Though years before Woodstock, the Monterey Pop Festival was just as important-it's just that the importance of a cultural event mathematically increases with its proximity to New York. Staged 50 years ago, this last weekend at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, the fest was preserved by the innovative documentary maker D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back) and a team including Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter.) Back in a 4k restoration, the film now has a preamble. Pennebaker (now age 92) describes how John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas and Phillips' manager Lou Adler created a charitable nonprofit to get everyone working for scale. This, in Pennebaker's view, made Monterey a show among equals. The sound system was » Read More

Like a wealthy scrap merchant seeking a coat of arms, director Michael Bay hired Anthony Hopkins' integrity to fluff up the class of Transformers: The Last Knight. As Sir Edmund Burton, an earl with historical connections to the medieval roots of this Transformers business, Hopkins keeps a level voice with lines like: "Without sacrifice, there can be no victory... without leaders, chaos reigns." The speediest way down the path to madness is to try to synopsize a Michael Bay movie. It begins in King Arthur's day with a drunken Merlin-muttering dialogue that could be improved by any Renaissance Faire busker-unleashing a three-headed mega-Ghidrah to save Arthur's skin. The Arthurian scenes look more lavish and exciting than the recent King » Read More

Since its release as a novel in 1963, followed shortly after by the classic 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, The Graduate has been an important cultural point of reference. Nearly a half century later, it has been baked into the radioactive background of American life. Now it's the Palo Alto Players' turn to take a stab at the eminent coming-of-age comedy. The play opens on Benjamin Braddock sitting awkwardly on his bed. He's wearing a wet suit his father bought him and is dreading facing a sea of people downstairs-all there to celebrate his college graduation. Benjamin almost is prepared to escape his house and avoid the party entirely when a family friend-Mrs. Robinson-finds her way into his room while looking for a » Read More

After graduating with a degree in geology and environmental science, comedian Andy Woodhull didn't particularly enjoy working in a lab for a company that sold clay. He wanted to do stand-up, but didn't realize the ladder-climbing that comes through open mics, then second-billed sets at comedy clubs. "I used to think you were just being funny in a restaurant one day and show business would come and say, 'You're the next Jerry Seinfeld,'" he says. In 2005, he discovered the scene in Chicago and eventually worked up the courage to quit his job and start touring in 2008. He basically hasn't stopped doing it since, working about 45 weeks of the year. At first, he focused on writing riffs on topics like frozen pizza, aiming for Seinfeld-esque » Read More

San Jose Stage Company's newest summer musical is a campy, crude and surreal romance set in the concrete swamps of The Garden State. Written by Joe DiPietro, The Toxic Avenger, is a musical adapted from the 1984 film of the same name. Originally released to a quiet response, the production's clever writing and obsessive fans helped propel this bloody B-movie into cult classic status, spawning a litany of adaptations. Now taken on by San Jose Stage Company, The Toxic Avenger opens to a spare stage, punctuated by barrels overflowing with radioactive green waste behind a large screen filled with a pixelated image of a trash heap-all the comfortable trappings of a toxic dump. The set shares the stage with a live band. The players sit to the » Read More

For the last 19 years, proprietor Eric Johnson has owned and operated the store, but when Joan and Pat Hayes first started the original business in 1967, they probably had no idea it would still exist 50 years later. Initially opening on South First Street, Recycle then moved to a location on San Fernando, where it became known for a distinguished and legendary basement. Old-timers still talk about that basement. Following the San Fernando location, the store eventually settled on Santa Clara Street for about 20 years, in the building now occupied by 2nd Story Bakeshop and Hibiscus Studio. By 1998, the store had begun to stagnate. The stock wasn't rotating like it used to and Joan Hayes began looking for a new buyer. Johnson took over the » Read More

Though it's hard to deny the existence of a 24-ton object hurtling toward us, seeing things accurately is not always the first order of the human perceptual system. In fact, evolutionary psychologist Martie Haselton explains that we seem to have evolved to make the least costly perceptual error in a situation-a subconscious calculation that sometimes leads to our over-perceiving or under-perceiving risks or opportunities. For example, in the physical risk domain, we are predisposed to over-perceive that stick in the rustling leaves as a snake because it's far more costly to die from a snake bite than to "die" of embarrassment when our peeps mock us for jumping out of our skin at a sinister-looking twig. » Read More

There are places in the oceans where the sea floor cracks open and spreads apart from volcanic activity. This allows geothermally heated water to vent out from deep inside the earth. Scientists explored such a place in the otherwise frigid waters around Antarctica. They were elated to find a "riot of life" living there, including previously unknown species of crabs, starfish, sea anemones, and barnacles. Judging from the astrological omens, Aries, I suspect that you will soon enjoy a metaphorically comparable eruption of warm vitality from the unfathomable depths. Will you welcome and make use of these raw blessings even if they are unfamiliar and odd? » Read More

Christopher Garcia is Silicon Valley's high-tech laureate of loss. Everything from his youth is being destroyed by progress in the valley, so he decided to start talking to other people about their losses as well. To a degree, Garcia is already a rogue historian of Silicon Valley's vanishing past. By day he works as a curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. On the side, he podcasts about wrestling history and art history. But like many valley natives of his generation, Garcia began to realize that most of the memorable places and buildings from his youth have disappeared. So it was time for another podcast. One aptly titled SiliGone Valley. For example, Garcia's birthplace, the old Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara, was » Read More