Page 64 - Sonoma County Gazette March 2017

The Vault Apocalyptia
Book review by Paul Potocky
Gary Brandt’s eruptive metamodern
novel The Vault Apocalyptia couldn’t be more frighteningly prescient. This grand, gaudy, and grotesque satire on the genesis of America’s suicidal nuclear crusade is both comically absurd and becoming ever more real, daily. Picture Pynchon peanut butter and Kubrick jelly slathered between pu y white slices of Trump Brand bread.
March Film and Theater Preview
No Walls Now:
Poetry of Resistance by Local Poet Jonah Raskin
The Vault Apocalyptia sends up science-for- science’s-sake amorality, political bu oonery, rank nationalistic delusions, disciplinary
Opening March 3: “Logan” starring Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart where Logan cares for an ailing Professor X. “X-men fans
will most likely go opening night! Also “The Shack” based on the international best seller. It stars Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer.
compartmentalization, weird foods, and intellectual acrobatics – along with humanity’s existential angst via mirth- lled literary blasts imagined straight from some depthless clown hell. Brandt’s is a Joycean
March 10: “King Kong” fans will be happy the new sequel opens March 10th. It stars John Goodman and last year’s Oscar winner Brie Larson. The franchise moved from Universal Pictures to Warner Bros. in September 2015. The expectation is future “Kong” lms may cross over with “Godzilla” lms ... Warner Bros. owns that franchise.
March 17: The live action version of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” opens. It stars Emma Watson and Emma Thompson. Perfect lm for the whole family.
March 23: My favorite lm festival from last year returns March 23rd and goes to March 26th. It’s the 10th Annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival. The opening night lm, “Sacred” explores cultural and religious ritual as it relates to life’s cycles: birth, adolescence, marriage and aging. It will be held at SCA Brent Auditorium 282 S. High St. Sebastopol. READ page 67!
March 24: is “ChiPS” based on the TV show which ran on NBC from 1977- 1983. It stars Dax Shepard and Michael Pena and it’s directed by Shepard. I’m very excited to see this!
March 31: is “The Boss Baby”, an animated lm starring the voices of Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Kimmel. The preview is hilarious.
LIVE Theater:
word-feast showcasing bloomin’ mushroom clouds in ery mustard sauce, its liquid glass washed down the gullets of terrestrial lifeforms whose post-plume skeletons engage in a dutiful yet raucous danse macabre. In short, The Vault Apocalyptia is a black-lit comic masterwork, frying synapses and making for the thyroid like a mutant infant to its radiant mother’s breast.
Bring your Kleenex. Shirley MacLaine fans will be happy she’s starring in a new movie called “The Last Word” where she plays a retired businesswoman who wants to control everything around her including her own obituary.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, his opponents have been promising the resistance that was sure to follow from writers. From coast to coast, poets have already gathered to rant,
rave, howl, and more. Local writers have joined the national chorus. One of them is Jonah Raskin, the author of a new poetry chapbook titled No Walls Now: New Poems for the Trump Era.
March is also a busy month for live theater.
Raskin’s name might be familiar to
readers of The Gazette. His journalism has
appeared in these pages. The seventeen
freshly-minted poems that make up this volume couldn’t be timelier. Indeed, they read as though they were inspired by yesterday’s headlines and from
March 10 ~ March 19: The best musical director in Sonoma County can not be found at the 6th Street Playhouse or Spreckels or even at a high school. Noelle Huberty has been directing musicals at Forestville School & Academy for at least 20 years and every show is a knockout. “Beauty and the Beast”
is performed with a VERY large cast including my nephew, Gustavo Padilla, and Destiny Taylor, granddaughter of our own publisher, Vesta Copestakes. I guarantee your family will LOVE this show. 707 887-2279 for tickets.
Destiny Taylor (in green pants) is among the cast rehearsing “Beauty and the Beast” with Gustavo Padilla, Don’s nephew
Thru March 19: at the 6th Street Playhouse is “A Little Night Music” Directed by the talented Craig A. Miller this show won four Tony Awards will delight you. 6thstreetplayhouse.com
March 7 - 19: “Eclipsed” opens at the Curran in San Francisco. The story of ve extraordinary women brought together by upheaval in their homeland of Liberia. Call 415 358 6450 for tickets.
March 10 - 26: My good friend Debi Durst is directing “The Sunshine Boys” in Paci ca at the Pacifica Spindrift Players. paci caspindriftplayers.org
March 11: Finally, for you Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley fans, there is a BENEFIT for Spreckels Theatre Company called “Cash & King” . Performed by Steven Kent, this promises to be a fun night.
tomorrow’s news, as well.
Readers who have had a glimpse of the book have
already picked out favorites, including Dirty People, Barbarians Came Down, and Hymn for My Dad, though other poems such as All Immigrants Now and No Wall also strike a chord.
Raskin, who has published seven previous collections of poetry, doesn’t just read his work.
He performs it with gusto. No Walls Now is a local product. Raskin wasn’t born here, but he has lived in Sonoma since 1976; the last poem in the book, Green and Red, captures some of the feel of the county.
Albert Lugo at Clone designed the book and printed it, too. No Walls Now is angry, funny, sad and loving. If you voted against Trump and are ready
voicing opposition to the regime these poems might be precisely what you’d like to hear and to read.
64 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 3/17