Arts DEVO

Volume 36, Issue 28, March 7, 2013 Arts DEVO is a list person. As I type these words my keyboard is flanked by two notebooks overflowing with my scribbles. On the left, in the shadow of a coffee-mug graveyard and Buddy Jesus statue, is a steno pad listing the day’s tasks, with red checkmarks next to a handful of items, each a passing grade for a portion of this day in the school of life. On the right is my brain’s overflow seating, a big legal pad, each page marked with the date of several months’ worth of Thursdays. This crumpled, food-stained, sometimes indecipherable repository is where the arts and culture of Chico, along with most of my half-baked ideas and notes on life’s weirdness, are dumped until the time each week when I can clear enough space under the Energy Dome to process the beautiful mess into something coherent.

This week, I’ve decided to keep the messy beauty intact and just go down the list of potential column fodder as is, and write, cut and pontificate as I go.

• Overdose Gallery: This looks cool. Well, I actually don’t know what it looks like, but it is a little art-mystery. And I’m not surprised that local arts trickster Max Infeld is behind it. It’s a “secret downtown contemporary gallery” that will feature one piece by one artist each month. Go to www.overdosegallery.blogspot.com and sign up for the only viewing of the first exhibit (featuring Selena Rosa Ruffin) on Friday, March 8.

• Rick B. soundtrack: This is so awesome. Some filmmaker heard Chico artist/musician Rick Barnett’s wonderful ramshackle, hand-clappy acoustic jam “Fragile Fickle Heart”—off the locals-only singer/songwriter compilation Thank You Chico, Goodnight—online and is going to use it an upcoming film. (Make a note to dig up more info.)

• The Chive: Chivettes? Chiving it up? Nope.

• Jeff S.: Shoot, I forgot to put in last week’s a column a note about Number One Gun’s Jeff Schneeweis having released a new EP, Closer, on iTunes.

• Google Glass(es): Ooh! If I would’ve started with this I could’ve segued so easily from my notebook blathering into a Human vs. Robot battle call! (Note: write post-human wasteland column, calling on the DEVO army to slap Google Glasses off of faces and do a little robot dance of defiance.)

• Bubble boy: I think I still have that photo I took with my phone last week of that guy floating in a bubble in the One-Mile pool.

• Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un sitting courtside in North Korea: Too easy. Though it might be the greatest story ever!

• “Call Me a Hole”: Holy goosebumps! Even if you aren’t like me and think that Carly Rae Jepsen’s pop toothache “Call Me Maybe” and Nine Inch Nails’ furious “Head Like a Hole” are both awesome, it is hard to deny pomDeter’s mind-blowing mash-up of the two. Visit the mysterious re-mixer at www.soundcloud.com/pomdeterrific and also hear his other fun, unexpected combos, including the excellent “A-Neck,” a mashing of indie-rock progenitors The Wedding Present’s “Brassneck” and preppy popsters Vampire Weekend’s “A-Punk.”

• monCA benny, Broken Rodeo CD-release: Shoot, I’m out of room. I’ll beg design for a tiny extra space to give shout outs for the Museum of Northern California Art’s benefit Arabic dinner at the Veterans Memorial Hall, Sunday, March 10, 5:30 p.m., and to my favorite local lonesome-cowboy duo, Broken Rodeo, and their CD-release party at Café Coda, Saturday, March 9, 8 p.m.

• Grand piano at CWC: Make it up to the Chico Women’s Club next week. Talk about the club’s restoration project for their 1911 Steinway concert piano and their 100th-anniversary celebration.