Arts & Events

Forgive me for being behind the curve, but I’ve just discovered an incandescent klieg light buried in the Bay Area’s sub-cultural bushes. For anyone who hasn’t yet heard about Ira Marlowe, listen up. (The best way to do that, by the way, is to tap into his Website — http://www.iramarlowe.com/MUSIC.html — for some samples or, even better, show up at one of his next two local gigs — the first is coming up this Saturday in Berkeley. See below for details). -more-

A month or so ago, I got my cable pulled (by my own hand), and, boy, was it painful!

So my methadone was Netflix with which I can “stream” lots of movies onto my computer and/or my 50” beautiful boob-tube. And they gave me a month for free, thereafter about $10, so I’m saving about $100 a month off Comcast, and it gives me a lot more time to download my brain into reviews like these. (I went to Best Buy and dropped about $189 on a Blu-Ray DVD player with built in Netflix and Hulu capability; if you haven’t seen a Blu-Ray video, then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.)

So here are two films and a series that are my picks for this month: -more-

Sometimes a reviewer gets a break and in the same week goes to see two plays with avian titles so that he can quip a little in his headline; but these plays have more similarities than just the title subjects. -more-

NOTE: Author Benjamin Ross will be reading from his new book and answering questions in San Francisco this Thursday. Time and location: 7PM at the Green Arcade Bookstore, 1680 Market Street, San Francisco (near Gough).

The Polluters: The Making of Our Chemically Altered Environment,By Benjamin Ross & Steven Amter (Oxford University Press, 2011)

One of the real surprises about The Polluters is that the co-authors are not green-hued activists or crusading journalists. Ben Ross and Steven Amter are, respectively, the president and senior environmental scientist at Disposal Safety, Inc., a DC-based consulting firm. Nonetheless, Ross and Amter have turned out a spellbinding and detailed compendium of corporate deceit and defiance that will leave readers fuming at the towering gall of the Polluting Class. -more-

With unemployment and home foreclosures sharply rising and the nation-wide economy on a downward spiral, these are not rosy times! Certainly the Japan disaster and fears of escaping radiation does little to lift our spirits. So, rather than settle for purely entertaining events and activities, perhaps we should consider something of a more substantive nature, such as the Peace Walk this Saturday, April 16, when groups will congregate at Lake Merritt from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. to stop the violence in the streets of Oakland. -more-