City Lights: This Week's Best

Week of Nov. 4 - 10, 2009

Friday: Jamie and Bobby Deen at Barnes and Noble Tysons Corner

Say what you will about Paula Deen—call her a Southern cliché larding up America on butter and her molasses-sweet charm—but she and her sons, Jamie and Bobby (the “Deen Bros.”), haven’t become household names because of a willingness to compromise their down-home traditions for the Cooking Light set. The Deen family understands that despite our healthful posturing, at the end of the day (particularly a long, stressful one), we just want a steaming pile of Easy Cheeseburger Casserole topped with biscuits and shredded cheddar cheese. The siblings provide this recipe in their latest, The Deen Bros. Take It Easy, an appropriately titled collection of dishes and desserts designed to take the stress out of family dinners, if not the fat and red meat. Sure, the bros offer a few concessions to our ubiquitous prole fears over obesity. But let’s not kid ourselves about whom the Deen boys are representin’. With plates like baby buttermilk biscuit pizzas and five-layer beef taco pie, you can practically hear NASCAR blaring in the background of Jamie and Bobby’s kitchen. I’ll give that a rebel yell.

THE DEEN BROS. SPEAK AT 7 P.M. AT BARNES AND NOBLE TYSONS CORNER, 7851 L. TYSONS CORNER CENTER, MCLEAN. FREE. (703) 506-2937.

Saturday: Found Footage Festival at Arlington Cineman 'N' Drafthouse

The continued existence of the Found Footage Festival relies on two factors: First, the ’80s and early ’90s were the height of allegedly “professional” video production. Second, much of that shit is still collecting dust on VHS or Beta somewhere. Exercise tapes, cable-access shows, inept how-tos, horrible cartoons, you name it—fest hosts Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher collect it the way your nerd roommate piles up vinyl records. Some of this year’s show is so painfully awesome that it’s already gone viral, including a montage from a 1987 video-dating reel. There’s also a nugget with strong D.C. flavor: Home-movie clips from a 1985 metal festival in Potomac, Md., that were passed along via Jeff Krulik, the guy who did Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Krulik will be on hand to introduce the footage, which features the now-defunct Silver Spring band Asylum and a piece of stolen CBS News gear. THE FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE AT 7:15 P.M. AT THE ARLINGTON CINEMA ‘N’ DRAFTHOUSE, 2903 COLUMBIA PIKE, ARLINGTON. $10. (703) 486-2345. —Joe Warminsky

Sunday: Mae at the Black

Norfolk, Va.’s Mae has made either some of the most noble or suicidal career decisions of any rock band in recent history. Take their label relations, for example: Originally signed with Christian label Tooth & Nail, Mae moved up to the big leagues with Capitol for all of one record and then abandoned ship. Why? Because singer Dave Elkins loves Jesus so much that he opted to start his own label with the intent of giving away almost all of his money. Somehow–perhaps its due to the band’s stranglehold on ambiguously Christian emo—Mae has managed to do exactly that, having sponsored numerous Habitat for Humanity builds without pawning Elkins’ trademark Gibson Firebird guitar. If you groove on the spirit of giving, or just love tight proggy powerpop, you can check out Mae confident that the proceeds from your ticket will be going to the least contentious of charities, and that you’ll be supporting a genuinely indie outfit.

MAE PERFORMS AT 8 P.M. WITH HOTSPUR AND JENNY OWEN YOUNGS AT THE BLACK CAT, 1811 14TH ST. NW. $13-$15. (202) 667-4490

Monday: A Serious Man at E Street Cinema

Fans have known for so long what to expect from the Coen Brothers that we’ve developed a sense of entitlement. When we learned that Burn After Reading wasn’t as funny as Raising Arizona, we bitched about it being an off-year film. No Country for Old Men? Too mainstream. Later, of course, we praised them both. A Serious Man, the first Coen Bros. film in recent memory that’s both painful to watch and utterly confusing, could change this dynamic. The reviews have been mixed, and while you didn’t have to be from Los Angeles to get the Dude, it helps to be Jewish to understand Larry Gopnik and the world in which he resides. But the biggest difference between this film and Coen works of yore is that it’s not something you can watch over and over again; it’s too heavy, too quirky, and—honest to God—too serious. And it might just be their best one yet.

A SERIOUS MAN shows AT 7:40 P.M. AT E STREET CINEMA, 555 11TH ST. NW. $7.50–$10. (202) 452-7672.

Tuesday: David Henry Sterry at Busboys and Poets

In the preface to the sex-work essay compilation Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, prostitute-turned-author David Henry Sterry recalls his dubious introduction to the world of publishing. He’s standing around with a bunch of fancy academics, guys who have filed tomes on stuff like “the mating habits of the Tasmanian mole,” when the conversation turns to Sterry’s subject—the nine months he spent making ends meet off the mating habits of humans. They want to know everything: Sterry’s pay scale, his work ethic, positions. The only thing they’re not interested in is Sterry’s actual work on the work. Hos’ contributors, members of the “sex worker literati,” are hoping to prove that the literary works of gigilos, porn stars, and dominatrixes have more to offer than the lurid details. In her contribution, former call-girl Xaviera Hollander declares that “it’s much harder to be a writer than a hooker.” As Sterry’s tour of publishing-world condescension proves, being a writer and a hooker may be the hardest job of all.

STERRY READS AT 6:30 P.M. AT BUSBOYS AND POETS, 1025 5TH ST. NW. FREE. (202) 789-2227.

Wednesday:

Thursday: “Flight Patterns” at Irvine Contemporary

“Flight Patterns” are not just for the birds. Though the title of Phil Nesmith’s show at Irvine Contemporary is quite literal for his glass-plate images of birds and insects, flight unites his show with the concurrent exhibition by Oliver Vernon. Both are characterized by movement through air, but with completely divergent approaches. Nesmith, whose medium is photograms (a method in which exposures are made directly on photosensitive black glass plates), captures delicate, subtle movements. Vernon, on the other hand, creates futuristic abstract landscapes that look as tenuous as Jupiter’s—stormy gases and debris, rotating and swirling together in orbit. Nesmith’s birds and insects are restricted in their flight by the glass jars in which he’s ensnared his subjects. Vernon’s paintings and a 3-D installation explode into space, bound by nothing.

THE EXHIBITIONS ARE ON VIEW FROM 11 A.M. TO 6 P.M. TUESDAY-SATURDAY TO DEC. 12 AT IRVINE CONTEMPORARY, 11412 14TH ST. NW. FREE. (202) 332-8767.

More Picks

Eccentric Soul Revue at the 9:30 Club

The headliner is 73 years old and has to relearn songs he hasn’t performed in decades. A supporting act’s bustin’-loose routine may make you think about defibrillators. But all of them—Syl Johnson, the Notations, Renaldo Domino, JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound—are stars in Ken Shipley’s world. Shipley is co-founder of Numero Group, a Chicago-based archive label that specializes in exhaustive crate digging, unearthing regional legends and outsider labels. The Eccentric Soul Revue was the logical next step. He compares it to building a time machine set to Stax ’72: “I’m walking into Marty-McFly-Enchantment-Under-the-Sea territory here.” But Shipley promises not another oldies show, no croaky affair for PBS pledge drives. There will be no set breaks, no Motown. “Syl Johnson is an animal,” Shipley boasts, adding that his shows are a rebuke to the oldies-but-goodies circuit. “I have no interest personally in propping that kind of crap up. We want to show people that these are viable performers. Forget that you don’t know anybody here. Embrace that.”

THE ECCENTRIC SOUL REVUE PERFORMS AT 7 P.M. AT THE 9:30 CLUB, 815 V ST. NW. $25. (202) 265-0930.