After reading celebraTORI, professional famous person Tori Spelling's 275-page Pinterest post about "unleashing your inner party planner to entertain friends and family," I am somewhat surprised to report that my inner party planner does, in fact, exist, and that it thinks party favors are the coolest.

But my snarky sense of skepticism also exists (and is decidedly healthier), and it smirks, rubs its fat hands together, and orders another whiskey on the rocks when it encounters suggestions such as, "You must have many desserts, and they must be displayed at all different heights."

Because let's face it: Tori is not a terribly sympathetic character. This is a woman whose tits have gotten more press time than most other architectural mishaps, from when her daddy first bought them in her 90210 days to the picture her husband Dean McDermott "accidentally" tweeted last November. She's also the kind of person who whines about an $800,000 inheritance, so perhaps it should be unsurprising that her money-saving tips include, "Sometimes it is just plain better, and sometimes even cheaper, to throw money at the problem." (Trying to sort out her logic actually gave me a tension headache.)

But hey, I needed an excuse to have my friends over, and for most people "come meet my cats and cuddle in the sun room" is not a good enough reason to make the trip across town. So I promised cocktails and appetizers, and then I set to prepping with celebraTORI as my guide.

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Disposable Fim Festival 2012 trailer
For decades, high cost made film one of the few art forms not readily influenced by the street. Accessible technology -- including cell phones and webcams -- has changed things. While the dominance of crotch-blows and kittens on YouTube has led some auteurs to bemoan the "democratization of film," no one can doubt the impact of having so many stories being told from fresh eyes around the world. The cutting-edge Disposable Film Festival brings together works by "lesser" devices from as far afield as Iran, in categories including science and stop-motion. This year's festival, which runs through the weekend, offers workshops, panels, lectures, parties, and screenings, but the Competitive Shorts Night remains the crowd favorite. It's Thursday night at the Castro Theatre.

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The Wizard of Speed and Time is a semi-autobiographical tale of a special effects wiz(ard) battling the Hollywood system. I speak from experience when I say it was an employee favorite at the Video Zone in Fresno back in the 1990s. It's still beloved by many of us.

Director Mike Jittlov stars as himself, and he also wrote, edited, scored, and co-produced the film -- and (duh) did the special effects. The majority of them are technically visual effects, not special effects, but I'm not here to split those hairs.

Instead, I'm here to praise a film that is not the only the greatest lost treasure of the VHS era -- oh yeah, I'm callin' it -- but of the Laserdisc era, too, and one that has been, sadly, out of distribution ever since.

Describing it as "pre-CGI" is too pat and too retconny. Rather, I prefer to think of Jittlov's approach as "I've got an optical printer, and I'm not afraid to use it."

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"We should do a public access show about cats!"

That's what my girlfriend Katrina said one night in December 2001 as we watched Channel 29, Access San Francisco. I thought it sounded like a great idea, and it still sounded good the next morning when we were sober. This is part two of that story.

(Please read Part 1 here. Also, in spite of how the font on this blog makes it look, kittypr0n is spelled with the numeral zero, not the letter O.)

Every tape submitted to Access San Francisco in 2002 was required to begin with 60 seconds of black, then a 30-second slate containing show and producer information so the programming coordinator would know it was the correct thing, and then a neato 10-second countdown provided by the station.

After that, the station played whatever the next 28:30 happened to be. Lots of shows just kinda started and stopped, but it was important to us that kittypr0n be framed like an actual television program, with a title screen at the beginning and credits at the end. More >>

Meilssa Rinne, associate curator of Japanese art, inspects a basket brought in by a member. Alas, the basket is interesting, but not of museum quality.

"Don't buy anything in Hong Kong," warns Maurice Jonas, a volunteer tasked with ferrying eager members of the Asian Art Museum to and from their 20-minute appointments. "They all do, and it's always junk."

And so begins the museum's own version of Antiques Roadshow, called Contributor's Consultation Day, on a recent, dreary, wet Friday. Much like the popular television show that seems to exist in every country, hopeful amateur collectors present their purported treasures to experts -- in this case, the museum's curatorial staff -- who offers them information on probable origin, date and attribution.

In addition to information, the curators also dole out -- in the most sympathetic way they possibly can -- a whole lot of heartbreak. Without fail, every member offered up an item that had garnered an entire mythology, often cultivated by external players. In some cases, the item was a gift and the giver had implied, virtuously or not, that it was of great worth.

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Updated with new extended deadline!

It's that time of year again: Not ski season (sadly!) but Masterminds, an annual competition held by SF Weekly to give leading local artists, designers, filmmakers, and performers cash grants.

Yes, you read that right: We're giving away good money to good local artists. (Emerging artists! That means, you aren't getting rich at it ... yet!) But to win, you have to enter by Jan. 23 noon on Friday, January 27.

Masterminds grants will be awarded in the following categories: Visual art, fashion/design, performing arts, and film/video/media. The exact size of the 2012 grants haven't been determined yet, but last year we gave out three grants at $1,500 each. Hit the jump for this year's details.

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San Jose hosts Further Confusion 2012, California's largest annual furry convention, starting today (Thursday). Further Confusion 2011's attendance hit 2,801, and more than 3,000 attendees are expected this year. (Glossary Tip: The overall furry scene, fans, fursuiters, and those elsewhere on the spectrum, are collectively referred to as "the fandom.")

Lee Strom co-founded the first Further Confusion in 1999, and he has been actively involved with the fandom since before then as a fursuit maker -- including as the head of Frolic's NeonBunny -- as well as a party organizer and general raccoon-about-town. We spoke with Strom -- whose fandom name is Chairo (\chi'-ro\) -- about the history, art, and business of fursuits.

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"We should do a public access show about cats!"

That's what my girlfriend Katrina said one night in December 2001 as we watched Channel 29, Access San Francisco. I thought it sounded like a great idea, and it still sounded good the next morning when we were sober.

Besides, nobody else was doing it. While there was no shortage of cat pictures on Web 1.5, there was no reliable source of cat videos yet, and as the Exhibitionist's Angela Lutz pointed out, they're good for your health.

Not that this was going to be online -- this was going to be on public access television. Hell, our camcorder was VHS-C. The show was going to be all-analog, though the title, kittypr0n -- pronounced "kitty-PRAWN", not "kitty-PORN," all lowercase and spelled with the numeral zero, and though the font used on sfweekly.com squashes the zero and make it look like the letter o, it really isn't -- was based on leetspeak, like the 1337 hax0rs we were (not).

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Whether you realize it or not, we are living in a special time for stand-up comedy. It doesn't happen that often. But right now, the most talked about comedian in America is also acknowledged by comics as one of, if not the, best comedian in America: Louis CK.

And if you didn't know that, you have just officially learned that you are out of the loop.

Louis won the title with the release of his new comedy special for the clearance bin price of five measly bucks. That's right! Five bucks and you can digitally download your own HD copy of Louis CK: Live at The Beacon Theater. And the crazy thing is that it wasn't his critically acclaimed hit TV show, Louie, that cinched it. It was his illogical, seemingly business non-savvy release of his DIY DVD. Which means that Louis won the title of best comic in the country during the offseason. This is like Lebron James winning the NBA Most Valuable Player Award during training camp.

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It was Dec. 10, 2002. Still reeling from the dot-com crash and my subsequent difficulties in finding a job (damn you, Obama! And where's the birth certificate?), my girlfriend Katrina and I decided to cancel our cable subscription. The few shows we actually watched were available over broadcast, so it would be no great loss ... except for one thing: Channel 29, Access San Francisco, the public access channel.

So, I recorded the night for posterity.

10pm: Torah Time

The tape begins, as all things must, with the last few minutes of a show in Russian (with a tiny little bit of yiddish mixed in, I'm told).

10:30pm: The Blue Lew Show

It's the first of the evening's "shot in my living room" shows. (Torah Time was too, in all likelihood, but it looks quasi-professional.) It's mostly amateur video of concerts, including Sammy Hagar at Justin Herman Plaza, but the highlight is the host killing the last few minutes of the show by lip-syncing to Ted Nugent's Double Live Gonzo.

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