Performance

Rabbit Research Collective

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PREVIEW The cultural map has changed, and Paris is no longer its center. Still, how does a small, unknown company from Chambery — a city best known as a jumping off place for some of the most spectacular boating and skiing in France — all of a sudden pop up in San Francisco? As with a lot of gigs, networking helps. In July ODC/Dance performed in Chambery, and voilà, here comes Rabbit Research Collective, a three-year-old multimedia art group that, rather unusually, includes a semiologist. Company founder, ballet-trained Emilie Camacho and American-born Corine Englander first participate in ODC Theater’s House Special, the culmination of a two-week collaboration with other selected dancers and choreographers. Joining local artists Monique Jenkinson and the trio of Charya Burt, Vishnu Tattva, and Melody Tanaka, they’ll present a workshop performance of a new piece created during their ODC residency. Then the duo moves over to the Alliance Française, where they’ll showcase Vertige (Vertigo), choreographed in 2006 around the concept of falling. The evening includes rehearsal footage and a discussion about the work’s generation. A glimpse at the video suggests that these women perform with souls, bodies — and brains.

HOUSE SPECIAL Wed/20, 8 p.m. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF. $15. (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org

VERTIGE (VERTIGO) Sat/23 and Tues/26, 8 p.m. Alliance Française de San Francisco, 1345 Bush, SF. $15. www.afsf.com, www.brownpapertickets.com

“Warchild”

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REVIEW German director Christian Wagner’s Warchild is a captivating and tragic drama about the psychological repercussions of the Bosnian war. Ten years after the fighting has ended, Senada (Labina Mitevska) comes across evidence suggesting that her daughter Aida, who was lost in the melee, might still be alive. She follows lead after lead with a kind of eerie resolve, undaunted by the fact that everyone — including her estranged husband — thinks she’s behaving irrationally. She eventually makes her way into Germany illegally and discovers that Aida, now 12 and renamed Kristina, was adopted by an affluent couple. Although the girl is clearly enjoying a life of privilege and has no recollection of her birth parents, Senada is determined to take her back to Bosnia. Naturally, this desperation is an expression of maternal love. But Senada also seems to believe that in reclaiming Aida, she will be able to reclaim the life that was essentially stolen from her during the war. Mitevska gives an arresting performance as the guarded but obviously broken protagonist; she is simultaneously sympathetic and unsettling.

WARCHILD opens Fri/22 at the Roxie Film Center. See Rep Clock for showtimes.

Critical sass

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ISBN REAL This month, a collection of Daniel Mendelsohn’s essays on books, plays, and films is being published. How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken (Harper, 480 pages, $26.95) is excellent. But it lacks something I can’t help wanting from the criticism I read, no matter how often some denunciation tries to shame the desire out of me. One of Mendelsohn’s pieces even takes novelist and literary critic Dale Peck’s 2005 review collection, Hatchet Jobs (New Press, 240 pages, $14.95) to task for indulging in the very thing I look for: bitchiness.

According to Mendelsohn, Peck’s analysis of any book cedes too much space to his caustic persona. Mendelsohn suspects that "what’s really going on here isn’t so much criticism as a kind of performance."

This is a common complaint. As standard as it’s become for critics to coat their reviews in personality, extravagantly painting their territory with barbed humor and a couple catalogs’ worth of references, there’s no scarcity of resistance to that practice, either. Just last week, on Mark Sarvas’ blog The Elegant Variation (www.marksarvas.blogs.com), writer Benjamin Percy expanded on Sarvas’ disgust over an excessively autobiographical review of Julia Reed’s memoir, The House on First Street (Ecco, 208 pages, $23.95) in the Aug. 3 The New York Times Book Review. Percy suggested a causal connection between the swell of infantile pop punditry on cable news channels and "those critics who spotlight their voice, their life, upstaging the assigned book."

Within How Beautiful It Is, Mendelsohn quotes Peck’s response to the controversy surrounding his critical flaying of Rick Moody a few years ago. Here we-go-’round-the criticism-bush: in turn, Peck’s quote mentions Heidi Julavits’ highly-regarded piece about the future of literary culture from the March 2003 maiden issue of The Believer. There, Julavits appeals to book critics to cool it already with the self-serving wisecracks. In fact, she mentions Mendelsohn as an exemplar of considered evaluation free from the static of the vitriol that’s come into fashion.

Julavits’ major beef was with the sadism of the bitchy critic, and in large part, that’s the same problem Mendelsohn has with Peck’s reviews. I have a lot of inner ethical debates queued up before I ever address, let alone endorse, the matter of the clever takedown. What I am willing to dispute right here, right now, is the puzzling belief that caustic criticism is not just ethically but also artistically deficient.

It’s one thing to frown upon a mean-spirited performance that gets away from the reviewed work as well as the rhythm of its own structure. I could even grudgingly comprehend were a canonical critic like Dorothy Parker called out for wandering too far into the realm of bilious stand-up comedy. (So much for wicked stand-up criticism as only a current trend). Regarding Peck, Mendelsohn is not wrong to point out the ungainliness of his grabs at attention. I can appreciate the argument that one’s limited reserve of creative energy should be spent in the service of creation and not destruction, particularly in the assessment of writers who don’t deserve the baroque angst their crappy books inspire.

But is there really no understanding that the affected horror of the cranky critic is a ritualized template for evaluation, and one that is as valid — when done well — as any other? If there isn’t, we’re all in trouble.

Hunters and collectors

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REVIEW It wasn’t so long ago that the term "curated" moved from dusty archive territory to popular lexicon. When did curated databases, boutique merchandise, and Netflix queues become commonplace? In the Bay Area, more than one school offers a master’s degree in "curatorial practice" — but who has a concise description of what that really means? The term has become elastic, perhaps because there’s too much material — of all sorts — to deal with in contemporary culture. Someone’s gotta figure out how to marshal and present it coherently.

Two current high-concept group exhibitions are equally about their curatorial premises and respective curators — Henry Urbach and Jens Hoffman — as the objects on display. Both have extended titles — "246 and Counting: Recent Architecture + Design Acquisitions" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and "Passengers" and "The Exhibition Formerly … ," at the Wattis Institute at California College of the Arts — and will evolve during their runs into 2009. Both are activated by transparent systems that generate their form.

"246 and Counting" includes every object Urbach, SFMOMA’s Helen Hilton Raiser curator of architecture and design, acquired during his first two years at the museum. In the wall label, he admits the show "aims to focus our attention on collection building." It’s not a stretch to say it has something to do with shopping: Urbach, who previously ran a commercial gallery in Chelsea, NYC, admits as much in the audio guide: "To shop well is half my job" (the other is to experiment with "curatorial practice"). And the presentation will grow to include each new piece he buys before "246" closes. The exhibition itself is a surprisingly refreshing take on the "collection show," the homely, hometown sibling to the bigger traveling exhibit.

Playing out on low platforms and arranged chronologically based on the date the works were purchased or given, "246"<0x2009>‘s structured format ironically allows for a degree of irreverence. Urbach leans framed photographs by Richard Barnes against the wall, stacks 1986 Beosystem stereo equipment, and splays silkscreen posters by the beloved activist nun, Sister Corita, on the floor under transparent Plexiglas boxes. It’s the same means used to showcase an iPhone, a donation from Apple, credited to Jonathan Ive. The fact that many of us have one makes for an automatic entry point.

The objects are identified on laminated cards, so the display initially resembles a high-end vintage store or the apartment of an aesthete/design guru — the format affords an approachable sense of personality. Urbach’s gesture is one of exposure — of the museum’s hierarchy and of his own sensibility. He uses this to assert a curatorial identity, and the narrowed focus makes for satisfying, authored viewing. If there’s an inclusion you question, you know who’s to blame.

The former director of exhibitions at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Hoffman — who just completed his first year of programming at Wattis — expresses a similar tastemaker sensibility. The contemporary art has a more experimental vibe because the gallery doesn’t collect. It feels as if Hoffman selected his picks from international art fairs. As noted on the Wattis Web site, "Passengers" is a "constantly transforming exhibition of emerging international contemporary artists, none of whom have ever had a solo presentation in an American public art institution." It’s structured around 12 artists: 11 with a few pieces, and one with a somewhat larger presentation, in a literal white cube space, before the latter artist leaves the show and another from the 11 remaining cycles into the bigger box.

The eclectic range of works — by artists familiar to Frieze readers but who will probably turn up in biennials down the line — tend to be funky and/or conceptual in bent and include Annette Kelm’s serial photos of a woven baseball cap; Valérie Mréjen’s short films about enacting various identities; and Federico Herrero’s painting project (though Aug. 30), which also involves a mural on a Potrero Hill home.

On Sept. 2 the show morphs into "The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers" — coincidentally with a showcase of works by San Francisco artist Tauba Auerbach, whose Alphabetized Bible (2006) is included, in editioned form, in "246" and "Passengers." The exhibition’s form will shift as well: after each solo presentation, the artist will leave the show, but none will be added. The final artist, Aurelien Froment, gets the entire space in August 2009. This may not be fair to the previous "Passengers," but it does make for a tidy denouement.

Like "246," the "Passengers" structure is perhaps more memorable than any of its works, making both meta-projects: shows about the act of making shows. It’s fitting, then, that Hoffman’s title salutes Prince, who has constantly reinvented himself, the structures of music distribution, and performance platforms. The musical artist has had his share of misfire projects, but you always know he’s going to come up with some convincing new challenge to cultural consumption. *

246 AND COUNTING: RECENT ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN ACQUISITIONS

Through Jan. 4, 2009

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

For hours and prices go to www.sfmoma.org

PASSENGERS: 1.12 FEDERICO HERRERO

Through Aug. 30

"The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers" runs Sept. 2–Aug. 29, 2009

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

1111 Eighth St., SF

For hours go to www.wattis.org

Money for nothing

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be feeling pretty confident in her reelection prospects this November, despite an independent challenge by high-profile peace mom Cindy Sheehan.

But that hasn’t stopped the San Francisco Democrat from raising big bucks from scores of interest groups who are contributing to her campaign committee and to the political action committee she controls, known as PAC to the Future.

Most of the money she’s raising is going toward assuring her continued power in Washington by giving it to the campaigns of other Democratic members of Congress, particularly those facing tough election battles that could threaten the party’s House majority.

Pelosi’s reelection committee has raised $2.36 million over the past two years, hundreds of thousands more than the average House member, according to federal campaign disclosure records and data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Her PAC raised an additional $585,000 during the current election cycle and spent $769,000, much of which has also gone to other candidate committees in payments of $5,000 and $10,000.

Many newly elected Democrats in the House represent conservative constituencies, and with her blessing they sometimes vote with Republicans to distance themselves from the party’s perceived liberal leaders like Pelosi, according to a new book published this month, Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics (Perseus, 2008). Democratic leaders in the meantime have continued a phenomenal fundraising spree to help protect those House members.

"Speaker Pelosi’s extraordinary financial commitment to her party, and especially to her party’s vulnerable members, illustrates the overriding emphasis congressional parties and members place on money," writes author Marian Currinder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. "And her encouragement of selective ‘opposition votes’ demonstrates the complexity of governing in a highly partisan and highly competitive political environment."

Even the day-to-day reelection expenses of Washington’s unrivaled leading lady are outsize, as Pelosi’s spending records show. In June 2007, she celebrated her 20th year in Congress with a glitzy fundraiser held in the capital’s Union Station that cost at least $92,000 and featured a performance by soul singer Patti LaBelle.

The bill included $25,393 for a slick video production; $61,105 on catering, rentals, and securing the site; $2,000 for hairstyling and wardrobe assistance insisted on by LaBelle; $2,824 on flower arrangements; and $1,396 for chocolates from a Pennsylvania-based confection maker.

Pelosi spent at least $650 from her campaign on makeup for the steady string of appearances she made after being sworn in as House speaker in January 2007. An annual fundraiser held this year at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco cost $23,454 for catering and other expenses.

As for the top contributors to Pelosi’s reelection committee, they include several members of the Gallo family, proprietors of the E&J Gallo Winery, who gave a total of $23,000 through maximum individual donations of $4,600. The Modesto-based company has long made contributions to both parties, particularly enriching candidates who show a willingness to scale back or even throw out the federal estate tax, which affects the inheritances of the wealthiest American families.

The Corrections Corporation of America gave $2,300 to Pelosi and $2,700 to her PAC. CCA is part of a storied group of for-profit privatization companies in Nashville, Tenn. that are closely tied to former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist and includes the Hospital Corporation of America and Ardent Health Services.

Just this year, the state of California hired CCA to house 8,000 inmates at six of the company’s facilities; a significant portion will go to a new $205 million CCA complex under construction in Arizona.

The nation’s largest private jail company suffered bad publicity during the 1990s due to a series of high-profile escapes and inmate killings inside its prisons. It teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after overbuilding jails without having enough inmates available to fill them, but the George W. Bush administration helped save the company with a new homeland security agenda that called for confining rather than releasing undocumented immigrants while they awaited deportation or asylum-request proceedings. The company’s revenue jumped nearly a half-billion dollars over the last five years and its lobbying activities in Washington, DC have increased similarly.

The entertainment industry has ponied up its share to Pelosi as well. The maximum $4,600 donation came from Aaron Sorkin, powerhouse writer behind the long-running TV series The West Wing and the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War. Christie Hefner, a regular donor to Democrats and heiress to Playboy Enterprises, contributed $1,000.

Steven Bing, a Hollywood producer who inherited a real estate fortune, and billionaire Las Vegas developer Kirk Kerkorian gave thousands to Pelosi over the last two years. Kerkorian has given to both parties, but he and Bing share a special relationship after having fought a nasty tabloid war.

Kerkorian allegedly hired private investigators to sift through Bing’s trash in search of DNA evidence that would link him to a child borne by Kerkorian’s ex-wife, whom he was divorcing, according to a lawsuit filed by Bing. Vanity Fair in July described Bing as part of a skirt-chasing entourage that ran with Bill Clinton and threatened to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid with its freewheeling bachelor reputation.

The wealthy Herbert and Marion Sandler, major supporters of MoveOn.org and other social justice causes, gave Pelosi a combined $9,200. The couple presided over the meteoric rise of Oakland mortgage lender Golden West Financial, which sold to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006. The housing crisis led Wachovia to post staggering multibillion-dollar losses this summer, and some business writers have attributed its declining fortunes to the Golden West purchase.

In June, George Zimmer of Fremont, founder of the Men’s Warehouse, gave $2,300. Notable husband and wife political team Clint and Janet Reilly, both active as candidates and donors, contributed a total of $19,200 to Pelosi’s campaign and PAC.

"Essentially, raising money for the party and its candidates is required of leaders," Money in the House author Currinder told the Guardian. "Pelosi wouldn’t have been elected speaker if she wasn’t a stellar fundraiser."

So where is Pelosi’s money going if not to television ads for her own campaign? She divided $250,000 among the campaigns of approximately 70 congressional candidates, and disbursed about $532,000 more to them through PAC to the Future. The beneficiaries included $14,000 to Democrat Chet Edwards of Texas, whose district includes President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch. Pelosi has publicly recommended him to Barack Obama as a possible running mate.

In addition, about half of the money Pelosi has raised since the beginning of 2007, slightly more than $1 million, went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, DC. She also gave to the Democratic parties of key battleground states including Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio. She singled out Democrat Travis Childers of Mississippi for extra cash totaling $21,000. In May, Childers stunned observers by defeating a Republican in a special election held when a representative vacated his House seat to take over for conservative icon Sen. Trent Lott.

"She has had prodigious success raising funds for individual Democratic candidates, for the DCCC, and for her own campaign and PAC," Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institute, told us. "Most party leaders represent safe seats but nonetheless try to set a high standard for raising money to advance their party’s broader objectives."

Pelosi’s Capitol Hill and San Francisco offices directed our questions to her fundraising operations at the DCCC. Her political director there, Brian Wolff, called the war chest "another vehicle for her to communicate with constituents in California." But he conceded that the pressure is on, "especially now that we have so many candidates and incumbents that need help. It definitely falls on her to be able to have a very aggressive fundraising campaign."

Wolff insists, too, that the Democrats revolutionized fundraising by seeking out smaller donations from large numbers of people instead of returning to the same short list of affluent contributors they had in the past.

In general, top donations to Pelosi still have come from lobbyists and lawyers, the real estate industry, insurance companies, banking and securities firms, and Amgen, a major biotech researcher based in Thousand Oaks. Officials from the labor movement’s biggest new power broker, the Service Employees International Union, also gave substantial sums, as did other major unions. But they fell far behind the contributions of large business interests.

Art Torres, chair of the California Democratic Party, told us that health care reform failed in 1990s at least partly because of political spending by drug companies. But he said that Democrats winning the White House and expanding their majorities in Congress would create a greater mandate to overhaul the health care system.

"It’s always been about issues" rather than fundraising, Torres said. "When I’ve talked to her, it’s always been about ‘How can we get this or that legislation through?’<0x2009>"

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the nation’s largest drug wholesaler, McKesson Corp., is based in San Francisco, and donors from pharmaceutical companies gave Pelosi more than $85,000 this cycle. Drug companies have given freely to Democrats in the past, but Democratic officeholders "still voted against their interests every time," Torres said.

Pelosi’s campaign spending on everything but her own reelection shows she doesn’t regard Sheehan as much of a threat. But the antiwar candidate did make it onto the ballot Aug. 8 and the Sheehan campaign has raised approximately $350,000 since December in small contributions after refusing to accept money from PACs and corporations.

"We didn’t have the party infrastructure going into this," said Sheehan campaign manager Tiffany Burns, adding that Pelosi’s campaign expenditures are "just another example of how Pelosi believes she is entitled to this seat."

Shakespeare and sexy Jesus

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More in this issue:

>>An interview with Steve Coogan

>>More new movie reviews

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Sundance darling Hamlet 2 has been dubbed by at least one critic as this year’s Napoleon Dynamite; but with an R rating and dialogue like, "I feel like I’ve been raped in the face," the movie isn’t nearly as quirky as that assessment implies. This is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy comedy served with a side of whimsy just as much as any Juno fan; but brazenly puerile movies that lie on the more ribald end of the humor spectrum have their own undeniable charms.

There is an art to making an enjoyable lowbrow comedy, as bizarre as it may seem. It’s the reason why deceptively dumb movies like Team America: World Police (2004) have achieved cult status and obscenely dumb movies like Hot Rod (2007) should never, under any circumstances be viewed — and incidentally, both were scripted (at least in part) by Hamlet 2 cowriter Pam Brady. There may be a fine line between stupid and clever, but the line that separates silly from moronic is just as — if not more — tenuous. Brady’s good name is happily on the road to recovery, though, with this over-the-top farce. To quote Polonius from Hamlet 1, "Though this be madness … there is method in it."

All of the madness, as it were, revolves around Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), an inept but undeniably gung-ho high school drama teacher. You see, Marschz (and every consonant is pronounced in that name) is a failed actor who devotes himself to the two students in his class and the low-budget, sparsely attended stagings of recent Hollywood classics like Erin Brockovich. When the school newspaper’s prepubescent, hyperarticulate drama critic gives his latest production a scathing review, Marschz is distraught, but he flirts with the idea of writing something original. It isn’t until the following school year, when funding for drama is cut, that he’s shocked into action. He begins working on what will become a sort of play-within-a-play — a lewd and ridiculous sequel to Hamlet with a cast of characters that includes Albert Einstein, sexy Jesus, a bi-curious Laertes, and everyone else from the original Shakespearean tragedy, brought back to life via time machine.

Though the tone is overwhelmingly absurd, this is a satire. It isn’t a particularly sophisticated satire, but it’s effective nonetheless — offering a critique of censorship and the ACLU; Amy Poehler plays a sassy, foul-mouth lawyer with no qualms about defending a high school play wherein Jesus gets a hand job. Rounding out the cast is Catherine Keener as Marschz’s crass wife, David Arquette as the Marschzs’ virtually silent boarder, who inexplicably follows them everywhere, and Elisabeth Shue as herself. But make no mistake, this is Coogan’s show. He’s a star in his native England, yet as far as American cinema is concerned, he’s consistently been relegated to supporting roles. Finally he’s allowed to shine here, and the movie ultimately owes its success to his performance. He falls down repeatedly in an intersection while wearing roller skates, he exposes his butt, he moonwalks on water as sexy Jesus — all of it inspired. Shakespearean comedies usually end in a wedding: though no one gets married in Hamlet 2, it’s a hell of a lot funnier than anything the Bard ever wrote. *

HAMLET 2

Opens Fri/22 at Bay Area theaters

Pennies from heaven

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Growing up gay in a military family of evangelical Christians in the Reagan-era South sounds like a tight squeeze for anyone. But as Kirk Read affirms, however claustrophobic one’s environment, there’s always room for a good fantasy. Besides, Read likes tight squeezes. His active dream life (which includes having a very large man lie on top of him and expel all the air from his lungs) percolated early with the image of his young gay Christian self leaving home for school each morning past an angry throng of fellow evangelicals in protest formation, waving signs expressing God’s vehement opposition to little backpack-wearing Kirk Read, holding up the obligatory jars of fetuses, shaking fists, and lobbing Bibles. Well, Read is here to testify that dreams can come true.

The story of that, um, miraculous moment (which took place recently as Read toured his home state of Virginia with the Sex Workers’ Art Show) makes up just one part of the Bay Area writer-performer’s lively, gleefully offbeat, and largely autobiographical concatenation of multimedia performance pieces, This Is the Thing, now being reprised at Shotwell Studios after its sold-out Queer Arts Festival debut at the Garage in June. But it comes, along with a raucous striptease, as the apt climax of an evening driven by a kind of fervor and sensibility clearly (if inadvertently) inspired by Read’s "hardcore" Southern Christian upbringing (recounted in detail in his 2001 memoir, How I Learned to Snap [Hill Street Press]).

Thus the evening begins with a prayer. Stepping onto the stage looking like a young Osmond-esque televangelist in a white polyester suit and gold sequin tee, Read (ably accompanied through many a mood by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, and backed by the smooth, evocative video collage work of Liz Singer) leads those assembled in a celebration of all those things disappearing — the cassette mixtape, the bottle rocket, the sonnet — before segueing into a paean to the penny and a loose, carefree set of associations that promptly lead to Abe Lincoln as well-hung gay icon. Pennies, those "shiny whores," are a sort of leitmotif here, though I can’t exactly say I understood why. Still, in terms of theme and execution, Read’s deceptively laid-back intensity, wit, and bold and personable self-exposure tend to make up for the evening’s slighter or more muddled aspects.

At its best moments This Is the Thing melds carefully honed physical and thematic juxtapositions with Read’s loose and natural but wholly committed performance style. The effects are often simultaneously hilarious, haunting, and gently moving. In a segment titled "The Conductor," Read recounts his first encounter with his very favorite sex client, a 450-pound man with a penchant for the classics, acting out the surprisingly romantic business affair with the aid of a large Winnie the Pooh–headed bear of a mannequin — a luxurious pileup of stuffed animal pelts constructed by Doug Hansen. In another pas de deux, a quietly strange and graceful piece called "Computer Face," Read is paired with a man-size figure set on wheels, wrapped in white bandages with clumps of wires for hands, and a glowing, hollowed-out Apple computer monitor for a head. As a looped recording plays a speech by Harvey Milk, Read pulls a series of objects from the figure’s head and dances with it in tight circles across the stage. In "The Nu Handbell Choir," the show reaches a kind of peak of starkness and delicacy as Read, calmly micturating into a set of crystal goblets, describes his furtive childhood adoration for his father — a veteran of three wars — and his Army brass buddies as they assembled in his parents’ living room to drink, talk, and console one another.

Other vignettes are less complex but still compelling in their energy and frank humor. "Hotel Hooker Haiku" is a sassy phenomenology of an Atlanta prostitute’s working world, set to banjo accompaniment and jovial footage of some dingy, dreary motel grounds. And the more traditionally outrageous if still amusing "Missing Mike Brady" posits Florence Henderson as a clothesline post airing her sex life on a well-worn marriage sheet. The Bradys may seem a little far afield here, but then, like the best of preachers, Read is nothing if not ecumenical.

THIS IS THE THING

Thurs/14–Sat/16, 8 p.m. (also Sat, 10 p.m.), $12–$20

Shotwell Studios

3252 Shotwell, SF

1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/38121

International Youth Music Festival

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PREVIEW How brilliant my high school music career was: I got to travel around the world to impress international audiences with my mad piano skills, take master classes with professional musicians, and play and network with European wünderkinder whose gifts were equivalent to mine.

Oh wait, my high school music career actually consisted of taking weekly piano lessons from a 65-year-old German woman in a church basement, figuring out ways to make her believe I had actually practiced that week. But I guess more focused and, er, gifted students actually do get to join the jet set and showcase their talent in front of classical music lovers on different continents.

Youth Music International was formed in 2003 to facilitate a US-UK exchange program for talented youngsters specializing in chamber music, hoping to provide the adolescent musicians with superior technical instruction and a unique opportunity for cultural exchange amongst peers.

The group returns to San Francisco this year for a four-day stint after holding last summer’s concerts in Oxford, England. Wednesday’s performance is the festival’s finale, with orchestral masterworks as the concert’s theme. So if you can put your jealousy aside, come check these kids out at Grace Cathedral, an intimate and historic setting, before they’re touring with Yo-Yo Ma and you can’t afford the tickets.

INTERNATIONAL YOUTH MUSIC FESTIVAL Wed/13, 7:30 p.m., $10–$16. Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF. (415) 749-6300, www.gracecathedral.org, www.youthmusicinternational.com

Tokio Hotel

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PREVIEW When I think of German music, Kraut-rock innovators and industrial metal gods usually come to mind. I always assumed Americans generated enough angsty, guyliner-donning teenage emo superstars to go around, but a quaint four-piece from Madgeburg, Germany, has proved me wrong.

Tokio Hotel released their debut, Schrei (Universal), in their native Deutschland in 2005 — three weeks after the lead vocalist’s 16th birthday. Their first single, "Durch den Monsun," instantly reached No. 1 on the German charts, and the pubescent pretty boys were quickly propelled into pan-European superstardom. The band’s first tour sold out 43 venues in Germany alone, followed by packed engagements across the continent. Last year’s performance in front of the Eiffel Tower drew 500,000 fans. If you watch clips from that show on YouTube, be prepared for low audio quality: it’s hard to hear the music over all the fangirl screaming.

After the success of their sophomore effort, 2007’s Zimmer 483 (Universal), and various behind-the-scenes DVDs, Tokio Hotel had all of Europe on lock. So the powers-that-be decided the band was ready for a stab at the only success that matters: the American kind. Scream, released stateside in March by Universal, is Tokio Hotel’s first album in English and consists solely of translated versions of their earlier hits. ("Spring Nicht" is now "Don’t Jump," "Schrei" is now "Scream"). I’d be lying if I said that their songs sounded uniquely German, or even vaguely European. Nope, Tokio Hotel pretty much sounds like the Svengali-produced version of every emo/alt-rock outfit that this country has dreamed up. And they look the part too: boy-band-esque dreamboats who gleaned makeup tips from Robert Smith.

Maybe that’s what’s so creepily German about Tokio Hotel: they’ve taken an often-cheesy but largely authentic American genre and repackaged it anew as a heartthrob fantasy for tweens with frizzy hair. Charisma meets efficiency, I guess.

TOKIO HOTEL Tues/19, 9 p.m., $25. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.ticketmaster.com

On the pulse

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How does one particular sound manage to work its way into one’s earhole and lodge itself in the consciousness, cooling its warm jets in the frontal lobes before arranging for a cozier stay elsewhere in the gray matter? For San Francisco musician Jesse Reiner, late of Citay and lately of Jonas Reinhardt, the new age sounds of the latter project likely stemmed from dreamtime as an eight-year-old. "It’s funny — I was just thinking about this the other day," he says by phone. "It may have been nap time in third grade when the teacher would play a sound-of-the-seagulls record. Maybe it’s early childhood conditioning." Add in a fascination with analog synthesizers and Moogs around the end of high school; a love of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and tracks like Pink Floyd’s "On the Run"; and the collegiate discovery of composers such as Terry Riley and Morton Subotnik: now you have makings of the man behind the proudly faux persona of the Jonas Reinhardt project, portrayed on the band’s MySpace site as a suave, sandaled Euro artist, based in Monaco and dialed in for intense relaxation.

Yet there’s nothing fake or contrived about Reiner’s band: witness the instrumental combo’s recent, jaw-droppingly powerful prog assault at the Hemlock Tavern. I’d dare any school kid to doze through that blistering performance, with Reiner on synths, Reiner’s Crime in Choir cohort Kenny Hopper on bass, and Mi Ami’s Damon Palermo on drums. Initially unveiled this spring at a Cluster afterparty in Big Sur, Jonas Reinhart rummages through the more propulsive, hard-rockin’ aspects of both Can and Goblin with a transcendence-bent energy only hinted at — by way of the bass-borne, primal glimmers of "An Upright Fortune" and fiery, urgent synth squiggles of "Crept Idea for a Mom" — on the band’s nonetheless gorgeous, multitextured self-titled disc, which will be released in November on Kranky (an iTunes-only digital EP comes out at the end of this month). Dare one call this the dawning of a New Rage? This is beat music — pulsing like mirrored hearts on tracks like "Fast Blot Declining" and "Tentshow" — meant for contemplative spirits as well as jittery soles.

And Reiner — long an aficionado of analog synth music that falls under the dread rubric of easy listening or new age — has found plenty of kindred souls of late for this bedroom project turned band: "I used to be able to go to Amoeba a couple years ago and go through this really abandoned section, at the bottom where the overstock bins were, full of new age records, and you could get everything for $1. Now they’re all $10 and $15 records." He was approached by Kranky after giving his music to friend and fellow new age buff, Adam Forkner of White Rainbow, who’s also on the label.

Where did the audience come from for these ecstatic emanations? Reiner isn’t certain, though he theorizes, chuckling: "I think it’s because a lot of people have been getting older! For people who come from a punk or indie rock background, maybe this blissed-out new agey stuff is resonating with them." Yet the musician doesn’t aim to hit all the snooze buttons in his listeners. "One of the things I want to do with my music is to make it a little edgier than most," he explains. "I don’t want it to be too sleepy-naptime music. I want to make sure it gets pushed a little bit."

Jonas Reinhardt’s tough backbone comes along with the old-school technology its songs are built on: a Maestro Rhythm King drum machine from the early ’70s. "I like the way it’s kind of rough-sounding and pretty heavy in a way, whereas most drum machines aren’t," Reiner says. The trio runs live drums and keyboards through the machine, which Reiner describes as "this funny caveman way to sequence," creating a "really cool pulse."

From there, it isn’t too hard to imagine Reiner and other newer-age indie-rockers pushing from the margins to craft their own cerebrally challenging soundtracks for yoga classes or massage sessions. "I went to Calistoga a month ago, and they had the music playing in the spa," Reiner recalls. "I thought, ah, I’d love to make my own record for this."

JONAS REINHARDT

With Jeremy Jay and DJs Conor and Pickpocket

Mon/18, 10 p.m., $7

Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

www.theknockoutsf.com

Also Aug. 28, check Web site for time, free

Apple Store

1 Stockton, SF

www.apple.com/retail/sanfrancisco

Those poor Romanians

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I’m surprised that this blogger is the only one who seems to have picked up on the NBC announcers’ astonishing comments that the Romanian gymnastics team would have been better off if the coach was still being mean and harsh to the girls.

In the days of Nadia Comaneci, “there would have been no hugs” for a performer who fell off the balance beam,” the sportscasters said after a disappointing performance.

That’s right: Beat and abuse the children, and they’ll do much better in prime time. Thanks, NBC.

Photo Issue Q&A: Jessica Rosen

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The cover image of this week’s Photo Issue comes from Jessica Rosen. While it reflects Rosen’s recent shift toward collage — which she also is using to create one-of-a-kind handbags and books — it only represents one facet of her work to date. Rosen’s website presents sections devoted to some of her earlier projects. Her vivid portraiture is defined by a striking use of color and shadow, and by a cooperative, perhaps even collaborative, bond with her subjects. I asked her about all of these things recently via email.

jessicabeach.jpg
From Jessica Rosen’s series “The Beach,” at www.jessicarosen.com

SFBG: Brazil is important to your photography to date. How did this come to be?
Jessica Rosen: To some degree, the location of my images is incidental. For about three years I was living between New York City and Rio de Janeiro. New York became my day job and Rio became my studio. Working in Brazil was simply a process that functioned really well for me.
Many of my photographs are rooted in a very specifically Brazilian setting, but I feel like I was exploring the same ideas that I had always been interested in. I was thinking a lot about cultural constructs of gender and sexuality and how those play out in the formation of subjective identity. I was also really interested in sex workers because I feel that this work becomes a very literal performance of sexual and gender stereotypes. And more importantly, the specificities of this performance are a reflection of more general cultural systems.
It’s not that those ideas could be exemplified only using Brazilian subjects. I mean, I could have been working with American sex workers and created different images that would have addressed the same ideas. In fact I have done projects of this nature in New York City. But Brazil was a great place to explore my interests.

2008 Cuervo Black US Air Guitar Championships

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PREVIEW For those about to air (guitar), we salute you. All it takes is viewing the big-hearted 2006 doc Air Guitar Nation or a few minutes in a sweaty club with the contestants to sample the craft, sass, and brash fearlessness needed to risk making a royal air-guitar-noodling ass of yourself in front of hundreds of sodden, mouthy armchair air-ax-slingers who believe — nay, know — they can kick as much as air-ass as you.

So kudos to San Francisco winner Awesome, a.k.a. Shred Begley Jr., a.k.a. comedian Alex Koll, for making the transition from the bedroom to the national 2008 Cuervo Black US Air Guitar Championships Aug. 8 at the Grand Ballroom. So what’s with the multiple monikers? Mob rules: it was chosen for him at the sold-out June 25 regional finals at the Independent by the all-too-ready-with-the-boos crowd.

"I was in a sleeveless tank top that said, ‘AWESOME!’, which is my name and my way of life," Koll says by phone. "The audience responded the only way they could. It chanted, ‘Awesome, awesome,’ until it became my official stage name." Attempts to "melt faces" culminated in a second-round performance that, well, continued the hype. "I rode my friend’s face into the crowd, which was very popular," Koll says. In return, the crowd "paid the ultimate price to get me back onstage — I had to use a couple as human shields. Then I had to do more ceremonial headbanging, and the stage started to crack in half, but I was able to pull it together — with my feet."

Sure, and we all know Koll can’t be held responsible for the recent Los Angeles quake, though he admits he was practicing at the time. Meanwhile he’s refining the awesomeness for the national bout — the winner goes to the world air-off in Finland — since the event includes Brooklyn winner Bettie B. Goode, who severed her toe in competition. "She still won," Koll moans. "These are the kind of people I’m up against. In light of that, I’m stepping up my game: I bought six new tassels."

2008 CUERVO BLACK US AIR GUITAR CHAMPIONSHIPS Fri/8, 8:30 p.m., $20. Grand Ballroom, 1290 Sutter, SF. www.apeconcerts.com

Exposer

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REVIEW Some early Bay Area figurative painting, wrote Peter Selz in 2002, encountered "the human figure by means of the physicality and the gestural performance of abstract expressionism." More explicit figures later emerged from this abstract cauldron. Ana Teresa Fernández, however, would rather start with the explicit body and work backward. Fernández, who grew up in Mexico, isn’t a figurative painter, performance artist, videographer, feminist, or Latina artist — although she assumes all of these roles from time to time. The best work at her 2008 Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Award exhibition, "Tela Araña Tela" (a mirroring of the Spanish for spider web), is so powerful, the movements in her work so difficult to look away from, that she acts as a detective, an intuitive investigator of the emotions embedded in human muscle tone and media complacence — an exposer of the skin-tight, commonplace untruths of so-called manual labor.

By meticulously documenting stills from her own performance work — which uncovers, overstimulates, and ironically decapitates familiar images of femininity and the female worker — Fernández manages to blend forcefulness and stillness into her brand of revelation. The two large, untitled paintings depicting her body in muscular heels, beset — I don’t know how else to say it — by laundry on a clothesline, show no human face. The face has been smothered, disappearing into a wavering white sheet. The even larger painting shown here between those two, Untitled, a documentation of Jennifer Locke’s 2007 Artists’ Television Access performance in which she covered her body in glue, reveals a lattice or an amorphous web around Locke’s face, making it hard to tell if it’s the skin or the glue that’s melting. The works on paper displayed here — also performance documentations — lack the forcefulness of the paintings. But don’t miss the video installation, where balloons are popped like they’ve never been popped before.

TELA ARAÑA TELA Through Aug. 9. Wed.–Sat., noon–5 p.m., and by appointment. Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF. (415) 255-5971, www.luggagestoregallery.org

Wilder blooms

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After Burnt Money (2000), Marcelo Pineyro’s conventionally entertaining true crime tale of gay bank robbers, queer blooms began to grow within the wilder garden of new Argentine cinema. Here’s a guide:

Smokers Only (Veronica Chen, 2001) Chen’s debut — about a hustler who sometimes tricks in ATM stalls and the goth girl who becomes obsessed with him — is probably the first chapter of the new queer Argentine cinema. Unfortunately, it’s boring and pretentious, built around an object of affection who isn’t as compelling as he is cute.

Suddenly (Diego Lerman, 2002) B. Ruby Rich (as quoted on Michael Guillen’s Web site the Evening Class): "A queer empathic … lesbian romantic escapade. If you’ve never seen or heard of [Suddenly], you’re missing your chance to see a young woman abducted at knifepoint by the lesbian street punks that desire her."

Ronda Nocturna (Edgardo Cozarinsky, 2005) A veteran director who fled Argentina in 1974 following the reelection of Juan Perón, Cozarinsky returned from exile to make this film. At least partly inspired by Chen’s Smokers Only, he borrows from that film’s night-in-the-life-of-a-hustler scenario. But Ronda Nocturna is hotter, wiser, and more far-reaching in its bottoms-up view of corruption in urban Argentina.

Agua (Veronica Chen, 2006) Chen’s follow-up to Smokers Only isn’t queer in story line, but its gaze at the male body in motion — and masculine psyche — is a beyond–Claire Denis case of female eye for the straight guy in turn for the queer guy. Handsome lead actor Rafael Ferro builds on his memorable appearance in Ronda Nocturna. A burst of pure athletic cinema with moments that match 2005’s Zidane (on a much lower budget) in their intense interiority, Agua refreshes.

Glue (Alexis Dos Santos, 2006) A triumph of intimate collaboration between a trio of young actors and a new director, Alexis Dos Santos’s first movie takes the bi-way to becoming maybe the best — or at least most honest and deep — teen movie of the 21st century so far. Lead actress Inés Efron’s brave gawky beauty reveals what’s been lacking from American cinema since the heydays of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall.

La Leon (Santiago Otheguy, 2007) Perhaps influenced by Lisandro Alonso, this handsome black-and-white feature scopes out alienation, attraction, and phobic intolerance in the Paraná Delta.

XXY (Lucía Puenzo, 2007) Efron returns in the role of an intersex teenager, delivering another superb performance.

Pitchfork fest day three: Tim Harrington trashed, Wu-Tang Clan clean up, Aussies take over

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IMG_2952-330.jpg
Sweet: Apples in Stereo. Photo by Matt Wysocki.

By K. Tighe

At every festival, I can’t help but keeping a running contest in my head. Friday night, July 18, went to Public Enemy, but Mission of Burma was only a smidge behind. Saturday, July 19, is a bit more complicated: !!! gave a raucous, undeniably fun showing, but Jarvis Cocker’s sleek, seasoned set was unforgettable. Of course, I’ve seen !!! countless times, and have seen them perform better countless times, and Jarvis was stubborn with the Pulp catalog – which means Saturday goes to Fleet Foxes, whose festival-suited, harmony-packed performance gained them thousands of fans in the span of 45 minutes.

Sunday, July 20, is a whole different animal: the final day of Pitchfork Music Festival 2008 boasts a lineup that no doubt kept many an indecisive hipster tossing in bed on Saturday night. With most of the heat packed at the end of the night, there was either going to be a shitload of running around or a lot of regrets.

Abiding Assistant and I arrived at the park just as Boris began. Between the fog machine sputtering in the blazing sun, the tight, a special appearance by guitarist Michio Kurihara (who collaborated with the trio on Rainbow, and the drummer who dove from behind a bright red kit into the crowd – he got some impressive distance, too – it’s safe to say that Boris effectively brought the rock. After the Japanese metal trio left the stage I saw something I hadn’t seen in years: a genuine call for an encore.

Adventures in eroscillation

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m in my 20s, I’ve had a few partners, I masturbate fairly frequently (since childhood), and I have no hang-ups that I can identify. In fact, I enjoy having sex as often as possible (usually more often than my partners can keep up with). However, I don’t think I can orgasm. I have no problems enjoying sex, and I can feel myself building up to an orgasm, but just at the point where it feels like I may reach the peak and crest over, suddenly everything just ebbs away and fizzles out. What gives?

Love,

Going Nowhere

Dear Going:

You too? I had a bunch of these questions this year, but I don’t think there’s any sort of trendy "no orgasms are the new orgasms" thing going on here. I think the orgasmless female sexual experience is with us always. And due to the cosmic joke part wherein our most sensitive bits ended up outside while most of our partners are driven to lodge themselves inside, I don’t expect this phenomenon to go away anytime soon.

You, though — are you saying you don’t come from masturbation either, even though you diligently practice like a good girl? That is frustrating! And it tells me that despite a professed lack of hang-ups, you are likely just not comfortable — sorry for the dismal cliché but there is no better way to say this — "letting go." It’s truly unlikely that you lack the capacity — that just doesn’t happen much with young, healthy women. What does happen is fear, inhibition, and "spectatoring," or allowing oneself to be distracted from the moment by wondering what one looks like or what one’s partner (even imaginary ones) is thinking of one’s performance, and so on. As I mentioned the last time (see "Going solo," 02/20/2008), one of the best sources for exercises aimed at getting one’s inner critic to STFU is Julia Heiman and Joseph LoPiccolo’s Becoming Orgasmic (Prentice Hall, 2003), although there are tons of similar resources out there.

There are also tools available that simply didn’t exist when pioneering works like Becoming Orgasmic‘s original 1980s version were being written — and by "tools" I don’t mean coping skills and so on, as referenced by therapists and therapy geeks. I mean tools that use batteries or alternating current. Some of the stuff out there now is just mind-blowingly efficient, so much the right tools for the job that they practically dare you not to come. Try something in the way of the Rabbit Pearl or one of its many descendants, any of these things that rotate, undulate, buzz, flicker, dice, puree, and frappé. Then see if you’re still having a problem.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My ex-boyfriend was able to give me multiple orgasms, usually using his hands. I mean real, one-after-the-other, sometimes three or four in 60 seconds. I haven’t been able to replicate this myself and I haven’t found anyone else who has quite the same effect on me. I miss it. Do you have any advice? I’m sure there’s no foolproof way to recreate this experience — step one, step two, presto! — but any tips from you or your readers would be welcome.

Love,

Miss the Multiple

Dear Miss:

Foolproof, no, but quite reliable, certainly. Just because you have not shared the above writer’s frustrations does not mean you can’t share her prescription: high-tech sex toys, the kind with something that goes in and something that stays out and various things that go ’round and ’round.

My favorite sex toy vendor, for no real reason other than that it is local to me and staffed with friendly nerdy chicks who can write a decent sentence and test everything before considering carrying it on the site, is Blowfish.com. And while you don’t have to shop there, you should certainly give its Web site a look. The "luxury toys" section is especially fun — even if you don’t want to spend $119, isn’t "The Cone" fascinating? It’s just a pink silicone, well, cone with a 16-function motor, and I suspect it may exude "come to me" pheromones like the similar-looking pink jelly monsters in erotic science fiction are wont to do. (They then enslave you and breed in you and you die, but that’s another story.) It even has an "orgasm button" (isn’t the whole thing an orgasm button?) for the impatient.

Then there’s the Eroscillator, which I love because it sounds and looks like something a bearded, dispassionate 19th-century physician might have used to solicit nervous paroxysm from hysterical housewives.

It also carries less rarified and less expensive options, of course, all of which are rather remarkable examples of modern and mostly Japanese engineering. And I can pretty well promise there was nothing your boyfriend could do with his hands that these can’t do with their … parts. Admittedly, however, they don’t love you. Is that part of the equation necessary, do you think?

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.

Ta-ta and smack-smack, Trannyshack

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As many if not all know by now, Trannyshack, revered weekly trash-drag temple of glittery gore from the planet Thrift Town, is ending after 12 years of tranny antics (trantics?). Head honchette Heklina revealed to me the exact reasons why in a candid interview back in early February — and I didn’t even have to score her any hot sex with quadriplegic Desert Storm veterans in return! She’s magnanimous. I’m scoopy. We traded memories.

Right now, Trannyshack’s counting down to its close with a series of four command performance nights featuring fave messy queens from the present and past. That will be followed by a ginormous, absolutely ginormous, Trannyshack Kiss-Off Party at the Regency Center on August 23. This shindig will double as this year’s famed Trannyshack Pageant as well, and will encompass appearances by Lady Bunny, Justin Bond, Lady Miss Kier, Ana Matronic, and more. I smell glorious disas-tears.

tshackkissa.jpg

Let’s leave this off with the incredible Glamamore’s (NSFW maybe!) performance of Bjork’s “Pagan Poetry.”

Nailing it

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Queens Nails Annex has long had its street-level glam talons on the pulse of the Mission District art scene — one that so often melds visual art, music, film and video, and performance — so it’s fitting that unexpected connections are emerging from its curatorial contribution to "BAN 5": "Estacion Odesia," a four-parter named for a metro stop that will present visual works by artists and musicians at QNA and their audio pieces at YBCA listening stations; produce a limited-edition box set of music and visual artifacts; and throw a music club with downloadable playlists, an opportunity to share tracks, and monthly meetings. One surprise at the QNA show has to be the video piece by Renee Green, the dean of graduate programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, which QNA cofounder Julio César Morales describes as an extremely media-ted portrait of Green’s brother Derrick, the vocalist-guitarist of Sepultura, painted with magazine stories and radio interviews without using any of the metal giants’ actual music. "It’s an interesting mix of documentary and her personal connection to her brother," Morales muses.

ESTACION ODESIA Sat/19–Nov. 16, YBCA, first floor galleries. Also July 25–Aug. 30, Queens Nails Annex, 3191 Mission, SF. (415) 648-4564, www.queensnailsannex.com. Music club happens Aug. 15, Sept. 15, and Oct. 17, 7 p.m.

Darkest hour

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>>Click here for more Guardian film reviews

So much of what will be written about The Dark Knight will focus on Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, and rightfully so. Every time the character appears onscreen — robbing a bank, crashing a party, gleefully explaining the origins of his perma-smile — the movie veers into supremely sinister territory. But even when the Joker is tucked away for a chunk of time, Christopher Nolan’s sequel to his 2005 Batman Begins is a grim affair, living up to the "dark" in its title in both style and tone.

That’s not a diss, though — Nolan’s Batman, embodied by Christian Bale, faces daunting circumstances. His alter ego, Bruce Wayne, may be a jet-setting playboy, but he ain’t no cheeky, cheeseburger-scarfing Tony Stark. Wayne Manor burned down in the first film, so Wayne’s living in a Gotham penthouse. Ex-squeeze Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, stepping in for Batman Begins‘ Katie Holmes) has taken up with Gotham’s new D.A., Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, nearly as strong as Ledger in a less showy role), who joins forces with the idealistic Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman) to rid the city of its gangster element. Operating on his own all-madness, all-the-time frequency, the Joker (who is called a terrorist more than once) manipulates all involved, with utter chaos as his ultimate goal.

The script, co-penned by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, offers a tangled, complex plot that asks more of its audience than, say, the relatively straightforward Iron Man does. Knowing this, Nolan staffs even bit parts with familiar faces, including Eric Roberts as a mafioso and Anthony Michael Hall as a talk-show host. But it’s not all talk — there are plenty of sweet vehicles and nifty gadgets (supplied, as before, by Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox), car chases, people flying out of windows, and every comic book villain’s dream prop: a giant pile of money.

That said, however, The Dark Knight has more heft to it than the average superhero flick. Some may find it too hefty — besides a few zingers from Michael Caine’s Alfred, its only moments of levity are supplied by a psycho in face paint. Personally, I’m glad to see The Dark Knight presented like a drama (with, uh, capes and explosions) instead of a toy commercial. And though it may ask some obvious superhero-movie questions, it places them in a world where the stakes are too high not to wonder: should Batman have limits? When, if ever, can the "masked vigilante" step aside and let cops and courts take over? And at what cost? There’s a sense of futility in The Dark Knight that feels odd for a summer blockbuster — probably because it so matches the mood of the real world. Maybe the film’s one easy question is when the Joker asks, "Why so serious?" For that, there are plenty of answers. (Cheryl Eddy)

THE DARK KNIGHT

Opens Fri/18 in Bay Area theaters

Taste the Mochi

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "If you build it, they will come!" A few famous first words from David Wang — otherwise known as the ever-fruitful laptop lothario Mochipet — when we spoke recently, and something to ponder as I gazed around his so-chill, so-frolicsome, and oh-so-free Fourth of July barbecue bash in Golden Gate Park. In a green, leafy nook near the fields where the buffalo roam, a DJ tent is up and housing such pals as Phon.o and Flying Skulls. Funk ‘n’ Chunk fire the grill with impressive flamethrower action, and Christian of the Tasty crew plunges fish-sauce-marinated chicks into the hot grease for Filipino fried chicken. Throw a Tecate on the whole thing, pet your mochi, and call it an awesome party despite the fact that, as Wang confides, "we did get started a little late because there were some rangers sniffing around."

Mochipet, “Get Your Whistle Wet”

Wang is accustomed to building where few have ventured before — and as a collaborator extraordinaire who has worked with everyone from Spank Rock to Ellen Allien, he’s brought together communities of sorts in the most unlikely of locales (hence the name of his label, Daly City Records). Earlier that week we chatted by phone in lieu of digging into Hong Kong deep-fried pork chops and a sweet, cheap Filipino breakfast ("It’s like soul food for Asians — everything’s either deep-fried or smoked") at Gateway restaurant near the literal and spiritual home of Daly City Records. The occasion is his forthcoming Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, an improv-y and likely collaborative performance, as well as a whopping release show at Club Six for his latest disc, Microphonepet (Daly City).

A formidable gathering of all of Wang’s work and collaborations since 2001, Microphonepet overwhelms with its awesome sonics, roving from "Tangle" with Salva and Epcot and "Get Your Whistle Wet" with the Hustle Heads, to "Vnecks" with 215 the Freshest Kids and "Lazy Days" with KFlay. Where has Wang been hiding his crazily deep-fried, deliciously bleepy hip-hop production skills all this time? "Guess it got to the point where last year I got 20 tracks, so I just put them out as a record, because some of them are really cool," he explains. "I thought they were really diverse and it would be a good segue to my next record."

Wang has been pouring plenty of energy into that coming disc, which may be released on Daly City or an imprint like Ninjatune. He describes it as more personal: he’s skating progressive, jazz, and South American musical influences off trad Korean and Chinese sounds, and acoustic guitar off heavy electronics. "I’ve always written traditional songs but I’ve never really been comfortable releasing it," says Wang, who describes his early aural interests as veering toward jazz and salsa. "All my records before this have been experiments — me trying new things. But they haven’t been as personal as this next record. I think of it as my first record, really. I’m a slow bloomer." *

MOCHIPET

MCMF show with Yoko Solo, Patrice Scanlon, and Blanket Head

July 18, 8 p.m., $7

Million Fishes Gallery

2501 Bryant, SF

millionfishes.com

Also Aug. 9

Microphonepet release show with Raashan, Mike Boo, Cikee, Daddy Kev, Dopestyles, Kflay, and others

9 p.m., $10–<\d>$15

Club Six

60 Sixth St., SF

www.clubsix1.com

BATTLE OF THE FESTS: MISSION CREEK VS. DIAMOND DAYS?

No need to create a faux feud: fests that clash by night and warehouse shows are no problem. In response to learning that Diamond Days — Heeb magazine’s hoedown, newly transplanted from Brooklyn to Oakland — goes down the same week as this year’s Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, founder Jeff Ray said, "I think it’s great. I like Heeb magazine. We haven’t completely settled on those dates, and I randomly picked this weekend — normally we do it in May. Next time we might do it the first week of August." OK, so both fests also happen to include some of the same performers — each has its unique attractions as well. Sparkling offerings at DD’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights fundraiser include Los Angeles’ punky-garagey Audacity, Seattle’s rousing Whalebones, Ventura’s thrashy Fucking Wrath, and a mother lode of intriguing folk from the LA area ranging from the sibling sublimity of the Chapin Sisters to the resurgent pop of "Windy" scribe Ruthann Friedman.

July 17 and 20, Mama Buzz Café, Oakl.; July 17–19, Ghost Town Gallery, Oakl. For details, go to www.myspace.com/diamonddaysfest

LOUDER, FASTER, STRONGER

APACHE


The garage rockin’ good times stream off this Cuts–Parchman Farm supergroup’s debut, Boomtown Gems (Birdman). Wed/9, 9 p.m., $6. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

KODE 9


The London dubstep artist and Hyperdub label owner with a doctorate in philosophy gives a shout out to his boroughs. Thurs/10, 9 p.m., $12. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

QUITZOW


The multi-instrumental wiz grabs for Solex’s crown with some goofy fun, like kitty-sampling "Cats R People 2" off her Art College (Young Love). With Settting Sun and the Love X Nowhere. Thurs/10, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

RATATAT


A kinder, gentler Crooklyn combo? Rabid fans can expect polyrhythmic rock from LP3 (XL). Thurs/10, 9 p.m., $20. Slim’s, 33 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

20 MINUTE LOOP


The SF indie rockers chime in on tabloid culture with their new, self-released Famous People Marry Famous People. Fri/11, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

“Top of the Structure Is Not Empty”

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PREVIEW The Garage is the kind of tiny, funky, out-of-the-way theater we all thought wouldn’t be able to survive the dealings of cutthroat real estate moguls. Fortunately choreographer and arts entrepreneur Joe Landini failed to buy into the pessimism. In 2003 he founded SAFEhouse (Save Art From Extinction) and last year moved his operations into a former garage at 975 Howard Street, a block still industrial enough to have available parking at night. Drawing on his programming experience with the now-defunct Jon Sims Center for the Arts and Shotwell Studios, he has filled the space with events (dance, multimedia, theater, and performance art), workshops, and residencies — including one specifically for the LGBT community. For the first time, the multidisciplinary space hosts SAFEhouse’s third Summer Performance Fest. Through August 28, Landini presents more than two dozen choreographers in shared evenings of edgy new works that should satisfy any aficionado wanting to take the pulse of the city. Top of the Structure Is Not Empty, with choreography by Rebecca Bryant, Cathie Caraker, Kelly Dalrymple, Sonshereé Giles, Hope Mohr, Don Nichols, Jerry Smith, and Andrew Wass opens the series. What do these ever-so-different-from-each-other artists have in common? They all investigate ideas on plagiarism and authorship in their work. Expect to see references to Trisha Brown, Miguel Gutierrez, Mark Morris, Nijinsky, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Max Roach, and Meg Stuart.

TOP OF THE STRUCTURE IS NOT EMPTY Fri/11–Sat/12, 8 p.m. The Garage, 975 Howard, SF. $10–$20. (415) 885-4006, www.975howard.com, brownpapertickets.com

Sound in the balance

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"Anger is an energy," sang John Lydon in the Public Image Ltd. tune "Rise." San Francisco electronic artist Kush Arora harnesses a similar combustible force in his live shows and on the three full-length recordings that have made him an established club fixture and touring act. "I try to do something different with music and express the frustrations of the youth in this country," says the affable 26-year-old Haight District resident, who performs with Chicago’s MC Zulu July 13 at Dub Mission.

Arora’s ragga-techno fusions have struck a chord with audiences from the Bay Area to New York, while monthly hybrid live/DJ sets at Club Six’s Surya Dub night have earned him a broad audience that includes dubstep heads, bhangra fans, experimental electronic admirers, and grime listeners. It makes sense as the former Montessori School teacher has always balanced different cultures.

Born in San Leandro and educated in Orinda’s leafy suburbs, Arora ingested death metal, punk, and experimental-industrial sounds, as well as his family’s Indian and Punjab music, learning traditional instruments like the single-stringed tumbi and algoze flute. His music experience increased after interning at his uncle Aman Batra’s Manhattan hip-hop studio Sound Illusions, and later working for sound-editing software company Arboretum Systems.

In high school he formed an experimental band called Involution, which he helmed for six years before launching his solo noise project Clairaudience in the early ’00s. But it was while attending a 14-month audio recording course at Emeryville’s Ex’Pressions that he learned a signature skill: recording live vocals. "When I was writing songs for my first album [2004’s Underwater Jihad (Record Label/Kush Arora Productions)], I wasn’t impressed with my own work or where electronic music was at the time. It wasn’t badass enough," explains Arora, who also felt there was a lack of high quality, vocal-based dance music in the Bay.

Soon Arora contacted and tracked stateside Punjabi singers and ragga MCs, including Chicago’s MC Zulu, Trinidad’s Juakali, Jamaica’s N4SA, Los Angeles’ Wiseproof, and San Jose’s Sukh and Sultan. "I wanted to work with people who were dangerous and different, especially vocalists who didn’t fall into their music’s niche or category," Arora says of the often confrontational and political artists he’s recorded on full-lengths like 2006’s Bhang Ragga and 2007’s From Brooklyn to SF, both released on his Kush Arora Productions imprint. The albums brought club bookings far and near.

Over the past several years Arora has played large Indian gatherings, small IDM shows, underground warehouse events, raves, and the monthly Non-Stop Bhangra party in San Francisco. His performance breakthrough happened in 2006 at DJ Sep’s weekly Sunday-night reggae party at the Elbo Room, Dub Mission. "That changed my whole presence in the city," he says.

Arora believes his family’s roots in the often-volatile Punjab region between India and Pakistan breathes through his music. "That’s why I like bhangra. It has an element of aggression and sadness," he reflects, acknowledging that those also are traits he looks for in his vocal collaborations. "The artists I work with have a real tug-of-war between good and evil in their lives. My music is their redemption and my redemption in a fateful balance." *

KUSH ARORA

Dub Mission on Sundays, 9 p.m., $6

(Arora and MC Zulu on July 13, $7)

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

www.dubmissionsf.com

Feeding the fire of Mountainhood

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Do you know the way to … Almaden? Not many know about that tiny, once-rural cowtown-now-San Jose-incorporated bedroom community. But Michael Hilde, a.k.a. Mountainhood, can map it out for you.

"I’ve never, ever played a show where I’ve told somebody that I’m from Almaden and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, yeah.’ No one has ever heard of it," the affable and intense songwriter swears, sitting on a log in a breezy patch of woods at a sandy edge of the Presidio. "But it’s a wild town. When I moved there, it was straight-up country. There were stallion farms and on the edge of my block there was a Harley-Davidson bar. Every Saturday night, guaranteed, you’d see two fat, wet guys just duking it out through the window."

Love of home led Hilde to name his 2007 CD-R on Finland’s 267 Laattajaa label after his town, as well as the name of his musical project (he switched to Mountainhood after a dream spent communing with Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic on a star-filled mountain). Home also brought him to City Hall when that biker bar, Feed & Fuel, was about to be torn down. "It’s funny because when I went there, right before I was to speak, they were doing this whole bill on whether cops could have the right to bust into illegal immigrants’ houses and harass them," Hilde recalls. "And I was, like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here to, like, talk about saving a bar. There were all these people with translators weeping. So I got up and gave an impromptu speech, and then afterwards, I sat back down, and people were, like, ‘You were amazing! What do you do?’ I was, like, ‘I’m a folk singer,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, that makes sense. We get it.’<0x2009>"

And folks are starting to get Hilde’s brand of cosmic Americana — a blend of delicate Banhart-esque rusticity, 1960s-era transcendental instrumentals, and modern-day home-recorded drone experimentalism. After a handful of lower-fi releases, his next two albums, Thunderpaint the Stone Horse Electric and Wings from a Storm, will be put out this summer on 180-gram vinyl, with stickers of Hilde’s impressionistic paintings by Time Lag. Yet despite the fact that Hilde has been building a community of sorts with his monthly Story night at the Stork Club — each performer adds a bit to a running narrative during their set — Hilde seems to cherish his outsider status in the local music scene as he describes one packed Lobot Gallery performance. "I’ll never forget their expressions," he says, miming a look of opened-mouth disbelief. "It’s stayed that way ever since I started playing here."

MOUNTAINHOOD

July 19, 9 p.m., $5

Argus Lounge

3187 Mission, SF

(415) 824-1447

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