You’re walking down the street in the dark. You can hear the steps of a beast with many feet behind you. Every second it’s getting closer and bigger. One minute it’s got the juicy spirit of a young Biggie Smalls and a waterfall piano melody that inspires visions of a tiny dancer. The next, its Ciara-stamped “O” pulses over the metric bump and grind of an Elastica connection. Just when you think you have its ID down, it changes again, shifting sounds and songs at a rate of a dozen a minute. It’s tapping you on the shoulder. It’s gotten inside your brain. It’s Night Ripper, the newest album by Girl Talk.
Gregg Gillis has made three albums under the Girl Talk moniker, but this year’s Night Ripper (Illegal Art) is the one that’s making that moniker famous — maybe because it’s a monster of an album that leaves most mashup ideas and practices in the dust. And to think that the title comes from a simple T-shirt. “There’s this shirt I’ve had for years that shows this skateboarder dude with all these fluorescent colors and skulls everywhere, and it just says ‘Night Ripper’ on it,” Gillis, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pa., explains via phone before a Friday night show. “I wanted an aggressive name [for the album] that also had a party feel.”
Night Ripper’s 16 tracks add up to a seamless 42-minute burst of manic energy. It’s no surprise to learn that Gillis composed the album as one big song. “I built it in three different chunks, so in case I got stuck in one area I could move to another,” he says. “Eventually, I had this whole piece.” The result possesses the type of megamix acceleration you’d find on the late-night Detroit radio stations that bred the likes of DJ Assault. But Gillis says that while he’s heard his share of CeCe Peniston–style techno pop and has nursed a childhood passion for New Jack Swing, neither count as a direct form of inspiration. “In high school I was into John Oswald and People Like Us and Evolution Control Committee and Plunderphonics-y experimentation. I fell into this mode of making megamix-style music through that.”
On his first album for Illegal Art, 2002’s Secret Diary, Gillis drenched Lil’ Romeo and others in static white noise. His flair for harshly comic juxtapositions was already there, present in a track (“What Iff”) that — thanks to Big Tymers — changed Joan Osborne’s infamous “What if god was one of us?” query into “What if god were a project bitch?” One track on 2004’s Unstoppable, his follow-up for the label, the jaw-dropping “Bodies Hit the Floor,” forecasted where Gillis was headed. Over frenzied beats, he ricocheted the “you say” verses of two radically different girl pop songs — Kelly Osbourne’s “Shut Up” and Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” — off each other and threaded Ludacris’s “Move Bitch,” Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River,” and a ghostly Bone Thugs ’n’ Harmony warrior ode through them.
“I think if you put Secret Diary and Night Ripper together, it’s kind of like Unstoppable,” Gillis says, his analogy suggesting an incessant urge to combine and fuse material. “I’ve made an experimental album, then more of an IDMish album, and now a pop record.” A berserk record that swallows pop music whole. It’s easy to imagine The Simpsons’ sometime market researcher and sexual predator Lindsay “be warm — but edgy-cute” Naegle having an aneurysm upon hearing it. Night Ripper is packed with funny split-second moments, such as a transition in which the hooting synth melody of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” is answered in a birdcall manner by the keyboard hook of Mariah Carey’s “It’s Like That.”
Yet for all its Dirty South meets AOR meets soft rock meets alt-rock meets gangsta meets grunge meets ’80s bubblegum appeal, don’t assume Night Ripper is a Frankenstein built only from other people’s parts. One of its purest blasts of adrenaline stems from Gillis’s own instrumentation, when he adds an accelerating guitar track to the “Girl, shake that laffy taffy!” chorus of D4L’s “Laffy Taffy.” The factoid masters at Wikipedia have already compiled an extensive list of Night Ripper’s samples, nabbing 190 sources. But their efforts can’t convey the sheer goofy your-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate joy of Young Jeezy colliding with Nirvana or a magnified version of Biggie’s trademark beat-fucking “uh” sound (from “Hypnotize”) giving way to an equally exaggerated bump and grind burst from Billy Squier’s onanistic “Stroke.”
With Night Ripper, Gillis has built a popular culture landmark somewhere between a Stars on 45 hit and the copyright-flouting 1987 United Kingdom chart attack of the Justified Ancients of Mumu. He uses a Plunderphonics-like practice to create something that might have mass appeal. “I’m making this music that is challenging yet pop,” he agrees. “I could have gone over the edge and doubled the number of sources and made it insanely crazy to listen to as an experimental piece or I could have slowed it down and made this easy-to-dance-to sort of record. It was a fine line, and I wanted to make something that was fun but at the same time interesting to listen to as a composition.” (Johnny Ray Huston)
For a complete interview with Gregg Gillis, go to Noise at www.sfbg.com/blogs/music.
Bay Guardian Archives
NOISE: Oh boy, Junior Boys
Bay Guardian contributor Chris Sabbath recently talked to Junior Boys in anticipation of their Sept. 26 show at Bottom of the Hill.
So This Is Goodbye (Domino), the new album from Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus of the Junior Boys, finds the duo getting their signature blend of seductive pop and bubbling electronica that started on 2004’s Last Exit (Domino) down to a science. The pair seem more focused on this album, and the music is more simplistic in nature than Exit‘s. Complicated drum rhythms and mathy tempos reigned supreme on the last album, but Goodbye is a lot more stripped down. Greenspan and Didemus subtly find a dense rhythm or beat and build from the ground up with Casio-inspired emanation, gloomy ambience, and provocative vocals that recalls the synth-pop of bands like Depeche Mode and New Order.
I recently had the pleasure of conducting a phone interview with Didemus while he was on a tour stop in New Orleans.
Bay Guardian: After the success of your last record, did you find the songwriting approach somewhat more challenging for the new album?
Matt Didemus: Yeah, well, the last record was recorded in a strange way. It was recorded over a period of like three or four years and different people were involved. In the very beginning I wasn’t actually even in the band properly — I was just mixing their stuff. There was Jeremy and John, this other guy who left before Last Exit even came out.
Yeah, but the recording process was different because it was done in a much shorter amount of time. I think that definitely affected the way the record sounded. It’s probably a more coherent record than the first album.
True religion genes
Tory in Jesus Camp. Copyright Magnolia Pictures.
Fascinated disgust and aghast amusement are two feelings I don’t experience often enough. Jesus Camp elicits both in spades. This doc by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (The Boys of Baraka) travels into the darkest heart of America’s evangelical Christian movement: a North Dakota summer camp that whips born-again children — most already homeschooled into such beliefs as the nonexistence of evolution and global warming — into religious frenzies. Tongues are spoken. Pint-size preachers take the stage. Pentecostal minister Becky Fischer warns her charges of the evils of Harry Potter: “warlocks are enemies of God!” (Later, there’s a great moment when one little rebel admits he’s watched all the Potter films on the sly; the wide-eyed looks on the other kids’ faces are priceless.)
Children’s minister Becky Fischer. Copyright Magnolia Pictures.
Though Air America radio host Mike Papantonio (a Christian but not a fundamentalist) steps in from time to time as a de facto voice of reason, Jesus Camp operates without narration or slanted editing. It doesn’t need it. As is, the doc offers a clear-eyed view of a religion that might seem on the fringes but in fact claims huge, ever-growing numbers. The film also places emphasis on the palpable evangelical presence in American politics — with a chilling look toward the future, when this brainwashed-from-birth generation will eagerly join the right-wing voting bloc.
I spoke with co-director Heidi Ewing hours before Jesus Camp’s sold-out Times Square premiere Sept 22 (the film opens Sept 29 in San Francsico). She was understandably a tad nervous: “I’ve got some butterflies that I didn’t think I’d have, but I think that’s normal.”
New voice in town
By Steven T. Jones
Ace photographer and all around good guy Luke Thomas — who had a nasty falling out with his business partner at the San Francisco Sentinel, Pat Murphy (I’ll have more details on that for y’all very soon) — today debuted his new website, Fog City Journal, which has the look and feel of the old site, but with a bit more journalistic integrity. Meanwhile, Pat’s site (recently returned from being down during his battle with Luke) looks like a shadow of its former self, running business community press releases and leading with a gratuitious breast shot from LoveFest. It reminds me of what some tavern owner friends of mine used to say, that the mark of a dying bar is when it starts holding wet T-shirt contests. But there’s no reason to dwell on the negative. Welcome to the fray, Luke.
The bogus terror plot
By Tim Redmond
leave it to Wonkette to demonstrate why the terrorists who were going to blow up a plane with carry-on liquids were pretty bogus threats. At least one expert points out that it’s almost impossible to mix a bomb out of ordinary materials in an aircraft loo.
Maybe Pelosi is the real devil
By Steven T. Jones
Like many Americans concerned about this country’s imperial ways, I was thrilled to hear Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounce U.S. President George Bush during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. It was biting, funny, insightful, and right on target. The cowardly Democrats are unwilling to really go after our truly dangerous leader, so it was refreshing to hear someone use an official lectern in this country to tell it like it is. And besides, despite the ridiculous denunciations of Chavez that have followed, Bush has been just as harsh with Chavez and other world leaders without being so roundly denounced for his lack of decorum and diplomacy.
But I was once again embarassed by our congressional representative, Nancy Pelosi, for joining the rhetorical lynch mob, and for the utterly ridiculous reduction of a head of state and the leader of the Latin American left to an “everyday thug.” As we approach the mid-term elections, Democrats should be demonstrating than they’re something other that the cowardly and unimaginative “me too” syncophants that much of the country suspects them of being. I’m beginning to fear that under Pelosi, the Democrats will never be anything more than has-beens and back-benchers, content to fiddle for spare change while the empire burns. It’s sad.
Josh’s going-back-to-jail party at Crash
On the eve of Josh Wolf going to jail, and on the eve of Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada facing yet another federal decision moving them ever closer to jail, I was honored to be the lead speaker at the fundraiser and going-back-to-jail party for Josh last night at Crash, a club on Mason Street in San Francisco.
I made two major points: first, that this was the only city in the country to my knowledge that had three reporters who were in jail or heading to jail, on orders from Washington, for failing to produce sources and material in federal cases. This was no mistake. This was a direct hit at San Francisco, the country’s leading city for dissent and anti-war movements for decades, and came down directly from the Bush Administration and its PATRIOT Act politics as a way to scare the city and put its dissenters on notice.
My second point was that I was speaking as a member of many journalism organizations (from the Society of Professional Journalists, which has already contributed $30,000 to Josh’s defense, to the California First Amendment Coalition to the California Newspaper Publishers Association to international groups from the InterAmerican Press Association to the World Association of Newspapers to the International Press Institute) and that these professional organizations either are or would be in solidarity on this common ground journalism/public service issue. They could be counted on. But the Josh Wolf case was different because he was a lone freelance video photographer, without a news organization and attorneys behind him, and he looked like easy prey for the local cops and the feds.
That, I noted, was what was so important about the Crash event and the emerging Josh brigade. The event was lively, well attended, lots of fun, and demonstrated that a freelancer who stands tall, as Josh is doing, can build a strong grassroots constituency capable of mobilizing sustained resistance.
The real outrage is that the local cops turned Josh’s case over to the feds and gave them another timely target for Bush in San Francisco. And the cops did so secretly and unilaterally, without going to the mayor, to the supervisors, to the district attorney, to the Police Commission. The cops who are fighting like hell to keep beat patrolmen out of the neighborhoods and were happy to invite the feds to come to town and rough up our press and our public on their behalf. At minimum, that move demands public hearings by the supervisors to determine how this happened and what can be done to see that it never happens again.
Today’s Chronicle blaring front page head said: “SILENCE MEANS PRISON, JUDGE TELLS REPORTERS” No, silence in this case for these three reporters means principle and honor and holding your ground under fire. There is no principle or honor for the people in Washington who are working overtime to put in jail three reporters who were doing their job at this critical moment in the City and County of San Francisco.
Free the Media!
WHAT: Free the Media!
WHEN: Thursday September 21st, 8pm-midnight
WHERE: Crash (34 Mason Street between Eddy and Turk)
Blogger and video-journalist Josh Wolf has been ordered back to jail for refusing to let a federal grand jury have unedited footage of a July 2005 protest demonstration.
Free the Media! Is a benefit to raise money for the Rise Up Network legal defense fund for freelance journalists.
Speakers at Thursday’s event will include Josh Wolf (on the eve of his return to prison), Bruce Brugmann, editor and publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian; San Francisco Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Chris Daly; filmmaker Kevin Epps; Sarah Olson, Truthout.org journalist; Jeff Perlstein, executive director of the Media Alliance; Richard Knee, acting Journalism Division chair of the National Writers Union’s Bay Area chapter; and Njeri Sims, filmmaker.
Live music by Magnetism. Chuck Gonzalez to DJ.
City attorney and the cops
By Tim Redmond
City Attorney Dennis Herrera released his official opinion on how the Police Commisison has to respond the the utterly horrible California Supreme Court decision on secrecy in police discipline cases. I’m not happy.
I realize that the Supreme Court has spoken on this, and that the city attorney of San Francisco can’t just openly defy the Supremes. But there are some (small) openings in the ruling; among other things, it specifies that records in police discipline cases have to be closed, but pointedly does not address the issue of open hearings. Herrera’s opinion pretty much says there’s not a damn thing the Police Commission can do other than shut down all public access to information about cops who have behaved badly. I like and respect Herrera, but I have to side with Poice Commission vice president David Campos, who told me this afternoon that “if there’s even a small opening, we should try to pursue it.”
Embattled journalist Josh Wolf’s video blog
@@http://www.joshwolf.net/blog/@@
T. Rowe Price: how to annoy the hell out of a good customer, Part 3
Repeating once again for even more emphasis: “Investment management excellence, world class service and guidance” (Positioning line at the top of the T. Rowe Price website)
By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)
Five days after putting my pointed questions to a voice mail at the T. Rowe Price headquarters in Baltimore as to why the company was calling my wife an excessive trader of mutual funds, I got a call back from Ben Scherer, from the risk management team of T. Rowe Price Financial Institution Services, as he is called.
He was an affable chap with the air of a seasoned flak catcher out of Tom Wolfe’s short story on mau-mauing the flakcatcher. He apologized for the troubles, and said that the person I had been calling at Price (on my own dime) had left the company three weeks before and that it was the fault of Charles Schwab for giving me her name and not giving me the Price 800 toll free number for answering questions and complaints. (I didn’t even ask why, if she were indeed gone, that there was not a message on her answering machine explaining that she was gone and who to call in her stead. I made five calls to her number.)
I asked Scherer why Price had told my wife, via a telephone call from a Schwab customer rep, that she (and I) could no longer invest in any Price funds because she had violated Price trading policy (unbeknownst to us) by selling a Price fund (quite modest) in her IRA account (quite modest) because Price had a six month hold on trading its funds. My wife had bought her Price fund in July and sold it in September, on advice of our financial advisory newsletter, and Schwab had not advised us of any hold policy. (The Schwab rep told me that Price is one of only a very few fund families that impose such penalties and restrictions and that this restrictive policy is difficult for Schwab to deal with. He said Schwab was working on a pop-up to let investors know of such restrictions, but it was not yet up and running.)
Where, I asked Scherer, did Price notify its customers of its penalties and restrictions? He said it was in the fund prospectus and could be viewed or pulled down from the Price website. He e-mailed to me under the ominous head “Excessive Trading Policy” a copy of the fund prospectus. And there it was, buried deep in the prospectus under the title “excessive trading policy,” a line that said “persons believed to be short-term traders may be barred for 90 calendar days or permanently from further purchases of Price funds…”
Let’s have a show of hands: how many investors would turn cryptographer and plow headlong into a prospectus to ferret out this nugget of legalese before investing? Let’s have another show of hands: how many small investors, poring through a prospectus and running into the clunky head “Excessive Trading Policy,” would stop and think it applied to them and try to figure out that it meant expulsion and banishment? Further: Price policy says “may” and so Price has the discretion of barring or not barring investors from further fund purchases. So I emailed Scherer and asked more questions: why had Price used its discretion to designate my wife and me, without real proper notice or warning, for expulsion and banishment? Why, with such a severe and unappealable penalty, did Price not work out proper notice with Schwab? Why did it not highlight the penalties at the top of its prospectus or at least in the table of contents or somewhere and instead bury it under mountains of legalese? Why, when confronted by annoyed customers, did it not budge and try to make amends and work to keep longtime customers? Why did it not take the occasion to display “investment management excellence and world class service and guidance?” The email back from Price, unsigned this time, read like boilerplate and avoided most of my questions and notched up the stonewall.
And so alas I must have a chat with my crazed short term and excessive trader wife and see what we should do: fire Price or start reading every prospectus, line by line, page by page, from top to bottom, before investing in any more Price funds with Charles Schwab.
P.S. Unsolicited advice: to Price, Schwab, and all investment advisors and advisory newsletters everywhere: if anybody is imposing severe penalties and talking expulsion and banishment and exile for small individual investors with modest accounts, please give them fair warning in advance. And please don’t blame the victim when you get a complaint. B3
Police foot patrols get green light
In the face of raised levels of violent crime in San Francisco in recent months, the Board of Supes voted on September 19 to look into expanding a pilot police foot patrol program.
The program was first suggested by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and, as amended, would provide foot patrols in more neighborhoods.
In a 5-4 vote, the Supes decided to add the Tenderloin, Mission and Ingleside police stations to the program and to send the proposed legislation back to committee for another hearing.
All this went down in face of Police Chief Heather Fong’s warnings that the program would result in increased costs and slower responses to violent crimes, even as she expressed support for expanding the program.
City Budget Analyst Harvey Rose predicted that the SFPD could start up the program without additional resources.
The amended legislation goes before the Committee on Gun and Gang Violence on Oct. 2 and returns to the full Board on OCt. 3,
NOISE: Winning Tortoise
Guardian contributor Chris Sabbath weighs in on the recent Tortoise show on Sept. 14 at Great American Music Hall:
Being a late bloomer in the whole Chicago post-rock department, I didn’t actually get around to hearing Tortoise’s eclectic jazz-prog-electronic post-whatevers until my early 20s. That being said, I went Thrill Jockey crazy for a summer — endlessly stockpiling my college apartment with albums by such label staples as Mouse on Mars, Trains Am, and Oval. Wharves — I’m over it now, but fast-forward six years later, and I still hadn’t seen the Windy City quartet in the flesh. From what I could remember, they had only breezed through my Cleveland, Ohio, hometown once, and instead of venturing to their show, I chose to spend the day bonding with my ex-girlfriend. Wish I would have chose the former, because I ended up lost in the ghetto, fighting with my ex, while my friends were having the time of their lives. (One friend went on to comment: “Dude, a haunting performance, dude. The best show I’ve seen in years.”) So to make up for bad arguments and stupid decisions, I was pretty stoked when I found out that I was going to be able to finally see the band when they came to the Bay Area last week.
My date and I ended up waiting outside in the will-call line for what seemed like an hour (nothing is more alluring then being entertained by the homeless and musically inept). Anywho, I began to panic when we finally reached the doors and I recognized the song echoing throughout the Great American Music Hall as “Swung from the Gutters” (one of my favorite Tortoise songs) off 1998’s landmark TNT album. Playing it cool, I casually asked my date where she would like to sit, and of course, she chose the highest portion of the building, behind the lighting designer, something I initially frowned upon (I like to be in the shit of sweaty bodies and spilled beer). But in actuality, it turned out to be a great viewing area, and I could see perfectly throughout the duration of the show.
After “Gutters” went through the motions with post-jazz, electronic gurgling, I was treated to a harmonious barrage of great songs from each of the group’s albums. The show ended up being the best I have seen this year. Having not bought an album by Tortoise in the past couple of years, I was a tad bit worried that the band would be playing all new songs that I wouldn’t recognize. Not the case. They relentlessly played all the hits. Every song that I would ever want to hear Tortoise play live ripped through the crowd — all bases were covered. Some of the highlights were “Glass Museum” off Millions Now Living Will Never Die, “It’s All Around You” from the album of the same name, and their first encore performance of “Seneca” off Standards.
I was very surprised that I recognized most of the songs that the band was playing. Tortoise released an album of covers with Bonnie “Prince” Billy earlier this year, in addition to a box set of rare material. There was a song or two that stuck out as not being memorable, but much to the crowd’s delight, as well as mine, the band kept dishing out the good stuff. John McEntire and company seemed to very relaxed on stage too, repeatedly switching up the instruments between members. I thought the use of two drum sets was very effective. What they lacked in stellar studio production, live, (their fluctuating tempos are obviously electronic based) was made up for with hard-hitting drumming — ultimately taking the music to a new level. In addition to the crystal-clear tones and rich textures of the guitar and bass, the band seemed comfortable jamming on stage, adding a sense of ingenuity to already great songs. After two encores, the band called it a night and succeeded in making an impression on me, amid my somewhat drunken daze — I will definitely go see this band the next time the opportunity arises. And so should you.
Jesus — not again
By Tim Redmond
Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission are interested in pursuing tidal energy off the Godlen Gate. This is an excellent development, something that Matt Gonzalez pushed for when he was running for mayor. It’s a way to generate huge amounts of renewable energy for the city and apparently is cost-effective.
There’s only one flaw – and as far as I’m concerned, it’s fatal.
From the Chron story Sept 19:
“The city is in negotiations with a number of companies that could help run the turbines and cover the costs. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is among them, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city’s Department of the Environment. ”
Holy shit, here we go again.
PG&E, which stole the city’s renewable electric power 80 years ago when the dam at Hetch Hetchy Valley began generating electricity, now wants to steal the power of the Golden Gate tides, too.
Memo to the PUC and the Department of Environment: Any tidal energy project has to be built, run and controlled by the city, as part of a public-power system. If PG&E has even the tiniest bit of involvement in the deal, it will be shot down as corrupt and unacceptable. Don’t even think about it.
Will Herrera fight the cops?
By Tim Redmond
The Police Commission held a long, long closed session tonight, and I’m sure they were discussing the big issue of the day — the California Supreme Court decision that the cops insist makes all cases of discipline against peace officers totally secret.
I have no idea how the behind-closed-doors discussion went — but I do know that Commission vice-president David Campos, who is acting as a courageous champion of public access here, told me several days ago that he was going to push his colleagues not to bow down to the police lobby. He wants to keep disciplinary hearings open, to the greatest extent possible. But that will require some courage from CIty Attorney Dennis Herrera, too — the kind of courage Herrera showed in backing the city’s decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses, in defiance of the established legal authorities. There’s a way to do the same thing here — to say that San Francisco will not simply give up on public scrutiny of police misconduct: Keep the hearings open, and force the cops to sue. Then fight them all the way, and try to make better law.
Dennis?
Trash hits Toronto: part two
FEST REPORT Because I’m psychotic, I jammed 22 movies into six and a half days at the Toronto International Film Festival — and was actually pissed at myself for not seeing more. Out of curiosity, I sprinkled in a few prestige pictures: Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the early days of the Irish Republican Army; and Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, starring a Penélope Cruz so va-va-voomy that it’s almost a relief when another character asks her if her chest was always that enormous.
I knew it’d be tough to top my two early favorites, both detailed in last week’s Guardian: from Korea, monster movie The Host; and from Hong Kong, Johnnie To’s stellar, Sergio Leone–infused gangster story Exiled. Several came mighty close though, including Andrea Arnold’s Red Road — about a woman whose numb existence spent watching surveillance camera footage is rocked when a man with ties to her tragic past happens to stroll into her line of vision. Not only is Red Road exquisitely directed, it features the best acting (particularly from lead Kate Dickie) of any film I saw at TIFF. That’s not a slight against the always-excellent Christian Bale, star of Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, whose Fear Factor–influenced portrayal of a jungle-bound prisoner of war erases all memories of Batman (but not, perhaps, freaky foodie Patrick Bateman).
Fellow Bollywood fans know a Shah Rukh Khan performance is not to be missed under any circumstances, though committing to the 192-minute Never Say Goodbye meant missing out on a few other screenings in the process. (It was worth it.) The fangirl mentality also drew me to Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, a polarizing work I heard variously described as “Aronofsky’s 2001” and “Aronofsky does Soderbergh doing Solaris.” Yep, it’s a bit baffling — but in a weirdly spellbinding way. Hugh Jackman, you are almost forgiven for Van Helsing.
TIFF’s documentaries were an overall strong bunch. Prickly American History X director Tony Kaye takes on America’s pro-choice–pro-life debate in the nearly three-hour Lake of Fire. Though the film’s most graphic images are (barely) muted by Kaye’s decision to shoot in black and white, the content — especially the interviews with right-wing extremists — is just as shocking. Other top docs: Macky Alston’s The Killer Within, about a nice, normal family grappling with the knowledge that 50 years prior, its patriarch shot and killed a college classmate for the murkiest of reasons; AJ Schnack’s Kurt Cobain about a Son, which takes the experimental approach of layering audio interviews with the late musician under newly shot footage of Cobain’s Northwest stomping grounds; and the more conventional punk celebration American Hardcore.
The fest’s lightning-rod film was Death of a President, a made-for-British-TV faux doc that imagines what would happen if George W. Bush were assassinated. (Before you start cheering, feel the terror of these words: President Dick Cheney.) JFK remains my favorite dead-prez whodunnit, but Death of a President manages to maneuver its scandalous concept into a perceptive take on post-9/11 civil liberties.
One last thing: do I have to give back my film critic’s wings if I say Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhs was my favorite TIFF movie? Because if loving Borat is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. (Cheryl Eddy)
FEST REPORT Navigating TIFF’s public screenings often leads to a heavy bout of queue fatigue. You line up to purchase tickets, to pick up tickets, to get into the theater, and invariably to get into the exclusive confines of the ladies’ room. And then there’s the peculiar indignity of the absurdly named “rush” line: the film is already sold out, so if you want in, you have to take the chance that there’ll be a no-show ticket holder you can replace. And that requires waiting forever.
But being the first to discover little gems makes it all seem worth it: Agustín Díaz Yanes’s Alatriste (starring an español-speaking Viggo Mortensen) plays like Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean if Uncle Walt had done a tour of duty in Gallipoli; the Canadian National Film Board doc Manufactured Landscapes follows photographer Edward Burtynsky on a fascinatingly meditative trip through the industrial wastelands of China; and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, the perfect companion piece, offers a brilliant, surreal slow boil on urban alienation in an increasingly modernized Thailand.
Of course, there were disappointments too, like Catch a Fire, Phillip Noyce’s well-acted yet underwhelming biopic of South African freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso. And let’s not forget the schlock, like the silly slasher film from Montreal’s Maurice Devereaux. I squinted when the director credit came onscreen, pretending for a moment that I had made it to the TIFF big time but winced at the sight of the movie’s irony-soaked title: End of the Line. (Michelle Devereaux)
Top 5 TIFF moments
(1) Sarah Polley makes her public debut as a director in the glitzy embrace of a Roy Thompson Hall gala for Away from Her, with the seats packed to the rafters, and gives the audience a manifesto on the importance of government funding and support for Canadian cinema. Yeah! Sarah Polley for cultural ambassador. Now that Lions Gate has picked up the film for distribution, there’s even a happy ending.
(2) Waiting in the green room backstage, I meet Anna Paquin, the little girl from The Piano, all grown up and articulate and serving as a member of the jury making the award decisions on Canadian cinema. We discuss the crowds of fans this year and the odd relationship between acting and celebrity. “Most actors are very shy and timid, you know,” she told me. “Those other people aren’t really actors. They’re celebrities who appear in movies.”
(3) In Away from Her, Julie Christie plays a wise, smart, ironic woman who begins to disappear into an Alzheimer’s fog. During one scene, in which her character, Fiona, seems barely aware of her surroundings, she suddenly snaps to attention as the TV news shows footage of the Iraq war. “Have they forgotten Vietnam?” she asks — more cogently than any administration official these days.
(4) At the “Dialogues: Talking with Pictures” event with Albert Maysles, who was accompanied onstage by documentarian Barbara Kopple, there was a screening of his new film composed of outtakes, The Beales of Grey Gardens. Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale explains in one scene why she’s agreed to do this film with the Maysles brothers. It’s because someone had approached her to do a fiction film based on her life and the notion horrified her. “Imagine, they wanted Julie Christie to play me! I couldn’t have that.”
(5) OK, so not all my top moments are upbeat. On the morning of Sept. 11, I woke up in my room at the Delta Chelsea Hotel to the phone ringing. When I answered, a voice said, “Oh, thank god it wasn’t you.” Huh? It was my friend Susan, who had just heard the news of a triple murder-suicide in a room five floors below mine. I was here on this same date five years ago too. (B. Ruby Rich)
For five more of Rich’s top TIFF moments and additional coverage of the festival, visit www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.
Weather channeling
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Dancer-choreographer David Dorfman is a poet of the ordinary. He digs below the commonplace and lets us see what’s underneath. Early in his career, with Out of Season, he paired football players with highly trained dancers. Ten years ago he invited his ensemble’s family members to join in performances of Familiar Movements. Both pieces revealed fresh ideas about dance, community, and beauty. They also showed Dorfman to be an artist of sparkling wit with a generous spirit.
In the two pieces that his David Dorfman Dance company made its Bay Area debut with last year, he worked single conceits into exuberant, athletic choreography that resonated beyond its voluptuously evocative appeal. In See Level, sprawled bodies on a studio floor suggested maps of continents, with individual countries that were self-contained yet had relationships with each other. A naked lightbulb inspired Lightbulb Theory, a meditation on death. Is it better, the piece asked in densely layered images, to die quickly or to flicker for a while?
Dorfman’s newest work, the 50-minute underground, opens the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ new Worlds Apart series, which according to executive director Ken Foster features artists who “create work that inspires us to think deeply and become responsible citizens of the global village.”
For underground, Dorfman started with history, using local filmmaker Sam Green’s Oscar-nominated documentary The Weather Underground as a jumping-off point. The film documents the activities of the Weathermen (later, Weather Underground). In the 1960s and ’70s, this radical offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society advocated violence to incite change. For Dorfman, the film and his associated research raised questions about individual and social responsibilities when faced with injustice. He also began to wonder about the effect of age on one’s perspective and decision-making process.
Speaking from his home in Connecticut, Dorfman explained that he was a Chicago teenager during the Days of Rage — four days in 1969 when stores and public buildings were attacked in protest of the Chicago Seven trial. “Now, I wanted to look at the idea of resistance against an unwarranted war from the perspective of a man with a 50-year-old body.”
Dorfman’s underground will strike a raw nerve with audiences, though he refuses to narrowly assign blame for the causes of societal unrest. He wants to unearth root causes, not apply Band-Aids. “Yes, of course I feel burned by the elections of 2000 and 2004 and the shameful behavior of our government. But this is not just about the current administration. Much damage was done before,” he said, pointing out that our conversation happened to be taking place on the anniversary of 9/11.
“I try hard to be a good global citizen, and I mourn the needless loss of life. So I want my generation and younger people to look at the nature of activism and what, if anything, justifies the use of force and violence.”
After the June premiere at the American Dance Festival, which occurred during the Israel-Lebanon conflict, a young audience member told Dorfman that he wanted to get off his backside and do something. “I don’t know what that something is,” Dorfman responded. “But we have to talk about it.”
The show stitches documentary footage, photo collages, spoken and projected text, and a commissioned score by Bessie winner Jonathan Bepler to Dorfman’s choreography for his nine dancers — plus some 20 local performers whom he auditioned this month. Though he still loves to work with people he calls “folks who don’t think they can dance,” underground’s choreography requires professionally trained artists.
Reminded of his ideal “to get the whole world dancing,” Dorfman is quick to point out that while realistically war may not always be avoided, perhaps we could learn to tolerate each other, and that dance — “nonsexual, noninvasive physical contact” — just might help.
Besides, he said, “If people are dancing, for that one brief moment they cannot kill each other.” SFBG
UNDERGROUND
Thurs/21 and Sat/23, 8 p.m.;
Sun/24, 2 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater
700 Howard, SF
$19–$25
(415) 978-ARTS
www.ybca.org
The Shadow knows
› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Why do we want DJ Shadow, né Josh Davis, to suffer for his art? Why are we so enamored of the romantic image of Davis, pate and gaze humbly hidden by a hoodie, bowed like a monk before a crate of precious vinyl like a mendicant curled in prayer at the dusty cathedral of flat black plastic? It doesn’t help that Davis seems to resemble in part that now-iconic pop image when he meets me at Universal Records’ SoMa offices. Polite and erudite, rigorous and righteous, he obviously takes a subtle, scientific delight in the details and precision of language and in meeting commitments, making dates, finishing interviews, taking care of business. He’s not some goofed playa tripping on hyphy’s train.
But being a smart dude aware of all the angles, Davis, 34, is well aware of the disjunction between his image and his current sound — his past and present — too. “I feel like it was getting to the point where a lot of people were trying to tell me who I am and what I represent,” he explains in the, yes, shadows of a Bat Cave–ish conference room hung with midcentury horror-cheese movie posters. “This image where it’s just sort of like me in the dungeon of records, with the hood pulled over my head, and I only like old music, and y’know, hip-hop was so much better way back when.
“Yeah, that’s a little piece of who I am, but it seems like some people kind of fetishize that culture or that aspect of my personality, where it has sort of devoured everything else. And, um, I just feel like it was important for me to make this record and articulate who I am, rather than let people compartmentalize me in that little box of, ‘OK, this is DJ Shadow. He’s the sample guy. He’s the guy who made Endtroducing, and he’ll never make a better record, and that’s … DJ Shadow. Next artist.’”
Hence The Outsider (Island). It’s a bold, deep rejoinder to scoffers that somewhat ditches the dreamy grooves in Shadow’s past for ever-infectious hyphy-lickin’ good times (radio hit “3 Freaks” with Turf Talk and Keak da Sneak and “Turf Dancin’” with the Federation and Animaniaks), a little bow to crunk (“Seein’ Things” with David Banner, made in the interim between Davis’s 2002 album, Private Press [MCA], and the rise of Bay sounds), funk and funny jams (“Backstage Girl” with Phonte Coleman), and even a completely outta-left-field dissonant pastoral (“What Have I Done” with Christina Carter of Charlambrides). Even E-40 takes part (“Dats My Part”), in what might seem to some like Davis’s bow to the Bay and its players. However you read the title of his latest album, this outsider has probably made his most geographically specific, here-and-now recording to date. It’s rooted in a genuine — though scattershot and even schizo — sense of place rather than an imaginative pomo zone where old 45s can be recycled and reused ad infinitum and a talented and introverted head like Shadow can study beats, the art of sampling, and music making inside out in bedroom-community privacy. Perhaps that’s why the San Jose–born, Davis-raised Davis has been so often connected, mistakenly, to Hayward — therein lies the romance of burby anonymity, the decentered, very nonurban reality of so many hoodie-bedecked kids who fall for hip-hop and spring for decks.
So Davis leans forward intently and tells me about listening to hyphy for the first time on KMEL while driving over the Golden Gate to his Mission studio and getting an instant hit off its raw kick. How he tried to break down the “strange, almost Eastern chords and keys” underlying Rick Rock’s, Droop-E’s, Trax-a-Million’s, and Mac Dre’s tracks. These are tales he has told many times before, to Billboard and URB (which lapsed by sticking the currently capped, clean-cut Davis in a white suit, like a datedly slick star DJ). But you have to appreciate the sincere passion of his mission. The need for this father of identical twin toddler daughters to fly right, get the record straight, come correct, and make good art, even if it means happily stepping aside, letting the current Bay stars set up on two-thirds of his sonic dreamscape’s turf, and disappearing into the heat of, say, Summer Jam 2005.
“I just feel like my job is to make a good song,” he says mildly. “And if making a good song means that I play the back and not get real freaky with the programming and not load it up with 10 trillion samples or something, whatever the song requires is what I’m willing to do.”SFBG
DJ SHADOW
Thurs/21, 4 p.m.
Amoeba Music
2455 Telegraph, Berk.
Free
(510) 549-1125
Thurs/21, 8 p.m.
Amoeba Music
1855 Haight, SF
Free
(415) 831-1200
WITH MASSIVE ATTACK
Fri/22, 8 p.m.
Greek Theatre
UC Berkeley, Gayley Road, Berk.
$45.50
www.ticketmaster.com
Twisted logos
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS I wear a jean jacket with Chief Wahoo, the not exactly politically sensitive Cleveland Indians’ logo, embroidered on the back. Not sure what people behind me think of this, but here’s what I’m thinking from inside the jacket: warmth. And meaningfulness, because I embroidered this jacket myself when I was a kid. I was into sports, and I was into embroidery (and needlepoint and macramé). And warmth.
I gave the jacket to my nephew and best bud Tom the Bomb when he grew into it, and then he grew out of it too, and my sister gave it back to me after he died. I put the jacket in my closet, like ashes in an urn, and started losing weight. When I got down to 135, 140, I tried the jacket on and it fit me again, only girlishly! So I wear it and it means some things to me, and probably something else entirely to the people behind me.
Do I care?
Last week I wrote about my voice, and there’s an even bigger challenge looming for me, which doesn’t have anything to do with writing my name in the snow, really, although it kind of does too. It has to do with public restrooms, maybe the bloodiest of all the battlefields where transpeoplepersons conduct business. My therapist wants me to conduct my business in ladies’ rooms, because he’s afraid I’ll get beat up in the men’s room. But I’m afraid I’m just as likely to get beat up in the women’s room, and I’m not so sure which would hurt worse.
So, like a quarterback stepping to the line of scrimmage, I make my read, depending on how I feel, how good I think I’m looking, the likelihood of a blitz, where the hell in the world I am…. Sometimes I go in one, sometimes the other, and sometimes, of course, I hold it in.
So it’s not a question of being uncomfortable. It’s a question of how and where I choose to be uncomfortable. Comfort’s not an option. Unless … and you hate to even hope it out loud, it’s so hopeless, but some places do have unisex bathrooms, the symbol for which — Mr. and Mrs. Public Restroom Figure side-by-side on the same placard on or over the same door — has become as welcome and wonderful to me as the smell of bacon.
So the other day I’m gassing up my pickup truck at a place out on 19th Avenue, and the guy gassing up the pickup truck behind mine, I notice, is wearing a jacket with this exact logo on the back. The man and the woman. The anyone-pees-here logo, one at a time, please. You know the logo, right?
The association, for me — well, immediately it puts me in a happy mood. I’m thinking: I should talk to him if he turns around. Maybe he’s cute. I’m thinking: I wonder what I have in my truck that I could offer to trade this guy for his unisex-bathroom jacket. I would like to wear it when I’m not wearing my Chief Wahoo jean jacket, and this one too will have meaning for me. Beyond warmth.
As I’m getting back in my truck, watching him, the guy does turn around, and the front of his cool jacket says, “Straight Pride.”
My mood changes. What an asshole, I think. With his big fat truck and not exactly politically sensitive jacket. Jerk! And as I put my car in gear and lurch forward there’s a knock on the window. It’s Straight Pride guy, pointing to my roof and smiling and, you know, being kind and all-around human, saying, “Gas cap! Gas cap!” Oops. I get out, thank him profusely, love him again — because why shouldn’t straight people be proud? — and drive away bewildered and confused, like I like to be.
My nephew the Gun, speaking of bewildered and confused, no longer wants to be a stuntman for a living. This is the Bomb’s older brother, and maybe the most sensitive, and therefore smartest, of all my millions of nephews. He’s so sensitive that waitresspeople can’t even see him. Predictably, the Gun now aspires to be an assassin. You see what happens? Ohio + North Carolina = this, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to have him out here again for at least a year this time, working for my phenomenal bro, living with my sweet, sweet cuz, and otherwise eating breakfast, talking philosophy, and just generally being recorrupted by the chicken farmer.
Where? My new favorite breakfast joint, of course! Great chicken-fried steak ($9.50). Great hash browns. The “house omelet” has bacon and sausage. Coffeehouse atmosphere, good coffee. It’s … SFBG
SOMA INN CAFE
Mon., 7 a.m.–6 p.m.; Tues.–Fri., 7 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sat., 7:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sun., 8 a.m.–3 p.m.
1982 Folsom, SF
(415) 863-0742
Takeout available
Beer and wine
AE/DISC/MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible
Without Reservations
› paulr@sfbg.com
Like all books, cookbooks must pull their weight. This means, for me, offering at least two and possibly three — or more — recipes I can work into my rotating repertoire. Pretty photographs are nice, as is exoticism or a local angle, but it is one of life’s eternal verities that shelf space is limited, and a cookbook that hopes to find a home in the puritan kitchen must be useful. (I have noticed over the years, in my reconnoiterings and snoopings in other kitchens, that spattering tells the tale. Spattering means: this book actually gets used — it isn’t just sitting there, beautifully posing.)
Although I have thus far made only one recipe from Cindy Pawlcyn’s new cookbook, Big Small Plates (with Pablo and Ernesto Jacinto, Ten Speed, $35), I have already assigned it shelf space in the permanent collection. In part this is because Pawlcyn is a local eminence who has had a hand in such hits as Bix, Fog City Diner, Mustard’s Grill, and most recently, Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. In part it’s because far more than two or three of the book’s recipes look tempting, though I haven’t gotten to them yet — and the reason I haven’t gotten to them is that the book opens with a splendid recipe for gougères. I have been making these gougères, and when you make gougères, you tend to get caught up in an obliterating bliss.
Gougères are — as anyone who’s queued at Tartine Bakery probably knows — sand-dollar-sized cheese puffs. They are close relations of brioche, the bread that thinks it’s a cake or the cake that thinks it’s bread — I’ve never been sure which. Like brioche, gougères are substantially fortified by butter and eggs. Unlike brioche, gougères rely exclusively on eggs as the leavening agent; there is no yeast. Pawlcyn’s gougères recipe is, in fact, a model of simplicity. It calls for butter, eggs, flour, water, salt, and grated Gruyère cheese, and the equipment list is a saucepan, a mixing bowl, a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and an oven. Best of all, the recipe results in handsome golden puffs that no one can eat just one of.
A word of backstreet wisdom: Pawlcyn’s gougères are best served warm, within an hour or so of emerging from the oven. When they cool, they deflate and look like miniature hamburger buns. Tastewise, though, they still pull their weight.
Watch on the Rhine
› paulr@sfbg.com
If San Francisco were Europe, Divisadero Street would be the Rhine: the heavily traveled commercial artery that crosses a jigsaw puzzle of (sometimes) quarrelsome fiefs, duchies, and principalities on its way north or south. In this paradigm I make the stretch of Divis from California to Geary, more or less, to be our Alsace-Lorraine, the six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other province long the subject of a tug-of-war between greater powers. The contenders across the pond were (and maybe are) Germany and France; over here they are Pacific Heights, land of the rich blond hets, and a confederation of the Lower Haight, NoPa, and parts of the Western Addition — in other words, hipster lands.
Naturally I am not suggesting that Pacific Heights is our Germany; not at all. For some years, the most conspicuous outpost of Marina culture on the nether side of Pacific Heights has been Frankie’s Bohemian Café, a lively simulacrum of some Prague haunt filled with riotous American frat boys who take their Pilsner Urquell by the pitcher. But in recent months there has been southward creep and the establishment of a new outpost: Tortilla Heights, a Mexican restaurant for gringos that opened earlier this spring in the strange space that used to belong to Minerva.
The space is strange — to me — because I can’t quite decide if it more nearly resembles a sound stage or a gymnasium in a public school. If the latter, then the decor is now in the prom-night vein, with some kind of cantina theme: brightly colored lights hanging from the ceiling, booths along the wall sheltered by thatched faux-roofs, and salsa music. The design touches are enough to let you know you are in some kind of Mexican restaurant, but they also have an improvised, portable quality that doesn’t suggest permanence.
And yet … on a recent Saturday night, we found the place pretty well jammed, and it was early. And while the crowd had its share of blonds and fratty types, it also included an elderly couple with their walkers, along with several sets of young mothers whose small children clung to the legs of mommy’s jeans or were stowed under mommy’s arms; it was like a social version of Noah’s ark. There is a chance that this eclectic group was drawn by the restaurant’s witty name — which reminds us, simultaneously, of Tortilla Flats and Pacific Heights — but it is more likely they came for the food, which is surprisingly good. While the menu is very much in the American comfort zone, it includes a variety of regional Mexican dishes, and the kitchen’s preparations are careful and emphasize freshness.
The Yucatecan-style citrus marinade in the grilled citrus chicken burrito ($6.50), for example, is noticeable as both a hint of sweet-sourness in and a tenderizing influence on the poultry flesh. It’s a small detail, but good cooking is nothing but small details. Another such detail is the roasted garlic cream that adds a grace note of luxurious richness to the otherwise virtuous plate of Cabo-style fish tacos ($11), a troika of warm white-corn tortillas stuffed with grilled white fish and shredded cabbage.
A larger detail is that the bigger plates do not come larded with huge scoops of rice and beans — starch that most of us really don’t need, especially if we have stuffed ourselves with complimentary chips and salsa while waiting for the show to begin. (Tortilla Heights, not surprisingly, is swift and generous in replenishing the chips bowl; the salsa was pleasantly fiery on one visit, undersalted on another.) Big blobs of beans and rice do have a way of furnishing a platter, but when they aren’t there, it’s easier to see the dish you actually ordered: an Oaxacan tostada ($11), say, with a heap of wonderfully tender carnitas (along with cilantro-lime cabbage and shavings of parmesan cheese) atop a pair of crisped corn tortillas. Or the blue-corn enchiladas ($12) filled with grilled chicken and topped with melted white cheese and a tart tomatillo salsa.
My friend the cheddarhead, a reliable lover of all things cheesy, did not like the queso chorizo ($5), a small tub of melted mixed cheeses laced with chunks of chili sausage and strips of green chile. The cheese did have a certain Velveeta quality, but it was just the right consistency for dipping surplus chips into. The guacamole ($5), meanwhile, was mainstream but beautifully made, with fresh avocados still chunky from not being overmashed and a good jolt of lime juice for mood lighting. The cheddarhead lodged no complaints.
The contemplation of desserts in Mexican restaurants is usually a perfunctory business. You have flan, and maybe something else. At Tortilla Heights, the dessert menu is characteristically brief, but it does contain one extraordinary item: the churros ($4), a half dozen or so ridged torpedoes of cinnamon-dusted, deep-fried pastry, about the size of medium zucchini, with a ramekin of caramel sauce for dipping them in. The sauce is good, but if it weren’t there you probably wouldn’t miss it, because the churros are sufficient unto themselves: a divine combination of crunchy and tender, sweet but not too sweet, an exotic whisper of cinnamon, and — yes — the fattiness that makes pastry, pastry, particularly if deep-fried. You might well feel uneasy, maybe even guilty, about enjoying them so much, but don’t worry — you had the fish tacos and didn’t like the queso, so you’ll be OK. SFBG
TORTILLA HEIGHTS
Continuous service: Tues.–Sun., 11–2 a.m.
1750 Divisadero, SF
(415) 346-4531
www.tortillaheights.com
Full bar
AE/MC/V
Noisy
Wheelchair accessible
Chumby!
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION On a shelf above my fireplace, snuggled next to a Totoro stuffed animal and a stack of books about movies, there is a puffy, tan creature about the size of a Nerf football that has a three-and-a-half-inch computer screen for a face. If you squeeze the creature’s body, a menu pops up on the screen — from there, you can log on to my wi-fi network. This quasi-plush animal is in fact a hardware prototype of a cute little wi-fi thing that’s designed to “think.” It’s called a Chumby, and it’s about to change your life.
Using the Chumby.com Web site, you can register your Chumby, name it (mine’s called Tribble), and then load different “widgets” into its brain. The widgets change what’s displayed on the Chumby’s face: you can have a digital clock, headlines from Digg.com, a stock market ticker, or pictures scraped from CuteOverload.com. Because the Chumby is always online via wi-fi, it can spend the day peacefully cycling through pictures of kittens interspersed with stock quotes. The result is a nontechnological-looking object that’s halfway between being a very lazy cat and a very simple computer.
Chumby-makers Chumby Industries, staffed in part by hardware maestros Joe Grand and Andrew “bunnie” Huang, wanted to create something that would bring the Web into people’s lives without being as intrusive as computers are. When the Chumby is running, you can glance at it every once in a while to see what’s happening in the news, but you can’t grab it and start trolling for data the way you might if it were a laptop. You stay connected to the online world but don’t get disconnected from the real one.
What makes the Chumby dramatically different from other consumer electronics is that its hardware and most of its software are open source. That means you’re permitted to modify, hack, reverse engineer, and optimize the device to your heart’s delight. Chumby Industries encourages people to build new widgets and submit them to the Chumby Web site so other people can use them. Same goes for hardware hacks.
When was the last time you bought an electronic gizmo that was truly yours? Most devices come with warnings not to modify them unless you want to void your warranty. Some companies even threaten lawsuits if you reverse-engineer their products. But the Chumby is designed to be ripped apart and sewn shut again by its users. I mean that literally and figuratively — you can hack its hardware, but you can also take the Chumby’s electronic components out of its plush case and install them inside a teddy bear or leather boot.
This is a piece of consumer electronics in the most meaningful sense of that term. Consumers can do what they want with it.
Right now, the Chumby is only available on a limited basis to people who don’t mind playing around with what bunnie calls “alpha hardware.” That means my Chumby is a prototype. It crashes; it falls off the wi-fi network randomly; it keeps resetting its clock to a random date in 1969.
Once Chumby Industries gets the bugs out, though, you’ll start seeing nonalpha Chumbys for sale.
The Chumby may be unique in openness, but it’s not the first “smart” object on the market. There’s a “smart bunny” called a Nabaztag (www.nabaztag.com) that’s not quite as sophisticated as the Chumby but can still go online and read the weather to you. Looking sort of like a cross between an iPod and a Japanese cartoon character, the Nabaztag can stream MP3s from the Web, light up in different colors, do live traffic updates, and be an alarm clock. Like the Chumby, it’s a paracomputer, a thing that communicates Web data to you without actually being a Web browser.
Futurists predict that in the next five years our homes will be packed with “thinking” things that get their intelligence via wi-fi. Chairs will sing; coffee pots will read you the morning paper; desks will get your voicemail. I’m not interested in any of that. I have enough trouble dealing with chairs that are completely silent. But I do like the idea of having many ways of accessing digital information. Computers can provide rich sources of detail, but other devices will offer just a snapshot framed by waggling bunny ears.
As soon as the Chumby hardware is a little more stable, I’m making it into my alarm clock. I like the idea of waking up to streaming MP3s and a few news headlines. And if I want to shut it off, I’ll just squeeze. I’m telling you, the squeeze interface is genius. Genius! SFBG
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who sometimes wishes her cat could display the latest headlines from BoingBoing.