11/23 Novoscene Weekend

I know it’s Black Friday and you’re all pooped from shopping and stuffing yourselves with stuffing. Well get those keisters back in gear dammit! There’s goin’ out to do! Tonight stop by the AK Press warehouse and hear one our foremost US policy critics get critical, then hop to Berkeley to find out why everything you’ve brought today is wrong. Saturday is a bit more cheerful with spoken word and community celebrations before Sunday comes round with a great reason for all you writers to get out from behind your desks for a few hours. A great way to work off those holiday pounds…

-kwan

Friday Nov. 23

Ward Churchill: “Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power”

You know the story by now-celebrated professor, “little Eichmanns,” media firestorm, bye bye professorship”-but there’s a lot more to the former U of Colorado prof than angry hyperbole.
Ward Churchill has long been an outspoken critic of violence by the US State, and these criticisms have attracted negative attention from those in positions of power in the government, the media, and academia. Tonight Churchill will speak at AK Press (publishers of his now infamous 2003 essay) on academic repression and the history and the lasting effects of colonization and genocide in America.

Ward Churchill: “Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power”
$5
7pm
AK Press Warehouse
674-A 23rd Street, Oakland
510) 208-1700
http://www.akpress.org

What Would Jesus Buy?

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir have a serious beef with Wal Mart and all of its big-box shopping brethren. The Rev regularly travels the country delivering sermons and preaching the good word on the evils of capitalism.
So it’s no surprise that on Black Friday, the high holy day for American shoppers, we get “What would Jesus Buy?” the new doc that follows the Church of stop shopping around the country as it fights to halt the impending “Shopocalypse.” Rev Billy preaches! He protests! He gets carried away by mall security! All in the name of keeping the holidays free of the rampant consumerism we’ve all come to know and love. Halleluiah!!

What Would Jesus Buy?
Various Prices
Shattuck Cinemas
2230 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/SanFranciscoEastBay/ShattuckCinemas.htm

Saturday Nov. 24

The Icarus Project Five Year Anniversary Party

Picasso, van Gogh, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stegner-all famous artists. All suffered from some form of mental illness. Linking artistic expression to mental instability has been happening for as long as the study and demonization of mental illness itself. About 6 percent of the US population suffers from some form of serious depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or other affliction that can make getting through the day much rougher than necessary.
5 years ago the Icarus Project was formed to offer support and alternative treatments for mental illness sufferers of the “Prozac Generation.” The international group uses the arts, group therapy and “radical mental health” to “new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of madness and ‘mental illness,’ rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework.”
Tonight the project celebrates it anniversary with a free party games, lectures, testimonials and lots of “brilliant madness.”

The Icarus Project Five Year Anniversary Party
Free
6-9
AK Press Warehouse
674-A 23rd Street, Oakland
510) 208-1700
http://www.akpress.org

Midnight Lyfe featuring Ise Lyfe & Friends

Oakland’s unofficial poet laureate Ise Lyfe has been spitting and slamming his way to fame for the last few years. The poet and performer has been featured on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on HBO and shared the stage with Dave Chappelle, Lauryn Hill, Dead Prez, E-40,Harry Belafonte, KRS-One, Saul Williams, Ben Harper and Erykah Badu. He was named one of the Bay Area’s “25 under 35” by City Flight Magazine and is set to release his second CD “Prince Cometh” and book “Pistols and Prayers.” Tonight Ise rocks with friends Brown Buffalo, Khalil Anthony, Hairdoo, Jaz Hudson, Tenure, Nu Decades & G Capone and premiere excerpts from his new works.

Midnight Lyfe featuring Ise Lyfe & Friends
$10
10 pm – 4 am
The Black New World
836 Pine Street (@ 8th Street)
West Oakland, CA 94607
510-451-4661

Sunday Nov. 25

Free Write Group

Writers of all stripes know this feeling: You’re at the desk for a while, then a while longer, then a little while longer…Finally after staring at the screen, biting your fingernails and twirling your hair for 3 hours you’re STRUCK BY THE MUSE!!!
Your hands hit the keyboard and you’re like lightning on the keys for those first few strokes. But the more you write, the worse it gets, your internal monologue shifts into editing mode and gives you hell until at the end you just give up, suck it up, and go looking for that damned muse at the bottom of a bottle of Guinness.
Well, Poet Patricia Edith has the cure for your writer’s block. Every last Sunday at the Frank Bette Center, Edith hosts a 3-hour writing workshop with the only rule being that you write continuously for the entire time. At the end you get to share your raw jewels with the class. All who are squirming and screaming for a second draft just as much as you are. Take that inner editor!

Free Write Group
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Frank Bette Center for the Arts
1601 Paru Street, Alameda, CA
510-523-6957
http://www.frankbettecenter.org
patriciaedith@yahoo.com