Savage Love

Adam Savage gets paid to improvise on camera, as well as blow up, shoot, and otherwise destroy things, so his presence tonight at Porchlight: A Storytelling Series will probably be a thing of magic and mystery — and he certainly won't make the rookie mistake of delivering a kiss-of-death prepared speech. Cable slugs know him from Mythbusters as the tall, mischievous host, sometimes seen in a fedora, who's the perfect foil to the more inert and mustachioed Jamie Hyneman, who would make a great diabolical genius if he isn't one already (love his beret). Tonight's topic is obsession, a malady Savage seems to have fought and lost to his whole life. On his Web site he says, "I am, in general, a maker of things," and the list of things he's made is criminally long, running from the toys he built as a boy to his work in the special-effects industry (the Matrix sequels, The Phantom Menace) to his art (sculpture, periodically seen in S.F. galleries). He's joined on stage by Porchlight vet Andy Raskin, musician Kevin Thomson, artist Dan Nelson, and authors Andrea Askowitz and Jennifer Traig.
Mon., June 16, 8 p.m., 2008