News-Press – Page 51

Old King Road’s Skeleton in the Closet

November 5, 2010July 6, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

After 11 years, Old King’s Road still doesn’t allow wankers through its doors, so I guess that’s a good sign for us. We just waltzed right in to stay. One of our Drink-of-the-Week-ers brought his parents along, and they promptly disappeared into the post-trivia, post-World Series crowd for a bit while we settled down to chat with Don Zaccagnino, who we immediately charmed by pronouncing his last name correctly.

Zaccagnino is one of three owners of OKR, along with Ross Cathie, the true Brit among the three, and Chris Faitel, the newest, youngest owner. We got into a little conversation about real fish and chips before Zaccagnino decided on his selections for us to try.

Hearts Afire – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have a long name, play short songs

November 5, 2010July 6, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Modest success has not gone to the head of Kip Berman, lead guitarist, songwriter and vocalist for Brooklyn band The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. He’s also still amazed that journalists want to ask him questions about the band’s music. He’s certainly easy to get a hold of, compared to a multimillion-dollar artist.

“Kanye’s not sitting at his mom’s house eating chips,” he says. “Lady Gaga has better things to do. But The Pains of Being Pure at Heart don’t have better things to do! That’s our vibe.”

Sankai Juku bring the esoteric dance of butoh to The Granada

October 30, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Butoh, the post-war Japanese dance style that celebrates slow, methodical movement, rarely comes to Santa Barbara, and so the crowds that turned out for Sankai Juku’s appearance at The Granada Thursday night seemed larger than usual for such an esoteric experience. For those who stuck with it, the all-male company’s work, “Tobari — As if in an Inexhaustible Flux” paid off in surprising ways.

A life cycle in a way, the seven acts of the work took us through nothingness, creation, life, death and back into nothingness. As the program explained, “Tobari” is a Japanese word meaning veil, physically and metaphorically, a veil between day and night, or life and death. But it also described the backdrop, a simple but absolutely mesmerizing wall of stars in an inky blackness. Stared at long enough — and butoh encourages and requires lots of staring — the stars did seem to twinkle and move.

The Rev. Henry Adams first non-Japanese-born minister to hold services at two area Buddhist churches

October 30, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

A member of the Buddhist Church of Santa Barbara holds a nenju, mindfulness beads, during a recent gathering.ROBBY BARTHELMESS / NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS

Toft-spoken and with a hint of a Midwestern accent flattened out by world travel, Henry Adams has, since April, been the minister at the Buddhist Church of Santa Barbara and Oxnard Buddhist Temple. That makes him the first non-Japanese-born minister to hold services at both churches.

At 33, the Rev. Adams modestly downplays the newsworthy nature of such a position. For him, it was simply a month between finishing his training and stepping into a vacancy left by the former minister. He was suggested to the Oxnard church by the Bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America and contracted to the Santa Barbara temple as well. And he wasn’t aware, he says, of the special import of his choice. Ten percent of current active ministers, he says, are of non-Japanese descent.

Roy’s Reckless Whistle

October 29, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Last time we visited Esther Rogers, the bartender and mixologist at Roy’s, we surprised her and she was still able to whip up some mighty fine cocktails with a gourmet eye, the kind we expect from Roy’s menu. This time, she told us, she knew we were coming. But that wasn’t the reason she had a small cocktail menu printed out — that was for the RND evening last weekend that our crew managed to catch at the last minute.

If we haven’t mentioned it before, RND vodka is our favorite local spirit. It may be the only one too, discounting the bathtub of homebrew gin I’ve been keeping a secret. Anyroad, Rogers set out to show off the spectrum of RND and we sidled up a week later to try the cocktails and see what we make of them.

A Howling Success – Resuscitating America’s greatest 20th Century poem in film

October 29, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

What a spectacular creation is Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s docu-drama “Howl,” and what a gorgeous mess. That’s quite befitting for the classic Whitman-esque sprawl of a poem, delivered first to a group of eager beatniks in a smoky coffeehouse one night in 1955. This electric evening is brought to life by an amazing performance by James Franco, who portrays author Allen Ginsberg.

Franco has played interesting characters in “Milk,” “Spider-Man 3” and “Pineapple Express,” but his Ginsberg is something else entirely, a creation from the inside out. He portrays the poet at several stages of his artistic genesis, most notably in conversation with an unseen interviewer during the obscenity trial at which the poem “Howl” and City Lights owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti were the center.

Take the Wheel – A new UCSB production travels the dark road

October 29, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Li'l Bit (Alexia Dox) and Uncle Peck (Eduardo Fernandez-Baumann) have a tabboo secret in the UCSB Theater season opener ñHow I Learned to Drive.Ó David Bazemore Photo — Li’l Bit (Alexia Dox) and Uncle Peck (Eduardo Fernandez-Baumann) have a tabboo secret in the UCSB Theater season opener ñHow I Learned to Drive.Ó
David Bazemore Photo

Who’s in the driver seat of your life? That’s the metaphor at the center of Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play opening at UCSB’s Performing Arts Theatre next Friday.

If you are Li’l Bit (Alexia Dox), the young female protagonist, you’ve been giving the steering wheel over to Uncle Peck (Eduardo Fernandez-Baumann), your aunt’s husband, who for several years was in a secret sexual relationship with you. Told from the older Li’l Bit’s perspective, with frequent flashbacks to her time with Uncle Peck, “How I Learned to Drive” is, in playwright Vogel’s phrase, “Lolita from the girl’s point of view.” It is also about how we learn from those who abuse us and how we can be hurt by the people who want to help us.

‘Machinal’ offers empathy for a murderess in 1928 play

October 27, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

Megan Connors, as Helen, and Trevor Thompson, as Dick Roe, star in Santa Barbara City College Theatre Arts Department's student showcase production of "Machinal," which runs for two more weeks at SBCC's Interim Theatre. RICK MOKLER PHOTO — Megan Connors, as Helen, and Trevor Thompson, as Dick Roe, star in Santa Barbara City College Theatre Arts Department’s student showcase production of “Machinal,” which runs for two more weeks at SBCC’s Interim Theatre.
RICK MOKLER PHOTO

Looking at SBCC’s production of “Machinal,” this revival of a 1928 play, one can peer back into a time of anxiety, where on one hand industrialization was changing society at a rapid pace, where city life was all anonymity and alienation, and on the other hand, one can see a time when social mores were changing and becoming more liberal. There was awareness of being stuck in a machine, but no sense of how to get out of it. At the same time, we can look from 1928’s perspective and see how a lot of “Machinal” reverberates though dystopian fiction in the following decades.

But unlike one particular film contemporary, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” there is no hero to free us from our chains. Unlike Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” there is no tongue-in-cheek humor or a male protagonist. And unlike Orwell’s “1984” or Huxley’s “Brave New World,” this isn’t the future.

Let the Sunshine In: Out of the Box scores big with its adaptation of ‘Hair’

October 26, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

As the flower children saunter onstage and take their places on the crazy quilt of blankets, the band strikes up the opening bars of “Aquarius.” Suddenly, the question arises: Is this the right time to be celebrating the Woodstock generation? With such a grim economy outside, the cheery and hopeful up-with-people overture of this now-classic musical seems less like a balm for our ills and more like a poke in the eye from the past.

But last Saturday night at Center Stage Theater, Out of the Box Theatre Company managed to pull off this revival without sinking into irony, and it did so with talent, vitality and some self-deprecating humor.

A British treasure, Kew Gardens deserves a full day to explore

October 24, 2010June 25, 2015 tedmills Leave a comment

King George III didn’t particularly like opening his Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, southwest of London, to the general public back in 1776. Although only open once a week, the king said he could notice the difference the next day.

“They seem so dirty,” he quipped of visitors.

But with a bunch of revolutionaries across the Atlantic making his life miserable, he had other things to think about. It would be hard to imagine what King George would think of this emerald jewel more than 230 years later, with its thousands of commoners — Just think of it! Commoners! — walking the gardens solo, in couples, in families, in school groups, every day, enjoying more than 300 acres of flora, both native and foreign. The king wouldn’t like it. Tough luck. Kew Gardens, as it is known, might not be the biggest botanic gardens in the world, but it is one of the oldest. And for those interested in natural beauty, it is one of England’s must-see destinations.