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Feature

Marty Anderson is Okay

A story about the music we make out of the things we carry

By Garrett Kamps

Published: March 30, 2005

The Cluttered House in Fremont Marty Anderson lives in a one-story house in Fremont with his mom and dad. As you walk through the front door and step on the brown, squishy carpet, the first...

Matt Smith

I Picket, Ergo Sum

With philosophy on their side, there's no way San Francisco hotel workers can't win their labor dispute

By Matt Smith

Published: March 30, 2005

Last Monday I received a note titled "PHILOSOPHERS TO PICKET IN SUPPORT OF HOTEL WORKERS" from Phil Gasper, a philosophy professor at a school in Belmont called Notre Dame de Namur University. The...

Infiltrator

German Heat!

Dieter is here. Fawn, Hollywood agents. Fawn, Dieter says.

By Harmon Leon

Published: March 30, 2005

In Hollywood, it's all about HEAT! Generating an industry buzz in turn creates HEAT, and most important, HYPE. Even for fake German comedians. On the whole, Hollywood is an emperor's-new-clothes...

Dog Bites

Vanishing Act

"The audience has seen a lot of me, and maybe they need a break."

John Mecklin

Published: March 30, 2005

He's been called, on various occasions, "preening, arrogant, sinister"; "a raving tyrant, enthusiastically cruel and as self-convinced as one of Tom Waits' growling drunkards"; "quiet, intense,...

Weekly Obsessions

Weekly Obsessions

Things we were obsessing about on March 30, 2005

Published: March 30, 2005

Until our favorite scene in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive was spoiled by a peculiar blur over the nether regions of Naomi Watts, our (admittedly flimsy) excuses for Blockbuster patronage kept...

Acknowledgments

Ack nowledgments

Appreciations we'd like to have seen expressed before March 30, 2005

Published: March 30, 2005

The San Francisco Chronicle would like to thank SF Weekly staff writer Nate Cavalieri for the guidance his story on labyrinths, "A Winding Path" (Dec. 1, 2004), provided in the preparation of...

Music

The Elephant Men

Mastodon's monstrous metal is just breaking the surface

By Eryc Eyl

Published: March 30, 2005

Brent Hinds is putting on some weight. Right now, his band, Mastodon, is in the middle of a megabudget, liquor-sponsored arena tour with Slayer and Killswitch Engage. And apparently the catering is...

Reviewed

Yo La Tengo

Prisoners of Love: A Smattering of Scintillating Senescent Songs 1984-2003

By Michael Alan Goldberg

Published: March 30, 2005

The 42 songs on this three-CD Yo La Tengo career retrospective aren't sequenced chronologically, but it wouldn't much matter if they were. The two-decade tale of Hoboken, N.J.'s finest indie rock...

Reviewed

Six Eye Columbia

Judy at Carnegie Hall

By Mike Rowell

Published: March 30, 2005

S.F.-based melancholic rock band Six Eye Columbia orbits around songwriter Josh Pollock, who's garnered quite a pedigree in recent years. A current member of enduring prog co-op Gong, Pollock has...

Reviewed

Beck

Guero

By Rossiter Drake

Published: March 30, 2005

Beck has long defied labels, his chameleonic ways leading him from acid-soaked folk to ambitious fusions of hip hop, synth-pop, and blue-eyed funk. Guero finds the versatile balladeer revisiting...

Reviewed

Brazilian Girls

Brazilian Girls

By Sam Prestianni

Published: March 30, 2005

Free association on a supercharged pair of words -- "Brazilian" and "girls" -- yields a wealth of evocative images: the lipstick grins and sequined breasts of Carnival, the delicately curved torsos...

Reviewed

Fannypack

See You Next Tuesday

By Rachel Devitt

Published: March 30, 2005

Call off the truant officer, because the school of lo-fi sass is back in session. To kick things off, Brooklyn's Fannypack throws itself a raunchy little pep rally on "Keep It Up," with MCs...

Reviewed

Out Hud

Let Us Never Speak of It Again

By Tamara Palmer

Published: March 30, 2005

So many bland new-wave bands have emerged so far in the '00s that they're beginning to dry up the musical credibility of the original '80s synth-pop and -rock experiments they're ostensibly...

Bouncer

Air Supply

Bouncer gets high the old-fashioned (and kind of stupid) way: oxygen

By Katy St. Clair

Published: March 30, 2005

Oxygen bars emerged in the Clinton administration, when those not full enough on the milk of aromatherapy turned their olfactories toward the periodic table of elements and threw a dart. For more...

Hear This

Hear This

The Master Musicians of Bukkake drop their twisted, free-noise, world-influenced panic-rock on you

By Maya Kroth, Justin F. Farrar

Published: March 30, 2005

"You're no poem once you open your mouth," Inara George sings on her recently released debut. George herself, however, is all poetry on All Rise , an album brimming with songs whose lyrics...

BeatBox

BeatBox

Get double your dance music this April 1 with "4.1.5." * no foolin'. Plus, Felix Da Housecat brings his disco space jams to Mezzanine.

By Tamara Palmer

Published: March 30, 2005

April Fools' parties are apparently passé, so promoters Red Wine and Fabric8 (an online boutique) have come up with a clever twist on this year's sort-of holiday by hosting a party called...

Eat

The Art of Eating

Fabulous, inexpensive Thai food whose only flaw is its speedy arrival (and consumption)

By Meredith Brody

Published: March 30, 2005

Something recently came into my mailbox that seemed eerily apt, seeing as I was thinking about Chinese and Thai food: a press release whose headline read "2005 Poised to Be Year of the Asian...

Social Grace

Outrageous Behavior

Bathroom smells, exorbitant contractors, and dinner-party pickles

By Social Grace

Published: March 30, 2005

Dear Social Grace, How do I ask a new colleague to not use the bathroom across from my desk for No. 2? The odor is horrible and very offensive. Some days this guy can take out several offices....

Film

Color Bind

What's black and white and red all over? Sin City, pal.

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: March 30, 2005

If nothing else, Robert Rodriguez's Sin City , co-directed with Frank Miller (and Quentin Tarantino, for a few seconds), will be remembered as the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever put on...

Film

The Grapes of Mirth

Jonathan Nossiter's wine documentary is subversive, funny, and humane

By Melissa Levine

Published: March 30, 2005

An epileptic bulldog in the home of the world's most famous wine critic. A snarling Boston terrier on the streets of Tuscany. A loping Labrador gobbling grapes in Burgundy. In every location of...