By Kai Wada Roath
Ambassador of Confusion Hill and host of the Super Shangri-La Show

"Across the rainbow bridge of Asgard,
Where the booming heavens roar.
You'll behold in breathless wonder,
The God of Thunder, Mighty Thor!"
~ The Mighty Thor theme from the 1966 cartoon

When I was a kid of just 10 years old, I would ride my Huffy down to the docks with my crab net on my back and spend the day hauling up rock crabs to later throw in a boiling cauldron before having a feast with my nutcracker. This is not the case for Tony Curtis in The Vikings (1958) in which he is sentenced to death by being tied in a low pool to be eaten alive by crabs.

In my humble opinion, this movie is the best Viking movie to this day. I mean, it's a no-brainer, Kirk Douglas has one eye and seeks revenge, and Ernest Borgnine is his dad, drinking out of a horn ...and it's narrated by Orson Welles!

If you live near Bagdad by the Bay, you can see The Vikings on the big screen at the historic Balboa Theatre in San Francisco this coming Wednesday, June 13th at 7:30pm and also buy it on DVD or Blu-ray at Amoeba and keep it in your Odin's Treasure Vault at home.

Burger Boogaloo is back at Oakland's Mosswood Park for its sixth year on Saturday, June 30th and Sunday, July 1st! This year’s "shok"-inducing lineup includes performances from Devo, The Damned, Le Shok, Mudhoney, The Traditional Fools, The Mummies, Dwarves, The Flakes, and plenty more. Of course, no Boog bash would be complete without the one and only Czar of Bizarre, John Waters, as the Mister of Ceremonies!

You just can't afford to miss this celebration of rock, roll, food, booze, and shopping. Look for the Amoeba Music booth for great deals, hot vinyl, and fun prizes.

Tickets are on sale now HERE, with weekend passes starting at $169 and VIP passes going for $269. Saturday passes are $125 and Sunday passes are $99.

SATURDAY 6/30
DEVO
THE MUMMIES
THE TRADITIONAL FOOLS
SPITS
MUDHONEY
HUNX AND HIS PUNX
FLYTRAPS
CUMSTAIN
NOTS
THE FRANCIS LAU EXPERIENCE

Is it June already?! Keep up to date with all the haps at Amoeba SF and Amoeba Berkeley with this handy calendar for June. We've got loads of sales and in-store events to keep you busy all month long.

By Jon Longhi

Welcome to this month’s Having A Movie Moment with Jon Longhi, where I review recent Blu-ray releases. Both of these Blu-rays came out in the past three months.

Thor Ragnarok, Marvel Studios:
What a great movie! It's pure entertainment of the type that Marvel excels at. This movie works on many levels; it's great science fiction, action, drama, and even comedy all simultaneously. It's got a great story, good acting and pacing, and wonderful sets, costumes, and special effects. Like every recent Marvel movie, the story feeds into the Avengers: Infinity War plot line, but it also succeeds quite well on its own. My daughter and I have been watching all the Marvel shows and movies and know how every related plot thread connects together, but my wife hasn't watched any of that stuff and she enjoyed this movie just as much as me when we watched it together. That's quite a feat, because the Marvel universe has gotten really complicated these days, so it takes great skill to make a new Marvel movie that doesn't need a guidebook for one to understand it.

This is the third Thor movie but it is almost equally a sequel and a prequel to the recent Avengers movies. It picks up with Thor wandering the universe performing his usual godlike deeds of heroism and searching for the Infinity Stones. He is imprisoned by the fire demon Surtur who tells him that his father Odin is no longer in his celestial home of Asgard and that the realm of the gods itself will soon be destroyed in a cosmic armaggedon known as Ragnarok. After dispatching Surtur and a really cool dragon, Thor returns home to find that his evil brother, Loki, has stolen the throne by disguising himself as Odin. After exposing Loki, Thor takes him to earth where they locate Odin with the help of Doctor Strange. Odin is dying, and his death releases his first born daughter, Hela, who destroys Thor's hammer, conquers Asgard, and casts Thor and Loki off into space. They land on a junkyard planet ruled by Jeff Goldblum who forces Thor to fight the Incredible Hulk in an area. Do Thor, the Hulk, and Loki escape? Is Asgard saved? I'm not going to give away any more spoilers, but let's just say that answering these two questions is tons of fun and pure Marvel entertainment.

Soft Shoes

The 23rd San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) returns to the beautiful Castro Theatre May 30 – June 3 for five days of masterpieces from the silent film era set to glorious live music. Several of the films are SFSFF restorations, which will be having their world premieres, including The Other Woman's Story (1925), Richard Oswald's German version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1929), the San Francisco-set Soft Shoes (1925), and the Soviet masterpiece Fragment of an Empire. Additionally, SFSFF has restored recently-discovered footage of San Francisco in the days after the catastrophic 1906 earthquake. (The nine-minute segment will be shown on Saturday, June 2, with Trappola.)