Mrs. What, Mrs. Who, Mrs Which. Screwy cherubim, mystical feathered pluralities, telepathic baby brothers. A dog named Fortinbras. And of course: tesseracts. What the hell am I talking about? The young adult books of Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet) who passed away yesterday at the age of 88.
SFBG Blogs
Blajeny, Ecthroi, Proginoskes
Tip o’ the Tibbs
Intrepid intern Lotto Chancellor (we shit you not, that’s his name) checked out the Chantelle Tibbs show at El Rio last Tuesday ….
EL RIO, Tuesday, September 4 — Sandwiched between Wee the Band, whose showertime blues covers were tolerable, and Dubious Ranger, whose drummer couldn’t quite seem to find the pocket, was Chantelle Tibbs, another SF transplant from, where else, the East Coast. But don’t worry. She’s from Jersey, not Mass.
Oh, Chantelle!
This woman straight up has pipes, pipes with enough resonance to fill the El Rio’s carpeted space and draw genuine applause not just from her admirers but also from wayward shuffleboard players, semi-conscious tipplers, et al. After her hour-long set she sold off what demos she had, and took compliments with grace, which is an easy thing to do when you know that people are actually telling you the truth about your performance.
Addis on “American Dream” on acid
Burning Man graphic by Rod Garrett
Like most reactions I’ve heard to next year’s Burning Man theme, “American Dream,” mine has been one of dismay and disgust. BM founder Larry Harvey may be trying to reclaim America from the red state yahoos, which is a fine goal, but to overtly make this countercultural event about American patriotism seems to me to be an unforgivable mistake and severe misreading of the sensibilities of his core audience. Personally, I tend toward Tolstoy’s view that patriotism is a vice that implies racism and causes warfare, and the sooner we can recognize it for the evil it is, the sooner we evolve.
But yesterday I discovered an unlikely supporter for Larry’s new theme: Paul Addis, the man accused of prematurely torching the Man on Aug. 27. We spoke by phone yesterday in a long and rambling conversation, in which he generally reinforced his disgust with the state of Burning Man and American society in general. But when I asked about the theme, he said that he thinks nationalism and patriotism are good things worth celebrating: “People have a right to be proud of where they’re from.”
Addis mug shot by Pershing County Sheriff’s Department
Love will tear us apart … and, uh, so will the bullets
Day one of the Toronto International Film Festival. New this year: badges with bar codes. Now, when you enter a screening room, they zap you in the badge instead of making you sign in. There’s also a lot of construction going on in the mall that envelops the main festival theater. This is my third year at TIFF, but things feel a little unfamiliar so far.
Not the case with the movies (or the ancient-popcorn smell that fills the theaters…rank, yet comforting somehow). I’ve already seen some really great ones. Been up since 4am California time (is there any other time, really?) and I’m up at the same time tomorrow, so I’ll keep this post pretty brief.
The day began as more of my days should: with a satisfying jolt of Spanish horror.
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave … amigo.
Today’s Ammianoliner…
Nuns challenge San Francisco firefighters to a no-touch football game. Win by a hail Mary pass! (From the voicemail of Sup. Tom Ammiano) B3
Peaches Christ explodes
“At first I was really uncomfortable that I was having a retrospective at the de Young,” Peaches Christ — filmmaker, actress, scene goddess, and queen of SF midnight movies — confided to me recently over free spring rolls and not-free wine spritzers at the Mix in the Castro. “I mean, does that mean I’ve gone legit? Should I die now? But then I heard that the de Young’s board got their panties in a twist when they heard the show was all about me, so I felt much better.”
She’s a hellion!
Flowing with Okkervil River’s Will Sheff
Down ye olde Okkervil River (from left: Scott Brackett, Brian
Cassidy, Will Sheff, Patrick Pestorius, Jonathan Meiburg, Travis Nelsen). Photo by Todd Wolfson.
O Will Sheff – should his parentals have named him Wit Sheff? I had fun chatting with the brain-teasin’ 31-year-old Okkervil River songwriter – catch the first part of the talk in this week’s Sonic Reducer. Here’s more from that interview, and for the proper soundtrack, behold the band at a free performance today, Thursday, Sept. 6, at Amoeba Music in SF.
Bay Guardian: So how did this new album, The Stage Names, materialize?
Will Sheff: Basically when I wrote Black Sheep Boy, I wrote it in the country during the winter, and I wanted to go somewhere else to write this album. When we go on tour it’s hard for me to write songs – I don’t get to touch a guitar unless it’s on stage. I wanted to go somewhere else totally different and I had a cheap deal in Brooklyn and it seemed as different as possible from the place where I wrote Black Sheep Boy. I had a fourth floor apartment, tiny, a room big enough for bed and chair with an open window. And I’d sit by the open window and write songs. I find if you have to walk four floors to get up there, it’s just as isolated as being out in the country. Outside the window there was all this life and hustle and bustle. Then I went back to Austin and recorded the album.
BG: Did anything specific inspire the songs?
WS: I watched this documentary about Clara Bow, the “It Girl,” one of the first movie stars to be famous because of her perceived sexuality. There was something about her that people in ‘20s thought was sexy. She came from a really bad background – her mom was a prostitute and locked her in closet and turned tricks. Then she won some sort of beauty contest and got cast in It. She had a coarse personality and got this reputation as being unpolished. The thing that everyone loved about her became the thing that got turned against her. And these totally untrue urban legends were spread about her.
When the talkies came along, her accent was so strong that studios wouldn’t give her work. Really her life in movies ended. And you think a lot about that, someone who’s an ordinary person who gets swept into this dream world. You wake up a little worse for wear.
BG: Can you relate to her experience, being in a popular band?
WS: I experienced it in my own tiny way – what it’s like to have people think something about you that don’t know you, whether it’s something great or something bad – especially with this record doing better than any of our previous records.
There’s some backlash that has very little to do with us and has to do with other people’s perceptions of hype. It’s amazing how personal people can get about you – not just bloggers – whether it’s positive or negative. People who don’t know you at all! I think that’s very interesting. It works in a negative way where people cast aspersions on your character and haven’t met you, and people cozy up because of the songs, and think you’re their friend. It’s a false intimacy but that’s what a lot of artists are looking for. I know a lot of artists who have a hard time dealing with basic interactions in real life.
BG: Really? Is that true for you?
WS: Maybe a little bit. I think most singers in bands are very awkward people, I’ve discovered. I don’t know if they were born that way or if it’s a function of what you do. Maybe I’m a little bit awkward. But my observations about this have nothing to do with me or my life.
Bowen on Summer of Love
See the full Bowen account after the jump below.
Who’s cruising who: William Friedkin speaks
Did Cruising director William Friedkin cruise the gay community without taking responsibility for the consequences? Was he cruising for a bruising, or careless about his film’s impact on gay men’s safety? (Is it a double standard when sexualized slasher-movie killings of gay men draw protests, but the same acts done to women on screen are treated as par for the course?) Friedkin the man may have been ignored while filming a scene from the movie at a bar’s jockstrap night, but Friedkin the director’s 1980 look through — or is it at? — a sexual underground hasn’t gotten the blind-eye from gay men, then or now. In this week’s Guardian and on this blog, you’ll find critical writing and specific history on the subject, some of it scathing.
William Friedkin circa 1970s
Cruising is not a perfect movie, or Friedkin’s best movie. It has ridiculous moments. The faux-Freudian explanation at the end parrots Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho as routinely as any Brian DePalma imitation of Hitch. But I’ve been fascinated by it since an era when it was reviled and hard to find on VHS tape. And I like it. I like Cruising‘s ambivalence and its ambiguity, which could be viewed as prophetic in a societal sense and influential in a stylistic sense. (In comparison, a lot of New Queer Cinema still seems rather, um, safe.) I like the movie’s gorgeous but scary shots of Central Park at night. I like its soundtrack. I think it’s interesting that the “killer”‘s disembodied voice — a quality that takes on new meaning the more you consider the story — might very well be the influence behind the killer’s voice in gay screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s Scream series. Today, Cruising seems most interesting to me as a movie that critiques (hyper)masculinity, straight and gay, as the boundaries between them blur.
I had a 20-minute block of time to talk with Friedkin when he came through town recently in conjunction with Cruising‘s upcoming run at the Castro Theatre and DVD release. Here’s what he had to say about Cruising — and about Mercedes McCambridge being tied to a chair, knocking back hard liquor and swallowing raw eggs for The Exorcist. (Johnny Ray Huston)
Guardian: The Roxie Cinema here in San Francisco has had a role in the changing reputation of Cruising, so I want to ask you about your relationship with them.
William Friedkin: I don’t know if Elliot [Lavine] and Bill [Banning] are still running [the Roxie], but they always ran films that I made, and I came up [from L.A.] whenever I could to answer questions from the audience. I loved what they were doing.
Now it seems the DVD is the true cinematheque.
Why Cruising Still Sucks
By Bus Station John
As a DJ who’s created a number of clubs celebrating the music, aesthetic and sexual freedom of the period during which Cruising was released, I’ve noticed that a significant number of the gay men in attendance — the twenty- and thirtysomethings in particular — seem excited and intrigued by the film’s reissue on DVD. And why shouldn’t they be?
The film offers today’s youth much more than just a fleeting glimpse of the now long-gone gay NYC sexual underground enjoyed by their elders. In fact, Cruising works best as a travelogue of pre-Disneyfied gay Manhattan, a celluloid tour of the city’s most notorious bars, back rooms and bushes, refreshingly populated by non-tweezery, pedicure-free, steroid-deficient and un-cyber-tainted denizens of the night. As the camera pans various tableaux of lusty men-on-the-make, the viewer finds himself literally cruising the screen…everybody’s lookin’ good!
“My son just got shipped to Iraq…”
By Bruce B. Brugmann
The following note just popped up on my computer screen from a Guardian mother whose son, 20, is
in the army and two weeks out of basic training.
“My son just got shipped to Kuwait on his way to Iraq. Please help stop the madness.”
She was reacting to the eloquent advocacy appeal she had just gotten from John Bruhns, an army infantry sergeant for the first year of the war, writing in support of a bring-the-troops-home-immediately petition from MoveOn.org.
He said, “Within my first days there (In Iraq), I realized that so much of what I had been told–about weapons of mass destruction, connections to 9/ll) was just White House spin to sell the war.
“I’m seeing the same thing all over again now. Even with this being the bloodiest summer for U.S. troops, even with Iraqi casualties running at twice the pace of last year, and even with l5 of l8 of President Bush’s own benchmarks unmet, the White House is at it again. The’re tell us that black is white, up is down, and things in Iraq are just great thanks to the troop ‘surge.'”
The Guardian mother, John Bruhns, and former E-5 Bruce B. Brugmann (an infantryman in Korea during the Cold War) urge you to read the statement after the jump and sign the petition. The most important thing to do these terrible days is to keep the pressure on in every possible way. B3
Flawless Korean skin
From the spam folder of the Senior Culture Editor:
Hello Marke! I am Dr. Ramapati Singhania! I went live with my web business just last month.
Cheers, darling, congrats.
Imagine a complexion so gorgeous that men and women were stopped in their tracks! Wouldn’t that be great?
Even if I live on microwaved Orville Redenbacher popcorn from the AMCO station down the street? <Cough>.
Or picture yourself confident and dazzlingly sexy even in a pair of jeans. How would it change your life to feel beautiful everyday?
It would save me a lot of time posting for man-dates on Craigslist. I could totally upgrade from “Casual Encounters” to “Men Seeking Men”!
For centuries the glowing complexion and flawless texture of the Korean woman’s skin have symbolized the ultimate in beauty and sensuality. Would you like to unravel the mystery of their beautiful skin?
Wasn’t that, like, the plot of Silence of the Lambs?
Here’s the mystery: Well to put it simply the secret to the flawless Korean skin lies in their cosmetic formulations. Traditional Korean compositions that have been used for centuries. Visit my site and I will give you this $800 value for free!
And here I thought the secret to flawless Korean skin was rampant stereotyping. How naive! Thanks Dr. Singhania. Got anything in Vietnamese? I’m a little low ….
PS. I can’t believe I’m blogging about spam. Bring back the heady days of Larry Craig! Oh wait, they may be back ….
Soma, Manhattan, and the SF Weekly
I was a bit startled to see the supplement called “Spaces” fall out of my SF Weekly today; it’s a slick, 16-page fluffer for the real estate industry, complete with an ad for Vanguard Properties on the cover.
Even by the standards of shameless ad supplements, this is pretty low; selling the cover of anything to an advertiser is considered pretty shoddy form. I suspect (still waiting for confirmation from the Weekly folks) that the editorial department over there had nothing to do with this, but it does contain some stories (one marked “advertorial,” two others not marked at all) — and boy, are they a piece of work.
My favorite is called “Lifestyles of the Young and Wealthy: Is SoMa San Francisco’s neighborhood du jour?” The piece, by Chelsea Sime (who is not an SF Weekly staff writer) is all about a realtor named Michael Novia who lives in Sausalito but “knows first-hand how unique — and lucrative — the SoMa neighborhood has become.”
Novia’s proud that SoMa has come such a long way, and promises: “Five to 10 years from now, SoMa will be a little Manhattan.”
How lovely. What a great perspective for an alternative weekly to be promoting.
Oh, and by the way: If you go to the supplement’s website, as published, (sfweeklyspaces.com) not only is there nothing there, but it appears that SF Weekly doesn’t even own it.
Censoring the Censored Project: Will the NY Times, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and the mainstream media censor this year’s Project Censored story?
By Bruce B. Brugmann
And so the 31st annual Project Censored story will run once again as the lead story in the Guardian and in many alternative papers around the country.
The highly regarded Project, researched and disseminated by Peter Phillips and Project Censored at Sonoma State University, makes its case about censored and under-reported stories in a most dramatic way:
the mainstream press, including the nearby Press Democrat/NY Times and the NY Times itself, censors the story.
Not only that, but the Post Democrat and the NYTimes refuse to say why they haven’t ever run a story on the project in 30 years. They even refused to answer my blog questions to the papers after we published last year’s Censored story.
So this year, let us all pull together on this critical mission: spotting who is censoring the Project Censored story? Let me note the impertinent questions for the record:
Will the nearby Press Democrat run this important local and national story? Will its parent New York Times do so?
If not, will they answer my questions when I renew my blogs on the issue? Will other mainstream media censor the story? Who will run it? Let us know at the Guardian.
This is serious stuff. I led my blog of Nov. 20th/2006 with this statement: “On Sept. 10, 2003, while the New York Times and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat affiliated papers were running Judith Miller stories making the case for the Iraq War and then seeking to justify it, the Guardian published the annual Project Censored list of censored stories.”
Later, after detailing the number one story on the neocon politics that marched us into war, I wrote, “the neocon story and the other censored stories laying out the dark side of the Bush administration and its drumbeat to war got little or no play–or else were presented piecemeal without any attempt to put the information in context.
The number two story was ‘Homeland security threatens civil liberties.’ Number three: ‘U.S. illegally removes pages from Iraq U.N. report.’ Number four: ‘Rumsfeld’s plan to provoke terrorists.’ Number seven: ‘Treaty busting by the United States.’ Number eight: ‘U.S. and British forces continue use of depleted uranium weapons despite massive evidence of negative health effects.’ Number nine: ‘In Afghanistan poverty, women’s rights, and civil disruption worse than ever.'”
Then I concluded my blog on last year’s censorship of Project Censored by writing, “This year, as Iraq slid into civil war, U.S. war dead rose toward 3,000, and the U.S. public was well ahead of the media in turning against the war, the New York Times should have finally recognized its annual mistake and published the Project Censored story. It didn’t, and never has” ( and neither has the Press Democrat nor hardly any other mainstream media that helped march us into war.)
This year, the theme of the Censored stories is more relevant and timely than ever: the increase of privatization and the decrease of human rights in the U.S. Let us see what happens. B3
Electricity deregulation falls apart
By Tim Redmond
The grand experiment in electricity deregulation appears to be in collapse around the country, according to the New York Times. Oddly enough — or perhaps not oddly enough — the one state that still seems to be sticking with this disastrous program is California.
Your Black Muslim Bakery on the chopping block for $900,000
Want a decades-old Oakland bakery uncomfortably linked to a litany of alleged violent and sexual felony criminal charges? It’s yours for just $900,000.
Oh yeah, it’s been shut down by the health department, too.
A trustee for Your Black Muslim Bakery’s Chapter 7 federal bankruptcy has hired a real-estate broker for the seemingly impossible task of selling the business, according to court records filed in Oakland last week. We made a trip to the court’s public terminals in downtown Oakland for a look at where the case stood.
The attempted sale includes Your Bakery’s main 5839 San Pablo Avenue location in Oakland, raided by a swarm of police last month, in addition to a duplex at 1083 59th St. Records show they will attempt to sell it “as is,” baggage and all.
But court records don’t indicate whether the trustee will try to also sell two other bakery locations slapped with minor health-code violations last year, including one for not properly cleaning and sanitizing food contact surfaces. (Follow this link to view descriptions of alleged health-code violations leveled at three total bakery locations over the last several months.)
Summer of Love: the pix
Sunday was a great day for lighting up and reminiscin’ — and grooving with tens of thousands of other tuned in, turned on, and dropped out minds at the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary gathering at Golden Gate Park. Guardian writer/photographer Justin Juul was on the scene — here’s a few choice pics of the rockin’ celebration. Check out more of Justin’s Summer of Love pix here. (And look for his review of the event in tomorrow’s issue of the Guardian!)
Good morning, Gaia!
Ah, the Magic Bus
Lunch with Wavy Gravy
An orgy of love
Bananas + melons = love
Why? Why? For those of us coming back slowly into consciousness after the big weekend, here’s a little WTF crazy-catchy tune from Sweden’s hottest latest “dance music” import (and, one hopes, most savvy performance artist), Gunther — “Tutti Frutti Summer Love.” I apologize beforehand for this, but it may be just the slap in the face you need to wake you up. At least in a “Is this a joke?!?” way.
Gunther will be in SF at Sound Factory on Saturday, Sept. 22 — I just scored an interview with him, which will come out in the next Super Ego. What the heck should I ask him? And why are the Scandinavians fierce ruling right now (hello, Junior Senior)? Questions.
Ammiano on Sen. Craig
Senator Craig says he doesn’t do things like that. And, oh yes, the Bay Bridge isn’t closed.
(On the voicemail of Supervisor Tom Ammiano). B3
Newsom won’t learn
By Tim Redmond
The mayor now says he’s going to seek another private partner to build a wi-fi network in the city. Calls, he says, are pouring in..
So here we go again.
Will Gavin debate with Tony Hall out of race?
by Sarah Phelan
While apparently not available for debating, Gavin has been spotted in City Hall like at this Aug. 14 event where he posed with a pretty unidentified brunette.
The day after former supervisor Tony Hall dropped out of the mayoral race, he told me that in the three weeks that
has passed since he filed to run, his campaign offered to meet Newsom, “in any format to have an intelligent informed debate,” but to no avail.
The Guardian has offered to sponsor a debate, but so far Newsom’s camp has not replied to our request.
Newsom’s campaign manager Eric Jaye was quoted in today’s Chronicle as saying Newsom will participate in debates with the other candidates– a promise Jaye also made to us three weeks ago.
Meanwhile, Hall denies that his decision to drop out was connected to a City’s Ethics Commission investigation into allegations that he misused thousands of dollars in contributions to his 2004 re-election campaign, when he was District 7 supervisor.
Water-closeted: the Q in Craig
It’s been a huge week for the gay (and, as someone hopelessly embedded in the daily news cycle, I’m queerly grateful) — Larry Craig’s water-closeted restroom fumble, gay marriage in Iowa, briefly ….
Let’s round it off on a pre-Labor Day musical high note, shall we? Ladies, gentlemen, and other — a delightful mashup of Larry Craig’s putative televised denials and Avenue Q’s poignant gut-buster (addressed to a closeted Republican Craig doppelganger puppet — prophesy!) “If You Were Gay.”
Take it away, fellas …..
Good morning, gay Iowa!
Io-wha??? In a turn of events strange enough to cause me to spit out my chocolate croissant in disbelief this morning, same-sex marriage is now legal in Iowa.
I shit you not.
Well, actually, it turns out that it was officially legal for only two hours — from 9am-11am. A judge in Polk County struck down Iowa’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act — otherwise known as “Io-we hate gays” — this morning, saying it violated the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection of six gay couples involved in the case, but then put the ruling on hold two hours later.
Still, a few couples got their legal license applications in on time and tied the knot. And it’s awfully hard to undo such things legally once they’re accomplished in such a way. (Our Winter of Love couples’ weddings were more easily declared invalid because they hadn’t participated in a legal case beforehand).
Gayer than we thought
“This is it. We’re married. I love you,” said Sean Fritz to Tim McQuillan, according to the AP, after they got hitched — one of the lucky couple to have applied in time (and skillfully worked their way around the typical three-day waiting period.)
Who knows what’s gonna happen — but I can’t stop singing “Iowa Stubborn” from Corn State-based musical The Music Man in my head: “You really ought to give Iowa a try…..”
Today’s Ammianoliner
WiFi bad for diet. City needs fiber. Fiber. Fiber. Fiber. (On the voicemail of Sup. Tom Ammiano) B3