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Good Clown Fun You could have nightmares for weeks about all the scary boys and girls wearing too much makeup at the "Carmanic Clown Convergence," a benefit for the AIDS Emergency Fund, A Waking Dream, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose capacity to indulge is unfortunately dictated by budget constraints. A giant indoor/outdoor party packed with drag queen nuns and freaky-styley clowns sounds surreal enough even before you get to the part about 15 hours of live music by bands ranging from Tee Fee to Blues Fuse. Roving performers will thread their way through the colorful throng and the massive display of art cars. The show begins at 11 a.m. (and ends at 2 a.m. the next morning) at Somar and the adjoining parking lot, 934 Brannan, S.F. Admission is $15-25, with a $5 discount for revelers in clown costumes; call 642-5757.
Damon Seed A long time ago, in a band called Galaxie 500, bassist Naomi Yang and drummer Damon Krukowski played rhythm section to singer/guitarist Dean Wareham's subdued vocals and echoey guitar. But then Rough Trade folded, the band suffered an acrimonious split, Wareham went on to form Luna, and Damon and Naomi were left rudderless in a bitter storm, until Shimmy Disc producer Kramer steered them back into the studio. It was mostly in earnest that the duo called the first release More Sad Hits, a cerebral collection of wistful, pretty tunes marked by the fluid psychedelia that listeners might have expected from former Galaxie-ites. In support of Sub Pop's rerelease of More Sad Hits, Damon and Naomi will be playing songs from that album along with newer work from The Wondrous World of Damon and Naomi at a handful of dates. Half Film and the Sunshine Club open the show at 8 p.m. at the Kilowatt, 3160 16th St., S.F. Admission is $7; call 861-2595.
'Wash Between Your Ears Some of those merry pranksters at the Cacophony Society get serious for just a sec with a "Bikes for Bosnia" drive at their annual movie party (the name of which has been changed from the Cacophony Society Drive-In Film Festival to the Brainwash Movie Festival). Aided by Houston art-car maker Tom Kennedy, who began the drive at Burning Man, donated bikes will be airlifted to Bosnia for Sarajevo's reconciliation parade, then donated to bikeless Bosnians. Silliness resumes once the screening starts: This year's collection of independent short films includes Scott Beale's Portland Santacon documentary, which recaps the Christmas a herd of drunk punks in Santa suits terrorized the City of Roses (Sunday). On the local level, David Gerboe shares the nightmare that is Muni with 38 Geary (Saturday), Joe Winston takes a road trip with Burning Man (Saturday), Peter Silberstein offers a theme song for the Garden State in New Jersey Rap (Saturday), and Bob Smolenski presents a pixel vision of Serbia in Sarajevo Summer '96 (Sunday). Screenings begin at 9 p.m. tonight and tomorrow at Somar (yes the same place as the "Clown Convergence"; Brainwash will be held outside tonight), 934 Brannan, S.F. Admission is $5-8; call 273-1545. Viewers must bring their own chairs.
sunday
july 6
Groovy Baby, Yeah Muhammad Ali fights cavities with the help of Howard Cosell, Frank Sinatra, Richie Havens, and a pack of city kids in Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay, one of the many forgettable films with far-out soundtracks profiled in DJ Ratso Russo's Groovie Movie Soundtracks radio show, an hourlong sampler's delight. The first program boasts the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra's trippy score for the 1974 pseudo-documentary Chariots of the Gods? and composer Peter Umiliani's score for the 1969 sexploitation flick about "meter maids by day, models by night," Sweden -- Heaven and Hell, which yielded the long-since-forgotten hit "Mah Na Mah Na." Ali and His Gang, the Electric Flag's 1967 score for The Trip, and the "fuzz beat-n-funk" theme from nudie film Mondo Candido round out the July 13 program, while the jazz score from Fritz the Cat and the tribal theme from Mondo Cane 2 materialize in the following weeks. The show begins at 7 p.m. (and runs Sundays through July 27) on KUSF-FM 90.3.
monday
july 7
A Message From You, Rudy World champion figure skating medalist Rudy Galindo will be describing his harrowing ascent from the working-class San Jose neighborhood of his youth to the expensive, heartbreaking, kneecap-busting arena of world-class competitive skating when he signs and discusses copies of his book Icebreaker at a local in-store promotion. Galindo's familiarity with punishing workouts has evidently served him well on this national book tour, which he wraps up with a few local appearances. Although Icebreaker is essentially an autobiography, Galindo didn't actually write it; he entrusted that job to Eric Marcus, a sort of post-medal scribe-for-hire who did as much for Olympic diver Greg Louganis with Breaking the Surface, which leads one to wonder: Can a Galindo movie-of-the-week be far behind? The signing begins at 6:30 p.m. at A Different Light Bookstore, 489 Castro, S.F. Admission is free; call 431-0891.
tuesday
july 8
Brown Bag Broadway A bunch of actors gather in their favorite pub to swap Broadway experiences in John Guare's The New York Actor, which plays with David Ives' Degas C'est Moi, the story of an unemployed dreamer who decides to kill time by pretending he's the French painter. The double-header kicks off the Center for Theater Arts' "Summer Season of Comedy," a lunchtime series that continues with Woody Allen's Death (July 22-25) and concludes with Christopher Durang's The Actor's Nightmare (Aug. 5-8), about the thespian equivalent to naked public speaking. Degas and Actor open at noon (and continue through Friday) in Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley campus. Admission is $4-6; call (510) 642-9925.
