San Francisco Chronicle Arts & Entertainment - Spoken Edition

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Growing up, I’d always heard that the cross-country road trip is one of the quintessential American experiences — the independence of your own car, the freedom of the open road, the promise just beyond the horizon, etc. But I grew up driving in the Bay Area, which means I associate driving with potholed highways, stressful commutes and the soul-destroying experience of sitting in traffic.

We don’t change the world. We only change the corner that we live in. We do that by being kind. In our case, that means making the bedlam bungalow in the outer, outer, outer Excelsior a better home for the family we chose. This column is about the sons who chose us: Zane and Aidan. And the dogs who chose us: Buddyboy and Bandit. Brian still says that he didn’t have much choice with me in that I was a rescue husband, but it’s not true that he found me in a pound.

I hate wine tasting. I don’t like drinking alcohol during the day, mainly because it doesn’t give me anything to look forward to at night. And while I enjoy wine as much as anyone, I have no clue as to the reason why, and I really don’t care. So when some friends invited us to a two-day wine tasting extravaganza in Paso Robles, which is about a 3½-hour drive down Highway 101 from San Francisco, in the heart of the Central Valley, I was a little hesitant.

Preoccupations is not a band many would call “comforting.” Instead the Canadian post-punk quartet prefers to dwell on darker subjects. Their third album, “New Material,” finds lead singer and bassist Matt Flegel battling against heavy concepts like nuclear warfare and the looming specter of death.

It might have been another cozy bedtime moment — my twin sons and I chatting after light’s out — but for Gege’s endearment. “I love you, Mama, because you cuddle,” he said. I squeezed him, enjoying the weight of him in my arms — among the countless hugs we’ve shared since he was an infant and now as he’s approaching the end of first grade.

Cats are harder to spot in a public park than dogs. Perhaps that was my first problem when I arrived in Dolores Park on Saturday afternoon for First Caturday: San Francisco, a gathering of cats, their owners and their enthusiasts. On its Facebook page, the location of Caturday is very clear. An overhead photograph of Dolores Park is amended with large circles meant to represent exactly where cats were due to converge. But upon my arrival, 30 minutes after Caturday’s 1:30 p.m.

From the emails I receive, it seems what readers like most about this column is that it humorously reflects on the realities of life. With that in mind, I’ve got a doozy of a story to tell. Basically, it starts with my wife thinking she might be having a heart attack and ends with me winning $5 on the golf course. In between, there are lessons to be learned.

The impetus to create a memory palace is ordinary enough in “887.” Robert Lepage (narrating from mostly autobiographical experience) is having trouble memorizing a poem he has been asked to recite, so he uses the mnemonic technique whereby you conjure a place you know deep in your bones, perhaps a childhood home, associating different lines of text with different rooms. For him, that place is the apartment complex at 887 Murray Ave. in Quebec City, where he grew up.

From the moment she entered that inn and took a table in the middle of the room with steely confidence amid dozens of leering men — then dispatched them in an epic fight with a fury unseen in cinema up to that point, 19-year-old Cheng Pei-Pei was a star.

Most San Franciscans don’t know what La Grande Tank is. But residents of the Excelsior neighborhood, one of the most unsung parts of the city, certainly do. “I grew up on La Grande, right where that blue tower is,” said filmmaker H.P. Mendoza, referring to the Tiffany-blue McLaren Park water tower, a distinctive landmark easily spotted from Interstate 280 that dates to 1956. “I was really happy because I always wanted to get that blue tower in a movie.

Kevin Fisher Paulson: There are times when kids actually can say ‘told you so’ Nurse Vivian went on every one of my field trips, and so I go on every one of the boys’. Not always a good idea. The teachers know what I do for a living, and they know how “spirited” my sons are, so they tend to put the other “spirited” kids in my car. They’re the first ones on the roller coaster vomiting up cotton candy.

When Kathreen Khavari walked out of an audition in 2016 for a major television network, the casting director ran after her and said, “Hey, so you’re Iranian? Are you mixed with anything else? South Asian?” While confused at the question, the Iranian American actress had recently done a 23andMe DNA and genetic test, and hesitantly answered: “I’m like 7 percent South Asian.” “OK, we are just going to say you’re half .

I’m going to come right out and say it: I am not a sexist. I believe in equal pay for equal work, Title IX, whatever. I’m all for equal political, economic, social, cultural and personal rights for women. I’m just not ready to let my wife drive when I’m in the car. Obviously, I’m not alone. Studies show even in households that identify themselves as “feminist,” 9 out of 10 had men as the principal driver.

The British-born, San Francisco-based artist and author Jez Burrows has come up with an ingenious addition to literary exploration: “Dictionary Stories,’’ perched perilously somewhere between lexicography, automatic writing and flash fiction.