Bored, broke, and nothing to do? Think again. Most museums in San Francisco offer regular free days. (Some are free all the time.) Here's your official guide to the best and cheapest exhibitions coming up this month and next.
M. Goodwin Associates SFMOMA
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Is there any comic more suited to an old-time radio play than John Hodgman, with his everyday suits, sometimes-mustache, and thin, delicate fingers? Of course not. He appears Sunday night in an old-time radio play, The Thrilling Adventure Hour at Marines Memorial Theatre, one of the many events at SF Sketchfest that make you realize that the title's "sketch" is an old-time quirk -- this year's fest has only three true sketch shows. Hodgman is joined Sunday by Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Richter, and Kevin Pollak, who is rumored to be doing his old-time role as Christopher Walken making a Cobb salad (that's a lie). Later, Richter moderates a tribute show with Upright Citizens Brigade, featuring Amy Poehler and company, and later still, Twitter-ace Michael Ian Black appears with his old Stella TV series classmates. And we're not done yet. Not close to it.
Mai Le John Hodgman
Aperture -- it's that setting on your SLR camera you pretend to understand. Actually, it's pretty simple. An aperture is a hole or a gap, and it's a fitting title for the world premiere performance by the Samantha Giron Dance Project that opens tonight (Friday) at Kunst-Stoff Arts. This Aperture explores the cause and effect of breaking away from tradition -- a literal presentation of the gap between what one knows and what one will discover. 
Mark Andrew Wilson Aperture
The dance troupe describes it as "a contemporary meets street dance, electronics meets strings, father/daughter collaboration." The artist, Samantha Giron, was inspired by her father's unexpected trajectory. Keith Giron, an Apache and Hispanic American, was a first-generation high school graduate and left his low-income family to attend an Ivy League college, effectively paving a very different path for himself and his family than they would have otherwise known. Giron asks a common question through a unique focal point of the Hispanic American perspective (cue the Clash): Should I stay or should I go?
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"Pissarro's People" at the Legion of Honor contains nearly 100 works of art, paintings as well as works on paper. These show the artist's family and friends, farmers markets in the French countryside, and workers in the fields. The show concentrates on figures rather than the landscapes that Impressionists are known for. Camille Pissarro, who considered himself an anarchist, shows workers' individuality. Local curator of the show James Ganz talks about how Pissarro would have been right at home in San Francisco, how the painter's images of bankers resonate now, and how Pissarro saw himself as a rural worker. 
Camille Pissarro Apple Harvest
Animation used to be the province of the fantastic and the impossible: dancing hippos, futuristic planets, talking rabbits, and psychedelic forests. We're still inundated with anthropomorphized animals and (less grating and more gratifying) worlds too imaginative and expensive to depict in live action. But animation has emerged in recent decades as a potent medium for depicting reality as well as evoking the littered, off-kilter landscape of the mind.
Eric Leiser's Glitch in the Grid (its trailer is above) is one such film. It opens the San Francisco International Animation Festival tonight at SF Film Society | New People Cinema. In it, Leiser imagines the neuroses and frustrations of a remote hermit lured by well-meaning relatives to pencil-sketch-shallow Hollywood. Pushing the already fluid bounds of animation, the filmmaker meshes stop motion with live action to convey his protagonist's yearnings for deeper connection and purpose.
More >>Paris in November sounds great, but for those of us not in the 1 percent, our own little French film festival is a good substitute. The San Francisco Film Society brings back its annual French Cinema Now series with a mix of recent mainstream fare as well as inventive work from established masters.
This year's lineup skews toward the two things that the French like to makes movies about -- love and sex. (Who'd have thought?). There's a film about marriage-night fright -- Bachelor Days Are Over -- as well as one called Four Lovers, in which two couples swap partners in an ongoing arrangement. Angele and Tony considers the romantic needs of a female ex-con, while Goodbye First Love is a free-spirit film based on the Romeo and Juliet blueprint.
(Warning: trailer may be NSFW)
In 30 episodes, Twin Peaks established an indelible place in the history of television storytelling. Having aired for just more than one year (April 1990 to June 1991), the series built an instant and adoring viewership who turned it into a full-blown phenomenon that included book and music releases, magazines, fan clubs, and weekly viewing parties. Rarely do television programs age so well, but the murder of Laura Palmer and the ensuing investigation led by Special Agent Dale Cooper of the FBI and Sheriff Harry S. Truman continue to sustain an audience and gain new fans. 
To mark the 20 years since the show's cancellation, the Roxie Theater hosts an anniversary celebration Saturday that includes screenings of Otto Preminger's Laura (a source of inspiration for Twin Peaks' premise), the series pilot, and the prequel feature film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Here are five reasons the series, for us, will never die.
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Halloween is a natural time to think about horror movies -- and these days you can see anything you want (practically) on demand. As recently as 20 years ago, though, we were guided by what networks and local TV stations thought was cool. The local TV horror host was a big part of this -- that's how Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, got her start. Michael Monahan and Lon Huber a fascinating look at the history of local TV horror hosts -- such as KTVU's not-as-square-as-he-looks Bob Wilkins, pictured above -- in the book Shock It to Me: Golden Ghouls of the Golden Gate. Monahan and Luber read from the book and show rare clips Saturday (Oct. 29) at the Main Library. Read more about that here in our calendar section. We caught up with the horror host-orians for the spookiest Q&A ever.
What is a horror host?
MM: It starts with theatrical Spook Shows, which were a combination of Grand Guignol [1920s Parisian theater that focused on shock value] and vaudeville; with mad labs and guillotines on the stage, monsters running through the audience and ghosts flying overhead. When the Spook Show magicians added cheap monster movies to their acts, they essentially created the template for the modern TV horror host.
There were also dozens of colorful and creepy hosts who introduced horror stories on the radio, so the TV horror host synthesized the theatrical visual elements of Spook Shows with the music, sound effects, and traditional hosts of radio. Maila Nurmi created the first full-blown horror host when she brought Vampira to television in 1954.
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Plastic surgery is for people who want to look like Barbie. But consider Barbie herself. She already looks like Barbie. What kind of surgery should she have? Barbie's lucky in this regard. There are literally millions of her, and almost as many artists willing to perform operations for free. So if a particular surgery goes awry -- or if it goes as planned, but not everyone likes the result -- there can be plenty more operations. 
Danny Sanchez "With so Many Personalities Who Will She Be Today?"
Welcome to "Altered Barbie," where some people love the doll, some resent her, many mock her, but everyone has a say in what she becomes. The exhibit continues through Nov. 20 at Shotwell 50 Studio.
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Without your map Saturday night, you're nothing. What's that you say? You know your way around? You've lived here a whole year? You have a smartphone? Forget it. It's not smart enough. 
Shelley Eades
Saturday night is Lit Crawl, the intellectual orgy that's the climax to Litquake - and the only time you'll see the Mission overrun on a Saturday night by salivating brainiacs rather than Cool Kids carrying 40-ouncers and barfing between parked cars. In three phases, about 450 readers perform in nearly 80 venues - including bars, bookstores, cafes, alleys, and even a police station.
Having a plan is essential.
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