Arrested Development/Fox

So you have daddy issues and you hate your mother, which has led you to experiment with different identities and take risks like visiting Oakland. For you, the best way to watch the newest season Arrested Development is amongst a crowd of people you are DEFINITELY not related to, who don’t know your real name, age or whether you are in fact confined to a wheelchair. Luckily the Parkway is marathoning the season in two sittings and costumes are encouraged. Possible costumes include: Leather Daughter, Studio Executive or Victim of BS Disease

2. Marathon Alone in Your Apartment: George Michael

Bad things are always happening to you. First off, you’re in love with your (maybe) cousin, everyone hates your actual girlfriend (her?), and you spend your days shilling fruit at the beach. Because of these factors and your general goodie two shoes-ness, no one wants to hang out with you and you end up spending a lot of time face down on your carpet…alone. So there’s really only one way you can watch the new season of Arrested Development: in your bed, under the covers, all at once, eating mayoneggs. You’ll be gone for days but don’t worry, no one will call the police.

3. Test Your Relationship by Watching on a Schedule with a Partner: Buster and (either) Lucille

Arrested Development/Netflix

You’re never sure how much your partner (or your mom) really cares about you. Yes, they want you around to zip up their dresses and participate in mother/son beauty pageants but who’s to say they won’t trade you in for a younger model (“Annyong!”)? Who’s to say they won’t murder you when they go off their meds? Here’s a way to find out if they REALLY love you: make them watch the new season of Arrested Development with you on a schedule, one episode a night. That way you will know where they are every night and if they start speaking along with lines at any point, you will know they’ve been cheating!

4. Throw a Theme Party: Lindsay

We know you’re great at throwing a fundraiser, whether it’s to end circumcision or your cause is TBD. Also, you’re a shopaholic (you’ve been looking for the right time to wear your lotion made of diamonds) and you’re an attention whore (because your mother doesn’t love you). All reasons why you should throw a theme party and try to forget that you’ve never seen your husband naked.

5. Watch Alone “When You Get To It”: Michael

Congratulations. You’re SOOOOO practical and responsible. You probably don’t even have Netflix. We would write more about you, but that about covers it. You’ll probably spend the next two weeks acting all superior to your friends and saying you’re too busy riding your bike or saving your family business to watch the new season of AD. Have fun up there on your boring mountain top of predictability but don’t be surprised when your son finds more entertaining (drunker) relatives to hang out with.

6. On Google Glass, Constantly: GOB

Everyone hates you.

Season four of Arrested Development goes live on Netflix on May 26.

By Emmanuel Hapsis and Lizzy Acker

If you haven’t used at least three different highlighters in your calendar to mark the release of Arrested Development’s fourth season this Sunday, you’ve made a huge mistake. To celebrate, Don and I collaborated on an exclusive, special edition of “Whilst in SF” featuring the Bluth family.

Taste the happy, readers!

WHEN I CHECK THE WEATHER AND REALIZE IT’S GOING TO BE OVER 80 DEGREES

VISITING NORTH BEACH ESTABLISHMENTS

ANYTIME ANYTHING HAPPENS ON MUNI, IT’S JUST LIKE:

WHEN I VISIT A PACKED DOLORES PARK AT 2:00 P.M. ON A WEEKDAY

TRYING TO ORDER A COSMO AT ZEITGEIST

THE FIRST TIME I VISITED FISHERMAN’S WHARF

MOVING TO THE PRESIDIO

Want more? Lucky you! See the rest of the GIFs (including some that aren’t KQED appropriate!) over at The Bold Italic.

The Source Family

I’m intrigued by cults though I know very little about them. Even the word itself contains vague complexities, etymologically and otherwise, and can be interpreted through both theological and sociological frameworks. One definition is merely any organized group of people with whom you disagree. There are the famous examples (Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, etc) and the associations we then make with mind control, indoctrination, abuse and violence. Yet my parents and all their friends followed a guru in the 70s and if my yoga studio was a cult I’d totally be a member. So, what is a cult really? What happens in the larger culture to inspire them? How is it possible they sometimes attract hundreds of people? Fictional interpretations have the luxury of using cults as a motif to explore a range of larger ideas, from faith, to power, to free will, to identity and non-fiction gets to use the truly divergent and unbelievably, wildly compelling details of the real thing. What follows are my favorites of both.

Recently I saw the absolutely riveting new documentary, The Source Family, about Jim Baker and his followers in 1970s LA. They owned one of the first health food restaurants, lived together in a bohemian mansion, had a proclivity for home births and played psychedelic rock. There was also some weird sex magic, and Baker got more and more narcissistic until he was a polygamist with underage wives, truly believing himself a god. Interviews with former members reveal some are broken, others crazy, others completely fine. They range from being participants in newer cults, to successful millionaire businessmen, to hippies living in solar-energy houses. One woman is grateful for the stability offered to her as a teenage runaway. Almost all talk about the feeling they had of truly being part of a family. While a lot of the audience snickered at the hokier details (everyone had the last name Aquarian), I found the story heartbreaking as it revealed very relatable needs and psychologies, as well as the somewhat awesome seeming origins of something that went pretty badly awry. The movie got me thinking that cults are not so unfathomable; they represent the dire extreme of something we all do, which is seek meaning and connection in our lives, all the while making bad decisions and not always knowing what we’re getting ourselves into.

Pete Rock, author of the new novel The Shelter Cycle  (you can read a fantastic excerpt of it here), which fictionalizes the Church Universal and Triumphant says it well, “[the novel] attempts to humanize and understand, to follow what seems an extreme collection of beliefs to where they make sense.” His wording encourages empathy but also points to the subjectivity of the groups we join, the beliefs we hold and even the minutia of each of our lifestyle choices. In each of our deepest convictions is something that makes sense to us even if it seems crazy to someone else.

In Sound of My Voice, Brit Marling (co-writer and star of the underrated Another Earth), again co-writes and stars, this time as a cult leader who just might also be a time traveler. The movie is creepy and enigmatic, placing us first as firm skeptics and then messing with our heads until we halfway feel we might believe. For days after we saw the movie I kept asking my husband, “Do you think she was for real?” In many ways that’s the wrong question. The questions of the film are about how or in what ways our lifestyles are sustainable, what we can do in order to reconcile our pasts and be ready to face our futures. In making a movie that uses a cult as its center point of suspense, Sound of My Voice is able to ponder these concerns in a context that seems both alien and chillingly relevant. “No one joins a cult,” a woman says at the beginning of Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple and that seems true.

Martha Marcy May Marlene doesn’t use the word cult to describe the farm Martha runs away from in the beginning of the movie. A fractured chronology leads us through Martha’s post-cult time as she acclimates to the real world, a place represented in an unflattering light by her yuppie sister and uptight husband. Though we are relieved she escaped the charismatic leader of the ideal-turned-scary farm commune we see in flashbacks, we don’t feel much more comfortable with the non-cult world that is her alleged haven either. Therein lies more of the twisted allure. Cults sometimes seemingly reject a world many of us might like to reject. But the utopian alternative they offer is short-lived at best, a perverse con or death sentence at worst. The sudden, uncertain conclusion to Martha Marcy May Marlene seems to question if Martha will ever really be free, her individuality and psyche ever intact. Again, this larger concern for freedom, the desire to be a self who isn’t afraid or controlled, seems to be about our freedom too.

It’s interesting to consider if the leaders of these groups believe themselves or not. The Master, directed by the brilliant Paul Thomas Anderson, has us watching the fraught and controlling, but also seemingly sincere, antics of the megalomaniac leader of the Cause. Anderson also refrains from using the word cult to discuss the dynamics in his movie, instead focusing on the larger historical and social realities of the time and why the ideas that Lancaster Dodd espouses might have held an appeal to so many. We assume it’s the vulnerable who are somehow led astray and that must often be true. Yet it’s also important to acknowledge that specific realities often create the reactions to them; in the case of The Master, a disturbed and violent post-World War II aimlessness leads Freddie to The Cause. Yet, despite all his bravado, Dodd seems vulnerable too, dependent on Freddie, if in a different way. Similarly, toward the end of The Source Family we hear Baker’s voice admitting maybe he isn’t actually a god, maybe he has no more to teach. Next we see him jumping from a cliff in a hang gliding attempt that seems an awful lot like a death wish.

I can’t help but feel viscerally drawn to these stories of cults and their members, both fictional and real. Even the leaders, those who seem most culpable, even dangerous at times, are struggling. These questions belong to all of us. What do we do with our disillusionment, with the realization of our limitations? How do we carve out an authentic life we really want to live? Cults, in all their endless variations and representations, point toward a profound human desire, one complicated, dark and endless, one full of a need for connection and meaning, one which so often goes unmet.

I’m a progressive, liberal feminist woman—I’ve lived in San Francisco’s Castro district, walking side by side with naked residents exercising their right to free expression. And I’ve been to Folsom Street Fair (strictly as an observer). What I mean to say is that it takes a lot to shock me. Yet, even I was caught off guard at the vaginas and strap-on dildos on display in in the new rock documentary Peaches Does Herself, starring electro-punk artist, Peaches.

Born Merrill Beth Niske, Peaches’ (that’s her stage name) has been called shocking, vulgar, lewd and downright nasty. She has toured with Iggy Pop, protested in the streets for the band Pussy Riot and wrote an album protesting President George Bush titled, Impeach My Bush. Her music has also been featured in several movies including the 2003 hit Lost in Translation.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending a Peaches concert or listening to any of her four albums… beware! They are not for the faint of heart. Expect in your face sexuality and outlandish costumes. The movie is currently on the film festival circuit, screening at the recent San Francisco International Film Festival and will be making stops in Seattle, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Copenhagen and London—just to name a few.

Here’s the trailer:

I had a chance to interview Peaches on the red carpet at the San Francisco International Film Festival screening of her film. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would she going prance down the red carpet in leather bondage? Would she even be wearing clothes? Would I need to avert my eyes? None of the above. Despite talking a mile a minute, Peaches was extremely genuine.

Here’s my interview with Peaches.

Peaches and Sandy Kane on the red carpet at the recent San Francisco International Film Festival.

KQED Pop: Peaches, it is such a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for chatting with me.
Peaches: Hellooooo radio world.

KQED Pop: Hellooooo Peaches. Your movie is a “rock-opera.” I saw the film this afternoon and noticed there wasn’t any dialogue. Can you tell me about that decision?
Peaches: Right, there isn’t dialogue. I wanted to take my four albums and create a narrative. An “anti-jukebox” musical.

KQED Pop: Are you a fan of musicals?
Peaches: I love musicals! I grew up on them.

KQED Pop: Really? What are some of your favorites?
Peaches: I love Busby Berkeley. I love Singin’ in the Rain and musicals from the 1950s.

KQED Pop: That’s surprising. What about Judy Garland? Does the infamous Peaches derive any inspiration from her work?
Peaches: I love Judy Garland, of course and the Wizard of Oz. But, I also grew up in the ’70s. At a very young age I saw things like Phantom of the Paradise, which is a Brian Depalma rocker version of Phantom of the Opera. I was also inspired by Rocky Horror Picture Show. And the 1970s British musical, Tommy, based on rock opera by The Who. Those films are embedded deep in me somewhere.

KQED Pop: Have you ever taken theater or film classes?
Peaches: I did. I actually studied theater directing. I went to college for that. Then I decided I didn’t want to do it.

KQED Pop: Why not?
Peaches: I didn’t want to have a heart attack by the time I was 30 if I had to think about all the sets and lighting and the actors. I would end up just yelling at people because I couldn’t handle everything.

KQED Pop: How did you go from theater directing to becoming the infamous, “Peaches.”
Peaches: I dropped out of college and ended up falling into music. I realized with music you can be the writer and director and do all those things I loved. I built the songs and then built the enhancement on top of it. For example, when I did Peaches Does Herself, it started as a stage show, and then became celebration of ten years of all the work I’m doing. We filmed it just to document it. Robin Thompson, who I work with, he filmed it and edited it in such a fantastic way that we realized we might actually have a film on our hands. We changed the ending to take it out of the stage and make it more like a film. That’s how it went.

KQED Pop: Watching your film reminded me very much of John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Especially because a few characters were gender ambiguous. Did that musical influence you in any way?
Peaches: Hello? (laughing) Yeah, yeah definitely. I love that you said that. It’s really cool to be associated with that movie. I just met John Cameron Mitchell. Both John and I are influenced by the same things. Hedwig definitely fits all into the same kind of genre. Another journalist said the same thing, too. He said maybe Peaches Does Herself is an exploration like Hedwig where there is a complete merge of both genders. So, maybe this is an exercise of what Hedwig is really like in practice.

KQED Pop: The movie has a shock quality to it like large vaginas on screen. Were you going for a shock quality?
Peaches: I made the decisions to put vaginas on stage because I was thinking of all the misconceptions that people see in me and think of my work. I decided I was going to go full on penis-vagina, vagina-penis. I am going to go all in it, not just break out of it. This was a celebration.

KQED Pop: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Unless you live under a rock with no Internet access, you’ve likely seen dance moves like the Harlem shake and twerking making the rounds through memes and viral videos. We’re fairly certain that KQED Pop readers crush it on the dance floor, and we want to see your moves! Show us your signature dance move (or make one up) and give it a catchy name. Then capture it in a short video and send us the link via Vine, Twitter, or in the comments section below, and be sure to tag #DoNowDance. The most creative dances will be featured here on KQED Pop. Everybody dance now!

UPDATE: check out our dance moves for inspiration!

Video Produced by Kristin Farr and Matt Williams

Prom, 1900.

Whatever details exist in our story of prom; heartbreak, rebellion, awkwardness, ambivalence, fun, or indifference, we all partook of this ritual experience, even if through rejection. A promenade is the formalized entering of the ballroom, a staging ground for the magic culmination (or anti-climactic punctuation) of our alleged best years. First mentioned in a diary well over 100 years ago, prom emerged as an odd middle-class version of the already bizarre debutante ball. This glittery rite of passage was vital to our teenage cultural experience; as a structure to hold certain charged memories within, dark vague hours to cultivate amnesia toward, or something else entirely, of which we’re still not entirely certain.

So then let’s examine the artifacts of prom night:

You went to a Chinese restaurant that didn’t card and ordered a Flaming Volcano with eight straws, the center engulfed in actual flames. Cameras followed you to make a documentary about prom. You were the inner-city kids to be contrasted against suburban counterparts. You posed for photos with an acquaintance who later died when you were in your 20s. Those photos showed up in memorials for him. You smoked on balconies. You thought it was going to be fun. You snuck away to the lake. You made fun of the theme: A Night To Remember. What you remember is your date’s tongue ring hitting your teeth, sitting bored at card tables with sequins poured on top, your English teacher flirting with you. You wore a feather boa, flip-flops and flowers glued to your dress. You wore a motley suit of burgundy and a dandy’s hat. You got your date her corsage at 7-11. It was the last one, bright orange, and in poor condition. You went in a group with a lesbian couple, one of whom was your school’s first openly gay student. After 20 minutes you left and went to a cavernous gay nightclub (with a volleyball court) where you lied about your age to get in. You skipped prom and went to a music festival. It didn’t occur to you to save your virginity for prom night. Prom wasn’t a big deal at your school like in the movies. You were raised on Sweet Valley High and She’s All That and considered prom to be a landmark moment you’d remember forever. You think prom brings up some interesting gender issues. Boys are told prom night means getting laid. Girls are told it’s a night to indulge their princess fantasies. But no one you knew was actually like that.

Your parents hated your boyfriend who was a high school dropout and a jerk, a skater punk with long hair and a pierced nose. You told your parents you were going to prom and instead parked behind the church, hoping to lose your virginity. It didn’t happen and you went home. After prom you slept in tents in someone’s yard. You ended up at a cabin in the redwoods where everyone cuddled. You got a foot rub. You didn’t ask the girl you liked. Your date made her dress out of a burlap sack and brought you a corn boutonnière. It was one of the tamest nights of high school. You attended Art School Prom in graduate school. It had the same mix of irony and disappointment as the original. You wore a tiara and declared yourself prom queen, though you weren’t. The real prom queen’s boyfriend told you that you made a great prom queen. You went to satisfy your parents and part of you wished to have a movie-like experience. You played cards most of the night. You wore a red petticoat, trying for some Madonna ’80s look. You left to go to a party at the beach. Your boyfriend wouldn’t go because he was 19 and said it was weird. You spent the most you ever have, before or since, on shoes. It ended up being like any other night. You made fun of people who took the whole thing seriously and scoffed at the thought that this was going to be a defining moment in your life.

Your boyfriend showed up wearing cut-off slacks, a sleeveless shirt, a tie and Converse. It was the night you and he broke up. You showed up to the after-party drunk, in sweat pants. You and your friend left as the sun was coming up, stumbled down the street smashing bottles. It was a mess of a night but one of your favorite memories with her. Your boyfriend wouldn’t take you so you asked an older boy you’d had a crush on for years and he said yes. You wore a floor length, long-sleeved black velvet gown. You found it at a thrift store and were pretty smug since all of the other girls were going to Jessica McClintock to buy new, hideous dresses. You’d grown up going to the beach every day, but turned into an Amish woman covered from wrist to ankle. Your mom took you to a local hair salon to have your hair and makeup done. You took in an ad, which showed a very white woman’s face with smoky eyes, wine red lips, and pale skin. The makeup artist said, as diplomatically as possible, that your skin was too dark to make you look like that. You said you wanted to look Goth. She did you up in peaches and mauves. You went home and wiped it all off, doing your usual cat eyes with liquid eyeliner, and burgundy lips. You felt badly for wasting your mom’s money.

Your date was a deviant. He had an undercut with a long ponytail. You’d rather not have gone, but the foolishness of prom is something that needs to be experienced. The art kids took over the dance floor in full, raucous, awkward force. You got milkshakes the next day. A boy you didn’t know well hung a banner in front of the school asking you to prom. You went home, pretending to be sick and wrote him a letter saying no, which your friend delivered. Your date couldn’t find your house so you had to pile your dress into your car and meet him. You wore your French teacher’s dress. You wore a green bridesmaid’s dress of your sisters. Prom was boring. Prom was awesome. You wore a blue tux. You had a drawer of vintage dresses that outfitted both you and your friends. You had a 2am fight barefoot on the street with the boy who was going to be your date. You’d promised yourself you wouldn’t have any drama about prom. Just because something was “once in a lifetime” didn’t mean you needed to do it.

Your friend’s dad dressed as a chauffeur, and a bunch of parents chipped in for a limo. You didn’t go but all your friends said yes to elaborate “promgagements”. Maybe it’s a rehearsal for another overpriced mating ritual, the wedding? You kissed a boy who wasn’t your date. You floated around on a boat in Lake Michigan until 4am and talked to people who never talked to you at any other point during high school. You were ambivalent about school, functions like prom, and life in general. You were full of contradictions, wanting to be good and do well while simultaneously wanting to give your parents and the Catholic school administrators the middle finger. You’re glad you got to share the experience with the person who was your best friend at the time. You went because you were supposed to. You got to dress up, go out into the world and play grown-up. You admit that you sometimes think back on that time and wonder why it was all such a big deal. *

*Compiled from twenty anonymous sources, ages 17-60. 

Dimitra Skandali, one of our favorite SFAI grads

Every spring art schools around the Bay have final shows to highlight the work of the year’s graduating Masters of Fine Arts (in visual arts). If you live here, you know there are a LOT of Masters and a lot of art projects. In San Francisco alone there are shows for the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, not to mention Mills across the Bay in Oakland and don’t forget Stanford and Berkeley.

This means a lot of work, a lot of artist statements and a whole lot of nervous grads entering a pretty competitive job market. KQED Pop had the chance to head to the Old Mint where SFAI’s final show, Currency, is being held from May 15 to 19. While the grads installed their work, we walked around and talked to some of them about why they make art and why we should care. Spoiler: we were impressed and we are hard to impress. Watch the video below and regain a bit of hope for the future of art in America.

The Office/NBC

Time is basically irrelevant without markers to let you know it’s passing. You go along, day to to day, doing jobs, eating dinner and then suddenly, BOOM! something happens to remind you that you are getting old and that someday, you are going to die.

So it is with tomorrow’s series finale of The Office, a show that has been on since my last semester of undergrad, April 2005–so in a way, my whole adult life. That’s nine seasons and eight years. In Lizzy-time, that’s five baby cousins born into my family who aren’t babies anymore. Three states, six bedrooms, two degrees, two surfboards, eight roommates, five bikes, one book, six jobs, one real-life boyfriend and three pairs of glasses.

“The American Version of The Office,” which those of us just returning from abroad trips in Britain in 2005 continued to call it for at least the first four seasons, never really reached the insanely painful heights of its British predecessor. The genius of Ricky Gervais in his original production of The Office on BBC 2 was that he was able to create characters just on the edge of believable, that made you so uncomfortable you almost had to turn away, precisely because you knew they could be real people. The America Office could never quite achieve that; its characters were always just a bit too silly. But after awhile, the show became its own thing. As apposed to sitcoms that defined previous eras, filled with leisure time and absurd apartments, it was about the daily grind, spending the majority of your hours with people you didn’t choose, in front of computers and trying to work the copy machine. The Pam and Jim romance kept us hopeful; the antics of the various bosses made us feel like our bosses weren’t so bad and also weren’t so good. I don’t know if this is necessarily a good thing, but The Office helped a whole generation of us Millennials romanticize normalcy and lowered expectations. And it helped goofy tall guys everywhere get some action.

Anyone who cares at all about TV will tell you that in the last few years, (last handful of years?), The Office has lost some of its original magic. New shows like Parks and Recreation took its mockumentary style and did it better, with more laughs and a more purpose. It’s characters, especially Dwight, became too ridiculous. Pam and Jim proved that no one wants to actually see the happily ever after. But in this final season, it has come back to being meaningful. Pam and Jim hit the rocks, like all married couples (I am told) and the characters final became aware of the fact that they were in a documentary, which feels strangely satisfying. Tomorrow, the whole story will get wrapped up. Maybe Pam and Jim will leave Dunder Mifflin. Maybe they won’t. Either way, it will be a little bittersweet but not so bad. Everything has its time and maybe tomorrow the people who will really be quitting the paper company will be us. Time marches on. And now it is time to find another job–something a little more interesting maybe?– and a new TV show to define the next stage of our lives.

The third annual San Francisco Green Film Festival, which starts May 30 and ends June 5 this year, will be presenting a series of environmentally-conscious films, mostly at the New People Cinema in Japantown. Here is a selection of pretty stunning trailers for films being screened at the festival this year:

1. The Ruffalo-studded Dear Governor Cuomo, directed by Jon Bowermaster. Man, turns out “fracking” does not mean the same thing in real life as it does on Battlestar Galactica:

2. & 3. Breathing Earth and Garden in the Sea, both directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer, who also made Rivers and Tides, a hypnotic documentary on the artist Andy Goldsworthy:

Here is a link to Garden in the Sea, because it can’t be embedded.

4. Markus Imhoof’s film on the mysterious and terrifying decline of the bee population, More Than Honey:

5. And finally, Andrew Garrison’s film Trash Dance, which probably needs no explanation:

Tickets to the festival are on sale now. See you there?