Mission Mission

Here’s the deal:

Please join us Saturday July 25th from 9pm onwards at Virgil’s Sea Room for an evening of fun and frolics with toe thumping beats by:

Raton rose
Siobhan Avolot
Debbie DD & Skayda.

Head out onto the patio to see pieces from photographer Katie Hanrahan’s last trip to Nepal.

A portion of sales is kindly being donated by VIRGIL’S so you know…. Drink up kittens!

Let’s raise a bunch of money and awareness for ongoing relief efforts in Nepal. All the money we collect on the night will all go towards helping to build a new school at the Orphanage and pay for daily supplies. The name of the orphanage is the Disabled Rehabilitation Centre located in Katmandu.

RSVP and invite your friends!

Wow, has it really been two years already?

The Adobe Books and Arts Cooperative has been an amazing adventure, thanks for joining us on the journey. We need your help to continue to stay open and to thrive. Join us on July 24th and raise a glass to a wondrous creature known as Adobe Books, and to learn more about how you can get involved by joining the co-op.

There’ll be art from the staff, music, and treats from Tartine!  Check out all the details here.

Previously:

• How to celebrate an anniversary

It’s only been gone a month, but I miss it already.

[Photo by Cierra, via It's Always Sunny in San Francisco]

We are all about going on adventures. Going to Berkeley to see a show described as “A new musical about how a band of hippies, mystics and visionaries changed the world” at a historic venue known as the “little castle” definitely qualified. So this weekend DT&D saw Project Ahab; or, Eye of the Whale, which is Central Works 48th world premiere (Central Works only does world premieres so that racks up the numbers).

Photo by J. Norrena

Brittany: When I saw the description that it was a musical I was a little bit like “Okay, so this is like an environmentalist musical? I guess that worked for Hair?” but I was worried it was going to be kind of weird. I actually thought that the way they used music worked really well.

Katie: Some of the songs for me were really nice. The female leads were wonderful singers!

B: They did a good job with their use of AV too. It was really cool when she took a picture that it showed up as a projection.That was a really neat way to put us in a very different space.

K: The only problem was they trained us that when she took a picture, and we heard that clicking sound, a projection would show up. They would put up the projection a few times, but then they’d keep taking pictures but stop putting up the projection. I started watching the audience look after every time they heard that click, and then nothing would be there and people looked disappointed. I know I was.

B: Yeah I wish they either showed photos each time she clicked the camera or just left a photo up there if they thought it was too distracting to keep switching them.

K: The other thing that I struggled with, was their wordy monologues. I got lost. I am sure part of it was where we were sitting. They didn’t do a great job blocking for a thrust stage. There were so many times they had their back to us and we couldn’t see them, or they were blocked by another actor. It’s general admission too, so you can’t guarantee where you are going to sit unless you get there early.

B: I felt the same. They would get lost in their own monologues. The songs would move it along, and the interactions would move it along, but when a monologue started they would hit a wall. They’d go on a tangent about the clouds, and stars, and whales, which was beautiful, but it made the show lose momentum.

K: The only person that made a strong connection with other characters was Cree (Sam Jackson). There were a few scenes with her that really sucked me in. Cree was my favorite. So natural. She wasn’t up there acting at us. She was reacting to what was happening around her.

B: I would watch her in a play all day.

K: One thing they did that really “get my goat”, as they say, was the extreme slow motion fight scene. I mean, we are right here. We are so close to you. I thought they were joking at first.

B: Yeah, that was awkward . . . but with that said, I was never bored and there was actually a lot I enjoyed.

The Verdict: Do you happen to be going to Berkeley in the next few weeks and want to go to a castle like venue built in 1927 and see a world premiere of an innovative folksy musical? We found the adventure for you! If you answered no to that question, then we say this isn’t quite worth the trip. This piece had some great moments, and it was an interesting venue, but still has some kinks to work out.

The Drama Talk: This is the environmentalist musical version of Moby Dick. Instead of going after a whale, they are going after a whaling ship. Moby Dick is a hard book because it’s long and poetic. It allows itself very flowery, super descriptive, long asides. Given the fact that the playwright borrows heavily from the book’s plot, we assume they were going for similar flourishes of language as well. However, there is a reason that a lot of people don’t read Moby Dick. Melville’s musings can lose people. The actors were so involved with the language and what was going on with their own characters that they weren’t connecting with the other actors on stage. It felt like they were acting at each other instead of with each other.

The Drinks: The venue is in the middle of Berkeley-college-kid-central. To avoid the college night life, like the 30 year old curmudgeons we are, we went to an old hotel bar called Henry’s a couple of blocks away. It was a perfect place to debrief, since it had mostly people over the age of 40 and plenty of open tables. Stick to beer or wine though, the bartender had to look up how to make a Moscow mule. If you want to get crazy with the college kids, we saw them all going into Kipps.

Project Ahab; Or Eye of the Whale runs through August 23rd at Central works in the Berkeley City Club. Tickets are available on the Central Works website for $28. Tickets at the door can be purchased for $15-28 sliding scale. Pay what you can nights are every Thursday.

[via Stokemonster]

Local artist Jenny Odell just stumbled upon this relic at the dump. What a find!

Here’s the rundown, from BoardGameGeek:

“Welcome to the Silicon Valley! You’ll soon be traveling through the Santa Clara Valley on its main highway, earning income, buying a new car, buying a home, and making investment decisions. Naturally, you can succeed or fail; just like reality, some of the decisions are up to you.”

Many elements in this game are real businesses, Intel, HP, Varian, Memorex, San Jose Mercury, Stanford, San Jose State, Sant Clara Univ. Local major Banks, Auto dealers, Real Estate companies real places. Months of research planning and coperation and their participation. No one was ever charged to be in the game. It really played well. It would have to be done by 4 locals to understand how it had a strategy and used math skills other than counting bills.

One person surmised–Appears to be a conversion of ‘The Game of Life’ to a local region similar to the multitude of ‘-opolys’ -but never played it.

This board game was the most succesful in the region of San Francisco/Silicon Valley for 11/80-1/82 selling about 30,000 copies. Only behind a popular toy Rubik’s Cube. Later others ITC San Francisco, ITC Hawaii, ITC New York, RW Marathon Game, Dotto and lastly a solo effort the official-KFAT Gilroy Garlic Game 5K.

Read on for lots more — like lots — on the game’s inventor.

Also, there’s one — like only one — for sale on Amazon if you’re real interested.

Wheel of Karaoke sure has come a long way. Way back when it started last year, it was at the Make-Out Room and didn’t expressly involve comedians — and now it’s expanding west to Lost Weekend Video and it expressly involves comedians! The event is a week from today. Here’s the deal:

Everyone loves a great comedian, especially when they know how to cradle the delicate balance of insight and silliness, and there are fewer things in life more enjoyable than watching a group of great comedians gather to riff in-the-moment insults directed at each other.

Wheel of Karaoke West is the only show in San Francisco that involves comedians who sing, tell jokes, and give each other plenty of love taps in the process. In this new edition of the hit show “Wheel of Karaoke”, a new panel of comedians is assembled each month to practice slinging wisecracks both at the audience and each other, all the while remembering why they never cut it as a lead singer in their high school punk band. The format works as follows: each comedian takes a turn to tell their best jokes, then sings a karaoke song while performing a challenge selected by the “Wheel of Fate”. These challenges range from the frustrating, such as singing while upside down, to the absurd, like calling the would-be pop-star’s parents. After all is said and sung, the comedy panel calls forth their weapons of blunt honesty and sardonic wit to make fun of each other, while the audience grabs a drink from the bar, sits back, and lets the bellyaching begin.

July’s show features the following modern-day singing jesters:

Jesse Hett (SF Sketchfest, SJ Improv)

Matt Curry (Laughs Unlimited)

John Gallagher (Savage Henry Comedy Festival)

Aviva Siegel (SF Sketchfest)

Krista Fatka (SF Sketchfest, Redwood Comedy Festival)

and your host Brandon Garner (Wheel of Karaoke, Redwood Comedy Festival)

Enjoy it here in the Mission now, before it gets its own HBO show and moves to Los Angeles!

Oh and Mission Mission readers get a discount on tickets if you use the code MISSIONMISSION (or just use this link). Thanks, Wheel of Karaoke West!

This epic banh mi (chicken meatball in a ginger tomato sauce) will be just one of the stars of Friday night’s Summer Night Market at Rice Paper Scissors on Mission Street. Here’s the deal:

This night-market-style dinner fuses Asian cuisine with Californian sensibilities. In this recreation of the street food markets found in Asia, taste phở, noodle soups, braised meats, and coconut shrimp all under one roof.

Beer, wine, and cocktails will be available for purchase from Brick & Mortar.

Full menu, more details, and advance tickets here!

Roald Dahl’s works are often shelved in the Children’s section of the library, but in reality Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach, are all pretty dark compared to traditional kid-fare. (Who wasn’t a little scarred by Willy Wonka’s chocolate river tunnel boat ride horror show?) Though part of our initial excitement about getting to see Matilda, the tour of the Broadway musical adaptation of the Dahl classic which is now playing at SHN’s Orpheum Theater, should be attributed to childhood nostalgia, we were also excited to see how the show succeeded in being a hit with adults too. So off we went for a night of Drama Talk, Drinks and ICE CREAM (Humphry Slocombe previewed a new-Matilda inspired flavor at opening, it was delicious and will supposedly now be available with a limited run a local shops, go get your sugar rush on)!

Katie: So many kids in this show! Extremely well trained, talented kids! And they looked like they were like 8! Knowing how much goes into being in a national tour of a Broadway show, I wondered what it must be like for them to have such an unconventional childhood. Well, really not have a childhood. What will these kids be like at 18?

Brittany: They will either decide they don’t want to act anymore, and say what the hell was my childhood?! Or end up like Brittany Spears and Miley Cyrus, so pissed off that they didn’t have a childhood they start licking random shit.

K: Hmm… well the plus side is they made the show so cute.

B: It was so cute! And so clever.

K: It was like watching a cartoon as a live musical. With how Mrs. Trunchbull was played by a man and wearing the exact costume from the book, all of the special effects, to the jerky, unnatural choreography and not to mention the swinging a kid by her braids.

B: I can’t believe they were able to pull that off. How did they even do that?! And the actor that played Mr. Wormwood was so old school vaudeville. Like the way he did takes and kicks in every single one of his exits was really cartoony. He was amazing.

K: He was great! So was the male actor that played Mrs. Trunchbull.

B: Sometimes when you have a guy play a female character and it’s like the fat women who is bad or crazy it comes off as weird and rubs me wrong. But this was done in a very tasteful way. Overall, I didn’t think it was going to be as dark and scary as it was. As an adult that made me really like it. It was a surprisingly biting critique of contemporary culture, everybody just cares about being loud. It felt like the song call “Telly” was a critique of Fox News.

K: Or reality TV. I felt like a lot of the message was lets not put so much weight on being the prettiest and the loudest, let’s care more about being kind and informed.

B: Yeah, I liked how the show really critiqued the way society so often tells people “Don’t be smart. Be pretty.” “We don’t need substance just a hundred and forty characters will do”.(She points to the Twitter office above us)

The Verdict: You don’t need to like musicals to like this show, it’s so fun and clever. If you hate: light hearted fun, talented kids, smiling, confetti, dark cartoons, swings and english accents you will hate this show. Otherwise, GO GET YOUR TICKETS, it was smart, dark and delightful.

The Drama Talk: This show was nominated for Best Musical, and won Best Set Design and Costume Design for a reason. It is such a refreshing take on a classic story that even though we have all seen the movie, this adaptation still surprises and does not disappoint.

The Drinks: After over two years of DT&D we have been to nearly all the bars in a two block radius of the Orpheum, so we were excited to see that a new bar/restaurant called Dirty Water opened opened on 10th and Market…Yep, inside the Twitter building. We were intrigued, but skeptical. We walked up to the door off of Market, but it was locked. We went around and entered through the alley off of 10th St. As you enter, you question if you are still in San Francisco… but after a chat with the very nice and knowledgeable bartender who makes you the best cocktails you ever had, skepticism quickly makes way for fandom. Brittany had the Long Strange Trip and Katie had the Suffering Bastard. The drinks aren’t cheap, and neither is the show, but both were very worth it.

Matilda runs through August 15th at SHN’s Orpheum Theater. Tickets are available through SHN’s website for $45-$210. They are also doing a $40 rush tickets for every show, so show up 2 ½ hours before any performance to try your luck. 2 per person. At the moment Goldstar also has tickets for sale for $65.

It’s by a popup simply called Burger, and you can get one of your own Mondays at Cease & Desist (fka Buffalo Wild Wings).

Also, follow Burger on Instagram for lots more juicy pics.

[via FOB Kitchen on Instagram]