Arts & Entertainment

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Ten Great Books To Get You Through The Holiday Season

  The holidays are upon us, which means you’re likely going to spend a lot of time traveling over the next two months, not to mention avoiding that conversation about Donald Trump back home in Ohio with Aunt Sally you have been studiously avoiding. To make matters easier, and more enjoyable, we’ve compiled a list of reading recommendations. Whether you’re in the mood for some serious literary fiction, a juicy biography, a funny memoir, or a thoughtful work of nonfiction, here are all the bases. Scissors, Paper, Rock: A Novel by Fenton Johnson Along with his siblings, Raphael Hardin left his childhood home in rural […]

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Seven Amazing Performances Coming Soon to Sonoma County

You haven’t even made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas yet, so you’re probably not making plans for next year just now. But tickets are on sale for some promising shows during 2016 at both Green Music Center in Rohnert Park and Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa. If you want the best seats, it’s not too early to order. Here’s a lucky-seven list top picks: 1. Comedian Lily Tomlin, riding high with her current Netfilx TV series “Grace and Frankie,” co-starring Jane Fonda, will perform June 4 at Wells Fargo Center, just a few days after the television series returns […]

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Book Review: ‘Trans’ by Juliet Jacques

At the beginning of Trans, Juliet Jacques described her experience with bottom surgery. She writes about meeting another trans woman, Billie, in the hospital. They talk intensely about poetry and join in a small rebellion, secretly disconnecting Jacques’ catheter so she sneak off to watch soccer. This vivid and engaging vignette left me wanting to know more about these characters, about what happened next in their lives. Although this vignette seems like a beginning though, it is really an end. Instead of moving forward from this point, the book immediately jumps back to Jacques’ childhood. Jacques describes growing up in […]

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Book Review: ‘Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl’ by Carrie Brownstein

The debut memoir from Sleater Kinney member and Portlandia star Carrie Brownstein Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is a whip smart and compelling story that expertly blends music writing with personal revelations. At turns heartbreaking and illuminating, Brownstein’s immense talent has produced an intimate portrait of America’s best rock band. The memoir opens with a scene from Sleater Kinney’s penultimate tour, before the band made an abrupt farewell in 2006. Sick with shingles, unhinged by anxiety, in one scene, Brownstein lets us into the carefully guarded world of Sleater Kinney. From there, she illustrates her childhood in the Pacific […]

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Book Review: ‘Uncovered: How I left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home’ by Leah Lax

At a writers’ conference, Nancy Bereano, the publisher of Firebrand Books from 1985-2000, suggested that the current popularity of memoir as a genre could be traced to the work of feminist writers and feminist publishing. I agree. Feminist writers changed the memoir and creative non-fiction and Bereano’s Firebrand Books was on the cutting-edge of these changes. Bereano published Mab Segrest’s My Mama’s Dead Squirrel, Minnie Bruce Pratt’s S/HE, Beth Brant’s Food and Spirit, and Barrie Jean Borich’s first collection, Restoring the Color of Roses. Each of these books altered how readers understood story-telling, including what stories are worth telling. One […]

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“We Know Who We Are” Vid Supports LGBTs in World’s Most Homophobic Countries

  In a powerful new music video, Steven James and Quentin Sound send a message of hope and support to LGBT people living in some of the most homophobic nations in the world: Jamaica, Russia and Uganda. In Jamaica, sexual acts between men are punishable with up to ten years in prison, while Human Rights Watch documented 56 cases of anti-LGBT violence in 2013—only four led to arrests or prosecutions. Russia’s rampant homophobia has been well-documented. Though there are no laws criminalizing same-sex activity, a law passed in 2013 banning the spread of propaganda of “non-traditional” sexual relations among minors […]

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Book Review: ‘Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin’ by Andrew Wilson

How difficult it must be to write a biography of a recently deceased person who was often called the ‘best of his generation’ and a ‘creative genius’; even more so in this age of instant information where video and audio evidence of an artist’s craft is prevalent. In his tightly-researched book on Alexander McQueen, Andrew Wilson pieces together, with panache and ease, the fractured selves of the brilliant British designer who rose from the working-class, East-end of London to the pinnacle of Parisian high-fashion. The title, Blood Beneath The Skin, perfectly describes the grit below his surface and how readily […]

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“You Can’t Take it With You” Enjoys Run at Analy High School

Do you know the play “You Can’t Take It With You?” Although written some 80 years ago, it addresses the issues of today: do we live a small life: in fear,& resistant to change, or do we live a joyous, inclusive, and fancy free life? The story of this play centers around a family that live an uninhibited and joyous life and the people driven by fear, who are inspired by them. It’s funny and it’s poignant. And by the way, our son Elijah is the lead, as Grandpa. Award Winning AnalyTheatre Dept. presents  “YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU” […]

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Film Review: “Summer”

  Life seems to have been unchanged for ever in this rather boring and isolated Dutch village, but little do its residents know that by the end of the sweltering summer that is about to start, nothing will ever be the same again.  The story that unfolds through the eyes of teenage Annie or “Ms Silent’ as she is better known, and it starts peacefully enough with her biking in the countryside with a pack of other village girls. They alway pass by the Power Station which everyone loves because it provides jobs and even some culture for the entire […]

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Streaming services have more LGBT characters than all traditional TV channels put together

  Streaming media providers Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime feature more LGBT series regulars than all of US network TV put together. The news comes from the latest GLAAD ‘Where We Are On TV’ report. The report found that the streaming services had more LGBT representation across just 23 series, than American primetime network television has on 118. American network television featured 35 LGB series regulars out of 881 characters, which is an increase of three since last year – but features no transgender characters on any of the 118 primetime scripted shows studied. Meanwhile, cable services including HBO, AMC […]

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