This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Sunday, May 16, 2004
Experimental music is sometimes misunderstood, as the Magnetic Fields' "Experimental Music Love" from their album 69 Love Songs shows, but the form continues as a vital force in the Bay Area: Witness the San Francisco Alternative Music Festival. Fred Frith is probably the best-known performer scheduled at this five-night noise fiesta, having been the bass player for John Zorn's Naked City, a composer for the Rova Sax Quartet, and a fascinating improv guitarist with his own foursome. But if you're attending these events looking for star power, you're in the wrong place. Instead, you'll find a hardworking, creative community of weird-music makers. S.F. Alt's closing show is tonight at 8 at the Music Union Hall, 116 Ninth St. (at Mission), S.F. Admission is $10 per show, or $40 for a festival pass; call 241-0684 or visit www.sfalt.org for complete schedule and venue info.

Monday, May 17, 2004
Using the words "crap," "turd," "Hershey squirt," and, to a lesser extent, "dookie" is a pretty low way to get laughs, so let's hope the dignified professionals on the Bass Red Triangle Comedy Tour do not stoop to our level. Hosted by Chicago City Limits, which for some reason is a New York City comedy institution, the show features plenty of laughable locals who, we bet, won't rely on potty humor (with the exception of the word "shit," without which no human, let alone a comedian, can communicate). Black & Tan Improv, for example, is two African-American women from the acclaimed Bay Area troupe Oui Be Negroes -- these ladies are probably more concerned with beer- and other alcohol-related humor than, say, dingleberries. Long-form improv guy Sam Shaw is reportedly self-obsessed, so no danger there, while comedy supergroup Pharmarsupial's psychedelic flier tells us its members might not even notice if they pooped their pants. The joke-slinging starts at 8 p.m. at Cobb's Comedy Club, 915 Columbus (at Mason), S.F. Admission is free with a two-drink minimum; call 321-1934 or visit www.cobbscomedyclub.com.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004
In the wake of the phenomenal success of Mel Gibson's brutal Jesus flick, the new film James' Journey to Jerusalem is doubly relevant. Journey, which follows the misadventures of an ardent African Christian who meets up with a scumbag businessman while en route to the Holy Land and winds up holding down a spot in a migrant labor pool, is a very different animal than The Passion of the Christ. While Gibson's epic is a tribute to bloody sacrifice, Journey's relatively gentle pillorying of its central character serves as a metaphor that makes subtle points about the corruption of innocence and the cruelty of survival-of-the-fittest economics. Or, to put it another way, at least you won't be dry-heaving all the way through. See Journey today (and through May 20) at the Opera Plaza Cinema, 601 Van Ness (at Golden Gate), S.F. Admission is $6.75-9.25; call 267-4893 or visit www.landmarktheatres.com for show times.

---

Calendar submissions can be mailed to 185 Berry, Suite 3800, San Francisco, CA 94107; faxed to 777-1839; or e-mailed to hiya.swanhuyser@sfweekly.com.