in July, I spoke to Spence’s youngest son, Omar, from Santa Cruz to get an idea.

"My dad drank, but he wasn’t doing heavy drugs," says the longtime private investigator who now works construction when he isn’t playing guitar, singing, or leading worship at Calvary Chapel. When, in 1994, Omar got reacquainted with his father at the urging of his two older brothers, Skip was living as a ward of the state in a Santa Clara halfway house with a 10 p.m. curfew and was suffering from schizophrenia. According to Omar, Skip’s everyday routine at the time consisted of panhandling on street corners in order to get beer and cigarettes. "He would buy a quart of beer and nurse it all day," his son adds with a chuckle. "He just wanted a trophy."

Whisked out of a chaotic life with Skip by his mother when he was about three, Omar, now 39 and with a family of his own, readily confesses that he harbored a lot of anger toward his father. Still, he confesses, "When I saw my dad, it broke my heart. I loved him instantly. My brothers brought him to Santa Cruz and took him to lunch — he had a bad leg, and we bought him a cane. But he was very sick. There were moments of clarity when he was genius smart, and then he’d wander off having a conversation with himself. Here’s a homeless guy that most people would walk past and pity, and he’d say, ‘I’ve been working on a song,’ and he’d scratch out some bar chords and musical notes on a napkin."

Omar tried to get involved in Skip’s life and rekindle their relationship, though his father couldn’t live with him because of Omar’s children and the care Skip required — this was, after all, the man who legendarily interrupted the recording of the Grape’s second LP, Wow (Columbia, 1968), by taking an ax to the hotel room door of guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson, a supposedly acid-triggered episode. "I tried to get him to move here so I could be closer to him, and then I found out he was seeing a gal. I was, like, ‘I hope he doesn’t start a family. He’s not the daddy type,’" Omar says, sounding like the little boy whose father used to lead the kids in alarming wake-up serenades aimed at Mom. (Fortunately, the girlfriend turned out to be a "sweetheart lady" who wanted Skip to live with her in a Soquel mobile-home park.)

Reviving Skip’s musical career, however, didn’t seem to be an option, although Omar says his father found a way to play at Grace Baptist Church in San Jose. "People would give him a guitar, and he’d give it away," his son explains. "You’d give him a jacket, and he’d give it away. He was just a very giving guy. It was really humbling in a way. You could see the side of him that people loved."

The old Skip, who bounced around onstage and was "most vulnerable to being out of control," would probably have gleaned the irony that his conscientious youngest son was the one to step into his shoes now that, after decades of legal battles, the Moby Grape have won the right to use their name from their old manager Matthew Katz. With much encouragement from Skip’s ex-bandmates, Omar has been practicing with the Grape, playing and singing his father’s parts. "I wish my dad was here right now to experience the fruit of this," Omar says. Nonetheless, he adds, "My dad knew they really had something, even when he was sick at the end of his life. He had a cockiness about him. He knew he was good and they were good. And they can still play." *

MOST ADORABLE TOUR ANECDOTE OF THE WEEK

"We saw baby owls on the fence outside a gig in Ashville, North Carolina. Cutest thing you’ve ever seen — little tufts coming out of their ears," says singer-songwriter Laura Viers, who was tempted to snap a photo for her favorite site, Cute Overload. Tues/5, 9 p.m., $12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016

LISTEN AND LUST

BLACK ANGELS AND VIETNAM


Fierce psych jams meet crooked folkies. With Spindrift and Greg Ashley. Wed/30, 8 p.m., $14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421

BLITZEN TRAPPER


After dropping much Philip K. Dick and Scooby-Doo, the Portland, Ore., dystopian deconstructofolkies came up with the forthcoming shaggy dog of a good-bad-time album, Wild Mountain Nation (Looker Cow). With the Hold Steady and Illinois. Wed/30, 8 p.m., $15–$17. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 255-0333

MARY TIMONY BAND


The white witch of the east reveals The Shapes We Make (Kill Rock Stars). With the New Trust and Pela. Thurs/31, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455

DRAGON BOY SUEDE VS. SCHAFFER THE DARK LORD


Battle raps don’t get any funnier than when the LA comedian attempts to beat down the Burmese vet. Sat/2, 9 and 11:30 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923

CLIKS


Not chicks but a polished, androgynous all-female pop-rock band from Toronto. Sun/3, 8:30 p.m., $10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016

LATIN LYSERGIA FEST


When they’re not putting the mental in experimental Muzak, the local noise lotharios of Sergio Iglesias and the Latin Love Machine mess with out-of-towners like Monterrey, Mexico’s Antiguo Autómata Mexicano. With Evil Hippie. Sun/3, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923

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