The Tattoos & Blues Festival was held at the Flamingo Resort Hotel February 24, 2013. See our photos from the ink- and needle-laden day by clicking on the slideshow below!
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Extended Play: Early Adopters
Our news story this week is about a local family that adopted two toddlers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC.
It’s a story with a hopeful ending for those two children set in the midst of a tragedy that many people know nothing about.
As we explain in the piece:
“Since 1998, the DRC has been the sight of massacre and sexual violence so overwhelming that the few writers covering it tend toward comparison rather than digits. Incited by the same militant refugee group responsible for the Rwandan genocide, the First Congo War—sometimes called the African World War—involved nine countries, twenty armed factions and has claimed the lives of roughly 5.4 million people. A 2006 report commissioned by the UN relief effort UNICEF puts it like this: “[E]very six months, the burden of death from conflict in the DRC is similar to the toll exacted by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.”
Though the exact number of rape victims in this bloody travesty is unknown, the report estimates them to be in the hundreds of thousands. “Sexual violence is consciously deployed as a weapon of war,” it states. Abortions are punishable by imprisonment, and yet women and girls who are raped and become pregnant often become social pariahs, rejected by even their families, according to the document.”
The UNICEF report concludes that global news doesn’t tend to follow this terrible epilogue to the Rwandan Genocide for some reason, perhaps its long history, the country’s deep poverty and the aura of hopelessness that hangs over it all.
If you want to find out more about the situation in DRC, here are some resources.
See the BBC’s coverage here.
The country’s profile on Human Rights Watch.
The county’r profile on International Crisis Group.
The UNICEF report we quote from in the piece, written by BBC War Correspondent Martin Bell.
March 5: Barbara Dana at Copperfield’s Books
Lock up your daughters—Emily Dickinson is alive! Well, no, not really. She is still dead. But Barbara Dana, author of A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson, is doing her best to resurrect the famed poet. Dana is an expert on all things Dickinson, and brings the pride of Amherst, Mass. back to life by dressing up as the famous poet and sharing the knowledge and insight she’s acquired over the years of writing about and portraying Dickinson on stage. Come and meet Emily/Barbara on Tuesday, March 5, at Copperfield’s Books. 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma. 7pm. 707.762.0563.
March 5: ‘The Wrecking Crew’ at the Napa Valley Opera House
Denny Tedesco, director of ‘The Wrecking Crew,’ provides a behind-the-scenes look at the uncredited Los Angeles studio musicians responsible for playing on hundreds of hit songs by the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, the Monkees and many more. Led by drummer Hal Blaine and featuring pioneering female bassist Carol Kaye, the group is truly the Funk Brothers of Los Angeles; this is their Standing in the Shadows of Motown. See the film on Tuesday, March 5, at the Napa Valley Opera House. 1030 Main St., Napa. 7pm. $10. 707.266.7372.
March 2: Bone Thugs n Harmony at the Phoneix Theater
Layzie Bone, Wish Bone, Flesh-N-Bone, Krayzie Bone and Bizzy Bone are back to represent, respect and recognize as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Together for longer than most marriages last, the group is celebrating their 20-year anniversary reunion with a show this week at the Phoenix—and a new record set to be released in May. With songs featured in soundtracks for famous movies like Batman and Robin and blaring out of every single car on the cruise in 1993—“Crossroads,” anyone?—the group plays on Saturday, March 2, at the Phoenix Theater. 201 E. Washington St., Petaluma. 8pm. $35—$100. 707.762.3665.
March 3: Lois Flood at the Occidental Center for the Arts
Famous for stepping outside of traditional ballet technique and focusing on natural movement, Isadora Duncan mixed her love of freedom and ancient Greece to create a unique style of her own—until she met her tragic death in 1927, after her scarf got caught in the wheel of her Amilcar and broke her neck. Eight decades later, dancer Lois Flood steps in and brings her moves to life in celebration of Women’s History Month on Sunday, March 3,, at the Occidental Center for the Arts. 3850 Doris Murphy Court, Occidental. 4pm. $10. 707.874.9392.
March 5: The Expendables at the Mystic Theatre
Ready for summer to begin? Since 1997, the Expendables have offered a pleasant, sunny blend of reggae, ska and surf rock, from the Warped Tour stage to headlining venues coast to coast. Their album titles give a hint into their aesthetic—Prove It, Open Container and Getting Filthy—and perhaps guitarist Raul Bianchi will offer attendees news on the hair straightener specifically designed for male pubic hair he claims to spend his free time developing on Tuesday, March 5, at the Mystic Theatre. 23 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. 8:30pm. $16—$18. 707.765.2121.
March 3: Aaron Lewis at the Uptown Theatre
He truly is a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n roll: Aaron Lewis, lead singer of the hard-rock group Staind, is following in the footsteps of Lionel Richie, Bon Jovi, and Darius Rucker (of Hootie and the Blowfish) and crossing over into Nashville. To Lewis, a transition to country “is full circle because, this is the first music I was ever exposed to as a child.” Lewis dropped his first full-length solo country album, The Road, last November; he has hit the road and is touring all over the U.S. Drive him crazy by loudly requesting Staind songs on Sunday, March 3, at the Uptown Theatre. 1350 Third St., Napa. 8pm. $40. 707.259.0123.
Treasure Found
In Margaret, cruising through life on a pair of really good thighs and a complicated smile, Lisa Cohen (the astounding Anna Paquin) is a self-described “privileged, Upper West Side Jew.” Lisa is faced with a moral awakening, and it’s like the description of enlightenment in Zen: it’s a red hot ball she can neither swallow nor spit out.
One day Lisa flirts with an MTA bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) long enough so that he accidentally crushes a pedestrian. As all problems come down, utterly, to herself, Lisa involves herself in a search for justice, though this doesn’t interrupt her coming of age, losing her virginity, crashing her report card and getting into fights with her shallow actress mother (J. Smith-Cameron).
Director Kevin Lonergan (You Can Count on Me) captures an adolescent state of mind usually celebrated in movies as the height of whip-smartness—flattering the hell out of a really lucrative ticket-buying demographic. Paquin’s acting should have got every award there was to get in 2011, as seen when she moves through a hallway to a boy she likes to tease or lashing out at the genuinely bereaved in a self-righteous fury.
The supporting work is immaculate. Matthew Broderick was brave to take the part of an inept English teacher, whose quote of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem provides the title. Matt Damon excels as a Midwestern good-guy of a geometry teacher who doesn’t know enough to keep away from Lisa. Other fine performances abound: Jeannie Berlin as the one woman who really has Lisa’s number; a Latin stage-door Johnny (Jean Reno, at his best), an essentially merry liability lawyer (Jonathan Hadary) and a patient-as-a-pachyderm cop (Stephen Adly Guirgis).
So why haven’t you seen this movie? Because due to behind-the-scenes Hollywood fighting, some ugly lawsuits and three different edits of the film (one by Martin Scorsese, believing so much in the film that he worked for free), Margaret opened in exactly two movie theaters: one in L.A., one in New York. It is, essentially, a buried masterpiece.
Margaret recalls Woody Allen in his prime, only without the schtick. Similar to that ’90s masterpiece The Sweet Hereafter, it’s about how litigation has come to replace self-analysis. As for its length, Margaret is in the company of long movies (Secrets and Lies, Tokyo Story, Short Cuts among them) that could have been even longer. The editing process sabotaged its release; the movie was utterly unpromoted. Hopefully its luck will change as word gets out.
‘Margaret’ screens Friday, March 1, at 7pm and Sunday, March 3, at 4pm. Sonoma Film Institute, Warren Auditorium, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. $7. 707.664.2606.
Joseph Phelps Freestone Vineyards
Hacks that we are, wine writers may be counted on, come November, to promote a Pinot pairing for T-day, nod to the best bubbly for NYE blowouts and to swoon with enthusiasm for lip-smacking summer sippers come May, employing all the awkward alliteration that the genre allows. It’s all pretty standard stuff, until you get to International Polar Bear Day.
That’s observed on Wednesday, Feb. 27, at least according to a freebie Ocean Conservancy calendar that I received from my folks—thanks, folks. On this day, the organization Polar Bears International only asks that we take the “Thermostat Challenge,” turning it down a few degrees as a gesture of action on climate change, which threatens to erase the habitat of that most charismatic of megafauna.
Celebrate with ice wine, naturally. This is not in jest. As noted in studies from Germany’s wine-centered Geisenheim Institute, the ice wine category faces a similar threat if temperatures continue to rise. Ice wine is made from white grapes that freeze toward the end of the season. The result is a sweet wine that’s a bit unlike other “late harvest” wines, since ideally, the grapes have frozen before raisining or being overtaken by botrytis mold. Traditionally made in select years in Germany, it’s been popularized in Canada, where, indeed, Ontario’s Ice House Winery features polar bear statues as mascots. But if the grapes don’t freeze on time, ice wine is off the menu.
Meanwhile, in St. Helena, Joseph Phelps Vineyards got the notion to produce an ice wine from estate-grown Scheurebe grapes in the 1990s. The 2011 Eisrébe ($50 split) has an aroma that’s more banana liqueur than white raisin, and a mead-like, clean, sweet palate. Although it feels heavy, with more than 20 percent residual sugar, the alcohol is only 8 percent. It’s available at the tasting room in Freestone, which, by the way, has been renamed to emphasize that it’s the westernmost outpost of Joseph Phelps. Fans of vibrant Chardonnay, or Pinot of the forest duff and fresh plum variety, might want to stop by at some point. Look for the little red barn.
But where does Phelps come up with an Ontario-level freeze? Alas, the Scheurebe is trucked to a commercial freezing facility in Sacramento. So it’s got a little carbon footprint. Just turn down that thermostat and bundle up. No doubt that Eisrébe paired with apple cobbler will add an extra layer of fat to see you through the winter.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards, 12747 El Camino Bodega, Freestone. Daily, 11am–5pm. Tasting fee, $15. 707.874.1010.
Extended Play: Early Adopters
Our news story this week is about a local family that adopted two toddlers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC.
The DRC's flag.
It's a story with a hopeful ending for those two children set in the midst of a tragedy that many people know nothing about. As we explain in the piece:
"Since 1998, the DRC has...
March 5: Barbara Dana at Copperfield’s Books
Lock up your daughters—Emily Dickinson is alive! Well, no, not really. She is still dead. But Barbara Dana, author of A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson, is doing her best to resurrect the famed poet. Dana is an expert on all things Dickinson, and brings the pride of Amherst, Mass. back to life by dressing up as...
March 5: ‘The Wrecking Crew’ at the Napa Valley Opera House
Denny Tedesco, director of ‘The Wrecking Crew,’ provides a behind-the-scenes look at the uncredited Los Angeles studio musicians responsible for playing on hundreds of hit songs by the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, the Monkees and many more. Led by drummer Hal Blaine and featuring pioneering female bassist Carol Kaye, the group is truly the Funk Brothers...
March 2: Bone Thugs n Harmony at the Phoneix Theater
Layzie Bone, Wish Bone, Flesh-N-Bone, Krayzie Bone and Bizzy Bone are back to represent, respect and recognize as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Together for longer than most marriages last, the group is celebrating their 20-year anniversary reunion with a show this week at the Phoenix—and a new record set to be released in May. With songs featured in soundtracks for famous...
March 3: Lois Flood at the Occidental Center for the Arts
Famous for stepping outside of traditional ballet technique and focusing on natural movement, Isadora Duncan mixed her love of freedom and ancient Greece to create a unique style of her own—until she met her tragic death in 1927, after her scarf got caught in the wheel of her Amilcar and broke her neck. Eight decades later, dancer Lois Flood...
March 5: The Expendables at the Mystic Theatre
Ready for summer to begin? Since 1997, the Expendables have offered a pleasant, sunny blend of reggae, ska and surf rock, from the Warped Tour stage to headlining venues coast to coast. Their album titles give a hint into their aesthetic—Prove It, Open Container and Getting Filthy—and perhaps guitarist Raul Bianchi will offer attendees news on the hair straightener...
March 3: Aaron Lewis at the Uptown Theatre
He truly is a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n roll: Aaron Lewis, lead singer of the hard-rock group Staind, is following in the footsteps of Lionel Richie, Bon Jovi, and Darius Rucker (of Hootie and the Blowfish) and crossing over into Nashville. To Lewis, a transition to country “is full circle because, this is the...
