After this fest comes the ninth annual Silicon Valley African Film Festival. Held Oct. 5-7, this three-day, 74-film event is at the Hoover Theater in San Jose. It opens with Pile ou Face (Heads or Tails) by Morocco's Hamid Zaine. Events include receptions and a visit by Susan L. Taylor, former editor of Essence magazine. Offerings include Iya Tunde, about Germaine Acogny, a French-Senegalese professor of dance crossing into her 70th year. Patrick Kabeya's Congo: A Political Tragedy, chronicles that infamously misruled nation. Marie-Madeleine: A Female Chief observes the rare enthroning of a woman as the chief of a Cameroonian village. Nigerian documentarian Toyin Ibrahim Adekeye's Bigger Than Africa investigates an interesting » Read More

Two pillars of competence here: the hulking mulleted OSI bodyguard, Brock Samson (voiced in a John Wayne drawl by Patrick Warburton), and the attractive yet gravel-voiced Dr. Mrs.The Monarch, simultaneously a rising Guild power and loyal wife to that butterfly of peril. The Monarch, with his itty-bitty crown and fail-prone schemes, is having tough times. He has a low Guild rating and an empty bank account. This season, the Monarch plumbs new depths of ineptitude, a level matched only by his constant foe, Dr. Rusty Venture. » Read More

After receiving his art degrees in the US, the Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê returned home to Vietnam for good in 1997, only to stumble across a powerful metaphor. He saw groups of clam diggers walking into the sea at low tide, baskets in hand and hats on their heads, in search of goods. The scene triggered memories of own traumatic experiences of leaving the country by walking toward a boat at sea. In the West, we might call this a "full circle moment," but for Le the image resulted in his first video work, The Imaginary Country (2006), now on display at the San Jose Museum of Art. » Read More

The Gilded Age far outshines nature in the Cantor Arts Center's new show, "Painting Nature in the American Gilded Age." Grandiloquent portraits from the turn of the 20th century line the walls. Opulently attired men and women stare back at their makers and, unknowingly, at us in the future. The curators have drawn a tenuous link between this beau monde and the natural world. It's not an implausible relationship, but you may have to strain your eyes to see it. In his Portrait of Mrs. Chase (c. 1910), William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) adorns his wife's pale décolletage with jewels. He drapes a sumptuous green skirt over her right knee. It shimmers like the wings of an iridescent butterfly. That brilliant splash of color, however, is the » Read More

The show is vibrant from the jump, with the set pieces rendered like an ornate Turkish palace, complete with tall domes and turrets towering above the stage and drawing the eye in. This is extended in the second act when the set is transformed into a magnificent topiary garden with leaves covering every square inch. The setting and ambiance is further reinforced by dynamic mood lighting, casting the stage in soft, early-evening oranges and purples or high-noon desert white light depending on the scene. This attention to detail extends to the costumes, which are an assorted blast of bright colors, textures, and arabesque patterns that transport the audience to the show's Ottoman time period. » Read More

At the age of 16, Jose Antonio Vargas rode his bike to the Mountain View DMV across the street from Target and tried to apply for a driver's permit. He did not know the green card supplied by his relatives was fake until the attendant told him. Just over a decade later, still undocumented, yet now a journalist, Vargas was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of reporters at the Washington Post. Vargas, who went to Crittenden Middle School and Mountain View High after arriving from the Philippines via Los Angeles, ignited a firestorm in 2011 by revealing his story in a New York Times Magazine article, essentially making him the country's most famous undocumented immigrant. » Read More

On pages 94 to 97 of Krazy George's book, Still Krazy After All These Cheers, old grainy photos accompany a March 1974 story he tells about a hockey game between the Boston Bruins and the hometown Oakland Seals. Not even 30 years old at the time, George bashed on his trademark snare drum and verbally insulted the visiting Bruins players during the game. He wasn't getting paid for his talents that night, so he was not yet "pro," as they say, but George's actions riled up a few drunk Boston fans in the crowd, triggering a brawl, and also coerced Bruins legend Terry O'Reilly to climb the glass and swing his stick at Krazy George. O'Reilly's teammates, including Phil Esposito, soon followed him up the glass, but did not ultimately enter the » Read More

Yet, in the 1950s, a group of psychiatrists writing the mental disorders bible, the DSM, took a big, unscientific leap. They willy-nilly added passive-aggressiveness to the list of personality disorders in the book, perhaps because without an official "disorder" label (and diagnostic codes that go with), health insurance companies wouldn't pay therapists to treat it. » Read More

Do you have any skills at living on the edge between the light and the dark? Are you curious about what the world might look like and how people would treat you if you refused to divide everything up into that which helps you and that which doesn't help you? Can you imagine how it would feel if you loved your life just the way it is and not wish it were different from what it is? Please note: People less courageous than you might prefer you to be less courageous. But I hope you'll stay true to the experiment of living on the edge between the light and the dark. » Read More