LUNAFEST COMES TO EL CERRITO, El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Center in El Cerrito, CA on Saturday, March 2, 2013

 

LUNAFEST Returns to El Cerrito on March 2, 2013

Popular film festival brings world-class films and filmmakers to local audience

El Cerrito High School's Performing Arts Center

540 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito, CA, 94530

El Cerrito, CA, LUNAFEST®, the fundraising film festival dedicated to promoting awareness about women's issues, highlighting women filmmakers, and bringing women together in their communities, returns for a sixth year to El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Center in El Cerrito, CA on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Tickets range in price from $5 - $50 and can be purchased at http://eclunafest2013.eventbrite.com/.

This unique film festival highlights women as leaders in society, illustrated through nine short films by women filmmakers. The films range from animation to fictional drama, and cover topics such as women’s health, motherhood, body image, aging, cultural diversity and breaking barriers. Clips from the films can be viewed here: http://www.lunafest.org/elcerrito.

LUNAFEST East Bay will again be hosted by El Cerrito resident and actress Karen Grassle, “Ma” of the hit TV series, “Little House on the Prairie”. Ms. Grassle will also interview two of the filmmakers after the screening. This special feature of LUNAFEST East Bay allows the audience a peek behind the scenes and into the creative process of the films they have just watched. This year, Ms. Grassle will interview Sharon Arteaga, filmmaker, “When I Grow Up” and Jisoo Kim, filmmaker and artist, “The Bathhouse”.

This year’s event is dedicated to the memory of Wanna Wright (December 11, 1944 – May 19, 2012), Breast Cancer Fund board member, co-founder of the African American Breast Cancer Task Group (AABCTG), breast cancer prevention advocate and committee member of LUNAFEST East Bay. See http://www.insideprevention.org/2012/05/in-memory-of-wanna-wright-breast-cancer-prevention-advocate-extraordinaire.html for more about Ms. Wright’s extraordinary life.

All proceeds from LUNAFEST will benefit the Breast Cancer Fund, El Cerrito High’s IT Academy and World Neighbors. Thus far, LUNAFEST, which is created and funded by LUNA®, The Whole Nutrition Bar for Women®, raised over $556,000 for Breast Cancer Fund and over $1,000,000 for other women’s non-profit organizations.

Book Review: "GODS OF MISCHIEF: My Undercover Vendetta to Take Down the Vagos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang " by GEORGE ROWE

Wow, what a ride! “Gods of Mischief – My Undercover Vendetta To Take Down The Vagos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang” by George Rowe is aptly titled and a hold-on, rumbling read.

George Rowe is a “drug-dealin, multiple-felon, racist a__hole,” who seeks a metamorphosis by becoming an informant for the ATF and working for a little payback to the 1%-ers, for a deed that so far, went unpunished.  

The term “Vendetta,” says it all, as Rowe’s efforts proved to be a prolonged and arduous journey to retaliate and gain vengeance against the very group he became a part of.  

The Vago MC of California is well known as a violent and prolific trader of vice and mayhem.  George lived first-hand the lifestyle of the gang before becoming a part of the Club.

The read is interesting and absorbing.  I felt the author was asking me to believe his “evolved” since of morality.  But, with the several anecdotal flashbacks he provides to purge the actions of his dark past, and his repeated declarations stating he’s a changed man, I still don’t know if I am all the way there by the end of the 324 pages.  

In the end, I would define this work as a confession but not a penance.  I feel he has come fairly clean but I don’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling that his previous propensities to violence and drinking have left him completely. 

In the end, it all about the book and what it does to/for the reader.  The book is good in the way it evokes emotional thought.  I kept wondering what I would do in similar scenarios and how I would handle some of the interpersonal relationships George came to endure.  

Answer is, I don’t know.  

I am not George, nor do I have a friend like George, nor have I had any interaction with 1%-ers…but now I have, thanks to this book!

(Reviewed by JRS)

"Gods of Mischief" by George Rowe - A Touchstone Book, a division of Simon and Schuster

"Gods of Mischief" - by George Rowe - REVIEW COMING SOON

 

 

GODS OF MISCHIEF: My Undercover Vendetta to Take Down the Vagos Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (Touchstone Hardcover / Simon & Schuster; February 12, 2013) by George Rowe is the high-octane, no-holds-barred telling of history’s first private citizen to voluntarily infiltrate an outlaw motorcycle gang for the U.S. government.

 

These tales of murder, mayhem, and incredibly heroic acts of a bad guy turned good, feel more like a season of Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad than someone’s actual life. But George Rowe lived it and is now telling his story for the first time in this gritty and harrowing memoir.

 

Rowe is currently living in an undisclosed location and a part of the U.S. Witness Security Program. If you are interested in receiving a finished copy of GODS OF MISCHIEF for review, please be in touch with your mailing address. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

CLICK HERE for the catalog page.