Arts & Events
Books: Max Brand: The Agatha Christie of the B Western
Max Brand was the pseudonym of Frederick Faust, a pulp writer who had ambitions as a serious poet. Or as he preferred, a serious poet whose day job was spinning cowboy yarns. -more-
Mockingbird Jazz: The Evolutionary Roots of Bird Song
I just finished a book called Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions, which despite the title is not another pop-psychology tract about gender differences. The author, Richard Francis, is an evolutionary neurobiologist, and the book is a rousing polemic against the sociobiologists and their intellectual heirs, the evolutionary psychologists: scientists who believe that just about every aspect of human behavior is an adaptation to something or other. -more-
Moving Pictures: Tributes to Gaynor, Borzage at PFA
Two retrospectives starting today (Friday) at Pacific Film Archive will illuminate the work of actress Janet Gaynor and director Frank Borzage, both sterling talents in their day but unjustly overlooked in ours. -more-
Moving Pictures: When Soccer Almost Conquered America
If you’re a soccer fan still looking for a way to get the poisonous image of Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt out of your mind, the solution may have arrived in the form of a new documentary. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos tells the story of soccer’s arrival in the United States in the late 1970s, when media mogul Steve Ross set out to make the “the beautiful game” a national phenomenon. -more-
The Theater: ‘Human Paper Doll’ a Real Cut-Up at the Berkeley Rep
The metamorphoses of Madonna, or Elton John changing fashions and overburdening specs ... Judy Garland as Dorothy, belting out “Over The Rainbow” while absent-mindedly petting a pinwheel-headed Toto ... and just how does a paraplegic Venus De Milo line-dance to Zorba The Greek ? -more-
Calatrava’s Sundial Bridge Puts Redding on the Map
Imagining a Berkeley Under Water
Matt, We need to reinforce the cripple walls in our 1906 one-story house. But we live in the Berkeley flats and we are worried about potential flooding. We are not that far above sea level and we don’t think that global warming is a fairy tale. -more-
Think Twice Before You Reach for the Bug Spray
It’s midsummer, more or less, and the other inhabitants of the garden are showing up in numbers. Aphids and whiteflies and thrips, oh my! The first flush in spring gave rise to another generation or two, multiplying all the way, and most of the birds have about finished raising their first and maybe second broods for the year, so fewer insects are being turned into babyfood. -more-
Correction
The Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition was misidentified in Tuesday’s Daily Planet. While nonprofit organizations participate in the coalition, BAPAC itself is not a nonprofit organization, as stated in the article. -more-