Art Archives — Page 167 of 206 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Shakespeare and sexy Jesus

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August 19, 2008

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Sundance darling Hamlet 2 has been dubbed by at least one critic as this year’s Napoleon Dynamite; but with an R rating and dialogue like, "I feel like I’ve been raped in the face," the movie isn’t nearly as quirky as that assessment implies. This is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy comedy served with a side of whimsy just as much as any Juno fan; but brazenly puerile movies that lie on the more ribald end of the humor spectrum have their own undeniable charms.

There is an art to making an enjoyable lowbrow comedy, as bizarre as it may seem. It’s the reason why deceptively dumb movies like Team America: World Police (2004) have achieved cult status and obscenely dumb movies like Hot Rod (2007) should never, under any circumstances be viewed — and incidentally, both were scripted (at least in part) by Hamlet 2 cowriter Pam Brady. There may be a fine line between stupid and clever, but the line that separates silly from moronic is just as — if not more — tenuous. Brady’s good name is happily on the road to recovery, though, with this over-the-top farce. To quote Polonius from Hamlet 1, "Though this be madness … there is method in it."

All of the madness, as it were, revolves around Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), an inept but undeniably gung-ho high school drama teacher. You see, Marschz (and every consonant is pronounced in that name) is a failed actor who devotes himself to the two students in his class and the low-budget, sparsely attended stagings of recent Hollywood classics like Erin Brockovich. When the school newspaper’s prepubescent, hyperarticulate drama critic gives his latest production a scathing review, Marschz is distraught, but he flirts with the idea of writing something original. It isn’t until the following school year, when funding for drama is cut, that he’s shocked into action. He begins working on what will become a sort of play-within-a-play — a lewd and ridiculous sequel to Hamlet with a cast of characters that includes Albert Einstein, sexy Jesus, a bi-curious Laertes, and everyone else from the original Shakespearean tragedy, brought back to life via time machine.

Though the tone is overwhelmingly absurd, this is a satire. It isn’t a particularly sophisticated satire, but it’s effective nonetheless — offering a critique of censorship and the ACLU; Amy Poehler plays a sassy, foul-mouth lawyer with no qualms about defending a high school play wherein Jesus gets a hand job. Rounding out the cast is Catherine Keener as Marschz’s crass wife, David Arquette as the Marschzs’ virtually silent boarder, who inexplicably follows them everywhere, and Elisabeth Shue as herself. But make no mistake, this is Coogan’s show. He’s a star in his native England, yet as far as American cinema is concerned, he’s consistently been relegated to supporting roles. Finally he’s allowed to shine here, and the movie ultimately owes its success to his performance. He falls down repeatedly in an intersection while wearing roller skates, he exposes his butt, he moonwalks on water as sexy Jesus — all of it inspired. Shakespearean comedies usually end in a wedding: though no one gets married in Hamlet 2, it’s a hell of a lot funnier than anything the Bard ever wrote. *

HAMLET 2

Opens Fri/22 at Bay Area theaters

Local Artist of the Week: Aurie Ramirez

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August 18, 2008

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LOCAL ARTIST Aurie Ramirez
TITLE Untitled
STORY Aurie Ramirez’ sophisticated, delicately rendered compositions create an ever-expanding fantasy world where fragments of 18th-century dandyism, neo-Victorian decorum, psychedelia, Venetian masquerade, glam-rock sex, and punk fetishism are repeated and transformed. Aurie’s work has been inspired by her interest in The Addams Family and KISS.
BIO Born in 1962 in the Philippines, Aurie Ramirez has exhibited her work at White Columns in New York, Jack Hanley Gallery in Los Angeles, ABCD in Paris, and Collection l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.
SHOW “Estacion Odesia,” through Aug. 30. By appointment. Queen’s Nails Annex, 3191 Mission, SF. (415) 202-3199. www.queensnailsannex.com
WEB www.creativegrowth.org

Pennies from heaven

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August 13, 2008

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Growing up gay in a military family of evangelical Christians in the Reagan-era South sounds like a tight squeeze for anyone. But as Kirk Read affirms, however claustrophobic one’s environment, there’s always room for a good fantasy. Besides, Read likes tight squeezes. His active dream life (which includes having a very large man lie on top of him and expel all the air from his lungs) percolated early with the image of his young gay Christian self leaving home for school each morning past an angry throng of fellow evangelicals in protest formation, waving signs expressing God’s vehement opposition to little backpack-wearing Kirk Read, holding up the obligatory jars of fetuses, shaking fists, and lobbing Bibles. Well, Read is here to testify that dreams can come true.

The story of that, um, miraculous moment (which took place recently as Read toured his home state of Virginia with the Sex Workers’ Art Show) makes up just one part of the Bay Area writer-performer’s lively, gleefully offbeat, and largely autobiographical concatenation of multimedia performance pieces, This Is the Thing, now being reprised at Shotwell Studios after its sold-out Queer Arts Festival debut at the Garage in June. But it comes, along with a raucous striptease, as the apt climax of an evening driven by a kind of fervor and sensibility clearly (if inadvertently) inspired by Read’s "hardcore" Southern Christian upbringing (recounted in detail in his 2001 memoir, How I Learned to Snap [Hill Street Press]).

Thus the evening begins with a prayer. Stepping onto the stage looking like a young Osmond-esque televangelist in a white polyester suit and gold sequin tee, Read (ably accompanied through many a mood by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, and backed by the smooth, evocative video collage work of Liz Singer) leads those assembled in a celebration of all those things disappearing — the cassette mixtape, the bottle rocket, the sonnet — before segueing into a paean to the penny and a loose, carefree set of associations that promptly lead to Abe Lincoln as well-hung gay icon. Pennies, those "shiny whores," are a sort of leitmotif here, though I can’t exactly say I understood why. Still, in terms of theme and execution, Read’s deceptively laid-back intensity, wit, and bold and personable self-exposure tend to make up for the evening’s slighter or more muddled aspects.

At its best moments This Is the Thing melds carefully honed physical and thematic juxtapositions with Read’s loose and natural but wholly committed performance style. The effects are often simultaneously hilarious, haunting, and gently moving. In a segment titled "The Conductor," Read recounts his first encounter with his very favorite sex client, a 450-pound man with a penchant for the classics, acting out the surprisingly romantic business affair with the aid of a large Winnie the Pooh–headed bear of a mannequin — a luxurious pileup of stuffed animal pelts constructed by Doug Hansen. In another pas de deux, a quietly strange and graceful piece called "Computer Face," Read is paired with a man-size figure set on wheels, wrapped in white bandages with clumps of wires for hands, and a glowing, hollowed-out Apple computer monitor for a head. As a looped recording plays a speech by Harvey Milk, Read pulls a series of objects from the figure’s head and dances with it in tight circles across the stage. In "The Nu Handbell Choir," the show reaches a kind of peak of starkness and delicacy as Read, calmly micturating into a set of crystal goblets, describes his furtive childhood adoration for his father — a veteran of three wars — and his Army brass buddies as they assembled in his parents’ living room to drink, talk, and console one another.

Other vignettes are less complex but still compelling in their energy and frank humor. "Hotel Hooker Haiku" is a sassy phenomenology of an Atlanta prostitute’s working world, set to banjo accompaniment and jovial footage of some dingy, dreary motel grounds. And the more traditionally outrageous if still amusing "Missing Mike Brady" posits Florence Henderson as a clothesline post airing her sex life on a well-worn marriage sheet. The Bradys may seem a little far afield here, but then, like the best of preachers, Read is nothing if not ecumenical.

THIS IS THE THING

Thurs/14–Sat/16, 8 p.m. (also Sat, 10 p.m.), $12–$20

Shotwell Studios

3252 Shotwell, SF

1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/38121

No mere ornament

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August 13, 2008

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REVIEW In Mary and Russel Wright’s Guide to Easier Living, first published in 1950, the designers instruct the midcentury housewife to avoid the "deeply carved wooden chair" in favor of a "contour design" to "simplify cleaning." This form-follows-function approach to design reached its height in the mass market in 1950s and ’60s, most notably with the introduction of the stacking, molded fiberglass chairs of Charles and Ray Eames — which can still found, en masse, in libraries throughout the University of California system.

Initially fueled at the beginning of the 20th century by the creative force of the Bauhaus movement, the reaction against ornamentation was iterated not only in the home but also in painting and music. A traveling survey, "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury," now on view at the Oakland Museum, presents a cross-section of modernism as explored by West Coast — and specifically Los Angeles — artists and designers. The exhibition takes a social and domestic stance, interspersing living room–like sets with didactic timelines, framing Vernor Panton’s iconic "S" chair with the introduction of Barbie and Wile E. Coyote cartoons. While this presentation nicely emphasizes the consumer context of much of the midcentury design, the pristine examples of hard-edge paintings do not benefit as much from this framework.

Characterized by well-defined abstract and geometric forms, the paintings by Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg, Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin, among others, instead situate themselves through their own clear, clean lines. Much the same way the subtle variations in Mondrian’s surfaces define his work, the intricacies of these paintings reinforce the mentality of their era — a philosophical idealization of the California landscape and climate. They vibrate an optimism in direct opposition to the frustration found in abstract expressionism on the opposite coast.

BIRTH OF COOL: CALIFORNIA ART, DESIGN, AND CULTURE AT MIDCENTURY Through Aug. 17. Wed.–Sat., 10 a.m–5 p.m. (first Fri., 10 a.m.–9 p.m.); Sun., noon–5 p.m. Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl. $8, $5 seniors and students (free second Sun.). (510) 238-2200, www.museumca.org

Micheline, man

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August 13, 2008

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So much of Jack Micheline’s work is great that it almost feels like a lie to speak of it. He remains a problematic, adorable, and — to the very end — indefinable artist. This is not loose praise.

In an introduction to the new Micheline collection One of a Kind (Ugly Duckling Press, 155 pages, $15), editor Julien Poirier asks, "Why does literature consider Jack Micheline a joke if it considers him at all? When he puts everyone in the dark!" It isn’t conspiracy speech to claim there are no valid or easy answers to this question. As Micheline said: "Fuck fame sweetheart. It is so fleeting. This stupid thing called Fame. (power, money)." He was well aware that "it is a sad affair what Modern America does to its poets. Or what happens to poets in 20th-century America." He lived his art and life against such destructive forces.

Micheline died in 1998, riding a BART train to the end of the line. He loved trains, racetracks, cities, poets, musicians, artists, and women. He was at ease with the roiling mass of humanity. His friends ranged from Charles Bukowski and Charles Mingus to street hustlers and bookstore proprietors. Late in life he became a prolific painter, and One of a Kind includes several reproductions of black-and-white paintings and drawings alongside a healthy selection of previously uncollected (for the most part) prose and poetry. Micheline’s work is phallus-centered and action-oriented, but it can also allow gender to be an open question. Ultimately, one of his primary concerns is the inherent and often unnoticed beauty found in subtle gestures.

Micheline dug speech. The nonstop rapport of an active city street lifted him from within:

I walked in the streets of night

so no one could see my face

and heard beautiful sounds

If you don’t know Micheline’s work, read One of a Kind. (If you do, read it too.) Micheline is an essential tick at the center of humanity. His poems don’t solve problems, but they celebrate and provide attentive insight into what it means to truly live. Hearing them will do you good. Poirier’s introduction, taking the form of a personal letter addressed to Micheline, is a treasure in itself. The intuitive care he’s given to Micheline’s poetry is clear. As an editor and fellow poet, he possesses the wonder necessary to assemble this book, yet true to his hope, the reward belongs to Micheline. This is the book Jack Micheline was working on for all those years.

Eye of the needle

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August 12, 2008

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› johnny@sfbg.com

REVIEW During the fall of 2004, I interviewed Bruce Conner, who had no shortage of viewpoints regarding contemporary art. "Many people," he said, "will develop a style of painting or subject matter or content that appears to be very innovative, and their next solo exhibition will be made up of 20 paintings that are all the same, aside from tiny variations."

Lauren DiCioccio offers a remedy for just such a malaise. Though her current show at Jack Fischer Gallery isn’t fully solo — she’s exhibiting with Aliza Lelah — she’s crammed five or six exhibits’ worth of ideas into her half. The extreme density and the versatile expansiveness of DiCioccio’s approach acquires special potency when one considers its relationship to the space: working from the smallest gallery in 49 Geary, Fischer presents intuitive outsider work with casual aplomb. His best shows present an experience akin to stumbling out of a sterile mini-museum into the residential hotel room of a smart enthusiast.

At the moment, that room includes 47 pieces by DiCioccio that stem from at least a handful of specific individual practices. Like some other young Bay Area artists such as Ruth Laskey, DiCioccio’s brand of personal creativity involves obsessive repetition. In other words, she’s transutf8g craft into art, with imagination and without much pretense. She sews unusual.

In the realm of nostalgia, DiCioccio threads lightly. Her series of works at Jack Fischer include 14 semi-amazing facsimiles of 35mm slides made by hand-embroidering bridal organza; five sculptures constructed from individual paper pads and thread; three mini-Mead spiral notebooks with felt covers and cloth pages sporting machine-sewn lines; eight "color codification dot drawings," in which she assigns colors to letters of the alphabet then paints on frosted Mylar after placing it over a magazine page; 11 variations on the classic plastic "Thank You" shopping or food-delivery bag, again made with organza; and, perhaps most strikingly, six pieces in which she sews through the top page of an entire issue of the New York Times encased in muslin.

Got that? DiCioccio’s show demands more viewing time than it takes to process the above sentence-long paragraph, and rewards that commitment with contemplative pleasure. At a moment when the average artwork gets around five seconds of zombie dead-eye before going gazeless once again, that’s saying something. Some of what DiCioccio is doing is derivative, or at least bears an obvious kinship to other projects. Her "Thank You" bags, for example, are a proletarian cousin to Libby Black’s experiments in paper designer wear. The paper-rad effect of her paper pad configurations isn’t far from origami, even if the waterfall effect she creates with aqua thread in one piece is lovely. But her best ideas are matched by a skill and dedication that honors humor and open-ended playfulness.

The open-ended quality of DiCioccio’s work is evident in the color paintings, which use a cryptic-yet-ripe foundation of meaning: the recent "green" issue of Vanity Fair with Madonna on the cover. ("And incredibly, looking not a day older," reads the parenthetical title of one of these untitled works.) Here, DiCioccio’s color-by-letters method highlights the structural beauty of mastheads and two- or three-column text configurations complete with pull-quotes. As she covers the magazine and its text, she simultaneously teases out ironies about Madonna and the notion of eco-friendly paper periodicals.

Green turns into gray lady — and Madonna’s unforgivingly ageless brand of masculine femininity gives way dour old boys and even Old Glory — in DiCioccio’s Times series. There, her threads meet up with disposable, obsolete newspaper, a material not far from dust in more ways than one. As with DiCioccio’s 35mm slide facsimiles, which bear micro-images of landmarks like Mount Rushmore, there’s a sense of an American way of life nearing death, and the artist is smart and honest enough to play it every which way but heavy-handed. Instead of trying for perfection, she lets threads hang loosely, suggesting a spirit left behind.

LAUREN DICIOCCIO AND ALIZA LELAH

Through Sat/16

Jack Fischer Gallery

49 Geary, Suite 440, SF

(415) 956-1178

www.jackfischergallery.com

Goat Hill Pizza

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August 12, 2008

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› paulr@sfbg.com

While the denizens of Washington, DC must nourish themselves with Capitol Hill Blue, we of the Blessed Realm have easy access to Goat Hill Pizza, and although there aren’t any goats on Potrero Hill any more, in blue or any other color, the views are still magical, the pizza is pretty good, and a longtime spirit of San Francisco abides, despite the passing of a third of a century and the ebb and flow of various funny-money economic tides.

Goat Hill is more than a pizzeria with a view (though a better view you won’t easily find), more than a place long famed for its Monday night, all-you-can-eat pizza dim sum extravaganza (though a better deal you won’t easily find): it’s a kind of community center, a locus of mingling, with the restaurant’s co-owner, Philip De Andrade, serving as mingler-in-chief as he moves from table to table, chatting and checking. The restaurant’s long walls are regularly hung with paintings for sale, and, on certain warm weekend afternoons, the place becomes a kind of art gallery that smells of linguica and cheap red wine — just the sort of environment in which to stumble across a surviving Beat writer or unheralded master painter.

Goat Hill is a still-glowing ember of a bohemian San Francisco where life’s riches were enjoyed but neither obsessed over nor paraded as status symbols. If, in a sense, it’s an ambassador from the past, it’s an envoy that’s survived a host of Bible-worthy plagues, from earthquake, disease, and fire to the dot-com boom-bust (in with the Porsches, out with the Porsches!) and the long adventure in misrule that began with a stolen election and will eternally bear the name of the unbearable George W. Bush. The little man will be gone soon, holding hands with Dick Cheney in one of their undisclosed locations while Mesopotamia burns, but Goat Hill will still be there, packing them in on Monday nights.

While a wait for a table is generally an annoyance for people who are hungry to eat dinner, the Monday-night wait at Goat Hill is rather festive, especially in mild weather. Clots of people loiter on the sidewalk and in the street near the door, chatting and flirting and occasionally taking the long view down the slope of Connecticut Street to the city’s luminous skyline, which seems close enough to touch. Of all the skyline views I’ve observed over the years, only those on the eastern slopes of Russian Hill are the equal of those on the north face of Potrero. With a view like that, who needs food? And yet, from time to time, the host does emerge from the restaurant to call out a name, and a party of people — maybe a twosome, but just as likely a sixsome or even more — eagerly marches inside.

The dim sum comparison is as old as time, but it isn’t quite apposite. (Visitors to Goat Hill’s arriviste location in the SoMa flatlands will find the all-you-can-eat deal in effect every day.) Whenever I’ve had actual dim sum at a Chinese place, the servers check off little boxes on a tab when we’ve chosen items to eat, so the final bill varies. At Goat Hill, you pay a flat fee (at the moment $10.95 per head), which buys you unlimited access to the salad bar along with unlimited access to the pies that emerge regularly from the kitchen. A pie arrives; its topping is announced, and, as at a Sotheby’s auction, you point or mumble or in some other way indicate an interest, and you are given a slice. But step lively, because the next pie could be just seconds behind. Or, minutes might elapse, an interval in which you can thoughtfully chew your crust rinds. Some of these can look a little scorched.

The toppings themselves show signs of being drawn from the culinary equivalent of an auto dealership’s parts bin. There’s pepperoni, of course, and also pepperoni with sausage, and sausage with mushroom. (No pepperoni with mushroom.) How about ground beef with green onions ("Italian hamburger"), or spinach with tomato and feta cheese, or chicken with sun-dried tomatoes? Green bell pepper makes repeated appearances, as does pineapple, with ham or with sausage, with or without chunks of jalapeño pepper.

Linguica — the garlicky Portuguese sausage — is underrated as a pizza topping; its flavor is every bit as potent as pepperoni’s, but (at least at Goat Hill) it’s richer and less salty. This last is always an important consideration for the pizza eater who is beyond 30 years of age. I love pizza, and I retain an affection for the sort of pizza gluttony Goat Hill enables, but the older you get, the more likely you are to be sorry the next day not to have exercised more restraint in enjoying your pizza. (The pizza crusts, incidentally, are sourdough and find a nice middle ground between crackery and bready, but the rinds nonetheless have a way of piling on paper plates around the tables. Only across the way, at a table filled with avid men in their 20s, did I notice the crust rinds being efficiently dispatched. It was like watching bright-eyed jackals polish off a wildebeest carcass, bones and all.)

The salad bar, amid all this crust, is not an afterthought. Although it has the look of something you’d find at Howard Johnson’s, complete with sneeze shield, it does offer a broad range of non-bloating items, including kidney beans and chickpeas, tomato slices, mushrooms, lettuce, grated cheese, beets, pepperoncini, and, of course, choice of dressing, to be ladled from big crocks. There’s even a view, at no extra charge.

GOAT HILL PIZZA

Sun.–Thurs., 11:30 a.m.–10:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.

300 Connecticut, SF

(415) 641-1440

www.goathill.com

Beer and wine

AE/DC/DISC/MC/V

Noise does not preclude conversation

Wheelchair accessible

Scoping out Treasure Island’s ‘Treasure Trove’

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August 12, 2008

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West Indian Girl at last year’s Treasure Island fest. Photo courtesy of www.treasureislandfestival.com

By Kat Renz

Apparently Noise Pop and Another Planet Productions don’t think there’s enough cool stuff to do at their upcoming second annual Treasure Island Festival. After all, there are only two days of major indie rock acts, a 60-foot-tall Ferris wheel, double-dutch lessons, and free hairstyling, among other diversions. But perhaps you need a break from dancing and shoegazing and hula hooping? This is when you become grateful to the minds behind the “Treasure Trove.”

A 2,500-square-foot tent will house pieces of art and culture representative of the Bay Area and will provide opportunities galore for local creativeness, both others’ and your own. Get cozy and catch up on your underground reading in the zine corner, hosted by none other than the SF ‘Zine Fest. Relax in a bathtub sculpture. Feeling festival-ly inspired? Compose your own music on the Octamasher, a melodic hydra of eight instruments connected to one computer brain, allowing future electronicons to sample, tweak loops, and collaborate with other participant-observers.

Photo Issue: Molly Decoudreaux looks beneath the nightlife

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August 11, 2008

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Photo by Molly Decoudreaux

It’s hopeless to ignore the incredible explosion of nightlife photography that’s happened on the Web and in art schools these past few years. And what better time than now, with our Photography Issue on the stands, to examine it a little?

For those of us who clung desperately in our ’80s Midwestern teens to every month’s Details (back when it was a nightlife zine and Michael Musto didn’t pee on celebrity legs) or took i-D as our lifeline to street fashion and personality-inversion in the outer world, the big bang’s been both exciting and a bit disconcerting. On the one hand, there’s incredible creativity being documented instantaneously and available to all — even in Djibouti, fantastic weirdos need never feel alone. On the other, there’s the sense that mere dressing up for the ever-present cameras has replaced actual self-expression. Misshapes! Cobra Snakes! Blue States Lose! And then there’s just the pure horrificality of sites like this one, which are about boobs. Par-T&A!

The upside: Club kids from the ’80s

The downside: Hoochies from last week

And yet, and yet. The dancefloor snappers here in SF are giving the nightlife bulbs a spin of their own, by focusing on the more artistic aspects of Clubland’s odd-wonderful players — and taking off in thoughtful directions, not restricting themselves to mere sublebrity paparazzi.

Case in point — the fab Molly Decoudreaux, a well-known nightlife gadabout who’s just published a fine new book, Here and There: Portraits.

The Oakland native got her start snapping pics of her hot dyke and faggot friends in blackout res, and has worked on projects for the Lexington Club, Big Top, and Lusty Lady.

Along the way, she’s developed a fierce photographic aesthetic that positions Clubland’s outsized personalities into a meditation of place. Her photos take in these club kids with admiring eyes, yet also deepen their glorious showboating with examinations of their daytime surroundings and situations. “My primary interest is portraiture,” she told me last week by phone. “Also gender representation and presentation — I started college as a gender and queer studies major — but captured in a way that looks at the layers through which we reveal or transform ourselves. Little cracks can show a lot.”

Big ups for “Big Top”

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August 11, 2008

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Finally, a publication is recognizing the recent(ish) explosion of independent circus art as a movement in its own right (rather than a bastardization of “real” circus or an extension of Burning Man culture). Yup, that’s right. I’m talking about Best of the Bay winner Big Top, the online mag dedicated to highlighting, promoting, and supporting indie circus culture. (For the record, we did talk about the trend in early 2007 – we just haven’t devoted a whole damn magazine to it.)

So why am I talking about Big Top so soon after we featured ‘em in last week’s issue – and hung with ‘em at our badass Best of the Bay party on Thursday? Because they’re awesome. And because they hosted their own incidiary event the next night at Fat City.

Fat City headliners Fou Fou Ha! Photo from Big Top Magazine.

The Gysin file

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August 6, 2008

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› johnny@sfbg.com

I associate the dreamachine with Christmas. The first and only time I’ve directly encountered a version of the device was a holiday five or six years ago. My friend Julien used a turntable to set up a homemade dreamachine in a corner room of his family’s cabin. I took a turn sitting with my eyes closed in front of its stroboscopic play of light and darkness. I didn’t have an epileptic fit; nor did I go into a hypnagogic state. It wasn’t a drugless high, but it was a mind’s eye stimulus. I’d try the dreamachine again.

"I don’t think [the dreamachine] really works unless you’ve smoked a pipe of hash," Kenneth Anger declares during FlicKeR, Nik Sheehan’s documentary about the device and its chief creator, the writer, painter, and mystic Brion Gysin. "I think it’s too dangerous if you’ve taken acid," he adds. You get the feeling Anger is speaking from experience, even if he doesn’t face a dreamachine in front of Sheehan’s camera. Such a meeting isn’t necessary, because FlicKeR‘s first 15 minutes serves up a Who’s Who of dreamachine enthusiasts in action: Marianne Faithfull, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, and Genesis P. Orridge of Psychic TV are among those Sheehan captures sitting and staring — with eyes closed — before the contraption’s oscilutf8g light.

The dreamachine makes for potent visual imagery, but distilling or truly conveying its effect is a tougher task for a filmmaker, even if Sheehan’s camera briefly stares directly into one (and later, incorporates Tony Conrad’s 1965 film The Flicker, a potent projector-based dreamachine corollary). For Sheehan, the mechanism provides a kinetic introduction to or threshold into, a portrait of the late Gysin. Though Gysin — who invented the Cut-Up literary methods popularized by best friend William S. Burroughs — is a shadowy figure to hang a feature-length film portrait on, FlicKeR‘s hopping, skipping, and jumping approach to his life at least energizes his enigma.

In Victor Bockris’ 1981 interview collection With William S. Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker (Seaver), Burroughs — who also says, typically, "[Gysin] taught me everything I know about painting" — relates Gysin’s description of a milk bar just after a terrorist blast: "People were lying around with their legs cut off, spattered with maraschino cherries, passion fruit, ice cream, brains, pieces of mirror and blood." Without a living subject, Sheehan must turn to various vivid Gysin acquaintances — mirror man Ira Cohen and a spry John Giorno, for example — to bring across similar illustrations of anarchic spirit. In the process, offhand observations come to mind: Genesis P. Orridge has transformed herself into a sisterly peer of rad auntie Faithfull (who praises Gysin’s warmth in her autobiography, where she’s largely disdainful of all men), for one. It’s easy to lose sight of Gysin amid such colorful characters, but FlicKeR is steadfast in its belief that Gysin is influential; a variety of academics use Gysin as a gateway to discussions of everything from the changing nature of terrorism to iPods.

He may not be the center of 20th-century history, but Gysin’s influence on the present is undeniable. This is partly due to another wave of ’60s resurgence. FlicKeR kicks off "Stoned Apocalypse," a Joel Shepard–curated Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series that includes a program devoted to the legendary light shows that overtook late-’60s music concerts. While most people associate such light shows with rock music, the new collection, The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde (University of California Press, 322 pages, $27.50), explores its links to avant-garde cinema and music in the Bay Area.

The dreamachine-like notion and practice of live cinema is building momentum in recent years, thanks to practitioners such as Bruce Fletcher, a new surge of interest in Conrad, and a 2007 San Francisco Cinematheque series that inspired an anthology of writing on the subject. Last year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Anthony McCall’s installation You and I, Horizontal filtered Conrad’s and Gysin’s ideas about pure light into a communal rather than individual experience so potent it was akin to near-death or first-moments-of-life. That which flickers still illuminates, and it may soon turn into a piercing beam of light.

FLICKER

Thurs/7, 7:30 p.m., $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

Charitable cash cow

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August 6, 2008

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Nonprofit charities in the Golden State should have been raking in the cash in 2004. Gracious Californians gave $60 million more toward fundraising campaigns that year than they did in 2003, totaling almost $293 million. The following year, donors gave even more: $332 million.

Yet despite the increasing generosity of Californians, the percentage that nonprofits actually took away from those campaigns steadily decreased from 2003 to 2005.

Most of the gains went to private, for-profit fundraising companies hired to conduct telemarketing services and coordinate special benefit events like gala dinners, rodeos, and variety shows.

Such companies charge steep fees and commissions that frequently leave charities, especially smaller or less experienced ones, with little or even nothing at all, according to state disclosure records.

Commercial fundraisers collect millions each year relying on the public image of selflessness projected by nonprofits devoted to promoting cultural literacy, saving lost or exploited children, finding cures for deadly diseases, or improving the welfare of defenseless animals.

Some desperate nonprofits elect to allow commercial fundraisers to take a percentage of the money they raise, at times as much as 80 to 90 percent. Alternately, larger charities may agree to set costs and fees associated with the campaign, but that strategy can also prove costly.

For example, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hired the Los Angeles company SD&A Teleservices in 2004 for a phone solicitation campaign that raised $12,000. But because the company’s fees were greater than the contributions received, the museum had to pay $19,854 more to cover the venture. Similarly, the San Francisco Ballet lost $3,400 in 2005 to the same company after SD&A raised $12,745 from donors, thousands less than what it charged.

Several people we interviewed said the benefits of a fundraising campaign might not materialize until later if contributors eventually become long-term supporters. But unless the typical donor has time to find out how much ultimately makes it to the cause they care so much about, they’re unlikely to be aware of the extraordinary costs involved in nonprofit fundraising.

"The charity agrees to it because they want the easy money that they don’t have to do any work for," Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Chicago, told the Guardian. "Then the person goes out and spends $1 million to get that $200,000, and the charity tries to rationalize it by saying ‘Well, it’s money we wouldn’t normally have. We don’t have staffing for fundraising.’ But they’re ripping off the public and disrespecting the intentions of the people who gave that money."

The Los Angeles Times published a months-long investigation July 6 that examined required forms submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office showing the total revenue generated from 5,800 nonprofit fundraising campaigns and how much of that money went to the charities.

Between 1997 and 2006, the paper discovered, 430 campaigns raised a total of $44 million — but in each case, every dime went to the fundraising company. Charities lost money in 337 more cases. In hundreds of instances, charities entered into contracts that assured them only 20 percent or less of the funds raised, regardless of how successful the campaign turned out to be. The AIP recommends spending no more than 35 cents on each dollar raised. The Times also pointed out that donors enjoy tax deductions from their contributions, even if huge portions go to for-profit companies.

"Nonprofits spend a lot of money attracting donors and then they fall away the next year, so they have to reach out and attract even more donors," Elizabeth Boris, director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy in Washington, DC, told us. "So there’s a lot of churning that goes on, because a lot of the same people don’t give to the same organization year after year. It is an expensive process of getting the names and contacting people."

Because California is behind in processing the required disclosure forms, the Times had to specially request records from 2006, meaning more recent figures aren’t available. The Guardian took a far less extensive look at the records, but we still found plenty of examples of charities earning astonishingly low rates of return.

In 2004, Campbell-based TBS Productions raised $418,377 for the San Francisco Police Officers Association and its annual "Parade of Stars" event held at the Palace of Fine Arts. But just $87,094 made it into the union’s nonprofit Community Services Fund, which redistributes it in small increments to a variety of causes.

"I’ve wrestled with this since I’ve come on," said POA President Gary Delagnes. "There are two ways of looking at it. Do we really want to lend our name to an outfit that’s taking 80 percent off the top? … The decision we made was: you know what, we’re to do so much good with the charitable money that it’s worth it to us."

That same year the Oakland Police Officers Association also hired TBS for its "Cavalcade of Stars" event. The company raised $402,515 on behalf of the East Bay union for charitable purposes, but only $88,603 remained after covering the event’s costs, a return to the union of 22 cents on the dollar.

That year, TBS coordinated events for at least 16 groups across the state representing law enforcement and emergency personnel, from the San Jose Firefighters Burn Foundation to the Fresno Deputy Sheriffs Association. But almost no one received a better return rate than 20 percent, and two raised just 15 cents on the dollar after accounting for the for-profit company’s take. No one at TBS was available for comment when we called.

More than 250 fundraising campaigns in California netted 20 cents or less from each dollar raised for charities in 2004, according to figures maintained by the state.

Rich Steinberg, a longtime scholar of nonprofits at Indiana University, said several factors mitigate all this. He explained that the United States Supreme Court has been reluctant to permit heavy regulations on charity fundraising because a seemingly poor cost ratio isn’t necessarily bad for a nonprofit.

"Big charities could do everything wrong but still have a good cost ratio" because their support is widespread, Steinberg said. The San Francisco Ballet and SFMOMA, for example, have done much better in some telemarketing campaigns, earning from 54 percent to 81 percent in return rates despite other times losing money.

Could it be that there are too many small, inefficient nonprofits with similar missions, each created in the belief that government wasn’t filling some need? Perhaps. But attempting to curtail them could undermine the democratic spirit that leads to their creation.

"We should make it legitimate for any group of idiots to get together and try to do something good," Steinberg said.

If they want to succeed, he said, charities should not accept terms that give fundraisers a percentage of the donations. Instead they should establish fixed fees so that every dollar beyond that amount goes toward services. Second, to ensure more favorable rates, they can require competitive bidding among fundraisers.

Ken Larson, director of public policy for the California Association of Nonprofits, said that few of the tens of thousands of charitable organizations registered in California use commercial fundraisers to attract donors, a fact confirmed in reports compiled by the attorney general. Many hire full-time professional fundraisers to seek foundation and government grants or relationships with repeat donors, intangible benefits that can go beyond immediate fundraising goals.

As for telemarketing, Mike Smith, chief operating officer of New Jersey-based Charity Navigator, suggests that when donors receive a call, they can just hang up and cut a check directly to the nonprofit.

The debate over nonprofit fundraising costs is nothing new, but with information increasingly available on the Web, consumers are in a much stronger position to give wisely.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation publicly and angrily parted ways with its commercial fundraiser, Pallatto Teamworks, in 2001 due in part to a dispute over how much the company charged to operate the California AIDS Ride. The charity has since created its own fundraising arm, steadily improving its rate of return from an average of 54 percent over the past seven years to 66.5 percent last year.

The foundation uses another company, MZA Events, to manage its annual AIDS Walkathon, which has averaged a healthy 63 percent return since 1999 with improved results over each of the last three years.

But officials with the SF AIDS Foundation believe telemarketing has enabled it to achieve greater public awareness. It also began moving the task in-house during the past six months and anticipates greater savings.

"Every dime we save in production is a dime that can go to our clients and our programs and our services," said Dave Ellison, spokesperson for the foundation. "We’re always extremely aware of how important it is to keep the costs down because we see the benefits every day in the lives of our clients."

Optic nerve

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August 6, 2008

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› johnny@sfbg.com

This is the second year that the Guardian has devoted an issue to local photographers. I’ll wait until it happens a third time before deeming the project an annual endeavor. It’s easy to believe in that possibility, because the range of photography in the Bay Area right now is exceptional. This great state of affairs is partly due to spaces and organizations such as SF Camerawork, RayKo Photo Center, and PhotoAlliance. It’s also due to more do-it-yourself street-level groups such as Hamburger Eyes and one of this issue’s 10 contributors, Cutter Photozine.

Last year’s photography issue focused on portraiture, but this year I’ve opted for a survey approach that allows for spontaneous connections. Jessica Rosen and Sean McFarland both utilize collage, but with vastly different results. Keba Konte’s collage aesthetic adds objects to imagery and links history to autobiography. Investigative work leads to political or societal exposure within Trevor Paglen’s and David Maisel’s photography. Adrianne Fernandez and Bayeté Ross-Smith focus on youth as they bring new twists to traditions such as the family album and the prom portrait. Dustin Aksland’s portraiture also includes teenagers, sometimes plopped onto or stopped within American landscapes, while Mimi Plumb likens rural landscapes to the backs of horses.

August may be when summer winds down and a portion of SF prepares to camp elsewhere, but it’s an important time for local photography. This issue coincides with PhotoAlliance’s and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery’s annual exhibition of local photographers. Two of the 10 artists on the following pages are part of that show. American photography also will be playing a major role at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next year, when that space presents an exhibition devoted to Robert Frank and his classic monograph The Americans (Steidl).

In honor of an old adage or clichéd truth, there aren’t a lot of words next to the pictures that follow. But the text does include Web site information. In most cases, these photographers’ sites function as another gallery of sorts, one that lacks the tactile nature and dimensions of an actual photograph but at least suggests the variety of a body of work to date. Scope them out, and scope out Pixel Vision, the Guardian‘s arts and culture blog, for interviews and other photography-related pieces this week. Last, before you look, some thanks are due to Glen Helfand, Chuck Mobley, and Mirissa Neff for their help in the selection process, and to Kat Renz for a last-minute idea.

Also in this issue:

>>Killer shots from the bowels of rock

>>Before stalkerazzi, there was Gary Lee Boas

>>Q&A with Heather Renee Russ of Cutter Photozine

>>Q&A with Jessica Rosen

>>Molly Decoudreaux looks beneath local nightlife
———-

NAME Adrianne Fernandez

TITLE Daddy Sends His Love

BACKGROUND In my "Alternative Album" project, the interplay of social and personal history is essential. It yields a complex tension between irony and nostalgia for the so-called family album.

SHOUT OUTS My influences include artists such as Larry Sultan and Elinor Carruci, who have worked with their prospective families to create intimate images that provide a compelling look into family dynamics.

SHOWS "Gender Agenda," through Sept. 14. The Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, Mich. www.thegalleryproject.com. Also "Not Your Mama’s World," Fri/8 through Sept. 9. Washington Gallery of Photography, Bethesda, Md. www.wsp-photo.com

WEB AlternativeAlbum@aol.com

———-

NAME Jessica Rosen

TITLE I Could See the Amazon from the 5th Floor of the Robert Fulton Projects
BACKGROUND This work is a large-scale photo collage installation made from cut-up, layered C-prints of my original photographs. It measures about 10 feet by 12 feet. Because this scale relates to human scale, it allows the viewer to experience the image as an environment rather than as an isolated image.

SHOUT OUTS My work stems from a fascination with people. Over the years my art practice has continually focused on portraiture. Although my newer collage works may seem quite fantastic, most are truly portraits in the traditional sense.

SHOW "Jessica Rosen," through Oct. 1. Open 24/7 (storefront window). Keys That Fit, 2312 Telegraph Ave, Oakl., http://www.xaul.com/KEYS/home.html

WEB www.jessicarosen.com

———-

NAME Cutter Photozine

TITLE Top to bottom, untitled photos by (1) Ethan Indorf; (2) Keith Aguiar; (3) Ace Morgan; (4) Darcy Sharpe

BACKGROUND Cutter is a San Francisco documentary photo magazine. Founded by Heather Renee Russ and Alison O’Connell, it has a DIY ethic and is eco-positive (it uses recycled paper and soy-based inks). Cole Blevins, Jesse Rose Roberts, Sara Seinberg, and Rachel Styer also worked to put out the first issue, which includes 20 photographers and spotlights Ace Morgan’s uncanny blend of rage, longing, joy, and punk rock.

SHOUT OUTS Cutter is dedicated to people telling their stories and documenting their existence. We seek to undo traditional voyeurism toward the "other" and place the power of sight in the focused home of the author.

SHOW The first issue can be purchased at local shops such as Needles & Pens. They’re currently accepting submissions for the second issue, due this fall. There will be a release party and photo show in late November.

WEB www.cutterphotozine.com

———-

NAME David Maisel

TITLE 1165 (from Library of Dust)

BACKGROUND The large-scale photographs of the "Library of Dust" series depict individual copper canisters, dating from 1913 to 1971, which contain unclaimed cremated remains of patients from Oregon’s state-run psychiatric hospital.

SHOUT OUTS Robert Smithson, NASA photographs, 19th-century exploratory landscape photographers (especially Timothy O’Sullivan), and the New Topographics photographers from the mid-1970s.

SHOW "David Maisel: Library of Dust," Sept. 4–Oct. 4. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Haines Gallery, 49 Geary (suite 540), SF. (415) 397-8114, www.hainesgallery.com. Library of Dust (Chronicle Books, 108 pages, $80) will be released in October.

WEB www.davidmaisel.com

———-

NAME Keba Konte

TITLE Detail from "888 Pieces of We"

BACKGROUND The eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year is approaching, and in alignment with this auspicious moment I have created this exhibition of 888 photographs printed on wood, copper, and vintage books. I’ve had to select from thousands of images spanning 42 years in order to choose 888 that reflect my journey: there are protests and portraits, street moments and political movements; freaks, friends, and family members. As a documentary and portrait photographer, one observes the beautiful strangers. However, looking at this large body of work, another story comes into focus: my own.

SHOUT OUTS Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Sebastião Salgado, Ruth Bernhard, Kimara Dixon.

SHOW "888 Pieces of We: A Photo Memoir," Fri/8 through Sept. 8. Oakland Art Gallery, 199 Kahn’s Alley, Oakl. (510) 637-0395, www.oaklandartgallery.org

WEB www.kebakonte.com

———-

NAME Sean McFarland

TITLES Untitled (park)

BACKGROUND I work from an archive of photographs I’ve made, along with images gathered from print and other media. Through collage, new pictures are formed. Recently my work has focused on weather, nighttime, and the ocean.

SHOUT OUTS For now, two books: National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather, (Knopf, 1991), and Gerhard Richter’s Atlas (D.A.P., 2007). Also, students, friends, and just about any archive.

SHOWS "18 Months: Taking the Pulse of Bay Area Photography," through Sept. 17. Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–8 p.m. San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place, SF. (415) 554-6080, www.sfacgallery.org. Upcoming: "Johanna St. Clare, Paul Wackers, Sean McFarland, Dan Carlson," October. Thurs.–Sat., 1–5 p.m. Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 1295 Alabama, SF.

WEB www.sean-mcfarland.com

———-

NAME Dustin Aksland

TITLE Paso Robles, CA (2005)

BACKGROUND This was shot during a trip to Paso Robles. My friend and I pulled off the highway to take the back roads into town. As soon as we pulled off, we passed this man sleeping in his car. We went about a half-mile and I made my friend turn around. We pulled up in front of the car and I shot two frames out of the passenger window.

INSPIRATION "Useful pictures don’t start from ideas, they start from seeing." — Robert Adams.

SHOWS "States of Mind," September. TH Inside, Brussels, Belgium. "States of Mind," November. TH Inside, Copenhagen, Denmark.

WEB www.dustinaksland.com

———-

NAME Bayeté Ross-Smith

TITLE Here Come the Girls

BACKGROUND This is part of a series that documents high school students in Berkeley, east Oakland, San Francisco, and Richmond as they mark their ascension from childhood to adulthood through the celebratory rite of passage known as prom. Taking a cue from traditional prom photos, the portraits allow for seriousness and playful flamboyance, depicting a vast array of budding identities.

SHOUT OUTS Walter Iooss, the Magnum photographers, and James Van Der Zee.

SHOW "Pomp and Circumstance: First Time to Be Adults," Sept. 4–Oct. 11. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 77 Geary (mezzanine), SF. (415) 788-5126, www.patriciasweetwogallery.com. Upcoming: "Off Color," Sept. 19–Nov. 1. RUSH Arts Gallery, New York.

WEB www.patriciasweetowgallery.com

———-

NAME Mimi Plumb

TITLE Harley

BACKGROUND These photos are part of an ongoing series that began about 10 years ago when I photographed a herd in the John Muir Wilderness of the Sierra Nevada. The horses in this new series live in Petaluma.

SHOUT OUTS Horses’ backs embody the landscape. They become the horizon and horizon line, at times transforming into the rolling hills of the California landscape where I grew up, before tract houses and strip malls became the norm.

SHOW "18 Months: Taking the Pulse of Bay Area Photography," through Sept. 17. Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–8 p.m. San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place, SF. (415) 554-6080, www.sfacgallery.org

WEB www.mimiplumb.com

———-

NAME Trevor Paglen

TITLE KEYHOLE 12-3 (IMPROVED CRYSTAL) Near Scorpio (USA 129), 2007

BACKGROUND This is a photo of reconnaissance satellite, taken from the roof of my house in Berkeley. It’s part of a series of photos of American spy satellites.

SHOUT OUTS I got interested in photography because I was working on projects that were nonfiction allegories, projects that played with notions of truth and what we can and can’t see. To me, photography is the medium that does that best. It captures reality and at the same time doesn’t. I like that tension. I also became interested in photography post-9/11 because photography became an aggressive gesture in a way that it wasn’t before — people could be arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. The act of taking photographs outside became an exercise in civil rights.

SHOWS "The Other Night Sky," through Sept. 14. Wed.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft, Berk. (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. Upcoming: Taipei Biennial, Sept. 13–Jan. 11, 2009; Istanbul Biennial, 2009; "2008 SECA Art Award Winners," Feb.–May, 2009, SFMOMA.

WEB www.paglen.com

B Star

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August 5, 2008

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› paulr@sfbg.com

If you run a successful restaurant on Clement Street, apparently you face a terrible temptation to open another restaurant on Clement Street — across the road, perhaps, or on the next block. And the new place should appeal to a different socioeconomic stratum. For grand Clémentine, this formula resulted in the opening, about four years ago, of Bistro Clement, an earthier and less formal sibling that trafficked in traditional French bistro dishes.

Now the Burma Superstar people, just a block or so to the west of Clémentine, have borrowed a page from the Clémentine script and, in early May, opened their own companion venture, B Star. In a small, or not-so-small, irony, B Star occupies the space held by Bistro Clement before it went under. If that is a bad omen, let’s consider some favorable ones: unlike Bistro Clement, B Star represents an upmarket, not downmarket, move. (Burma Superstar’s lofty reputation has to do with its food, not its ambience) Also, the menu is, of course, Burmese (-ish), and the new place is on the same side of the street as the parent restaurant.

If you’re on foot, in fact, you’re not likely to miss B Star. It’s the mid-block spot with would-be patrons idling and swirling on the sidewalk and in the doorway. Yes, the crowds have already descended, apparently drawn by alluring whiffs of upmarketry and innovative Asian cooking. That formula has been working at nearby Namu, and now it works at B Star, though the two are hardly interchangeable. While Namu is of the night, B Star has the look of day: knotted pine floors, creamy yellow walls, globes of soft light dangling from the ceiling, and a fair amount of lush greenery. If Namu is an ersatz nightclub, then B Star has a certain gazebo quality, even in the evening.

The menu card adverts to "simple and wholesome Asian-style comfort foods." Never have so few syllables signaled so much to so many; they make me think of meatloaf tataki. B Star doesn’t offer that (does anyone?), but the kitchen does turn out dishes all along the innovation spectrum, from a fabulous, if traditional, platha ($4.50) — a disc of pastry-like flatbread, cut into quarters and presented with an irresistible curry sauce for dipping — to a heart-shaped potpie ($14) filled with Thai-style salmon, carrots, red peppers, zucchini, and snap peas awash in a green curry coconut milk sauce that doesn’t lack for chile punch.

Most of the dishes strike a reasonable balance between familiarity and wildness. Care is taken with putf8gs and other small touches, and the ensemble of crockery, rich in eccentric shapes, has a museum-of-modern-art feel that subtly elevates the food it carries. Also, the kitchen is keenly attentive to the matter of texture and to the value of crunchiness, in particular. We detected a definite crispness in a vegetarian samusa soup (a $7 bowl was plenty for two), whose delights included cabbage, lentils, potatoes — worthies all, though soft — and falafel. I love falafel but had never before enjoyed it in any other form than wrapped in a pita or lavash. Here it resulted in a soup that went crunch, and we only wished that the murky, curry-scented, slightly metallic broth had been a little less harsh.

"It’s missing something," my companion said. Salt? Salting helped but did not cure. Something freshening or fruity, maybe?

Additional crunch turned up in kau soi ($11), a large, shallow bowl filled with noodles, bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens, and ground chicken, each in its place, which made the bowl look like a 3-D map of some ethnically fractured island. It fell to the diner to mix and mingle (as with the Korean beef salad known as bi bim bop), and one of the first things this diner noticed was that the chicken — more shredded than ground, I thought — was wonderfully crispy, in contrast to the soft-focus players. If any dish at B Star manages a rustic sophistication, it’s this one.

Since the menu offered no meatloaf tataki, we settled for a spicy-tuna version ($8.50). The fish had been crusted with crushed peppercorns au poivre-style, seared, cut into slices, and served with a gingery mush dotted with bits of jalapeño pepper and flecks of cilantro. It was also quite chilly, which suggested pre-preparation but also brought a cold-flash counterpoint to a parade of dishes that ranged from warm to scorching.

A nicely balanced dish, in this respect, was the duck lettuce cups ($8). The lettuce consisted of long spears, crisp and cool as an early spring in morning; they were on hand here so we could scoop up the duck, a pile of cooling but still warm shredded meat (like the pork in mu shu pork) perfumed with five-spice powder and laced with a mince of red bell pepper, carrots, celery, and scallions. Our only complaint was that the lettuce spears were not particularly useful as scoops; the regular lettuce cups (of broader and more pliant butter-leaf lettuce) would have been better.

Just as it must be hard to be the child of a famous or accomplished parent, so it must be difficult to be the offspring of a restaurant that uses "superstar" for part of its name. Expectations are bound to be stoked. "Star" is at least more modest than "superstar," particularly when it’s denoted by a symbol rather than spelled out as a word. And B Star does have glints of something special: the best dishes are memorable, the look is appealing, and the staff is as young and energetic as the crowd. A B is good, but give us an A !

B STAR

Dinner: Tues.–Thurs., 5–9:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sun., 5–10 p.m.

Lunch: Tues.–Sun., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

127 Clement, SF

(415) 933-9900

www.bstarbar.com

Beer, wine, soju

MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Lennar sued by shipyard artist

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August 5, 2008

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serpentinite,jpg.jpg
Serpentinite is California’s state rock. It can contain naturally-occuring asbestos.

Shipyard artist Jack Hain says he just wants his rocks back. Serpentinite rocks, that is.
And getting these rocks back appears to be the crux of the case that Hain has filed in Superior Court against Lennar. That and the question of whether it’s OK to move materials from one part of shipyard to another.

But unlike the other shipyard-related cases involving Lennar, Hain isn’t worried about possible health risks from the serpentinite, which can contain naturally-occuring asbestos.
200px-Mineraly.sk_-_chryzotil.jpg
Veins of chrysotile, or other members of the asbestos family, can run through serpentinite rock, making it a toxic health hazard, if crushed, dug or otherwise quarried and excavated.

That’s because, says Hain, he wasn’t crushing or grading the rocks, but simply moving them across the yard.

Hain sued Lennar Communities and Lennar BVHP on May 15, 2008 in Superior Court, a month before residents sued the developer and two of its shipyard subcontractors, CH2M Hill and Gordon N. Ball, and five weeks before Lennar sued one of its subcontractors, CH2M Hill, for failure to monitor and control asbestos dust.

But unlike those suits, which center around Lennar’s failure to protect the community from naturally-occurring asbestos, while digging into a hillside full of serpentinite, Hain’s suit centers around the fact that Lennar removed three serpentinite rocks from an art work that Hain was building outside his studio in Building 116 on Parcel B of the Shipyard. (That’s the parcel where the Navy is currently proposing revisions to its original plan for radiological, soil and groundwater clean up.)

tre-f2.gifsized.gif
Map of areas under radiologically investigation at Hunters Point Shipyard.

Gauging hip-hop producer Presto’s ‘State of the Art’

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August 4, 2008

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PRESTO
State of the Art
(Concrete Grooves)

By Ian Ferguson

How well-known can one man be in the underground before breaking through to the big time? West Coast producer Presto, ne Chris Douglas, begs that question on the occasion of his recently released State of the Art . He’s so popular that each of the tracks boasts the lyrical stylings of a different MC: rappers ranging from New York’s CL Smooth, Sadat X, and Large Professor to fellow West Coasters Fatlip, T-Weaponz, and Blue. The disc also includes two appearances by defected Black Eyed Peas vocalist Kim Hill.

Presto’s pastiche of a production shows that he’s versed in jazz, funk, and ’70s soul. On “Pour Another Glass,” a piano groove and stereo-panning funk-horn sample support the utterances of Blu, whose whisky-tipped rhymes slip into a staccato-sung vocal part as smooth as Courvoisier.

State of the Art isn’t always a gentleman drinker – it stumbles at times. “Higher,” one of the most promising tracks on the album with its bright, Motown piano riff, fails when the soulful vocal line is transposed up an interval, then another, and at its third, loses the color and timbre of a human throat and begins to sound like Alvin the Chipmunk. Despite consistently strong beats – if not perfect, they are at least always engaging and compelling – the tracks often finish with less force or fade-outs, a weak weaning that ends a song with no closure.

Presto proves to be a competent producer in the subtle sampling of an old LP’s static; the use of a muted concert hall piano, discordant just ahead of the beat and leading the listener on; and the juggling of a variety of beats, dynamics, tensions, and flows. And he brings out the best in each MC on an album that invariably delivers.

Homegirl

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July 29, 2008

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Of the many unsung, possibly fabulous, potentially limitless unexplored combos floating round in the ether — up there with the now-familiar chocolate and peanut butter or pizza flavoring and dog-biscuits-for-humanoids — has to be rock music and housework. Natch, Heloise would probably be in hell contemputf8g the crusty state of most band’s vans or rehearsal spaces. Few jam it home-econo.

Leave it to Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables — a Bay Area player who has been consistently reimagining old music and traditional folk with an often theatrical, punky sensibility — to rescue the most mundane of tasks, so far from the neggy decadence and glam hysterics of most rock and pop cliché-peddlers, and bring together music, hearth, and home on her new EP, A Table Forgotten (Drag City). Coproduced by Nurse with Wound’s Matt Waldron, Table is a palate-tickling, four-track taste of Faun Fables’ 2009 full-length — roving compactly from the Irish bodhran drum beat and "happy clinks" of spell-casting opener "With Words and Cake" to the spine-tingling, fiddle-swept "Pictures" to the epic "Winter Sleep," cowritten with Björk producer Valgeir Sigurdsson, whom McCarthy worked with on Bonnie "Prince" Billy’s The Letting Go (Drag City, 2006).

The focus on home and family came in part from McCarthy’s residency at Idyllwild Art Academy in the San Jacinto Mountains, where she began to develop some of these songs as part of a student musical theatrical production, although she’s been meaning to undertake this ode to home work for a while. "I’m going to sound like an Amish woman or something," she says with a chuckle by phone from Oakland. "But over the years I found a lot of solace and joy in doing household stuff. It’s kind of one of those hidden arts. And I find that it’s those little day-to-day things that make or break my happiness."

McCarthy’s family is expanding: she’s pregnant and expecting her child around the time of year she herself was born, Oct. 30. "I have pregnancy brain," she says after one inadvertently long pause. And her home is shifting: after living near the Oakland zoo for eight years in an old rustic cottage "that time forgot," as she describes it, and more recently in an artists’ warehouse near Jack London Square, she’s hoping to move to Sonoma. In the meantime she hopes to make edible saleables like vinegar pie for her Café Du Nord merch table. "The singing and performing and shows feel amazing," she says. "I can tell the baby is happy with it."

FROM THE GUT On the bill at Faun Fables’ upcoming Du Nord show: über-productive bicoastal player Bonfire Madigan Shive, who also headlines at the Henry Miller Library Aug. 2. The activist-musician dazzled all and sundry who caught the recent American Conservatory Theater production of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore where she performed, suspended above the stage and outfitted in angel’s wings, ripping alternately dulcet and dissonant unearthly sounds from her cello and thereby commenting on, counterpointing, or lamenting the gory, incestuous goings-on below.

"Now that it’s wrapped, I’m proud and happy with what I created for that," Shive says of her "duets for hair and gut," as she dubbed the music she composed for ‘Tis Pity. "For me, it was a lot of surrender, getting out of the way of preconceived notions and focusing on the style and time and being a part of this world, to work on this text that’s 400 years old, and how that world reflects this one."

Up amid the sensuous lines of ‘Tis Pity‘s almost futuristic discotheque set, Shive told me — speaking in the ecstatic, enthusiastic streams of an earthbound angel — she’d often study the audience’s reactions from on high. "I would have moments when I’d zone in on a person and they’d realize, ‘I’m a part of this show.’<0x2009>"

Shive is likewise often pulled into others’ shows: since we last spoke she’s toured or played with the Good, the Bad, and the Queen; Laibach; Carla Bozulich and Silver Mt. Zion members; Kimya Dawson; and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark. Somehow she’s also found a moment to publish an essay in Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction (Seven Stories Press), and she’s looking forward to self-releasing her next album, which includes contributions from Joan Jeanrenaud and Jolie Holland. Apparently it’s just one fastball after another from the onetime member of the Guardian softball team.

"I’ve known Dawn [McCarthy] for a long time now," Shive says. "When she moved from New York to the Bay Area, she came to my apartment and said, ‘I heard you’re a yodeler. Yodel for me!’ Dawn’s one of those kindred spirits. It’s all about community and art."

FAUN FABLES

With Bonfire Madigan

Thurs/31, 9 p.m., $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

LOOK, LISTEN, YEARN

EEF BARZELAY

Clem Snide, we never knew ye. So meet the band’s songwriter, touting a new solo CD, Lose Big (429). Wed/30, 8 p.m., $14. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE HERBALISER

Hot on the heels of Same as It Never Was (!K7), London’s Ollie Teeba turns in a DJ set. Fri/1, 10 p.m., $12. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.sunsetpromotions.net

CONOR OBERST AND THE MYSTIC VALLEY BAND

"Sausalito" is the name of one song on the Bright Eyes’ front-guy’s first solo LP in 13 years, Conor Oberst (Merge). Fri/1–Sat/2, 10 p.m., $25. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TITUS ANDRONICUS

Glen Rock, N.J.’s finest, Titus Andronicus, dust off and spit-shine a rustic punk-pop. Sun/3, 9 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

NOMO

Haunted by Fela Kuti and Francis Bebey as well as Can and Miles Davis, the new Ghost Rock (Ubiquity) finds the Michigan collective ushering a new post-rocky fusion. Tues/5, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

Editor’s Notes

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July 29, 2008

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s not an easy time to be celebrating. The Bush administration has driven the economy into the toilet. After more than five years, the nation is still fighting a foolish, unnecessary war in Iraq. Unemployment is rising, and so is the cost of living.

But it’s also been a banner year for grassroots democracy. Barack Obama, the antiwar candidate, the upstart, took on and defeated the vaunted Clinton operation, and did it in large part with little pieces. He raised millions from small donors and mobilized activists on the ground in a way we haven’t seen in too many years.

And that energy is alive and well in San Francisco. The city that defied Washington and forced the legalization of same-sex marriage, the city that remains the heart of the antiwar movement, will be leading the way toward a more sustainable energy policy this fall. District supervisorial campaigns are well underway, with the mobilizations and energy coming not from big campaign donors and powerful interests but from ordinary people who live here and care about their community.

That’s the spirit we celebrate in this Best of the Bay issue.

There’s a lot more democracy in our selections this year — more selections and ideas from our readers, more input from our community. Our cover art and the illustrations inside reflect the activist traditions and inspirations of this city.

It’s bleak out there in America, but hope lives in places like San Francisco. And that’s a great reason to be proud of all that is the Best of the Bay.

No Age ways

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July 23, 2008

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER No Age is in dire need of some vulture repellent. The much-acclaimed Los Angeles duo might have been decreed the future of rock by cultural gatekeepers like those yuksters at New Yorker, sailing forth via the freedom-first joys of "Miner" and negativity-bemoaning "Teen Creeps" on their urgent latest, Nouns (Sub Pop), but that doesn’t mean all is peachy keen in No Ageland, says drummer-vocalist Dean Spunt.

"We get e-mails all the time from managers and people who want to make our merch for us — I call them the vultures. Everyone kind of wants a piece of whatever’s going on," explains Spunt, 26, keeping it casual and amiable from LA as he and guitarist Randy Randall, 27, prepare to go on tour. "It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, I can charge you $8 for a shirt.’ I think most bands that aren’t DIY don’t know how much a T-shirt actually costs to make."

No Age happens to print its T’s at a silkscreen shop owned by Spunt’s mother. Making things there — and skate culture — left an impression concerning the hands-on pleasures and tangible economics of doing it yourself. "I really want to keep it fun for us, but it’s also now kind of become our living," Spunt confesses. "I think a lot of the vultures would try to have you not make it so fun. There’s a definite way, a cookie-cutter approach, that people take to music and bands, and I think a lot of people — the vultures I talk about — they just see it as that. It’s, like, ‘Well, hey, this is what bands do.’ But me and Randy don’t really do what bands do."

That goes for everything from taking money from their label to fund tours to renting a bus that costs the same amount a day as a van might per month. "I just like to keep the books clean," Spunt continues. "The whole Minutemen ‘jam econo’ thing — it sort of applies to us, you know."

DIY is far from dead for the band. Spout says he silkscreened No Age’s first seven singles by himself at his mother’s shop, as well as the band’s first "product": a bandanna, which the two ex-Wives members sold along with a DVD-R of art videos during their first tour. As much as any non-self-released album, Nouns reflects those values — born amid punk, fostered by riot grrrl and hardcore, and now nurtured by community at the Smell, in addition to those at like-minded venues like Gilman Project and 21 Grand (the latter is reportedly again under pressure to discontinue regular shows).

"We had an opportunity to record in a nicer studio," Spunt said of Infrasonic in LA and Southern Studios in London. "With Weirdo Rippers [FatCat, 2007] we were limited in terms of what we could do with sound, which is a big part of our band. The reason we’re two people is we kind of like the limitations being put on us so it makes us more creative and stuff, but we wanted to open the sound up a little more with Nouns, and I think we did. The noisier parts got noisier, and the poppier parts got poppier, and it’s a little more direct. The ambient stuff doesn’t run as long, and it just kind of gets you there." Mainly, he adds, they wanted to write songs that were fun to play live.

With Nouns, imagine No Age fingering its predecessors’ punk and post-punk garments longingly when it isn’t generating the larger-than-its-numbers blast of Hüsker Dü or Volcano Suns. The twosome looks directly back to an Alternative Nation for touchstones, while documenting a many-hued spectrum of faces and places in Nouns‘ accompanying booklet, snapping haunts and audiences that look startlingly alike, regardless of whether they were captured in Portland, Ore., or London. You might draw a line from one city, one space, or one gen to the next — from the 60-year-olds Spunt says write them fan e-mails to the 14-year-olds who might materialize at the all-ages shows. "It’s awesome," marvels Spunt. "It sort of goes with the name, I guess."

As for their future as "DIY professionals," as Spunt puts it, the pair simply want to keep making whatever they like. "I’m sure someday that will not be cool," he offers with a chuckle. "I’m waiting for the backlash."

NO AGE

With Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda

Mon/28, 8 p.m., $13

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

Also Club Sandwich two-year anniversary

With Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, and KIT

Tues/29, 9 p.m., $8

Lobot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

SIDEBAR 1

A BLAST, FAST

CAROLINER

More unforgettable noise pageantry from underground OG Grux. With Hans Grusel’s Krankenkabinet, Loachfillet, Amphibious Gestures, and Bones. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

THE DUKE SPIRIT

That’s the spirit of UK retro rock with girlish sighs. With Aarrows and Scene of Action. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill,1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

EDGETONE NEW MUSIC SUMMIT

The seventh annual experimental music hoedown gathers such diverse players as No More Twist!, a "sound and light lie detector" No More Twist!, local Chinese American hardcore unit Say Bok Gwai, Moe! Staiano’s Mute Socialite; High Mayhem–ite Carlos Santistevan’s the Late Severa Wires, and Birgit Ulher Trio with Gino Robair and Tim Perkis. Wed/23–Sat/26 at Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF. See www.edgetonemusicsummit.org for details.

WYCLEF JEAN

The ex-Fugee brings out a full band. Wed/23, 9 p.m., $35–<\d>$50. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

TOILING MIDGETS

Up from the ashes of Negative Trend and the Sleepers. With Cloud Archive and VIR. Fri/25, 10 p.m., $10–<\d>$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

HARVEY MILK

Harvey Milk lives — in the form of his namesake Athens, Ga., art-metal band, which plays live for the first time in SF. Sun/27, 8 p.m., $14. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

Disco of the Gods

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July 23, 2008

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I use my favorite pair of scissors to cut out photos of dancers and models from the late ’70s and early ’80s. Sometimes the designs and imagery on the other side of the magazine paper are more compelling and attractive than the literal combos of flesh and clothing that produce the silhouette.

The past is the present is what you make it. So Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson said, in torturously profound terms. For a sonic illustration, look and listen no further than Hercules and Love Affair’s self-titled debut (Mute), a contender if not outright champion in the 100-point rating realms of metacritic.com and Pitchfork Media.

When critics aren’t running from the phobic fantasies of joining soulless fuck zombies at the Continental Baths that Hercules and Love Affair apparently provokes in fevered, perhaps repressed, imaginations, they’re keyword-searching variants of "gay," "AIDS," and "disco" to provide shorthand blog-banal references for the album’s sound. Thus the usually vaguely defined spirit of Arthur Russell is invoked more often than the influence of living, breathing Kevin Saunderson, even though Hercules and Love Affair‘s "You Belong" is like a whiteface Goth niece-nephew of Inner City’s "Good Life." Thus no one compares Antony Hegarty’s countertenor to Boy George’s and wonders if Hegarty is given more respect and awards simply because he honors pretense over humor. Hercules and Love Affair sports two, maybe three of 2008’s most glorious songs. On "Hercules’ Theme," "Athene," and "Blind," core member and songwriter Andrew Butler crafts superb horn and string arrangements and layers them over a live rhythm section to produce swank, strutting syncopation. The sound is lush and swoony — as unique as the fluorescent pastels of the disc’s cover art — and unlike anything else floating out of speakers and headphones at the moment. I can’t resist comparing the time-lapse vaudevillian blooms at the close of "Hercules’ Theme" to "Doin’ the Do" by Betty Boo — where are you? — if only to add some irreverence to the poker-faced hosannas for the group. But Butler is a rare talent — one who’ll flourish the further he gets from art school.

In theory, Butler’s communal approach to assigning vocalists — which tweaks an earlier landmark club crossover, Massive Attack’s 1991 Virgin effort, Blue Lines — should yield a singing bouquet to match his arrangements. Hegarty is Hercules and Love Affair‘s most florid singer. His strained emoting suits his tunes on the disc better than any Antony and the Johnsons track, yet not once does his falsetto match the sensuality and soul that his antecedent Sylvester brings to a song like "I Need Somebody to Love Tonight." Kim Ann Foxman inhabits Athene in a song of the same name, but stumbles off-key through the plodding "Iris." Butler does a good Russell in "This Is My Love," but no vocalist can rescue the obvious lyric of "True False/Fake Real."

Hercules and Love Affair revive the silhouettes if not always the spirits of disco’s and house’s native New Yorkers. At best, they create their own haunted wonderland. At worst, they host a pose party that’s the musical equivalent of the narcissism that motored Shortbus (2006). Once upon a time, Manhattan was wilder and hungrier.

HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR

Sat/26, 9 p.m., $16–$20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

Reliability

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July 23, 2008

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Most expensive thing I ever bought was a shiny, concert-quality, made-in-Trinidad steel drum which, in its case at the head of my futon, makes an excellent back rest while I’m reading books. The drum I play and love and cherish is a rusty, junky trash can, hammered out by some white guy with a stutter in Mendocino. He used it as his beach drum for a while, then left it out in the rain for a winter, then gave it to me for $100 and it sounds like butter. Whereas my $1,600 Steel Island special, crafted by Tony Slater and fine-tuned by the great Bertie Marshall himself, sounds like paper clips in the laundry. But, hey, back support is very important. Without it, I would constantly be hitting my head on the floor.

Last fall, for the first time in my life, I started driving a reliable car. It was less than 10 years old (a first for me), had air bags (a first for me), a door lock clicker (a first for me), and three state-of-the-art cupholders. In March, the engine blew up. Cost me $1,649 to fix it, and it’s still not fixed. In the past four months my reliable car has spent more time with my mechanics, Larry, Curly, and Moe, than it has with me.

Luckily, it shit the bed so fast I hadn’t yet got rid of my ’86 3-cylinder pickup truck. So that’s what I’ve been driving, Old Reliable — only when I say reliable in this case I mean it. No tongues, no cheeks. My old truck may take many tries to go into first gear, but it will, eventually, go. And once a month it is going to leave me sitting on the side of the road somewhere, broken down, for exactly 52 minutes.

I know that nice guys in nicer, bigger trucks than mine will stop and noodle around under my hood, try to get it going, give up, tell me I need a new this or a that, and offer to give me a ride somewhere. And I will sit there and smile and say, "No thanks, but thank you though." And sometimes right in front of their disbelieving eyes, if 52 minutes has passed, I will turn the key and it will start — and run for exactly another month. That’s what I call reliability.

I’m trying real hard to get legit. I’m a part-time nanny now, and kids and parents are counting on me. So I got a cell phone. My first! Now, for $40 a month, I pretty much always know what time it is. This is a first for me too, since I’ve never been a watch-wearer. And even though I am invariably out-of-signal when my car dies, I can sit there and look at the time on my cell phone and know exactly when 52 minutes is up.

For 10 years I wrote on an old Gateway dinosaur. Then, a year and a month or so ago, I bought a shiny new MacBook with a one-year warranty. As a visual joke, a twist on my farmerly aesthetic, I set up the Gateway outside next to the chicken coop. When it rains, I put a tarp over it. But in any case it is generally covered with dust and feathers and shrouded in salty coastal fog. Every now and then, on a nice day, I turn it on, and am always pleasantly surprised that it boots.

In fact, I’m writing on it right now because my MacBook died — not only mere months out of warranty, but on the exact day the new iPhones came out, assuring I would not be able to see anyone at any Apple store for at least a week.

So I took it to MacMedics. Their estimate: $960. How much I paid for the new computer one year and one month ago: $950. Do they sell new Macs? You bet!

While it’s still Poo-Poo Pride month, I would like to dump a figurative pile of stinky, steamy, corn-dotted, meat-eaterly chicken farmer shit all over Apple Computer, Saturn, Steel Island, and AT&T — only in AT&T’s case I don’t exactly know why yet. Forty dollars a month is more a trickle than an explosion. Still, I hold my cell phone like a hand grenade.

——————————————

My new favorite restaurant is Taqueria La Nueva, and not just ’cause I work right up the block. Although that helps. The al pastor burrito is wonderful, the carnitas less so. And it’s kind of inconspicuously tucked away on an odd corner of Foothill in Oakland. They have to put a sandwich board out in the street — not the sidewalk, in the street. Yes yes yes, we’re open open open. Right here. And still there’s never anyone there. Four-fitty gets your burrito, chips, and some great green salsa. That’s old school, and that rocks, in my opinion.

TAQUERIA LA NUEVA

Daily: 9 a.m.–10 p.m.

5324 Foothill, Oakl.

(510) 698-4036

No alcohol

AE/DISC/MC/V

Manufacturing Frida

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July 22, 2008

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW Though overshadowed during her lifetime by her famous muralist husband Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo is one of many examples of driven artists who achieved their icon status posthumously. And, like other historical figures with life stories loaded with tragedy, Kahlo underwent her share of suffering, which makes for great book sales and dramatic film plots. But as anyone who knows a bit of her story beyond her groundbreaking art can attest, she handled the physical and emotional pain with flair: she was a modern, intelligent Mexican woman who, from the 1930s through early ’50s, chose to flamboyantly dress herself in celebration of her cultural ancestry. She was exotic — even among her circles of culture vultures and political activists — and strikingly beautiful, so it’s no wonder that nearly half of her paintings are self-portraits. One thinks she might have wowed herself. Nonetheless, the well-known photographers who caught her on film left more telling documents than her paintings — of someone who radiated charisma and soul.

Before we dismiss a round of would-be Fridamania as an attempt to generate even more profits from Kahlo reproductions on bags and T-shirts, we should remember why she was plucked from history. Currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the first major American exhibition of Kahlo’s works in nearly 15 years. Last year, for the centennial of Kahlo’s birth, the Palacio De Bellas Artes in Mexico City held a comprehensive show of her artistic accomplishments, along with personal photos and documents. Visitors to SFMOMA’s "Frida Kahlo" — which was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — will get a similar experience to the Mexican exhibition: beyond almost 50 Kahlo paintings, there is a trove of documents and photographs. Don’t expect to see just the greatest hits, though those are present.

Strange still-lifes — like the pile of bodylike root vegetables in Still Life: Pitahayas (1938) — are displayed alongside bizarre folkloric conglomerations of Aztec mythology, Mexican jungle life, and political figures merged with events from Kahlo’s life. Her portrayals of other people are as mesmerizing as her self-portraits. Portrait of Luther Burbank (1931) presents the odd scene of the elder Burbank sprouting from the soil of a browned landscape. The area where his feet should be is a mass of roots growing into a decaying corpse. He holds a leafy tropical plant — a reference to his horticultural focus. Another compelling work rarely viewed outside of Japan’s Nagoya City Art Museum is Girl with Death Mask, (1938) in which a skull-masked child in a pink dress stands on a barren, sky-dominated expanse with a mask of a tongue-wagging monster at her feet.

When we enter the last rooms of the show, we are greeted with walls and display cases of family photographs, many with Kahlo’s handwritten notes. Two photos of Rivera, from 1929 and 1940, have her lipstick kiss prints on the back, and several other images are marked with pencil or ballpoint doodles. These funny, poignant bits of reality were not meant for public consumption, and the fan is given a deeper view into the real person. Add the early color photos of Kahlo and a home movie of Kahlo and Rivera fawning over and goofing around with each other, and you could begin to think that you actually know her.

So when one views the photos of Kahlo in traction, her strained face attempting to smile, or the pre-tragic pregnancy photos, subjects explored repeatedly in her art suddenly become even more clearly felt. Icons rarely get to be real after their ascension: we don’t want them to be mortal, perish, and take their magnetism away. When Kahlo died in 1954 at 47, a final diary entry read, "I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope to never return." Yet no one wants her to go.

FRIDA KAHLO

Through Sept. 28

Mon.–Tues. and Fri., 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs. 10 a.m.–9:45 p.m.; Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–7:45 p.m.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org

2008 Bay Area Playwrights Festival

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July 22, 2008

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PREVIEW Even 32 years after the Playwrights Foundation chose a young Sam Shepard for its first Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 1976, the annual celebration of the script still runs below the radar of the larger local theater-going audience. Perhaps that’s because most fans of the stage want to see a full production — with costumes, sets, and lighting design — rather than the bare-bones staged readings at the festival. Over the decades, the event has played an important role in keeping stages across the country full of vital new works and aiding the budding careers of now-established playwrights such as Pulitzer Prize–winner Nilo Cruz and Liz Duffy Adams, who won critical acclaim with 2002’s Dog Act. (SF’s Crowded Fire is currently premiering her latest, The Listener). Venture off to Fort Mason during the 10-day festival and you can check out the up-and-coming talent. Of particular interest to conspiracy theorists will be Dominic Orlando’s Danny Casolaro Died for You. In the thriller, the writer attempts to suss out the circumstances of his brother’s death. A freelance journalist, Casolaro was found dead in a hotel room in 1991 while investigating labyrinthine connections between spy software company Inslaw, US and Israeli governments, and various Islamic organizations. Marcus Gardley is another promising writer worth getting a peek at. The Yalie who made a name for himself here with the East Bay historical drama Love Is a Dream House in Lorin brings a new work, every tongue must confess, about the burning of black Baptist churches in a small Alabama town during the late 1990s. Proving that there is an art to the reading of the play, popular Bay Area director Amy Glazer takes on Whisper from the Book of Etiquette, Claire Chafee’s look into the dynamics of wooing surrogate mothers.

2008 BAY AREA PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL July 25–Aug 3. See Web site for details. Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina and Buchanan, SF. $15–$25. (415) 626-0453, ext. 105, www.playwrightsfoundation.org

Poultrygeist

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July 16, 2008

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WINGIN’ IT Veteran filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman spoke to me from Troma Entertainment’s Long Island City, N.Y., headquarters about Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead — a scathing and explosive (as in "explosive diarrhea") look at the fast-food industry. He calls this hilarious, stomach-turning epic "the first chicken-Indian-zombie movie that has singing and dancing." He also had quite a bit to say about the state of the media and cinema today. (Cheryl Eddy)

LLOYD KAUFMAN "The biggest misconception [about Troma films] is that people who haven’t seen them assume that we make these movies formulaically — that we just throw together some gyno-Americans in bikinis, slap some ketchup on ’em, and have ’em run through the woods. Troma is a 35-year-old company, and we wouldn’t be around if that was all we did. The problem is, most people who dismiss us are too busy taking [in] the Burger King advertisement called Iron Man. The Village Voice has a conglomerate — the so-called ‘alternative newspaper,’ the LA Weekly, the New Times — they don’t even have the interest in reviewing [Poultrygeist]. They have some idiot review it in New York who, in my opinion, didn’t even look at the movie, and says that Trey Parker is in Poultrygeist and gives it a cursory review. I can’t imagine how they could have seen the movie if they think Trey Parker is in the movie. Somebody put it up on imdb.com because Trey Parker was discovered by Troma, and because Trey Parker has acted in other Troma movies. Some fan put it [on the Internet]. And this has been repeated by other critics — critics! who are supposed to be reviewing the movie. So if the alternative media is a disgrace like the LA Weekly, if they’re just vomiting out an inaccurate, uninspired reviews, if this is the alternative media that’s supposed to be embracing art and embracing independent art, we don’t have a chance. When Toxic Avenger came out in 1983, Vincent Canby — the lead reviewer for the New York Times — chose to review it when it came out. He cared, he was interested. That’s gone. It’s over.

"All of us independents have got to fight for the future of art. The big hope is that [independent filmmakers] come out swinging: that they be aggressive and not be afraid to whore for their art. I think too many talented directors feel that doing what Lloyd Kaufman does is low-class, going out there and promoting the film — like, ‘I don’t wanna get my hands dirty doing that.’ As long as you don’t compromise your art, as long as you don’t try to remake Pulp Fiction 10 times, as long as you’re doing something you believe in once it’s finished — as long as you’re not breaking any laws or hurting people — what is wrong if I wear a clown suit and go to Cannes and throw blood on people? Why is that wrong?"

POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD opens Fri/18 at the Roxie. See Rep Clock for showtimes.