Latest in Calendar

• Latest in Calendar

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    Comedy Comedy

    Recommended

    Nikki Glaser

    Stand-up comedian Nikki Glaser jokes about deeply unpleasant topics. Like mowing down old men in her car, never knowing a mother's love, or getting back together with a boyfriend because he had a functioning printer. But look beyond that, and the former host of MTV's Nikki & Sara Live (RIP) and frequent fixture on Comedy Central's @Midnight will joke about even more unpleasant things. Like DIY Brazilian waxes, the agony and ecstasy of using an electric toothbrush as a vibrator, or asking her man to shave her big toes. With any luck, she'll lighten things up with jokes about abortion or the correct season in which to leave children in a locked car (winter — they can last for hours!). Nikki Glaser performs at 8 tonight, 8 and 10 p.m. Friday and 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the Punch Line Comedy Club, 444 Battery St., S.F. $16-$22; 397-7573 or punchlinecomedyclub.com. More
    Feb. 25
    Punch Line
    Giselle Velazquez
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    Education History

    Recommended

    Rick Prelinger & Péter Forgács in Conversation

    Rick Prelinger is the archivist and filmmaker whose Lost Landscapes of San Francisco screenings reflect not just on "the city that's gone," as he says, but also "the city we'd like to live in." He has a kindred spirit in Budapest filmmaker Péter Forgács, who likewise understands the value of raiding our cultural cupboards for proto-selfie mementos of more innocent times. Forgács' Letters to Afar is a haunting mosaic of pre-Holocaust home movies from Poland, and his Private Hungary series builds inquisitive, experimental narratives out of found footage from the 1930s-1960s — a not undramatic period, it's fair to say, of Hungarian history. Like Prelinger, Forgács turns ostensibly ordinary banalities to poetic purposes — illuminating, for instance, philosopher István Bibó's assertion that "the greatest threat to the rule of law is not the people outside it, but those uncertain and distorted situations in which it becomes bad, contradictory, and hypocritical." It's a wonder we made it through the last century, and there's no telling how this one will end — except with lots of footage. Filmmakers Rick Prelinger and Péter Forgács speak at 6:30 p.m. at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F. $10; 655-7881 or thecjm.org. More
    Feb. 26
    Contemporary Jewish Museum
    Jonathan Kiefer
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    Calendar On the Cheap

    Recommended

    Mac McClelland

    Human-rights journalist Mac McClelland is not afraid to cry. Over her career, she has immersed herself in horrific situations in the Congo, Uganda, Burma, and more with an unflinching eye and unflagging humanity. It's emotional work, but crying jags — sudden, inexplicable, and crippling — are unacceptable. After returning from Haiti in 2011, McClelland found herself in California, safe yet plagued by terrors. Crying, sweating, gagging, trembling — waking or sleeping, her brain was a very bad neighborhood. Drinking helped a little; masochistic sex helped a lot more. When McClelland published an essay about her personal experience with post-traumatic stress disorder, and her coping mechanisms, other female journalists loudly criticized her for being narcissistic and, worse, irresponsible. McClelland answered the censure by delving deeper. The result is Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story, an intimate examination of the disorder that includes detailed reporting on our culture's relationship to PTSD; the latest research, which indicates family members of sufferers often develop serious symptoms; and a very real love story. Mac McClelland speaks at 7:30 p.m. at Booksmith, 1644 Haight St., S.F. Free; 863-8688 or booksmith.com. More
    Feb. 26
    The Booksmith
    Silke Tudor
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