Working it

IT NEVER STOPS – fall entertainment, that is, and winter, spring, and summer entertainment, too. Which means that because I take my job seriously, I rarely stop. Not that I'm out every night, except some weeks. And flipping through the fall arts preview, I've mapped out my own calendar through September, a month that will wind up like this: Thursday, Sept. 25, I'll be at Davies Symphony Hall where Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Mahler's intimate, warmly sad Symphony No. 4 (although to prove I'm normal, afterward I'm headed up Polk Street to see three punk bands and a drag queen perform at the Red Devil Lounge). On Friday I'm really going out (because out is where the Lab is, like, all the time; once I saw Miya Masaoka duet with bees and Mary Armentraut onstage with bicycles, Styrofoam peanuts, and a rolling bed) to see what I think is a multidisciplinary play with "a chorus of poets" (what's that?) by Carla Harryman (with help from Amy Trachtenberg and Jim Cave) called Performing Objects Stationed in the Sub World. Saturday night – to support an old friend who works for Studio Canal and complains that Americans don't like French film – I'll be at the Castro Theatre to see Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (Don't touch the loot). I can't always follow the French, and I hate subtitles, but I can't resist a film that shows us gangsters who brush their teeth before going to bed. And then Sunday is the Folsom Street Fair – OK? – and if I make it home in one piece, I'll be doing it again the following week. You should, too, which is why the Bay Guardian's editors and writers offer you their thoughts on what to do this fall. (J.H. Tompkins)