Alice in Wonderland, 3-D - Castro Theatre
Alice in Buttland.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (my review) - Red Vic
Okay stoner, here's your chance.

The Runaways - Bridge
Dakota Fanning & Kristen Stewart visit a vintage store! On Friday, there'll be DJ Omer, on Saturday DJ Skipp playing before the 7 and 9:30 shows, all to celebrate the glorious victory of you watching!

Repo Men - All Over
Audience members will consist of people measuring Jude Law's receding hairline for anthropological purposes. Emilio is NOT, I repeat, NOT, in this.

The Bounty Hunter - All Over
Madonna-realm Armiston and coke bloat Scottish hottie in some whatever.

Mother - Clay
From Bong Joon-ho, a film about a crazy revengeful mom.

The secret to experiencing musical theater on the cheap? Pay-what-you-can preview shows. Tonight, catch the Tony-nominated musical Baby, the story of three couples going through the pangs of expecting parenthood.

When: Tonight at 8
Cost: Normally $20-$32, but today it's pay what you can
Website: http://www.roltheatre.com/
Venue: Off Market Theatre
Address: 965 Mission Street in San Francisco

This event is curated from funcheap, a San Francisco-based website that uncovers and shares recommendations of 50+ cheap, fun, and unique Bay Area events each week.

Man, that sun is beating down upon my office window. Maybe that's why there's tons of hot dance shooting through the city right now...

Case in point: VERGEfest, which "came out of an interest in supporting artists at varying stages of their careers on their path as teachers/performers." Affectionately nicknamed "VERGE" (which can be defined as "the limit or point beyond which something begins or occurs" or the "brink"), this week-long festival offers an opportunity for "new teachers to emerge and seasoned teachers to share and motivate." In its inaugural year, VERGE focuses on two themes: improvisation and practice-to-performance. Christine Cali, curator/choreographer/performer, describes VERGEfest as "rich and deeply investigative." Now whip out the SPF 80 because that's hot.

The week includes workshops scattered throughout and performances Thursday through Sunday evenings.

Collaborators include (but are not limited to) Sara Shelton Mann, Nita Little (Divisadero Research Group), paige starling sorvillo (blindsight), Christine Cali, Paul Laurey, Folawole, Sebastian Grubb, Andrew Ward, Rosemary Hannon, Vitali Kononov, Melecio Estrella, Christine Bonansea, and Rajendra Serber.

What: VERGEfest @ The Garage
When: Workshops March 14-21; Performances March 18-21 @ 8PM
Where: The Garage, 975 Howard St., San Francisco
Tickets: Workshop registration $20-85 online or RSVP via email; Performances/$15 online or in person night of the show.

Photo: Sebastian Grubb and Christine Cali

Kathak and tap dance aren't quite peanut butter and jelly, but in India Jazz Suites, Chitresh Das and Jason Samuels Smith spread them together into one unique blend. Smith, a 29-year-old African American, Emmy Award-winner, and Sesame Street guest performer, hails from New York City, and the 65-year-old Kathak Master Das was born and raised in Calcutta. Smith joins his toe tapping rhythms with Das' ability to slice powerfully through time and space, and, over the evening, the two men cross age, background, and style barriers.

India Jazz Suites, originally premiering in 2005, returns to the stage at the Palace of Fine Arts this weekend as part of the Chitresh Das Dance Company's 30th Anniversary Gala, so here in San Francisco, this is a one-night-only event, folks. If you want to see this eclectic combination, get your butts up there! And yes, performance-only tickets are available.

Ahead of this weekend, Das was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Becca Hirschman: How did you two [you and Jason Samuels Smith] meet and what prompted this collaboration?

Chitresh Das: We met several years ago while practicing backstage at the American Dance Festival at Duke University. I started to dance and Jason said. "How can you do that with your bare feet?"

What was the creative process like? Were there disagreements or times where you didn't see "eye to eye"?

We created a structure for the performance. We choose a specific rhythmical cycle and timing, and we improvise and create within that structure. The improvisation takes a tremendous amount of concentration--there is no such thing as disagreements because on the stage we are one.

Since the premiere in 2005, have you modified the work?

It has evolved. It is never the same performance twice. Although we have our structure in place the nature of improvisation is such that anything can happen on the stage. After touring and working for several years with the Indian classical musicians, Jason better understands the complicated mathematical rhythms of India; thus he and I are able to create more freely on the stage.

Tap dancing and Kathak dance are each uniquely different, yet both are grounded in rhythm. Would you talk a little about how the two forms compliment each other?

Each form has the use of the feet in common. Jason wears metal tap shoes, and I wear 4-6 lbs. of bells wrapped around my ankle and use my bare feet. The rhythms of 4, 7, or 8 are universal. It is always challenging--the tap shoes are loud--it is very difficult, but I try to produce the same sound with the slap of my foot while playing my tabla, singing, and dancing as Jason produces with his taps.

How has your involvement in "India Jazz Suites" influenced your other work?

Jason is fast and strong. What the Indian tabla player does with his hands Jason is able to do with his feet. Working with Jason has increased my stamina. The collaboration has helped to bring American tap and jazz to the Indian Community in India and abroad and the awareness of Kathak to the tap community--it has opened each world to the other, and in this way the performance serves as a cultural bridge between the two communities.

Are there other collaborations, either together or separately, in your future?

Most definitely. In 2007, we expanded the collaboration to include the company members of each respective art form in India Jazz Progressions. Next we want to include our pre-professional youth company with students from age 8 to 18 and the children and youth of the tap world.

India Jazz Suites can next be seen in Boston (May 1-2 at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston); Ogden, Utah (May 8 at the Egyptian Theater); and Houston (May 21 at the Wortham Center).

Top o' the morning! Since today's St. Patrick's Day, I figured why limit our Funcheap spotlight to one drinking event? Check out Funcheap's list of the cheapest drink-related events across the city, including free cab rides home. I hope you like Guinness.

When: All day today
Cost: Free
Website: http://sf.funcheap.com/st-patricks-day-san-francisco-2010-events/
Venue: San Francisco

This event is curated from funcheap, a San Francisco-based website that uncovers and shares recommendations of 50+ cheap, fun, and unique Bay Area events each week.

Breaking up these days isn't as easy as it looks. Sure, you've got more media to send the message: email, text, Facebook, or Twitter if you're really cruel. But how do you get over your ex when they keep popping up all over YouFace and you've got 32 mutual friends to keep your online bubbles connected?

At some point, regardless of how beautiful and thought-provoking and dove-releasing the breakup was, you just have to delete. You realize this somewhere in the middle of checking their (now activated) OKCupid profile for the tenth time that day, after you've rediscovered Google Buzz (because you rightfully blocked it) and find all the other people they were dating during your open relationship phase, after you've stared at their name in GChat for seven minutes, willing them to IM you so that you can turn up your nose at them. Through an emoticon, of course.

You shouldn't worry about hurting their feelings. They won't (immediately) notice that you've unfollowed or defriended them. You broke up, they'll get over it, and maybe down the road you can re-extend that digital handshake of friendship. Besides, you broke up. That should be pain enough, unless they've got their priorities way out of wack. In that case, you're doing the right thing.

But what to do about all those e-mementos? You know, the pictures on your phone, the pictures on your computer, the archived emails, the thousands of lines of chat stored in your email, the RSS feed of their blog, etc. You've read over those conversations three times each now, wondering where things went wrong. Do you delete those too? If you like saving happy things from your relationships, you can download your conversations and pictures to a flash drive that you'll eventually lose and find months later when you're moving apartments. Or you can archive everything, move everything to a hidden or buried folder. Or, you know, you can drink a bottle of wine by yourself and go on a massive deleting spree that's never quite as satisfying as a real burn session, complete with fire and glossy photos.

When you deliberately limit your access to someone you once talked to everyday, you can get obsessive. At a certain point, you need to not just delete the person but block them as well. If your ex is all over the internet, it's almost a necessity to block their blogs, their tumblrs, their profiles, and basically any other website they've touched or associate with. This is when you call in reinforcements, like an add-on for Firefox and the help of Google. When you start feeling that void in your stalker heart, just think of how your productivity has soared!

Eventually, you won't need your online training wheels, but the internet and the Web 2.0 make it too easy to become glued to your ex's every move, every published thought, every friend or potential new partner. You don't need that, and it's not healthy. Go ahead and crumple into a little ball on the floor of your shower, sobbing "dear God, why?! Why me? Why now?" Just don't tweet about it to make your ex feel like a horrible person (and your friends cringe). Please.

Image from djking.

The Sexual Manifesto is Christine Borden's weekly column on sex in the city, sex and culture, and, well, sex. Got a tip for Christine (and it's not in your pants)? Email her at christine@sfappeal.com.

Last week at the National Bike Summit, the surprise appearance of Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood was big news. But the possibly bigger news was Google's unveiling of bike directions for Google Maps. Just to give you a sense of Google priorities, it first introduced driving and pedestrian directions, then public transportation, and now, finally, bikes. Way to put the car before the horse human, Google!

I kid because I love (and fear) Google, which had been testing the new bike maps internally for a while before asking for data and input late last year and then releasing it last week. (The company so fetishizes the college campus experience at places like the founders' alma mater Stanford, where bikes are used regularly to get around, that it maintains its own bicycle sharing program.)

The first thing I noticed is that the color scheme -- green bike-friendly paths overlaid over the regular street grid -- was instantly recognizable from the maps issued by the San Francisco and East Bay Bicycle Coalitions. What it lacks that those maps have is easy grade indicators, such as inline arrows, that easily describe the direction and difficulty of the grade, though Google has this data as Cycleicious determined by plotting a round-trip in Santa Cruz that went uphill and then downhill. The estimated time for the uphill trip was calculate at a lower average speed than the downhill trip, which makes perfect sense for students of cycling physics.

It's not the first application to help cyclists navigate -- an independent MetaFilter Project by one Amar used Yahoo maps to accomplish the same goal, though obviously with fewer resources. Of course, cyclists being the utopian idealists that we are, the suggestions didn't stop at better aping the style of existing maps from local bike clubs.

For instance, where's the application for mobile devices? I've said that mobile computing is one of the best things to happen for cyclists in the last ten years, and it's not as if there's a shortage of iPhone applications that cater to the needs of cyclists (I recommend Flashlight at least for night rides, especially if you have an on-bike iPhone charger). And not only did it not recognize the Wiggle on rides between the eastern and western neighborhoods in San Francisco, it didn't recognize the alternative McAllister climb, either.

My suggestions? While it's decent at recognizing low-traffic routes and bike paths, and shows landmarks, those landmarks don't include bike rental and repair shops where you might be able to fix a flat. Also, bike directions and transit directions aren't integrated, meaning you'll still have to do quite a bit of planning if you want to use public transit with bike storage and racks to take trips farther afield, such as car-free camping.

But give them time. Like everything Google, it's in beta for the foreseeable future. And just like a new bike, it needs to broken in and tuned up some. Still, it is progress, and might help those who don't know the best bike lanes and paths find their way into every day riding. And to send Google feedback directly, you can report a problem by clicking the link in the lower-right of the map view, just to the left of the zoomed-out inset view.

I still think that the Daft Logic tool for calculating distances using Google Maps that I mentioned in my inaugural column is quite handy, especially if you want to know how far an unplanned ride took you, and not just for bikes but for runners and pedestrians as well. Any sites or applications you recommend? Please do send an email or post a comment!

Jackson West has ridden a bike around the San Juan Islands, up and down the Cascades, in Vancouver, Seattle, Brooklyn, Austin and all over the Bay Area. He admits to being online more than on a bike the last few weeks. Have any bike-related questions? Send an email!

Love Aaj Kal screened as part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) at the Castro Theatre last night. I was a little alarmed when the man in front of me announced that since this was a Bollywood movie, it was sure to be at least two and a half hours long. At 9:00 pm?! On a Sunday night?! Luckily Love Aaj Kal clocked in at a demure two hours and 10 minutes and it was a toe-tapping, hip-thrusting, rollicking good time.

The movie follows Jai and Meera, a modern-day couple living in London with a philosophy of love that is either realistic or jaded, depending on your point of view. They're deeply connected but focused on their careers and intend to squeeze love into the margins of their modern lives. Jai's dream career move leads him to San Francisco and Meera, who restores frescoes, moves back to India where she becomes involved with her boss.

Jai's romantic mentor, an older man named Veer, advocates for the romantic notion of soul mates. Veer's love-at-first-sight pursuit of a woman named Harleen back in the olden days is told in parallel to Jai and Meera's contemporary story. I was a bit confused, because the SFIAAFF literature and the festival director who introduced the movie and said that the stars portray the modern couple as well as the old-timey couple but the women didn't look the same, but both men had bodies like Mario Lopez from "Saved by the Bell" so... maybe?

A Google search reveals that each character is actually played by different actors and that there seems to be some grumblings in the Bollywood world that Harleen is played by a Brazilian actress. Personally, I can't get over the fact that there's more than one Indian actor who resembles Mario Lopez, but I digress. What ever the case, Love Aaj Kal is an entirely lively movie and I wondered why these types of Bollywood films don't have a wider audience when comparatively dopey movies like Mama Mia do so well in the US?

The biggest laugh for the San Francisco audience, who clearly have been following the tussle over Obama's health care initiative, was when Jai is savagely beaten by muggers in San Francisco and the bystander who runs to help him says he'll be okay as long as he has health insurance. This prompted loud guffaws from this Castro Theatre audience.

Although Love Aaj Kal only screened one night, I was pleased to overhear an audience member tell the man in front of me that she had just seen the SFIAAFF centerpiece movie, The People I Slept With. She declared it hilarious and sexy. I'm going to see The People I Slept With tomorrow at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley. It also plays on Saturday at the Camera Cinemas in San Jose.

Spring weather arrived in San Francisco this past weekend along with the 28th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Despite the glorious weather, the afternoon showing of filmmaker Leo Chiang's documentary, A Village Called Versailles, was completely sold-out.

In the devastation following Hurricane Katrina one of the first communities to come back and rebuild was a small, densely populated Vietnamese community in the New Orleans neighborhood of Village de l'Est. This approximately two-mile long neighborhood. known as Versailles to its residents, houses the biggest concentration of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam. While many Vietnamese are Buddhist, the immigrants who settled in Versailles are predominantly Catholics from three rural villages in North Vietnam who fled the country during the Vietnam War. The spiritual and community center in Versailles is a charismatic pastor named Vien Nguyen.

When Pastor Nguyen held his first mass following Katrina, 300 people came from as far away as Houston (a five hour drive), to be with their community. Eight hundred people showed up for the second mass, and 2,200 showed up for the third.

The drama of A Village Called Versailles is not the usual "quiet rebuilding of a scattered post-storm community" you've seen and heard many times before.

Instead, it's the story of a community that had to overcome its cultural reticence regarding political activism when Mayor Ray Nagin signed an executive order authorizing the dumping of toxic and moldy Katrina debris into the Chef Menteur Landfill, two miles from Versailles. It starts to look suspiciously like environmental racism when you plop your poisonous garbage down in the backyard of poor people who don't speak English, are quietly self-sufficient, and don't generally kick up a fuss.

This documentary was in the category of two-hanky sniffler for the film festival audience, who seemed to appreciate the story of normally quiet senior citizens who rallied with the younger generation to remind the city and the nation that they were Americans and this was their home too.

In the question and answer period after the movie, the filmmaker noted that he showed the film to the Versailles community at their lunar new year festival and they turned the movie off after 20 minutes because no one was paying attention. Director Chiang noted that members of the community only seem to realize how noteworthy their story is when they view the movie with an outside audience.

A Village Called Versailles plays again tomorrow, March 16 at the VIZ Cinema in San Francisco's Japantown, and at Camera 12 Cinema in San Jose on Saturday, March 20. The documentary has also been picked up by PBS and will be coming to the small screen at the end of May.

Does art make you hungry? Chow down on "street food tapas" and guzzle cheap drinks over at 111 Minna's pop-up restaurant. From 5 to 6 p.m., you can buy two sliders for $10. During the 5 to 7 p.m. happy hour, drinks range from $3 to $6.

When: Tonight from 5 to 10
Cost: Free, with food and drink available for purchase
Website: http://eatrestaurantsf.com/
Venue: 111 Minna Gallery
Address: 111 Minna Street in San Francisco

This event is curated from funcheap, a San Francisco-based website that uncovers and shares recommendations of 50+ cheap, fun, and unique Bay Area events each week.

On the one hand, that's a noble aspiration because those Haight Ashbury bumletts are mean. One time one of them called me an asshole on my way into American Apparel, as if going into American Apparel makes you an asshole, so it stung, and he knew it.

I'm all for not having a pitbull tear me to shreds while I'm buying spandex, but then I saw this article in Newsweek about rehabbed pitbulls and they were so cute and docile looking that I just didn't even know how I felt anymore. I got so tired of thinking that I just wanted to sit down somewhere and think about the strange dichotomies of life. But I couldn't sit down so I stood up, and it just wasn't the same.

Right after I first moved to this city, I was on my lunch break from a temp job at Batter Blaster, and wanted to spend that hour sitting outside and reading a book in the sunshine.

Knowing what I know now I probably wouldn't sit in a deserted alley between 6th and 7th, but I didn't know what I know now so there I was sitting on the cement when I was punched in the head by a bum.

Wasn't that crazy mean homeless man exactly who the sit/lie law is supposed to protect me from? But instead it was almost like he was on citizen's patrol, because he enforced the sit/lie law on me.

So sitting, which is something I like, got confused with being punched which is something I don't like, and now I feel jumpy whenever I even look at the sidewalk or a fist. I guess you could say I have PTSD from enforcement of the sit/lie law. I would like for someone to pay for my therapy, but my therapist is so afraid of the sit/lie law that she won't even let me sit anymore during our sessions.

Her fear is kind of justified because whenever my butt touches a hard surface I kind of turn into a mean Haight Ashbury street child and my hair gets dreaded and my jacket gets covered in dirt and I start seeing people for the assholes that they are.

The Friends of the SF Public Library and the SF Botanical Garden Society have teamed up to sell unique books and flora to the public, all available at reasonable prices and ready to be pored over in your study or poured over in your garden.

The money goes to a good cause: literacy programs and botanical gardens. And who knows, you could just walk out with your very own Romneya coulteri or Arctostaphylos berry, which will only increase in size as spring approaches! Just remember: whatever they offer you, don't feed the plants.

What: Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society Plant and Book Sale
When:Fri, 3/26 4-8 PM, Sat, 3/27 10 AM-6 PM, Sun 3/28 10 AM-4 PM.
Where: The County Fair Building, Golden Gate Park, 9th Ave at Lincoln Way
Price: Admission's free.

I know being San Franciscans y'all think of John Cameron Mitchel's film of vibrating panties and sex clubs when you read "Short Bus," but that's not what we're talking about here. My Baby Rides the Short Bus is an anthology dealing with kids with disabilities and the parents who raise them. Tonight, a handful of the contributors will share their stories about raising their younguns in an ableist world.

When: Tonight at 7
Cost: Free
Website: http://mtbs.com/events.html#ev03-12-10
Venue: Modern Times Bookstore
Address: 888 Valencia Street in San Francisco

This event is curated from funcheap, a San Francisco-based website that uncovers and shares recommendations of 50+ cheap, fun, and unique Bay Area events each week.