Pixel Vision Archives — Page 111 of 133 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Local Artist of the Week: Lauren DiCioccio

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August 5, 2008

LOCAL ARTIST Lauren DiCioccio
TITLE Mount Rushmore: The Four Presidents (hand embroidery on organza and pleather, 2008)
THE STORY “These embroideries are life-size sculptural re-creations of 35mm slides I have collected. I am drawn to slides as precious objects: the fragility of the translucent material and the intimacy of scale of a palm-size slide are particularly endearing. I hope to capture this tenderness in my sculptures. To make these little pieces, I embroider directly onto bridal organza, a delicate translucent material, and allow the excess threads to pour out the back and hang down the wall.
BIO DiCioccio’s current work employs tedious handiwork to investigate the beauty of commonplace mass-produced media objects (newspapers, magazines, office papers, writing pads, plastic bags, 35mm slides) in lamentation of their approaching obsolescence. She received a BA from Colgate University in 2002 and now lives in Woodside.
SHOW “Lauren DiCioccio, Aliza Lelah,” through Aug. 16. 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Mon.–Sat., Jack Fischer Gallery, 49 Geary, Suite 440, SF. (415) 956-1178, www.jackfischergallery.com
WEB SITE www.laurendicioccio.com

Baghead: There’s more to it than just mumbling

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August 1, 2008

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

It’s difficult to call most films independent nowadays. But the Duplass Brothers’ 2005 Sundance sleeper The Puffy Chair is as Indie as an American feature film can be. Made for $15,000, it brought the grit of John Cassavetes and the introspection of Richard Linklater to a whole new generation. Now considered to be part of the godfathers of “Mumblecore,” a genre defined by this generation’s talkative nature, the Duplass brothers have returned with their follow-up. Baghead is a hilarious and often unsettling stalker film that delves into the personal relationship minutia and woes of two guys and two girls who are trying to write a screenplay together in remote cabin.

Um, Baghead

Both of the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, were recently in San Francisco for an interview on a windy summer afternoon.

Mark Duplass: There’s this book that someone sent to us once to maybe adapt into a movie about a couple who had a lot of trouble breaking up. They would break up, get back together, break up, and get back together. So they basically picked their 10 favorite things from the relationship that they loved to do, and they were gonna do all those things and then end the relationship after completing them. Great concept, but it ended up being really bad. I thought it would be great if, while they were trying to do those things, they came upon more obstacles. But the book ends with: since they can’t live with each other and they can’t live without each other, they do a double suicide in a poetic and oblique way.

SFBG: So you’d have to ruin the book if you adapted it into a film.

MD: Yeah, which we’ve done before.

Carbs rebound: ahoy gourmet donuts

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July 31, 2008

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See you latte: Lemon and thyme and vanilla bean donuts with caffeine side. All photos by Kimberly Chun.

Remember turn-of-the-century Atkins? Remember pushing that bread basket away and diving head first into a slab of sirloin? Well, maybe those nutty notions are ready to go the way of cut-glass Jello salad and all-pineapple diets. Carbs are back – big time. Proof: the line forming every morning – much earlier than you’d expect – at Dynamo Donuts and Coffee at 2760 24th St., San Francisco.

It’s those little niblets of fried batter that are making it happen. Personally, I’ve been waiting for the donut revival to hit any moment: few treats can beat a piping hot wad of cake dough covered in sugar or glaze or whatever, as the ideal desert. Add in the lovely, imaginative, only-in-Ess-Eff flavor combos at Dynamo Donut and you’ve got a hit. Enough of a hit that the line gently wound out of the almost brand new little stand on two separate weekday morns.

So far I’ve tried the lemon-thyme donut, the apricot honey-stuffed and iced number, the spiced chocolate, the salted caramel with fleur de sel, and the vanilla bean, all priced at $2 to $2.50. The lemon-thyme is bedecked with glaze, but the petite flecks of lemon and herb still peek out from their cakey home. The spiced chocolate was complex and amazing – my fave and worth the extra 50 cents. I even dug the apricot – I, who otherwise despise ‘cots. All appear to be low on the grease factor, and amazingly not too sweet despite the thick swathe of frosting and the liberal amounts of sugar coating the top and bottom of each donut. More, please.

P.S. I can’t wait to try the maple-glazed apple and bacon number, though I’ve no clue when that comes around next. Better to keep it a surprise. And word has it the current three flavors – which often sell out early – will soon expand to seven.

DYNAMO DONUTS AND COFFEE
Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-5 p.m.
2760 24th St. at Hampshire, SF
(415) 920-1978

Killing the keffiyeh: Another trend slowly fizzles

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July 29, 2008

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By Marianne Moore

Rack of keffiyehs at Sharks on Telegraph

It’s a tired cliché by now: the hipster in skinny jeans and vintage T-shirt wearing a checkered, vaguely Arab-looking scarf folded into a triangle and wrapped around the neck, the point draped across the chest. The scarves, loosely based on Arab keffiyehs, are thought to give the wearer an air of edginess and rebellion totally unaffected by his or her ignorance of the political significance of the accessory, which differs from pattern to pattern. The black and white checkered keffiyeh is associated with Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization; the slightly less common (among hipsters) red checked Kefi, was worn by Jordanian soldiers in the ’60s and now associated with Hamas, the ruling party in Palestine.

Click-click, bag-bag: Procrastinate with style

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July 29, 2008

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By Dona Bridges

Everyday fashion via sfstyle.blogspot.com

Rejoice, voyeurs and procrastinators! I have found a new timesuck for you. My longtime perusal of Jezebel, Fashionista.com, and Facehunter led me to the truly amazing wastes of time that are personal and street fashion/style blogs. I gobble them up like candy, and during some of my over-consumption sessions I’ve managed to find a few that deal with Bay Area fashion specifically:

Rumi mugs on fashiontoast.com

Coquetteis a general fashion and style blog by SF writer Natalie Zee Drieu, with some coverage of local designers and stores.

SF Indie Fashion concentrates on local independent designers, stores and events.

SFBayStyle is a local fashion e-zine/blog with multiple contributors, many of whom are based in the Peninsula; it has a slightly more mainstream focus.

Fashiontoast is the personal style page of SF girl Rumi, with lots of pretty pictures of her in Kate Moss-ish getups, along with links and reviews relating to fashion.

SFStyle does street fashion ala Facehunter, except with tons of hilarious analysis and commentary.

Streetfancy is another street fashion blog, very heavy on nightlife coverage and very recognizable locals like Merkley. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated in almost six months.

You didn’t expect to actually get any work done today, did you? You’re welcome.

Hitting the Bullseye: a young person’s guide to safe shoot-’em-ups

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July 29, 2008

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A selection of firearms at the Bullseye Indoor Shooting Range.

By Ian Ferguson

Fast approaching my 21st birthday, I realized that I had yet to shoot a real gun – unthinkable for an amendment-abiding American patriot. Each year’s 30,000 firearm-related deaths in the United States aside, when Bruce Willis knocks that gun from the hostage-taker’s hand and it skitters across the floor to stop at my feet, I had better be able to shoot it well. Imagine how much the other hostages would hate you if you messed that one up. So I drove out to Bullseye Indoor Shooting Range in San Rafael for an hour on the range.

I’ve a few excuses for having never shot a gun: my parents. As long as I lived under their roof, their patience topped out at Nerf. There’s also my homecounty, Marin – for all its open spaces it doesn’t much tolerate guns, probably because if you fire into what appears to be open space, nine times out of 10 you’ll shoot out the window of some hedge fund manager’s house nestled invisibly among forest and hill. And there’s my wallet: shooting isn’t cheap. This trip left a hole in it as large as any in the targets. Maybe that’s why the war costs so much…wait, nope, forgot about Blackwater.

Located in the warehouse district of San Rafael, Bullseye’s range fits into an unassuming, gray, single-story concrete shell of a building. (I have no idea how they keep the bullets from ricocheting around the inner walls, or piercing through them.) Inside, guns and targets line the walls as the mostly male, mostly crew-cut, mostly Army-fit staff signs shooters in from behind a glass display case. On a backpack leaning against the cash register I noticed two patches: an American flag and a military patch reading “Pork-Eating Crusaders.”

Local Artist of the Week: Michelle Blade

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July 28, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Michelle Blade
TITLE Untitled (Celebration)
THE STORY Using Dura-lar as her primary work surface, Blade paints in gestural and restrained styles, highlighting the extreme variances between her subjects. Bringing to mind Romantic sublimity, she accentuates nature’s vastness while expressing a harmonious human connection with it.
BIO Blade was born in Los Angeles and received an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Park Life, and Electric Works. She has also shown in Philadelphia and Copenhagen.
SHOW “The Elliptical Good-Kind,” through Aug. 8. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia, SF. (415) 522-1623, www.jackhanley.com
WEB SITE www.michelleblade.com

Squatumentary: A Q&A with Hannah Dobbz

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July 22, 2008

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By Liam O’Donoghue

Hannah Dobbz’s Shelter: A Squatumentary screens at 8 p.m. tonight at Artists’ Television Access. A 45-minute exploration of squatting in the East Bay between 2004 and 2007, it shares a bill with Sabrina Alonso’s self-explanatory 28-minute Mischief at 16th and Florida. I recently discussed the the pros and cons and politics of squatting with Dobbz, a freelance writer, editor and filmmaker.

SFBG What is your definition of squatting?
Hannah Dobbz Squatting could be using an abandoned building for a project or just for sleeping. It could be using an abandoned lot for gardening. Generally speaking, squatting is utilizing any unused space.

Hannah Dobbz

SFBG Is there anything that could be described as a “squatting scene” in the Bay Area?
HD Hard to say, since it’s so secretive and clandestine. If people are squatting, they usually don’t want everybody to know. They might need to sneak in at night and leave early in the morning. Not all squats can be used as community spaces.
The most well-known squat was probably Hellarity in Oakland, which is featured in the film. Another squatter featured in the film is Steve DiCaprio, who is working on Banana House and another house now, but that’s more of a private project — not really part of a scene. There is definitely a community of people who would consider themselves squatters (former or current), but using the word ‘scene’ is not really applicable.

America, meet your new gay bachelor

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July 22, 2008

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Yes, the meat is in! But first, let us pause for some sad news. Estelle Getty, beloved Golden Girl, has passed on to that pastel lanai in the sky. (queer tear.)

Yet we move on … to myPartner.com‘s crowning, last week, of America’s Most Eligible Gay Bachelor. It was inevitable, I guess, and my inbox has been absolutely flooded of late with what the more or less cynical among us would regard as desperate capitalization on the whole legal same-sex marriage thing. But I must admit that myPartner is a tad genius. It set itself up before the California Supreme Court ruling as a matchmaking site for gays looking for “long-lasting relationships” — kind of a Bizarro Manhunt, except that Manhunt’s recently evolved into the gay MySpace (it’s no longer crossing the line to know what your bff’s dick looks like, zomg). It all seemed a bit confusing initially, especially since the promotional materials featured hot shirtless guys rolling around in bed and promised the possibility of “making connections” on business trips out of town. Slutty! Hedging their bets! But when that ruling came down, myPartner was perfectly positioned to pimp its romantic fantasy wares, and boy did it jump on that shit with this nationwide Most Eligible Gay Bachelor contest. Good for them.

But enough of that — let’s get to the goods. Here he is ladies and gentlemens, after 35,000 big gay online votes (that’s 350,000 in heterosexual votes!) and a live runoff in San Diego during Pride Week, your new husband on the hoof (with foof) is …. Abel Lima, Mr. Rhode Island, who, oddly perhaps, resides right here in San Francisco!

Just look at that smile! He won $25,000.
Photo by Tara Luz Stevens.

Abel was the winner, out of five finalists, based on high ratings in the category of “mind,” “body,” and “soul.” No word on how he did in the quantum mechanics portion of the contest. Coming in 2020: Most Eligible Gay Widower contest. It’s the Golden Girls all over again!

To scope the other contestants — rather handsome I must say, although I’m still into Polk Street hustlers badly in need of dentistry — click here.

New film celebrates Burning Man

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July 16, 2008

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Tis the season in San Francisco to get ready for Burning Man…and apparently for the release of films about the beloved and bemoaned event. Unlike another recent film that takes a critical look at the shortcomings of the event and its leadership, “Burning Man: Voyage to Utopia” is a celebratory tribute to the event and its central players, particularly founder Larry Harvey and temple builder David Best.
Filmmaker Laurent Le Gall, whose work premieres Friday at the Castro Theater (followed by afterparty at Cafe Flore), gives viewers an inside look at the 2003 event, starting pre-playa with the Temple crew and other attendees, through the arrival of the first dozen people on the playa, and continuing to the Temple burn that culminates the event and brings emotional closure to some of the film main characters, who came from France to attend the event.
Unlike in Oliver Bonin’s “Dust & Illusions,” where Harvey’s disconcerting intransigence during his interviews reinforced accusations of a leadership vacuum, Le Gall shows Harvey at his creative best: engaged, inspiring, playful, cerebral and capable of dropping thought-provoking rhetorical bombs whose impact lingers long after the conversation ends. And Best comes through as the amazing artist and individual that he is.
This is a sweet film, maybe too sweet for many jaded old burners. But at a time when tens of thousands of Bay Area residents are busily preparing for their annual pilgrimage to the playa next month, it’s a film sure to get many people’s juices flowing.

Local Artist of the Week: Noah Beil

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July 16, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Noah Beil
TITLE San Francisco, California, 2008
THE STORY Beil’s series “Berms and Drumlins” explores man’s alteration of the landscape. From Ohlone shell mounds to gold mining sediment changing the bay shoreline, the Bay Area has long been subjected to deliberate and unintentional modifications by its inhabitants. This photograph was taken on Treasure Island, a man-made environment built entirely on landfill.
BIO In his landscape photographs, Beil compares natural and man-made features and searches for subtle embellishments to the earth’s surface that may not be readily apparent. He questions whether the reshaping of the earth should be considered destructive or decorative. He lives in Oakland.
SHOW “Eighteen Months: Taking the Pulse of Bay Area Photography.” Thurs/17 through September 19; Wed.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place, SF. (415) 554-6080. Opening reception Thursday, July 17, 5:30 – 7:30pm. www.sfacgallery.org.
WEB www.noahbeil.com

The return of The Americans

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July 16, 2008

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In the 1950s, while Robert Frank was shooting photos for The Americans (Steidl, 180 pages, $39.95 ), a Southern sheriff told him he had “an hour to leave town.” If Frank took even one photo before splitting, then few people have ever made better use of 59 minutes and 59 seconds. The Americans turns 50 this year, and to celebrate its birthday — and perhaps to more perceptively rue the lack of change in this country — it has been republished in a new edition. This version corrects cropped images from past editions and presents deep tri-tone scans of vintage prints. Frank revised the book’s design. He selected its paper and its thread-stitching. He also conceived a new dust jacket that is closest in spirit to the book’s famed 1959 Grove Press and 1969 Aperture manifestations. As ever — maybe more than ever — The Americans is a scary beauty.

A Frank exhibition will be coming to SFMOMA. For now, here are some photos from Steidl’s version of The Americans.

L’homme de evasion: Tell No One

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July 14, 2008

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By Erik Morse

Winner of four 2007 César Awards, including Best Director and Best Actor, Tell No One — aka Ne le dis à personne — stars François Cluzet as Alexandre Beck, a successful Parisian doctor whose wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) is horribly murdered in the disturbing opening scene. Huit ans plus tard and we learn that Beck has been investigated, harrassed and scapegoated by the gendarmerie for the crime until several key pieces of evidence link Margot’s death to the work of a local serial killer. Taken to drink and solitudinous reveries of the past, Alexandre remains consumed by the events of that night. His obsession over Margot’s death is further inflamed when he receives an email containing a surveillance video of his wife still very much alive. Her instructions to him: “Tell no one.” Is it a hoax? His imagination? Or his wife returned from the dead?

Local Artist of the Week: Jen Merrill

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July 10, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Jen Merrill
TITLE The Proportion of Perception
THE STORY Inspired by scientific anatomical studies and human interactions, Merrill uses paper, paint, and her scalpel to create a three-dimensional world of eerie, sometimes humorous figures. They are at once clinical and viscerally powerful, betraying a battle between emotional restraint and an unruly body and conscience.
BIO Jen Merrill first took scalpel to paper at San Francisco Art Institute, where she received her MFA in 2006. She continues to hone her paper-cutting skills in Oakland, where she lives and works.
SHOW “Demikhov’s Hands of Glory.” July 12 through August 10 (reception Sat/12, 7–9 p.m.). Wed., 4–7 p.m.; Sat., 1–4 p.m. Iceberger Gallery, 3150 18th St., # 109 (18th and Treat), SF. (415) 225-8932, www.icebergergallery.com
WEB SITE www.jenmerrill.com

Lit: Commie Girl rips OC, invades SF

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July 8, 2008

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By Kat Renz

Commie Girl on the OC: “It took Senor Schwarzenegger’s propositions, overwhelmingly denied through the rest of the state and overwhelmingly approved here, to make me see just how willingly I’d blinded myself. It’s not the conservatism that bothers me: it’s the nastiness. The nattering classes I’d thought were fringey were in fact the decision makers.”

First off, what a great word: nattering. Second, really? I couldn’t believe Commie Girl — a.k.a. Rebecca Schoenkopf, a.k.a. “the black widow/queen bee of alternative journalism”(Orange Country Register) — claimed forced ignorance for nine years. “ ‘That’s a bad rap’,”she told me, describing her excuses over the phone from the porch of her new-as-of-eight-days home in LA. “ ‘We have a lot of Republicans, but we’re electing Democrats in central county and blah blah blah.’ But no, I was wrong. I was totally, totally wrong.”

It seems perfect timing: Schoenkopf’s inaugural book — Commie Girl in the OC (Verso Press, 2008), a compilation of scathing tales of Orange County high and low culture written under her leftie-chick moniker – was published just as she’s moved out of the OC. When I spoke with Commie Girl, she’d just finished whirlwindedly unpacking her boxes among the blue-violet jacaranda trees and 1930’s Spanish bungalows of Los Angeles’s Wilshire ‘hood. Her relocation effectively wrapped up a 12-year tenure at the Orange County Weekly and ushered in a new one as editor of Los Angeles City Beat.

But rewind a decade, when Commie Girl was born after taking over an OC Weekly nightlife column. Schoenkopf insisted her commentary be told through her unique filters: a 25-yr-old socialist, Catholic-Jewish, educated, single mother. About five years later, a little partied-out, her column evolved into pure politics.

Semiconscious Consumerism: American Spirits light the way to the finish line

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July 3, 2008

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Just in time for the Fourth of Independenciality, another installment of our Semiconscious Consumerism blog by confused-with-a-capitalism-C Justin Juul. To read about his previous Nike vs. American Apparel torment, click here.

Sweatpants and Spirits. Fannypackin’ across the Bay to Breakers finish line.

I started smoking when I was 14 years old and I’ve never been able to stop. The gum didn’t work. The patch didn’t work. The plastic cigarette holders that show tar buildup didn’t work. Shit, even adopting a rigorous jogging schedule (I’m up to 25 miles a week!) hasn’t done anything to curb my appetite for tobacco. I’m a smoker through and through. But at least I’m a healthy smoker, a highly functional smoker as we’re called. I run, I bike, I don’t eat meat, and I only smoke American Spirits, the healthiest cancer sticks on the market. Just kidding! I do smoke American Spirits, but I’m not dumb enough to buy into all that hippy marketing crap. I was at one time though.

‘Usually I like it when you play with yourself,’ or Richard T. Walker at Iceberger

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July 3, 2008

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By Ari Messer

Continuing to glide through artistic media, the Mission’s new Iceberger gallery opened its fifth show, Richard T. Walker’s video installation, “sometimes i like you more than othertimes,” with a bang on June 14.

Walker, a British artist currently at the Headlands Center for the Arts and formerly at Berkeley’s Kala Art Institute, is drawn to our often self-interested but always interesting interactions with the natural world. In this case, two videos playing simultaneously on color flat screens face each other in the small, pristine gallery space. They showcase Walker traipsing around the golden California hills with a microphone and small amplifier, delivering a speech in different locales while looking away from the viewer. At the same time, he literally plays with himself – on guitar, vocals and drums – also looking away from the viewer, as if talking to himself all the way around the world.

The most impressive thing at Iceberger’s fifth opening wasn’t the free beer – or free pizza – but the fact that most folks stayed to watch the entire video, often following along with the conversational, poetic text, which was available as program notes. Though spoken in address alternately to “all of the grass I have ever encountered” and to “a medium-sized mountain that will stay in my thoughts forever,” the words sound like a Tarot reading from a good, if ruthlessly honest, friend, speaking directly to the viewer, such as this:

Local Artist of the Week: Praba Pilar

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July 2, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Praba Pilar
TITLE Performance still from The Church of Nano Bio Info Cogno
THE STORY Reverend Praba Pilar of the Church of Nano Bio Info Cogno travels the world offering fantastical prophesies, outrageous sermons, incantations, neorituals, and a freshly minted techno-communion with emerging technology. Inverting phobic cries for a precautionary principle, the church proclaims a liturgy that drives these technologies: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience — forward into the neoteric millennium.
BIO A Bay Area/Colombian multidisciplinary artist, Praba Pilar explores the intersections of art, science, technology, and community through site installations, performances, street theater, and Web sites. Her wildly diverse work has been presented at museums, galleries, universities, and on streets around the world while winning multiple honors, including the Creative Capital award and the Creative Work Fund award.
SHOW “Bay Area Now 5,” opening July 19 (performance: Aug. 10, 2 p.m.). Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. $3–$6, (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. “We Remember the Sun,” through Sept. 13 (performance Sept. 11, 7 p.m.). Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, SF. Free, (415) 749-4563, www.sfai.edu
WEB SITE www.prabapilar.com

More Montreal Fringe Fest: Peg-Ass-Us, Zombie parties, faux kraut rock …

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June 30, 2008

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Nicole Gluckstern reports from the Montreal Fringe Festival. You can read part one here.

It’s Monday morning, three am. In the last week I’ve eaten my way through a pound of chocolate-covered espresso beans, a bottle of Excedrin, and countless bowls of $2 chow mein, and now find myself uttering the unlikeliest phrase of all: “I’ll almost be glad when the party is over.”

The plays, the pleasure, the poster. Photo by Barry Smith

Not that the party is ever truly over in Montreal in June. Montreal in June, like Madrid eleven months a year, is like an endurance marathon of frenetic activity. Sure — the Fringe Festival has come to an end, but tomorrow is Saint-Jean Baptiste — Quebec’s largest and proudest festival day of all, the one day a year that even the dépanneurs (beer stores) don’t stay open. Also happening as I type: the Suoni per il Popolo Music Festival, the First Peoples’ Festival, the Free Jazz Festival, a Baroque Music fest, and the Infringement. And it ain’t free–but I’ve still somehow managed to score myself a ticket to Leonard Cohen’s sold out concert on Wednesday. No, there’s no end to the party around here, but the Fringe, at least, c’est fini. Since last night was the official awards ceremony, I feel obliged to offer my own shortlist of totally subjective, unofficial awards, in no particular order, to celebrate my personal top ten favourite moments of the Montreal Fringe, 2008.

1) Best passionate dissertation in musicology: Led Zeppelin was a Cover Band, by Stéfan Cédilot. Not a play so much as an exploration of the musical path leading from old beloved blues tunes to 70’s rock-and-roll, Cédilot’s love for his subject is evident in every anecdote and every rarity spun. His air guitar skills could use some polishing, but his enthusiasm couldn’t be better.

2) Best off-venue set design and use of space: The Beekeepers. Built into a tiny corner of a tiny cafe, The Beekeepers set is claustrophobic, spare, and entirely apt. Boarded up doors, a solitary bee box, wood floors, and a single suspended picture frame to serve as a window somehow conjure up the vision of an old wreckage of a farmhouse, barricaded against the rioting starving on the outside. We, the captive audience, are not even granted the cover of darkness, and the effect is as if we are watching an uncomfortable fight between a couple struck with cabin fever while sitting in their living room.

Fucking Zombie Party! Photo by Barry Smith

3) Best reason to stay up until 4 a.m. on a Monday (and a Tuesday, and a Wednesday….): The 13’th Hour. This Montreal Fringe variety show, which starts at one am.m every night of the Fringe, is a cornucopia of spontaneous hilarity and a showcase of the best (and worst) performers on the circuit. Suavely hosted by members of local improv troupe, Uncalled For, the hour often lasts two, punctuated by spins of the “money wheel” which leads to prizes the whole room can enjoy. Plus they threw a Zombie-themed party this year which somehow managed to surpass even last year’s Mass Wedding party in terms of sheers debaucherous entertainment.

Burning Man film revives key conflict

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June 27, 2008

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A new film about Burning Man – Dust & Illusions, which has its first public screening tomorrow night at CELLspace in a benefit for the fire arts collective Flaming Lotus Girls – revives questions about whether the rapidly growing event has missed an opportunity to transform itself from the best party on the planet into an important and enduring sociopolitical movement.

San Francisco filmmaker Olivier Bonin has been shooting footage for the film (which is still in rough form and awaiting final editing and a soundtrack) for more than four years. Much of his time has been spent with the Flaming Lotus Girls, who we were each embedded with when I did a nine-month immersion journalism project with the group in 2005.

Bonin has collected some amazing archival footage from the event’s early years and he scored insightful interviews with significant originators such as John Law and Jerry James, offering viewers a sense of what a collaborative effort the creation of the modern event was. Founder Larry Harvey comes off as sort of the last man standing and the often uncomfortable interview footage with Harvey certainly doesn’t help dispel the accusations that there’s a leadership vacuum at the heart of an event that has come to consume so much financial, emotional, and creative capital in San Francisco.

LIT: Beautiful photography exposes crude reality

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June 26, 2008

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photo by Lou Dematteis

Crude Reflections opens with pastoral scenes of a rainforest lagoon and the looming roots of a giant ceiba tree. Indigenous Ecuadorians are dancing in an open-air hall and traveling by canoe down tributaries of the Amazon River. A placid stretch of water seems threatened by nothing more than a puffy white thunderhead.

Turn the page. The viewer is blasted by roiling flames: the liquid surface of a waste oil pit on fire, the foreground charred to coal, the forest horizon blurred by a shaky haze of heat.

Turn another page and the river has given way to a viscous stream of oil seeping out of a “remediated” pit. A family is walking down a road, sprayed with waste oil to keep down the dust. They are barefoot. They are the Aguindas from Rumipamba, lead plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Chevron,

Photographers Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak have put together an unparalleled pictorial account of life in the northern Amazon region of Ecuador, where certain elements of life are cruel and crude. For over 30 years, the land, water, and people have been tossed asunder in favor of a more marketable natural resource: oil.

From 1964 to 1992, Texaco drilled for oil in the Oriente region, but chose not to employ best practices for the industry, instead dumping the waste and byproducts into 627 open, unlined pits, polluting a region three times the size of Manhattan.

Color shots by Dematteis and black and white images from Szymczak are interspersed with profiles, written in English and Spanish, of families and children who have fallen ill from decades of drilling.

“After bathing, our skin was covered with crude,” says Maria Garofalo, whose husband and daughter both suffer from different forms of cancer. “I went to the oil companies, and they said this wouldn’t affect me; that the reason I had cancer was because I didn’t have good personal hygiene.”

photo by Lou Dematteis

Frameline: Project Runway’s Jay and the perils of PR

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June 25, 2008

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By Jason Shamai

Part of what makes Project Runway so good is that it loves its clever queers. By no means is the show light on standard-issue drama, but one thing its producers and editors don’t abide is bullshit fabulousness comedy routines. They love their bitchy overcompensators (Christian) and their angelic peacekeepers (Danny V.) and their hyperbaric chambermaids (Austin Scarlett, and Malan Breton from Taiwan) and their everything-but-the-sodomy queens (Vincent Libretti), but they would not put up with a Carson Kressley. Or at least they wouldn’t give him much face time.

The producers and editors, of course, are the master tailors behind all the sartorial pageantry. Their jobs seem pretty similar to the trials imposed upon the designers:

Production team, your challenge was to take the painfully young, dumb, and talented Christian Siriano and craft his insecurities into a compelling dramatic arc. You perhaps overplayed your hand in the beginning by setting him up as Machiavelli’s pet rat, but the disarming late-arrival accents of warmth and anxiety brought the whole together boldly if not seamlessly.

And so on.

You sense they are really sweating the final product, resenting the challenges that are comparable to designing ice-skating outfits or fitting teenagers for prom dresses and reveling in the opportunity to make top-notch originals with quality materials.

If the judges aren’t voting solely on craft (and if you think they are, I have a Saturn Astra to sell you at bluefly.com), they don’t just handicap for drama queens—the dry editorialists are always given high consideration. When Chris March and Steven Rosengard were on the chopping block last season, my loins voted for Steven to stay but the rest of me knew Chris was the wiser choice. The show needed his class more than it needed Steven’s lips. It knew he was that season’s color bearer of wry, thoughtful faggotry. And in Season Two, Santino’s Tim Gunn impersonations were an inspired collaboration with the editors. His Red Lobster bit, generously featured as it was, instantly made the world a better place.

Jay McCarroll and hot air balloons in Eleven Minutes

Jay McCarroll was just such an object of appreciation on Season One, and possibly the most worthy of the series. More power to him, then, that he’s got himself a proper documentary, which is showing this Wednesday as part of Frameline. Eleven Minutes, directed by Michael Selditch and Rob Tate, follows McCarroll as he prepares to show at New York’s Fashion Week—his first not under the auspices of Project Runway. In the film, McCarroll worries that any success he might have as a designer will always be thanks to an alloy of aptitude and personality. He’s well aware that the cameras continue to roll because he entertained us way back when on Bravo and he’s ambivalent about it at best.

Local Artists of the Week: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and James Luna

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June 25, 2008

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LOCAL ARTISTS Guillermo Gómez-Peña and James Luna
TITLE Photos of El Mexican’t and The Shame-man
THE STORY Chicano performance artist Gómez-Peña’s and Native American conceptual artist Luna’s ongoing project The Shame-man meets El Mexican’t challenges stereotypes, assumptions, and lazy thinking about race and culture. Their latest collaboration within the series, La Nostalgia, reveals how that term can be used as a mechanism of cultural defense, as a stylistic device, and as a way of revising the artist’s careers. In a pair of performances last year, the artists staged their ritual deaths inside coffins and then engaged in a poetic dialogue while Luna cooked Indian stew and Gómez-Peña played roulette.
SHOWS: La Nostalgia Re-mix (Best hits and outtakes for an imaginary bar). Thurs/26, 8 p.m.; $10–$20. The LAB, 2948 16th St., SF. (415) 864-8855, www.thelab.org. (Also, on July 11, Gómez-Peña’s group La Pocha Nostra will present four performance/installation pieces at the de Young Museum.)
WEB SITES www.pochanostra.com, www.jameslunaprojects.com

George Carlin: Gee, he was here a minute ago

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June 23, 2008

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L.A. writer (and my former instructor) David Hochman reflects on an interview with George Carlin about death, dying, and CNN.