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Feature

Absolutely Fabulous

Transformed by a romanticized airport novel, our heroine constructs a strangely compelling life

By Bernice Yeung

Published: January 29, 2003

Leigh Bordelon, a former Catholic choir director and the daughter of missionaries, found her salvation in a book. It spoke to her about love and strength, and she discovered comfort and peace...

Night Crawler

In and Out of India

A meditation on memory and Indian culture, from Krishna dolls to bharathanatyam

By Silke Tudor

Published: January 29, 2003

One of the many hangover curatives my housemates could never understand involved peeling open an inflamed eyeball at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning to watch Namaste America , a program on Channel 26...

Dog Bites

Boyz Night Out

Jeez, can't these Raiders players take a joke about golden showers?

Published: January 29, 2003

It all begins at Mingle's, a nightclub in Oakland's Jack London Square. Monday night open-mike comedy, known among regulars as "Section 8 Night." It's a tough room, but damn it, I'm a young comic...

Letters

Letters to the Editor

Week of January 29, 2003

Published: January 29, 2003

Fun With Syphilis But what about the poetry man?: I find it odd that your article on syphilis researcher Deborah Hayden discussed Lou Salomé and Friedrich Nietzsche without so much...

Music

Fact or Friction

Here Are the Facts You Requested drags indie rock into the realm of performance art -- and soul music

By Nancy Einhart

Published: January 29, 2003

Here Are the Facts You Requested received its first piece of fan mail in 1991. The package -- a note and a blurry photograph of its author -- came from a cello-playing high-schooler named Akire...

Reviewed

Irving

Good Morning Beautiful

By Nancy Einhart

Published: January 29, 2003

It's rather galling to us Northern Californians that the lower portion of the state produced so many praiseworthy albums last year, among them Rilo Kiley's The Execution of All Things , Queens...

Reviewed

Kathleen Edwards

Failer

By Lawrence Kay

Published: January 29, 2003

It's pretty easy to nail Kathleen Edwards as "the next Lucinda Williams," since the frequent comparison is hardly unfair. On the opening tracks of Edwards' debut album, Failer , the Canadian...

Reviewed

Mickey and the Soul Generation

Iron Leg: The Complete Mickey and the Soul Generation

By Matthew Africa

Published: January 29, 2003

During the band's lifetime, Mickey and the Soul Generation knew little but failure -- none of the group's five singles, recorded between 1969 and 1977, enjoyed any measure of commercial success....

Reviewed

Groove Armada

Lovebox

By Ron Nachmann

Published: January 29, 2003

The pre-release buzz on Groove Armada's fourth album, Lovebox , was that Tom Findlay and Andy Cato had tossed away their unwilling association with "chill-out," the laid-back dance genre that...

Pop Philosophy

Download or Die

The RIAA's war on the consumer

By Dan Strachota

Published: January 29, 2003

RIAA also stands for Really Intrusive Avaricious Asswipes You're in deep doo-doo, and it's all Khia's fault. Some jerk on the bus was humming her tune "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)," and by the...

House of Tudor

House of Tudor

American Mullet, blues radical John Sinclair, and Nik Phelps' animation bounty

By Silke Tudor

Published: January 29, 2003

In the film Withnail & I , Danny, the purveyor of "rare herbs and prescribed medicines," offers this solemn caveat against the shoring of one's hair for financial gain: "Hairs are your aerials....

Hear This

Hear This

Johnny Marr steps out front with the sunny rock of the Healers

By Tamara Palmer

Published: January 29, 2003

Morrissey got most of the attention in the Smiths for his wry lyrical take on British drudgery, but it was Johnny Marr's emotional music that really anchored the band. Now, with his new group, the...

Eat

Antojitos Antics

Calvin Trillin and assorted other out-of-town tipsters inspire a round of tacos

By Meredith Brody

Published: January 29, 2003

It's not really like I need an excuse to go out and spend a day eating around -- it's my job, after all -- but sometimes I do enjoy a nudge in a certain direction. And the Jan. 20 issue of The New...

Social Grace

Eat This

How to tell chatty diners at the next table to shut their cake holes

By Social Grace

Published: January 29, 2003

Dear Social Grace, My wife and I celebrated our anniversary [recently], and we ate out at one of our favorite restaurants. It's very small and intimate, and the tables are close together, and...

Film

Blowin' Smoke

Biker Boyz is furious, but it ain't fast, which is a real drag

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: January 29, 2003

First off, make no mistake: Biker Boyz is not, and has no intentions of being, The Fast and the Furious on two wheels, which will be considered a serious shame by the 12- to 12-year-old...

Reel World

sex, lies, & videotape

Veering off into madness with first-time moviemakers David Owen and Paul Stephen

By Michael Fox

Published: January 29, 2003

An astonishing number of first-time filmmakers are indefatigable self-promoters -- witness the just-wrapped Sundance egofest -- but not S.F. State theater alums David Owen and Paul Stephen. When I...

Reps Etc.

Reps Etc.

Published: January 29, 2003

Commentary by Gregg Rickman ( greggr1@mindspring.com ). Times compiled from information available Tuesday; it's always advisable to call for confirmation. Price given is standard adult...

Night&Day;

Star Search

Discovering the next Jackson 5, as the Apollo's "Amateur Night" hits the road

By Karen Macklin

Published: January 29, 2003

When the Apollo Theater opened 90 years ago in Harlem, its stage was intended for burlesque acts -- and its doors were closed to black people. This seems ludicrous to our generation, which grew up...

Night&Day;

Head Trips

Drugs and their religious uses, as experienced by three explorers of psychedelia

By Lisa Hom

Published: January 29, 2003

Now that the Bush administration is waging war on terrorism, the War on Drugs is playing a distant second fiddle. Still, in America today, hallucinogens are considered felony-grade contraband, but...

Art

Elevating the Platform

An art gallery-cum-dance club lures the masses

By Jake Ginsky

Published: January 29, 2003

It's 9 p.m. on Thursday, and the line in front of 25 Lusk St. in SOMA is more than 40 people deep, snaking back and forth along the sidewalk in an "S" pattern. Two off-duty cops, hired as doormen,...