Susan Atkins

June 28, 2010 the San Diego City Council voted 6-2 to approve construction of the new San Diego Central Library. At the time the project had its detractors. Councilmembers Carl DeMaio and Sherri Lightner voted against the library saying it was too expensive and the City could not afford it. Former City Attorney Michael Aguirre was also opposed to the project, once again citing costs.

The library’s architect, Rob Wellington Quigley noted at the time that the new central library had been a long time coming. “I know people have been involved in this for 30 years,” he said. “We were hired almost 17 years ago. Luckily they were smart enough to hire a young architect.”

The San Diego Central Library may have had its detractors and it may have been a long time coming but fast forward to today and the library is almost complete. The current Central Library will be closing Sunday, June 9 in preparation for the move and the Grand Opening of the new Central Library at 330 Park Blvd. has been set for Saturday, Sept. 28.

One of the foremost visions with this new library was to create a civic space that would allow San Diego to showcase its diverse communities and define its regional pride.

For one of San Diego’s communities the opening of the library could not have happened at a more significant time. 2013 is fast evolving as a historic year for the LGBT community with marriage equality at the vanguard of the fight for total LGBT equality.

The new Central Library provides the perfect platform for the LGBT community to forever memorialize the importance of this year for San Diego LGBT Americans.

Recognizing that, longtime national and local LGBT leader and Library Commissioner Susan Atkins is spearheading a project to name an alcove window as a gift from the LGBT community.

The goal is to raise $150,000 to help fund the Teen Center and to grow and maintain the library’s LGBT collection. In recognition of the LGBT donation the Library Foundation will name one of the alcove windows overlooking Park Boulevard. The location of the LGBT window is significant as it will be next to the Social Studies section of the library which houses the library’s extensive LGBT collection (8,800 items). It is worth noting that this is one of the largest LGBT collections in the country and is buttressed by multiple online services and LGBT items throughout other collections in the library.

San Diego LGBT Weekly recently caught up with Susan Atkins and asked her about the origins of the campaign, the importance of it and how it was all going.

San Diego LGBT Weekly: Thanks, Susan for finding the time to talk to us. Firstly, how did this campaign start and who else is involved with it?

Susan Atkins: Libraries are enormously inclusive places – perhaps the last bastion of democracy where rich and poor, homeless, transgender, minority or elite get the same tireless service from dedicated library staff.

So, as a library commissioner for six years, I watched as our fantastic new Central Library began to take shape; and like everyone else, I was grateful when “the usual suspects” of generous, wealthy San Diegans began to step up and come up with nearly $60 million so far to fund this iconic new edifice. But I said to myself, “Where are the LGBT people? This is our library, too.” So many LGBT people in town are leaders in the community at large, but only a precious few know that they are gay unless they are elected officials.

So, I asked fellow commissioners if they thought an LGBT-focused fund would fly, and then I called some LGBT leaders and asked their advice and opinions, and following much positive feedback I got started on the campaign.

2013 is turning into a historic year for LGBT rights. How can the LGBT library campaign contribute to marking the significance of that?

Civil rights have never come easily in our country, but I think the idea of public lending libraries helps the cause. I further believe that because of the significance of the LGBT rights cases currently before the Supreme Court, and their likely outcome, the year 2013 will make “13” the lucky number for LGBT people. I think it is fitting for our very generous and outstanding San Diego LGBT community to mark this lucky “13” year by helping to fund and putting our name on this Central Library that will bolster our education and grace our skyline for at least the next 100 years.

I believe our fund and our name in the very heart of this iconic public library will acknowledge that the LGBT community is an integral part of the San Diego community. Also, I think it will help generations of San Diegans recognize and understand the extensive participation of LGBT people in the community.

How is the fundraising going? How close are you to reaching your goal?

So far we have more than $80,000 in the door (or pledged.) That’s more than half way to the $150,000 we hope to raise to name the grand alcove window near the LGBT collection – and near the Teen Center which is important!

The new San Diego Central Library

People who have stepped up so far with money and/or support include Gene Burkard and Ron Hicks, Randy Clark and Michael Clark, Bonnie Dumanis and Denise Nelesen, Susan Guinn and Denice Feldhaus, Jeanne Hall, Christine Kehoe and Julie Warren, Bob Nelson, Tracy Jarman and Marcia Bonini, Joyce Rowland and Pam Morgan, Todd Schultz and Paul Scott Silvera, Laura Shawver and Tracy Macuga, Maureen Steiner and Camille Davidson, Susan and Crystal Atkins-Weathers, Dr. Delores Jacobs at The LGBT Center, Kay Chandler at the Human Dignity Foundation, the Rescue Social Change Group and many others.

But we still have a way to go and I’ll keep smiling and dialing – with a little help from my friends – until we’re done.

What would you say to members of the LGBT community in order for them to donate to this fund?

The LGBT community has made huge contributions to San Diego, from serving on boards and commissions to volunteering, campaigning and donating to so many things that make San Diego a great city.

The LGBT community has a history of giving, and I want the greater San Diego community to know this. I also want everyone to be aware that among the highest users of the Central Library are homeless youth, and a staggering 40 percent of them are LGBT. I want us to help take care of our own. I want every LGBT person in San Diego, and every person who supports LGBT rights (our wonderful straight allies) to step up with whatever they can to help us reach this goal.

And finally, for those who can give larger amounts, this is a one-time (non-recurring), tax-deductible donation that can be paid out over several years.

How will the new Central Library serve the LGBT community?

The new Central Library will serve all of San Diego. From the richest to the poorest, every San Diegan will benefit from the resources in our library. This may be health information. It may be job information, school research projects, or LGBT information for a questioning youth or parent. The library is here for everyone. The facilities at the library will also provide meeting places and free public entertainment including LGBT-oriented pieces of entertainment, art and history.

Will the funds raised go toward anything else?

You know the funding for this library has been an amazing thing, from the State Library Association; from the Unified School District; from the old Center City Development Corporation and, of course, from private donors. The money we raise will be chiefly funneled into the Teen Center and into growing and maintaining the library’s LGBT collection. In recognition of the LGBT community’s generosity, we get to name a window. Some of it will also go to funding all of the expenses involved in this $185 million home for our new Central Library. And by the way, our new Central Library is the first in the nation to house a public school – on two of the top floors!

It is said that every great city has an iconic central library. Why is it important for the LGBT community to embrace this new project?

I feel that the LGBT community of San Diego benefits from everything that benefits the city. We know that libraries change lives, and we know they change them for the better. I want LGBT San Diegans to be a significant part of this life-changing event. And, I want San Diegans to know that we care.

Once this project is complete will there be any ongoing efforts to further enhance the LGBT presence in the library?

Throughout its lifetime, the library will continue to host exhibits of relevance to the LGBT community. The Lambda Archives has contributed exhibits, and I anticipate the national Lambda Literary Foundation and the local LGBT Center will provide exhibits, speakers and programs for the library as Lambda Archives has in the past.

At the time the City Council approved this project it had its detractors. What would you say to those individuals now?

You know, part of our democratic process is that anybody can voice their opinion about – well, about anything. There are good people who hold opposing opinions, but I think that even the nay-sayers will be proud of our new library. It is something that should bring us all together as San Diegans, and it is something in which we should all take great pride.

Finally, Susan, tell us about the Buy-a-Brick community campaign?

This is a very exciting campaign and an opportunity for donors to own a lasting piece of this community treasure. Commemorative bricks are available for donations of $150, $500, $1,000 and $2,500. Depending on the level of the donation the bricks will be placed in the main lobby, the trellis walk entrance to the library or in the garden courtyard. The donor’s name can be on the brick or the donor may want to write a special message to a loved one or in fact anything they want. A donor will have up to 36 characters to be creative!

An alcove window in the new Central Library

Overall, I am so proud to be involved in such a wonderful project and the generous participation of the LGBT community will mean that the new Central Library will truly reflect our LGBT pride.

Thank you, Susan, for all your efforts on behalf of the LGBT community.

Donations of any amount can be made to the LGBT initiative by sending checks made out to the Library Foundation to Jay Hill, chief executive officer, San Diego Public Library Foundation, 820 E Street, San Diego, CA 92101 with LGBT in the memo line, or by going online at give.supportmylibrary.org/LGBT and including LGBT in the comments section.

To purchase a commemorative brick visit give.supportmylibrary.org/buyabrick

Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana in Star Trek Into Darkness

The first question I was asked after I walked out of Star Trek Into Darkness was not, “Was it good?” but rather, “How good was it?” After the 2009 glorious reboot of the iconic sci-fi series Star Trek, with J.J. Abrams directing Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock, the expectations for the sequel were high. Very, very high.

Throughout the previous decade, Star Trek had wandered into the darkness; the original cast and movies of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s (with William Shatner as Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock) had given way to the celebrated TV series Next Generation, and the less so Deep Space Nine,Voyager, and Enterprise. The movies based on the Next Generation cast started out fine, and then not so much, and the last one, the 2002 Star Trek: Nemesis, was a dud, earning $67 million, a sixth of the box office of what J.J. Abrams’ reboot did.

Abrams, who co-created Lost, Fringe, and Alias and has been tapped to – gasp! – reboot Star Wars, is a great science fiction filmmaker; his Star Trek was thrilling, gorgeous, epic and perfectly cast, particularly Quinto as Spock. So, how good was its sequel? Very, very good.

Star Trek Into Darkness starts out a few years after the last film, with Kirk deciding to save Spock’s life instead of following the Prime Directive, the Star Fleet rule that states it is not supposed to interfere with the destiny of another planet or species.

In this case, Kirk allows a primitive culture to see the Starship Enterprise. Back on earth, this decision causes him to lose his ship and get Spock reassigned to be another ship’s first officer. But that all changes when a rogue Star Fleet officer (Benedict Cumberbatch) bombs a top secret weapons lab and, then, when they are assembled to discuss it, he kills half of Star Fleet’s leadership.

Seeking vengeance, Kirk asks Admiral Marcus (a Cheney-esque Peter Weller) to allow him and his crew to find and kill the villain, who has hidden himself on the Klingon home world. Who this man actually is and why he is doing what he’s doing harkens back to (and rewrites) arguably the best Star Trek film, the 1982 The Wrath of Khan.

And arguably, Into Darkness is as good, if not better. Not only is Cumberbatch as brilliant, fierce and accented a bad guy as Ricardo Montalbán was in Kahn, but unlike in Khan, the character development of both Kirk and Spock are central to the plot.

While Spock is trying to understand and accept how his human emotions can exist side-by-side with his affectless Vulcan half (and manage his relationship with Lt. Uhuru, played by Zoe Saldana), Kirk has to deal with his achieving his potential as a leader, his great trouble following rules and his great trouble accepting Spock’s utilitarian belief that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Both Quinto and Pine do great jobs, but I was particularly enamored with how the taut, funny and pointed script allows Quinto to become Hollywood’s first out, gay action star. In Star Trek Into Darkness, Spock kicks ass.

Into Darkness is also the most politically relevant of the films, even if the allusions to 9/11 are not as deftly handled as similar themes were in, say, the Battlestar Galactica TV series. Spock and Kirk’s debate about the many and the few become the central theme around which the film is centered.

It expands from Kirk saving Spock and spooking a planet’s natives in the opening to dealing with – in the classic metaphorical and allegorical ways that science fiction is so good at doing – the moral problems of drones, weighing vengeances against justice and the misuse of weapons of mass destruction.

I think Abrams ultimately avoids delving into the darkness that the film’s last act creates, but perhaps he knows that the key to Star Trek is its optimism about the future. And this makes me hope the next movie is even better.

MOVIE REVIEW

Star Trek Into Darkness

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Benedict Cumberbatch

Rated PG-13

In 3-D

At your local multiplex

Bob Filner

When Mayor Bob Filner finds himself up against a wall politically, he turns to the very source of his political power: his constituents. That political power supply, the mayor says, is also his best source of personal vigor.

As one of the mayor’s senior staff members told San Diego LGBT Weekly during a recent day of exclusive, unlimited access “it takes a lot of energy just to keep up with him.”

According to that member of the mayor’s team, multiple staffers working in shifts is what’s needed to ensure Bob Filner has more than just a security detail accompanying him to the myriad of events he attends in a single day.

Indeed, trailing Bob Filner as a reporter is challenging. Consider just one hour-and-a-half slice of our time with San Diego’s top government official.

In a mere 90-minute period, we found ourselves struggling to keep up with the mayor’s SUV, racing from the outermost edges of Balboa Park, across town to the Handlery Hotel in Mission Valley, then north to the farthest reaches of the 163 freeway to arrive at the Chinese School in Kearney Mesa.

There, along with San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts and celebrated physicist, Prof. Stephen Hawking, Filner helped dedicate the planting of a peach tree in honor of the late San Diego philanthropist (and friend of Dr. Hawking), Dennis Avery.

Earlier, at the Veteran’s War Memorial Museum in Balboa Park, Filner gave a speech to a gathering of vets, many of whom were decked out in uniforms from just about every American wartime period – from the Civil War, to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There, his honor presented an official proclamation welcoming home soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen from Vietnam.

“This is long overdue,” Filner told the crowd, adding that they deserved much more than a plaque. He promised to provide more city services to homeless veterans.

The mayor with an unnamed veteran at a ceremony at the San Diego War Memorial

“The people are his secret weapon; he thrives on interaction with them,” the aforementioned staff member said. “And as you can see, they gravitate to him.”

Indeed, anyone who spends a day with this mayor can see that Bob Filner enjoys a uniquely understated brand of rapport with most “regular folks,” as the expression goes. Was that ease with voters, residents, families, youths and other constituents always part of this mayor’s personality? In a word, he says, “Yes.”

“Maybe it sounds corny to say it,” Filner explains. “But, they’re why I got into politics, into governing, to begin with. It’s that simple; I love the people of this country and this city.”

For the most part, Filner laments, the media seem to miss the story of his “connectedness” to the people he represents.

“Sometimes I don’t think they see past the personalities and hype surrounding only the most sensational issues,” Filner said. “The problem with that is not only does the fact that I get along with most people very nicely – I mean real people, like these San Diegans you see here (at a park in City Heights) – not only does that fact get missed, but the most important aspect of the issues we face in our city get missed.”

According to Filner, the most important aspect of any issue involving governance is how everyday people are affected by public policy decisions.

“Yet somehow, multinational corporations who own hotels in San Diego have the undistracted ear of those in power and in the media,” said Filner, who at the time of our interview had just taken a minor beating in the Tourism Management District (TMD) special assessment battle.

Indeed, seemingly lost amid the din of disdain for the mayor’s reticence to help hoteliers pay for their advertising and marketing, was the fact that every indication was that Filner had vast support from voters regarding his stance on TMD.

Mayor Bob Filner tells Vietnam War veterans their official city homecoming welcome proclamation has come.

“Of course, that was underreported,” he said. “I don’t know what the exact poll numbers were – if they were scientific polls – but no one can argue that voters didn’t support my decision to take a second look at this notion that government should help corporations pay for their marketing.”

The mayor’s refrain of incredulity toward TMD’s loudest went something like this: These guys usually say government can’t do anything right. Why now do they need us to be involved with their advertising campaigns?

In the end, however, Mayor Filner signed the TMD contract – albeit, with one caveat: Should the City be sued by citizens groups for footing the bill for private companies’ marketing plans; those companies – not the taxpayers – would be responsible for settlement payments or court-ordered damage awards.

By backing away from a full-fledged war with San Diego’s big hotels and all but one City councilmember, Mayor Filner probably preserved a great deal of political capital.

He may need that capital if he takes on some in the City who are dubious about the mayor’s plans for more housing for homeless veterans.

A former congressman and chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Mayor Filner has called veterans the most underappreciated members of society. Historically even lower on the totem pole of appreciation for their sacrifices and service, according to Filner, have been LGBT veterans.

“These men and women have gone to war,” Filner said. “They’ve risked their lives for your freedom and mine; they’ve asked for nothing in return except that we treat them with respect and decency.

“Of course, they want and I believe have earned, the basic services they were promised when they enlisted – services like good health care, a chance to work, decent, affordable housing and the educational opportunities they’ve earned.”

Filner helping constituents at a park in City Heights pull off an impromptu photo opp.

As a congressman, Filner was a supporter of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the now defunct Dept. of Defense policy that, until 2011, denied lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers the right to serve openly in the military. Filner now wants all servicemembers, including all LGBTs to be allowed to serve openly (transgender members are stilled barred).

Filner says he also wants equal benefits for LGBT servicemembers and their families.

“They’re not getting that now,” he said. “That’s not what America is about. That’s not what we’re sending gays and other LGBT soldiers abroad to fight for. Why shouldn’t they have the same rights and benefits for their families as straight soldiers, sailors and Air Force members? I think they should.”

Filner spent two months behind bars in Mississippi as a prisoner for protesting in favor of equal voting rights and civil rights protections for African Americans when he was 19, as one of the legendary Freedom Riders.

With a civil rights pedigree such as his, it’s comes as no surprise that Filner considers the worst mistake of his professional career to have been his vote, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, in favor of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

“I wish I could undo it,” Filner told LGBT Weekly. “It was wrong, and I regretted it almost instantly.”

Our day with the mayor ended at a Cambodian New Year festival at a park in City Heights. There, the mayor was at home with a vastly diverse and quintessentially San Diegan mass of constituents.

There, he mingled contentedly with Pacific Islander Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, African Americans, LGBTs and their families, as well as opposite-sex couples and traditional families – and even folks of European descent.

Mayor Bob Filner with revelers at a Cambodian New Year celebration

Circa 1993 President Bill Clinton – known for his kinship with the African American community – was introduced as “America’s first black president” to roaring applause from a mostly black crowd.

Allegorically, Mayor Filner was introduced at the 2013 Cambodian New Year celebration as “San Diego’s first Asian mayor.”

In fact, Bob Filner has earned affinity and loyalty from a wide swath of several minority communities. If this mayor holds true to his vow never to let the LGBT community down again in our fight for equality, he might one day be introduced as California’s first (honorary) gay governor.

Emmy Rossum in Beautiful Creatures

dvd of the week

The plot is basically a standard supernatural star-crossed lovers tale, one that is rather familiar to young consumers of contemporary pop culture. But there is a snarky, dark edge to Beautiful Creatures, partly because of the potential evil in Lena (Alice Englert) and partly due to the wry insults the teens throw at each other.

Richard LaGravenese’s screenplay has a simple structure, but the repartee between the characters, particularly when it involves hyper-literate Ethan (Alden Ehrenreich) or delightfully evil Mrs. Lincoln (Emma Thompson), is where the fun comes in. I’m not sure how LaGravenese managed to assemble such an incredible cast for a genre film.

Lena and Ethan are unknowns, and while Englert is perhaps a bit too mopey in her role, Ehrenreich oozes a witty, sexy charm; I hope we see more of him. And Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis and Emmy Rossum have a great deal of fun with their roles, and I had a great deal of fun watching them.

Scott Baio and Henry Winkler return for Arrested Development season 4

dvr this

Netflix, Sunday, May 26

True, you can’t really DVR this, since Netflix is like a DVR in the sky. But the long awaited fourth season of Arrested Development arrives on Netflix Sunday with 15 new episodes available all at once. The style of this insanely wacky comedy about the dysfunctional Bluth family begat 30 Rock, Community, and Modern Family, and yet, I haven’t seen all of the original series yet. So, before I binge on the new season, I’ll binge on the first three, which are also available on Netflix.

Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell and Ralph Macchio in The Outsiders

If you are on Facebook (duh!) then you might have noticed a recent weekly phenomenon that has come to be known as Throwback Thursday. It is an opportunity for “friends” to post an image of themselves from sometime in the past so that we can all laugh and/or go ahhh. Quite often the photo is of the person we know now looking quite dated and ridiculous (but sometimes cute and sometimes hot) in an outfit from the 1970s or the 1980s and with a whole lot more hair.

The Museum of Photographic Art (MOPA) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and it is in a similar mode as far as its programming is concerned. Their May POP Thursday this week is all about 1983 and you are invited to get in on the action,

Voting has just ended and members determined which of three classic 1983 movies to screen. The Outsiders beat out Risky Business so you can enjoy watching the very beginning of some pretty luminary Hollywood careers (Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe). There will be music and food and libations and it is a perfect opportunity to dig out your best ‘80s attire. In conjunction with this screening there will also be a Push Pin Party. Just like when MOPA opened in 1983, they invite you to put your pictures up on the walls of the museum. It’s a rare opportunity for the aspiring photographer to have an image hanging in a world-class photography museum.

mopa.org

Liquor by Carla Richmond, The Art of Photography Show 2012

The Art of Photography

If you are a photographer you have probably heard of or perhaps even entered the locally organized Art of Photography juried exhibition. It is a notable opportunity to have your work seen by a respected authority in the world of photography and possibly win acclaim and a cash prize. The organizers of this year’s show have just extended their deadline to June 10 so you have time to review your work and submit your best.

The juror this year is Julia Dolan, curator of photography at the Portland Art Museum. The winners will be announced later in the summer and the exhibition takes place at the San Diego Art Institute right here in San Diego.

artofphotographyshow.com

DEV as Michael Jackson

thursday, may 23

Dance Like Michael Jackson Workshop

Michael Jackson lives on in our hearts, our stereos and in our living rooms as we spin, kick and thrust our hips attempting to recreate those magical moves. If you have never tried to moon walk just from watching him, it simply won’t happen. It is one of those counter intuitive dance moves that must come from a trained professional. Learn the moves and choreography of the King Of Pop. Taught by master dancer and MJ impersonator Devra Gregory aka DEV as MJ.

The Dance Place, 2650 Truxtun Road, Suite 106 in Liberty Station, Thursdays at 5:30-7 p.m. May 23-July 18, $150/8 week session or $20 single class, 619-225-1803, sandiegodancetheater.org/workshops

friday, may 24

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Millie, a young bride living in the 1840s Oregon wilderness, plans to civilize and marry off her six rowdy brothers-in-law to ensure the success of her own marriage. Her plan backfires when the brothers kidnap six women from a neighboring town to be their brides. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is all boisterous fun and romance that harkens back to the glory days of the movie musical. Presented by Classical Academy High School.

California Center For The Arts, 340 North Escondido Blvd. in Escondido, 4 and 7:30 p.m., tickets from $9, 800-988-4253, artcenter.org

The cast of Fiddler on the Roof

saturday, may 25

Fiddler on the Roof

The tale of Tevye the milkman and his daughters from the popular stories of Sholem Aleichem, became one of the world’s greatest musicals. Featuring memorable songs like “Tradition”, “If I Were A Rich Man”, “To Life!”, “Sunrise, Sunset” and “Little Bird, Little Chavela,” this fresh, stirring and joyous production draws on the fascinating musical tradition of the Klezmer band, with powerful dance numbers and an amazing cast of actor-singer-dancers.

Lamb’s Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Avenue in Coronado, 4 and 8 p.m., tickets from $38 (4p.m.) and $34 (8 p.m.), 619-437-6000, lambsplayers.org

The cast of The Divine Sister: Jacque Wilke, Dangerfield G. Moore, Lauren King, Maggie Carney, Yolanda Franklin and Daren Scott

sunday, may 26

The Divine Sister

Do nuns really have more fun? The Divine Sister is an inspired homage to every Hollywood film ever centered on the convent. This is the gleefully twisted tale of an indomitable Mother Superior trying to cope with a young postulant experiencing “visions,” a sensitive schoolboy in need of mentoring, a mysterious nun visiting from Berlin and a former suitor intent on luring her away from her vows. No nun, whether singing or flying, is spared and no Mary left un-hailed in this loving parody that dares to take a look beneath the habit.

Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd., #101 in San Diego, 2 p.m., preview tickets $25, 619-220-0097, diversionary.org

monday, may 27

Pacific Horizons: Melanesian Art from the Valerie Franklin Collection

This ongoing exhibition explores the artistic achievements of Melanesia, where art connects people with land, nature spirits, ancestors and each other to create strong and vibrant communities. In this region, each time art is created and displayed social relations and cultural understandings are refined and strengthened. Pacific Horizons: Melanesian Art from the Valerie Franklin Collection presents a startling variety of visual forms and intellectual models and allows visitors to experience some of the finest art created in Melanesia – art that remains one of the least understood in the world.

The San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park, hours 10 a.m.-5 p.m., adult admission $12, 619-232-7931, sdmart.org

Alex Nee and Trent Saunders in American Idiot

tuesday, may 28

American Idiot

Direct from Broadway, this smash-hit musical tells the story of three lifelong friends, forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia. Their quest for true meaning in a post 9/11 world leads them on the most exhilarating theatrical journey of the season.

San Diego Civic Theatre, Third Avenue and B Street in San Diego, 7 p.m., tickets from $20, 619-564-3000, broadwaysd.com

Marilyn Manson

wednesday, may 29

Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson is an American rock musician and former music journalist known for his controversial stage persona and image as the lead singer of the eponymous band Marilyn Manson. Manson has been ranked in the Top 100 Heavy Metal Vocalists by Hit Parader. Picture Me Broken plays support.

House of Blues San Diego, 1055 Fifth Ave. in San Diego, 8:30 p.m., tickets from $39.50, 619-299-2583, houseofblues.com

Anderson Cooper Photo: CNN

(CNN) — CNN anchor Anderson Cooper played the groom in a surreal wedding scene send-off for Bill Hader’s Stefon character on the season finale of “Saturday Night Live.”

Hader announced last week that he was leaving SNL after eight seasons to move to California and get more sleep, which meant his memorable characters were also saying goodbye.

Stefon — Weekend Update’s New York City correspondent — gave one last report Saturday night, rushing off the set after telling anchor Seth Meyers, “You never respect me.”

“I didn’t want to do this here, but I’ve met someone else, and he’s a lot like you, except he likes me for me, and we are getting married,” Stefon said. “Bye, Seth Meyers.”

Stefon has always appeared to have a unrequited gay crush on the straight Meyers, but now Meyers seemed hurt by the rejection.

“Hey, go to him,” Meyers’ “platonic work friend” Amy Poehler said. “It’s never too late. Follow your heart.”

Thus began a bizarre pre-produced segment that parodied the “Wayne’s World” parody of Dustin Hoffman’s frantic run to interrupt his true love’s wedding in “The Graduate.”

Meyers ran from NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters down 5th Avenue to Marble Collegiate Church, where he found Stefon at the altar.

Fetish characters described in Stefon’s many SNL reports made up the bridal party, including “human traffic cones” as bridesmaids.

The camera panned to reveal his groom — Anderson Cooper.

A brawl ensued when Cooper stopped Meyers in the aisle. “Get ready for Anderson Cooper — 360!” he said as he went into a slow motion round-about spin. But one punch from Meyers knocked Cooper out.

Meyers grabbed Stefon, and the couple dashed away, while DJ Baby Bok Choy — another character from Stefon’s reports — blocked Cooper from following. Wedding guests — including smurfs, a gremlin and Alf — converged to celebrate.

Ben Affleck, host of the last episode of SNL’s 38th season, made a cameo appearance, yelling to Meyers: “Follow your heart, bro. Follow it!”

Meyers and Stefon then reappeared live on the “Weekend Update” set as SNL cast members tossed rice on them.

Meyers is taking over NBC’s “Late Night” show next year, although he is expected to return to SNL for season 39.

David Beckham

(CNN) — Father, son, husband of a Spice Girl, fashion icon, role model, sporting ambassador. It is sometimes easy to forget that David Beckham was ever a midfielder of the highest caliber with more than 100 appearances for England.

He wore a sarong, a headscarf, nail varnish, adorned his body with tattoos and changed his expertly coiffured hair-do practically every week. He spoke sparingly and, when he did, it was with a high-pitched, slightly effeminate whine. And, as far as anyone could tell, his female partner seemed to make all the important decisions. And yet his masculinity was never in doubt.

In the 1990s, we called Beckham a New Man, or a metrosexual. He was evidently straight, but never aggressive or even assertive in a traditional masculine way. In fact, he seemed mild-mannered. He dressed stylishly — if a little too flamboyantly for many tastes — groomed himself painstakingly and appeared unembarrassed when asked about his formidable following of gay fans.

There was a shimmering complexity, a quiet elegance, and perhaps even a sly wit about Beckham. Footballers, as the world knew them, were hard-boiled characters, who liked a drink and a good play up, especially after a game. Their reputation was hewn from the granite of working class tradition — men were tough and affectless. We can barely imagine the reaction in the locker room when Beckham unpacked moisturizer, bronzer, and assorted hair products from his kit bag.

In the late 1990s, when he first surfaced, only Beckham could get away with it. After all, he enjoyed the adoration of women all over the world, had a pop star girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, and had to fend off advertisers who clamored for his endorsement services. He was a man with the world at his feet. He still is.

Today, cultural history is unimaginable without Beckham — because he helped change that history. He slew the image of the unrelentingly macho sport hero and emerged heroically as the world’s first all-purpose celebrity athlete. A symbol of a new masculinity.

And still we have to remind ourselves: Beckham was never rated as the best footballer in the world. And, far from being a hellraiser or a serial womanizer like many a notorious sports figure, he was squeaky clean.

Well, at least until 2004 when the News of the World tabloid alleged that he had an affair with his assistant — something he denied. Paradoxically, the alleged affair added rather than subtracted from his already iconic status, introducing a dash of devilry and rescuing Beckham from a kind of borderline piousness, and perhaps issuing a reminder that, despite all the affectations, his manhood was beyond doubt.

So why is Beckham the game-changing celebrity athlete?

There were two David Beckhams: one the flesh-and-blood mortal who kicked a ball around for a living, the other a character that existed independently of time and space — a product of our imaginations.

Everyone thought they knew Beckham and enjoyed a secret relationship with him. He was like a blank canvas. Had he espoused his own views, or aligned himself with great causes he would have spoiled it. But he was silent, giving interviews rarely — and, I suspect, at Victoria’s discretion. And while he stayed largely unknown, the Beckham mystique grew.

When Beckham first entered the popular consciousness it was amid feelings of hate and revenge. Red-carded in a crucial England game against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, Beckham was blamed for his team’s exit. Effigies of him were burnt and he was forced to retreat. It’s difficult to imagine the intensity of the loathing back then. Yet it was crucial in generating interest, even, passion.

The sight, even the name of Beckham stirred up powerful feelings. Football fans may have despised him, but others were just curious. And they became more curious as Beckham defiantly refused to give interviews or make public appearances, save for at the occasional fashion launch or a party hosted by a rock star or designer. All this was very un-footballer-like and faintly unmanly.

By the time Beckham and Victoria were married in 1999, interest in him had extended far beyond the football fraternity. His most devoted followers knew nothing of football. Unlike traditional sport fans, they were not interested in how he played: they were interested in him — just Beckham.

At the start of the 21st century, there was only an embryonic celebrity culture; the fascination we now have for people who make no material impact on our lives and, in many cases, had no accomplishments of note was a new and perplexing development. Fans knew famous sportsmen and women by their talents and achievements. Beckham was different, he was known for being Beckham and, in this sense, he was among the first generation of celebrities.

Beckham’s departure from football will not mean his disappearance. He will remain on our TV screens, in our magazines and on advertising hoardings the world over. But most significantly, he will remain in our imaginations.

Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby

Even though The Great Gatsby is my favorite novel (and I’ve read it three times) I have always been left a little cold by Gatsby himself. I didn’t fall in love with him like his obsession Daisy did, and I didn’t become utterly enamored with him like the book’s narrator Nick Carraway did. This was the case for me with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 book, arguably the greatest written in English in the 20th century, in Jack Clayton and Francis Ford Coppola’s failed 1974 film with Robert Redford in the title role, and again in Baz Luhrmann’s ecstatic new adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Gatsby is cipher; not only is everything about him concealed until the end of the book (or two-thirds of the film) but everything about his character – his affect, his accent, his trappings – are an elaborate and astonishing act. He has created a palace of wealth and excitement on Long Island across the bay from his lost love, Daisy (a luminous Carey Mulligan), all to draw her to him; he charms his much poorer next door neighbor, our narrator Nick (a most excellent Tobey Maguire), because he is Daisy’s cousin; he has constructed a false life story of well-born privilege and war heroism to give him the respectability a woman like Daisy needs. And all of it is a lie except for his desperate love for Daisy, who is married to a brute of an American aristocrat, Tom Buchanan, who Joel Edgerton amazingly makes more fully realized than even Fitzgerald did. Tom, after all, is the only one who sees through Gatsby’s veneer, though he of course hates what is actually underneath.

Better than anyone else has in the myriad adaptations, DiCaprio manages to play Gatsby’s complexity, by acting fake and acting real in strategic succession. His charisma, both Gatsby’s and DiCaprio’s, is admittedly powerful, but perhaps because I knew how it all would end, I couldn’t quite succumb. Perhaps it’s because Gatsby encapsulates the American Dream: the capacity for reinvention, for hope, to offer the shimmering promise of wealth, and to send us on a pursuit for happiness. And for many of us, that American Dream is bunk. Gatsby, however, never gives up hope. That’s what makes him so tragic. Fitzgerald, a heartbroken drunk, wasn’t a cheerful man.

Baz Luhrmann, however, has no such affliction. His films, the best of which are Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, are, like Gatsby, tragedies. But they are ebullient, gorgeous, lush, and enrapt tragedies, full of fauvist color, baroque styling and anachronistic music that is less an attempt at post-modern disjuncture than a manipulation of the audience’s capacity to recall the emotional resonance they feel for some songs. In this case, it’s Beyoncé and Andre 3000 covering Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” Jack White doing U2’s “Love is Blindness,” and Jay-Z, the film’s music supervisor and executive producer, throwing in such iconic songs as his “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and his, Frank Ocean’s and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” as well as a new, but probably soon to be iconic, “100$ Bill.”

The music is combined with Luhrmann’s sets, costumes, 3-D cinematography and CGI, and the results are simply outrageous. To me, this works so well because unlike Clayton and Coppola’s dully naturalistic version, Luhrmann treats Fitzgerald’s lyrical, astonishingly beautiful language with the reverence it deserves. When Nick isn’t narrating in voiceover, Luhrmann transforms Fitzgerald’s words into indelible images bursting with almost garish color and ostentatious detail.

This is the first adaptation of a Fitzgerald work that seems to be as in love with Fitzgerald’s writing as Gatsby is with Daisy. Unlike Fitzgerald, whose novel is perfectly tempered and constructed, Luhrmann makes errors of both under-emphasis and exaggeration, but the end result is still a wondrous experience, unlike anything you will see on screen this year.

MOVIE REVIEW

The Great Gatsby

Directed by Baz Luhrmann

Written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan

Rated PG-13

In 3-D

At your local multiplex

Work stinks.

Home isn’t much better. Deadlines, dirty dishes, screaming boss, loud neighbors, nasty clients, empty bank account; any wonder why you’re so crabby?

No help, no raise, no sympathy; what you really need is to get away. And so did author Mikey Walsh but, as you’ll see in his new memoir Gypsy Boy on the Run, he escaped certain death.

Growing up in Europe’s Romany culture in the 1980s was wonderfully idyllic for Mikey Walsh – for awhile.

As a young boy, Walsh played with his sister, danced to his mother’s favorite music, made mischief with cousins and loved to dress up. But since Walsh was the youngest in a line of Gypsy fighters, his father started “training” him early to use his fists. That meant daily beatings, sometimes more, until Walsh was a teen.

By then, he realized he was gay and he knew his father would kill him if he found out. So, with the help of Caleb, a man he’d fallen in love with, 15-year-old Walsh escaped in the middle of the night.

But his father wasn’t going to let him go easily.

Within days, a “five grand” bounty had been put on Walsh’s head, and Caleb was being stalked. Terrified, they moved Walsh from place to place until he finally found safety in a town where he hoped his father wouldn’t look. Walsh found a job, but he lost Caleb to the pressure of constant threats.

With the familial situation eased a bit, Walsh seized the opportunity to change things he didn’t like about himself. Though proud of his Gypsy heritage, his way of speaking became more “Gorgia.” He made friends and learned to embrace his sexuality. He was confident enough to move even farther away from his family’s influence, to find a good job and a safe apartment. He’d stopped living with paralyzing fear, he learned to read, and he enrolled in acting classes.

He cautiously began to forgive his father.

At the end of last years’ Gypsy Boy – which I absolutely loved – author Mikey Walsh teased his readers by letting it slip that there was much more to his story. He didn’t elaborate, and I wondered if he could deliver on that delicious tantalization.

I shouldn’t have doubted.

Beginning with a brief recap that also serves as a summary for those who missed the first book, Walsh wastes little time before pulling readers into a terror-filled account of the months in which he was always just a half-step ahead of his father’s fists – and yet (this amazed me), he manages to keep a sense of humor about what happened. He presents his story with no poor-me, no sympathy-begging, and a voice that’s calm and matter-of-fact. The lack of whining is oh-so-refreshing in a book like this.

Yes, this memoir contains some repetition, but that minor annoyance is overpowered by a Part Two tale that’s every bit as stellar as its predecessor. If, therefore, you’re searching for something for vacation, weekending, or just because, Gypsy Boy on the Run is the best escape.

BOOK REVIEW

Gypsy Boy on the Run by Mikey Walsh

© 2013, Thomas Dunne

$24.99 U.S. / $16.99 Canada

306 pages

Murder by Death

dvd of the week

Steven Soderbergh’s last studio film is basically a long, relatively well-acted Law & Order episode, complete with discussions of double jeopardy and a “shocking” but offensively retrograde ending.

Emily (Rooney Mara) is married to Martin (Channing Tatum), who is being released from prison after serving five years for insider trading. As they try to get their life in New York back to normal, which for them means black tie parties and lots of money, Emily cannot shake her depression. After driving her car into a wall, she starts treatment with the psychiatrist (Jude Law) who evaluated her in the ER. He prescribes several anti-depressants before settling on a new one called Ablixa, which Emily’s former psychiatrist (Catherine Zeta-Jones) recommends. Unfortunately, while Ablixa helps Emily love life again, it has a rather annoying side effect: sleepwalking. Oh, and murder.

If Side Effects had been an actual Law & Order episode, it would have been the best one ever. But as a Steven Soderbergh movie, especially for his last feature, it’s a bit lazy.

dvr this

Turner Classic Movies, 8:15 p.m., May 18

I don’t think Murder by Death is as good as the similarly themed Clue – both of them are parodies of the 1970s Agatha Christie murder mysteries – but it is still great fun.

Written by Neil Simon, the film’s conceit is that a rich madman (the ur-queen Truman Capote) invites the world’s greatest detectives for dinner and a murder mystery. The detectives are all versions of Miss Marple (Jessica Marbles, played by Elsa Lanchester), Charlie Chan (Lionel Wang, played with racist absurdity by Peter Sellers), Sam Spade (Sam Diamond, played by Columbo’s Peter Falk), and others, and the humor is certainly helped along if you know the quirks these great actors are mocking.

The movie is a romp of slapstick and hamming, and it’s great fun.

Aladdin

thursday, may 16

Aladdin

Arms Wide Open presents the classic tale of Aladdin and the magic lamp. Featuring a cast made up entirely of performers with special needs. Arms Wide Open is a non-profit organization that gives children and adults with special needs opportunities to participate in the performing arts.

Lyceum Stage, Horton Plaza in San Diego, 7 p.m., tickets $15, 619-544-1000, sdrep.org

The Rookie

friday, may 17

Summer Movies in the Park: The Rookie

The 2013 Summer Movies in the Park season is kicking off this weekend with a bang!

Come to Balboa Park/ Morley Field for The Rookie starting at dusk!

Bring your blankets, picnics, and lawn chairs for a fun night for the whole family!

Summer Movies in the Park, 2221 Morley Field Drive in San Diego, free, 8 p.m., dusk -approx. 15 minutes after sunset, summermoviesinthepark.com

saturday, may 18

Marcia Ball

Marcia Ball: Toast of the Coast

This all-star group promises a lively and soulful evening of music from the American South and Gulf Coast. Marcia Ball is a five-time Grammy nominee (including 2012 for Best Blues Album), and an eight-time Blues Music Award winner with four wins in the last five years for Best Piano Player, and two recent wins for Best Contemporary Blues-Female Artist of the Year. She has also been honored as a Gulf Coast Music Hall of Fame Inductee.

Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave, in San Diego, 8 p.m., tickets from $30, 619-570-1100, sandiegotheatres.org

sunday, may 19

Zombie Prom

The cast of Zombie Prom

This girl-loves-ghoul rock ‘n roll off-Broadway musical is set in the atomic 1950s at Enrico Fermi High, where the law is laid down by a zany, tyrannical principal. Pretty senior Toffee has fallen for the class bad boy. Family pressure forces her to end the romance, and he charges off to the nuclear waste dump. He returns glowing and determined to reclaim Toffee’s heart. He still wants to graduate, but most of all he wants to take Toffee to the prom. The principal orders him to drop dead while a scandal reporter seizes on him as the freak du jour. History comes to his rescue while a tuneful selection of original songs in the style of ‘50s hits keeps the action rocking across the stage.

Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego, 2 p.m., tickets from $17, 619-448-5673

Bottled & Kegged: San Diego’s Craft Brew Culture

This exhibit explores the ebb and flow of beer production in the San Diego region over the years and answers the question: Why is San Diego becoming such a nationally renowned region for craft beer production and innovation? Beginning with the region’s earliest inhabitants to the present day, the exhibit highlights events and individuals who built a brewing industry where once there was none, kept an industry alive during Prohibition, and managed to bring back what, at one time, was one of the region’s most robust enterprises. The exhibit features many hands-on interactive elements that help explain: the brewing process, how San Diego County brewers achieve such expansive flavor profiles, and the science behind matching beers with food. Bottled & Kegged has components that speaks to audiences of all ages and will educate even the most avid craft beer lover.

San Diego History Center, 1649 El Prado in Balboa Park, open daily from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., adult admission $6, 619-232-6203, sandiegohistory.org

tuesday, may 21

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Guillermo Figueroa

The Figueroa Family and Its Jewish Roots: A Journey Through Music

Guillermo Figueroa was formerly music director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and is currently music director of Colorado’s Music in the Mountains festival. Guillermo and his sister, Ivonne Figueroa, of the University of Puerto Rico, trace their family’s roots in a concert presentation with stories, photographs, violin and piano music. This event is part of the Anti-Defamation League’s festival “¡Celébrate! The Jewish Experience in Spanish-Speaking Countries.”

Lyceum Space, Horton Plaza in San Diego, 7:30 p.m., tickets $18, 619-544-1000, sdrep.org

wednesday, may 22

Shakespeare’s R and J

Shakespeare’s R and J

After curfew, four repressed students in a parochial school for boys discover in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet a forbidden text that becomes more dangerous as they explore their pent-up energy and adolescent passion boiling under the surface. A hot-blooded and unique take on R&J.

Cygnet Theatre, 4040 Twigg Street in San Diego, 7:30 p.m., tickets 434, 619-337-1525, cygnettheatre.com

NEW YORK, – Here TV  America’s only gay television network, announced today that Here TV’s award-winning programming is now available as a YouTube paid channel, the newly launched subscription-based platform. Episodes of classic Here TV series will be available immediately on demand through the new service for a low monthly or yearly subscription. Here TV is one of the first paid channels rolling out on YouTube.

“We are excited to launch our YouTube paid channel to bring our original, LGBT programming to a new global platform. Here TV continues to embrace the latest innovations in program distribution,” says John Mongiardo , Here TV’s SVP of Programming Operations.

Here TV will debut on YouTube in: the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Spain, France, Australia, Japan,South Korea, Russia, and Brazil. To subscribe users must sign into a YouTube account on a computer and have a Google Wallet account. Here TV’s channel will be available for viewing on: computers, phones, tablets, and TV.

Here TV titles available will include Dante’s Cove and The Lair; the Emmy-nominated documentary 30 Years From Here; She’s Living for This ; political talk show For & Against ; marriage equality special Pride & Groom; network special The Dinah Girls; and more.

“We are thrilled to be part of this launch. As we continue to create original programs, this new channel will allow us to have an extensive global perspective in the development of new content and reaching a new audience,” says Josh Rosenzweig , SVP of Original Programming and Development for Here TV.

Esmeralda Anaya with her mother, Maria Castillo

For some, Mother’s Day is that day when you can’t avoid your mother’s phone call. In fact, you really have to call her or risk a lecture for the 364 other days of the year. You marvel at the marketing moms across the country have done because I mean, really, who knows when Father’s Day is?

In relation to other holidays Mother’s Day is actually relatively new, historically speaking, tracing its roots in the United States to 1908 when it was first created by Anna Jarvis, a woman who lost her own mother in 1905 and actually never became a mother herself. President Woodrow Wilson was the first president to sign a proclamation for Mother’s Day May 9, 1914.

What had begun as a holiday meant for families to honor their mothers quickly became commercialized around the giving of gifts, something that the holiday’s creator fought. Sadly, Anna Jarvis died penniless in a sanatorium and the holiday continued on as we know it.

Cory Huston with his stepmother, Cyndi Huston

In the LGBT community relationships with our parents can often be complicated, so we asked some of our readers to tell us what Mother’s Day means to them.

Kurt Cunningham shared a story of his loving mother, Lisa Cunningham, who was supportive and caring without condition.

“My mom really was my best friend,” Cunningham told San Diego LGBT Weekly. “My dad worked a lot when I was a kid so it was always me and my mom together all the time. Later in life the support she always gave me was beyond anything anyone could ever hope for. She would come to my drag shows, she was even on stage when I was crowned empress and I have a photo of that night in my drag album here. It has been less than a year since she died, but there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of her. I often have dreams that she is in, and I know that’s her way of coming to check on me.”

Coronation of Empress Summer Meadows (Kurt Cunningham) watched by his proud mother, Lisa, in the lavender dress

For some, Mother’s Day is more complicated. Acknowledging the great sacrifices of her mother, LGBT Weekly reader Esmeralda Anaya explained that her mother never accepted her orientation.

“My mother was a woman who sacrificed so much to ensure we were provided for and have a future she could only dream of,” said Anaya. “As immigrants, she said we must work twice as hard like we had something to prove. After coming out I felt I had to work twice as hard as my siblings for her love, to prove that my love was equal. As much as I tried to show her the similarities that exist in our struggles, we could never come to an understanding. It’s been almost two years since I’ve heard my mother’s voice and I fear I am almost forgetting what it sounds like. Nonetheless, I strive to make her proud and one day hope she acknowledges that love is love.”

Navy Veteran Cory Huston, dedicates Mother’s Day to his stepmother who raised him since he was 6 alongside her own biological children. Huston’s relationship with his biological mother was fraught with conflict and disapproval especially because of his sexual orientation.

Kurt Cunningham with his mom

“My stepmom raised me from the time I was 6 and I call her ‘Mom’ because she was the one I came home to everyday and she always tried ten times harder to make up for my biological mom’s bad motherhood,” Huston recalled.

Pride Card joint-owner and creator Bo Andras shared with LGBT Weekly that he always wondered what his life would have been like had he had more time with his mother. His mother, Beverly Guillot Andras, passed away of cancer when he was 8. He honors both his mother and his aunt, Linda Guillot, on Mother’s Day.

“I honor and remember my mom every day,” Andras shared with LGBT Weekly. “She passed away 35 years ago this upcoming December; a week before Christmas. I do treat and honor my aunt as my mother on Mother’s Day. She stepped in and raised me like her own and even though I never called her ‘Mom’ or even ‘Aunt Linda,’ I always called her by her first name because she was more than an aunt but never wanted to disrespect my mom by calling someone else ‘Mom.’”

For the LGBT community Mother’s Day is another day complicated by the relationships we have. But like any American, the day is about Mom, and for some that makes it either a really good day or a miserable one – but one that will likely touch us all in some way.

Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man 3

Can we talk about Robert Downey Jr.’s beard for a minute? It’s not quite pencil thin, but it’s distressingly narrow; a strip that connects tweezed sideburns with a manicured mustache and a chin strap. It’s decidedly not fashionable; the look really hasn’t been hip since the late 1990s, which is when the third installment of Iron Man opens. It was douchey at the turn of the century (when that insult wasn’t really in use), and it just looks bad now.

I’m not entirely sure why I am so focused on how awful Downey’s beard is. Overall, it was just a minor part of why he bugged me so much in the movie. I guess it’s partly because I’m bear and prefer real beards, but partly it’s because Downey spends disappointingly little time in his armored suit, and his face and awful beard are on full display.

It turns out Iron Man 3 is less of a superhero movie and more of an action movie vehicle for Robert Downey Jr. and his trademark, and to me, increasingly irritating, shtick.

The movie opens with a flashback to 1999, when pre-Iron Man billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Downey) picks up a promising botanist named Maya (Rebecca Hall) and rudely ignores a decrepit, limping scientist named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce).

Thirteen years later – a few months after Iron Man and the Avengers battled aliens and a cranky Norse god in New York (as seen in Joss Whedon’s awesome The Avengers) an event that has inexplicably made Tony prone to panic attacks – Killian shows up again, perfectly healthy, and tries to convince Tony’s girlfriend and the CEO of his company Pepper Potts (a fierce Gwyneth Paltrow) to partner on his future research. Meanwhile, a Middle Eastern terrorist called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is setting off bombs and killing Americans willy-nilly.

When one of the Mandarin’s blasts hurts Tony’s trusted bodyguard Happy Hogan (John Favreau, who directed the first two Iron Man films), Tony is enraged and challenges the Mandarin. And the Mandarin responds, sending three helicopters to destroy Tony’s Malibu mansion, seemingly killing our hero.

Of course, Tony survives, and his quest to get the Mandarin leads Tony to Aldrich, Maya, Tennessee, a cutesy friendship with a young boy (Ty Simpkins), several glowing bad guys (led by the criminally underused James Badge Dale), Miami and a massive Michael Bay-ish fight above an oil tanker alongside Tony’s brother-in-another-suit-of-armor Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle).

The plot is, to say the least, involved, though most of the mystery is pretty easy for the audience to figure out long before Tony and Pepper do. However, there is one twist that is slightly surprising, utterly delightful, and it allows at least one member of this outrageously talented cast (that also includes Miguel Ferrer and Dale Dickey) to go for a Golden Globe nomination. This twist has enraged comic book fan boys, but I’m not sure which is more entertaining, their geek outrage or the object of their ire.

As a long-time fan of the Marvel Comics universe, I was unconcerned about the change of an established, but minor character, especially since writer-director Shane Black did it so well – and it’s the best part of an impressively witty script. I was much more irritated that, unlike every other Marvel film, from Spiderman to the X-Men to The Avengers, the iconic character being played in Iron Man is subservient to the star’s persona.

Downey, once considered to be the great actor of his generation, has become a lazy ham, playing a vaguely different version of the fast-talking, sarcastic cad in every film, whether it’s the Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes franchises or broad comedies like Due Date.

Call me a fan boy, but just like that terrible beard, that character is distractingly wrong for Tony Stark.

MOVIE REVIEW

Riz Ahmed in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Iron Man 3

Directed by Shane Black

Written by Drew Pearce and Shane Black

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Kingsley

Rated PG-13

At your local multiplex

Available in 3-D and IMAX

also playing

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

If you were offended by Zero Dark Thirty, and there’s good reason to be, you may find solace in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which is as subversively anti-American and anti-imperialist as Zero Dark Thirty was pro-American and pro-fascism.

Based on the novel by Mohsin Hamid, it is the story of how Changez (Riz Ahmed) is transformed from extremely eager, extremely competitive capitalist – from Princeton to investment banking – into the heroic professor of anti-American student protesters (and possibly terrorists) in Lahore, Pakistan. Changez tells his story to Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber), a journalist covering the kidnapping of one of Changez’s university colleagues, an American scholar.

It’s a powerful story and a useful counter to the mindless anti-Muslim and silly jingoism of most American films.

Visible Bodies Photo: Wolfgang

San Diego will help rewrite the way stories about transgender people are told thanks to Visible Bodies an exciting exhibit of more than 30 portraits of people in the local transgender community.

Visible Bodies, a photography series highlighting transgender and genderqueer individuals will be exhibited the entire month of May at Art of Pride in North Park. Through captions written by participants and a close collaboration between subject and photographer, the photographs on display in this exhibition empower transgender people, giving them the space to express what their gender means to them. The exhibit is part of a fledgling movement of transgender people telling their own stories, in contrast to the biased and overly simple narratives told about them in the media.

Started as a legacy project by Ph.D. candidate Scott Duane to document and empower transgender students at the University of California San Diego, Visible Bodies quickly grew to encompass the larger transgender community. “San Diego trans people are excited to see accurate, positive representations of themselves in this project,” says Duane. “The response has been so overwhelming; we’ve actually had to turn down several potential participants. On the other side of the coin, non-trans people find Visible Bodies educational and enlightening.”

Historically, and still today, the narratives of transgender people have been written by people who are not themselves trans. In mainstream media, trans people are almost always characterized as one-dimensional. The focus of these stories is narrow, typically only discussing the trans person’s tragic childhood and the events leading up to their transition.

Visible Bodies: Spike Photo: Wolfgang

Sensationalizing gender-confirming surgery and hormone therapy, using incorrect gender pronouns, emphasizing before-and-after pictures, birth names and genitalia are all common media practices. A less reductive and more nuanced narrative showing trans people as people with careers, partners, children, hobbies and interests outside of their own gender identities and transitions are rare.

Additionally, there is almost no mainstream media coverage of gender-variant and genderqueer people. According to Liat Wexler, founder of Genderqueer San Diego, “Virtually no mainstream media discusses people whose genders are fluid, are genderqueer and do not fall in one of the two recognized binary genders (man or woman), or those who have no gender (neutrois or agender.)” One of the unique aspects of Visible Bodies is its broad representation of gender expressions and identities.

Visible Bodies: Evan Photo: Wolfgang

All are welcome to the artist reception Saturday, May 11 6:30-8:30 p.m. Art of Pride is a curated gallery in the San Diego LGBT Pride building located at 3620 30th Street.

Doona Bae and Xun Zhou in Cloud Atlas

dvd of the week

David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, considered one of the greatest literary achievements of the last two decades by many critics, was thought to be impossible to adapt for film. There are six narratives that take place in wildly different times and spaces and they’re connected in weird and wonderful ways.

The film is a towering achievement of editing, writing and directing, with several great performances (Jim Broadbent, Tom Hanks and Doona Bae), but it is not nearly as deep as writer-directors Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski want you to believe. But the fact that they made a coherent, entertaining movie out of Mitchell’s post-modern masterpiece is a feat to behold.

thursday, may 9

The Big Bad Armo Show

Playing to sold-out audiences across California, The Big Bad Armo Show is a hilarious, bold, fun and witty sketch-comedy show about the Armenian-American experience. Written by Lory Tatoulian it stars Alex Kalognomos, Helen Kalognomos, Ludwig Manukian, James Martin, Alex Mashikian and Lory Tatoulian.

Lyceum Space Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza in San Diego, 8 p.m., tickets $25, 619-544-1000, sdrep.org

friday, may 10

Manhattan Transfer

Manhattan Transfer

The first group ever to win Grammy Awards in both Pop and Jazz categories in the same year (1981) – Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Jazz Performance, Duo or Group. Join this amazing vocal group as they perform live on stage at the historic Balboa Theatre for one night only!

Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave. in San Diego, 7:30 p.m., tickets from $34.50, 619-570-1100, sandiegotheatres.org

Ray Street wall mural

saturday, may 11

Ray at Night

Ray Street is a tiny little one way street in the heart of North Park. This tiny little street is lined with galleries, stores and shops. It has become an art mecca, and is considered to be one of the most culturally rich art and culture districts in San Diego. It is host to one of San Diego’s largest and longest running (9 years) art and culture events, Ray at Night. Ray at Night takes place every second Saturday of each month with live music, arts, crafts and good food.

Ray Street in North Park, 6-10 p.m., free, 619-800-2787, raystreet.com

The Sound of Music

sunday, may 12

The Sound of Music

The final collaboration between Rodgers and Hammerstein was destined to become the world’s most beloved musical. When a postulant proves too high-spirited for the religious life, she is dispatched to serve as governess for the seven children of a widowed naval Captain. Her growing rapport with the youngsters, coupled with her generosity of spirit, gradually captures the heart of the stern Captain, and they marry. Upon returning from their honeymoon they discover that Austria has been invaded by the Nazis. The family’s narrow escape over the mountains to Switzerland on the eve of World War II provides one of the most thrilling and inspirational finales ever presented in the theater.

The Birch North Park Theatre, 2891 University Ave., in San Diego, 2 p.m., tickets from $26, 858-560-5740, sdmt.org

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: View of the Campidoglio, 1757, etching

monday, may 13

Piranesi, Rome and the Arts of Design

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) was a printmaker, architect, antiquarian, art dealer, theorist and designer – one of the foremost artistic personalities of the 18th century, whose views of Rome remain the city’s defining image. Fresh, thought-provoking and innovative, Piranesi, Rome, and the Arts of Design sets out to show the range of the artist’s genius in a 21st-century approach to his creative endeavors.

The San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park, open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., adult admission $12, 619-232-7931, sdmart.org

The Agency – 1983/Robert Mapplethorpe

tuesday, may 14

The Agency – 30 Years Later

Photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe

NYC, 1983 – Robert Mapplethorpe approached Alfredo Santiago, then president of the agency Models Incorporated to photograph his models in hopes of breaking into the fashion photography industry. The results were artistic and unlike any other fashion photography ever created. An exhibit of the photographs was held May 3, 1983 at Hardison Fine Arts Gallery in NYC. Today, Santiago lives in San Diego and had these works (tucked under his bed) for 30 years. He would like to share them with you.

Christine Estabrook and Zoë Winters in Be a Good Little Widow

White Box Contemporary, 1040 7th Ave. in San Diego, open 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., $25 donation, 619-237-8813, whiteboxcontemporary.com

wednesday, may 15

Be a Good Little Widow

Melody thought being a young wife was hard, until she became a widow. Luckily her mother-in-law is an expert in the field. As Melody navigates the prickly terrain of pressed black dresses, well-meant advice and inappropriate outbursts, she stumbles toward understanding what it means to find someone through losing them. A bittersweet look at the messy parts of life, this quirky comedy contemplates how grief, devotion and hope can persevere within us all. Contains strong language.

Old Globe Theatre, Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Conrad Prebys Theatre Center, 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park, 7 p.m., tickets from $29, 619-234-5623, theoldglobe.org

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

(CNN) — Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have taken “Thrift Shop” all the way to the bank.

The duo have made history on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, as their first two singles, the aforementioned “Shop” and the more recent “Can’t Hold Us” with Ray Dalton, have both shot to No. 1.

That makes Macklemore and Lewis the first duo in Billboard’s history to see their first two singles climb to the top of the chart.

While their single “Same Love” hasn’t gone quite as far (at least, not yet), it is making just as much of an impact. The artist rhymes about questioning his sexuality as a kid, and discusses the inequality and stereotyping the gay community faces.

In an interview with Out magazine, Macklemore said that he wanted to tackle the issue of gay rights through a hip-hop track but wasn’t sure how to do it.

“I knew I wanted to write a song about gay rights, about marriage equality, and about homophobia in hip-hop, but I didn’t know how,” the rapper said. “I tried, at first, writing from the perspective of a gay, bullied kid. That’s what sparked the song in the first place: reading the story of a 13-year-old who committed suicide.”

In the end, he continued, “Same Love” is a song about equality.

“[W]e play it regardless of what we think the response is going to be. There’s been such ground made in terms of acceptance in the hip-hop community,” Macklemore said. “What Barack Obama did, and what Frank Ocean did, and what, hopefully, ‘Same Love’ did is start a conversation.”

United In Anger: A History Of ACT UP, a documentary feature film will be screening twice at Frequency Film Festival  May 27 at 8 p.m. and June 8 at 10:30 a.m. at The Ocean Beach Playhouse, 4944 Newport Ave. in San Diego.

United In Anger: A History Of ACT UP is a unique feature-length documentary that combines startling archival footage that puts the audience on the ground with the activists and the remarkably insightful interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project to explore ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) from a grassroots perspective – how a small group of men and women of all races and classes, came together to change the world and save each other’s lives. The film takes the viewer through the planning and execution of a half dozen exhilarating major actions including Seize Control of the FDA, Stop the Church, and Day of Desperation, with a timeline of many of the other zaps and actions that forced the U.S. government and mainstream media to deal with the AIDS crisis. UNITED IN ANGER reveals the group’s complex culture – meetings, affinity groups, and approaches to civil disobedience mingle with profound grief, sexiness, and the incredible energy of ACT UP.

Watch the trailer below:

'The Scar'

SAN DIEGO – Pipingo Films and Alma Films have announced the presentation of The Scar, Jimmy Larouche’s first feature film, at the Frequency Film Festival in San Diego. Produced and distributed 100 percent independently by Jimmy Larouche and Patricia Diaz, the film stars Marc Béland, Patrick Goyette and Normand D’Amour. The Scar is a psychological suspense movie which deals with the subject of bullying. The Scar will be presented May 27 at 1:15 p.m. and June 8 at 6:55 p.m. Both screenings will be held at The Ocean Beach Playhouse.

To date, The Scar has been selected in more than 12 festivals across the world including the prestigious Busan International Film Festival (South Korea), Cinequest in San Jose (California) and Camerimage Plus in Poland. The Scar was also recently awarded the Rising Star Award at the Canadian International Film Festivals in Vancouver.

The Ocean Beach Playhouse is at 4944 Newport Ave. in San Diego.

The Scar

How to build a future on a lifetime of failure? The deepest scars are not always the most visible ones, and the one Richard carries within has been open ever since on a particular evening where, in a barn, when he was a child, his life changed forever. Thirty years later, he has returned to that same place with the intent to take his revenge. Between realism and fantasy, The Scar draws an intense psychological suspense, through one man’s confrontation with his past. The games children play, are not always innocent…

Liza Minelli. Photo by Adam Bouska courtesy of NOH8 Campaign

NEW YORK — The legendary Liza Minnelli was the latest celebrity to support the acclaimed NOH8 Campaign. Liza’s NOH8 portrait was unveiled last Friday by the organization whose mission is to promote equality through visual protest.

The NOH8 Campaign is a photographic silent protest created in direct response to the passage of California’s Proposition 8 which amended the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Photos feature subjects with tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop. 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8″ painted on one cheek in protest.

When Liza was asked her message for the LGBT community she responded, “Here’s what I believe … no shame, no blame, no guilt. Be happy. And be who you are. I love you.”

The Agency - 1983 / ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

If there was a patron saint of contemporary LGBT art a contender for that title would surely be Robert Mapplethorpe. Mapplethorpe sought, found and held onto fame in the 1980s thanks in part to his gorgeously lit photographs of flowers and then his gorgeously lit photographs of naked men in all manner of sexual situations.

A Mapplethorpe image that you might recall is an early self-portrait. In it, the young Mapplethorpe is facing away from the camera; he is bent over looking back at the viewer, his mane of brown curls dipping below his shoulder; coyly protruding from his behind is a bullwhip with a long tassel. The photograph was and remains in your face, bold and provocative.

Another notorious Mapplethorpe image is Man in a Polyester Suit. The image is indeed of a man wearing a lighter colored polyester suit. The photo is cropped tightly around the man’s hip and torso region. The man’s fly is open. The rest is history. I am sure you’ve seen it.

Mapplethorpe died of AIDS related complications in 1989 with a reputation for being scandalous and calculating. However his work and his persona have been gathering a certain luster over the years, most recently in Just Kids, a wonderful memoir by his close friend, fellow artist Patti Davis.

The complete Robert Mapplethorpe story has yet to be told, even now 25 years after his untimely death. Like many complicated people the sum total of his contributions to art and to the gay experience will be revealed slowly through time as more books are written and more stories told. One such story will unfold here in San Diego this weekend when 36 rare Polaroid photographs go on display at the White Box Contemporary.

The Agency - 1983 / ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE

The exhibition titled The Agency opens May 3, at 5 p.m. with a wine reception and fundraiser for Mama’s Kitchen.

It’s unlikely you’ve seen these Polaroid’s before because they’ve been under a bed for 30 years; then again maybe you have! Here’s their story of origin: in 1983 Robert Mapplethorpe approached Alfredo Santiago, then president of the model agency Models Incorporated asking for work. It was an early attempt on Mapplethorpe’s part to break into the fashion industry.

Santiago told him to go away but Mapplethorpe persisted, finally convincing Santiago to give him a shot. According to Santiago, the results were artistic and unlike any other fashion photography ever created so much so that the photographs were exhibited at a New York gallery.

Santiago eventually moved to San Diego and the Polaroid’s came with him, ending up secreted away in a box for 30 years – until now.

The Agency opens to the public on May 4 and runs until June 15.

whiteboxcontemporary.com

Arnold Reyes in Graceland

It has been a while since I saw something on screen and said out loud, “Oh, my God.” But I did that while I watched Graceland, Ron Morales’s taught indie thriller about kidnapping, child prostitution and poverty in Manila. Early in the film, Marlon (Arnold Reyes), the driver for the rich and sleazy Congressman Manuel Changho (Menggie Cobarrubias), is driving his and his boss’s teenage daughters home when they are hijacked by a kidnapper dressed as a policeman. They drive to a deserted area of a massive dump; the girls are whimpering, Marlon is tearfully protesting, and suddenly the kidnapper shoots Changho’s daughter in the chest before absconding with Marlon’s. It is a quick shot, with only a split second of blood splatter, but that brief moment as young, recently chipper, now terrified Sophia stutters and dies made me exclaim out loud.

There are several moments in Graceland that are shocking or discomfiting, but none of them – including murders, several plot twists, and the nudity of the very young prostitutes Changho likes – felt exploitative. This is a contrast to how similar plot points have been handled in, say, Law & Order: SVU or Taken, in which sex and violence are gratuitous demands of genre. While Graceland is suspenseful and paced in order to raise your heart rate, Morales seems less interested in titillation than in the moral dilemmas created by poverty and desperation.

In order to get his daughter back, he needs to convince Changho that his own daughter is still alive. And he also needs to convince his hospitalized wife, who is in need of an organ transplant they cannot afford, that their daughter is safe. Lies compound each other, and the detective on Changho’s payroll (a terribly hammy Dido De La Paz) is very suspicious.

Shot on location in the grimy slums of Manila on a shoe string budget, Graceland features a cast of well-known Filipinos. American audiences expecting a certain kind of naturalistic acting from their indie films will appreciate Reyes’ desperate performance, but De La Paz, Cobarrubias, Marife Necesito (who plays Changho’s wife), and Leon Miguel (who is the main kidnapper Visel) vacillate between wooden and melodramatic. Morales, whose story structure, visual direction, and editing show him to be a great talent, does not have equal skill when it comes to working with actors, some of which is because his dialogue – at least as translated from Tagalog to English for the subtitles – is a bit clichéd.

The ending of the film, which I will not spoil, is assuredly not clichéd, however. Instead of going the route of most Hollywood thrillers, Morales refuses the easy moral certitude that comforts the comfortably middle class American audiences.

Marlon’s life and the life of his wife are both too precarious for that sort of luxury, and Morales communicates that disease expertly in the final short of Reyes’ wide-eyes and nervous hope.

MOVIE REVIEW

Graceland

Written and directed by Ron Morales

Starring Arnold Reyes, Menggie Cobarrubias and Dido De La Paz

Rated R

In Tagalog

Donna W. Scott, Garret Dillahunt, Isaac Leyva and Alan Cumming in Any Day Now

At Reading Gaslamp, and online at Amazon and iTunes

Any Day Now

Alan Cumming is best known nowadays for his smart, snarky, and subtly camp performance as Eli Gold in The Good Wife, the best show on network television. But he originally became famous for playing the MC in Sam Mendes iconic revival of Cabaret in the late 1990s; he won a Tony and legions of straight and gay fans. He is a song and dance man, but not in the chipper, jazz hands Glee way; he is mischievous, sly, sexy and sardonic. And very, very funny. In Travis Fine’s gay-parenting drama Any Day Now, Cumming plays a drag performer in 1970s West Hollywood who becomes a father to an abandoned teenage boy with Down’s syndrome. Both his Broadway skills and his (somewhat) more tempered dramatic skills are on display, and in his greatest screen role, Cumming makes the film, despite its missteps, memorable and moving.

Rudy (Cumming) is the lead of a trio of drag queens who perform at a WeHo bar. One night he picks up a patron, handsome assistant district attorney Paul (Garret Dillahunt), and it is him Rudy calls when he discovers that his junkie neighbor (Jamie Anne Allman) has disappeared, leaving her developmentally disabled son Marco (Isaac Leyva) alone. Paul balks at first, but when Marco escapes the foster home where he’s been sent and Rudy and Paul find him, they quickly become a family. In order to make that happen, however, they have to lie to a judge about their relationship. Paul’s boss figures out what is actually going on, and since it’s the late ‘70s, gay parenting goes on trial. Literally.

Fine’s screenplay is structured a bit too much like a Lifetime issue-of-the-week movie, and, particularly during the court room scenes, some of the scenes are cartoonish. Gregg Henry, who plays the homophobic opposing lawyer, is a stereotypical monster.

Fine’s direction of his actors inside Rachel Morrison’s beautifully colored cinematography makes up for some of the clunky writing. But the movie is held together by Cumming’s broad, versatile, deeply sympathetic performance as Rudy. (His only flaw is his wonky Queens accent, which is a bit inconsistent.) His musical performances are key; when he sings “I Shall Be Released” over the last few images, it’s heart-breaking.

MOVIE REVIEW

Any Day Now

Directed by Travis Fine

Written by Travis Fine and George Arthur Bloom

Starring Alan Cumming, Garret Dillahunt and Isaac Leyva

Rated R

On DVD and Amazon.com

The faces in the pictures look back at you with hopeful, aching eagerness.

Ah, your high school annual is such a trove of memories. There you are at Senior Skip Day, making goofy faces. There’s a picture of the class black sheep, now the president of the local bank; remembrances of prom, homecoming, first kisses and team spirit.

You haven’t seen a lot of those kids since you graduated. Sometimes, you wonder if you really ever knew them. As in the new book Prairie Silence by Melanie Hoffert, you wonder if you ever really knew anything.

It may’ve seemed like the kind of idle conversation that friends have when they’ve known one another for ages, but Melanie Hoffert was dead-serious when she told her friend, Melissa, that they should return together to the prairie.

Hoffert surprised herself with her longing for home. She’d hated growing up on an isolated farm in North Dakota, ten miles from grocery stores, three miles from playmates, a half days’ drive to a major city. She hated small-town life then but, sitting in a cold office in Minneapolis, she realized how much she missed the farm and, most of all, harvest-time.

So she took a leave of absence from the job she loved. She wanted to be a farmer again. She wanted to touch the past.

But in reconnecting with memories of vast openness and the kind of silence that comes when neighbors are miles apart, Hoffert also rediscovered who she was, years ago. She knew at a young age that she was different from other girls: she figured she’d eventually kiss a boy, but she yearned for another kind of love. She dreamed of holding hands with a woman, and she became smitten with her best high school friend, Jessica.

Hoffert knew she couldn’t talk about that to anyone on the prairie. That sort of thing just wasn’t.

Coming home to North Dakota, she remembered that puppy love. She remembered how Jessica led her to Jesus, and the turmoil it created when she was told that homosexuality was a sin. She recalled her family, and marveled at how much had changed.

And she remembered neighbors: the ones who asked if she found a “fella” yet; corn farmers; homesteaders and homemakers; caretakers of the land.

When it comes to this books’ title, Prairie Silence couldn’t be more apt.

Author Melanie Hoffert has written a sure love letter to a land and its people, but it’s love spurned and unrequited, as well as love held fast. In between Hoffert’s sweet-yet-angst-driven memories and her journey of self-rediscovery, readers are treated to quiet reverence for a disappearing way of life, for faith that just couldn’t last, and for folks who – to her surprise – never discouraged Hoffert from being who she was.

This is a gorgeous book that evokes quiet country mornings and loud self-examination, and this former farm girl enjoyed it thoroughly.

If you once believed that you can’t truly ever go home again, Prairie Silence is a book you’ll be eager to read.

BOOK REVIEW

Prairie Silence by Melanie Hoffert

© 2013 Beacon Press

$24.95 / $28.95 Canada

238 pages

Wine, cheese and tapas cooking class

thursday, may 2

Wine, cheese and tapas cooking class

Enjoy an evening of gourmet fromage, fantastic wines and fabulous tapas! Chefs Jodi, from Lajollacooks4u and Samantha Rees from Intimate Gatherings, will engage your taste buds with wine and cheese pairings and also guide you in a fun, hands-on tapas making class. Four gourmet cheeses will be paired with four wines and the tapas menu includes: paprika shrimp with citrus slaw, Argentinean beef skewers with chimichurri sauce, eggplant rollups with goat cheese and pesto spread, rosemary and sea salt flatbread. And not forgetting dessert with sweet bite-lemon curd shooters and brown butter cookies. All participants will take home a menu and recipe booklet and eat, drink and be merry.

Lajollacooks4u, 2092 Caminito Capa in La Jolla, 5:30-8:30 p.m., admission $165, 858-752-4980, lajollacooks4u.com

Janet Hammer

friday, may 3

Janet Hammer

Since her very first vocal performance at age five, Janet Hammer showed music is clearly in her blood. She’s performed all over the world, influenced by singers the like of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Phoebe Snow, and jazz vocal groups such as Manhattan Transfer, Singers Unlimited and Rare Silk. She has opened for The Pointer Sisters, The Drifters, The Platters, and Johnny Cash and has worked with musicians from groups such as The Righteous Brothers, Little Anthony, Maynard Ferguson, Natalie Cole, The Chieftains, and The Guess Who. She teaches, performs, directs and inspires.

The Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant, 2660 Calhoun Street in Old Town, 7:30-10:30 p.m., $5 cover, 619-297-1874, oldtowncosmopolitan.com

Art-on-the-Green

saturday, may 4

Art-on-the-Green

Carlsbad Oceanside Art League gallery member artists display their artwork at Art-on-the-Green every weekend (good weather permitting) on the lawn in front of the Carlsbad Inn Beach Resort. Spend an enjoyable few hours of your Saturday admiring the work of these talented artists en plein air.

3075 Carlsbad Blvd. in Carlsbad, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., free, 760-434-8497, coalartgallery.com

Chocolate Festival logo

sunday, may 5

Chocolate Festival

Mars Chocolate History Ambassadors will be onsite to demonstrate the historical bean-to-beverage story of 18th-century chocolate using authentic tools including cocoa pods, cocoa beans and nibs, a hot stone metate, winnowing baskets, chocolate drink pots and stirrers throughout the day. Observers will be able to touch, taste, smell, and experience chocolate as it was enjoyed in early America at every demonstration by sampling American Heritage Chocolate® drink. American Heritage Chocolate® is an authentic historic chocolate recipe made by Mars Chocolate North America.

Maritime Museum of San Diego, 1492 North Harbor Drive in San Diego, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., admission $16, 619-234-9153, sdmaritime.org

Aziz Ansari: Buried Alive Tour

monday, may 6

Aziz Ansari: Buried Alive Tour

Currently starring in the Emmy nominated NBC series Parks and Recreation, Aziz Ansari‘s portrayal of government employee Tom Haverford has earned him much critical praise including Entertainment Weekly naming him one of their “Breakout TV Stars”, TV Guide naming him a “Scene Stealer” and Yahoo! TV placing him in the number one spot on their list of “TV MVPS: The Most Valuable Performers of the Fall Season”. People magazine named him 2011?s “Funniest Dude in Prime Time”.

San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave. in San Diego, 7 p.m., tickets $35, 619-570-1100, sandiegotheatres.org

Dan Adams Hot Dogs Art Exhibit

tuesday, may 7

Dan Adams: Hot Dogs

Sophie’s Gallery is honored to host the artwork of Dan Adams, a self-taught artist, who is well known in San Diego. He captures the art of everything canine with his expressive brush strokes and develops his subject matter by photographing human and dog action at local dog parks. Dan has exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Art, Riverside Museum of Art, Oceanside Museum of Art and Escondido Museum of Art among others.

Sophie’s Gallery and Gift Shop NTC, 2875 Dewey Road in San Diego, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free, 619-578-2207, stmsc.org

ART BY: RON TATRO

wednesday, may 8

Janine Free and Ron Tatro at Gallery 21

Photographer Janine Free returns to Gallery 21 in Balboa Park with abstracted reflections of mannequins in store windows. Digital artist and sculptor Ron Tatro shows 12 digital drawings of the human head.

Gallery 21, Spanish Village Art Center, 1770 Village Place in Balboa Park, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free, janinefree.com

A short film from 2012 that illustrates what it would be like if homosexuality was the “norm” making heterosexuals outcasts.

“Teen bulling and teen suicide based on someone’s sexual preference is ridiculous – and this film turns the tables on modern society. What IF the shoe was on the other foot?. ” –K.Rocco Shields (creator/director)

A powerful video that highlights the trend of teen suicide and bullying

Kylend Hetherington and the cast of Billy Elliot the Musical

Billy Elliot the Musical opened on Broadway in November of 2008 and closed in January of 2012, but originally premiered in London in 2005 and is still running today.

The musical, based on the 2000 film of the same name, shares many of the same creative team that made the 2000 film such a big hit. Both the film and the musical were directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours, The Reader), choreographed by Peter Darling and written by Lee Hall (War Horse). All three won Tony Awards in 2009 for their work. The only creative addition to the musical was pop icon and Tony Award winner Elton John (Lion King, Aida) who wrote the music.

This coming week the Broadway National Tour of Billy Elliot bursts into town for one week only. With all of its accolades and awards, it’s safe to say this show will probably sell out and that’s easy to understand given its moving story of a motherless 11-year-old boy who, after discovering his love of dancing, fights to do what he loves … dance.

Both his father and brother are out of work due to a union strike, and are at odds with riot police. The fact that Billy wants to dance is not something that is looked upon as acceptable by either of them, so he hides it, until his teacher recognizes his talents and sees how much he loves it.

The tour, like the Broadway show, has three boys playing the demanding role of Billy. Ben Cook, already a Broadway veteran, was also in the Broadway version and will be playing the part of Billy here in San Diego. His path to performing was somewhat similar to the part of Billy.

“My sisters (Emma and Kate) both drew me to performing,” Cook said. “They were both dancers and inspired me to take up dance. I started out with tap and didn’t really like it at first but when I moved into jazz, contemporary and ballet I ended up falling in love with it.”

Cook was already familiar with the movie thanks to his parents who felt it was an important film for him to see.

“I did see the film before I heard about the musical,” Cook admitted. “I watched it with my parents because they thought it would be a good movie for me to see as a boy dancer. I loved the movie then found out about the musical afterwards and I knew that show was something I really wanted to do.”

Cook’s acting experiences include being a part of the original cast of the award-winning musical Ragtime, and he was also seen on the Emmy-winning sitcom 30 Rock, playing the younger version of Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin’s character).

“I did Ragtime at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. before it went to Broadway,” Cook said. “It was just so much fun. The whole cast got along so well and we all ended up becoming a big family, it was definitely an experience I will never forget. It was great! [30 Rock] was very different from the theater-type of experience I’m used to, but it was so much fun! I got to see the studio, Tracey Morgan and how they set up the show; it was really cool.”

The role of Billy’s angry and volatile brother Tony is being played by, Cullen R. Titmas, who is a Broadway veteran as well. While he has enjoyed being a part of Broadway hits like Avenue Q and Billy Elliot and loves the theater, he also says he doesn’t know where that desire came from.

Ben Cook in Billy Elliot the Musical

“I have no idea where I got the passion to do what I do,” Titmas admits. “My parents have always been ultra supportive of me but neither knew a thing about the biz nor even being a biz parent. They have always however encouraged me to be who I want to be. My grandmother’s brothers were both multi-instrumentalists, but other than that, I’d say my dad is a pretty good whistler …”

Titmas has the distinction of being a key part of the process that brought Disney’s Finding Nemo to the stage at Disney Florida. It was a process Titmas enjoyed very much.

“The Disney gig was a wonderful experience,” Titmas said. “Creating the show from the first movement is an actor’s dream! The story lends itself to amazing relationships, so we were able to make some amazing moments happen with the puppets and our connection to them. The creative team was genius.”

Titmas, like Cook had also seen the film prior to playing the part of the brother Tony, but had only seen it a few times.

“I had seen the movie once or twice before,” Titmas confided. “It is a beautiful film. Tony is an angry and sometimes childish guy, but he really cares for his family and the outcome of their lives. His struggle is great to play on stage. I love being able to act more in this show, but my strength is singing. I love singing jazz and blues material, and sometimes I just wanna be in a choir somewhere. I miss it.”

Titmas also admits that while many of his past roles were closer to whom he is as a person, this part definitely has more of a darker side. “I suppose I’m really young at heart so those roles fit me very well,” Titmas said. “I’m pretty silly most of the time, although my current cast probably sees me as much darker. I’m getting older now, but I hope my childish nature will override crankiness!”

San Diego audiences may remember Titmas for his stint as Trekky Monster in the award-winning musical Avenue Q that played at the Spreckles Theatre downtown. Although that wasn’t his first time here.

“I love San Diego,” Titmas exclaimed. “I played the Spreckles with Avenue Q in ’07 for six weeks and I also went on a trip there in 7th grade with my best pal. He lives in PB now with his family. I’ve visited him there a few times, along with another friend who used to be in the biz and is now a doctor! So I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and enjoying that perfect weather.”

Craig Bennett (South Pacific, Miss Saigon) is a Broadway veteran as well and plays a few roles in the show, but covers and has performed the role of Billy’s father.

Bennett, a father himself, says being a father enhances his connection to the character of the father in the show.

“Having a son about Billy’s age can only enhance my connection to the dad character,” Bennett said. “The initial, unsupportive side of [the] dad is a challenge. I think these days most parents realize that being supportive of your kids, especially at a young age, is essential to their development. So, being convincingly unsupportive, without just being angry and yelling, is the task as an actor.”

Noah Parets and Rich Hebert in Billy Elliot the Musical

Bennett also feels pretty strongly about what it is about the show that audiences connect with.

“Everyone loves the underdog and Billy is the ultimate,” Bennett said. “He’s got so much going against him and yet still manages to pursue what makes him happy. The more difficult the path, the more we root for success.”

Billy Elliot the Musical runs from April 30- May 5, at Broadway San Diego located downtown at 1100 Third Street. For tickets call 619-564-3003, or purchase online at broadwaysd.com/billyelliot.php

Olga Kurylenko and Tom Cruise in Oblivion

Oblivion

The screening at which I saw Oblivion was, as many advanced screenings are, hosted by a local radio station that had given away passes to contest winners. Usually, someone low on the totem pole at the station gives away T-shirts and tries to get the crowd excited that they got to see a movie for free.

Some of these people are better at their job than others, and some of them get better movies than others. That said, the poor woman who was assigned Oblivion was not at fault when the audience responded to her question “Who’s excited about Tom Cruise?” with five or six slow claps. Oof. Then someone yelled out, “Morgan Freeman!” And the crowd clapped. Unfortunately for the crowd, Oblivion is 95 percent Tom Cruise; Morgan Freeman is barely there. However, if you forget that you hate Cruise, you may like him in Oblivion, which is a serious, artful science fiction film hidden behind the veneer of a shoot-‘em-up blockbuster.

Cruise plays Jack Harper, who along with his girlfriend Julia (a most excellent Andrea Riseborough), is tasked with managing and repairing an army of flying, armed orbs that are protecting massive hydropower machines hovering over the ocean.

Seventy years earlier, aliens destroyed the moon, causing worldwide disaster, and then they invaded Earth. Earth won the war after nuking their enemies, but that made the planet uninhabitable. The survivors have fled to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.

Jack and Julia are part of the clean-up crew, helping make sure those hydropower machines create the energy needed on Titan. Jack fixes them when they’re broken, and Julia is the liaison between them and their boss Sally (Melissa Leo), who is in a giant space station orbiting the planet. The drones are protecting the machines from the smattering of aliens still trying to destroy all things human.

Or at least that’s what Jack tells us in the voiceover at the beginning of the film.

An old NASA ship crashes down in one of the areas Jack patrols, and when he investigates he finds the crew in suspended animation. The drones show up and kill all of the survivors except one, a woman (Olga Kurylenko) who he had been dreaming about, which is weird, since his memory was wiped five years ago. This strange event leads Jack to discover everything he believes is wrong. Morgan Freeman is the one who tells him.

As directed by someone like James Cameron or Roland Emmerich, this mystery and the Tom Cruise-centered action could have led to a more forgettable, slighter and bombastic movie. But Joseph Kosinski, directing from a script based on his own graphic novel, and cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who just won an Oscar for his brilliant work on Life of Pi, made a serious, stunningly beautiful film.

In IMAX, the visuals and the sound are awesome; I was actually in awe. The landscapes of the destroyed, desolate East Coast of the United States, from buried New York City with only the tip of the Empire State Building visible to a mountain lake oasis where Jack escapes to think, are wonderfully imagined, designed and photographed. Jack and Julia’s home high in the sky and the bubble plane Jack flies are also gorgeous; inspired futurism.

I can imagine that heady ideas and occasionally slow pacing of the film will bore some audiences. But I actually wish the film was more ponderous. It is at its best when Kosinski is paying homage to 2001 or Blade Runner and at its weakest when he throws red meat to blockbuster expectations, mostly through his use of a hammy Morgan Freeman.

Cruise, to his credit, does an admirable job as the center of every bit of the story, as lovelorn, confused, determined and honorable.

I think the movie would have been better with an actor of more gravitas (Michael Fassbender, for example), but there is a reason Cruise is a superstar. He is a believable action hero. He deserves a little applause.

Elly au Verso, 2012 by Cayce Zavaglia

Call me gay, but I have always liked the idea of sewing. I made a short film once. It was a mini coming of age story called Buttons and Thread that relied on a kid’s fascination with a sewing basket and all its shiny contents.

Last year I was caught up in quilting, amazed at how complex pieces of tapestry could emerge from scraps of fabric. I am a big fan of Project Runway and I am so glad Patricia will be participating in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week because I personally loved her horse hair cape!

Recently I even tried learning how to knit. My patience ran out though as soon as the hamster sized blanket I was creating starting seizing up on my beginners needles. The whole knotty mess is in a bag somewhere in the closet.

Never mind that. What I am eager to tell you about is a wonderful-looking exhibition that just opened at Scott White Contemporary Art in La Jolla. It is called String Theory and it is a dynamic all-female group exhibition showcasing exquisite fiber works by Devorah Sperber, Kumi Yamashita and Cayce Zavaglia. The intricate exhibition explores contemporary photorealistic works created using textiles traditionally associated with craft and it’s worth checking out.

After Van Gogh (Self Portrait), 2008 by Devorah Sperber

The three artists are all working around the same idea, but their work could not be more different. Sperber juxtaposes an organized stack of colored spools of thread (hundreds of them!) with a clear acrylic viewing sphere through which an image appears. That image is a camera-obscura phenomenon whereby the upside-down image created by the organized colored spools are made right and small and easily read in the glass. I am not quite sure what this is supposed to say, but it is an interesting sculpture to engage and works well with the rest of the work.

If I did not have the patience to make a hamster blanket then I would surely not survive in Kumi Yamashita or Cayce Zavaglia’s worlds.

Yamashita creates photo realistic portraits with a matrix of thread wrapped around galvanized steel nails on a wooden board. From afar the faces look etch-a-sketch perfect but close up each piece is simply a zigzag of string, not unlike the kind of things children make at school. Meanwhile, Zavaglia’s portraits are hand-embroidered portraits that are uncannily life-like, in a Lucien Freud kind of way.

On one side of the Belgian linen is a very realistic face, while on the other there is a more abstracted version of the same face, an inner vision if you like, behind-the-scenes evidence of the extraordinarily hard work done to create the front.

If this all sounds super complicated, like quantum physics or string theory then you’ll have to go see for yourself. You have until June 1 to figure it out.

thursday, april 25

Dining Out For Life San Diego

Don’t forget to make plans for breakfast lunch and dinner (and dessert and cocktails – or coffee) for Dining Out For Life San Diego. The lovely Dining Out Divas will be visiting some of the 100+ participating restaurants who are donating 25 percent or more to The Center’s HIV/AIDS programming. Don’t miss the fun! Make sure that you select a restaurant from the participating restaurant list and make your reservations today.

Dining Out For Life San Diego, for more information, call Ian Johnson at 619-692-2077 x247, restaurant guide at thecentersd.org

Aida

friday, april 26

Aida

Zandra Rhodes’ vivid designer’s eye enhances Verdi’s vision of ancient Egypt in this stunning production. Acclaimed in London, San Francisco and Houston, the brilliant sets and costumes are seen in San Diego for the first time, creating a riot of color and pageantry. The tragic love triangle of a Pharaoh’s daughter competing with her own Ethiopian slave for the love of an Egyptian general is one of the most-beloved operas. Filled with great arias and choruses, including the famous Triumphal March, Aida demands extraordinary singers in every role.

San Diego Opera, Civic Theatre, Third Avenue and B Street in San Diego, 7 p.m., tickets from $45, 619-232-7636, sdopera.com

saturday, april 27

Mission Federal ArtWalk

The white tents of ArtWalk mean spring is here! The 29th annual festival returns to the streets of Little Italy April 27 and 28, filling 17 blocks of San Diego’s most charming neighborhood with more than 350 visual artists. The free outdoor festival offers a full array of music and dance performances, and their signature KidsWalk area with 15 interactive art activities.

Mission Federal ArtWalk, held on the side streets of India Street in Little Italy, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free admission, missionfederalartwalk.org

Jorge Rodriguez and Jacqueline Grace Lopez in References To Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot

sunday, april 28

References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot

The moon, her cat and the boy next door keep Gabriela company in the hot and lonely desert as she awaits the return of Benito, her husband who’s been fighting in the Persian Gulf. The heat is palpable as magical realism and gritty naturalism collide in this story of lust, longing and love.

Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., Suite N in San Diego, 2 p.m., tickets $25, 858-598-7620, moxietheatre.com

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library

monday, april 29

Victoria Martino: Musical Milestones

Violinist and art historian Victoria Martino returns to the Athenaeum this spring for a lecture-concert series celebrating major anniversaries of some of history’s most illustrious composers. Accompanied by her longtime musical partner, James Lent, she will perform works ranging from the Renaissance to the 20th century, juxtaposing the music with visual art from the same regions and periods, and placing it in its historical and cultural context.

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, Joan & Irwin Jacobs Music Room, 1008 Wall Street in La Jolla, 7:30 p.m., tickets $20 member, $25 nonmember, 858-454-5872, ljathenaeum.org

(From left) Robert Foxworth, Kandis Chappell, Dana Green, Andy Bean and Robin Pearson Rose in Other Desert Cities

tuesday, april 30

Other Desert Cities

Novelist Brooke Wyeth is home in Palm Springs for the holidays with a copy of her latest manuscript – one she’s not showing her parents. Her brother is a reality show producer, her dad a former movie actor turned politician, her mother a ’60s-era comedy writer turned socialite; but now long-buried secrets threaten to put her picture-perfect famous family back on the tabloid pages. Hold onto your seats, things are about to get bumpy.

Old Globe Theatre, Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage, Conrad Prebys Theatre Center, 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park, 7 p.m., tickets from $29, 619-234-5623, theoldglobe.org

The Museum of Photographic Arts

wednesday, may 1

MOPA’s 30th Birthday

The Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) turns thirty May 1 and invites everyone to join the festivities. Throughout the month of May, MOPA has scheduled events to help commemorate their three decades as a museum in Balboa Park dedicated to photography, film and video. And they plan on celebrating!

The celebration launches May 1 with $1 admission to the museum, as it was in 1983. See Web site for additional offers.

Museum of Photographic Arts, 649 El Prado in Balboa Park, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., admission $1, 619-238-7559, mopa.org

James McAvoy in Trance

In the late ‘90s, Danny Boyle directed two of John Hodge’s screenplays in a row that made them and their star Ewan McGregor famous. Trainspotting – the brilliant, disgusting, kaleidoscopic examination of a crew of Scottish heroin addicts – is better known, but Shallow Grave, a post-modern Hitchcock thriller about morally troubled Londoners, is just as good: Twisty and shocking and delightfully fun.

I was pretty excited that, after 13 years, Boyle was directing a Hodge script again. And it’s a crime thriller, too! Trance is just as twisty and occasionally as fun and thrilling, but it’s a bit too shallow to reach the heights of Shallow Grave.

In the role that almost certainly was written with Ewan McGregor in mind, James McAvoy plays Simon, an art auctioneer who helps a group of thugs steal a $25 million Goya painting in a daring heist. He’s got gambling debts and not much of a moral center. Unfortunately, the crew’s leader Frank (Vincent Cassel) knocks him unconscious during the robbery and when Simon wakes up, he has forgotten that he stole the painting from the men he persuaded to steal it.

Even after being tortured, Simon cannot remember what he did with the painting. Frank suggests hypnosis. Simon goes to see a hypnotherapist, and even though Simon tries to mask his real intentions, Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) figures out something is up. After she inserts herself into the gang, the crazy hypnotism begins. And how.

This all happens in the first 30 minutes, and I’ve already told you too much. The plot twists and alliance switching go on for another hour or so, and by the end, you’ll probably be unsure who you’re cheering for, which scenes were real and which were trances and whether or not any of it makes sense. My hunch is that it all does, but I may need to see it again to be sure.

I am also unsure if the confusion is a flaw or a feature, but Doyle and Hodge have earned the benefit of the doubt. Hodge’s imagination is wide and marvelous, but using hypnotism to create multiple realities and the unsure footing needed to create great suspense is a tad too gimmicky. It’s like using multiple personality disorder or demon possession to explain away strange behaviors; it’s a ham-handed trick to avoid deeper characterization and more psychologically astute behaviors.

Boyle, whose directorial skills were dazzling in movies like Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, and 127 Hours, doesn’t throw his bag of tricks at the audience. Even in his restraint, he plays with extreme colors, off-kilter angles, and explicit, surprising images. The latter works quite well in both torture and trance scenes, but, in concert with one of Hodge’s wackier ideas, it also provides the perviest plot-twist of the year.

It works thematically, for sure, but, well, it’s just a bit too hairy for me. I’ll say no more.

Like Boyle and Hodge, the cast all does a good job but not their best work. I liked watching McAvoy go bad, and I think he may end up being a better anti-hero than a romantic lead (as he was in Atonement). But I kept imagining McGregor in the role and how much better, more resonant and sympathetic his acting is.

Dawson is smooth, extraordinarily sexy and plays the brainy femme fatale nicely, but most of her acting choices were obvious, borrowed from noir heroines of the 1980s. Cassel, whose appeal escapes me, is basically playing the same sexy creep he did so well in Black Swan.

This time, he’s a thuggish club owner, not a ballet choreographer. (I’m sure some dancers would say the difference isn’t that great.)

Boyle didn’t push any of the actors very hard, just as he didn’t push himself or Hodge. The movie is still great fun, even if it doesn’t stick with you like Boyle’s classics.

MOVIE REVIEW

Trance

Directed by Danny Boyle

Written by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge

Starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel

Rated R

At Landmark Hillcrest and ArcLight La Jolla

Do you ever feel that your life is completely tied to technology? I suspect you do because it is discussed everywhere these days, all the time. No doubt our collective worry began with the wheel, and then the car and then television but it seems to have amped up recently. The observation has become so commonplace that we typically laugh it off as though being tied to electric-digital-online everything is an unquestionable new order to the world. After all, it’s not like we can unplug from the grid just like that.

I know I couldn’t.

I panic if I misplace my phone and get all anxious when its battery life sinks below 10 percent and I am out without my charger. Periodically, I become so aware of the hours wasted online and on certain sites in particular that I clean house. I log on to each of them (not that many!) one by one and without looking at any photos or emails I promptly delete the accounts; delete, delete, delete. A few months down the road however, I am back online; create, create, create. Meeting people via technology is so much easier.

Of course this illustration is just scratching the surface. The broader and deeper implications of such a tech-driven existence are worth thinking about. If it is a subject that interests you or if you would simply like to inject a fresh point of view about the creep of technology into your life and maybe into your gay life in particular then maybe this will be of interest.

We Are Not Robots is a talk by Richard Louv happening at the San Diego Museum of Man Saturday, April 20 from 6-8 p.m. The subject is Reconnecting with Our Humanity and Louv will expand upon his approach to a happy and healthier society through the natural world around us; a theme he has explored in his books which include Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

What’s the art link you might be wondering? Well, the presentation is a partnership between the Museum of Man and local literary arts organization Write Out Loud. It’s part of Write Out Loud’s The Big Read project which was recently launched with a focus on the explosive and controversial themes in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451.

All is not doom and gloom however as Louv will explain a heartening vision of the future in which our lives are as immersed in nature as they are in technology. So, let’s close Facebook for an hour or so, log off the man4man sites, power down our smart phones and head over to the museum in Balboa Park where I hear they have flowers and trees!

The neighbors sure got an eyeful last week.

Then again, they always do. They don’t miss a thing when it comes to you and, no matter what it is; they always know your business. Guests, groceries, gifts; whatever comes through your door is another topic of interest for them. Just another thing to gossip about. It’s small-town living at its very worst, whether your city is populated by 200 or 2 million.

So now imagine living on an island, landlocked and festering with dirty laundry. In Mundo Cruel by Luis Negron, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, you’ll get a little taste.

Once not too long ago, Santurce, Puerto Rico was known as Cangrejos, which meant crabs. For such a small neighborhood, that name might have been fitting, since the buildings, people, the heat, smells, the noise and the gay bars were constantly scrabbling up against one another.

Santurce is where a boy can be raised thinking he’s The Chosen One. He can become a prophet, the future leader of a church, a most beloved son of God … and he can fall from grace in the time it takes to lower his pants in a men’s restroom. He can fall from grace in the eyes of everybody except the pastor, who looks upon the boy with lust.

It’s where beautiful macho men lie to get what they want, and the trick is really (sometimes literally) on the man who gives it to them. It’s where money can be owed for a long time and getting it back can be impossible, which doesn’t stop some people from trying. It’s where a father gradually starts to notice that his youngest son is an awful lot like the boy’s uncle – and since the uncle is gay, there’s sudden, cautious acceptance all around.

People gossip in Santurce, over the fence and about a neighbor’s child who seems rather effeminate. People are murdered there, and crime scenes are somehow humorously made worse by an attempt at subterfuge. People die in Santurce, and they lie about who they really are.

At a mere 90-some pages, Mundo Cruel has got to be one of the skinniest books I’ve read in a long time. It’s probably one of the oddest, too.

Through a series of short stories – many of which leave the reader hanging in the most uncomfortable ways – author Luis Negron gives readers a feel for the kind of community where close-knit, kindred residents have lived together long enough to intensely dislike one another. That, of course, can lead to a few funny scenarios and at least one that ends in heartbreak. With these better-told tales, Negron does an exceptional job in presenting small-town life with all its snarking and back-handed support.

So can I recommend this book?

Yeah, I think so. The good stories make up fully half the book which means, because of the size of it, there isn’t much to endure of the lesser ones. Indeed, Mundo Cruel is a tiny collection of tales, but it could be a decent eyeful.

BOOK REVIEW

Mundo Cruel by Luis Negron

© 2012, Seven Stories Press

$13.95 U.S. & Canada

96 pages

Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook

dvd of the week

When I read that Silver Linings Playbook was about two psychologically troubled people, I was initially concerned. So many film depictions of crazy are just crazy awful. I wasn’t encouraged when the first few scenes of the film took place in a mental hospital. But shortly after Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) is discharged by his extremely concerned mother (Jacki Weaver) and I watched them and Pat’s obsessive-compulsive father (Robert De Niro) communicate, or fail to, as a family, I saw that director David O. Russell was going for authenticity, not parody, and those worries dissipated.

And when Pat is set up with a similarly distressed Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), and they start comparing their psychopharmaceutical experiences and debating who is more screwed up, the worries evaporated.

This is a movie about people and relationships, about love and self-forgiveness, about functioning within dysfunction; it is not a movie about illness. And it’s among the best films I saw last year. The entire cast was nominated for Oscars, and Lawrence won.

Hair

dvr this

Turner Classic Movies, Sunday, April 21, 1 a.m.

While the musical Hair is a beloved classic, there is an unspoken problem with the staged version. It doesn’t really have much of a plot. The movie, on the other hand, which was directed by the great Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, The People vs. Larry Flynt), has a screenplay by Michael Weller that turns the tone poem about hippiedom and revolution into a powerfully resonant story about love, death, honor and protest.

In the late 1960s, Claude (John Savage) is a farm boy draftee who arrives in New York for his Army physical and he falls in with a group of hippies that includes the charismatic Berger (Treat Williams), who introduces Claude to a debutante (Beverly D’Angelo).

The songs (like “Age of Aquarius,” “Let the Sunshine In,” and “Easy to be Hard”) are all wonderfully, lovingly staged and the film is as relevant today as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

thursday, april 18

Castle Neuschwanstein, Germany

Art History Lecture Series: Romantic Castles of Europe

Castles adorn the cityscapes and landscapes of virtually every part of Europe. Many are crumbling ruins that evoke their origins as fortresses and are populated by ghosts of bygone eras, while others have been lovingly maintained and serve today as palaces, museums or even luxury hotels. In this lecture art historian James W. Grebl, Ph.D., examines the history, architecture and art of the most intriguing examples of these romantic relics from Germany. In the process, the military, political and social roles of these complex, dramatic structures will be explored.

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, Joan & Irwin Jacobs Music Room, 1008 Wall Street in La Jolla, 7:30 p.m., tickets $12 member, $17 nonmember, 858-454-5872, ljathenaeum.org

friday, april 19

Tyrone Wells

Tyrone Wells

A singer/songwriter from Spokane, Wash. Tyrone Wells launched his solo career in 2000, playing acoustic shows in Orange County, Calif. Wells released his solo album Remain Jan. 27, 2009. The first single from Remain, “More,” reached No.13 on the Triple A radio charts. The second single “Sink or Swim” was used in promos for the season 6 premiere of Grey’s Anatomy.

In September 2010, Wells’ song “Time Of Our Lives” was used in the series finale promo for American daytime soap opera, As the World Turns, as well as The Vampire Diaries episode, Memory Lane.

House of Blues San Diego, 1055 Fifth Ave. in San Diego, 8 p.m., tickets from $18, 619-299-2583, houseofblues.com

saturday, april 20

Keyshia Cole – Woman To Woman tour

Keyshia Cole

Multiplatinum-selling songstress Keyshia Cole is gearing up for her Woman to Woman tour – named after her November 2012 album, and serves as a thank you to fans for making all of her albums top 10 on the Billboard 200. The Grammy-nominated artist bared her soul on Woman to Woman; an effort which earned her the No. 2 position on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums Chart, and hosted singles “Enough of No Love” and “Trust and Believe.”

Humphreys Concerts by the bay, 2241 Shelter Island Drive in San Diego, 7:30 p.m., tickets $70, 800-745-3000, humphreysconcerts.com

sunday, april 21

Music All Around Us!

San Diego Symphony

Music really is all around us. From “Happy Birthday” to “The Wedding March,” there is a song for every special occasion. The San Diego Symphony celebrates all those cherished moments with music for birthdays, graduations, weddings, dances and more! Concert includes music of Richard Wagner (“Bridal Chorus”), Johannes Brahms (“Lullaby”), Edward Elgar (“Pomp and Circumstance”), W.A. Mozart and many others.

The San Diego Symphony, Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B Street in San Diego, 2 p.m., tickets from $15, 619-235-0804, sandiegosymphony.org

monday, april 22

Lifelike

Vija Celmins, Eraser, 967 acrylic on balsa wood

Is it real? Lifelike invites a close examination of works based on commonplace objects and situations, which are startlingly realistic, often playful, and sometimes surreal. This group exhibition, which debuted at the Walker Art Center, features artists variously using scale, unusual materials, and sly contextual devices to reveal the manner in which their subjects’ “authenticity” is manufactured.

Avoiding the brand-name flashiness embraced by 1960s Pop and the slick urban scenes introduced at that time by the Photorealists, the artists in Lifelike investigate the quieter side of the quotidian, choosing potentially overlooked items or moments as subject matter: a paper bag, an eraser, an apple core, a waiting room, an afternoon nap.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 700 Prospect Street in La Jolla, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., general admission $10, 858-454-3541, mcasd.org

tuesday, april 23

From Beyond the Book

Beyond the Book: Fresh Perspectives on the Print Collection

A bold experiment in curatorial participation. University of San Diego art history student Katherine Ayd ’13 curated the exhibition featuring works from USD’s Print Collection that have been selected and re-interpreted by current undergraduates from a wide variety of majors.

University of San Diego, Robert and Karen Hoehn Family Galleries in Founders Hall, 5998 Alcalá Park in San Diego, 12- 4 p.m., free, 619-260-4600, sandiego.edu

wednesday, april 24

The Laramie Project

In October 1998 Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo. Five weeks later, Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, and over the course of the next year, conducted more than 200 interviews with people of the town. From these interviews they wrote the play The Laramie Project, a chronicle of the life of the town of Laramie in the year after the murder.

Southwestern College, Mayan Hall Theatre, 900 Otay Lakes Road in Chula Vista, 7:30 p.m., general admission $12, 619-421-6700, swccd.edu

Naya Rivera

(CNN) — “Glee” star Naya Rivera has earned accolades as the tough and proud Santana Lopez on the Fox comedy, but one of her prior gigs wasn’t as rosy.

The 26-year-old actress used to work at Hooters, she tells the May issue of Allure magazine, and she admits that she has “nightmares about that job.”

It sounds like part of the problem is that Rivera wasn’t exactly comfortable in her own skin.

“When I was working there, I was really skinny — a lot skinnier than I am now,” she said. “But I was always self-conscious. It’s so funny now to feel completely different.”

That much is evidenced by her photo shoot with Allure, in which the actress adopts a thoughtful pose in the buff, with her arm shielding her breasts.

And although Amanda Seyfried, who covers the newest issue of the beauty magazine, remains clothed, it’s not because she’s shy about her body.

Playing the role of adult film actress Linda Lovelace in the biopic “Lovelace” helped, Seyfried said, because it “made me feel comfortable in my own skin in a way that I hadn’t been.”

The 27-year-old added that she “saw a picture of [her breasts] a couple of days ago from when I was 19, and my boobs were way bigger … There was something to beautiful about the size of them. When I look back, I’m like, ‘Why did I always give myself such a hard time?’ Nobody gave me s*** about it except me.”

As for Rivera, her role on “Glee” has had a fun side effect as well. Thanks to her role as the feisty lesbian cheerleader, Rivera’s earned plenty of fans in the LGBT community.

“It’s kind of cool – and it makes me feel like a bada**,” she told Allure, which arrives on newsstands April 22. “I get more girls than my boyfriend. They always tweet me about my booty.”

Robbie Jones and Jurnee Smollett-Bell in Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor

Before I delved into Tyler Perry’s hysterically moralistic potboiler Temptation, I need to tell you I am going to spoil the plot in this review, because in order for you to know just how awful the movie is, I need to let you know about its ending. You’ve been warned.

Like most of Perry’s movies, Temptation is focused on middle-class African Americans; he’s best known for his broad comedies starring his drag alter-ego Madea, but this is one of his melodramas.

The plot is rather simple. Judith (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is married to her childhood sweetheart Brice (Lance Gross). (“If smiles were dollars, they’d have millions.” It’s an actual line.)

They live in Washington, D.C., where Brice is a pharmacist and Judith is using her marriage counseling degree as the in-house therapist at a high-end matchmaking service run by Janice, played by a bizarrely French-accented Vanessa Williams. Oh, and Kim Kardashian works there, too. She says things to the supposedly fashion disastrous Judith such as; “A degree on your wall without labels on your back is nothing.” Entitled, ambitious, holier-than-thou Judith doesn’t like working there.

One day, a wealthy tech tycoon arrives at the office interested in investing. Janice assigns an eye-rolling Judith to work with Harley (Robbie Jones). He is charming, aggressive, rich and very different from Brice, who, as we are told possibly 53 times, takes Judith for granted.

Obviously, she’s going to sleep with Harley, and it’s so, so, so obvious that he’s bad news. When I saw the movie, everything Harley said to seduce Judith was met with “Oh, no, girl!” responses from the audience. But when Judith opened her mouth slightly and started breathing heavily in response to Harley’s obnoxious flirting, we knew she was going to throw everything away – including Brice, her faith, her comfortable shoes and her self-respect – and take that billionaire for a ride. Which she does on his private jet. After he basically date rapes her. In Tyler Perry’s world, no still means yes.

Once she settles in as Harley’s girlfriend, she is transformed: into evil! We know this not only because she starts dressing like Kim Kardashian, with sexy heels the height of a small skyscraper and sexy glittery pants and sexy bouncy hair, but she also betrays – in addition to Brice, of course – her God-fearing mother (Ella Joyce), and then Janice. She does all of this with a constant sniffle. Because she’s doing cocaine now. Because that’s what bad people do in Tyler Perry’s world.

With a morality tale set up like this, you can only assume Judith will get her comeuppance. And how. While Harley is beating Judith into submission, Brice discovers that the man stalking his cashier Melinda (Brandy Norwood) is Harley, who – brace yourself – gave Melinda HIV.

And, we discover, in the scene after Brice carries Judith’s battered and bruised body from Harley’s house that Harley gave it to Judith, too. Judith, you see, is telling this story to one of her clients, who is cheating on her husband. After hearing this tale, the client says she will immediately dump her boyfriend and fix things with her husband. Then we watch Judith hobble over to the pharmacy and pick up her meds.

Brice, aged with a terrible gray wig, has a new wife and son. The credits role as Judith awkwardly shuffles down the sidewalk, heading to meet her mother at church. In Tyler Perry’s world, HIV gives you a limp.

Temptation would be more offensive if it wasn’t so poorly directed, so badly acted, and so, so dumb. Nevertheless, using HIV as punishment for bad behavior or as a result of weak morals is still offensive. It’s a virus. Stigmatizing it only prevents people from getting tested, admitting they have it, and going to get treatment.

So, I say to Tyler Perry what Judith’s mother said to Brice when he told her he forgot Judith’s birthday: “You need your ass whipped. That’s the King James version.”

MOVIE REVIEW

Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor

Written and directed by Tyler Perry

Starring Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Lance Gross and Robbie Jones

Rated PG-13

At your local multiplex

In the age of ubiquity, where pathologies of every stripe, human or otherwise, have been hyper-indexed, a certain degree of detachment is required in recognizing the barbaric acts of others. We may not understand how (or, more importantly, why) a mob of people, with the full participation of its citizenry, may close in on a woman in a public square and stone her to death for adultery, but at least, we ultimately conclude, it is not us, the civilized world. And, yet, the barbarism continues, a kind of weakened immune system in the human condition that doesn’t quite make us unable to function but continues to rob us of our full potential.

Honor killings, as they are ironically known throughout much of the world, are just one sort of blot. They involve the execution of a family member (or a member of a social group) who has been judged to have brought dishonor upon others.

The ‘crimes’ usually, but by no means always, involve women who, in the majority of cases, have brought shame through some act that is either directly or obliquely tied to sexuality: an adulterous affair, a refusal to agree to an arranged marriage (and, thus, jeopardize the family’s lineage through reproduction) or dressing and/or behaving in a way that is deemed offensive by the standards of the community (read: sexually suggestive).

It should come as no surprise, then, that homosexual acts, seen by most of the Muslim world where many of these honor killings occur as an affront to masculinity, are roundly condemned and are digressions no less worthy of execution.

David McConnell

That honor killings are largely understood and accepted, encouraged even, by the wider groups, clans and tribes around them differentiates them by degrees in what author David McConnell has examined in his latest work, the non-fiction American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men.

McConnell, whose works of fiction include Firebrat (2003) and The Silver Hearted (2010), culls from the last fifteen-or-so years a series of brutal crimes that, while different in geography, psychopathology and methodology, all involve, in one shape or another, an affront to ‘honor,’ however tortured that definition may be, and all involve victims who were gay; dots that would eventually be connected in the national push for universal hate crimes legislation.

John Katehis, murderer of George Weber

That many of the perpetrators were themselves gay, bisexual or deeply closeted perhaps makes these honor killings uniquely American. I don’t know. But as McConnell explains in his forward, “In a sense the stor[ies] begin with the end of gay panic. The murders in this book don’t look much like that kind of crime. They’re far more complicated, atavistic. Hence, ‘honor killings.’ They involve honor, manhood, desire. When used in the phrase ‘honor killings,’ honor obviously has a negative connotation. We’re not talking about real honor.”

And yet, as each slaying attests to, some code, some manifest belief system dreamt up by the religious extremists (brothers Ben and Tyler Williams), neo-Nazi skinheads (Bradley Qualls and Darrell Madden – aka gay porn performer Billy Houston), gang members (Steven Hollis and Juan Flythe) and man-child murderers (John Katehis) that populate this affecting study in hate crimes, brings with it a construct that, however vile to the gay community, must be understood if we’re to get past the simplistic monikers. (Currently, only thirteen states have hate crimes legislation that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.) We need to move forward and make the case that, yes, there are people out there – the people that populate American Honor Killings – whose inhumanity lies as much with the crimes they commit as with the thinking that allows them to commit them in the first place.

George Weber, murdered by John Katehis

After all, Oklahoman Steve Domer, whose entire body was duct-taped in his own car, physically and verbally assaulted and then strangulated by an untwined wire hanger before being dumped in a ravine to rot, may engender collective outrage. But failing to understand how Bradley Qualls and Darrell Madden, the two men who committed the act, worked through their thought processes and arrived at the conclusion that Domer’s life was worthless, are as important to the hate crimes legislation debate as they are to the thematic tapestry that weaves itself through McConnell’s book.

And while the author makes no mention anywhere that American Honor Killings is some grand call to arms in the current legal debate, the reader can’t help but think how much more urgent it feels after getting to know all the unsavory nooks and crannies that inform these killers’ worldviews.

Benjamin Matthew Williams, killer of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder

It also helps to understand and convey that crimes against gay men are more violent. “Like women [gay men are] often perceived to be weak. In the backwards logic of violence, weakness enhances its own destruction. Plus the cultural protections for gay men are still pretty flimsy,” observes McConnell. “But this is [truer] with gay-bashings and bullying than with the very different, more personal crimes I wrote about.”

And what about the victims – the Steve Domers, George Webers, Steven Parrishes, Winfield Mowders and Gary Matsons of the world – that too often and too quickly become abstractions in annual hate crimes reports? “I understand the desire to rescue and celebrate the memories of victims,” David adds. “But I don’t think it helps the public discourse very much unless it’s just to stoke outrage or move us to action. Yes, we have a ghoulish fascination with these killers, but the problem is that it’s not authentic curiosity. I guess I thought it was important for understanding to look the criminals in the eye, whether I liked it or not.”

Darrell Madden (aka gay porn performer Billy Houston), murderer of Steve Domer

And what he finds and then conveys in American Honor Killings reminds us that while they are not us, the civilized world, they are more than just ‘others’ for whom hate crimes legislation is just one small piece of a puzzle that McConnell fearlessly unearths, no matter how rotten what underneath lies.

American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men can be purchased on Amazon.com as well as numerous other sites.

With the arrival of spring in San Diego come longer days, more sunshine and a plethora of home improvement projects just waiting to get started. Whether you’re updating your home or your yard, San Diego LGBT Weekly checked up on some local businesses that have the knowledge, tools and resources to help. Even better, all of these retailers are LGBT-friendly!

Spring often signals the start of the building and remodeling season and San Diego’s hardware stores are ready to help. From repainting to updating kitchens and bathrooms, stores such as Hillcrest ACE Hardware and San Diego Hardware have the supplies needed to get the job done.

In the heart of Hillcrest, ACE Hardware has served the community for nearly 18 years and offers residents a local alternative to driving to the big box home improvement stores in Mission Valley.

“Customer service is our number one priority and we insist all customers and employees are treated equally,” said Kathy Gorman, buyer for ACE Hardware in Hillcrest. “We even treat the pets equally … and all pets are invited to accompany their owners into the store.”

Active in the community since its opening, ACE Hardware regularly donates to LGBT causes and has hired several people from Stepping Stone, a non-profit drug and alcohol recovery program targeted at LGBT individuals.

“We open early morning during the Pride parade to assist The Center and floats with any last minute emergencies and then close for the day so all employees can celebrate,” Gorman said.

Whether your spring home improvement needs include electrical, plumbing, gardening or painting, Hillcrest ACE Hardware has it all.

Gorman suggests checking out their selection of Mythic paint, which contains no toxic solvents or odors and helps to eliminate the negative health effects often associated with paint. The store is one of only three stores in San Diego to carry this painting alternative, according to Gorman.

Journey outside of Hillcrest and find one of the oldest hardware stores in San Diego. Founded in 1882, San Diego Hardware has catered to local’s home improvement needs for more than 120 years.

Although it began as an everyday hardware store serving downtown San Diego’s early residents, it has transitioned in recent years to specialize in decorative hardware and moved to a new location in Kearny Mesa in 2006.

Today, San Diego Hardware specializes in an assortment of cabinet, door and plumbing hardware for kitchens, bathrooms and more.

“The hardware industry is slow to change but for sure the products with more clean lines and contemporary products still rule the roost and typically in a brushed nickel finish,” San Diego Hardware co-owner Bill Haynsworth said.

Haynsworth expects a surge in cabinet and door hardware sales as the spring remodeling and construction season begins.

With more than four decades of experience working at San Diego Hardware, Haynsworth knows the ins and outs of the business. He began working in the store as a teenager and eventually bought it from his father, along with friend Rip Fleming.

At the suggestion of his ad agency, Haynsworth recently began advertising to the LGBT community.

“We’re really pleased with the response,” Haynsworth said. “We have many great customers from the LGBT community and welcome everybody with open arms.”

Spruce up the outdoors

Although San Diegans are lucky enough to live in a mild climate that allows for plenty of time outdoors year-round, the longer daylight hours of spring signal the start of many outside decorating projects. Whether you’re looking to create a colorful garden oasis or a peaceful patio setting, this is the perfect time to embark on an outdoor remodeling adventure.

Want to lay decorative flagstone to create unique walkways, build outdoor fireplaces with bricks or create stunning gardens with boulder accents? Visit Southwest Boulder. The Pacific Beach location, one of five in Southern California, offers an assortment of stones to suit your landscaping needs, ranging from tiny pebbles to large decorative boulders.

It’s also home to the best selection of flagstone in San Diego County, according to Jonathan Bechtol, who is in charge of marketing and IT at Southwest Boulder.

The store offers more than just the supplies; it also provides free workshops to the public on various landscaping trends.

“As far as smaller projects people are working on, designing terrariums for their homes is really big. We recently had a workshop on that very topic in Pacific Beach,” said Bechtol. “Also, designing with California native plants and exploring permaculture is really big right now.”

Southwest Boulder’s Fallbrook store will host a Habitat Restoration with California Natives April 13 at 10 a.m. The workshop will demonstrate ways to create a natural landscape using plants that are native to the area.

If the exterior of your home is in need of some extra love and maintenance this spring, Nurse Stucco can help. For more than 30 years, Nurse Stucco has served the San Diego area by providing new stucco finishes, stucco recoating and repair services.

While stucco walls have been around for centuries and were even used in Ancient Greece, modern technologies have allowed for new finishes, breathing new life into this old material. Stucco is available in an assortment of colors and is easy to maintain.

Nurse Stucco, owned by brothers Blaine and Darren Nurse, officially began in 2000 but is an offshoot of their father’s original stucco and plaster business. Both brothers began working in the stucco business for their father in 1981.

Based in Lakeside, Nurse Stucco works on homes throughout San Diego, Riverside and Imperial Counties.

Improve your interior

Perhaps instead of a drastic remodeling project, you simply want to freshen up the appearance of your home furnishings. Replacing an old sofa or even just upgrading with a new cover can do wonders for brightening and improving the visual quality of your home.

Metro Decor and Creative Futons, two San Diego-based furniture companies, offer an assortment of sofas, bedding and more to give your home a new look this spring.

For more than three decades, Metro Decor has provided quality furniture at affordable prices. Choose from a variety of stylish options or take advantage of Metro Decor’s custom-made sofas and special order your dream couch by choosing the fabric, color and more.

Check out the furniture options in Metro Decor’s main showroom, located just off Interstates 5 and 8.

Founded by Leslee Evans in 1987, Creative Futons, quickly outgrew its station at Koby’s Swap Meet and moved into its North Park store in 1990.

Seeking to create a higher quality futon that maintained its shape and comfort level, Evans started making her own mattresses. New mattress technology, such as memory foam, allows for more comfort and a better night’s sleep.

Located also in Hillcrest at 3734 Sixth Ave., Creative Futons offers more than just futon mattresses. Choose from a variety of futon frames and fun, festive color schemes, including island, southwest and contemporary.

So, dust off those cobwebs and get planning your spring home improvement project. With a little help from these LGBT-friendly businesses you’ll have your home shipshape in no time.

home improvement spotlight

How to choose the right window treatments

By Denise Teuffer, decormywindows.com

There are many things to consider when choosing your window treatments, such as privacy, style, light source, color, window shape energy efficiency, UV protection and safety.

Window treatments are classified in two categories: soft and hard window treatments.

Soft window treatments are draperies, Roman shades, valances and swags among other fabric treatments. If you prefer a more casual and relaxed look the more popular styles now are simple, classic styles with natural fabrics like linens, cotton and silks hung on simple black, pewter or wood poles, often with rings. There are different top header drape styles and the best known are the timeless classic French or pinch pleat. The other modern classic is the tailored pleat. These two styles are highly recommended for areas that will open and close frequently. Grommet top drapes are popular for a modern, sleek look used in interior and exterior draperies.

Hard window treatments are shutters, horizontal wood blinds, faux blinds, mini blinds, vertical blinds, roller shades, solar shades and woven wood shades. These styles of blinds are adjustable to accommodate the light’s diffusing properties. These products suit both modern and traditional décor with their variety of colors and textures, filling any room with style in an instant. Some, like the roller shades, are sleek, minimal and modern. Roller shades are available in solar, light filtering and blackout materials. Solar shades absorb heat and block UV rays while still preserving your view. Blackout shades provide total privacy plus give you the comfort of light blocking.

If you do not want to cover the whole window the more trendy and functional in performance is the layered look, mostly achieved with a roller shade or blind under draperies or side panels. These are draperies hung for decorative purposes only on each side of the window. Just make sure your side panels have enough fullness in them, or they will look skimpy. Side panels look best when they are floor length, or puddled.

The most important thing to remember when choosing your window treatment is that it should suit your needs and create the feel and style that you want in your home. If you are not confident in doing this yourself, get help! Find pictures of styles that appeal to you and show them to your decorator or window covering specialist. If you want draperies, make sure that any draperies you buy are well-made, from good quality fabric. If you can’t afford to do everything you want at once, start with the most functional layer (blinds, shades or sheers) and then add the next layer (draperies, valances, side panels) later.

Denis Lavant in Holy Motors

dvd of the week

I missed this wildly weird French movie when it was playing in San Diego this fall, but I saw it on DVD this past week and I was amazed. Leos Carax’s hypnotic, fascinating, and somewhat opaque film follows Oscar (Denis Lavant) as he goes from appointment to appointment in Paris, driven in a white limo by Celine (Edith Scob).

At each stop, he transforms himself, from a homeless woman to an assassin, from a dying old man to a cruel and worried father. Each appointment is like its own short film, and what is tying them all together is not clear, but the trips between are full of Oscar’s pathos and Celine’s doting and some moral, existential, perhaps cosmic meaning.

I haven’t enjoyed being this confused since I saw Mulholland Drive, and Carax may be as gifted a director as David Lynch.

Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan the Ape Man

dvr this

Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, April 13, 12:45 p.m.

Imagine it’s 1932, and you’re gay, or you are sexually attracted to men but don’t use the word “gay” to describe it. But you know. You hear there’s a movie starring an Olympic swimmer, in which he’s wearing only a loin cloth. So, you go see it. It’s Tarzan the Ape Man and it’s about a British lord who was lost in the jungle as a boy and raised by apes. He yodels, has a chimp sidekick and he falls in love with a woman named Jane. You’re there. In the theater. Over and over. Because Johnny Weissmuller is just that hot. Thank God for Hollywood.

White Box at Liberty Station is San Diego’s freshest performance space and it has truly come alive with thirteen evenings of live arts that began April 5 and continues on until April 21.

Live Arts Fest was created and curated by San Diego Dance Theater artistic director Jean Isaacs and the newly formed White Box Collective, a group of local emerging choreographers including Blythe Barton, Anne Gehman, Kerry Greenwood, Maria Juan, Zaquia Mahler Salinas and Minaqua McPherson. So far, the first annual Live Arts Fest is living up to its promise offering all types of live art including dance, puppetry, theater, music, light installations and more.

Check out the Web site to see what event appeals to you. In the meantime here are a couple of events to consider this week:

Righteous Exploits by Margaret Noble and Justin Hudnall is the 100-year-long true story of a family rising out of and returning to poverty over the course of three generations. Dust Bowl-era activist heroine Helen Hosmer fought against the exploitation of agrarian workers in the face of persecution by McCarthy’s FBI, but her own family’s dissolution undermined the very ideals she championed. Told through a combination of live audio/visual multimedia and performance art, Margaret Noble pulls audiences through a time warp of cultural mishaps that reveal just how dirty the good fight can get when morality competes with survival, and civic duty undermines family.

LGBT community favorite Michael Mizerany and friends will premiere a brand new work, At Long Last…Love! as well as his award-winning solo Tin Soldier (“heart breaking and beautiful,” Kris Eitland, San Diego Story) and audience favorite Tethered. In addition the evening features performances by Stephanie Harvey, Andrew Holmes and Bradley R. Lundberg.

The Door is Open: An Intergenerational Dance Project by Kira Corser is a joy-filled 30-minute documentary that covers a year of working collaboratively with Jean Isaacs’ San Diego Dance Theater with a tango performance by Jim and Jo-Ellen Larue. For the last four years, Jo-Ellen and Jim have been studying Argentine Tango under the tutelage of Colette Hebert. Jim, now 80 years old, and his wife, Jo-Ellen, will perform a “Milonga,” a playful and fast-beat dance which preceded the better known Argentine Tango. They will dance Francisco Canaro’s Milonga Brava.

sandiegodancetheater.org/whitebox

Margaret Noble

White Box at Liberty Station is San Diego’s freshest performance space and it has truly come alive with thirteen evenings of live arts that began April 5 and continues on until April 21.

Live Arts Fest was created and curated by San Diego Dance Theater artistic director Jean Isaacs and the newly formed White Box Collective, a group of local emerging choreographers including Blythe Barton, Anne Gehman, Kerry Greenwood, Maria Juan, Zaquia Mahler Salinas and Minaqua McPherson. So far, the first annual Live Arts Fest is living up to its promise offering all types of live art including dance, puppetry, theater, music, light installations and more.

Check out the Web site to see what event appeals to you. In the meantime here are a couple of events to consider this week:

Justin Hudnall

Righteous Exploits by Margaret Noble and Justin Hudnall is the 100-year-long true story of a family rising out of and returning to poverty over the course of three generations. Dust Bowl-era activist heroine Helen Hosmer fought against the exploitation of agrarian workers in the face of persecution by McCarthy’s FBI, but her own family’s dissolution undermined the very ideals she championed. Told through a combination of live audio/visual multimedia and performance art, Margaret Noble pulls audiences through a time warp of cultural mishaps that reveal just how dirty the good fight can get when morality competes with survival, and civic duty undermines family.

LGBT community favorite Michael Mizerany and friends will premiere a brand new work, At Long Last…Love! as well as his award-winning solo Tin Soldier (“heart breaking and beautiful,” Kris Eitland, San Diego Story) and audience favorite Tethered. In addition the evening features performances by Stephanie Harvey, Andrew Holmes and Bradley R. Lundberg.

The Door is Open: An Intergenerational Dance Project by Kira Corser is a joy-filled 30-minute documentary that covers a year of working collaboratively with Jean Isaacs’ San Diego Dance Theater with a tango performance by Jim and Jo-Ellen Larue. For the last four years, Jo-Ellen and Jim have been studying Argentine Tango under the tutelage of Colette Hebert. Jim, now 80 years old, and his wife, Jo-Ellen, will perform a “Milonga,” a playful and fast-beat dance which preceded the better known Argentine Tango. They will dance Francisco Canaro’s Milonga Brava.

sandiegodancetheater.org/whitebox

Blythe Barton and Bradley R. Lundberg in Tethered

thursday, april 11

Michael Mizerany and Friends

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Michael Mizerany, recent recipient of Bravo San Diego’s Outstanding Choreographer Award for 2012, will present the premiere of a brand new work, At Long Last…Love!, at the Live Arts Fest at The White Box Theater. At Long Last…Love! is a classic love triangle with a unique and provocative twist, and features sultry and sexy performances by Stephanie Harvey, Andrew Holmes and Bradley R. Lundberg.

Mizerany will also present his award-winning solo Tin Soldier and the audience favorite Tethered.

The White Box Theater, 2590 Truxtun Road, Studio 205 in San Diego, 7:30 p.m., tickets $15 advance purchase, $20 at the door, 619-225-1803, andiegodancetheater.org

friday, april 12

Kettner Nights

Come join the galleries, boutiques and entertainment venues on the second Friday of every month for a night filled with arts and design. In Little Italy North the art has as much flavor as the espresso and tantalizing marinara. The Art and Design District of San Diego’s Little Italy was modeled after New York City’s trendy SoHo and Chelsea districts offering art-lovers and design patrons diverse resources.

Valet parking is available on W. Kalmia Street between India Street and Kettner Blvd. for $7 a vehicle from 6 p.m.-1 a.m.

Between W. Grape and W. Laurels Streets on Kettner Blvd. and India Street in Little Italy North, 6-9 p.m., 619-233-3898, littleitalysd.com

saturday, april 13

SDGMC: Rocket Man – The Music of Elton John

The songs of legendary musician and showman Elton John will take center stage at the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus (SDGMC) spring concert Rocket Man – The Music of Elton John at the Birch North Park Theatre in San Diego. The 150-member chorus will highlight five decades of hits from “Your Song,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Daniel” and “Candle in the Wind” to “Circle of Life” and other songs from his movie and stage hits The Lion King and Aida! Also plays Sunday, April 14 at 3 p.m.

Birch North Park Theatre, 2891 University Ave. in San Diego, 8 p.m., tickets from $25, 877-296-7664, sdgmc.org

sunday, april 14

DerbyWise

The all-alpha-female world of the San Diego Derby Darlings can seem like an alternate universe filled with new rules, new names, new spouses, and in many cases new identities. Circle Circle dot dot’s latest original production DerbyWise is a journey through the eyes of budding Roller Derby star, Erika “Jezebel” Simms, who takes on this new world and all of the complications that this endeavor entails.

10th Avenue Theatre, 930 10th Ave. in San Diego, 4 p.m., tickets $20, 619-356-3682, circle2dot2.com

monday, april 15

From the Vault: Rare Artifacts with Fascinating Stories

From the Vault will highlight the many ways in which an artifact can be a treasure, emphasizing the artist’s attempt to make the object functional, beautiful, spiritual, or a combination of these attributes. You’ll see pieces from numerous countries and several centuries displayed side by side. While at first these objects may seem unrelated, if you look carefully, you’ll see that the artifact pairings reveal something about both the cultures they represent and humanity as a whole.

San Diego Museum of Man, 1350 El Prado in Balboa Park, open 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., adult admission $12.50, 619-239-2001, museumofman.org

tuesday, april 16

Taste of Point Loma

Sponsored by the Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, the Taste of Point Loma is an annual dining out event celebrating its twenty-fourth year. Thousands of attendees sample cuisine from a range of restaurants. Featuring dishes from Red Sails, Old Venice, Point Break Café, The Bay Club Hotel and more.

Taste of Point Loma, 2725 Shelter Island Drive in San Diego, 5:30-9 p.m., regular tickets $20, 619-858-0322, peninsulachamber.com

wednesday, april 17

Federal Jazz Project

San Diego REP presents the world premiere production of Federal Jazz Project, conceived and written by Richard Montoya with original jazz score and onstage jazz band led by trumpet virtuoso Gilbert Castellanos. Directed by Sam Woodhouse, Federal Jazz Project is a fusion of spoken word, historical fiction, border poetry, live jazz, bi-national history, percussive tap dance and original song, also including performances from sit-in musicians.

The Lyceum Stage, 79 Horton Plaza in San Diego, 7 p.m., tickets from $43, 619-544-1000, sdrep.org

Catch the video on the red carpet at Club Skirts Dinah Shore Weekend 2013 “Monte Carlo” Party in Palm Springs. Featuring exclusive interviews with Karmin, Uh huh Her, Fortune Feimster, Julie Goldman, Jessica Clark, The cast of The Real L Word, Katy Tiz and so many more.

Karmin headlined Club Skirts’ “Monte Carlo” Party performing their current single “Hello” as well as their summer chart-topping radio hit “Brokenhearted.” The American pop duo, comprised of engaged couple Amy Heidemann and Nick Louis Noonan, were named Rolling Stone’s winner in their annual Women who Rock contest, and Heidemann was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.