All that is night

The Enrique Experience

Promoting Repo! The Genetic Opera, her most recent film endeavor, Paris Hilton arrived at Stingaree, the Downtown nightclub, amid a cacophony of camera shutters that seemed to follow her every step.

A poised, subdued and perhaps even panty-wearing Hilton worked the red carpet, where she chatted it up with CityBeat. We learned that Paris 2.0 hasn’t yet seen The Dark Knight because she’s been showing up incognito at theaters, only to find sold-out shows; we heard about her plans to become a cartoon; and she told us all about how BF Benji Madden took her to a local Applebee’s, and she now hearts the chain restaurant.

“We ordered, like, everything in the menu,” Hilton said. “The Ivy [in L.A.] is good, but Applebee’s is actually better.”

Enrique: “Besides the yummy “Ultimate Trios” dish at Applebee’s, how’s San Diego treating you?”

Paris: “I love San Diego—it’s so relaxing. I’ve been coming here since I was a little girl with my grandfather to see Chargers games and to SeaWorld. It’s so different now.”

E: Your character [in Repo!], Amber Sweet, is obsessed with plastic surgery and appearance modification. How did you approach her?

P: “[In the movie] I’m basically this girl with a lot of father issues, so she gets all this plastic surgery, kind of to get acceptance from her father, who’s, like, a very cold man. In every scene I look completely different; she has a different nose, different hair color, different eyes. It was a very hard character to play.”

E: “If you could wake up with any super power, what would it be?”

P: “To be invisible—that would be fun.”

E: “What would your superhero name be?”

P: Actually, I’ve created a superhero with Stan Lee, which is [based on] me, and we’re doing a cartoon right now with MTV.”

E: “If you could have a fling with any Star Trek character, which one would it be?”

P: “None. I have a boyfriend, and, um, I don’t watch Star Trek.”

Funny, I for sure thought she would say Spock; you know what they say about a man’s ears.
—Enrique Limón

Locals only

Changes are afoot in San Diego club land. First the Zombie Lounge died and was reborn as The Radio Room. Then John Reis’ Bar Pink Elephant was forced to drop the pachyderm from its moniker and became Bar Pink. Now, Tony Vee—owner, promoter and amateur masseuse—has confirmed to CityBeat that he’s sold San Diego Sports Club.
“You can only go on so long keeping it fresh,” Vee says. “It was time to get out.”

Vee assures us that the as-yet-unnamed new owners will continue the Hillcrest venue’s tradition of debauchery by transforming the club into a “burlesque lounge like the Forty Deuce in L.A.” Vee plans to hold an official closing party at SDSC on Aug. 22 before heading north to pursue an acting career.

“It’s phenomenal news,” Vee says. “Now I get to go to Hollywood.”

A slightly more somber going-away party is in the works for Sept. 5 at Anthology. That’s when a special benefit concert will be held to honor Craig Yerkes, the late guitarist for The Grams who died in a car crash on June 28. The show, billed as “Remembering Craig,” will feature the remaining members of The Grams (including Yerkes’ widow, violinist/vocalist “Sweet Elise” Ohki), as well as The Clay Colton Band and special guests. The show also effectively marks the end of The Grams after five years, two albums and two “Best Americana” wins at the San Diego Music Awards.

As for local shows that are actually happening this week, North by North Park pretty much has the market cornered (see our feature on Page 33) on Aug. 2. But it’s not entirely the only game in town.

At least three local acts will be holding CD-release parties this week, including alt-rock trio Secret Apollo (Hiding Something Great) at the Whistle Stop Bar on Aug. 1, local indie-rock vets Buckfast Superbee (Turn of the Radio Age) at The Casbah on Aug. 2 and pop-punks Plane Without a Pilot (It’s About Time) at SOMA, also on Aug. 2.

And if album-release shows are a little too self-congratulatory for your taste, there’s always musical bloodsport. In this case, the “Warped Tour Battle of the Bands” at ’Canes on July 31, when finalists Monday’s Alibi, High Tide, Livid Virus, Higher Minds and Throwing Seven will duke it out for a slot at the local Warped stop on Aug. 14.
—Nathan Dinsdale and Kinsee Morlan

Reggae crosses the border

Last Wednesday, as Prezident Brown sang his Jamaican reggae and small Rasta children with dreads danced at his feet in front of the stage at the WorldBeat Center, Makeda Dread, executive director and founder of the Center, whispered into my ear, “The world needs to change. I’m getting treated like a queen over at 102.5, and I’m not even in my own country. That just shows you—something needs to change.”

Until last month, Makeda had been the host of Reggae Makossa, a reggae-centric show that aired from 8 to 10 p.m. Sunday nights on 91X for 25 years. She was let go by 91X program director Phil Manning last month and just recently started up the show again every Tuesday from 7 to 9 p.m., this time on 102.5, a government-run station in Tijuana (the signal is broadcasted in San Diego, too).

Makeda says the dismissal from 91X came after she got a three-week suspension for showing up late to one of her shows. She says she served the suspension and then went back on the air, but after publication of a story in The Reader, mentioning a personal conflict between Manning and Makeda, she says Manning wasn’t happy.

“He said that I didn’t show enough remorse,” Makeda said. “But I’m not here to bash 91X; I just think that all of this—all of radio has to change. I really realized, too, that it’s the good-old-boys club and there are no black people on the radio in San Diego—I was the only black woman. You know, this is my city, and as an African-American woman, I’ve always had to work triply hard.”

Manning declined to comment, saying only that “it’s water under the bridge. We’ve both moved on.”

Makeda also has her own online radio station at www.oneworldreggae.com. You can catch her on www.bigupradio.com, too.
—Kinsee Morlan

View from a stool

South Park’s Citizen Video has hosted a string of film and music events at the nearby Whistle Stop Bar, and their latest was a batch of short-film screenings last Thursday evening. A black-and-white piece from McSweeney’s Wholphin series got some kudos from the crowd, as did Santa Barbara animator Don Hertzfeldt’s hilarious Oscar-nominated animated short, Rejected.

Citizen Video’s Craig Oliver was VJ for the night, and, not coincidentally, Oliver is also the live guitarist and keyboard player for local minimalist pop trio Christmas Island, whose free intermission set attracted plenty of late arrivals.
The Islanders have been playing everywhere recently, and with a full-length planned for taste-making garage-punk label In the Red in the near future, scenester gossip has been awash in whisperings of “Next Big Thing.” But be forewarned: Such claims are entirely missing the point. The band’s charming, chaotic mess of faux-naïve lyricism and brittle song structures stands to attract a rabid cult following among San Diego’s music-nerd cognoscenti. But Christmas Island’s DIY spirit seems less about gaining fans and more about the band members pleasing themselves.

Sounding kind of like Calvin Johnson or Jonathan Richman fronting The Clean (or any number of fragile, poppy post-punk acts), Christmas Island hit upon a strain of catchy, innocent tunes delivered with a sort of awkward irreverence. Stripping pop songs down to their barest elements, the band doesn’t present a distinct image or bathe its music in unnecessary effects (tons of reverb notwithstanding), which is precisely what makes it all so damned interesting. They may not be the next Grand Ole Party, but for the right audience, that’s a good thing.
—Todd Kroviak

The Kinsee Report

Last Friday at twilight, hundreds of cyclists out for the monthly Critical Mass ride congregated at the corner of University Avenue and Park Boulevard near a roadside altar made in memory of Atip Ouypron, a 22-year-old who died after being struck by a car at that corner two weeks prior.

It seemed every one of the bike-riding kids knew Atip personally, either through his job at Trader Joe’s or Bar Pink, or simply because Atip was always out and about.

“It was a curse not to know Atip,” said cyclist Matt Hennessy, a good friend of Atip. “It was truly a blessing to have known that kid.”

Some of the cyclists circled the crowd, handing out fliers for a fund-raising party for Atip’s family at San Diego Sports Club at 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 30.

After the roadside memorial, some of the bikers headed to The Casbah for the sold-out Hercules and Love Affair show. Later at the club, Tim Pyles of FM 94/9 shared the bad news that would circulate for the next two hours—the band wasn’t going on. A synthesizer was broken.

If you’re at all familiar with Hercules and Love Affair, you know just how essential the synth is to their disco-meets-experimental electro/funk.

“If they don’t go on,” one kid said, “I’m going on a shooting spree.”

We’re pretty sure the dude was only half joking, but if he wasn’t, DJ Mark E Quark saved many innocent lives at 12:30 a.m., when he announced that the synth had been fixed and the band would play after all.

At the back bar, we overheard Casbah owner Tim Mays saying some guy named Eric (we think, although he could have said “Derrick” or even “Tom”) walked in with a soldering iron and fixed the thing within minutes.

So, Eric, Derrick, Tom—whoever you are—we and the other Hercules lovers who spent the rest of the night gyrating like happy Chihuahuas on crack, just want to say “Thanks.”
—Kinsee Morlan