On Thursday night, at Popscene, San Francisco’s self-proclaimed “premier indie nightclub,” London-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist VV Brown put on the kind of show that invites such various adjectives as “rollicking” and “enthralling.”

Backed by a full band, Brown took the stage in a form-fitting sparkling gold tank top, plaid pajama bottoms and a Mardi Gras mask with extravagantly tall feathers. (Click here to read more…)

Last night I was one of many hipsters to attend the official unveiling of “BAMscape,” the brand new, day-glo orange, “functional” art installation that now sits in the enormous central gallery of our beloved but ignored art museum. Besides free coffee, BAM offered a concert by the Album Leaf, an appropriately atmospheric choice for the cavernous BAM gallery. While a large projector stationed behind me shone large squares of moving light onto the 1000 foot wall behind the band, I noticed the magnified shadow of my frizzy head swaying across the shoulders of people standing a few feet in front of me. Standing completely still, they made an excellent canvas for the display shadow puppets in addition to my alarmingly bulbous head. In fact, most people in the relatively packed hall would’ve made similarly excellent backdrops for shadow puppetry, due to the nature of a motionless human back. People make better projection screens than windows, as the saying goes. (Click here to read more…)

Dave Eggers, a writer who at 39 years old could aptly be deemed a pop cultural icon in the literary community, will be speaking at the UC Berkeley Morrison Library February 11 from 5 to 6 p.m. Not only is he an acclaimed author on an international scale, he is also a major personality in the Bay Area, which is now his home. (Click here to read more…)

With the 2010 Sundance Film Festival expanding to eight cities nationwide for the first time in the venue’s history, last Thursday evening in San Francisco marked a special occasion. Gracing the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas was documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s new film “Howl,” based on the life and times of literary icon Allen Ginsberg. Starring James Franco in the title role, “Howl” opened the Dramatic Competition category at this year’s Sundance Festival. Here in its Bay Area premiere, the film played to a packed audience—including critics, industry professionals and the film crew’s family members—and received a heartfelt five-minute ovation after the credits rolled. (Click here to read more…)

Artist Reception for The Tao of Duality: An Exploration of Self Portraits

When: Wednesday, Feb. 3,  6:00 pm

Where: The Brava! Center for the Arts; 2781 – 24th Street (at York), San Francisco, CA 94110

What: An exploration of self-portraits from intriguing local artists. Featuring: Ken Paul Lozada, Zach Ma, T.W. Chui, Michele de la Menardiere, Johnny Selman, Marsha Balian, Rob Cox, Larry Martin, Francesco De Benedetto, Kathy Fujii-Oka, Jane Neilson, Shelli Renee Joye and Sheila Tajima (Click here to read more…)

This week, there are a ton of unusual concerts for your listening pleasure . . .

Shows to watch out for:

The SF Winter Music Festival persists through Thursday, before it segues into the film-oriented Indiefest.

Tonight, right here at UC Berkeley, Sub Pop mellow-ers the Album Leaf are playing the student opening party for Thom Faulders’s “BAMscape” exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum. Free for UC Berkeley students, it’s always a pleasure to find free music close to home. Look for coverage of the performance, as well as the Album Leaf’s latest album, A Chorus of Storytellers, which is out today, as featured in Thursday’s Daily Californian. (NB: The Superb website lists the starting time as 7, with doors at 6:30, but the flier distributed around campus today has doors at 7, start time 7:30. It wouldn’t hurt to arrive early, I imagine, unless it’s raining.) (Click here to read more…)

Fernando Botero’s vision of the atrocities of Abu Ghraib in 2004 will be added to Berkeley’s permanent art collection, but the exhibit featuring 56 paintings ends on February 7, 2010.  While on a flight back home to Paris, Botero read one of the first articles written by Seymour Hersh for The New Yorker exposing the horrific details. Before the plane landed, Botero was already sketching the scenes he imagined based upon Hersh’s account. The final collection of 56 paintings chronicle the artist’s own response to the acts of humiliation and abuse. (Click here to read more…)

Everybody loves a comeback. That is, until they see Mel Gibson’s new film, “Edge of Darkness,” which I had the, uh, misfortune of seeing with fellow Daily Caler, D. Rock Sagehorn, at a sneak preview in San Francisco this week. I’ll leave the real criticism to my colleague, but let it suffice to say that Mel may soon find himself relegated, yet again, to cinematic obscurity. After an eight-year hiatus from acting (his last role was in 2002’s “Signs,” which I loved), his return to the screen packs quite a superficial punch. As a bereft Boston cop, Mel hearkens back to his Lethal Weapon days, doing things he used to like kicking ass, using language that would make the Pope blush and (this isn’t one I remember) trying his best to keep his saggy jowls from wobbling. How it all plays out remains to be seen, but as we all know, comebacks don’t always take (see Michael (Click here to read more…)

Suddenly the iPad is no longer an interesting piece of news.

At the young age of 91, J.D. Salinger–a riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in a man of mystery–died yesterday in his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Considering Howard Zinn’s death the other day, the Rule of Threes is upon us.

In light of Salinger’s death, it is perhaps futile to discuss his literary career because it is so imbued in the popular imagination. We, as readers and writers of fiction, are inescapably indebted to Salinger, particularly with “The Catcher in the Rye.” We continue to re-encounter facsimiles of the Holden Caulfield character in every generation. I would argue that the heroes of Dave Eggers’s ”A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky are very much in dialogue with Salinger and his Holden Caulfield, continuously rewriting the angst and ennui of the coming-of-age experience in America. Wes Anderson’s film “The Royal Tenenbaums” is an obvious nod to “Franny and Zooey.” I can’t think of any other 20th century writer who is so ubiquitous in contemporary culture, and though “Rye” was published in 1951, you can spot a reproduction of its first edition jacket on Urban Outfitters t-shirts on every college campus. (Click here to read more…)

Here’s a smattering of art exhibit openings and events this week! Several are right here on Berkeley’s campus or near by in the East Bay, and a few are a short BART trip away in San Francisco. I encourage everyone to drop by some of these happenings before the semester gets too hectic…particularly since there’s plenty to see within walking distance! (Click here to read more…)