Today’s Ammianoliner:
Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Phil Bronstein promoted to ….paper boy.
“I’ll only deliver in Pacific Heights.”
(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Jan. 24, 2008.)
SFBG Blogs
Viva Elvis Pez-ley!
Available for $19.99 on the Pez website…
You get Army Elvis! Sideburns 1960s-Hollywood Elvis (drool)! 1970s jumpsuit Elvis! Sweet! Plus you get a CD with three era-appropriate songs: “Hound Dog,” “Follow that Dream,” and “The Wonder of You.” AND, duh, three thingies of baby aspirin-tasting Pez candy.
Still, I’m a little disappointed…no Hillbilly Cat Elvis? No Gold Suit Elvis? No 68 Comeback Black Leather Elvis (the dreamiest Elvis by far, for my money anyway)? No Hawaii Elvis? No Karate Elvis? No Elvis-Meets-Nixon double set? The possibilities are endless, really.
Quoth Guardian Calendar Editor Duncan Scott Davidson: “It’s not for Priscilla anymore…now you, too, can eat candy from the King’s neck.”
This brings me to a larger topic…Elvis-themed candy in general. It’s pretty easy to find around Valentine’s Day. If you love an Elvis fan, get them some of this action.
Attempted Power Grab at the Planning Commission
A mayoral power grab was narrowly thwarted at the San Francisco Planning Commission in a 4-3 vote, Jan. 17.
Commission Vice President Christina Olague led the counter charge against perceived interference from the Mayor’s Office, questioning why there was a proposal to continue election of the Commission’s President and Vice President to Feb. 7, 2008.
According to Commission regulations, the election of these officers typically takes place on the first meeting after January 15, and Olague said she saw no point in postponing the election, which had originally been scheduled for January 17.
Olague acknowledged that Mayor Gavin Newsom requested the mass resignation of his department heads and commission appointees, last fall. But she also noted that the January 7, 2008 deadline for Newsom to accept the resignations had already come and gone.
Video Mutants: Reflections of Damon Packard
Though Damon Packard considers himself a filmmaker, not a video artist, his wonderfully unique and often bizarre works are right at home in our Video Mutants issue.
Watch and learn, kids!
The trailer for The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary.
Reflections of Evil trailer.
“Throw your computers out!” Devo leads a devolution at “MacBlast”
Spud attack: Devo at the Warfield on Jan. 15. All photos by Peter Conheim.
By Peter Conheim
Devo valiantly tried to protect us from the ninnies and twits for a roughly a decade beginning in 1975. The buzz about this ferocious live beast from Akron, Ohio – the seeds of their rage sown at Kent State during the time of the National Guard shootings – eventually brought the band into the corporate maw of Warner Bros., through which they become superstars – for a while. A label fallout and the critical departure of drummer Alan Myers led to a hiatus, and then a reemergence on the smaller Enigma label with a new percussionist and pair of near-horrendous studio albums in the late 1980s.
Yet Devo never quite went away. The past decades have seen the group – which can only be loosely defined as a band, considering they no longer create new material – rearing its head only for corporately sponsored mini-tours or one-offs of an equally well-funded nature (patrons have included Vans sneakers, Acura, ZDNet, et al). Nonetheless, the majority of their performances in the past five years have been full-throttle affairs with the combo in fine form, tossing out hits and misses with nary a sampler in sight, the Brothers Four (two Mothersbaughs and two Casales) comfortably deep into middle age and completely ripping it up with abandon.
It came as little surprise, then, that these spuds would appear on Jan. 15 at the Warfield – for the first time since New Year’s Eve, 1981 – as the evening’s entertainment at “MacBlast,” Macworld’s biggest private party and the launch of Microsoft Office 2008.
Ammianoliner: Tolls and Trolls
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Golden Gate Bridge to increase tolls and trolls under the bridge.
(From the answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammianoliner on Jan. 23, 2008) B3
Bronstein kicked upstairs?
That’s what it sounds like. The Chron reports that editor Phil Bronstein, who has been a key part of the operation since Hearst bought the paper in 2000, is “leaving his post to take a larger role in the newspaper division of Hearst.”
His new title will be “editor at large.” His job duties haven’t quite been established yet.
It’s funny — a year ago, I would have said the paper desperately needed new direction. The Chron was flailing, heading nowhere, losing circulation and tons of money. But in the past few months, we’ve actually seen some life — opinion pieces and campaigns on the front page (bad ones, for sure, like Chuck Nevius’s crap on the homeless, but at least they were taking on issues), better design, some decent City Hall pieces etc.
So now we get a new editor with deep local roots. I’m holding my breath.
Guardian v. SF Weekly: Here we go
Lawyers for the SF Weekly failed today to get a delay in the trial of the Guardian’s lawsuit against the paper and its chain parent, Village Voice Media. So jury selection will begin Thursday morning.
The Weekly’s lawyers, H. Sinclair Kerr and Ivo Labar, argued a computer file the Guardian had turned over to them last week amounted to a huge new pile of data that would take considerable time to review. They asked Judge Marla Miller to postpone the trial for 90 days.
But the Guardian’s lawyers, Ralph Alldredge and Craig Moody, pointed out that the computer file was just an Excel spreadsheet containing data that VVM and the Guardian had exchanged some time ago. There was, they said, nothing new in the file, and Miller agreed.
The Guardian is suing the weekly for predatory pricing, arguing that the big national operation has been selling ads bleow cost in an effort to harm a locally owned, independent competitor. As part of his presentation, Alldredge noted that that Weekly lost close to $2 million in 2007, evidence that the paper continues to sell ads below cost.
Jury selection is expected to take no more than two days, and Miller has set opening arguments for Monday.
Follow Lennar’s Money
Sup. Chris Daly has a juicy item on his blog. He’s uncovered that Lennar has already spent $500,000 to try and qualify a mixed-use development at Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard for the June 2008 ballot. This Lennar financed project is being framed as the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative.
But just who has benefited from Lennar’s spending spree, so far?
The city’s campaign finance data base shows that the biggest beneficiaries have been business lawyers Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Waller; political consultants Terris, Barnes and Walters; campaign law and lobbying firm Nielsen, Merkamer, Parrinello, Mueller and Naylor, Sam Singer’s public relations firm, Singer Associates, Ground Floor, the public affairs firm run by Jim Stearns and Alex Tourk, and David Binder’s polling research. Oh, and then there’s the $17,500 Lennar paid to Pacific Petition, a petition circulation subvendor, to gather signatures to qualify this puppy for the ballot.
Meanwhile, supporters of the Bayview Affordable Housing initiative, which seeks to ensure that 50 percent of all housing built at Candlestick Point and the shipyard be affordable, are likely going to have to rely on community volunteers to qualify their competing measure for the June 2008 ballot.
Q. Which initiative do you think is most likely to benefit the people who currently live in the Bayview?
p.s As Lennar argues that it can’t afford 50 percent affordable housing in the Bayview, it’s worth noting that in 2006, Lennar President and CEO Stuart Miller made $1 million in salary, but his bonus decreased (from $21.5 million in 2005, paid half in stock and half in cash) to $4. 7 million, paid entirely in cash. Poor baby.
Newsom takes a trip…and all the credit
Last year in Davos, Newsom’s avatar was interviewed in Second Life, the highlight of his trip.
While Mayor Gavin Newsom was jetting off to Switzerland to play celebrity and attend his fourth World Economic Forum – where on Friday he’ll lead a panel discussion entitled “How Cities Are Aiming For Sustainable Growth” – smart growth activists here were working with Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin to actually create sustainable growth policies for San Francisco.
In fact, the legislation Peskin has introduced to limit the amount of parking that will be built with housing downtown (and to delink parking from the housing price, thereby lower housing costs for most and making drivers pay for their impacts) is the kind of thing that Newsom has blocked or ignored in the past.
But as Peskin noted in the Examiner article, this is a smart solution that should be embraced by both environmentalists and developers. That means, no doubt, that after Newsom watches others do the work and take the political hits for being bold, he’ll swoop in later to claim the program, just as he did with Sup. Tom Ammiano’s health care measure.
BTW, on Friday morning, Newsom will be taking part in the “World Class Health Care for World Class Cities,” led by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who willingly meets for a monthly Question Time with his city’s legislature and has led the way in the traffic congestion pricing program that San Francisco will consider adopting this summer (and which Newsom recently got on board with after Sup. Jake McGoldrick and others did the heavy lifting over the last two years).
More video art: Malkoff and Mix-a-lot
In honor of our cover story about video art, I’ve decided to share my favorite videos of the week. Are they worthy of a SFMOMA installation? Probably not. But are they art? I say yes. Here’s why:
Mark Lives in IKEA
So comedian/filmmaker Mark Malkoff (famous for going to every Starbucks in Manhattan in one day) decides to move into an IKEA while his apartment gets fumigated. And they let him.
The genius of this? First, that he thought of the idea at all. Second, that he actually convinced IKEA to let him do it. And most importantly, the amount of work and planning it must’ve taken to compose and edit these “reality” segments (including getting IKEA staff and even his wife involved), which are actually quite funny and endearing. If Mark weren’t in New York, already married, and likely to put the whole thing on YouTube, I’d totally hit that – for his brilliance alone (and cuz I like the geeky glasses thing).
Video Mutants: Kalup Linzy washes your eyes (and mind) out with soaps
Welcome to the party, welcome to the show. What are sweetberry club cakes? Wouldn’t you like to know!
To find out, you’ll just have to listen to “SweetBerry Shuffle” by Kalup Linzy, where Labisha will break it down for you. It’s worth the search: Whether it manifests as phone-crazed soap opera societal satire, animation, painting, or music, Linzy’s creativity — which can be glimpsed and heard on his own site and MySpace pages and seen in person through his gallery, Taxter and Spengemann — is pointedly funny. I recently spoke to him for a profile in this week’s video issue.
Asshole
Guardian: I want to begin by talking about the role or presence of soap opera within your videos. Did you have affection for the soaps and for melodrama?
Kalup Linzy: I grew up watching soap operas. I was raised by grandmother, but it sort of goes back to my great grandmother – she used to listen to Guiding Light on the radio. When it switched over to TV, she grew deaf, and somehow she would sit and watch soap operas all day long. We couldn’t turn the channel. If we were playing and went over to one of our aunt’s houses down the street, the same soap opera would be on.
By the time I turned 10 or 11, I knew what was going on [on the shows] and I started watching them as entertainment. They sort of inspired me to want to act and write. They struck that chord in me.
The Pursuit of Gay (Happyness)
Liars, Liars, band on fire…
Gotta love those Liars, the most interesting band to come out of the turn-of-the-century NY rock scene that begat the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Not only do they continue to turn out stellar LPs like 2006’s Drum’s Not Dead (Mute), they are freakin’ amazingly powerful live. Magnetic frontman Angus Andrew fielded a few e-mailed questions earlier this week – you can peer at him yourself when the band headlines at Slim’s, Friday, Jan. 25.
SFBG: So what’s new with Liars?
Angus Andrew: We’ve just finished a brief but much-needed break from touring. Being let back in the world after so long on the road can be shocking and exhilarating. What is Zoey 101? Who is Hannah Montana? What are they eating in Boston? I guess you could say we’ve been immersing ourselves in culture, but more specifically, it has enveloped us.
SFBG: The last time I talked to you, Angus, you were about to move to Berlin, i believe. What’s happened in the interim?
AA: Yes, I moved to Berlin, and we recorded our last two albums there. It’s a great city that’s energized in some ways by its dark history and the need to prove itself otherwise. In Berlin, quite apart from Germany, there is no economy, but rather an overcompensation of humanity.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Toumani Diabate, Ingrid Michaelson, La Otracina, Poison the Well, and the art overfloweth
What to do when the gloom descends and the sky thunders? Double your pleasuuuur with art-music selections that didn’t make it into print last week and the worthy live shows that slipped betwixt the cracks this time around.
Ingrid Michaelson
The new Lisa Loeb or… the latest waif in a Nellie McKay cute suit? Something to ponder when listening to the MySpace star best known for her Grey’s Anatomy and Old Navy commercial tunes. This is so sold out I think you’ll have to contact your fave Hannah Montana/soccer mom scalper for assistance. With Greg Laswell. Wed/23, 7:30 p.m., $15. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333.
Amoebic art: Zak Wilson’s acrylic My Roomate Bob Ate My Last Piece of Chicken, So I Had to Shoot Him.
“Amoeba Music‘s Second Annual Art Show”
Wonder what those talents scowling in the aisles do on their off hours. More than 30 toil in the trenches of art-making, we hear. The second annual event includes more than 100 pieces by staffers at the SF, Berkeley, and LA stores. Get an eyeful at the reception Fri/25, 7 p.m.-2 a.m., when organizers raffle off prizes as a fund-raiser for Creativity Explored. Show runs through Sat/26. Daily 8 p.m.–2 a.m. Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF. (415) 377-3325.
“Enter the Center”
Call ’em Ribbons. Call ’em Ship. Just don’t call ’em late to this long-awaited exhibit. The dynamic Bay Area duo whoop it up at the opening reception honoring their new book, Enter the Center, on Sat/26, 6-10 p.m. – stay for the screening of the pair’s new video album, the treeVD. And look for more special soirees at Ribbons’ month-long quasi-arts center, ala Feb. 2’s get-down with White Rainbow, Lucky Dragons and a classical Indian ensemble, and Feb. 9’s fete with Brendan Fowler of BARR, Pocahaunted, and ARP. Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 1295 Alabama, SF. (415) 867-7770.
Video Mutants: Ryan Trecartin streams/flows into onlive timeslot, TOtal nowhere emotion expansion
In this week’s Super Ego nightlife etc. column, as part of our Video Mutants issue, I handheld display my growing obsession with young artist Ryan Trecartin, who somehow squares club culture and diverts the neon identity parade into a tributary of parodied obnoxion (with Internet hyperquotes). By which I mean, “Damn! I think I just got dissed in a nextdoor dimension, but I like it that way.”
I-BE AREA (Double Jamie, Ramada Omar, and Sally Man Pause)
Ryan – who’s represented by the bigtime Elizabeth Dee Gallery in NYC – has a total Pro Tools grasp on irreality and its obverse reality, what’s beneath people performing, and his video work combines Mardi Gras parade giddiness (he spent time living in New Orleans), Web 2.0 blank paradise, and head-trip introspection with way incredible about me’s. Electronic ghosts, phased identities, realtime spots and trailers .. the online is performed in trashy afterlife/live/death here, and it wears a sparkling wig. Plus, Ryan does fabulous things with windows. JK/JK
I like to think there’s a deep current of nightlife reference running through feature-length works like A Family Finds Entertainment and I-BE AREA. Although who the hell knows? Ryan’s worked with at least one local beloved club presence, Patrik Sandberg — of ‘90s-flashback pirate radio show “Cobain in a Coma” and “drugged out goth shoegaze dream pop party” Spaced, at the Knockout — who plays space-waif gift-giver Craig Ricky in I-BE AREA and tells me that Ryan’s “holding a mirror up to a generation that lives a significant part of their lives online, in a way that makes fun of but also adores it. Not only that, I can’t stop quoting him.”
OK Agreed. And more than guilty above. So, yeah, I freaked and zoned and freaked again when Ryan agreed to answer some art critic avatar agenda questions over one whole e-mail about his digital video mental.
SF Bay Guardian: In I-BE AREA, the Wood Shop is like the most nightmarish gay dance club I’ve never been to. I dream about it a lot. How did you put together the Wood Shop scenes?
I-BE AREA (WoodShopBoys Ramada Omar and Jamies Band)
Ryan Trecartin: It was a three shoot workout, in a space called The Woodshop Drama Room one of three rooms that make up Jamie’s Area which is a conceptual part-Cyber-hybrid Platform that obeys and functions with in both laws of Physics and virtual-non-linear reality and potential in Web 2.0/ultra-wiki communication malfunction liberation flow, add-on, and debate presentation. The main structure is the character Jamie her self- a total control damage freak with independent log-ins, muse extension people, and live-links. The Wood Shop is a situation stage where pho-male-cyber-gays login to over posted anti-productive decisive message board dead-end faggoting activities. Jamie has a composer status in this scene during another timeslot using her saw and wood dictating with wireless momentum control and influence over her haters at work, while mirroring in Dark Jam Band form, on cell-phone with Ramada Omar in Class Room separated by a closed Window (3 time slots being viewed). The Wood Shop Fags search-out wanting a free channel edge and perform a permanent Window opening on Ramada Omar Freeing it to an independent Multi-tasking shape shifting reality pool. The actual shoot was really fun. It had a script but was the most abstract shoot of the whole movie-lots of improvisations and an everyone talked at the same time, making a don’t be quiet on the set situation. Like planed home video- script-destruction theme over goal. My favorite part is when Solomon (black hair pig-tale mall goth wig) has a brick ready for the Break Down, in cell phone placement and says nothing about someone calling him on his phone an “Said”, over and over like it’s a presidential victory speech with supporters and reason promoting a total nowhere emotion expansion with self eating content, saying… what?—don’t use hotmale log out to log In father fucker.
Video Mutants — umbrella zombie datamosh mistake
What better way to kick off our Video Mutants issue than with Rihanna-anna-anna’s coquettish kitten face turning silver and melting into the spray-golden visage of a zombie-obsessed Dolores O’Riordan (oh, where are you now?) of the Cranberries in Paper Rad’s umbrella zombie datamosh mistake?
Stick around after the chorus, because that’s when things really get good, with home video of a dog named Ringo, Alf newscasting a holiday parade featuring a giant Garfield balloon, two blond girls impersonating Mack Daddy and Daddy Mack, and more.
Heartbroke mountain
Film intern Jennique Mason pays tribute to Heath Ledger.
“I love you baby…” You remember, those bleachers and Letters to Cleo on the roof? Yup. You heard it. Hunky Heath is dead! Growing up with him, charting his successes, his breakthroughs, his 10 Things I Hate About Yous, quite frankly, I’m devastated. According to the Hollywood Star, and every other internet rag obsessed with celebrity, the Australian-born actor was found dead in his SoHo apartment this afternoon. Naked and unconscious with a bottle of sleeping pills on his night-stand, Ledger appears to have been paying homage to Marilyn Monroe. But Marilyn lived to be 36 — Heath has officially checked out at the tender age of 28. Leaving a fine array of films behind him — including recent triumphs like Brokeback Mountain and I’m Not There, and the next Batman installation, we’ve lost one helluva an actor and a heartthrob. These days, talents with both qualities are becoming increasingly obsolete.
Ledger as Batman nemesis the Joker in The Dark Knight, out this July.
Today’s Ammianoliner
Today’s Ammiano liner:
Hillary and Barack discuss the issues. Britney should keep her kids. Not.
(From the answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Jan. 22, 2008.) B3
Blow by Blow: At the beck and call of Khaela Maricich
The Blow’s Khaela Maricich is a charmer – and lord, the girl knows how to multitask, moving into her new Portland, Ore., studio while fielding questions all the while. For the first part of the talk, go here. And she performs tonight and tomorrow, Jan. 22 and 23, at Great American Music Hall, so look out!
SFBG: So Jona [Bechtolt of Yacht] won’t be performing with you at Great American Music Hall?
Khaela Maricich: He hasn’t been performing with me for a year and haf. He’s been doing own thing with Yacht.
SFBG: How would you describe your current act then?
KM: Well, I come at performing from a lot of different angles. I never really thought of myself as a musician. I never thought of myself as a performer either and I always thought I’d be a visual artist. As a kid I remember there being video cameras from a TV station and me being under the table, not interested at all in being the center of attention. I never had a sense of being, “I want to be a musician,” and so I never think it’s going to be a great music show! I look at different angles of entertaining myself and different ways of using the stage to make a show.
I think it’s a lot like stand-up and performance and karaoke. It’s electronic music – there’s no laptop onstage. It’s just me and a microphone.
Heath Ledger quits us
The ever sensitive San Francisco Bay Guardian newsroom responds to news of Heath Ledger’s death:
Into the Abyss
Sometimes you just have to change things up: come to work late, eat lunch for breakfast, change around your office furniture, have a post-work Happy Hour at your desk. Last Thursday was one of those days – just in time for the arrival of a bottle of Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss.
See, one of the perks of my job is that people send me stuff. A particularly good perk is that Deschutes, a brewery in Bend, Oregon that makes the kind of fantastic, creative beer that’s made the Pacific Northwest famous for its microbrews, is one of those “people” who sends me “stuff.” In fact, I’ve also had a bottle of its Green Lakes Organic Ale sitting by my desk for a month, just waiting for a taste test.
So. I invited some colleagues up to my office. I switched off the Misfits (which is PBR-drinking music) and switched on Elvis (which, somehow, seemed more like microbrew-drinking music). And I popped open the Green Lakes and The Abyss (whose cap, by the way, is covered in wax, like a fancy bottle of whiskey).
SPORTS: Where’s Tiger Woods?
And why isn’t he speaking up against golf’s racism?
By A.J. Hayes
Tiger’s not talking
For a sport that demands precious silence from its gallery , why is it that pro golf’s shot callers behave like a boisterous drunks every time they are faced with the fact that the sport just might be a tad lacking in racial tolerance within its infrastructure?
The latest racially charged calamity to soil the sport began about two weeks ago when an obscure Golf Channel announcer named Kelly Tilghman proclaimed that the only hope young golfers have in beating the great Tiger Woods was “lynch him in an alley.”
While it was a bizarre statement to make – who uses the term “lynch” so casually in regards to an African-American? – most people, including Woods himself, gave Tilgman the benefit of the doubt that didn’t make the statement with race in mind.
After she apologized she was given a two week suspension.
Then last week, Golfweek magazine joined Tilgman in the sand trap when it ran a picture of a noose on its cover to illustrate a story about the Tilgman. The cover line read: “Caught in a Noose: Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can’t wriggle free.”
Of course anyone who isn’t submersed in the world of golf 24 hours a day would know how blatantly offensive such imagery is. Eventually the real world caught up with the magazine and a change was made in their editorial hierarchy.
This fiasco is just the latest racially charged episode to hit golf. If it isn’t the controversy over golf course that holds the Masters Tournament that forbids women from being members, to the racially insensitive remarks about Woods made by golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, golf has a real problem with race.
Compounding the problem is, it never seems to learn from its mistakes.
In a dark and lonely place
By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
Back with his second report from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, it’s Midnites for Maniacs programmer and Guardian contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks.
In Bruges – directed by Martin McDonagh (UK)
Colin Farrell is the most underrated, overhated actor of the the past few years. His range was genuinely stunning in Sundance’s opening night film. This purposefully offensive comedy follows two hired guns (Farrell and Brenden Gleeson) as they are sent to do an unknown job by their boss (Ralph Fiennes) in the yuppie little town of Bruges (in Belgium). Written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, the film has a David Mamet sense of misanthropic morality that is quite rewarding for those with a similar anger towards the world. Farrell has the perfect delivery for this sensibility — watch In Bruges and his pitch-perfect performance in Woody Allen’s misunderstood masterpiece Cassandra’s Dream, and you too will become a believer.
Diary of the Dead – directed by George Romero (USA)
As the 67-year-old horror director spoke after his latest zombie movie-social satire, I truly felt a sense of joy exuding from the man. George Romero’s newest entry confronts our confused and destructive world once again, this time by following a crew of film students who, while making their student film, realize that zombies have taken over their town and that they suddenly need to make real choices for the first time in their lives. The film is filled with some of the most inventive zombie deaths this side of the UK and has a friendly sense of humor to go along with its deeply cynical view. While Diary of the Dead is not as powerful as Frank Darabont’s adaption of Stephen King’s The Mist, Romero has made an honorable attack on our society while having a whole lot of low-budget fun.
Ammiano: Bonds not going to Super Bowl
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Yes, Mr. Bush, the Giants are going to the Super Bowl.
No, Mr. Bush, Barry Bonds is not going with them.
(From the answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Martin Luther King day, Jan. 2l, 2008)
Personal note to Tom: Your enunciation is getting more crisp. Keep it up! B3