Califone tonight at Bottom of the Hill

Califone is probaly Danielle and my favorite band in the world (which is really saying something, as anyone whose seen my music collection knows). They are playing tonight at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

I have two standard descriptions for Califone's music:

1. Tom Waits' "Gun Street Girl" goes to art school
   
2. You find a pair of seemingly ancient cowboy boots in an anonymous thrift store. There's something compelling about them. You start to wear them obsessively. You keep figuring out new functions, bits of magic, they can do. Disappearing your enemies. Giving you control of wasps and locusts (but not honeybees). Now you always have silver coin in your pocket. Eventually, you realize they are the made from the robot snake in Blade Runner. They have a benign curse upon them. And they go with absolutely nothing, but still somehow "work".
   

You can put these guys on a bill or in a mix w/ the likes of Son Volt and Calexico, very easily. But in concert they also get into noisy, effects-laden jams that no one can wrap a box or a label around. Their renderings of halluciated (sic) blues, roots, and more precisely the roots of blues electrified. Fry the country killer in the chair and turn him into a super hero. Yup. And the lyrics are fine fine.

Want to hear free Califone mp3s from their site?

I suggest "Electric Fence" (early) in particular and "Wingbone" (recent), to represent the range and dynamics of the band.

you can also hunt up several videos on YouTube. Including a few from a week ago, at their first show of this tour

More links:

• Califone homepage
  
• Wikipedia page on Califone
  
• Thrill Jockey's page
  
• All tour dates
  

Young Frankenstein the Play:
October at the Dark Room

image by Scott Beale (Laughing Squid)

Young Frankenstein is on at the Dark Room. And I am playing the monster. I am! I can prove it! (Thanks, Scott!!). Check out Scott Beale of Laughing Squid's great photos on Flickr. As long as you don't mind finding out ahead of time what all the costumes (and makeup) look like!

The show opens this Friday, 10/6, and plays all of October on Fri-Sat at 8pm, and on Sundays at 3pm. I really highly recommend catching the earlier weeks when tickets will be easier to get--the last couple weekends always sell out.

It's fantastic and includes a lot of great talents involved with last October's great show at the Dark Room (which Scott also documented).

Come check it out!! Tickets are available at the door or in advance from Ticketweb.

update your damn blog!!!


okay, okay already....


okay, well, not all ready, I guess. sooner or later.

Star Wars tops 2005 goof-up list - Cinematical

All-things-movie blog Cinematical pointed to this fun list of the films from 2005 with the most "goofs" (continuity mistakes, "plot holes", etc). SWETRS One-hundred and Thirty Nine mistakes in total, according to the folks at Movie Mistakes. It's a running list including contributions by visitors to the site, so the tally changes, and more recent or less popular films are going to be lower (for now) cuz they've had less scrutiny. King Kong, which I saw last night, has forty-six. But you gotta figure that's gonna grow. [FYI, IMDB has a much shorter list Rev o' Sith, but I guess they aren't as dedicated as the Movie Mistakes folks to that task.] Also, the number sometimes decreases, because the site allows corrections of supposed mistakes. The Corrections page for Sith may be more fun to read than the mistakes page.

Movie Mistakes is a fun site to know about, for now Pirates of the Caribbean has the most mistakes of all time. You've gotta figure that people spending enough time critiquing Gigli. But then that's what Bad Movie Night is for.

Yo. No. Really. It's me. I do post occasionally.

esp. when Scott name-checks me. ;)

I'm watching Long Riders right now. RIGHT NOW!! A great film, just the cowboy flick you always want to watch. Hero outlaws. Daring robberies. An amazing gun battle. A tough guy knife fight. A tragic ending. It's one of my all-time favorites. I recommend it for a double feature with Outlaw Josey Wales--which is also set in Missouri. And as many folks know, that's very high praise coming from me.

Shot in 1980, it's The story of the Jesse James gang, starring 4 sets of real brothers: Keaches, Carradines, Quaids and Guests. Keith Carradine not long ago played Wild Bill Hickock in the current HBO western series Deadwood. That also recently flew through our NetFlix queue.

It really holds up, after all these years, I'm very pleased to say. Which is good. I can't say that about all the movies I remember fondly and have recently re-watched. That's right, that's right, we really are bad.

California Election Time (how special)

Just a list of links for the 2005 CA Special Election:

• Good site from the California Voter Foundation for state-wide info and more links.
• Campaign Finance Information-- who is funding what Proposition, and with how much $$$
  
• San Francisco voter information and the ballot lineup in SF
• Resource on health-related State Propositions

a couple more:

• Yahoo!'s directory page on the Special Election
• From Wikipedia: Summary info and polling data on statewide measure plus some additional links.

Make sure to research. Make sure to vote.

Closing weekend of BATMAN!!! the TV Show: the Play

Only two shows left. Check it out if you can at tonight's 7:30 show or Sunday's 3pm finale grande! Tickets here. Info here.




And coming up next at the Dark Room: The Drug Diaries in November and Emperor Norton (an original musical based on an actual emperor from a San Francisco of long ago).