Picks

Wednesday August 4

RILO KILEY

The happy country-hustling twang of Rilo Kiley is a deceptive one, a Cali-hillbilly cool creased by the disruptive lyrics of Ms. Lewis, who takes the open-air emotionalism she's utilized throughout Rilo's last several CDs and bounced them on their ear. Atop an organ-grinding softer than Garth Hudson on a Sealy posturepedic, a slow dazzling drizzle of rhythm guitars and a chirpy brass sound Herb Alpert would proudly call his own. With Matthew Caws and Mike Bloom. Knitting Factory Main Performance Space, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B'way & Church St.), 212-219-3132, 8, sold out.

Kittie

After seeing the soon-to-be-released documentary on the Runaways (is there anyone that can't be retrospected in film form?), we can proudly say that big-girl metal is ready for its close-up. Thick, wide-hipped women proud of their bodies in tight jeans making amphetamine-driven, lewd and crudely charged-up rawk that'd bruise your innards like a wet towel-full of oranges: That's what we want to hear. To find it, we must go north to Ontario, Canada. The all-girl Kittie quartet-led by guitarist/screamer Morgan Lander-has taken the grinding garage howl that was their debut, Spit, and turned it slurpingly slow and sludgier on their just-released Until the End, an album that beats the now-weedy-looking Metallica at their own cranium-crushing game. Like the rest of Kittie's looming dynamic sound, their heated heaviness is just roomy enough to accommodate "feeling"-a word Lander attaches to her first-person rants like a Harley patch on her ass. Vroom. Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place (15th St.), 212-777-6800, 8, $20.

Zilvinas Kempinas

In his first solo exhibit, Lithuanian-born artist Zilvinas Kempinas reveals a site-specific installation that's deceptively minimal. In "Flying Tape," a room-sized loop of unspoiled videotape is held in mid-air by seven industrial fans arranged in a circle on the floor. Walking through the loop, the viewer can watch it quietly ascend and descend, but what's on the reel, if anything, is Kempinas' little secret. With video increasingly on a file server instead of a reel, work like this is getting harder and harder to come by. Spencer Brownstone Gallery, 39 Wooster St. (betw. Grand and Broome Sts.), 212-334-3455, 11-6, free.

Thursday August 5

Night of James Bond

Prospect Park moves temporarily into TBS territory with a night of Bond. The Connery classic Thunderball will be played on the biggest screen in Park Slope. Red Hook will be on tap to quench the thirsts of blanket-toting Brooklyners. But the real draw will be the Loser's Lounge playing musical selections from the Bond movies. How deep will they get? Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill"? Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better"? All that silly schlocky 60s diva-tastic stuff? Only one way to find out. Prospect Park Bandshell, 9th St. (Prospect Park W.), Park Slope, 718-855-7882, 7:30, $3 sugg. don.

Outfoxed

After seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Corporation, complete your liberal-outrage cinema hat-trick with Outfoxed, the movie alleging that Fox News-GASP!-skews its infotainment to the right. While this might seem like a forehead slapper akin to arguing that the Playboy channel has a bias toward naked ladies, the film (only available on DVD) presents information that will shock even the most cynical Rupert Murdoch hater. With testimony from people like Walter Cronkite and FAIR's Jeff Cohen, and memos from Fox News chief John Moody, Outfoxed shows the News Corp's flagship station to be as balanced as a seesaw with a fat kid on one end. OfficeOps, 57 Thames St. (betw. Morgan & Knickerbocker Aves.), Bushwick, 718-418-2509, 8, free.

Friday August 6

Living Colour

After scoring an unlikely hit with "Cult of Personality," winning a bunch of Grammies and having their name hijacked by the Wayans brothers' In Living Colour, the band broke up in the mid 90s. The members-including Corey Glover, whose dad is Riggs in Lethal Weapon-then ventured down different non-mainstream musical paths. Once or twice a year, the band reunites and relives their late-80s stardom combined with a contemporary edge (expect more electronically integrated sound). Think AC/DC meets Primus.Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 10, $20.

Saturday August 7

SAVE FREDDY'S BENEFIT

Thanks to Bruce Ratner, this great watering hole in Prospect Heights is now on the endangered-species list. Sure, there's Southpaw and the dated 90s indie jukebox at Great Lakes on 5th Ave., but this bar's got a little something we like to call character. The tribute/benefit's an all-day affair starting at two, and features the following: Joe Bendik, Alice Bierhorst, Fusion, Confidence Man, The Hermanos, Motostar, Acoustic Trauma, Nemo and the Knockout Drops. Freddy's, 485 Dean St. (6th Ave.), Bklyn, 718-622-7035, 1:30, don.

Fania All-Stars

Fania Records was to heyday salsa what Stiff was to punk-house platform for hot leaders, seedbed of collaborative frenzies. The label's main men gather for a raucous reunion out in Jersey: Johnny Pacheco, Ray Barretto, Larry Harlow, Oscar D'Leon-just to name a few. Viejos they may be, but they (and their audience) push musical fervor to the boiling point. Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, NJ, 201-935-3900, 8, $97.

Day of the Locust and Targets

Nathaneal West's classic novel of 1930s Hollywood is brought to the screen brilliantly in this long but mesmerizing 1975 feature. With Donald Sutherland as the overly meek Homer Simpson edging toward meltdown, Burgess Meredith as a drunk former vaudevillian, Karen Black as his cheap, conniving daughter-and William Atherton as the young art director finding out for himself just how evil things are in L.A. With Billy Barty, Bo Hopkins, Jackie Earle Haley, cockfights, annoying transvestite children and a riot! Double-billed with Peter Bogdanovich's first feature, Targets (4:45), in which an aging and bitter Boris Karloff plays an aging and bitter Boris Karloff-type actor who reluctantly agrees to make one last public appearance at a drive-in, even though a sniper is on a killing spree. A thrilling debut Bogdonavich never topped. Part of the AMMI's "Paradise (Lost): Los Angeles on Film" series. American Museum of the Moving Image, 35 Ave. (36 St.), Astoria, 718-784-0077, 2 & 4:45, $10, $7.50 st./s.c.

Who Is Wilford Brimley?

Everyone's favorite insurance-selling grandfather with the permanent scowl became synonymous with Quaker Oats in the twilight of his career. He almost redeemed himself laying the smackdown on Tom Cruise in The Firm, but otherwise we never really got to know the real Wilford Brimley. Hence, "Who Is Wilford Brimley?" The show is a multimedia musical narrative in three acts, chronicles Brimley's up-and-down career and his daily struggles between "choosing the right thing to do and the tasty way to do it." Brush up on your Waltons trivia. The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Ave. (betw. Union Ave. & Lorimer St.), 718-907-6189, 9:30, $10.

Sunday August 8

Garment District: Meet the Wall Signs

This is a celebration of the ghosts of commerce, the faded advertisements on the sides of buildings that tend to be invisible unless pointed out. New York City ephemera historian Diana Stuart, probably best known for her work with the history of manhole covers, leads this tour through the Garment District. Pointing out faded colors and chipped-paint patterns, Ms. Stuart will uncover a part of the city's history that hasn't been ravaged by time: commercials! It's like Madison Avenue in sepia tone. Hopefully there'll be at least one miracle tonic. Madison Square Park, Madison Ave. (26th St.), 212-685-6150, 12, $15.

MondayAugust 9

The Yellow City Revolution

This ain't your grandmama's book reading. The lovely folks over at Bluestockings Books are advertising this as an "audio-visual presentation" of Carissa van den Berk's new book, May It Come Quickly. Instead of a bunch of literati sitting still and rhapsodizing over the spoken words of some supposed genius author, the St. Louis-based novelist and zinester is offering an audio- visual experience, complete with acoustic punk rock and audience participation. Assisted by the music of Rachel Jacobs and the poetry of Matthew Berliant, van den Berk will act out the action in the post-apocalyptic, anti-empirialist coming-of-age story. Indeed, the revolution will not be televised, but it will be presented in an engaging multimedia format. 172 Allen St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-777-6028, 7, free.

Tuesday August 10

Blogs: The Future of Politics?

We certainly hope not. Then again, considering the dwindling number of people who actually care about politics and the overtly hostile tone used by people who do, maybe that's what we deserve. Representatives from the world of politically minded blogs, including Bryan Keefer, from campaigndesk.org, Jeff Jarvis from Buzzmachine and Salon's Geraldine Sealey will defend the navel-gazing nature and cherry-picking political tendencies of what is sickeningly called the "blogosphere." Decide for yourself if politicoblogs are canaries in a coalmine or tempests in a teapot. Makor, 35 W. 67th St. (betw. Columbus Ave. & Central Park W.), 212-601-1000, 7:30, $15, $12 adv.

Contributors: A.D. Amarosi, Lionel Beehner, Adam Bulger, Simon Cohn, Lara Farrar, Jim Knipfel, Andrew LaValee, Alan Lockwood, Dennis Tyhacz.