Blurgh

The Daily Blurgh: Bros before trolls

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: Bros before trolls

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

For the love of God, iPad, or printed matter, please read former Guardian culture editor, and current lead editor of science and sci-fi wonderblog io9, Annalee Newitz’s eye-opening summary of the 5 ways the Google Book settlement will change the future of reading (one plus: “pulp science fiction will make a comeback in ways you might not expect”).

 “It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.” 

Early master of photography actually insane cuckold killer: “This commission took [Edweard Muybridge] out of San Francisco at a convenient moment: He’d recently murdered his young wife’s lover, but squeaked by with an acquittal in court — one part of his defense had been that only someone already unbalanced would take the risks that Muybridge did in Yosemite, just to get a picture.”

Meanwhile, still-living photo-snapper The Tens got a peek inside the bowels of Kink.com (h/t Mission Mission)

The Awl preaches bros before trolls: “Instead of shaking your Internetty fist at all that angers you though, what if you ignored it and discussed things that do work, things that are wonderful, and encouraged others to do the same?”

 

These gorgeous creatures – children of video artist and endless font of inspiration Kalup Linzy — are hitting Berkeley Art Museum tonight with support from DJ Bus Station John, starting at 6pm. Get it!

 

 

The Daily Blurgh: Stick a Bjork in it

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

So what if the Fader posted this last week? Vallejo royalty E-40’s new Bjork-sampling track, the Droop-E produced, “Spend the Night” is too fabulous not to share (and it looks like the NY Times likes it too). The icing on the cake is that Bjork cleared the samples, taken from “Oceanea” off of her, IMHO severely underrated, acapella album Medulla. And as Fader commenter bollocks noted, this isn’t the first time Queen B has appeared on a local hip-hop track. The timpani-heavy riff from “Human Behavior” was used back in 2003, “by Bay Area legends Hieroglyphics, for ‘Let It Roll,’ off their classic album Full Circle.” Thanks for the knowledge.

I bet I can guess what you’re doing on your coffee break. Wheee!

Slog nicely sums up the cases of Gregory Lee Giusti, who was arrested yesterday for allegedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her support of the health care reform bill (he threatened us too), and Charles Alan Wilson, who allegedly threatened to kill Washington Senator Patty Murray over her support of the health care reform bill, best: “Powerful Women, and the Men Who Threaten Them.”

 “Let’s just say that if Malcolm breathes, it’s too much for me to stomach.” Johnny Rotten on the Sex Pistols’ former manager Malcom McLaren. RIP, Madame Butterfly Buffalo Gal Duck Rock. (Watch all three simultaneously for our version of heaven?)

Researchers at UCSF School of Pharmacy want you to know that the bacteria in that tainted burger patty could become the next Monet.

Tonight, SFMOMA presents “Streets of San Francisco: Filmic Journeys,” a program of over 50 years of footage of SF’s streets as filmed by the many wonderful experimental filmmakers – including Martha Rosler, Hollis Frampton, Lawrence Jordan, and more – who have called this city home and muse. 50 footage!

The Daily Blurgh: The true price of free food tattoos

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: The true price of free food tattoos

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

A. E. Housman (who once deliciously referred to poetry as a “morbid secretion”) said, “Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. ” And as John McWhorter so ably demonstrates, Sarah Palin’s words — or at least the art of parsing them — can be extremely pleasurable:
 
“This reminds me of toddlers who speak from inside their own experience in a related way: they will come up to you and comment about something said by a neighbor you’ve never met, or recount to you the plot of an episode of a TV show they have no way of knowing you’ve ever heard of. Palin strings her words together as if she were doing it for herself — meanings float by, and she translates them into syntax in whatever way works, regardless of how other people making public statements do it.”

 

She’s no delicate petal-pusher. How pretty are the state’s highway medians at this time of year? Check the Desert Wildflower report for daily updates.

No it’s not clip art. That twilight landscape on your iPad desktop was actually shot by a local. (h/t to Boing Boing)

“A San Francisco eatery has convinced some customers to get tattoos in exchange for free food for life.” Hint: It’s not Michael Mina — but possibly a replay of the great burrito tattoo “disaster” of 1999.

This was supposed to be worth $5.8 million at the time. Like Gezundheit.com

An addendum to yesterday’s esteemed guest columnist: the New York Times’ Bay Area blog (the nerve!) ran a profile yesterday of Glendon Hyde, aka our favorite punk rock dragtavist, Anna Conda. She knows from first hand experience what gets lost – and more importantly, who gets displaced — when a gayborhood becomes just a neighborhood. Granted, Polk Street’s de-gayification has been happening for decades now (the pink flight to the Castro began around the mid-to-late 60s), and is just one part of the long, ongoing story of gentrification in the TL. Still, Anna/Glendon’s efforts to “Take back the Polk,” and now, her current campaign for the District 6 supervisor’s seat, should serve as rebukes to Katz’s patronizing mourning of communities that he was only superficially invested in.

Finally, in honor of Lady Day would have been 95 today I’ll leave you with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs

The Daily Blurgh: Howdy, gaybor!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: Howdy, gaybor!

Tuesdays will occasionally be given over to a guest columnist. This week, please welcome a bitter queen.

Have you heard? Gayboorhoods are becoming extinct. So sayeth Matt Katz tosday in Obit mag, a self identified straight man who has spent enough time among that mythic fairy land, “where gay people lived and hung out, somehow fulfilling stereotypes while simultaneously stimulating social justice” (via hand jobs?) to tell us of the local color that once flourished there and to lament their passing.

Thank God we have intrepid Margaret Meads like Katz  — who even once let a gay squeeze his bicep at the gym (no homo!) — to wax nostalgic about the good old days of double dutch jumping trannies on the corner. You see, children, the gayborhood was a wonderful, rainbow-hued place of escape “where cleverness, artistry and merriment is applauded.” Huzzah! You know, I still can’t go out in the Castro without some Oscar Wide wannabe vomiting bon mots onto my chinchilla gilette to the applause of onlookers.

But seriously, even though Katz’s commentary on the changing face of urban gay life has as much nuance as a college freshman’s five paragraph essay (to wit: “The demise of the gayborhood indicates that America is more mixed – ethnically, economically, sexually — than ever before.”), his overall thesis is true, to some degree. Yes, there is greater social acceptance of homosexuality and thus less need for the self preservation of a ghetto. Yes, the Internet is a factor, at least in the demise of bar culture — even though bars continue to be perhaps the only reason anyone still frequent gayborhoods (see the Katz’s final ‘graph). And yes, the Castro is a Pottery Barn-upholstered shell of its former hedonistic self blah blah blah.

But to applaud gayborhoods as the superficial pleasure domes of memory where “people don’t pretend that the real world is anything all that important” is to wholly ignore their historical importance as sites of political organizing and resistance (that’s “stimulating social justice”). Oh, and speaking of queer political activism, there’s that other factor that shook up the gayborhood. You know, AIDS. But don’t go looking for any mention of it in Katz’s obit. Why would he want to talk about an unattractive thing like that? Get Lil Miss Ally another Long Island Iced Tea. I’m going back to dusting my Erte lamps.

The Daily Blurgh: But will it blend?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
2
The Daily Blurgh: But will it blend?

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

Last Wednesday (forgive our slowness) the New Yorker offered a tantalizing sneak peak at Andrew Pilara’s soon-to-be-not-so-private collection of more than 2000 photographic works, a rotating selection of which will be displayed at Pier 24. Not only is the speed at which Pilara — the president and senior portfolio manager of the RS Value Group and a member of SFMOMA’s Board of Trustees – has amassed his staggering collection astounding (six years!), but the quality and breadth of his holdings would send any photography curator worth their salt into apoplectic fits. In addition to name-dropping Jackie Nickerson, Vera Lutter, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Marilyn Minter, and Dorothea Lange, the New Yorker also mentions that Pilara owns all fifty-two of Lee Friedlander’s “Little Screens” (which SF’s Fraenkel Gallery last displayed in 2001) and all of Garry Winogrand’s “The Animals.” In the words of Rachel Zoe, “I die.”

Also of interest: “Each work is installed without any caption information, so looking becomes an exercise in recognition and speculation, and ultimately conversation.” I like this approach, in theory. And based on the caption information in the article’s accompanying slide show, it seems that whoever hung the photographs has an eye for not only what’s visually resonant, but more importantly, for what will spark a conversation. One example: Vanessa Beecroft’s highly theatrical and controversial portrait of a Sudanese woman nursing two malnourished infants hangs next to Dorothea Lange’s famous “Migrant Mother.”

Joe public will have to wait until “later this spring” to check out Mr. Pilara’s goods, but for those curious as to the look of the place, Envelope A+D, the firm responsible for renovating the old pier, has posted artist renderings and a description of their projected re-design. Coupled with SFMOMA’s recent announcement (http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/407) that the museum will re-stage the influential 1975 George Eastman House exhibit New Topographics in June, SF looks like the place to be for photo buffs this S-S season.

 

In tech news, the only question I have about the iPad is: will it blend?

 

I want to second the Awl’s gay-dazzled love for the I Am Love trailer. The trailer is almost so perfect as to make watching the actual film (which screens at this year’s SFIFF) pointless. Cut at the speed of any contemporary fantasy-action-CGI-craptacular, the I Am Love trailer has everything: Tilda Swinton in fitted rich lady clothes; the Italian countryside; suggestive food preparation; a hunky and hirsute otter-chef; references to family (just like the Olive Garden!); references to Vertigo; Tilda Swinton’s cheekbones; furtive glances; lovemaking! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll swoon. I die.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhbTeBneRVU

The Daily Blurgh: Splinters of the cross

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: Splinters of the cross

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

“An unbelievably hermetically sealed spherical inalienable maze of light and sound seeing imagery expand in every direction.”

I was reminded of the words of visionary architect and late SF resident Achilles Rizzoli – who spent his life drafting gorgeous symbolic portraits of friends, family, and loved ones as fantastic buildings, the cornerstones of which would never be laid – when I saw this Wired video that Boing Boing posted about Rohnert Park artist Scott Weaver’s enormous sculpture of San Francisco done entirely in toothpicks.

Weaver has been at work on his creation for nearly three decades, having turned down multiple offers last year from Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum to buy what he views as an example of, as he told KGO at the time, “what can be done in life if you create and use your imagination.”

“But is toothpick art woodworking?” asks Fine Woodworking Senior Editor, Tom McKenna, in an article from last August about artist Steven J. Backman, who he describes as, “perhaps the preeminent toothpick sculptor in the country.” If Weaver’s accomplishment evokes Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights by its fantastic condensation, Backman’s pieces – many of which are based on local landmarks and attractions, such as the Golden Gate Bridge or a trolley car – go the route of Picasso’s early still life paintings, their forms connoted through pared down lines and simple, pronounced shapes. Even SF Mayor Gavin Newsom gave his seal of approval back in 2005, proclaiming January 11th of that year to be Steven J. Backman Day.

Backman’s art is a wonder of engineering. But Weaver’s is simply wondrous.

 

But what wonders of mental engineering also lurk in the virtual-pet analogue world?

 

And now, again, just in time for Easter, we turn to an Andy Rooney-inspired feature I’d like to call: “You got my goat!”

“Do you Want Men Dressed as Women Teaching Your Kids?”

Hell yes!

But listen up, Traditional Values Coalition. We need to talk about your look. It’s busted. Don’t you know ominous, dark clouds went out of fashion after everyone and their mother mocked the National Organization for Marriage’s “Gathering Storm” ad? Weak. Sauce.

What you need is some drag queen valkyries or some shit like that thundering out of the heavenly maw, ready to swoop down and piss on the souls of those studious young folk, whose preciousness is so inviolate as to make Justin Bieber look like the next jailbait-hungry mark to get punked on To Catch a Predator (just give him time).

If you want fierce, bitch, you gotta go Wagner.

The Daily Blurgh: San Fran pranksters

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: San Fran pranksters

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay

As Laughing Squid wisely reminds us, today is Internet Annoyance Day. So, rather than annoy you with fake news items that SURPRISE! Link to NSFWLOLfunnytimes, here’s a compedium of some of my favorite moments in which our city has played the fool at the hands of some trickster, egghead-with-a-funny bone, practical joker, anonymous collective, or plain ‘ol sick fuck.


“The Stockton Street Tunnelway, running South below this ‘Tunnel Top,’ is recognized as the first of 200 ‘Oriental labor tunnels’ dug within the state of California. Dating to the year 1894, the Oriental labor force indentured by the Moorlock-Datsun Company worked tirelessly in deep water and suffered many deaths in the pursuit of easy, underground passage for the residents of San Francisco.

This Plaque was erected in July 2002 in memoriam for the 3 men who lost their lives digging here, having succumbed to a sudden and terrible subterranean whirlpool.”

 

“Enter the world of the samurai, where more than seven centuries of martial rule are reduced to a single Disney-like trope of gentleman-warrior myth. Military prowess  meets cultural connoisseurship in an ideal of masculine perfection–selling militarism as beauty in a time of war.”

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHxn_9aVq8

 

 
“It’s Official…I am Running for Governor of California”

 

“Back in 1998 several San Francisco Bay Area radio stations had April Fool s-themed programming, including commercial station KITS (aka Live 105), which changed to KGAY for a day, airing gay-themed music. That same year college station KUSF read an announcement over the air stating that the university was selling off the station and commercial rock station KFOG devoted their 10 at 10 3 segment to big band music. Another year KFOG spent part of their program day playing the best 15 seconds of songs as their new format.”

(Yeah, yeah. “KGAY” is about as funny as Rudy Giuliani in drag, but props to KFOG’s 15 second rule)

 

For a true education pick up a copy of Re-Search #11: Pranks, as well as the follow-up volume, for interviews and invaluable tips from past and current local funny folks as Jello Biafra, Monte Cazazza, Mal Sharpe, and Bruce Conner, among many others.

The Daily Blurgh: Bee warned, Purple Sylvester

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The Daily Blurgh: Bee warned, Purple Sylvester

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay

I’m all for local businesses and delicious honey and getting to use the word “apiarist” in a sentence, but if any kind of this shit goes down you’ll know which type of urban farmer to give the stink eye. You say 15 beehives hidden in “‘borrowed spaces’ around SF,” NY Times — I say bio-terrorist cells. Hell, if you can train bees to detect bombs, who’s to say they also couldn’t be trained to detonate them?

Meanwhile in Science: “While dominant hyenas have a steady, confident-sounding giggle, subordinate ones produce a more variable call, allowing the animals to keep track of their social hierarchy, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study.” Who’s laughing now, bitch?


Remember in Basquiat when David Bowie’s Andy Warhol crows, “you always get the good stuff,” to dealer Bruno Bischofberger (Dennis Hopper, in an equally meta bit of casting) over their power lunch? Well, that’s how I felt when I read the news on Fecal Face that uber-cool-for-Mission-School gallery Jack Hanley is closing shop in SF to focus on its New York space. If you want to pour out some beer on the corner of 15th and Valencia, the SF institution’s final show opens this Saturday. It’s a family affair, including work by old and new Hanley favorites such as Tauba Auerbach, Chris Johanson, Alicia Mccarthy, Shaun O’Dell, and Leslie Shows.

In more encouraging gallery-related news: last Friday, the GLBT Historical Society’s Dom Romesburg sent out an email announcing that the org just signed a lease for, “a new Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society History Museum in the Castro.” Romesburg continues, “The new exhibit space is on 18th near Castro, in the old laundromat right across from Magnet.” This is indeed exciting news, as the rotating exhibits at the Society’s intimate downtown space, along with Passionate Struggle, last year’s long-running panorama of SF LGBT history in the old Wolf Camera shop on Castro Street, have largely been great, but have also felt like so many amuse-bouches for what must be some pretty fabulous main-course holdings (Sylvester’s Purple People Eater sequined stage costume, one of Passionate Struggle’s highlights, notwithstanding).

123Page 3 of 3

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org