Indie adult film star Madison Young teaches Santa Cruzans how to take erotic filmmaking into their own hands

Pornography has always gone hand-in-hand with the idea of “doing it yourself,” but never more so than in the present era. The Digital Revolution has made it relatively easy for Joe and Jo Blow to not only produce and star in their own naughty movies, but also to show those movies to the world at large if they so desire. As a result, Independent internet porn now threatens to topple the DVD-based mainstream adult film industry in the same way that digital audio encoding has dealt a fatal blow to major record labels.

Editor’s note: In this week’s Poetry Corner, we feature the work of D. A. Powell, the author of “Tea,” “Lunch,” and “Cocktails,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His most recent collection, “Chronic,” was also a finalist for the NBCC Award, and was named a best book of 2009 by Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications, and won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He teaches at the University of San Francisco and lives in the Bay Area. The following selected poems, written by D. A. Powell are: “confessions of a teenage drama queen,” “early havoc,” and “he’s a maniac, maniac” from “Chronic,” © 2009. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minn., graywolfpress.org.

The Pacific Rim Music Festival combines musical masterminds from across the ocean
Any musician knows that collaborating with fellow musicians in your own town can be hard enough, but just imagine collaborating with musicians on a different continent. Fortunately, we live in a world in which compositions can now be swiftly sent across the Web in the form of Mp3s so that innovative fusions of culture and sound are possible. Take for instance, the Pacific Rim Music Festival (PRMF).

In its fourth installation since its inception in 1996, this year’s festival combines instruments and techniques of the Orient with those of the West. The Korean 12-string zither-like gayageum, the two-string fiddle (haegeum), the bamboo flute, the mouth organ, the bamboo oboe, Korean percussion, and the Indonesian gamelan tradition will find themselves embraced by Western performers and modern nuances—classical European strings, and even electric guitars, will be infused. 

New local theater company debuts popular play
A group of young thespians brings death, disease, poverty, and sexual taboo to Santa Cruz at the end of April via their debut performance of the film and Broadway sensation, “RENT.”

“RENT” flutters into town on the wings of Phoenix Rising, a nascent theater group branching off of the local Kids on Broadway children’s theater group. The group was created to give young adults a space to perform that was attached to Kids on Broadway but branched away from the label of “children’s theater.” “RENT,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning rock opera written by Jonathan Larson and based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” is littered with inarguably deep, heavy, adult, and mature content. The plot outlines one year in the life of a group of young bohemians struggling with love, loss, and AIDS in modern day New York.

Daniel Arnold’s ‘Early Days in the Range of Light’ goes back in time to discover, firsthand, the early mountaineers
The premise is simple, the execution grand. Take nearly a dozen or so early pioneers of California mountaineering and tread in the echoes of their bootsteps. Follow them up the peaks that defined them, separated only by time itself. Sounds easy, right?

Almost forgot to mention: No Gore-tex, GPS or nylon ropes allowed. If these early mountaineers went solo, so shall you. If they had to roll their meager possessions up into a blanket and tie it off with an old rope as Clarence King did, then you too will leave your backpack at home. Like John Muir, you will chase away hunger with bread crusts and tea. As for maps … what maps? You will bed atop a layer of dead pine needles, shivering under the stars and storms without a tent. With the invention of DEET still decades away, mosquitoes will sing you to sleep. And you will come to know the Sierra like you have never known it before.

Up-and-coming local fashion designer hits her stride
Alexis Meschi opens the door looking every bit the up-and-coming fashion designer that she is: she wears tall grey boots, designer jeans, the perfect assortment of accessories and an enviable shirt that she made herself. She doesn’t look a day over 21, but she’s 30, married, and has three adorable, young daughters. Meschi is also the sole proprietor and fashion designer of her own company, Lex Designs, which creates modern/romantic T-shirts, dresses, tank tops, skirts, purses and clutches, that are eye-catching and cutting edge—and each is created and sewn by Meschi. At the quick rate that her clothes have been selling at downtown Santa Cruz retailer Stripe, there’s no doubt of her talent, or that her wares are likely going to stretch beyond this city by the sea. (Keep an eye on her. We have a feeling she’s going far.)

DJ Little John has been throwing parties for 15 years and shows no signs of stopping
If there is one indisputable fact about electronic music, it’s that it makes people dance. This is so true, in fact, that if you were to go to an electronica show and not dance, something might be wrong with you.

It was this inescapable, lawless dancing that first drew John Edmonds to the electro scene in 1995 (which is, by his account, “early for some, late for others”). Edmonds, now better known around Santa Cruz by his DJ name Little John, was a Deadhead following music around the country, camping out and embracing a lifestyle of freedom—the ultimate expression of which was dancing at music festivals and concerts. Electronic music had a lot more bass and a lot less guitar, but it engendered the same liberated dancing—something he experienced in full force that year on his first trip to Burning Man (which he’s only missed two years since).

Distinguished local poet, writer and translator Richard Kessler takes on some of the greats in poetry

The great American poet Robert Frost once said, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought, and the thought has found words.” Throughout the centuries, poets have churned emotions into flowing words of love, passion, hate, regret and every other human emotion one can name. One of the most famous yet elusive poets of the 20th century, Jorges Luis Borges from Argentina, preferred to explore the dark world of blindness, visions and dreams. But until now, many of Borges intriguing poems have remained unexplored by English speakers. Local translator (and poet and writer) Stephen Kessler has undertaken the monumental task of translating Borges’ works from Spanish into English and has therefore created two new masterpieces where poetry books are concerned—“The Sonnets” and “Poems of the Night.” GT recently caught up with Kessler prior to his poetry reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz to find out more about his compelling translations.

Robin Black’s short stories take a look at the poignant human experiences we all share
The ubiquitous greeting adopted by most Americans is, “Hi. How are you?” To which the expected response is “Fine, and you?” This exchange is made perhaps billions of times a day between everyone from bank tellers to co-workers to the man that comes to install the new dishwasher at your home. But does anyone really care? If a deviation to the usual response of, “Fine, how are you?” is indeed made, the robotic trance of the standard impersonal greeting is broken, revealing an uncertainty of what to say next. To say, “I’m terrible actually,” elicits a panicked state in the mind of the other party, who becomes unsure of whether to ask why, or simply say, “I’m sorry.” The thing is, it seems that few people want to hear how someone is really doing, and vice versa—few really admit that they are feeling anything besides, “Fine, thank you.”

Local auto racer stays on the fast track
In Germany, crowds of thousands flock to the automobile racing star’s hotel just to try to find out which room is his. Back home in Santa Cruz, people who meet him ask his name and wonder what it is he does, exactly.

We sit in Brook Johnston's office on a Friday afternoon. I am lucky I've caught some time with him, as the 22-year-old has just arrived back from a trip to Texas and plans a return flight to the Lonestar state on Monday.