wild weekend

That's Wild and Wonderful Whites director Julian Nitzberg with OMF (ha! I wrote OMG accidentally). His Q and A afterwards went a long way towards alleviating any queasiness I felt at the exploitative nature of this type of documentary. He has known the White family for 20 years and has a great affinity for them. He even got a semi-angry comment from a man who lives in West Virginia (he said he wished Nitzberg had shown the other side of West Virginia) and he diffused the tension handily by pointing out the pains he had taken to say that the Whites don't represent every family, and then ended by saying something along the lines of "Is that OK, or do you still think I'm an asshole?"

His story of being hit on by every female (and one male) in the White clan was pretty funny. He barely made it out alive.

There is SO MUCH going on this weekend it's really crazy. Tonight at the Hub, MOM is playing and Nitzberg mentioned he would be there. I think he's a fan. Tomorrow, Bows and Arrows is having a crazy 50% off sale!! Nuts. Have you watched their video from Fox 40 yet? It's on the blog at right.

Also tomorrow (and today) Jennie Krausse is holding a crazy estate sale at a mansion in Granite Bay. I totally thought I would go but I don't think I can. I'm missing my chance to increase my velvet caftan collection. Speaking of crazy, Krausse is pretty out there with her descriptions, and the music on the video makes it unintentionally funny. Her intention is to honor the family.

On Saturday, there's The Bananas/Four Eyes show in SF.

Sunday, MOBS is having a scary movie marathon, culminating in a showing of Night Of The Living Dead. Classic!

For the love of brew...

OK dudes, this is BIG. Or it could be. I, and a couple of the hopheads, have convinced taplister.com to add Sacramento as a city. Taplister is a website on which you can list beers currently on tap all over the city. Common citizens who become "ambassadors" can list beers, as well as business owners. This could be really awesome as a way to build excitement about beer in Sacramento, and just to generally find out what is on draft where.

How can we make it awesome? Beer lovers need to log in and become ambassadors. This will require a tiny bit of clicking effort on your part, so bear with me.

1) you need a twitter account. annoying, I know, but you don't need to use it for tweeting

2)create a login on taplister.com

3) then, go to this page to request to be an ambassador. they added me within minutes and then I tweeted (it's painful to say that) my first few beers, since I know what's on tap at the Weatherstone right now

4) In the future (when we have flying cars), it will be important to take off beers when kegs are blown. There are multiple ways to do this, so I don't think it will be too hard to figure out.

Please perservere and try this, and let me know if my instructions work for you. Some cities on taplister hardly us it, but some cities, like Portland (natch) keep it current and hopping.

And please blog about it if you have a blog and care at all.

movie talk

The MidMo sponsored screening of "The wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia" is tonight at 8 pm at The Crest. Director Julian Nitzberg will be in attendance who sounds like and interesting guy and a FOMF (that's Friend of Old Man Foster). It's ten bucks, which is sadly, normal for a movie in primetime these days (and people will still only pay 5 bucks to see a band!), but will be worth it. It doesn't look like it's going to rain tonight.

Speaking of movies, I picked up a collection of Pauline Kael's reviews at a thrift store and I am really digging it. It's called Taking it all in, and it's her seventh collection. It covers her reviews for the New Yorker from '79 to '83. The first thing that struck me is how looonnngg they are. That' what always strikes me when I look at old magazines. Things have gotten so blurby, it sucks. The second thing that struck me is that she HATED Raging Bull. Wait, don't stop reading here. Reading more of her reviews I figured out that she pretty much hated modern movies, but without knowing that's what she hated. She couldn't know that the movies that she despised would go on to shape modern movie making much more than the movies she loved. For instance, The King of Comedy (which I like), she criticized for being so empty and ugly, but think about it, doesn't that movie seem like the forefather of a whole style of film-making? Like Todd Solondz' work, for one. Hey, I ain't no movie critic, this is just what occurred to me.

And it's so thrilling that she effortlessly brings a strong female perspective into her reviews. I love reading her lavishly detailed descriptions of how actors and actresses look and their physical presence, and her obvious affinity for sex scenes (hope no one thinks it's sexist that I think that stems from her being a woman).

She would hate movies today so fucking much!

Anyway, I'll let her speak from herself. This is from her review of The Return of the Jedi. She liked Empire, but hated ROTJ:

Lucas may be be on to something: that for children (and some adults) a movie that's actively, insistently exhausting can pass for entertainment. Lucas produces the busiest movies of all time; they're made on the assumption that the audience must be distracted every minute...I don't mean that Lucas means to shortchange the audiences; quite the reverse. He gives them a load of movie-so much that their expectations are rammed down their throats....

It's one of the least amusing ironies of movie history that in the seventies, when the "personal" filmmakers seemed to be gaining acceptance, the thoughtful, quiet, George Lucas made the quirkily mechanical Star Wars-a film so successful that it turned the whole industry around and put it on a retrograde course, where it's now joining forces with video games manufacturers. If a filmmaker wants backing for a new project, there'd better be a video game in it. Producers are putting so much action and so little character into their movies that there's nothing for a viewer to latch on to.

And so on! From 1983!

help me out here

what sports team is this hat for?

tshirt time!

I can happily confirm that The Four Eyes and The Bananas will be rocking the Bay Area this Saturday. Be there!

I got the new SacTown mag, and it contains an ad for the new douche complex that's opening on K street at the end of the year. I don't mean to be a brat about it, but c'mon. For some reason blogger decided to upload the pictures sideways, even though they are not sideways in the file, so sorry they are really hard to see. These businesses do not seem to have webpages. Check the slogan for "Pizza Rock" (shouldn't they call it pizza.rock.life. ?) "pizza artisan meets nightlife energy". huh? nonsensical.
here's the lovely vision. smiller quipped that it looks like something that would be on a tshirt on Jersey Shore.

yay frends

Wow, was that a wet weekend or what? I know, lame way to start a post.

Speaking of lame alliteration, don't forget about the MidMo screening of the Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. It's this Thursday at the Crest, doors open at 7:30, movie at 8. And the director is going to be there. Is he going to do a Q and A? Before or after? Sometimes those are awkward. Like with that guy who stalks Tiffany at MOBS. I definitely enjoyed watching the directors other movie back in the day (hella old school), the one on the dancing outlaw Jesco White, so I'm looking forward to this one. Lest you think it's just an expoitation flick, read this review by A.O. Scott in the New York Times.

Sweet, BAR mentioned MidMo!

kind buds

The blog is boring today so smiller demanded I upload these photos to the blog. These are chapstick's birthday present to him, which was oh-so-nice. I have been enjoying them as well.

Check out the tablecloth that EC gave us, too. What kind friends.
Have a good weekend!

YESTERDAY!

I know it's not a contest, but this is one of the funniest things one of my friends has ever written.

P.S.speaker of writer friends, I'd like to give a shout out to DB's shout out to Dileep Rao. He steals all the scenes. Someone needs to cast his as a lead.

mission accomplished?

Ha! So we succeeded in confusing some of you who tried to get into the Verge and watch The Thing with us. Mission accomplished. There were not enough blueberry cookies to go around. That scene in The Thing with the dogs in the cage is one of the creepiest scenes ever. I love it so much.

uh, usually I'm not at a loss for posts but I feel like it right now. My Billy Ngo piece is in the SNR this week. It was fun getting to know Billy a little bit and hanging out at his restaurants. I really love some (not all, sometimes he overreaches) of what he is doing at Red Lotus. The dumplings are bangin, serial. He has some decent beer on draft as well. A dinner can be a good value (depending on how you order), but it's easy to overlook that when you compare it to actual dim sum prices. He sources quality meat, so there really isn't a direct comparison. The fish at Kru is IMPECCABLE. The chef's choice nigiri dinner is also a good value there, for top-quality sushi. And you get free edamame, which goes a long way with me.

I'm hungry! Going to fatface today. She has two new sandwiches, a "Cuban-style" shredded beef with hominy and a salami with pepper/olive/grape(!) relish. Mad scientist!

sly nod included

LC, who used to work at Beers, moved to Portland and now works for Tin House quarterly literary mag. He wrote a piece for their blog about Beers with a primo pic of Raffles. Seems like the headline is a sly nod to the Sacramento Treat.

two beards at a time

Hey, look, another beard! And it's attached to that guy from One Day At A Time. Tonight! At The

Verge, 625 S st., 7:30 pm, we will be screening....well, hopefully you already know this. If not, see below ad nauseum.

This is interesting, though. On Wednesday, Dave Eggers will be doing a lecture and book signing at The Crest.

oh, hello

Sounds like it was a fun weekend in Sac. I was in d'ville for a beautiful, wonderful, fun fun wedding. I may have done some pointing on the dance floor, and maybe a little shoving. Maybe some dance floor yarmulkes were busted. Who knows?

Tomorrow night, Tuesday, as you are well aware, me and Liv are screening John Carpenter's The Beard, oops The Thing at The Verge, 625 S st. at 7:30. Beer! Popcorn!

And then, don't get these two things mixed up: next Thursday, the 28th, MidMo is hosting a special movie screening at The Crest. It's The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. It's a documentary about an eccentric family. Here's the preview:

David Hemmings happens

This is just to get you warmed up for next week.

Look at that hipster! This album is decent, by the way.

MOBS has some exciting stuff coming up. I'm stoked about Night of the Living Dead on All Hallows Eve. This Sunday (10/17) they're showing an Argento movie called Deep Red, starring one Mr. David Hemmings. I have seen this one and it has its moments, as any Argento movie does, but at least in the copy I had, there were long stretches in Italian that were not dubbed into English, which made it hard to follow. Not trying to hate! Just being real.

I won't be posting until Monday.

fat face super fan

This is the newest fat face sandwich: Korean BBQ chicken with pureed kimchee and sesame napa cabbage slaw. Juicy, well-salted (that's important!) dark meat chicken and a pleasant sesame aroma from the oil in the slaw.

Then I got a tshirt, which yielded a free plum popsicle. Need I even tell you have plum-licious this popsicle was? I needn't.

John Carpenters The Beard

Wow, you guys almost crashed the server with your wave of votes, but I hear you loud and clear. Next Tuesday, at the Verge, for MidMoMoNi, we will be showing John Carpenter's The Thing starring Kurt Russell's beard. We will be selling brews and popping corn. I think I will probably get a sixer of Caldera IPA from the Davis Co-op, to sell for two bucks a pop. It is a tasty brau. We will have cheap beer too. Starts at 7:30.

Brewer and Shipley, an appreciation

Time to choose the movie for MidMoMoNi, which, is a week from tomorrow, October 19th. Vote at right. We have: John Carpenter's The Thing with FINE ASS Kurt Russell or

The Haunting, the filmed version of Shirley Jackson's superdupycreepyscary book "The Haunting of Hill House". The movie is also totally frightening. Not that many movies actually scare me, maybe 10 ever filimed, and this is one of them.

Let's move on to an appreciation of two kind bros, Brewer and Shipley. Can I just say that it's a great injustice that they are mostly only known for the crap-ass song "one toke over the line". There is so much more to them than that song. This song below isn't one of their best either but I beg of you to just watch it until 27 seconds in to see something awesome. Then I don't care if you keep watching after that.

I think Shipley is the cute one

See, pretty cute and look at that shirt and vest combo
Here's the obligatory 60s shot of the band with some poor kid that is probably majorly in therapy, or maybe that's Courtney Love, who knows? It kind of looks like her. Maybe she just wandered through many album photo shoots.
This album rules. I got it at Burger. The only questionable choice is a cover of "all along the watchtower" and believe it or not it's not even that bad.
This album has TWO songs with the word "lady" in the title. That is a clue to how good it is.
Look at the font and handwriting
In addition to "oh sweet lady" there's a song called "lady like you". In the thank yous they thank a lot of ladies.

Curry pan from Maharoba
Anpan Man and he's filled with eggy chocolate pudding
Not to get all hunter angler on you, but last night we ate venison that our neighbor gave us. This is a backstrap cut. It was the bloodiest smelling meat I have ever smelled.
I browned it, and then braised it for a bit in beef broth and red wine, not very long.
I reduced that sauce and it was pretty good, I maybe overcooked the venison just a tad bit but there were morsels by the bone that were amazingly good. Now my house smell like venison.

yakitori story

Despite the fact that this image from Alice Sweet Alice looks like it would be really scary, it's really just bizarre and dumb, so we will not be screening that movie for you at MidMoMoNi on October 19th.

I'm still getting tomatoes! One plant, I think it's a brandywine, just started busting out now.
Last night we made grilled yakitori and pork/napa cabbage gyoza. I got both recipes from the cooking class I took at Whole Foods.

I soaked the skewers for a day, which kept them from catching on fire.
Here are the chicken thighs, marinating in sake,mirin, soy, and gin and juice, er ginger juice.
snacks
the gyoza have shitake chopped up in there. shitake add such a funky, earthy taste. I love 'em. They're part of what make the sui mai at Red Lotus so fucking good.
A key factor: beer.
Here's the gyoza filling, ground pork, garlic, shitake, scallion, soy, chopped ginger, mirin, sesame oil. Not pictured: chopped napa cabbage.
The pickle man stopped by and made a delivery. Look at that brine! That is the good shit.
When making gyoza, it is best to have at least four sets of hands.

We made about 50 of them in no time at all.

It's best to have a non-stick pan, but I don't have one, so that means that you have to watch them carefully and not evaporate all the water. Some stuck, but I used a spatula and it was no big deal. They cook really quickly. They are really shockingly easy to make.
mmm....glistening dumplings
here's the yakitori, hot off the grill
Skipper also made two kinds of salads, this seaweed one was totally pro. I would order it in a restaurant.
and broccoli
for dessert (and breakfast): peanut butter mochi from osaka ya

MOBS

Last week when I saw the movie at MOBS people who had seen Hannah House last year were eager to see it again. October 10th

7:30 pm
Admission: $5.00
Movies on a Big Screen at The Guild
2828 35th St, Sacramento, CA

Hannah House

Set in 1904, a young couple desiring to own land is convinced by a distant cousin to leave their comfortable city life to pursue homesteading in the Nebraska Prairie. A neighbor's house and land has become vacant, and the couple is told they can have it.

Possibilities of a new life and future for their unborn child overshadow any questions about what happened to the previous occupants of the house. Based on a true story, this chilling account portrays the hardships and desolation of prairie life as the young family unearths the horrifying details of the house and its past.

"Hannah House," essentially a silent film, utilizes visual textures similar to those that occur now in many of the decomposing silent films from the 20's. By capturing the imperfections of scratches, skips, dirt and trapped hairs, the result is like watching a painting of the desolate prairie come alive, and are also used as a narrative element to further the disturbing tone of this film. Note: this film contains a "birth" scene, so there is some brief, graphic (yet simulated) nudity.

We often include quotes from Variety, Village Voice, etc. Which is great and all, but in this case, we’re including a quote from someone who used to help out around MOBS:

"This film is hauntingly disturbing. Its convulsive sepia-toned images come at you like an opium flashback from a previous life. It will stay with you for days, and not in a good way..." - Korey, Former MOBS "Floor Manager" (aka. "the door guy").

The LA Times is talking about Sac. Are your ears burning?

Look, we got ourselves a real museum. It's exciting.

get your groupon

I know I should save this for my secret Criminal Minds blog, but Ion television is finally playing newer episodes, and I saw the one that had Gavin Rossdale in it last night and it was WEAK. They are getting too over the top and TOO MUCH MANTEGNA.

Groupon has a Masullo coupon today! You pay 9 bucks for 18 bucks worth of pizza pie. Buy it! Did you know he is open for lunch now? Did you know his pizza is the best?

Me and Liv are restarting our film screening, now at The Verge! It's gonna be donation, which will go to the Verge and the cool thing is we'll be able to sell beer! And I'll pop some corn, with lots of nutritional yeast of course. It's gonna be on October 19th, at 7:30. What scary movie should we show?

I totally forgot

Oh my god do you guys remember Brian Peppers?!?!? That was heckasac way back in '05. Memories.

sorry!

Sorry heckasac is boring this week. I prefer the threadjack below about the Christmas show. Here's a link to the Four Eyes blog to get in your requests. Maybe they should cover that Eminem/Rihanna song for the current hit that they usually play? Charlie from Lost is in the video so perhaps Lil' Maxwell could be involved in the performance in some way?

damn hipsters

I know you don't come to Heckasac for excellent band photography and I will not disappoint you. Here's Buk Buk Bigups. Not pictured: Dylan and Joss.

Here's a cute photo of the cutest band! Dreamdate. Before they played, obviously. They have a new album coming out (including their first vinyl) and they will be hooking up a show in Sac soon.
Then on Sunday morning I headed over to another hip scene: the pancake breakfast at Koyasan Buddhist Temple on 14th and U.
Four bucks!
My only gripe was the shot glass of orange juice. I could have used more. Minus one star. They have this breakfast three times a year. Look for the fliers. It's fun, except for being crowded with too many hipsters. Look at this hipster wearing two shirts! He probably rode a fixie to the pancake breakfast.