By Johnny Ray Huston
Local Flavor
(Siltbreeze)
A hot dog made Patty Duke lose control, but on this album Blues Control makes me lose control. Local Flavor is kinda like a short version of Daydream Nation minus the annoying vocals. “Tangier” is the track that hypnotizes me with an effectiveness akin to that of Jacques Bergerac in 1960’s The Hypnotic Eye. Cameo by Kurt Vile on one track.
Blues Control, “Rest On Water”
By Caitlin Donohue
Burlesque pistol Bunny Pistol gets more comfortable on the Expo for Independent Arts stage on Saturday
In a world where Rupert Murdochs and Borders Books cast their shadows over the city streets, where rent payments and the IRS hovers over upstanding creative citizens — in a world that tries its best to homogenize and monetize its art and artists, the bat signal is permanently alight for cape crusaders like the Independent Arts & Media producers’ co-op. The group was started in 2000 to provide resources and support to autonomous voices in art and media and lucky us, their centerpiece event of the year, the Expo for Independent Arts, is this weekend and it’s gonna kick ass. Dig the scene – whether your bag is selling your indie art, copping some indie art or just checking out what’s going down with Bay creatives.
Four Corners Mural Project South Bay by Expo artist Andy Gouveia
On Friday Berkeley will play host to the Symposium, the learning segment of the massive shindig. There’ll be experts champing at the bit to teach about everything from DIY career planning and low budget marketing techniques to how to self- pitch fast (in an elevator, no less!).
Interview by Juliette Tang
Midori, photographed by Constance Smith. See more hot local women of BDSM in our “Submission Possible!” cover story this week.
Sex educator, artist, writer, and diva, Midori, is currently showing her latest installation, Plastics, at Femina Potens (2199 Market St). I stopped by Femina Potens to chat with Midori as she was setting up and was faced with a turbulent sea of blow-up dolls, plastic breasts, knives, razor blades, and syringes. We quickly relocated to the more conventional setting of a cafe down the street, where we had a nice chat about avocados and what it means to be kinky, over coffee cake and Earl Gray.
SFBG: So, what kind of classes do you teach?
Midori: With 60 to 70 different topics, I have a wide range to go from general sexuality to the sexual subcultures of Japan to kinkier topics.
SFBG: What are you working on right now?
M: I have a couple of books I’m way behind on that I need to get done. One’s about how to eat a peach, and it’s really funny and a lot of fun.
SFBG: How to eat a peach? Can you elaborate?
M: So we have this idea that if you can tie a cherry stem into a knot, that means you’re good at oral sex. Tying the cherry is not that practical when it comes to our clits. You’re not going to take the clit and tie it into a knot. But if a tongue can do a nice, deep thrust and a curl-in, and do that for like, 5 sets of 10: that’s practical. You know, I’ve got a shortish, average tongue. It’s not necessarily the equivalent of size. It’s how you move it.
From “Silken Sleeves,” a short film by Maria Beatty featuring Midori
SFBG: There’s a lot of food imagery in that description.
M: One’s attitude to sex and life is like one’s attitude to food. Food is something you need. However, you can overindulge. You can have a very strange relationship with it. You can have an abusive relationship with it. You can have a market manipulated, media manipulated relationship with food. You can cook it and consume it carelessly, or you can consume it mindfully. You can end up sharing food with a stranger or with someone you absolutely love head-over-heels. Food and sex… the attitude is very similar.
SFBG: Can you give us a food recipe you find particularly sexy?
M: So imagine you’ve been out all day, on your feet. It’s hot and all that, and you come home and your sweetie has one of those beautiful shallow Chinese goldfish ceramics, with pebbles in it. So, hot day you’re tired, your feet are swollen. And you have cool water, pebbles, mint leaves, and citrus slices, and your sweetie takes brown sugar and scrubs your feet.
By Justin Hall. Check out his awesome guide to erotic comics in this week’s Sex Issue here. Below is another extra special one-hander.
HARRY AND DICKLESS TOM
Brad Rader
(self-published)
www.flamingartist.com
This erotic graphic novel is both brilliant and completely unique. I certainly don’t know of any other gay porn comic that features such huge, well-drawn, splash pages of vaginas.
Two homophobic truckers are crossing the country screwing fags in truck stops and then beating them up, when the Goddess decides to teach them a lesson. Tom wakes up one morning with his dick replaced by a vagina, and his relationship with his buddy Harry, himself, his family, and the rest of the world is changed instantly. His new pussy humanizes him and when he finally gets his dick back, he finally knows how to really use it.
Harry and Dickless Tom is a very personal book by an extremely talented cartoonist. “My sole erotic release [when I was young],” writes Rader, “was my jerk-off sketchbooks. I would draw in them for hours, making love to the pages with pen and ink, pouring my angst, lust and longing into images I hoped and feared the world would someday see, and that I might somehow realize.” Rader has worked on everything from Batman to King of the Hill, and he puts his considerable illustration abilities to use with this book, drawing each section of it in the style of a different famous cartoonist. It starts off with an homage to Herge’s Tin Tin and winds up imitating Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. In every style, though, Rader makes sure that his odd cast of characters stay sexy, especially Tom, the balding, bespectacled, daddy muscle bear with a pussy. Check it out at Raders’ site www.flamingartist.com.
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Chynna, Judson and Forester
Tell us about your look: “I work at Crossroads and these are all secondhand.”
By Marke B.
In the grand tradition of the genius Christian Bale freakout remix (not to mention Pwak-Pwak Pelosi and several takes on this century’s greatest living hero of all time) — and oddly right after I discovered the Castro’s renewed fetish for the 1996 Armand Van Helden remix of Tori Amos’ “Professional Widow,” the backing track here — comes this, the pithy motto of our generation set alight. Taylor, I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish, but watch this first and dance around.
By Justin Hall. Check out his awesome guide to erotic comics in this week’s Sex Issue here. Below is an extra special one-hander.
ALI BABA Y LOS 40 MARICONES
“Ali Baba and the Forty Faggots”
Nazario
(La Culpula, 1993)
Nazario, the godfather of underground Spanish comics and a dissident artist during the dark times of Franco, is best known for Anarcoma, his deadly, cock-loving, tranny detective. But while her adventures are truly breathtaking in their bizarre, violent and sexy extremes, Ali Baba is the work of a more mature and sophisticated cartoonist. Like similar underground, gay, pervert artists John Waters and Almodovar, the early works are exciting, but the later stories are better made.
Ali Baba is a series of interlocking stories about the goings-on at the Ali Baba bar and the three apartments above it, all filled with outrageous maricones based on the denizens of Nazario’s home Barcelona. The artwork is wonderful, incredibly detailed and textured but cartoony all the same. Unlike most erotic cartoonists who draw the same man of their dreams over and over, Nazario is clearly interested in many flavors of menfolk, from young twinks to hairy daddies to chubby fems to square-jawed hunks, all of them having good, hot sex. Sex in his hands is primal, captivating and uncontrollable, and his characters dive right in.
Unfortunately, Nazario’s comics are hard to come by in English. There have been a few attempts at translations, but all of them are well out of print. He’s still kept in circulation by Spanish comics publisher La Cupula, however, so check out their collection at www.lacupula.com.
Bar reviewer Kristen Haney seeks to separate hipster wannabes from real-life dives in this weekly column.
Ha-ra ra, sis boom … nevermind. Don’t get too cute at this Tenderloin dive, or bartender Carl might get more surly than usual.
The term “dive bar” is difficult to define. The label tends to be subjective, used to conveniently describe myriads of diverse drinking establishments. According to the ever-so-accurate encyclopedic knowledge of Wikipedia, a dive bar is a “down market drinking establishment frequented by a poor or working class clientele.” A slightly more trustworthy source, the Oxford English Dictionary, simply considers a dive to be a “disreputable nightclub or bar.” And just in case I haven’t been keeping up with the jive street jargon of today’s young folk, I consulted Urban Dictionary, which says the term can be used to describe anything from a “comfortable-but-basic neighborhood pub” to the “nastiest swill-slinging hole.”
Pretty general, right? In the name of journalism, I’ve taken it upon myself to put on my drinking shoes and sling back beers with regulars at this city’s great (or not so great) dives. I’m willing to cause irrevocable damage to my liver in order to bring you a weekly review of places that fit my dive bar criteria, so you don’t have to waste your precious brain cells on places populated by neckerchiefs and skinny jeans. Here’s what I consider important for determining the “divey-ness” of the watering holes that pepper the city like cockroaches refusing to be squashed. You can take ‘em or leave ‘em, but I’m going to take a page from the typical dive bar patron and let you know I could care less what you think. Besides, that which we call a dive bar by any other name would smell just as…questionable.
By Louis Peitzman
Paul Festa grooms in Let Me Tell You John Cameron Mitchell.
The Good Vibrations Independent Erotic Film Festival finally went down (tee-hee!) last week. September 17’s competition at the Castro Theatre brought out the best, brightest, and naked-est in a series of shorts that will hopefully help to redefine the future of the genre. For those of us tired of the overproduced crap that usually passes for pornography, the screening was a breath of kinky fresh air.
It helped that the event was hosted by four lovely ladies: Good Vibes sexologist and chief cultural officer Dr. Carol Queen, Peaches Christ, Lady Bear, and Hugz Bunny. Sitting on a couch in front of the stage, they commented on the films with wit, insight, and just the slightest bit of sass. Stressful for the filmmakers, I’m sure — who wants to have their erection judged by a drag queen? — but entertaining for the rest of us.
There were 11 films screened, and rather than dissect them all (because that would be bo-ring), allow me to highlight my four faves.
Let Me Tell You John Cameron Mitchell (Paul Festa)
Festa’s short film is actually an edited version of an audition tape he submitted for John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006). Despite its origins, it works well as a stand-alone. And yes, I’m probably biased by a slight crush on the director and star, but this is legitimately successful work. What I like most about Let Me Tell You is the way it sexualizes the mundane — who knew shaving one’s head could be so erotic?
Narcissister, with hot lunch
Narcissister’s Hot Lunch (Narcissister)
I’m going to be honest: I’m actually a little creeped out by Narcissister. For those not familiar with her work, it involves a half-mask and other fake body parts. (Well, I think they’re fake. If real nipples could produce ketchup, I’d be pretty impressed.) Still, there is something hypnotizing about her dance moves and the comedy she works into the finished product. Bonus points for her use of “Hot Lunch” from Fame (1980) here.
Interview by Marke B. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour, on stands in the Guardian now.
House of Salad, photographed by Leo Herrera
I recently ran halfway across downtown with the mother of lunatic dragstravaganza House of Salad, Ambrosia Salad herself (pictured above, bottom center, with the big head), teased out extra wig and fake Louis Vuitton suitcase full of props in tow. We were on our way from a vogue ball at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to Aunt Charlie’s in the Tenderloin, where she was set to perform. But first we made a quick pit stop at an Indian pizzeria for a huge slice of Hawaiian, which Ambrosia relished with gusto, lipstick be damned. I guess that summarizes the ragtag retinue of underground DJs, performers, promoters, artists, and freaks that she’s gathered around herself, who represent every alternaqueer tribe in San Francisco and put on a hell of a show: Who needs makeup when you’ve got ham drippings and pineapple juice?
SFBG You grew up in the fruit fields of Monterey …
Ambrosia Most of my wonder years were spent on a strawberry farm next to the ocean, where my bedroom furniture got front row to me dancing around to Stacey Q, Annie Lennox, and Grace Jones. I was no stranger to wearing mommy’s pumps and tube tops as dresses. Oddly enough, it wasn’t until five years ago that I revisited wearing women’s clothing. At first just silly swamp drag: a mustache with a shitty wig. It wasn’t until [drag mentor] Mr. David beat the shit out of me that I discovered that Ambrosia didn’t need to be so tragic after all. In fact, she looked pretty good.
Interview by Billy Jam. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour, on stands now.
B.A.S.S. ladies: Pam the Funkstress and DJ Zita, photographed by Keeney + Law
The B.A.S.S. (Bay Area Sistah Sound) Crew, which bills itself as "the Bay’s Premier Lady DJ Crew," kicked into gear in March 2008 with its first Everlasting B.A.S.S. party at Milk in the Haight. The wildly popular SF monthly, which prides itself on presenting all-female DJ and promotion talents, has now found a home at the lovely Poleng Lounge. Every fourth Saturday, founding member DJ Zita and Pam the Funkstress (formerly of the hip-hop legends the Coup) serve up a nonstop mix of hip hop, funk, soul, and dancehall. DJ Neta, currently busy being a new mom and finishing her PhD, and promoter Fiyah Lilly are also part of the Sistahood. Over the past 18 months Everlasting B.A.S.S.’s hot guest spinners have included DJ Shortee, Deeandroid, Celskiii, Melina Jones, and Conscious Daughters. On Sept. 26, DJ Similak Chyld and emcee Josie Stingray will join the mix.
SFBG What sets Everlasting B.A.S.S. apart from other parties?
Pam the Funkstress It’s all female DJs, all female emcees, and female promoters, too. It’s a whole lady thing. And our music selection is a lot different from what you would normally hear at a regular club. I mean you hear the club stuff, but Zita plays a lot of the old school stuff, and I play a lot more of the newer stuff but at the same time I play a lot of ’90s. But I don’t seem to play music that is derogatory toward women. Like with, say, Too $hort, I will play "Short But Funky" or "Blow the Whistle," but I won’t play some of his album classics that I know are hits but are derogatory.
Interview by Mirissa Neff. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Nightlife and Glamour, on stands in our regular issue now!
Funky C with his band Joya, photographed for our SCENE cover by Spencer Hansen
Known throughout Latin America as C-Funk, singer, guitarist, and DJ Funky C, a.k.a. Cristian Moraga, was born during the bleak days of Pinochet’s dictatorship. He co-fronted popular funk-rock-hip-hop band Los Tetas and brought the groove back to a Chilean scene rife with disenfranchised punk rockers. When Los Tetas ended, Moraga vowed never to set foot on another stage. Lucky for us, though, his particular brand of funk (what he calls “Funk Latino”) was too chronic to shake. The mothership brought him to San Francisco where he recorded Joya (Sonic 360, 2007), an album full of nods to funk icons like James Brown and George Clinton and less-expected heros like Tupac and Snoop Dogg. With two recent slots at the Fillmore under his belt, Funky C is set to throw down his deep-rooted riffs and infectious songs at a series of new parties called “Latin Biatz.”
SFBG How did you end up in the U.S.?
Funky C I have family here and came here to play with my old band, Los Tetas. But I always wanted to come here to live. In 2007 I released the Funky C album with L.A. label Sonic 360 and decided to move here. Then my wife and I had our baby here in San Francisco, a California girl. It’s been a crazy year.
SFBG So the whole band came from Chile?
Funky C Well, I decided for myself, and they wanted to come too. And through my visa I got them visas. The drummer Pepino arrived last year. The bass player Chicho came last year, went back to Chile, and got back just in time for our show at the Fillmore last week. The only one who’s not here is the keyboard player. We’re missing one of our characters in the band, and I miss him a lot.
Every week, Virginia Miller of personalized itinerary service and monthly food, drink, and travel newsletter, www.theperfectspotsf.com, shares foodie news, events, and deals. View the last installment here.
Barrel-aged beer sounds delicious right now. Photo from www.beerandnosh.com
EVENTS
10/10 Beer & Nosh presents Notoberfest
Jesse Friedman, whose popular blog Beer and Nosh is one of the best out there on the sudsy stuff and accompanying foods, throws an event beer and food lovers shouldn’t miss. But be forewarned… the event is already half sold out though weeks away.
With a cap at 150 people, Friedman told me he plans to keep it a comfortable party with various outposts around the room, flowing with food and beer. In the spirit of collaboration, Jesse assembled quite a line-up. None other than Ryan Farr and the 4505 Meats team prepare a feast with details not completely confirmed, though I hear rumors of grass-fed beef roasted over a fire, malt-studded/malt extract-glazed pork belly (yes!), barley beer brats on a stick, fried croquet on barley & sour apple chutney, and hopped rolled face on a fence(!) Dessert promises to be equally stunning with Humphry Slocombe creating six custom beer ice creams and treats just for this event. Wow.
Sampling the goods with Steve Altamari (Valley Brew), Ryan Farr (4505 Meats), and Jake Godby (Humphry Slocombe). Photo from www.beerandnosh.com
And the beer? Valley Brewing Co. serves their suds: Reinheitsgebot-breaking beers, each non-traditional, modern takes on heirloom styles:
* Luna Blanca – Central Valley Golden Ale
* a tart Olallieberry Sour that’s been fermented using wild yeast
* Brandy Barrel-aged “Collaborative Evil” Belgian Strong Golden Ale
* India Pale Ale
* Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout
* a rich Valley Brew Skullsplitter Root Beer
* the event’s signature beer, “Notoberfest” Bourbon Barrel Maibock Lager
This collaborative night brings together passionate craftspeople serving one-of-a-kind beers, meats and ice cream. If you need any more reasons to attend, I can’t think of them.
October 10, 1-5pm
$50 pre-purchase; $60 at the door (if not sold out): includes beer, food, commemorative glass and poster (shown on Web site)
Mars Bar
798 Brannan Street
415-621-6277
www.beerandnosh.com/notoberfest
This just in: Dinners from Chef Melissa Axelrod
Read about wine or beer pairing dinners around town from Chef Melissa Claire in my current issue of The Perfect Spot.
www.melissaclaire.com
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Virginia, Willard North and McAllister
Tell us about your look: “I need to do my laundry!”
By Andrea Nebmerson. View more alt.sex.columns here.
andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com
I’ve always had a pretty good sex life, with no problems getting it up or keeping it up, until recently. I’m now 59 and suddenly, even a la Viagra, it’s just about impossible. It is even difficult for me to get an erection masturbating. I had my doctor give me a whole series of tests and everything seems OK, so I am mystified. Perhaps it is just age (whatever that means, since I have been and remain quite athletic)? Any thoughts or clues? Or is my sex life pretty much over with?
Love,
Feeling Down
Dear Down:
I’m feeling a little down too, just reading this. No way should your sex life just be over, and no way should we assume that that bunch of tests was testing for the right things. As much as we (the sex educator "we") often direct help-seekers right back to their medical providers, medical providers frankly kind of suck at solving sex problems.
Did the doctor test your testosterone? Did s/he check it more than once? Did you get a prostate exam? How about your blood sugar? Are you on beta-blockers or similar for high blood pressure? And, perhaps most important, did s/he send you on for a cardio work-up? I don’t want to scare you, but inability to get blood to the pelvis may be indicative of inability to get blood circulating nicely everywhere else, and that’s never good.
There is much discussion lately of desire disorders, the sudden (media) prevalence of which is a bit mysterious, not to mention a bit subjective. One person’s desire disorder is another’s normal sex drive, and refreshing as it has been to see women’s sexuality taken seriously, there may be a bit of — dare I call it hysteria?- around women and desire going on out there. But more on all that later. This sounds physical.
By Caitlin Donohue
“Gene Simmons Begs Barbie” by Lavonne Sallee from the 7th Annual Altered Barbie Exhibit
During the years in which I was easily influenced by colorful plastic and catchy commercial jingles, my parents were good feminists and most certainly did not buy me Barbie dolls. Nonetheless, Barbie dolls multiplied in my toy chest like darling, prolific rabbits. How? The fact of the matter is that The Blonde One is a part of our social milieu. Getting away from Barbie is a proposition akin to avoiding pavement or romaine lettuce; it is simply not done.
SFBG TV at Altered Barbie 2008
This brings us to the San Francisco 7th Annual Altered Barbie Exhibit, wherein local Bay Area artists have appropriated the pink high heels, the taffeta, the Corvette and permanent purple eyeshadow and made this anatomically improbable fact of life their own.
By Caitlin Donohue
Photos by Erik Anderson
Back in January 2008, before Obamarama had reached its most dizzying heights, before the Beer Summit, even before calling Kanye West a “jackass,” our Barry O.’s campaign trail led him to the Women’s Building. El Presidente-to-be picked the site to publicize his plans to aide working class women and families. He couldn’t have chosen a soapbox with better mojo.
In 1979 the Women’s Building became the first women-run and operated resource center in the country. For the past 30 years, its extravagantly muraled walls have housed a cornucopia of practical tools for some of the most overlooked members of our community: a food pantry for immigrant families, dirt cheap professional legal advice, information on how to obtain a restraining order, even an after-school running program to help build confidence in girls. “This is a safe space for women,” says Corrin Buchanan, Program Director. “Lots of people have come through these doors and left with social services. It’s a place to gather for the community.”
Text by Sarah Phelan
Lennar kicked off the first day of fall by reporting a $171.6 million third quarter fiscal loss for the period ending August 31. That’s more than double Lennar’s $89 million third quarter loss in 2008.
In a peppy press release posted at the corporation’s investor relations website, Lennar President and CEO Stuart Miller attributed his company’s 3Q loss to lower sales volumes and falling house prices.
“While high unemployment and foreclosures will continue to present challenges, consumer sentiment has significantly improved as homebuyers have recognized that the residential housing market is stabilizing,” he said.
“Assuming the economy continues to stabilize, we believe our improved sales environment, increasing pre-impairment gross margins and ability to leverage S,G&A [ selling, general and administrative expenses] should enable us to return to profitability in fiscal 2010,” Miller concluded.
That’s a pretty big assumption that Wall Street apparently wasn’t swallowing: it sent Lennar’s shares down 53 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $16.01 in yesterday’s midday trading.
Further casting doubt over Lennar’s hopes of a 2010 comeback is the fact that it’s still unclear if lawmakers will decide to extend a federal tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homebuyers which expires Nov. 30.
By Spencer Young
Walking into the dark and somewhat dingy den that is Café Du Nord on Saturday night (9/19), I was confronted with the hysteric gritty sounds and seizure-inducing visuals of Joe Grimm (sorry Operative/Scott Goodwin, I missed your potentially amazing set). Interweaving noise with two 16mm video projectors, Grimm literally made sound visual as the former informed the latter into a cacophony of refracted oscillations that during heightened crossover created blinding ephemeral colors, patterns, and images — I swear I saw Kim Jong Il high-fiving Mickey Mouse at one point — that eerily resembled a Rorschach test.
Photo by Spencer Young
All this frenzy and sensory overload froze anyone who dared watch, making the audience a mass of automatons blankly staring into a propaganda machine—eyes possessed, ears perked, and bodies stiff. I was tempted to fake a seizure to break the tension in the room or at least prevent anyone else from having one, but couldn’t shake the grip.
The cacophony continued as the boys of the evening fiddled with the knobs, switches, and wires of various gadgets. After Grimm, every act on the bill contained a special voyeuristic charm — on stage, each performer appeared as though he were alone in his bedroom on a Saturday night somewhere in the Midwest with nothing to keep him company save for some random mixers and pedals he found in the garage, and we the audience were seeing this unfold as though through a curtain-drawn, lava lamp illuminated window.
Boys of (psychedelic) summer: Ducktails brings the blur. Photo by Spencer Young
In the case of Pete Swanson, teenage angst coupled with ennui was battled with and exorcised via a wall of sound that had him shaking in desperation. Ducktails donned Ray-Bans to casually careen through his set, evoking a bit of Dylan. His blurry summer psychedelic sound emanated from a mini Casio keyboard and a sampler inside an old suitcase. With its looped circus-like two-step dance trance and warbly guitar riffs that delicately bowed like patrons at a Japanese tea ceremony, “Beach Poijt Pleasant” was the best song of the night.
By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
>>Check out critic Dennis Harvey’s TIFF takes here.
There were quite a number of exciting films at the 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival, though attending 21 features and 20 shorts in five days also involved some disappointments. Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll somehow dropped the ball in every which way, throwing around interesting concepts involving a sex doll who comes to life (a la The Velveteen Rabbit), but it ended up leaving me longing for Michael Gottlieb’s 1987 politically incorrect gem, Mannequin. Or Fridrik Thor Fridriksson‘s The Sunshine Boy, an Icelandic documentary about Autism around the world. Though it used Bjork and Sigur Ros on the soundtrack, it felt like an infomercial for public access. (To be fair, I saw the version with an Icelandic narrator and not the newest version with Kate Winslet reading the cues.)
Some films succeeded in minor ways, including George Romero’s fifth entry in his zombie oeuvre, Survival of the Dead. While enjoyable, this one seems to lack the political immediacy of his previous entries, including his underrated Diary of the Dead (2007). Michael Moore’s (last?) feature Capitalism: A Love Story had some brilliantly ironic moments — as always, interspersed with his typical forehead-slapping activism (do you really have to continue using minimum wage-earning security guards at major corporations as the butt of your wacky antic jokes?). It felt a bit scatterbrained. Still, the film is well worth watching and even won the runner-up audience award for Best Documentary.
The creator of the original British version of The Office had his directorial debut with The Invention of Lying. Ricky Gervais’ cynically hilarious, cameo-packed laugh-fest sadly ran out of steam during its last act, but no matter. What’s most important here is the sucker-punch moment that has Gervais flexing dramatic skills so poignantly that it literally brought tears to the entire audience. (On a side note, why doesn’t Gervais ever end up kissing his leading ladies? Is this a conscious choice to counteract the likes of Woody Allen or Vincent Gallo or is it truly due to a low-self esteem?)
Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime, Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, and Claire Denis’ White Materials all delivered solid entries, proving these directors know their craft and do it quite well — though depending on how much you may have enjoyed their previous films you may be left wanting a little less or a little more.
By Johnny Ray Huston
Here is Barbara Lynn
(Water)
A lost gem of Atlantic, saved by the boys of Water in Oakland. The clarity and purity of Lynn’s voice are rare — and don’t let those adjectives fool you into thinking she’s a frail flower. Here, the left-handed guitarist makes wise ballads she wrote as a teen burn as strong and steady as anything by Irma Thomas. It’s all in the voice.
Barbara Lynn, “You’ll Lose a Good Thing”
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Ruth, University of San Francisco
Tell us about your look: “This outfit is a secondhand, vintage piece by local designer Karen Rentschler and I got these boots about ten years ago from Nine West.”
Have you entered yet? Midnight on Tuesday, September 22, is the cutoff for entries so get to scribblin’!
Our 10 favorites will win a gift certificate to Books, Inc. and be published in our October 7 Writers Issue! Just send a story that reflects life in the Bay — fiction, nonfiction, or poetry — to culture@sfbg.com with LIT123 in the subject line. The catch? Each entry MUST BE EXACTLY 123 WORDS! (Not including any title.)
Here’s one from copy chief Diane Sussman to help your creative juices flow:
A few weeks back, shortly after a 57-year-old friend dropped acid (at a concert, surrounded by grinning friends, designated driver assigned, all glowing and good) my husband and I began thinking about the worst places we could think of to drop acid. And then it came to us: the 22 Fillmore. It took us a while to get there. Natural settings were out: there’s always the risk that a stray bug proboscis can wander on the scene and unhinge your worldview. Home was out: a massive dustbunny could lead to hours of horror. I tested it out on a 20-something at a Haight Street head shop. “Whoa,” he said. “Whoa. Yeh, man.” Then he paused for a second. “I dunno. I think the 23.”
See more examples here and here. Hope to hear from you soon!
By Mistress Eve Minax, a professional dominatrix, sex educator, and food lover based in SF. Read her previous sexcipe here.
This recipe (“The Quickie”) was inspired by a quick spanking, bondage and fucking session the other night. Quick and easy, you still have time to process, read, or watch a movie, happily sated in sex and food.
Burger with almond butter served on salad of mesclun greens, strawberries, avocado, and spicy citrus melon
Ingredients:
1 lb Grass fed ground beef
salt, (high quality or smoked)
fresh ground pepper
garlic clove
Raw almond butter
Mesclun greens
Half pint strawberries
Avocado
1 fresh melon
two lemons
ground cayenne pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
Method:
Chop the garlic clove and combine it with the ground with the salt and pepper and set aside.
Grab your subject and lift her skirt or drop his trousers and put them across your lap for a lengthy, fine, slow, well delivered spanking, (take classes if you want to know more!). When their ass is warm and rosy and both of you are turned on, have them go to the bed, strip, and lay like an X. Bind the arms and feet nice and wide and outstretched, add a blindfold. Tell them something dirty to think about.
Return to kitchen, (within eye and ear shot).
