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Feature

That Secret Shame

You don't have to be embarrassed to read romance novels anymore. With modern themes and better writing, Bay Area authors are helping to make the genre almost (gasp!) respectable.

By Mark Athitakis

Published: July 25, 2001

In the film As Good As It Gets , Jack Nicholson plays a bitter, aging hack writer. His chosen genre is romance novels. Writing 62 of them has made him a very rich man, but, alas, writing love...

Sidebar

A Romance Glossary

A Reader's Guide to Romance Novels

By Mark Athitakis

Published: July 25, 2001

Amazon.com -- Evildoers, according to some romance authors. Amazon promotes the sale of used copies on the site, which deprives authors of royalties. Because Harlequin ships books early to...

Mecklin

Out With the New, In With the Old

The fear of change has been an ongoing parable of San Francisco. The city needs a new parable.

By John Mecklin

Published: July 25, 2001

Sipping a drink at "Bardot A Go Go" the other night (and how many other columnists have been able to write those words?), I was struck by the tongue-in-cheek energy of it all. Here were 100 or so...

Night Crawler

The Agony and the Ecstasy

A walk through the "Torture Exhibition" can be a terror or a turn-on, depending on your point of view

By Silke Tudor

Published: July 25, 2001

Torture (tor-chur) n. 1. the infliction of severe pain as a punishment or means of coercion. -- Oxford American Dictionary Torture (tor-chur) n. 1. a form of sensual bliss that precedes...

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Troubled Waters; HOT Topic; Clarification

Published: July 25, 2001

Troubled Waters A whale-hugger responds: Had you asked us, we could have saved you reams of the valuable newsprint you were forced to expend on John Dougherty's inch-deep, mile-wide...

Music

Change of Heart

M. Ward's new album is damn fine folk -- from a guy who used to ignore folk music

By Dan Strachota

Published: July 25, 2001

M. Ward is tinkering with his acoustic guitar onstage at the Great American Music Hall. The small crowd -- which, like Ward, is seated -- looks up at him with an air of quiet curiosity. The singer,...

Music

Into the Mystic

After more than a decade of struggles, is Mystic ready for mainstream hip hop success?

By Darren Keast

Published: July 25, 2001

Right in the middle of our telephone interview, just as she's recounting how and with whom she recorded her first song, Mystic is interrupted by something on the television. "Oh! My video's playing...

Music

Various Artists

Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit (Sympathy for the Record Industry)

By Jennifer Maerz

Published: July 25, 2001

A recent Entertainment Weekly article on Detroit's garage rock revival hinted that the Motor City might be the ever elusive "next Seattle." If it does get slobbered on by the mainstream, D-town...

Music

Film School

Brilliant Career (Me Too!)

By Jill Stauffer

Published: July 25, 2001

Listening to an album for the first time can be like "hanging out" with someone new. You don't know whether an evening will end in a kiss or whether it's just a trip to the movies. Film School's...

Pop Philosophy

Pop Philosophy

*Tangents* returns, live365.com stays put, a Brit misses coke

By Dan Strachota

Published: July 25, 2001

How to make the world a smaller place Public radio is kind of like church: You don't always want to listen but you're glad it's there. Public radio music shows, however, are often as inviting as...

Hear This

Hear This

Jill Scott delivers smart and sensual R&B;

By Sam Prestianni

Published: July 25, 2001

Coming on like a sensual sophisticate with urban panache, poet/songstress Jill Scott embodies the allure of real rhythm and blues. On last year's self-assured debut, Who Is Jill Scott? , the...

Eat

Sinking Sun

Ozumo

By Greg Hugunin

Published: July 25, 2001

Nothing could be more annoying than having a meal begin with a white man saying, " Konbanwa " (Japanese for "good evening"). OK, maybe a few things could be more annoying -- say, if a meal began...

Eat

Shaken, Not Stirred

g bar

By Matthew Stafford

Published: July 25, 2001

I drank my first martini courtesy of John the Jehovah's Witness, serving behind the bar at Da Angelo in Mill Valley. I had ordered a kamikaze and John had misunderstood me. I used to order...

Side Dish

Going Hungry

As the economy takes a dive, so do prices on some restaurant menus

By Harry Coverte

Published: July 25, 2001

Empty Plates With the dining scene cooling off, the survival tactics are heating up, and as a result many restaurants have redesigned their menus in the hopes of keeping tables and mouths full....

Social Grace

The Word Police

Is it OK to use the word "picnic" in polite company?

By Social Grace

Published: July 25, 2001

Dear Social Grace, I need to know whether it is polite to use the word "picnic." I was recently told that this term has a racist origin; however, some research at my local library revealed that...

Film

Gangster Crap

Made, a wannabe mob comedy, won't be furthering anyone's career

By Bill Gallo

Published: July 25, 2001

When last we spotted indie icons Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau on screen together, they were knocking back fruit-flavored martinis and chasing L.A. skirt in the inventive Gen-X hit Swingers . The...

Film

Blood Brother

As fatalistic and deadpan as ever, Takeshi Kitano brings his trademark style to America

By Andy Klein

Published: July 25, 2001

Actor "Beat" Takeshi Kitano has built an international reputation over the past decade, primarily through a series of ultra-hard-boiled crime films in which he plays either a cop or a felon. With...

Reel World

Reel World

A lot of people have told writer/director Nick Katsapetses that his new comedy is too dark. But he seems enthusiastic anyway.

By Michael Fox

Published: July 25, 2001

Crimes and Misdemeanors Nick Katsapetses ( Get Over It , The Joys of Smoking ) isn't one of those Wunderkind filmmakers who got a camera as soon as he was old enough to cry. "My parents sent...

Night&Day;

DV Dynamite

Inexpensive digital video is a truly democratic art form. Check out the radical, unique, weird, perverse, and marginal results at the DV Underground Film Festival.

By Michael Fox

Published: July 25, 2001

If there truly is a just God, the great gift of digital video will turn out to be his subversive potential. With only the mildest of financial barriers, the radical, the unique, the weird, the...

Night&Day;

North vs. South

Scarlett O'Hara is no match for Southern belle Alice Randall, in town to read from her controversial parody The Wind Done Gone

By Lisa Hom

Published: July 25, 2001

Margaret Mitchell's 1936 epic Gone With the Wind is not your standard quiet piece of fiction. With over 25 million copies sold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is one of the five best-selling...