Hiya's Weekend Blahg

Starting the weekend right: Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts’ visual exhibits always rock, but its “Illusion” series is extra special since they cover the joint with paper and like 50 artists dress in white while doing their thing live. We didn’t get the chance to put it in Night & Day, but it was dramatic as usual. Guillermo Gomez-Peña was there, as were several half-naked ladies, and it looked like someone was making ceviche, as a performance piece. Sadly, it’s a one-night-only event. But check out its blog for more pictures.

I heard Artists’ Television Access is in danger of having its rent raised to the breaking point. Imagine the Mission without ATA, and fight back tears. Send them hunks of money, or love letters, or I don’t know, but we better do something dudes.

Skip to Sunday. I still think Evil Hippie’s myspace page is awesome, but I thought they sounded kind of more like Subdued Hippie when I went to check out the show at the Hemlock last night. I think we couldn’t really hear the laptop player very well. But the drummer was amazing in both skillz and faux-nerd glasses-wearing style. Serious polyrhythms and a Diego Luna-meets-Buddy Holly thing? Oh hell yes. Plus the crowd was so cute it was nearing irritating: very young, very well dressed, happy, dancey. I had to get out of there. I went to Martuni’s to hear Katy Stephan at the live pianoside showtunes karaoke thing she does Tuesdays and Sundays (starting at 9, I think.) It used to be one hundred per cent salt-and-pepper gay men and the silly ladies able withstand their comments on our singing. But last night it was fucking packed with damnably perky groups of straight-seeming youthsters who didn’t know the words to their songs. Katy enchanted the rest of us with a gorgeously depressing version of “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” during which the toddlers were shushed by the guys sitting at the piano seats. All this plus a ride home in the trusty City CarShare = perfect end to weekend. --Hiya Swanhuyser