Bay Guardian Archives Archives — Page 997 of 1098 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Newspaper execs pose uncomfortably for camera

April 16, 2007

By G.W. Schulz

Dean Singleton is fuckin’ stoked! Check him out below! That’s him on the right there. He’s the CEO of MediaNews Group, beloved by laid off reporters and editors everywhere, some who adore him so much, they throw empty beer cans at him.

Dean Singleton (right) with dreamy blue eyes
and conservative red tie. Tighten that knot, Dean!

If you owned as many newspapers as this guy does and flew around the country in your own private jet to deal with each one, you’d probably be able to hammer out a slightly bigger smile than this, huh? Dean’s spicing things up at MediaNews Group with a brand spankin’ new Web site and a recent office move across town to swankier digs in Denver, where the company has long been based.

So who’s that guy on the left there? That’s Joseph J. Lodovic IV, president of MediaNews. He earned a fat $1 million bonus last summer after the Hearst Corp., owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, gave MediaNews nearly $300 million to complete its big local newspaper buyouts that included the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. Joe’s muggin’ big ’cause he knows he’ll have his own private plane soon enough!

Weekend warfare – XBXRX do declare, Ponys cavort Deerhunter, Aerogramme takes flight, and more, more, more

April 13, 2007

Ah, it’s here again – that little breather from the workday world…. What you say, you don’t work? I’ll just have to ignore that, idle rich kid. Anyway, there’s plenty of music to see and hear this weekend – starting right up top with Oakland’s own punk heroes: XBXRX.

Dudes caused quite a ruckus at Monday’s Lobot Gallery show, opening for Lightning Bolt. They have a brutal lil’ new album, War (Polyvinyl), an exploration of frenzied guitar, lengthier songs, and metallic textures. Check opening song, Center Where Sight, for a good loud whiff. For a longer earful, go on over to their record release partah Saturday, April 14, at Hemlock Tavern, SF, with the Mall, Robin Williams on Fire, and the Show Is the Rainbow. It all starts at 9 p.m. and costs 8 bucks.

And y’know if you’re not up for noise stars Deerhunter and garage mavens Ponys at 12 Galaxies tonight, April 13, then you might want to keep it at the Hemlock for Mon Cousin Belge‘s cabaret shenanigans, Nudity’s heavy-hanging booty psych, and Society of Rockets’ primo pop.

Elsewhere you’ll have a chance to get your ya-ya’s out and dance like a cracked-out ’80s spazz-bot when Love of Diagrams bring their electro-pop to Slim’s, opening for the always dynamite Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Saturday, April 14. (9 p.m., $16). If we could bottle this kinda energy, our midnight Jolt runs might be a thing of the past.

Speaking of power, across town, the elderly Charlie Louvin kicks out that “Great Atomic Power” at Swedish American Hall, tonight, April 13. (7:30 p.m., $20-$25) I had to crane my neck but bad during SXSW to get a glimpse of the country music legend. The man is elderly, but he’s still alive, unlike his bro Ira, so make a beeline. Court and Spark’s MC Taylor opens.

Don’t bottom out there – indie rock faves Appleseed Cast break the mold headlining Friday, April 13, at Bottom of the Hill (10 p.m., $12), playing with the Life and Times and the Moanin Dove. Later on Sunday, April 15, a certain Seattle indie band bids you reach out and touch the woman that’s expecting a big fat something come Mother’s Day: Say Hi to Your Mom.

And if sweet sounds are your poison, maybe hightail it over to 12 Galaxies Saturday, April 14, for Kelley Stoltz and Essex Green – magnifico indie all! If Brazilian is more your beat, then talented hottie CeU will be making her stand tonight, April 13, with a self-titled Six Degrees debut in hand, at Independent (9 p.m., $15). Bay soul sister Ledisi comes through the following night, April 14, and then Aereogramme lands with Glasgow indie to spare on Sunday, April 15 (8 p.m., $12-$14).

Pant, pant, OK, so hit your marks and report back Monday, if there’s anything left of you…

Shocked! Shocked! And shocked again!

April 13, 2007

Not one of the nation’s biggest newspaper chains (Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens)
saw fit to run a story on a key decision in favor of the Guardian motion to unseal the records during and after the Riley antitrust trial. Why people get mad at the media (l5)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Federal Judge Susan Illston’s latest decision was an important free press and public access victory and may lead to an unprecedented public examination of the Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/Stephens move to monopolize the press in the Bay Area and much of California, yet the chain papers and the Associated Press, their wire service, didn’t run the story.

Impertinent rhetorical questions: Why? Will they publish the story? Will they continue to fight to seal the documents despite the judge’s order? Will they continue their policy of promoting the publishers’ side and tossing a bone now and then to plaintiff Clint Reilly?

I think attentive readers of the Guardian and the Bruce blog have a pretty good idea. But, being objective and fair-minded on monopoly issues, I will pose the questions and see if I can get some answers:

To Hearst corporate in New York and MediaNews Group/Singleton corporate in Denver, and Gannett corporate in Arlington, Virginia, and Stephens in Las Vegas: Why didn’t you do the unsealing story? Will you? When? Will you continue to fight to seal the documents despite the judge’s unsealing order?

To the editors and publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst, Oakland Tribune/Singleton, Contra Costa Times/Singleton, San Jose Mercury News/Singleton, San Mateo Times/Singleton, Independent Journal in Novato/Singleton: Why didn’t you do the unsealing story? Will you? When?

To the Associated Press: I called the AP office in San Francisco and found that the editor on the story was Brian Corovillano, but he was away from his desk. So I emailed him the questions. He later emailed me this note: “We covered Tuesday’s ruling and I’m attaching the story below (B3: Illston’s decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed.) We decided yesterday’s development didn’t rise to the level of another AP story. But we’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on developments in the caae as it continues.”

To the attorneys and law firms representing the chains in their sealing motions Gary L. Halling , Michael W. Scarborough,and Tyler M. Cunningham from Sheppard, Mullin, Richter, and Hampton in San Francisco and Alan L. Marx and Steven C. Douse from King & Ballow in Nashville, Tennessee (both firms representing Singleton and the chains’ partnership California Newspapers Partnership).

And Gordon L. Lang from Nixon Peabody in Washington, D.C., and John H. Riddle and Paul J. Byrne from the
Nixon Peabody office in San Francisco (representing Singleton): Did you advise your clients not to run the story? Will you continue to fight to seal the documents in this case despite the judge’s unsealing order?

Let me know. You can email me the answers. I assure you that many of us — staffers on your papers, the rest of the press in your circulation area and beyond, and many readers, advertisers, and members of the public — would like to know. More to come, B3

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/12/07): 8 Iraqi parliament members killed in Green Zone. 10 Iraqi civilians killed in bridge bombing.

April 12, 2007

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/12/07): 8 Iraqi parliament members killed in Green Zone. 10 Iraqi civilians killed in bridge bombing.

“How the president and people around him can say things are going well is really hard to comprehend,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

A suicide bomber killed at least 8 Iraqi parliament members today after slipping through the tightest security net in Baghdad, according to the Associated Press.

To read a daily reports of violence and military operations in Baghdad, click here.

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 10 Iraqi civilians were killed when a bridge in northern Baghdad was demolished by a suicide truck bomb, according to CNN.com.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

61,294 – 67,243: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 8 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/39/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,526: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

Source: http://www.rsf.org/

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/12/07): So far, $416 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

The fun keeps dying

April 12, 2007

By Steven T. Jones
How Weird Street Faire’s fate got even worse since my last post, with the San Francisco cops now saying the organizers need to cough up $23,833 in fees, to be paid before the May 6 event. What is this, a shakedown? Somebody call a cop. Or maybe someone at City Hall should call off the cops.

Unfortunately, the city’s punitive approach to its most beloved street fairs and festivals only got worse last night when Recreation and Park Department staff convened members of the Outdoor Events Coalition to say they’re recommending substantially increased special event fees, so big that events like Bay to Breakers, Love Fest and other events could cease to exist. Rec and Park, an increasingly incompetent department that has bungled its way into a $2 million budget deficit, say they need big bucks to cover their costs and wipe out the red ink. Their proposal calls for charging $50,000 to use the Golden Gate Park polo field, $25,000 for Civic Center Plaza, and $12,000 for Mission Dolores Park. And on top of all this, the city has banned booze from the Haight Ashbury Street Faire of all places. Last year, we warned that fun in the city was under siege. Now it’s starting to look comatose.

The fun keeps dying

April 12, 2007

Rev up the presses! Judge Illston rules in favor of a Guardian motion to open all the Hearst/Singleton records during and after the Reilly antitrust trial

April 12, 2007

By Bruce B. Brugmann (scroll down for the publishers’ briefs and monopoly news you will see nowhere else)

There’s bad news and good news today. The bad news is that Federal Judge Susan Illston ruled today
April l2 that the Hearst/Singleton documents of secrecy and stonewalling remain under seal in the Reilly antitrust trial. She adopted the proposals for sealing as put forth by the Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/Stephens attorneys.

The good news is that Illston was clearly exasperated with the publishers’ continuing demands for sealing records and stated that “during and after the trial” the public will have a “highly compelling interest in access to all evidence presented by the parties.” She concluded her one paragraph order by saying that “the instant sealing orders will therefore have no effect on the sealing of any evidence presented at trial.”

Attorney James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project in Oakland had earlier won a ruling from Illston to unseal the Hearst/Singleton court records, but allowed the publishers to seal a new batch of records during a later filing. Wheaton asked for a review and argued that Illston “should apply the more stringent standard applicable to dispositive motions” and that the court “should not seal a record submitted with a dispositive motion unless defendants have made the required showing of ‘compelling reasons’ and a balancing of ‘all relevant factors’ to justify sealing.” A dispositive motion is one directed toward or effecting dispositon of a case.

Illston responded to Wheaton’s appeal with today’s order that would unseal the Reilly trial documents and in effect open up the publishers’ monopoly moves to lock up the press of the Bay Area and much of California to an unprecedented examination by the staffs of the chain papers, the rest of the press, and the public.

Wheaton is representing the Guardian and the Media Alliance in this action. See my previous “Stop the presses” blog for more information on the secrecy and stonewalling battle and copies of the publishers’ filings asking for the lastest batch to be sealed. See Illston’s unsealing decision below and Wheaton’s appeal in my previous blog. The Guardian will put up all records during and after the trial on its website at sfbg.com.

Professional note to Reilly and his attorneys Joe Alioto and Dan Shulman: make sure you get all the relevant monopolizing documents of the nation’s biggest chains into the trial so that the Bay Area, and the rest of the world, can see how it is done and how monopolies censor and mangle the coverage of their own monopoly moves. This is one of the big Censored Stories of our time. And it is indeed chilling to watch these events unfold.

Repeating the key question: why is it that a reader and an intervening alternative newspaper have to do the job of the California Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney’s office? Antitrust? What’s antitrust these days? B3

Click here to view Judge Illston’s order to unseal

Sites We Love: No sleep ’til Mendocino

April 12, 2007

Wanna travel? Wanna get away? Why drive when you can fly, right? Wrong. There’s tons of great travel opportunities right here in the Bay — not all of them boutique-y in that precious Wine Country way or “Look at all these distressed and antiqued finds up here in Half Moon Bay” way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

But lately — and post-Spring breakly — we’re lovin’ 71 Miles, a local travel site put together by former television travel commentator and late-night heartthrob John Vlahides — who certainly seems to know a lot about the Bay’s “hidden spots” …

And why not? Who doesn’t want to fondle the soft, white, nearby underbelly of the Bay in terms of restaurants, B&Bs, shops and other such getaway stuff? So forget about Puerto Vallarta — we’ve got Truckee! Yes, Truckee. The “next Aspen.” Really!

Dr. Jang for mayor!

April 12, 2007

By Tim Redmond

You’ve seen the late-night cable-TV ads. You’ve seen the drag queens portraying him on Halloween in the Castro. He fixes my teeth (well, one of his associates does, but I’ve met The Man.) And now Beth Spotswood wants him to run for mayor!.

I love her candidates list: Brian Boitano, Cheech Marin (“you know what the mayor’s office is missing? A bong”), and — of course — George Clooney (“he’s already broken up with Jennifer Siebel.”) But I’m voting for Dr. Jang.

Keys of life

April 11, 2007

PIANO MAN On April 13, 1957, at an assembly room in the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, George Michalski gave his first piano recital. He played John W. Schaum’s "Snake Dance" and "The Sphinx" and closed with "My First Waltz," by Bjarne Rolseth, from G. Schirmer’s Piano Solo series for students. "My mom was so excited leaving the house that she tripped and sprained her ankle," Michalski remembers. "She went to the show anyway and stayed for the whole recital — then we took care of her leg."

On April 13, 2007, Michalski will put on another piano recital in San Francisco. This time it won’t be at the library, but his mother will attend. So will some special guests — unsurprising, since in the 50 years after his first performance, Michalski’s ivory-tickling talent has led to collaborations with everyone from Blue Cheer to Barbra Streisand.

"The most exciting thing about making music is to go from Blue Cheer to someone like Streisand," Michalski says while discussing his special anniversary show, which one friend has described as vaudevillian. "Blue Cheer is so far into [pure volume and distortion] that I think of them as classical music. The biggest challenge of playing with them was peer pressure. When I worked with Streisand [on songs such as "The Man I Love" and the soundtrack to 1979’s The Main Event], I tried to get her to listen to blues. She was very open-minded."

A member of Foxtrot — the onetime house band at both Los Angeles’s Whisky a Go Go and its chief competitor, the Starwood, and also the first white group signed to Motown Records (where Smokey Robinson gave Michalski a piano and Berry Gordy’s mother, Bertha, signed his checks) — Michalski has rubbed creative shoulders with everyone from Don Johnson to some of the best-known mimes in the world and crossed paths with political figures such as Bill Clinton and Desmond Tutu.

The ’70s television mainstays Shields and Yarnell, currently on a reunion farewell tour, are the aforementioned mimes. "Robert [Shields] was discovered right here in the Bay Area, in Union Square — the term street mime was invented to describe him," Michalski says, then adds some funny details that could cause someone wearing pancake makeup to become red-faced. "Robert hates most street mimes — because they’re not very good and they give mimes a bad name. I’ve seen him stand there, watch a mime, and rip the guy to shreds. And when mimes recognize that it’s Robert watching them, boy, do they get nervous."

In recent years Michalski has been making music with the original tabloid target, Eddie Fisher. "Confidential magazine got started by writing about him — he was on their first cover," Michalski says, while praising Fisher’s gentle nature. "The whole notion of the paparazzi partly started with him and Liz [Taylor]. That guy has seen a lot, and what he hasn’t seen, his daughters have — Carrie Fisher is no slouch."

To put together his anniversary show, Michalski drew from an idea he first landed on with his friend the late Vince Welnick, keyboardist for the Tubes, in which a strange array of friends stop by his apartment to perform. In addition to unconventional cover versions of songs that have made a few of the special guests famous and some dueling piano boogie-woogie interludes, the evening — presided over by MC Steve Parrish — will likely include numbers from Michalski’s most recent recordings, including San Francisco (Masia Music, 2002), which transforms his love of the city into a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, song-by-song portrait. "This show is different, but there’s no dead time," Michalski says at the end of our conversation before leaving to meet his mother. "It runs like an Italian train system." (Johnny Ray Huston)

AN EVENING WITH GEORGE MICHALSKI

Fri/13, 7:30 p.m., $20

Fat City

314 11th St., SF

www.ticketfusion.com

www.georgemichalski.com

Illston

-

April 11, 2007
0

Click here

Contractors accuse Lennar of Extortion

-

April 11, 2007
0

By Sarah Phelan
Lennar has been giving contractors a choice between a rock or a hard place: reduce your unpaid invoices by up to 20 percent—or be excludedfrom bidding work for a minimum of six months. Nice, real nice.

Marc McGuire, a tile contractor from San Diego, and CALPASC’s Brad Diede on CNBC yesterday to discuss accusations that Lennar is extorting contractors

Three top Lennar executives sent these demands to contractors in Southern California in a letter dated January 16, 2007. So far, no similar letters have emerged locally, but that doesn’t mean similar demands haven’t been happening here, warns Brad Diede. Diede is executive VP of the Sacramento-based California Professional Association of Specialty Contractors, which represents 500 trade contractors and construction suppliers nationwide.

Outraged, Diede fired off a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown, in which he wrote,
“We believe this potentially criminal act is a flagrant example of the abuses of power builders exercise over trade contractors in the State of California.”

But so far, Lennar has not been found guilty of civil or criminal violations in this case.

Stop the presses! Here come the documents of secrecy, stonewalling, and collaboration from the nation’s biggest chains (Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) Why people get mad at the media (l4)

-

April 11, 2007
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

As expected, Federal Judge Susan Illston ruled on Tuesday April l0 that Clint Reilly can go to trial in his antitrust suit opposing the Hearst/Singleton deal to monopolize the Bay Area newspaper market.

The San Francisco Daily, a free daily, played the story the way it ought to be played: on the front page, with a strong head, “Newspaper monopoly trial allowed, Bid to block it quashed,” and a good lead that said, “A federal judge yesterday cleared the way for an unprecedented jury trial to determine if the consolidation of newspapers in the Bay Area violated antitrust laws.”

The Chronicle and the Singleton papers continued to run the story as if it were a rummy little squabble between a lone angry reader and a big company out there somewhere, without any redeeming journalistic or public interest values.
But the Chronicle did move the story from its usual burial spot in the business section to a new burial spot: straddling the fold on page 4 of its Bay Area section with yet another Rip Van Winkle sleeper head, “Judge permits trial over newspaper deals.”

The story is even harder to find on the Chronicle’s website. When I checked about 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, It ranked 23rd on the list of Bay Area stories, behind Farley the cartoon strip, and behind such blazers as “Bay Bridge Labor Day closure may begin early” and “Rain, rain will go away–’til possibly Saturday” and “Out to pasture they go–3 police horses retire/Long in the tooth, these mounts head to Santa Rosa ranch” and “Muni breakdown creates delays.” However, it did rank ahead of “Miniature boats provide major fun.”

More: not only are the Galloping Conglomerati blacking out and mangling a major story involving their own papers,
but worse they are continuing to reverse their own historic free press and sunshine-in-the-courts positions. They are continuing to press the documents of secrecy, stonewalling, and collaboration in federal court to cover their
moves to monopoly.

Alas, Illston allowed the publishers to keep their records sealed, and the Reilly responses sealed, in their latest filings on April 6, despite her earlier order to open the court records on the demand of the Guardian and the Media Alliance. (The Guardian is appealing her decision and will continue to press to open up the records and keep them open throughout the trial, which is scheduled to begin on April 30.)

Too bad. You can tell, just by glancing at the extensive list of Reilly declarations and records that the publishers want to keep under seal, that there is a lot of explosive stuff in the hopper. Meanwhile, the Riley case remains the only major impediment to the Hearst/Singleton deal. And I am getting the impression that Riley is building a strong case and that Hearst and Singleton are getting extremely nervous about the outcome. It’s going to be a helluva trial.

Check the publishers’ filings below for a preview of coming attractions and the lengths to which they will go behalf of court secrecy and stonewalling. Check also the move by the Guardian attorneys, the First Amendment Project in Oakland, to request Illston to review her sealing order. Most important, check Illston’s excellent, well-reasoned order denying summary judgment. She nails the Hearst/Singleton position on point after point. B3

1. Click here to view the declaration of Joseph J. Lodovic, president of MediaNews Group/Singleton

2. Click here to view the declaration of Daniel E. Ehrman J., vice president of planning and development of Gannett

3. Click here to view the proposed order to seal from the San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst, MediaNews Group/Singleton, Stephens Group, Gannett, and California Newspapers partnership (B3: a business partnership of the papers)

4. Click here to view the proposed order to seal from the MediaNews Group/Singleton

5. Click here to view the letter from the Guardian and its First Amendment Project attorneys asking Judge Illston to review her decision allowing the publishers to seal documents

6. Click here to view the Illston order of April l0 denying the Hearst/Singleton motion for summary judgment and giving Clint Reilly standing to sue

Unions intervene in GGRA lawsuit

-

April 11, 2007
0

By Sarah Phelan
Last week, a judge granted four unions–The S.F. Labor Council, SEIU Local 1021, SEIU United Healthcare Workers West and Unite Here Local 2—an intervention in the suit that Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a non-profit trade association, has brought against the City and County in the matter of the soon-to-be implemented San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance.
GGRA is arguing that the mandatory aspect of this local ordinance is preempted by federal law.
Specifically, GGRA’s beef is with the part of the ordinance that requires employers with 20 employees or more to spend a minimum amount per hour worked to provide health care benefits. Employers would also have to maintain records of health care benefit spending, record and report such spending and make records available for inspection. These mandatory requirements won’t be implemented until January 2008, but the City and County will start coverage of unemployed (and therefore uninsured) San Francisco residents, as of July 1, 2007.

Frock you: Givin’ it for Viv — and Funky Chicken 4 Life!

-

April 11, 2007
0

This just in from drag icon Juanita More and more …

A More Perfect Union: Mr. David and Fauxnique Stage a Fashion Uprising

Uprising, upfrocking

This Friday, two of my favorite performers — Mr David and Fauxnique — have put together a fashion extravaganza in honor of fashion luminary Vivienne Westwood’s show at the De Young. It’ll be a punkrock-drag-drunk-politico-darlings revolution — full of SF’s most flamboyant underground stars. All up in DeDe Wilsey’s DeDe Young garden no less.

Friday, April 13, 2007
6 – 8:30 PM / Show @ 7 PM
de Young Museum / Wilsey Court
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
SF, CA 94118
Free

PLUS — FUNKY CHICKEN: Dining Out For Life (after the jump)

Tiger pause — Jason Shamai gets Tropical Malady

-

April 11, 2007
0

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Frame by Frame” presentation last Friday (April 6) at the Pacific Film Archive of his lovely 2004 pain in the ass Tropical Malady didn’t provide much in the way of explanations. Armed with a DVD player remote and an unpretentious appreciation of his own film, the Thai director instead offered truckloads of tiny, personal details as reassurance that the thick-growth trail through his story is a simple one if we just let it be.

The Pirate and the Princess

-

April 11, 2007
0

This week, in Careers and Education, Justin Juul seeks expert help to write erotic prose. Here’s his first attempt at the easy to publish, but not so easy to write, art form. And yes, he found a pseudonym.

The pirate costume I ordered from eBay was sitting in a box by my door when I got home last night. I took it upstairs, set it on the kitchen table, and poured myself a glass of rum. Rum…that’s what pirates drink isn’t it? “What else do they do?” I wondered. If I wanted Chloe to swab my deck for more than five minutes I knew had to be in full swashbuckler mode by the time she arrived. I could put it off no longer. It was time to become a pirate.

I popped in a bootleg copy of Dead Man’s Chest for background noise and prepared myself for a feverish Wikipedia session. Pirate lingo was all I needed, really. I had the accent down pretty good, but I couldn’t just keep saying “arrr,” and I knew words like “landlubber” and “scallywag” would only make us laugh. I cut the box open with a rusty knife as my computer booted, and then, with the blade clenched in my teeth, plunged into the Styrofoam popcorn to search for some treasure. I felt my cock stiffen as I ran my fingers over the beard, eye-patch, scarf, sword, and sexy felt hat. Arrr matey. I was gonna get some princess booty tonight.

Tourk payments investigation clears and questions

-

April 11, 2007
0

By Steven T. Jones
The City Attorney’s Office this morning released its investigation of payments the city made to Ruby Rippey-Tourk after she left her job as appointments secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom, with whom she had an illicit affair, to enter substance abuse treatment. The report found no wrongdoing by any city officials and indicates Rippey-Tourk can keep the $10,000-plus that she received. But it also highlights the special treatment that Rippey-Tourk received and notes that investigators were hindered by her refusal to waive medical privacy rules.

Magic and memory: Matt Sussman chats with Apichatpong Weerasethakul

-

April 11, 2007
0

Whereas David Lynch at times utilizes all the excesses of a bad rock video to give form to the dream logic of his films, Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul creates quietly evocative cinematic reveries. Paced to the unhurried rhythms of their character’s lives and structured around the landscapes (frequently, the verdantly green jungles of his native Thailand) in which they unfold, Apichatpong’s films invite introspective contemplation as much as they have puzzled many an audience and critic. His elliptical narratives, shot through with moments of sharp humor and unexpected beauty, are imbued with a sense of openness, a kind of responsive flexibility that allows their course to be redirected by other forces: a song, memories, folktales. These last two items, in particular, kept coming up as Apichatpong discussed his latest feature Syndromes and a Century (a twice told tale loosely based on how his parents met, showing April 13-15 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts), his love of American disaster movies, and the magical potential of film. (Matt Sussman)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul and actor Sakda Kaewbuadee accepting the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival

Guardian: You are doing a scene by scene breakdown of Tropical Malady at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive. How do you feel about that kind of engagement with your film?

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: I’m not sure. I’m excited about it, because it’s a film that’s quite difficult to explain. One part of my mind thinks that it’s not good to talk about this film because it’s very open to interpretation, but another part thinks that it’s a very nice way to get the audience’s feedback. And I may learn that we can also maybe adapt [the format] and do similar events in Thailand, where very few people relate to my films.

We shall over come ourselves

-

April 10, 2007
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Nearly all the imagery we’re fed when it comes to understanding or imagining issues reutf8g to race in the United States comes from the civil rights era. No doubt that was a critical moment in American history, but it should go without saying that the road home can’t be found on an outdated map. The idea that "we shall overcome" is nice, but in reality different times have created different conceptions of who "we" are, what we’re overcoming, and how we will accomplish it.

It stands to reason that the problem tends to follow our playwrights onstage. The challenges and potential payoffs found in Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door (at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, directed by actor Delroy Lindo) and the American Conservatory Theater production of Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War (see "Home Run: After the War Lucidly Strikes Home," 4/4/07) are different, as if the writers had looked at the bag of tricks they’d been handed and consciously decided to make their own tools. Daily life — onstage and off — has been littered with lazy and self-serving, formulaic attempts to explore nearly every question reutf8g to race. What is most satisfying about Blue Door and After the War is that each asks fresh questions that are difficult and important.

Barfield’s multicharacter, two-actor play focuses on a troubled African American math professor struggling to deny the single fact that most shapes his interactions with the world — he’s hit bottom so hard that his white wife is pushing him to participate in the Million Man March as a way to get in touch with himself. As a result, his career is on the rocks, as are his marriage and his relationship with his family. His daily life gives way to a surreal sleepless night during which he’s visited by relatives, including some who were slaves, an experience that forces him to admit that his present and future have been shaped by the past.

Gotanda has created an ad hoc family of post–World War II refugees who share space in a boardinghouse in what was — before the war — San Francisco’s Japanese neighborhood. Six years later things are considerably different; the war’s over, and African Americans have moved into the Fillmore District housing vacated by interned Japanese Americans. As the original residents struggle to find and rebuild their community, politicians and developers have plans that don’t include black and Japanese American — or any marginalized — San Franciscans.

Gotanda’s multiracial, multinational menagerie lives under the roof of a young jazz musician named Chester Monkawa. Monkawa is a long way from today’s stereotypical hypersuccessful model minority. But although Gotanda’s created his share of outcasts and rebels over the years, what’s different about After the War is the difficulty the assembled characters have in dealing with each other. They’re a happy family when things are going well, but when the pendulum swings the other way, they go with what’s familiar — seeing race as life’s fundamental building block.

It’s refreshing to see After the War and Blue Door raise questions without ready-made answers, but that fact speaks to the problems their playwrights face. If such issues were easily dealt with onstage, we’d be doing a better job with them offstage as well. In fact, it takes a lot of money and an almost pathological reservoir of self-delusion for anyone to deny that America is a long way from addressing its ills. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to see what Barfield and Gotanda — one young and black, the other a veteran Japanese American playwright — are doing. *

AFTER THE WAR

Through April 22

See stage listings for info

BLUE DOOR

Through May 20

See stage listings for showtimes, $33–$61

Berkeley Repertory Theatre

2025 Addison, Berk.

(510) 647-2949

www.berkeleyrep.org

For an interview with Delroy Lindo, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

Still evolving

-

April 10, 2007
0

The human race either sinks or swims. That’s evolution as Charles Darwin first saw it. But flippers and a seal pelt, that’s pure Kurt Vonnegut. The novelist plays God like no other, wresting the species from its self-destruction, then sending it on its wobbly way with a childlike capacity for invention and a wry if discontented grasp of human folly. That’s Galápagos, anyway, his 1985 best-seller in which evolution saves humankind from its big and mischievous brains by sending it back to the sea. And although the transition from page to stage is probably as slippery as that first fin step on dry land, Vonnegut fans (a species unto themselves) will no doubt flock to see the book’s adaptation in the world premiere of Galáp, by San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre.

In a year that found the young company variously pitched in the sand at Baker Beach and careening onboard the Mexican Bus’s rolling party platform, it hardly surprises one to see the itinerant Boxcar pulling into the Cadillac Building at 1000 Van Ness to occupy the vacated offices of an online shoe company as it brings its inaugural season (aptly titled "Journeys") to a close. And indeed, a better-sounding setting for a play inspired by a Vonnegut story is hard to imagine.

Artistic director Nick A. Olivero wants to make the most of it too. His imaginative, kinetic staging contains continual surprises, aided by the aquatic and exotic atmosphere summoned through Lisa Lutkenhouse’s resourceful costumes, Norm Munoz’s puppets, and David Sophia Siegel’s jaunty original score. The room itself is divided into several stages, more or less enveloping the audience in the play’s fractured story line, which looks back one million years through the eyes of a ghost (Josh Truett) at the troubled but pivotal year of 1986 as several hapless tourists aboard "the nature cruise of the century" to Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands become the progenitors of the next wave in human evolution.

The six-member cast cycles through a number of characters, sometimes sharing duties in a single role. If the hardworking cast begins to win us over, it also never masters the rigors of the material or Vonnegut’s satirical style. Poor sight lines, moreover, make some scenes impossible to view from certain seats. Boxcar’s ambitious closer is a mixed bag, in other words, but like Vonnegut’s relentless survivors, the company shows it can adapt. (Robert Avila)

GAL&AACUTE;P

Through April 27

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $12–$28

AMC Cadillac Bldg.

1000 Van Ness, SF

(415) 776-1747

www.boxcartheatre.org
>

1...996997998...1,098 Page 997 of 1,098

Bay Guardian Archives

Newspaper execs pose uncomfortably for camera

For those keeping track …

Weekend warfare – XBXRX do declare, Ponys cavort Deerhunter, Aerogramme takes flight, and more, more, more

Shocked! Shocked! And shocked again!

An evening with George Michalski. Join me tonight at 8 p.m. at Fat City to celebrate the legendary pianist’s 50 years to the day in show business

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/12/07): 8 Iraqi parliament members killed in Green Zone. 10 Iraqi civilians killed in bridge bombing.

The fun keeps dying

The fun keeps dying

Rev up the presses! Judge Illston rules in favor of a Guardian motion to open all the Hearst/Singleton records during and after the Reilly antitrust trial

Sites We Love: No sleep ’til Mendocino

Dr. Jang for mayor!

Leno-Migden, Round 1

Keys of life

Illston

Contractors accuse Lennar of Extortion

Stop the presses! Here come the documents of secrecy, stonewalling, and collaboration from the nation’s biggest chains (Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) Why people get mad at the media (l4)

Unions intervene in GGRA lawsuit

Frock you: Givin’ it for Viv — and Funky Chicken 4 Life!

Tiger pause — Jason Shamai gets Tropical Malady

The Pirate and the Princess

Tourk payments investigation clears and questions

Magic and memory: Matt Sussman chats with Apichatpong Weerasethakul

We shall over come ourselves

Still evolving