Light-up wonders, deep sea explorers, jelly apps: Marine biology at the Bone Room

02.26.13 - 2:17 pm | Jessica Wolfrom |

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"No Bones About It: The Diversity of Gelatinous Invertebrates in the Deep Sea" at the Bone Room. Photo by Jessica Wolfrom

"No Bones About It: The Diversity of Gelatinous Invertebrates in the Deep Sea" at the Bone Room

You don't have to travel far to enter foreign waters. Just a few miles off San Francisco shores lies a world more alien to us than anything dreamed up by the likes of Ridley Scott or James Cameron. And as Doctor Steve Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute told us in his lecture, entitled "No Bones About It: The Diversity of Gelatinous Invertebrates in the Deep Sea" at Berkeley's Bone Room last Thursday night, this world -- otherwise known as Monterey Bay -- holds 4,000 meters of uncharted underwater territory , miles of yet-to-be-discovered ecosystems, organisms, and almost unimaginable possibilities of new life.

Monterey Bay is one of the most biologically diverse bodies of waters in the world due to the massive sub-oceanic Monterey Canyon, one of the deepest of its kind off the coast of the United States. It stretches about 4,000 meters in depth, surpassing the depth of the Grand Canyon.

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Watching models eat: On and off-runway shots at NY Fashion Week

02.26.13 - 1:29 pm | Caitlin Donohue |

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Academy of Art University at New York Fashion Week. Photo by Aldo Carrera

"New York inspires me to be more ambitious and to push my work to higher levels," reflected Academy of Art University shutterbug Aldo Carrera on his recent trip to document his school's Fashion Week runway collections.

"I also love watching models eat."

Truly, that most elusive of NYFW moments. Read more »

FYI 'Drag Race', SF is still doing it better

02.26.13 - 11:40 am | Caitlin Donohue |

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Now that our local darling Honey Mahogany is out of the RuPaul's Drag Race due to being nice and enjoying actual fashion, we must say that Seattle drag queen Jinkx Monsoon's Little Edie from Grey Gardens blew away the Marilyn Monroes and Katy Perrys of last night's celebrity impersonation challenge last night on the LOGO TV show.

But we take serious issue with Gawker's headline proclaiming it the best Edie ever. Clearly politiqueen Anna Conda's take, assumed for her housewarming party upon moving to a fixer-upper in the Excelsior last summer, was superior in both motivation and situation. Overturned hottubs > sparkly curtained TV sets, in this case (and many others.) Read more »

Staff of shut-down Mission dispensary opens SoMa's newest cannabis club

02.22.13 - 3:29 pm | Caitlin Donohue |

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Today was the grand opening for a new dispensary just steps from the front door of Mezzanine and right down the block from a rapidly-changing Sixth Street. Long-time medical marijuana patients may recognize some familiar faces -- Bloom Room employs many of the staff and management from Medithrive, the Mission Street dispensary was was forced to close "for the children" back in November of 2011. Read more »

Live Shots: 'Dance + Diaspora' at ODC Theater

02.22.13 - 2:36 pm | Ariel Soto-Suver |

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Jill Parker and the Foxglove Sweethearts at ODC. Photo by Ariel Soto-Suver

Musicians for Dance + Diaspora at ODC. Photo by Ariel Soto-Suver

Tania Santiago Movendo con Capoeira at ODC. Photo by Ariel Soto-Suver

Strong drum beats, hip shimmies laden with bells and voices coming together in song. This show has it all. Presenting "Dance + Diaspora" two performances this Friday and Saturday -- pics above are from the dress rehearsal -- by choreographers Jill Parker (with her Foxglove Sweethearts troupe) and Tania Santiago (with her Movendo con Capoeira troupe) -- a showcase of steamy belly dancing and heart-pumping Capoeria.

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Countdown to the Oscars! Plus: Cinequest and new flicks

02.22.13 - 12:09 pm | Cheryl Eddy and Guardian Staff Writers |

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Important: the Oscar broadcast starts at 4pm on Sunday on ABC. If tradition holds, the ceremony won't actually begin until a little later, but if you want to soak up the full awkwardness of the red carpet, with its "Who are you wearing?" and its reporters mistaking Denzel Washington's daughter for his wife (true story), you will want to tune in on time. (If you're a true fiend, E! starts their red-carpet coverage at 2:30pm.)

As far as Oscar winners go, I thought I had it figured out, but really ... it's anyone's game, unless your name is Daniel Day-Lewis. Fingers crossed for local filmmaker Sari Gilman to win Best Documentary Short for her Kings' Point.

This week, I took a look at San Jose's Cinequest festival (zombie lovers, get on this one!) Among the new releases, the Rock goes undercover for the DEA to clear his son's name in Snitch, and Keri Russell battles supernatural suburban invaders in Dark Skies. Reviews below the jump of mystical drama Bless Me, Ultima; Oscar-nominated doc The Gatekeepers; and Werner Herzog's latest doc, Happy People: A Year in the Taiga.

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Film

It's the year of the female water snake! Best ways to celebrate this weekend

02.21.13 - 4:23 pm | Caitlin Donohue |

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Mystery, divination, revelation will all mark 2013 if you believe in age-old Chinese astrology. We've entered the year of the female (yin) water snake -- time to get over from the brash dragon year of 2012, thank Gaia. The actual start of the Chinese New Year was on Feb. 10, but the bulk of San Francisco's festivities take place this weekend -- including the red-and-gold parade juggarnaut that'll swamp downtown starting at 5:15pm at Second Street and Market, Sat/23. Don red for good luck, and slither on down to the parade route (or Verdi Club, depending on your celebration perogative.) Read more »

02.21.13 - 8:53 am | Caitlin Donohue |

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Can you guess which of the 290 pages of Mitch Connell's jampacked new, puffy-covered-like-cheap-tablecloth art anthology he is most proud of? It is not the vaguely seedy Hanna Barbera art, commissions all for Warner Brothers that were never utilized commercially. It's not the illustrations for porno mags, the public works benches in Chicago, several Newsweek covers, untold numbers of event flyers, or his late-1980s pop art aerial views of reclining women hoisting hot dogs.

It's the crazy shit he drew after he discovered his wife had been chronically cheating on him. You thought the rest of it was wacky! Read more »

Pressure, two ways: Academy of Art and Project Runway at NY Fashion Week

02.20.13 - 5:48 pm | Jessica Wolfrom |

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Shoes, backstage at AAU. Guardian photo by Jessica Wolfrom

Heather Scholl's knitwear, backstage at AAU. Guardian photo by Jessica Wolfrom

Janine Villa-Amanda Nervig at AAU show. Photo by Randy Brooke/Getty Images

Qian Xie's line at AAU show. Photo by Randy Brooke/Getty Images

Heather McDonald at AAU show. Photo by Randy Brooke/Getty Images

While hyperbolic coverage of what many news pundits called the ‘storm of the year’ raged across the Tri-State area, Manhattan’s would-be-mammoth blizzard arrived in the Big Apple as a pint-sized flurry that the Weather Channel dubbed Nemo. Nemo did little to deter the stilettoed, snow-shoeing pack of fashion-forward who started the morning of Feb. 8 filing into the tents at Lincoln Center for New York Fashion Week hullabaloo around 6 am.

This is the world of fashion, where a steel backbone is required. Plus, “this is New York, we have noreasters," said a publicist with whom I scored post-show beers. "This is not a some kind of apocalypse blizzard. This is a snow storm. Put on your big girl boots and get over it.” Read more »

The Performant: Love bites

02.20.13 - 5:24 pm | Nicole Gluckstern |

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Power ballads at the Roxie. Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Panties at Heist boutique. Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Interior of Heist boutique. Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Sunglasses at Heist boutique. Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Jeans at Heist boutique. Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Celebrating romance with power ballads, Spandex leggings, fancy panties

Although there are about 364 days of the year when I can do without it—one day of the year seems custom-made to celebrate the ignoble rise of hair metal and its greatest contribution to the musical landscape -- the power ballad. From “Love Bites” to “Is This Love,” “(I Can’t Live Without) Your Love and Affection,” to “The Power of Love” -- all the saccharine sentiment of brooding, pouty millionaires in ripped jeans, tight leather, and all those glorious manes -- power ballads can and probably should form the soundtrack to Saint Valentine’s Day now and forever. They so perfectly tap into both the cynicism of the single person facing “the dread VD” alone, as well as offering a soaring guitar-solo boost to the cuddly nostalgia of the happily coupled.

While innamorati for hundreds of years have used February 14 as a date to shower their beloved in flowers and cards, Jeff Ross and the SF IndieFest team have used it as another excuse to party, with an annual Power Ballad Sing-along at the Roxie Theatre. Just three years after its San Francisco debut (a similar party tears it up each year in Brooklyn), PBS pours its sugar and motors through the packed house, screening subtitled MTV videos turned up to 11 of all the best bands you’d love to forget to a theatre full of eager inebriates, cutting loose in a veritable bacchanalia of communal song.

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