Night + Day

Wednesday
January 14
Take a Hike

Edward Hasbrouck, a world traveler and sometime travel agent, debunks the myths about getting the cheapest plane tickets ("Myth No. 5: Airline fares are cheaper locally") and offers packing tips for extended trekking in his book The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World. Other advice to be had when Hasbrouck discusses his work at a local in-store appearance: international finger signs used to indicate numbers; choosing travel in the First, Second, Third, and Fourth worlds; alphabet- and language-deciphering hints; and how to make border crossings and travel document-shuffling easier. The reading and discussion begins at 7:30 p.m. at Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia (at 20th Street), S.F. Admission is free; call 282-9246.

Thursday
January 15
They Just Clicked The winners of this year's James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography pushed past technical and cultural boundaries in their search for new photographic territory. Erin O'Neill messes with our collective perception of the powder room in her series Gender and Bathrooms, as men wearing skirts and bustiers, and sporting fake facial hair (and very real leg hair), render the little symbols on the restroom doors irrelevant. In her series it is the beauty of the yam to carve a dark path slowly, Kim Brown comments on the awkward modern relationship between humans and nature, creating large-color images in which yams function as a natural presence in an artificial world. And David Berg, the third in the winning trio, doesn't even use a camera in the experimental process; he paints faux negatives on mylar plastic cells and enlarges them to create faux photographic images. The work of artists who received honorable mentions will also be shown at the exhibit, which opens at noon (a reception will be held Friday at 5:30 p.m.) at S.F. Camerawork, 115 Natoma (at Mission), S.F. Admission is free; call 764-1001.

Friday
January 16
Makes Me Wanna Holler Glaswegian playwright Sharman MacDonald has gotten lots of mileage out of the rocky Scottish coast, the setting for her mother-daughter drama The Winter Guest, which was adapted by Alan Rickman into a new film starring Emma Thompson, as well as the backdrop to her 1984 mother-daughter debut drama, When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout, which the Center for Performance Studies will stage locally. In The Winter Guest, a mother admonishes her daughter to get on with her life after her husband dies; in Scream and Shout, an unmarried, childless, 32-year-old woman (Fiona) digs her feet into the rugged seaside landscape and confronts her aging mother (Morag), who often comments on her lack of grandchildren. As the drama unfolds, MacDonald switches back and forth between 1960 and 1983, to reveal that the 15-year-old Fiona and her best friend Vari plotted to have 17-year-old Ewan father Fiona's child so that Morag wouldn't go abroad with a new man. Pacific Sun theater columnist Lee Brady plays Morag in the show, which opens at 8 p.m. (and runs through Jan. 31) at 450 Geary Studio Theater, 450 Geary (at Sutter), S.F. Admission is $14; call 673-1172.

And By the Way, If You See Your Mom This Weekend ... Just when Satan reveals himself as Billy Crystal, along comes "Say You Love Satan! The Devil on Film," a program of pure cinematic evil from which Crystal and baby-snatching co-conspirator Woody Allen are conspicuously absent. (Insert Rosemary's Baby joke here.) Satan shows up in shorts -- short films, that is -- with Spook Show Trailers, a collection of ads for Halloween horror shows, and the 1960 trailer for A Date With Death, which introduced "psychorama," an audience manipulation technique using subliminal words and symbols on-screen. Satan kicks Cupid's ass in Tex Avery's Don't Look Now, and scantily clad German freuleins frolic their way through bondage, S/M, and the black arts in the 1928 film Black Mass. Kenneth Anger materializes in Invocation of My Demon Brother, with music by Mick Jagger (who once fashioned himself as a Satanic Majesty of sorts), and Lucifer Rising, the story of the famous fallen angel, featuring Marianne Faithfull and a soundtrack by ex-Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil. And what would a program devoted to Satan be without both sets of Mansons? Marilyn Manson casts a satanic spell on a young boy in Richard Kern's music video Lunchbox, which was banned from MTV, and when the series continues at 8 and 10 p.m. on Jan. 30, Charles Manson and his nutty adopted relatives take center stage in Jim VanBebber's Charlie's Family, which backtracks through the murderous Manson tale. The screenings begin at 8 p.m. tonight (and continue at 10 p.m. tonight with the Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi vehicle The Black Cat and 8 p.m. Jan. 23 with Where Evil Dwells) in the Center for the Arts Screening Room, 701 Mission (at Third Street), S.F. Admission is $3-6; call 978-ARTS. Meanwhile, Satan makes a cross-town appearance at the Asian Art Museum's documentary and animation film series "Touched by the Hand of the Devil (Akuma No Te)," showing in conjunction with the museum's exhibit of graphic, modern-themed paintings by Masami Teraoka. This week's films include Space Adventure Cobra, about the titular character's battles with the evil Crystal Boy (not Billy) showing at 7 p.m. tonight, and Night on the Galactic Railroad, about a boy who takes a trip on a mystery train showing at 2 p.m. Sunday. Screenings are held in the Trustees' Auditorium of the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park. Admission is free after museum admission (free-$7); call 379-8879 for more information.