Clifton LemonSF Station Writer |
|
 | Get It While You Can Five minutes into "Love, Janis", and I’m totally like “Whoa. Dude. The 60s.” Unlike many of you out there, I was around then and still remember a lot of it, like hearing Janis on the radio every day, along with Jimmy and Aretha and Carlos Santana and Sam and Dave and the Doors and the Mamas and the Papas and a lot more, all on the same station. I can honestly say that "Love, Janis" made me remember what acid flashbacks (or at least what we thought were acid flashbacks) felt like. More » |  |  | A Dam Shame Are dams evil? Are they necessary? What are their “hidden” costs, and, even if these costs turn out to be much greater than the supposed benefits (as is usually the case), why do we keep building them? The answers to these questions are as varied as the groups that conceive, approve, finance, construct, and operate dams, and the groups that oppose them, fight them actively, or lose their land, livelihoods, and cultures to them. More » | |  | Local Festival Makes Good I was pleasantly surprised to learn recently that one of the top film festivals in the country is right up the road, so to speak, and that it offers a particularly tasty cinematic lineup as well as the opportunity to simultaneously indulge your culinary hankerings. The [b]Sonoma Valley Film Festival[/b] promises an "intimate five days of new, top-quality independent films, with gourmet wine and food pairings at each screening, as well as special events, VIP receptions and tributes." More » | |  | Stepping Up to the Mic This arch, hilarious, wacky, and poignant romp of a musical uses the setting of a small town spelling bee as a jumping off point for an extended riff on perfectionism, adolescent insecurity, rejection, parental love (or rather, lack thereof), language, winning, losing, and…well, what else is there in life? The characters, a motley crew of nerdy high school students, bring all their festering angst and internal conflict to the microphone in their heartfelt attempts to spell correctly and win approval. Then they sing and dance and spell some more. More » | |  | Standing in the Light This complex, mystical, and powerful work is the ninth in August Wilson's ten play cycle about the twentieth century African-American experience. [b]Gem of the Ocean[/b]'s setting, Pittsburgh in 1904, is the earliest chronologically; it introduces characters referred to in the cycle's plays set in later decades. It paints a vivid historical picture of life in the post-Emancipation North that's as full of pain, joy, humor, and resonance as it is devoid of sentimentality, sanctimoniousness, or prejudice. More » | |  | The Logo is Mightier than the Sword This compact exhibit of graphic arts explores the political agendas of American social activist movements and the potent symbols used to convey their underlying messages. The historical range of these movements spans abolitionism through gay rights, and includes the United Farm Workers, Black Panthers, AFL-CIO, anarchism, IWW, ecology, nuclear disarmament, feminism, and the Resistance. More » | |  | Never the Same Thing "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" is the raunchy, biting, hilarious and occasionally tragic period piece about the intersecting love lives (and the concomitant discourse about them) of four typical, mid-seventies twentysomethings that launched David Mamet's illustrious career as a playwright. It's refreshing, entertaining, at times cruel, and simultaneously pointedly anachronistic and eminently relevant to the current "battle of the sexes", whatever form it happens to be taking today. More » | |  | Baroque Modern Vampires, with all their attendant darkness, sensuality, decadence, and existential complexity, always carry the promise of a good show. The vampire theme, like vampires themselves, is eerily eternal and disturbingly familiar. Perhaps it's one of the elemental story lines embedded in our collective unconscious, if there is such a thing. The collaboration of Anne Rice (novel), Elton John (music), and Bernie Taupin (lyrics) did not disappoint, and there are many surprises in this work. More » | |  | Fringe Benefits Ask your homies why they live in the Big City, and the answer is likely to include the phrase "all the cultural events…" But if you inquire what the last "cultural event" was that they had partaken in, you're likely to encounter long pauses, vacant looks, or maybe a vague recollection of a Quentin Tarantino flick. It's a shame; in the Bay Area, right under our noses, in our own backyards, there's a wealth of cutting-edge performance art and small theatre that seems to go largely unnoticed. We default to the cineplexes when we want out-of-home entertainment, but the problem is (in case you hadn't noticed) big studio movies kind of suck lately. More » | |  | Internal Dialog One can easily imagine the ecstasy of 15th and 16th century artists and anatomists, especially Leonardo da Vinci, had they been able to see what we can now do -- carefully and accurately preserve human bodies, dissected, sliced, and revealed in almost any way possible. Thanks to a technology called plastination, whereby water and lipids in biological tissues are replaced by curable polymers (otherwise known as plastic), cadavers can be transformed into odorless, dry, durable specimens invaluable for anatomical study and analysis. More » | |
|
