Short notice, but what the hell — there’s an awfully cool doc playing tonight and tomorrow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on seminal yet underappreciated Boston post-punk band Mission of Burma. Not a Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story, from co-directors David Kleiler, Jr. and Jeff Iwanicki, kicks off as the band is prepping for its first public performance since 1983 — the New York City show that launched their rapturously received 2002 reunion tour.
photo by Kelly Davidson © 2006
SFBG Blogs
“So good, so quick — almost unworldly”
Fox sucks…and so does getting arrested
By Laura Beth McCaul and Steven T. Jones
Justin Barker saw an opportunity on Halloween to denounce Fox News, but ended up in jail overnight for his effort. He was in the Castro just after 10:30 p.m. when he saw local Fox affiliate KTVU-Channel 2 reporter Amber Lee doing a live shot. He stepped behind her and yelled “Fox News is bullshit, Fox News sucks” on live television before the broadcast cut away to some B-roll footage. Suddenly, Barker found himself in trouble. “I go to walk away and three policeman come up and knock me to my knees and I get handcuffed,” said Barker, who’s been charged with battery and resisting arrest. As KTVU news director Ed Chapuis told us, “At 10:30 during a live shot, he jumped in front of our camera and practically pushed our reporter to the ground.” But Barker said he didn’t touch the Lee, is non-violent, and was simply trying to exercise his free speech rights. In fact, he says he heard the police ask Lee if he touched her and she answered “I don’t know.” The footage that aired was inconclusive, but Lee appeared composed and unmolested when the shot returned to her about 30 seconds later. Chapuis said the station will push for prosecution, telling us, “How do you know the intent of someone who step up to disrupt your live shot?” In this case, the intent seemed clear: to denounce Fox News, a network that does, indeed, in all its Orwellian “fair and balanced” glory, suck.
Cancelling Halloween is like killing Gay Christmas
By Sarah Phelan
Is San Francisco going to let a handful of gang bangers shut down Halloween?
Er, wouldn’t that be like “letting the terrorists win,” to quote our not so favorite president.
And how can San Francisco seriously expect to win the Olympic bid if the city spends the next week blabbing on about how we don’t know how to control a large crowd or successfully manage a parade?
Because a parade could have turned Halloween 2006 into a peaceful success, instead of a violent disaster.
Instead, Sup. Bevan Dufty’s last-minute effort to reap political mileage out of the ‘law and order” theme seriously backfired when things turned nasty the MINUTE THE POLICE ANNOUNCED THE PARTY WAS ENDING EARLY.
Wiith meaningful planning, beginning NOW, the community can figure out cool ways to keep Halloween alive.
As District 8 supervisorial challenger Alix Rosenthal told the press, the city’s security and safety preparation “was badly conceived, badly executed–and preventable. We should spend at least 6 months planning this. Instead Dufty waited until the end of July to start doing anything and the city says, ‘We did our best.’ It’s time for new leadership.”
Bill Clinton kicks Big Oil’s ass, says yes to Prop. 87
By Sarah Phelan
Say what you will about Clinton, but when it comes to raising morale, the 42nd President still has what it takes.
“One side says stay the course, the other says, ‘We can do better,'”said Clinton, as he urged us all to vote Yes in Prop. 87, which raises $4 billion by taxing oil, and uses those funds for alternative energy research and development, including incentives for buying alternative-fuel vehicles. Too bad Big Oil didn’t spend $100 million on improving air quality, reducing asthma and lung cancer, instead of on all those misleading ads that try to frighten people into voting no.
“They can’t deny climate change, the national security implications, that too many of us, especially children, are breathing air that doesn’t meet minimum requirements, so they’re just spending $100 million to defeat Prop. 87,” said Clinton. “They’re really just saying, ‘We’re against any positive change.”
Bill Clinton kicks Big Oil’s ass
By Sarah Phelan
Say what you will about Clinton, but when it comes to raising morale, the 42nd President still has what it takes.
“One side says stay the course, the other says, ‘We can do better,'”said Clinton, as he urged us all to vote Yes in Prop. 87, which raises $4 billion by taxing oil, and uses those funds for alternative energy research and development, including incentives for buying alternative-fuel vehicles. Too bad Big Oil didn’t spend $100 million on improving air quality, reducing asthma and lung cancer, instead of on all those misleading ads that try to frighten people into voting no.
“They can’t deny climate change, the national security implications, that too many of us, especially children, are breathing air that doesn’t meet minimum requirements, so they’re just spending $100 million to defeat Prop. 87,” said Clinton. “They’re really just saying, ‘We’re against any positive change.”
More Impertinent Questions on Hearst shenanigans on the drug pricing scandal (part 5) Why did Hearst censor an AP story on McKesson profits?
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Let me cite yet another example of the dangers of the Hearst/Singleton move to destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area.
As attentive Bruce blog readers know, I always turn to the second page of the Chroncie/Hearst business section called “Daily Digest” to pick up the news that Hearst is censoring. Yesterday, I spotted yet another nugget
that demonstrated how Hearst was censoring a major scandal story involving its own subsidiary in San Bruno and McKesson Corp., one of the nation’s largest drug wholesalers.
The story looked harmless enough, a six paragraph Associated Press story headlined “McKesson soars above expectations,” with a lead that said that the company’s “quarterly profit climbed 37 per cent to soar past analyst expectations, prompting the nation’s largest prescription-drug distributor to brighten its financial outlook.” Another five paragraphs provided the details of this seemingly rosy McKesson story.
So, knowing there was much more to this story and getting my blogging genes at the ready, I checked the online version of the story. Imagine my surprise when I found that the guts of the Chronicle story had been cut out of the paper and the juicy stuff was tucked away in the online version. A full seven paragraphs had been chopped from the print version of a l6 paragraph story by Michael Liedtke from the San Francisco AP bureau.
Let me quote the key chopped out paragraphs to make my point: “McKesson released its results and bullish outlook after the stock market closed Tuesday. The company’s shares fell 60 cents to finish at $50.09 on the New York Stock Exchange. After an early rebound in after-hours trading, the shares shed 5 cents.
“The downturn extended a recent slump triggered nearly four weeks ago by news of a tentative legal settlement that could depress prescription drug prices. (b3: a dreadful thing.)
“The settlement covers a class-action complaint alleging that drug price publisher First DataBank Inc. (B3: a Hearst subsidiary in San Bruno) had conspired with McKesson between 2002 and 2005 to boost the wholesale cost of most prescription medicines by 5 per cent. (B3: a tidy newsworthy sum).
“Although McKesson has denied any wrongdoing and isn’t joining the settlement, investors are worried the agreement will force the company to lower its prices (b3: another dreadful thing). Consumer advocates have estimated the settlement will save health insurance plans about $4 billion (b3: a nice newsworthy figure). The settlement still needs approval by a Massachusets federal court, something unlikely to happen before April…”
Note my previous blogs to get the scope of the Hearst shenanigans at work here. AP doesn’t put Hearst into the story where it belongs and doesn’t even identify FirstDateBank as a local subsidiary owned by Hearst, the biggest daily in Northern California and a big bankroller and participant in the Singleton move to monopolize the Bay Area. Hearst doesn’t properly edit the AP story and put Hearst high up where it belongs. And Hearst actually cut the print version of the story and put the guts of it up online at SF Gate so it will be hard to spot. And of course Hearst never ran the original story of the scandal (reported first in a lead story in the Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal, with versions by the AP, the Guardian, and even the Hearst-owned Houston Chronicle, see my previous blogs.)
The hinge point: Hearst went to these embarrassing lengths to censor a major scandal story involving Hearst, and three local companies, to protect its corporate interests and refuses to explain this professionally glaring omission in the stories, or to its readers. It also refuses to answer my questions directed to Hearst corporate in New York City via Hearst San Francisco and publisher Frank Vega, Executive Editor Phil Bronstein, Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal, and Business Editor Ken Howe. And the “competitive” Singleton papers haven’t done the story either to my knowledge and won’t explain why.
Impertinent Questions: If Hearst and Singleton won’t compete on a major scandal story like this, where will they compete and when do they start? How can they censor and cover up a major story like this in the midst of investigations by Justice and the AG?
This sorry episode illustrates a key issue for the current Justice and AG investigations into whether the Hearst/Singleton deal violates U.S.and state antitrust laws. It also illustrates a key issue for the highly important Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit seeking to blast apart the Hearst/Singleton financial relationship. I refer again to Brugmann’s Law: Where there is no economic competition, there is no news and editorial competition. So the thrust of any real antitrust investigation ought to be to stop monopoly moves like this and insure real newspaper and media competition.
We hear that Justice is at least doing lots of interviewing. God knows what Lockyer and his antitrust crew are doing as he heads into the sunset to be state treasurer. His probable successor, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, operating under the thumb of the Oakland Tribune/Singleton, has refused to comment or answer questions as to whether he will continue Lockyer’s purported investigation. Reilly and Alioto are hard into discovery, working with the media documents they obtained from Justice and the AG as a result of their suit. The documents were filed by the principals in the original merger (McClatchy, Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) to get preliminary Justice and AG approval. They are certain to be illuminating. Impertinent Question: Why is it that, once again, Relly and Alioto must do the heavy lifting in a private suit because Justice and the AG have so far knuckled under to the chains and refused to do their job.
Repeating the Impertinent Questions to Hearst and Singleton editors and publishers: Why haven’t you done this major scandal story? When will you do it? If you won’t do the stories, please explain. Until then, let’s have no more macho talk about competition between Hearst and Singleton papers. B3
P.S. Let me quote the third paragraph from the WSJ to dramatize the heft of this story: “A 2002 email by a manager of (McKesson) describes how pharmacies would be able to more than doiuble their profit for dispensing the cholestrol drug Lipitor and adds, ‘that is awesome.'” The article quoted an economist hired by the plaintiffs who estimated that savings in 2007 alone at $4 billion. There is much, much more. The Hearst and Singleton papers would cover this national scandal in a flash if it involved any other big company in their territory. Hopefully.
A tough pill to swallow by G.W. Schulz
McKesson’s fiscal 2Q profit rises 37 percent to top analyst views by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
Links (NOT TO PUBLISH)
San Francisco Bay Guardian : Home Page
… BY AMANDA WITHERELL Rob Strange Project Censored
Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story.
Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times: still no answers on why…
U.S. MEDIA CENSORSHIP / CONTROL
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‘SF Chronicle’ to Outsource All of Its Printing By E&P Staff
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ChainLINKS. Scroll to the bottom of the website to join the e-mail list
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PRESS RELEASE: The Hearst Corporation
TRANSCONTINENTAL SIGNS 15-YEAR DEAL TO PRINT HEARST CORPORATION’S SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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The New Media Offensive for the Iraq War by Norman Solomon
B3,
You`ll be pleased to hear we run our endorsements in a sidebar on the cover monday in addition to longer editorials in the weeks leading up to the election.
Bruce Mitchell
Publisher
The Athens NEWS
(740) 594-8219
The Wall Street Journal
Justice Department Press Release
A tough pill to swallow by G.W. Schulz
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Nov. 7
Culture war at LA Weekly: A former sales staffer speaks out…
The worst photo of a politician in 2006 (maybe)
By Tim Redmond
My friend Ken Neill, the publisher of the Memphis Flyer, sent me what may be the ugliest political photo of the year. The story’s pretty gnarly, too.
Any better nominations?
Dan Savage comes through in the clutch. The gay sex columnist endorses in his pre-election column in the Voice and other New Times papers, but the Voice and New Times papers do not endorse. Hurray for Dan Savage!!!
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Hurray for Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist for the l7 Village Voice/New Times papers in major markets with major battleground races for the election.
Savage performed heroically under fire and managed to get some key election endorsements into the second to last paragraph of his syndicated sex column in the crucial issue before one of the most important elections in modern history, a plebescite on Bush, the war, and the occupation. (New Times papers historically don’t do endorsments and don’t allow their writers to endorse.) He ran a letter in his column from a Wisconsin male who wrote, “Wisconsin needs your help!. On Tuesday, Nov. 7 we’re voting on an amendment banning gay marriage. As a married heterosexual male I’m supposed to feel threatened by gays getting married, but I’m smart enough to realize it doesn’t affect me at all. I also realize that I got to marry whomever I wanted, and everyone should have that right. Urge your readers in Wisconsin to vote NO on the marriage amendment. Thanks!”
Savage gave the writer the ultimate Savage compliment: “You put it better than I could, JIW. I would add: The amendment in Wisconsin bans gay marriage and civil unions. Vote no.”
Then Savage continued his endorsement: “And to my readers in Colorado, Idaho,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virignia, Arizona, and South Dakota: Please vote against the gay marriage bans in your states, too. And in South Dakota, please vote to overturn your state’s idiotic abortion ban. And to my readers in Canada: Be glad you don’t have to put up with any of this shit.”
In the presidential race two years ago, Savage snuck his Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his pre-election column. This time, he slipped his endorsements into the second to last paragraphs, with a neatly disguised ending to his column with a diverting letter from a woman who claimed she couldn’t have an orgasm until age l8. She then took some pot with a “cooperative boy friend and–bam! –six orgasms in five minutes.” And he signed off, “Thanks for sharing.” And sent his readers off to a Savage website to learn more about pot and sex. Well done, Dan. A masterful job.
Meanwhile, Savage’s endorsements were the only real endorsements to be run in the pre-election issue of the Voice, probably one of the first times in Voice history, if not the first, that this bastion of New York liberalism has been Voiceless and neutered and has not endorsed candidates or run serious political coverage in an election. (Why? I put the questions by email to Voice/New Times CEO and chief executive officer Jim Larkin, Executive Editor Michael Lacey, and David Blum, the new Voice editor in chief, but got no reply by blogtime.)
Instead, the Voice this week ran a gripping “report from the trenches of ‘Saturday Night Live’–dress rehearsals, wrap parties, last-minute sketch changes, a l a.m. phone call from Lorne Michaels (and yes, Andy Samberg!”) with a front page illustration of a smiling comedian doing the Bronx shrug. I kid you not. Check the link below and the Voice website and see what has happened to the mighty Voice in the short nine months since Larkin, Lacey,and the Arizona Gang got ahold of it. Meanwhile a quick check showed that none of the other l6 Voice/New Times papers ran any endorsements in their pre-election issues, with the possible exception of the OC Weekly in Orange County. An editor sent me an email saying they were doing endorsements but I could not find them at blogtime.
Well, Nathan Blumberg, my first journalism professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in l953, used to say that a paper that didn’t run endorsements didn’t have any balls. He used the word testicles, because this was Nebraska in l953, but the class all got the point. So: does this mean that Dan Savage has balls, and Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey don’t have balls? Let us let the readers decide.
P.S.1 It’s hard for the staff members of a Village Voice/New Times paper to say much inhouse or publicly about the management style and editorial policies of Larkin and Lacey. For example, note what happened to poor David Schneiderman, the former Village Voice top guy since l978, who they sacked unceremoniously last week. VOICE BOSS GAGGED,” chided the New York Post head. The Post noted Larkin’s subtle style when it quoted an insider as saying about Schneiderman: “The new guys held him in complete disregard. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.” Schneiderman will go down in journalism history as the guy who sold the Voice to New Times, and pocketed $500,000 for his work on the deal, but even he probably didn’t deserve the Larkin/Lacey treatment.
P.S 2: Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the SF Weekly/
Village Voice/New Times ran a front page page illustration of two gay comic figures I can’t quite characterize, but sported the head, “DRAWN TOGETHER, Graphic Homosexual comics and the young women who love them.”
Smith came the closest to a political endorsement when he meandered around with the two major candidates in District 6, Sup. Chris Daly and challenger Rob Black, and wrote a self-immolating piece titled, “Vulgar posing, How our columnist was seduced into watching the World’s Largest Female Bodybuilder beat up on Rob Black.” After missing, mangling, mushing, and making fun of the issues, Smith came up with two summary questions but no clear endorsement: “Isn’t Daly the vulgar jerk who threatened the democratic process? What about the gentility-in-public-life rap Black’s been giving SOMA condo dwellers? Black is gone. I don’t feel like chasing after him with my facile questions.” Well, Smith concludes, “Alone, in SF Weekly’s offices, beer on my breath, an awful sort-porn video on the VCR, I realize I’ve beens seduced by the poses of two political hacks.”
News flash to Smith: There are real major issues in this district. For example, Calvin Welsh lays out a big one in a Guardian op ed this week, “Don’t for a minute believe that he (Daly) is in the fight of his political life because he’s rude, because he doesn’t care about lw and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market rate housing slated for this district and is far too protective of lower income residents in District 6.” He concludes: “There’s a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? Smith, Larkin, Lacey, Voice/New Times folks, do you realize it?
P.S.3: At blogtime, Jonny Diamond, the editor in chief of L magazine in New York, replied to my query about Voice endorsements with this quote: “Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it’s the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story (and he gave me the link). Remarkable stuff from the country’s formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm elections in a long, long time. I’d say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we’re working on something for Friday.”
So, to get election endorsements and coverage in New York, forget the Voice and
go to the website of the L magazine, a zippy New York arts and entertainment biweekly under the direction of the Steadman brothers.
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we may have heard the final word on the eve of the election from the Larkin/Lacey/VillageVoice/NewTimes/SF Weekly crew in San Francisco and New York. Maybe Larkin will stop reading the paper long enough to send me comments or explain to the readers of his l7 papers why they don’;t endorse or do serious election coverage. I’ll let you know. If anybody spots a political endorsement in a Voice/New Times paper, flash me the word. B3, hoping good news is on the way on the way Nov. 7th
VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS:
By KEITH J. KELLY
October 27, 2006 — DAVID Schneiderman is out as president of Village Voice Media nine months after Phoenix-based New Times took over the alternative weekly newspaper chain.
Following the takeover of the Voice by New Times CEO James Larkin and Editorial Director Michael Lacey, Schneiderman stayed on as president of the combined company, which took on the Village Voice Media name. He split his time between the company’s headquarters and Seattle, where his wife Dana Faust, a New York Times ad executive handling the Pacific northwest, is based.
However, few expected him to stay for long as he was clearly a man without a power base. He was given the job of exploring Web opportunities for the company, an area in which he had scant expertise. Even after he immersed himself in the new role, it didn’t impress the new cowboys from Phoenix.
“The new guys held him in complete disregard,” said one insider. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s Web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.
Reached yesterday, Larkin said of Schneiderman, “He resigned.”
Asked if there would be a replacement, Larkin said, “We are going to restructure.” He declined further comment, saying, “We don’t comment on personnel matters,” he said.
When reached by Media Ink, Schneiderman, said, “I’ve been approached by people in the venture capital and private equity world. I just felt the time to move on was now.”
He insisted that his deal as Voice president was “open ended” and that he could have stayed longer.
But making frequent trips between New York, Phoenix and Seattle “was wearing on me.”
“Waking up in my own bed for awhile is important to me,” he said.
The Boston Phoenix was reporting yesterday that its editor Bill Jensen had resigned to accept a job running Web operations for Village Voice Media, its parent company.
The dark tower
With Amores Perros and 21 Grams, director Alejandro González Iñárritu (along with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga) trademarked his filmmaking style: overlapping storylines and characters connected in seemingly random ways; a technical approach that includes gritty locations and hand-held camerawork; and a Big Theme that overarches all. His latest, Babel (read Dennis Harvey’s Guardian review here), is Iñárritu’s most ambitious effort to date.
Alejandro González Iñárritu with Gael García Bernal on the set of Babel. (Photo: Eniac Martinez)
The cast, which includes Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Amores Perros star Gael García Bernal — as well as several non-actors — is enormous, and its multi-layered tales circle the globe, with segments set in California, Mexico, Morocco, and Japan. Iñárritu’s similarly whirlwind tour in support of Babel’s release landed him in San Francisco recently, where I caught up with the Mexico City native for a chat about the film and his career to date.
New Poll Data
The Fog City Journal cited a new poll of District 6 voters which shows Chris Daly ahead with 60 percent of the vote.The article included the polling firm’s name, location, and numbers — perhaps its more accurate than the others lauded by the Black campaign and commissioned by his supporters.
A shameful Halloween
By Steven T. Jones
First of all, let me state my biases: my sweetie is Alix Rosenthal, who is running against Sup. Bevan Dufty, the architect of the city’s approach to Halloween in the Castro last night. But given what I saw and experienced last night, I feel an obligation to share a few observations with Guardian readers.
As you may have heard, there were several shootings that occurred just after the police tried to shut down the event at 10:30, an earlier than usual finish time pushed by Dufty, but a point at which the crowd seemed to be peaking in numbers. Contrary to city claims and some media reports, the police were not searching most people for weapons or alcohol as they entered the event, at least not anyone in our large group during the three times we entered the event from outside. There were certainly a ton of cops out there this year, but most of them were just standing around in groups of a dozen or more, not doing anything. I saw very few officers circulating in the crowd. Two cops on motorcycles who were doing something around 10 were rudely telling people to clear the streets and go onto the sidewalks, where other cops working sidewalk exits told us to go back into the street. That was emblematic of the obvious mismanagement that caused frustrations all night long, including streets that dead-ended and had people walking in circles in frustration.
But the point in the evening that left me feeling profoundly ashamed of this city was at 11 when a team of water trucks and street sweepers rolled in to clear the streets, accomplishing by force what the repeated announcements that “the party is over” failed to do. Why exactly were we hosing down hundreds of thousands of visitors to San Francisco? Do we really want to show an intolerant, authoritarian face to the world just as people are trying to join us in celebrating a holiday that most of us love? Judging from the reactions I saw around me among the basically well-behaved crowd, we have sullied and lowered ourselves as a city by treating people badly and with intolerance. And we spent a ton of money do it, money that could have been put toward managing the event like New Orleans manages Mardi Gras or New York manages New Year’s Eve. I love this city, but today, I’m not proud of it.
Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa, what really happened on Halloween Eve in l951
By Bruce B. Brugmann
As I was getting ready to do my daily blog, anxiously awaiting the political endorsements in the Savage Love column in the Village Voice (see my previous blogs), a dispatch from the San Francisco Sentinel caught my eye on my email display.
“City Plans For Safe Castro Halloween,” the headline read.
A safe Halloween? Who wants to read about a safe Halloween? I can speak for a generation or two back in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, where Halloween was the one night of the year
when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.
It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs.
After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow He never caught anybody or made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.
Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.
It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark. We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.
We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.
The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.
Last year, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.
Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”
For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since. He calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco and he always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” B3
Those were the days, my friends. The days of “safe” Halloweens.
P.S. I love smalltown lore and will from time to time lay out the life and fast times and wild adventures of my hometown, the best little town in the territory. I invite you to contribute your smalltown stories and lore. B3
The Sentinel’s Lobbyists
by Amanda Witherell
It’s no secret that the San Francisco Sentinel has really slipped since Luke Thomas struck out on his own with Fog City Journal, but an article this past weekend represents a new low. “Has Anti-Incumbent Fever hit San Francisco?” makes reference to three polls showing Rob Black leading Chris Daly in the District 6 race for Supervisor. The author of the piece, Sam Lauter links to an article in the Chron about the polls, but he could have just linked to the raw data — at least one of the polls was commissioned through his political consulting firm, Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter(ahem) and Partners.
This lobbying firm is also a liason for much of the thousands of dollars being spent by independent expenditure committees on anti-Daly hit pieces. Before messing around in local elections, Lauter had a career in governmental relations at PG&E, though a Sentinel reader wouldn’t know it — there’s no bio included with the author’s “article,” except that it was formerly printed in a “Red Meat for a Blue State” online publication. Meanwhile, another unauthored Sentinel article criticizes Daly for supposed contributions from lobbyists, though fails to mention that the anti-Daly movement is controlled by a similar crowd of money-runners.
NOISE: Hill ‘n’ Twin
Andrew Hill’s quintet was amazing the other night – too bad you weren’t there on that sleepy Sunday night to catch ’em. Of note in particular were trumpet player Charles Tolliver and drummer Eric McPherson. Hill himself was frail, reedy voiced, but relentlessly inventive.
On a completely different note, check out Madeline on Orange Twin Records at the Stork Club Nov 7. A Cat Power-esque folkie to watch for.
White Guilt on Your Green Lifestyle
By Sarah Phelan
With the Green Festival’s tips on green homes, green investment, eco-travel and organic beer set to hit San Francisco Nov. 10-12, African People’s Solidarity Day coordinator and physicist Aisha Fields told the Guardian her group is hitting the Bay Area a week earlier to tell folks that “the entire white lifestyle—alternative or not—is unsustainable.”
Because of its colonial legacy, much of mineral-rich Africa has no infrastructure—something APSD wants to change by raising awareness, funding and support for Africa, including demanding reparations for centuries of slavery, theft and genocide.
“Tremendous natural resources only serve a few corrupt politicians, who pump them out and send them to Europe and the U.S.,” says Fields, who hopes to fund projects for electricity, renewable energy and water purification in West Africa. “People need to deepen their understanding of the root causes. Many of the minerals mined to make cell phones come from Africa, and many of the wars Americans see on TV are being fought to frighten folks off their land, or because a ruling party wants access to those resources.”
APSD takes place in Oakland, Nov. 4, 10am – 5pm, at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th St and in San Francisco, Nov. 5, 10am – 5pm at the Women’s Building, 3543 18 St. Contact info@apscuhuru.org. 510.625.1106
The Daly Show
By Sarah Phelan
In the past few months, I’ve attended numerous city hall meetings in which Sup, Chris Daly vigorously pushed for more police foot patrols. Also sitting through those meetings were reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, who witnessed Daly pushing Police Chief Heather Fong to implement the program that residents of Daly’s district and other violence-plagued areas of the city, are literally begging for. They also watched as Daly questioned whether the police department’s request for more funding was premature, something that the city’s budget analyst recently concluded was in fact true.
So it was disappointing, if not surprising, to watch the Chron repeat the B.S. about Daly’s supposed attempts to block funding for the police
And it was disappointing, if not surprising to hear Daly’s challenger Rob Black make similar claims, while on the phone to the Guardian answering questions about his connections to lobbyist and political mastermind Jim Sutton and his clients PG&E.
Black spewed the statistic that “30 percent of crime takes place in Daly’s district,” then claimed that Daly had done nothing about it, including repeating the lie that, “Chris Daly talks about the need for beat officers, but isn’t willing to put the money there.”
That statement simply isn’t true, as city watchers all know, so it was a relief to see BeyondChron take the Chron to task for its incessant peddling of misinformation, which apparently is their way of trying to influence the elections. Maybe there is hope, after all, that lies won’t trump the truth this fall.
Josh Wolf meets Eminem meets Nelson Mandela
By Sarah Phelan
Got a letter from jailed videographer/blogger Josh Wolf, saying he remains hopeful. Here are 3 reasons why.
1. Legendary lawyer Martin Garbus has joined Wolf’s team as Lead Attorney. That puts Wolf in the company of Eminem, Nelson Mandela, Daniel Ellsberg, Amy Tan, Al Pacino, Spike Lee, Sean Connery, Robert Redford and Michael Moore, to name a few of Garbus’ high profile clients. Garbus is also working on the case of the two SF Chronicle reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wade, who face possible jail time for refusing to name the source who revealed transcripts from a grand jury investigating Barry Bonds and steroid use in organized sports.
2. Josh’s attorney’s have filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit, refuting that panel’s decision that the court doesn’t have the power to create a common-law privilege, claiming that this ruling contradicts a previous decision, the Jaffee case, which established a privilege for psychotherapists in the case of a police officer who had gone into therapy following a disputed shooting.
3. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is going to do some cases in the 9th.
Wolf’s advice to San Franciscans? “Keep talking, refuse to be silenced.”
His advice to San Francisco? ”Cut all fiscal ties with the federal government. It’s a radical approach, but it has value beyond protecting journalists—it spares the city from the vice-like grip of No Child Left Behind, for example.”
The unholiest of holy days
Miniature candy bars before breakfast, random spashes of fake blood on my Converse, death threats, Misfits on the iPod, Freddy Krueger watch on my wrist … could be any other Tuesday in my life, really. But hot damn, y’all, it’s Halloween!! BOO-ya!
So, I was up late last night chattin’ with Captain Howdy about some of the reasons for the season. The good Cap’n suggested I post some Oct 31-friendly links for your enjoyment. In the interest of keeping my soul out of Pazuzu’s clutches, for the time being anyway, I thought I’d better comply.
NOISE: Meditating on Incubus…and on coveting your neighbor’s cellie
Guardian intern Aaron Sankin checked out the Incubus show put on Verizon Wireless on Oct. 20; here’s what he thought:
Incubus + Verizon Wireless = Synergy!
The LG VX8500 Chocolate phone is available from Verizon Wireless for $149.99. It has an iPod-style touch wheel, Bluetooth compatibility, a digital music player, and a 1.3 megapixel digital camera that can take both pictures and movies.
I assume it can also make and receive cellular telephone calls, even though it’s capacity to do so isn’t really advertised anywhere.
If my phone were to break suddenly, such as if I were to absentmindedly drop it in a toilet during a heated conversation with my bookie (I never said to bet on the Mets!) or have it accidentally fall from my pocket while running from the zombie hordes (they’re everywhere!), I would seriously consider taking a look at this phone.
The people at Verizon Wireless should be happy because they worked like hell to put this idea in my brain. The other group of people who should be very pleased with themselves are Incubus because they joined with Verizon Wireless to have a special private concert at Bimbo’s on Oct. 20 in the most epic feat of techno-musical cross-promotion since Bono realized that Apple loved iPods almost as much as he loved himself.
First, a disclaimer: My relationship with the band Incubus is fairly complex. I first heard about them through a friend when I was in eighth grade. This was during their early period when all they wanted to do was be like Primus and years before any modern rock radio station would touch their stuff.
From the first moment I heard their music, I loved it. It was funky and spazzy and, most importantly, it was mine. Incubus was the first band that I unconditionally loved that no one else had heard of. It made me feel underground, important and cool (the last one being especially important to an uncoordinated middle-schooler looking for angle to talk to girls).
Once they broke into the mainstream, I started liking them less and less. With their albums Make Yourself and Morning View, they seemed to loose some of what made them exciting and distinctive, and got lost in the slop of the myriad or post-grunge alt-metal bands. Two years ago, they came out with Crow Left of the Murder and it was the first new Incubus album that I liked even half as much as the first time I heard them way back in eighth grade.
Anyway, this event was a private party held Verizon Wireless in support of the LG Chocolate phone, which was just released in America last month. When people bought the phone, they could enter a contest to win tickets to this show. If they were one of the lucky winners, they got an email on their phone that contained a bar code. This bar code was their ticket into the concert. Instead of scanning a piece of paper, the security guard at the door scanned the phones.
My phone cannot do this. It can, on the other hand, play Journey’s “Wheel In The Sky” whenever someone calls. While this has never gotten me into a concert, it did once get my into a bar conversation with drunk 35-year-old investment banker who later bought me a rum and coke because, “Journey is awesome!” Yes, yes they are.
Once inside, the real silliness began. There was a screen next to the stage where people could send text messages from their phones and see them on the screen. The messages ran the gambit from “Incubus rox” to “I love my new phone”. Joe Strummer rolled in his grave, and Gene Simmons wished he thought of it first. I tried texting, “Once Incubus killed a pirate in support of the Basque separatists,” but it didn’t make the cut. Why must the telecom industry continually spit on the proud Basque people day in and day out? It truly crushes my heart.
But running up people’s cell phone bills with needless text message charges wasn’t the only goal of the night. Incubus was also there to shoot the video for their upcoming single, “Anna Molly”. Much like Verizon did with its customer service, Incubus decided to outsource the production of their video. They told everyone there with the new phone to take videos of the band playing and send it in to them and they would eventually painstakingly edit the clips together to make the band’s video. I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is probably terrible. But hey, at least they’re trying.
Incubus opened the show with, “Anna Molly.” It sounded like Pearl Jam. In fact, it sounded a lot like Pearl Jam. This is neither a coincidence nor is it a bad thing. They recorded their new album, Light Grenades, with Pearl Jam’s longtime producer. Vocalist Brandon Boyd even pounded a bottle of red wine onstage like Eddie Vedder seems to do at every show.
Their set was incredibly solid. Their newer stuff sounded great, particularly “Sick Sad Little World,” and everyone there appeared to know ever word to every song, which always bodes well for a band. And when they played a couple songs from their first album, I wasn’t the only person there who got noticeably excited (there were at least three others).
I guess the whole thing was pretty successful. It made me want to buy a phone I have no real need for and made me remember what I loved about this band when I was a pimply-faced eighth-grader trying to appear hip. I believe, in the business world, they call they synergy.
Let us lift a Potrero Hill martini for Thomas Peele of the Contra Costa Times/Singleton papers. He criticized Singleton by name for sealing court records in the Hearst/Singleton antitrust case.
I’m drinking a Potrero Hill martini in honor of Thomas Peele, the investigative reporter on the Contra Costa Times/Dean Singleton papers.
He did what few editorial staffers do in these dread days of mega media mergers and resulting layoffs: he sharply criticized his new boss in a “guest commentary” column in his own paper, the CCTimes.
He was commenting on the federal court ruling that sealed the records in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust case aimed at breaking up the Hearst/Singleton deal that would destroy daily competiton and impose regional monopoly on the Bay Area.
His lead: “Many believe newspapers are too much of a public trust to act like any other business. Their corporate owners are not among them.” His conclusion: “With his recent acquisitions, Singleton has moved up another notch in his publishing ascent. His friendship with Bush, his considerable wealth, his abundant Texas charm, combine to allow him lead on free-press and freedom-of-information issues through the principles he avows. His position would be stronger if he begins applying those principles to his own company.”
To his credit, Singleton answered Peele’s tough questions and Peele quoted him in the article. And Singleton and the CCTimes and Singleton managers allowed Peele’s piece to run in Sunday’s paper and posted it on the CCTimes website this morning.
Could this ever happen at the Chronicle/Hearst? Well, it won’t happen until the moment Hearst starts allowing its staff to cover such censored stories as the PG@E/RakerAct scandal (a censored story since the late l920s after Hearst got some timely fresh capital from a PG@E-controlled bank in return for flipping on their support of public power (to be laid out in coming blogs). The latest censored Hearst story: the Chronicle still hasn’t published the big Hearst prescription drug price scandal story, which was run as a lead story in the Wall Street Journal, with versions by the Associated Press, the Guardian, and even the Hearst-owned Houston Chronicle. (see previous blogs).
And nobody from Hearst corporate or Hearst San Francisco will answer my email questions as to why the story wasn’t published in the Chronicle and when it would be or provided an explanation for the embarrassing corporate blackout. B3, who can see the fumes from the Potrero Hill power plant from my desk, courtesy of PG@E and Hearst.
P.S. And the Potrero HIll martini? That is a story for another blog.
Freedom of information must be an unwavering principle by Thomas Peele
Who will Dan Savage endorse in his column in the Village Voice/New Times papers? Will the Voice and other New Times papers be allowed to endorse in this crucial election?
Who will Dan Savage be endorsing in his pre-election sex column in the Village Voice/New Times chain of l7 papers?
Since his is the only endorsement that may see the light of day in any VV/NT paper (they don’t allow endorsements),
I emailed him on Friday in hopes I could get a scooplet. Dan was uncharacteristically shy. He didn’t respond by blogtime.
Savage, the editor of The Stranger alternative paper in Seattle who writes “Savage Love,” two years ago managed to slip in a Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his last pre-election column two years ago. The crucial questions: What will he do this time? Will he be allowed to do it again?
Savage has already in his current column done more on the endorsement front than his New York paper, the VV/NT. In a note to his New York readers, he plugged a political fundraiser by writing, “I hauled my ass all the way to Philadelphia to help raise money to defeat Rick Santorum. The least you can do is haul your ass to the party at Drop Off Service…Admission is free, but it is a fundraiser. So, like, bring some funds.”
He ended his column with an even more subtle pitch to his Phiadelphia readers: “I had a blast at the Trocadero–and hey, a a shout-out to hometown hero Atrios, whom I neglected to mention when I rattled off a list of inspiring lefty bloggers. The whole country is counting on you guys to get out and vote against Rick Santorum on Nov. 2. To raise money and help get out the vote, Philadelphians Against Santorum is hosting a Halloween party at Ortlieb’s Brewery Cabaret…Free if you’re wearing a costume, $l0 otherwise. If you don’t live in Philly but would like to help defeat Santorum, go to www.phillyagainstsantorum.com and make a donation.”
I’m emailing NT Chairman and CEO Jim Larkin and Editor in Chief Mike Lacey, at New Times headquarters in Phoenix, and Voice David Blum to see if they will allow Savage to keep endorsing and to see if they will allow the Village Voice to endorse this time around (a Voice tradition)–and if they will allow the other five Voice papers now under NT aegis to endorse (Minneapolis City Pages, Seattle Weekly, Nashville Scene, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, all papers in areas with critical races). Also: to see Larkin and Lacey will maintain this ban on endorsements on their other ll papers.
I’m not hopeful in reaching Larkin and Lacey. The New York Times, in its Oct. 28th story headlined “Village Voice Stalwart Resigns In Latest Postmerger Shake-up,” ran into the Larkin/Lacey stonewall in reporting that longtime Voice CEO David Schneiderman resigned last Thursday. Schneiderman, who came to the Voice in l978 from the New York Times, told the Times that it was his decision to resign. “I knew once we’d completed the merger and everything went smoothly, that would be the proper moment,” he said, adding he had no regrets about the merger. “I felt then and I feel now that it was a very smart business decision.”
And then the Times reported as many of us have for years: Neither Larkin nor Lacey “responded to messages left yesterday.”
Smart business decision? Well, maybe, but Schneiderman couldn’t say “smart editorial decision” after Larkin and Lacey quickly gutted the Voice, cut out much of its cultural staff, and neutered its political coverage. Would the Voice be voiceless on Bush, Iraq, and other major political endorsements for the first time in memory? Thank the Lord for Dan Savage! l B3
Village Voice Stalwart Resigns in Latest Post-Merger Shake-up
VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS