Carrina Schindler

Damien Chacona in the title role.

Ham Pants' production of The Wrong Dick, at the Dark Room this month Thursdays through Saturdays, is as much a love letter to detective noir as it is a spoof. And like so many love letters (not that we critics receive a lot of them, but we can imagine), this one goes on a little too long.

When it parodies, however, this show shines. It follows Mort Fiskarmann (Tim Kay), a fishmonger who stumbles upon, throws up in, and then finds himself somehow responsible for a pile of dead whores -- or as one character says it, "hoo-oars." Complicating his exoneration is a madcap adventure through various San Francisco neighborhoods, on which he encounters a parade of multiple stock characters in the genre: the inscrutable, opium-peddling Oriental (Cameron Eng); the "dame" who's dying to tell her story of woe to "a capable man" but then erupts with histrionics into her handkerchief (Monica Hernandez); and of course, the trench coat-sporting hard-boiled detective (Damien Chacona).

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Men, please dress like this more often. Actually, please dress like this all the time. Thank you.

I could go on about what great clothing people wore to the Art Deco Society of California's Art Deco Preservation Ball on Saturday night, or what an appropriate venue the glitzy and historic Bimbo's 365 Club is for any vintage-themed event, or how people should be throwing money at the Deco society so it can continue its noble efforts to preserve the architectural and artistic masterpieces of that dazzling era. I could, and yes, people looked spectacular and showed off a variety of fascinating period dance moves to the era's tunes, many sung by Frederick Hodges, a true '20's style light tenor. But more interesting than the event itself for someone who wasn't there might be that it highlights what we've lost as a culture in terms of the way we "party" -- what we talk about when we talk about clubbing. More >>

Tommy Lau

Words on film: Jonathan Lethem

At last year's San Francisco International Film Festival, indie producer and invited speaker Christine Vachon embarrassed her hosts with a sloppy and unprepared "State of Cinema" report. To erase the lingering memory of that lowbrow disaster, organizers lured another New Yorker, best-selling novelist and professor Jonathan Lethem (The Fortress of Solitude), to the big house at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas over the weekend to deliver the annual address. One could say the festival rode the elevator from street level to an upper ivory-tower floor, with appreciably better (though not-quite-scintillating) results.

Conveying a casual likability -- maybe it was the untucked shirt under the gray sportcoat, or the gray shoes with green laces -- Lethem acknowledged the performance requirements of his assignment by beginning with a five-minute "joke" and maintaining a high level of energy and enthusiasm throughout his 45-minute talk. But Lethem is a writer, not a speaker, which is to say that his litany of ideas, feints, parentheticals, and digressions would be better served by reading it on the page than by hearing it delivered. (The festival has posted a video the essay -- a more descriptive word than "speech" -- which you can see here.)

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Maureen Walsh

Series founders Wendy Rein and Ryan T. Smith in A Public Affair. They take coffee orders, too. No, seriously.

The Concept dance series is a rare bird hiding in San Francisco's cultural aviary. Put on by RAWdance, it's pay-what-you-can, semi-undiscovered, and there's free food. First-date heaven! Or, for those muddling around sans date, you're practically guaranteed to meet new and (this being a dance audience) attractive people. Singles heaven!

Beyond that, though, lies something even more appealing and harder to define. It just feels good to be there. Part of it is the brick-walled, historic venue, 66 Sanchez Studio, formerly known as the James Howell Studio. The rest is because of curators Ryan Smith and Wendy Rein, the co-directors of RAWdance. They founded the group in 2004, and in 2007 they started this twice-yearly series. The two dancers, lithe and coiffed, have this emcee shtick that would be annoying if they were any less good at it.

See, after welcoming the audience -- Smith: "Is this anyone's virginal experience of the Concept series?" -- they hand out cups of popcorn, take coffee orders -- "or else people get limey" (Rein) -- then go dance the hell out of a piece or scamper offstage to ensure everything is running smoothly. Then they come back to vamp a bit, breathless and accommodating (more coffee orders, more popcorn), while the next performers prepare or someone in the crew leans over the front row of seats to ask an audience member to dim the lights halfway, as the switch is just behind her.

It's cozy like that.

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Kellen Breen

American Boys and Girls

Get past the miscellany of dogs and beer, and you'll find a surprisingly refreshing art gallery in the back of Place Pigalle, Hayes Valley's no-frills culture destination.

The exhibition "Paintings by Kellen Breen and Scott Inguito" opened Saturday night to a familiar crowd that was more mainstream than art geek, less tech and more street -- a rare blend of normalcy that was surprisingly more interested in the artwork than being seen. The large-scale oil paintings -- some measure five feet across -- are impressive and thought-provoking without being overwhelming. Breen and Inguito, who share a studio in the Mission, clearly work well together in close quarters, and their work exhibits harmoniously side by side. Where Breen's paintings are visually stimulating and complex, Inguito's focus and nuanced study on the El Camino -- the car, not the road -- is sublime.

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Nina de Torres Ignacio

The cast of Bill Peters' production of Hamlet.

To some ways of thinking, the title role in Hamlet is a natural part for female performers. Unlike the other male characters in Shakespeare's tragedy, who are all too ready to kill or banish or compromise their loved ones the moment the thought crosses their minds, Hamlet thinks before he acts. The Prince of Denmark is a university student, much more at home in the world of words and thoughts and debates than in the one in which he finds himself: a revenge plot.

Hamlet's father has died, and his mother Gertrude has married his uncle Claudius, isolating Hamlet in what Claudius calls "unmanly grief." Literature historically leaves mourning to women -- Hamlet's closest predecessors might be Penelope and Electra. Hamlet revels in his grief, using it as a weapon, a comfort, yet still insisting that what he shows the world is "but the trappings and the suits of woe." But when he finds out that Claudius killed his father and that he must avenge his father's death, his grief proves ill suited to spur him to kill.

Many actresses have taken on the Dane, including legendary Shakespeareans Sarah Siddons and Sarah Bernhardt. Director Bill Peters, in a minimalist San Francisco State production, is now taking the femininity up a notch by casting actresses in all the roles. That doesn't mean that the characters become female. Nor does it mean a lot of fake beards and artificially deep voices -- rather, it's a lot of unflattering menswear. Actually, it's easy to forget that Peters' performers are women. Once in a while, Hamlet (Alix Cuadra) and his confidante Horatio (Maia Knibb) giggle like schoolgirls, or Claudius (Kayla Lauzier) and Gertrude (Celeste Conowitch) whisper sweet nothings to and pet one another, calling attention to gender much in the way that Shakespeare's all-male troupe did. Other than that, the performers might as well be men.

It seems there's no larger purpose to the cross-gender casting. Not that there has to be. Women ought to be able to interpret any role in whatever way they choose without the imperative to be subversive or "feminist." The trouble with Peters' production is that "just because" seems to be the answer to every artistic question.

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Charlie Jane Anders

The big thing you need to know about the monthly series Writers with Drinks is this: Arrive super early, maybe even an hour before, for your chance at a stool or a booth. The Make Out Room is a pretty big space, but Saturday's installment still felt packed to a fire-hazard-y degree.

For good reason! As organized by Charlie Jane Anders, a writer and science-fiction nerd, five authors brought all the literary cred you'd want. With or without drinks, they read their work while most of the audience stood (and many others sprawled on the floor). Some were making out!

Overall, the evening's tone was a grab bag of comic-book geekery (Los Angeles' Sarah Kuhn), memories of a precocious childhood (local Glen David Gold), plain old storytelling (L.A.'s Amber Benson, who, from her three-season stretch acting on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, boasts a platinum-clad geek quotient), semi-erotic fiction (San Francisco's Malinda Lo), and fully erotic fiction (New York's Rachel Kramer Bussel).

A sex writer by profession, Bussel read her harrowing story of a woman who loves getting smacked by her lover. When the two end up doing it in an alley, one's panty-less-ness is revealed; things get drippy; Handi Wipes are proffered, "because she was a top who came prepared."

Whoa.

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SF Weekly art director Andrew J. Nilsen gives you a first-person perspective of what it took to compete with the top-notch racers in the recent Bring Your Own Big Wheel 2012, a race down Vermont Street, which is as twisty and curvy as the famous part of Lombard Street, except it's not famous (and its surface just looks like road, rather than fancy-schmancy bricks).

The video (set to the Dead Kennedys' "Police Truck" among other tunes) also includes pre-race tuning and customization as well as front- and rear-view perspective of the downhill action.

Nilsen got such a kick out of this project he created another video on what the race looked like from the sidelines -- except things are going backward, at four times their normal speed.

"Party!" says Nilsen.

Click through to see his creation.

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Michael Devin

In an act of unprecedented sacrilege, Funky Jesus gives the devil horns as he's crowned Hunky Jesus 2012.

Bonnets and bunny ears were among the various kinky and religion-bending outfits and accessories populating Dolores Park on Sunday as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence led hundreds through a San Francisco-style Easter celebration, but it was Funky Jesus -- playing a cross-shaped guitar -- who won top honors. He was crowned Hunky Jesus 2012 in a contest that marked the order's 33rd birthday.

During the full day of events, champagne bottles were uncorked at every turn and the smell of marijuana filled the air. The Red Hots Burlesque started the celebration, which also included a contest for the most elaborately decorated bonnet.

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Michelle Tea founded Sister Spit.

"I've been thinking a lot about Adrienne Rich," began the legendary queer author Dorothy Allison. The crowd was hushed, the silence nurturing reverence. "I've been thinking about the stories we all share." Allison's Southern cadence rolled off her tongue as she opined, "Leave something behind." And Allison definitely left something behind on Sunday -- tales involving sex, porcelain, childbirth, and (maybe) orgasm.

But before we get there, we should tell you Allison was the final reader at Sunday's Sister Spit event at the San Francisco Public Library. And if you don't know (yet), Sister Spit is a vanload of chanteuses and luminaries, queer legends and performance artists, who travel the country in a sort of literary roadshow every April. Sunday's edition inaugurated the 2012 tour with a special SF appearance by Ali Liebegott and Hilary Goldberg's short film adaptation of a chapter from Michelle Tea's Valencia.

The vivacious Tea, host extraordinaire and founder of Sister Spit, welcomed the crowd with two announcements. The first (which we already knew) was that her book Valencia is being made into a film with each chapter adapted by a different director and cast. The second was that Sister Spit is getting its own imprint with City Lights Publishers. Tea is indeed a busy, busy lady (did anyone catch her hosting Balderdash the other week at Intersection for the Arts?), and now she's on the road with her traveling cabaret, moving between Southern California, Arizona, and back up to Oakland on Sunday, April 8, for a different show with Beth Lisick and Annie Danger.

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