​Last October, I wrote the eulogy here on The Exhibitionist for Wicked Grounds, the kink-oriented coffee house that had, in just a little more than two years, become one of the most beloved gathering places for San Francisco's alt-sex community. When Wicked Grounds announced its closing via Twitter, there was an enormous and immediate outpouring of grief from \Bay Area kinksters, made all the more intense by the hard work that they had put into rallying to save the place.

But like Mark Twain, it seems that reports of Wicked Grounds' demise have been exaggerated. Just as everyone had begun to come to terms with Wicked Grounds being dead and buried, the word went out in January that it was reopening.

Almost exactly one month after the café reopened, I found myself once again sitting across from owner Ryan Galiotto at a table in the middle of Wicked Grounds. When I interviewed him in October, his voice trembled with with grief and exhaustion. After working a busy four-hour shift, the exhaustion was still there, but braced by a sense of satisfaction and relief.

"It's like I've used two of my nine lives on this place," he said. "I'm so grateful for the doors being open again."

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​Moral ambiguity in a courtroom drama has never been as complete as it is in Otto Preminger's 1959 film, Anatomy of a Murder, which is being released this week on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection. There's no question about the murder at the center of the film's story; it's quite clear from the outset that a sullen young Army lieutenant played by Ben Gazzara has indeed killed a local barman suspected of raping his wife (Lee Remick). The ambiguity primarily revolves around attorney Paul Biegler (James Stewart), the reasons he accepts the case, and his vigorous defense of the unlikeable Lt. Manion.

​When Anatomy of a Murder was released in 1959, it caused an uproar and was one center of Preminger's many battles with censors. Rape is described in unmistakable terms. Words like "panties," "sperm," and "completion" (meaning orgasm) are used repeatedly. The fact that we hardly notice the use of such language now allows us to move past it and get to the real -- and dense -- substance of the movie, which is still very much worth talking about.

Why would respected lawyer and former District Attorney Paul Biegler accept a case like this? We know that he needs the money -- his private practice has floundered since he lost the last election, and he spends most of his time fishing, unable even to pay his long-suffering secretary Maida (Eve Arden). But Lt. Manion is no fount of wealth; he can pay Biegler only with a little cash and a promissory note.

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TLC

Sci-Fi speed daters on 'Geek Love'

​

Abed Nadir: So you guys are going to Can't Buy Me Love me.

Britta Perry: We're going to what?

Abed Nadir: Like the movie Can't Buy Me Love. You're going to change me from zero to hero, geek to chic.

Troy Barnes: Oh, he means we're going to Love Don't Cost a Thing him.

--From NBC's Community

Film and television audiences have often been fascinated with the romantic lives of social outcasts, most often in the context of the awkward, fecklessly navigating what we think of as "normative" approaches to dating: dressing sharp, flirting, wine, dinner, and a progression of sexual acts using whichever sports metaphor to which you are so inclined. Through transformative makeover montages and popular kids learning to be less heinous, the message seems to be: "Hey, weirdo, assimilate to my ways a bit and I'll take this asshole routine down a notch. And this asshole may just end up being the love of your life."

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Even in the magical land of Equestria, some folks are just plain rotten. And they often find their way to Ponyville.

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​There was a time when I read and thought about poetry on a regular basis -- but I broke up with that girlfriend and have barely read a word of it since.

That joke points to why it's so difficult to ascribe "poetic" qualities to a work of art without sounding trite. So many of us don't take poetry seriously. We read it as part of a phase, or when a grade depends on it. Beyond such circumstances, ideas about what might be "poetic" just get confused with terms like "artistic" or "creative."

When it comes to Kate Glasheen's deeply felt Bandage: A Diary of Sorts, the descriptor "poetic" might at first seem insufficient and vague. But that is, in fact, the best word to use, because Glasheen understands poetry's nature as an art form.

Bandage uses words sparingly. The art is figurative without being merely representational. Riven with impressionistic ambiguity, Bandage reveals a poetic core by being far more interested in suggestion than exposition.

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Chris Hall

​One of the things that sets my teeth on edge about what an old friend calls San Francisco's "Kinky Konfederacy" -- the loose affiliation of queers, kinksters, fetishists, swingers, pornographers, sex workers, and perverts who band together under the ethic of sex positivity -- is the idea that sex should somehow be "spiritual." As moving and powerful and important as sex might be to me, it's not spiritual to me -- not in the least. More to the point, I don't think it should be.

At first glance, saying that might sound like I just came out in opposition to fluffy bunnies and lollipops. And that's the problem: "spirituality" is vague enough that it doesn't say anything meaningful but still gives you warm fuzzy feelings inside. It's one of the fluffy bunnies of the English language -- and what kind of sick, heartless bastard could be against fluffy bunnies?

Well, me. I think that anything that could be called sex-positive in any meaningful sense needs to be strictly anti-fluffy bunny. I would go even further: I think that the whole point of being sex-positive is to seek out fluffy bunnies in sex and gender, wring their little necks, skin them, and sink our teeth into the meat with relish. The fact that it is so very, very popular in sex-positive communities to put sexuality in the realm of the mystical by defining it as "spiritual" or "sacred" doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy; it gives me a numbing chill because what I really hear is shame. I hear people making excuses for their kinks and their pleasure. That so much talk about sexuality is wrapped in platitudes about spirituality, magic(k), or transcendence shows how deeply we've failed in being able to discuss sexual pleasure as a good thing in itself, without any excuses.

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Pop-culture emcee Adam WarRock

​​Adam WarRock, dubbed the Internet's foremost comic book rapper, rolled through Berkeley's 924 Gilman on Sunday to promote his second full-length album You Dare Call That Thing Human?!?, which released the week prior. Co-headlining with indie nerd rockers Kirby Krackle and local openers who sang acoustic ditties about Pokemon and life post-zombie apocalypse, WarRock's set was surprisingly intimate for a hip hop performance -- due to Gilman's sparse surroundings and a Sunday evening show which started in broad daylight -- yet undeniably spirited. More >>

Stanley Frank

Trixxie Carr upholds the dignity characteristic of the original bacchanalian.

​Sometimes, the usual career gurus just don't cut it. When you're really down and out, when the recession threatens to quash once and for all your dreams of a career in the arts, you have to look beyond Craigslist and advice columns, past the usual contacts and mentors ... and maybe dispense with mortals entirely.

Well, not entirely. Dionysus is only a half-god. She is played by Trixxie Carr, and channeled by four down-and-out artists (Travis Santell Rowland, Angelica Roque, Norm Munoz, and Jarrad Webster), in Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus, a "Greek comedy rock epic" at CounterPULSE. She may or may not have been kicked off Mount Olympus, and it's uncertain whether she has any real powers to aid in the arts, despite being the god(dess) of theater.

But she has had a lot of jobs, and she's all too happy to share the wisdom of her experience with the hapless mortals, provided they play the part of reverential audience to her self-aggrandizement, and she is afforded all the theatrical devices her heart desires.

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Dr. Sengupta: Caring psychiatrist or secret super villain?

​Alcatraz is now more than halfway through its first season, and we still don't know much. Each episode continues to play out like a comic strip: The bad guy wants to destroy the city and/or kill a lot of people, usually to avenge past wrongs, and the unlikely heroes must operate in secret to save the blissfully ignorant public from fates like land mines, cyanide poisoning, and random sniper shootings, the kind of stuff that would make my mom shudder and say, "Oh, that's just unacceptable."

But the characters are starting to feel predictable and the plots formulaic, which is problematic on a slow-moving show like Alcatraz. The tiny, fast-spinning gears that are the weekly reappearances of the old-timey inmates are struggling against the weight of the one large (and most important) gear that is the overarching mystery of why the inmates have returned and their motivation, as well as character development. And it feels like that large gear hasn't moved in awhile. In any case, it's not all bad. Let's head onward with episode seven.

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Fine Art Museums of San Francisco

The Contemporary Māori Cloak

​Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

The de Young Museum welcomes a new artist-in-residence every month, but it rarely acquires any work produced during that time. In reality, the museum is regularly "deaccessioning," meaning it offers items from its collections to other institutions if, upon reassessment, they are deemed better placed elsewhere.

In its contemporary collections policy, then, the de Young is a discerning institution, which makes its recent acquisition all the more interesting. When October's artist in residence, Glanda Joyce Hape, offered as a gift a cloak she made at the museum, Curator Christina Hellmich didn't hesitate to accept.

Hape is Māori, an indigenous people of New Zealand, and her work proved exceptional from the beginning. The de Young is located in Golden Gate Park, and the museum encourages its artists-in-residence to explore the connection between park and museum environments. Hape relies on flax to weave her contemporary art, so she excitedly embraced the 1,017 acres of park - which boasts more than 7,500 exotic plant species - out of necessity. She regularly teamed up with Andy Stone, the park supervisor, and the two went on long expeditions in park in search of flax to harvest. Stowe Lake, as it turns out, offered Hape an abundance of flax bushes to choose from.

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