Fashion Archives — Page 54 of 63 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The dobro mastery of Jerry Douglas in all its glory on ‘Glide,’ at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

October 3, 2008

JERRY DOUGLAS
Glide
(Koch)

By Todd Lavoie

Universally regarded as the finest dobro player in contemporary music, Jerry Douglas has long been the go-to source for the most evocative of resonator-guitar textures.

Starting off as a session musician back in the ’70s and ’80s – and having worked along the way with everyone from bluegrass pioneers David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs to country artists as varied as Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Trisha Yearwood – Douglas eventually launched a solo career which established him as one of the forerunners of the burgeoning “newgrass” movement. Proponents of the newgrass sound wanted to expand the boundaries of bluegrass by drawing from other traditional acoustic-based styles – particularly jazz – and the drive to rescue the dobro from pigeonholing was certainly understandable, given the perceived limitations many folks had up until that point.

The instrument has been frequently, almost predictably, used in film and television scores to introduce a Southern setting – often rural and run-down in nature – thanks to its ability to fashion moods from its lazy slides between notes. Sure, its “we’ll-get-there-when-we-do” slides and slow finger-pickings easily summon up images of sweltering afternoons under a merciless sun. But the dobro can do so much more – and Douglas has made it his mission to prove exactly that.

Project Censored

September 30, 2008

› amanda@sfbg.com

The daily dispatches and nightly newscasts of the mainstream media regularly cover terrorism, but rarely discuss how the fear of attacks is used to manipulate the public and set policy. That’s the common thread of many unreported stories last year, according to an analysis by Project Censored.

Since 1976, Sonoma State University has released an annual survey of the top 25 stories the mainstream media failed to report or reported poorly. Culled from worldwide alternative news sources, vetted by students and faculty, and ranked by judges, the stories were not necessarily overtly censored. But their controversial subjects, challenges to the status quo, or general under-the-radar subject matter might have kept them from the front pages. Project Censored recounts them, accompanied by media analysis, in a book of the same name published annually by Seven Stories Press.

"This year, war and civil liberties stood out," Peter Phillips, project director since 1996, said of the top stories. "They’re closely related and part of the War on Terror that has been the dominant theme of Project Censored for seven years, since 9/11."

Whether it’s preventing what one piece of legislation calls "homegrown terrorism" by federally funding the study of radicalism, using vague concerns about security to quietly expand NAFTA, or refusing to count the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war, the threat of terrorism is being used to silence people and expand power.

"The war on terror is a sort of mind terror," said Nancy Snow, one of the project’s 24 judges and an associate professor of public diplomacy at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Snow — who has taught classes on war, media, and propaganda — elaborated: "You can’t declare war on terror. It’s a tactic used by groups to gain publicity and it will remain with us. But it’s unlikely that [the number of terrorist acts] will spike. It spikes in the minds of people."

She pointed out that the number of terrorist attacks has dropped worldwide since 2003. Some use the absence of fresh attacks as evidence that the so-called war on terror is working. But a RAND Corporation study for the Department of Defense released in August said the war on terror hasn’t effectively undermined Al Qaeda. It suggested the phrase be replaced with the less loaded term "counterterrorism."

Both Phillips and Snow agree that comprehensive, contextual reporting is missing from most of the coverage. "That’s one of my criticisms of the media," Snow said. "They spotlight issues and don’t look at the entire landscape."

This year the landscape of Project Censored itself is expanding. After talking with educators who bemoan the ongoing decline of news quality and want to help, Phillips launched the Truth Emergency Project, in which Sonoma State partners with 23 other universities. All will host classes for students to search out untold stories, vet them for accuracy, and submit them for consideration to Project Censored.

"There’s a renaissance of independent media," Phillips said. He thinks bloggers and citizen journalists are filling crucial roles left vacant by staff cutbacks throughout the mainstream media. And, he said, it’s time for universities, educators, and media experts to step in and help. "It’s not just reforming the media, but supporting them in as many ways as they need, like validating stories by fact-checking."

The Truth Emergency Project will also host a news service that aggregates the top 12 independent media sources and posts them on one page. "So you can get an RSS feed from all the major independent news sources we trust," he said. Discerning newshounds can find reporting from the BBC, Democracy Now!, and Inter Press Service (IPS) in one spot. "The whole criteria," he said, "is no corporate media."

Carl Jensen, who started Project Censored in 1976, said the expansion is a new and necessary phase. "It answers the question I was always challenged with: how do you know this is the truth? Having 24 campuses reviewing all the stories and raising questions really provides a good answer. These stories will be vetted more than Sarah Palin."

Phillips said he hopes to expand to 100 schools within the year, and would like the project to bring more attention to the dire need for public support for high quality news reporting. "I think it’s going to require government subsidies and nonprofit organizations doing community media projects," he said. "It’s more than just reforming at the FCC level. It’s building independent media from the ground up."

Phillips likens it to the boom in microbrewed beer and the spread of independently-owned pubs: "If we can have a renaissance in beer-making, following established purity standards, then we can do it with our media, too." But for now, we have Project Censored, whose top 10 underreported stories for 2008 are:

1. HOW MANY IRAQIS HAVE DIED?

Nobody knows exactly how many lives the Iraq War has claimed. But even more astounding is that so few journalists have mentioned the issue or cited the top estimate: 1.2 million.

During August and September 2007, Opinion Research Business, a British polling group, surveyed 2,414 adults in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces and found that more than 20 percent had experienced at least one war-related death since March 2003. Using common statistical study methods, it determined that as many as 1.2 million people had been killed since the war began.

The US military, claiming it keeps no count, still employs civilian death data as a marker of progress. For example, in a Sept. 10, 2007, report to Congress, Gen. David Petraeus said, "Civilian deaths of all categories, less natural causes, have also declined considerably, by over 45 percent Iraq-wide since the height of the sectarian violence in December."

But whose number was he using? Estimates range wildly and are based on a variety of sources, including hospital, morgue, and media reports, as well as in-person surveys.

In October 2006, the British medical journal Lancet published a Johns Hopkins University study vetted by four independent sources that counted 655,000 dead, based on interviews with 1,849 households. It updated a similar study from 2004 that counted 100,000 dead. The Associated Press called it "controversial."

The AP began its own count in 2005 and by 2006 said that at least 37,547 Iraqis had lost their lives due to war-related violence, but called it a minimum estimate at best and didn’t include insurgent deaths.

Iraq Body Count, a group of US and UK citizens who aggregate numbers from media reports on civilian deaths, puts the figure between 87,000 and 95,000. In January 2008, the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government did door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000 households and put the number of dead at 151,000.

The 1.2 million figure is out there, too, which is higher than the Rwandan genocide death toll and closing in on the 1.7 million who perished in Cambodia’s killing fields. It raises questions about the real number of deaths from US aerial bombings and house raids, and challenges the common assumption that this is a war in which Iraqis are killing Iraqis.

Justifying the higher number, Michael Schwartz, writing on the blog AfterDowningStreet.org, pointed to a fact reported by the Brookings Institute that US troops have, over the past four years, conducted about 100 house raids a day — a number that has recently increased with assistance from Iraqi soldiers.

Brutality during these house searches has been documented by returning soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and independent journalists (See #9 below). Schwartz suggests the aggressive "element of surprise" tactics employed by soldiers is likely resulting in several thousands of deaths a day that either go unreported or are categorized as insurgent casualties.

The spin is having its intended effect: a February 2007 AP poll showed Americans gave a median estimate of 9,890 Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, a number far below that cited in any credible study.

Sources: "Is the United States killing 10,000 Iraqis every month? Or is it more?" Michael Schwartz, After Downing Street.org, July 6, 2007; "Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian killing fields," Joshua Holland, AlterNet, Sept. 17, 2007; "Iraq conflict has killed a million: survey," Luke Baker, Reuters, Jan. 30, 2008; "Iraq: Not our country to return to," Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008.

2. NAFTA ON STEROIDS

Coupling the perennial issue of security with Wall Street’s measures of prosperity, the leaders of the three North American nations convened the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The White House–led initiative — launched at a March 23, 2005, meeting of President Bush, Mexico’s then-president Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin — joins beefed-up commerce with coordinated military operations to promote what it calls "borderless unity."

Critics call it "NAFTA on steroids." However, unlike NAFTA, the SPP was formed in secret, without public input.

"The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement," Laura Carlsen wrote in a report for the Center for International Policy. "All these would require public debate and participation of Congress, both of which the SPP has scrupulously avoided."

Instead the SPP has a special workgroup: the North American Competitiveness Council. It’s a coalition of private companies that are, according to the SPP Web site, "adding high-level business input [that] will assist governments in enhancing North America’s competitive position and engage the private sector as partners in finding solutions."

The NACC includes the Chevron Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Merck & Co. Inc., New York Life Insurance Co., Procter & Gamble Co., and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

"Where are the environmental council, the labor council, and the citizen’s council in this process?" Carlsen asked.

A look at NAFTA’s unpopularity among citizens in all three nations is evidence of why its expansion would need to be disguised. "It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones," wrote Steven Lendman in Global Research. "It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of Canada, water as well."

Sources: "Deep Integration," Laura Carlsen, Center for International Policy, May 30, 2007; "The Militarization and Annexation of North America," Stephen Lendman, Global Research, July 19, 2007; "The North American Union," Constance Fogal, Global Research, Aug. 2, 2007.

3. INFRAGARD GUARDS ITSELF

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have effectively deputized 23,000 members of the business community, asking them to tip off the feds in exchange for preferential treatment in the event of a crisis. "The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does — and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials," Matthew Rothschild wrote in the March 2008 issue of The Progressive.

InfraGard was created in 1996 in Cleveland as part of an FBI probe into cyberthreats. Yet after 9/11, membership jumped from 1,700 to more than 23,000, and now includes 350 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies. Members typically have a stake in one of several crucial infrastructure industries, including agriculture, banking, defense, energy, food, telecommunications, law enforcement, and transportation. The group’s 86 chapters coordinate with 56 FBI field offices nationwide.

While FBI Director Robert Mueller has said he considers this segment of the private sector "the first line of defense," the American Civil Liberties Union issued a grave warning about the potential for abuse. "There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI," it cautioned in an August 2004 report.

"The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment," Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, told Rothschild.

And they are privileged: a DHS spokesperson told Rothschild that InfraGard members receive special training and readiness exercises. They’re also privy to protected information that is usually shielded from disclosure under the trade secrets provision of the Freedom of Information Act.

The information they have may be of critical importance to the general public, but first it goes to the privileged membership — sometimes before it’s released to elected officials. As Rothschild related in his story, on Nov. 1, 2001, the FBI sent an alert to InfraGard members about a potential threat to bridges in California. Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley, received the information and relayed it to his brother Gray, then governor of California, who released it to the public.

Steve Maviglio, Davis’s press secretary at the time, told Rothschild, "The governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’<0x2009>"

Source: "The FBI deputizes business," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Feb. 7, 2008.

4. ILEA: TRAINING GROUND FOR ILLEGAL WARS?

The School of the Americas earned an unsavory reputation in Latin America after many graduates of the Fort Benning, Ga., facility turned into counterinsurgency death squad leaders. So the International Law Enforcement Academy recently installed by the Unites States in El Salvador — which looks, acts, and smells like the SOA — is also drawing scorn.

The school, which opened in June 2005 before the Salvadoran National Assembly approved it, has a satellite operation in Peru and is funded with $3.6 million from the US Treasury and staffed with instructors from the DEA, ICE, and FBI. It’s tasked with training 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement agents in counterterrorism techniques per year. It’s stated purpose is to make Latin America "safe for foreign investment" by "providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime."

ILEAs aren’t new, but past schools located in Hungary, Thailand, Botswana, and Roswell, N.M., haven’t been terribly controversial. Yet Salvadoran human rights organizers take issue with the fact that, in true SOA fashion, the ILEA releases neither information about its curriculum nor a list of students and graduates. Additionally, the way the school slipped into existence without public oversight has raised ire.

As Wes Enzinna noted in a North American Congress on Latin America report, when the US decided it wanted a training ground in Latin America, El Salvador was not the first choice. In 2002 US officials selected Costa Rica as host — a country that doesn’t even have an army. The local government signed on and the plan made headlines. But when citizens learned about it, they revolted and demanded the government change the agreement. The US bailed for a more discreet second attempt in El Salvador.

"Members of the US Congress were not briefed about the academy, nor was the main opposition party in El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí-National Liberation Front (FMLN)," Enzinna wrote. "But once the news media reported that the two countries had signed an official agreement in September, activists in El Salvador demanded to see the text of the document." Though they tried to garner enough opposition to kill the agreement, the National Assembly narrowly ratified it.

Now, after more than three years in operation, critics point out that Salvadoran police, who account for 25 percent of the graduates, have become more violent. A May 2007 report by Tutela Legal implicated Salvadoran National Police (PNC) officers in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006.

El Salvador’s ILEA recently received another $2 million in US funding through the congressionally approved Mérida Initiative — but still refuses to adopt a more transparent curriculum and administration, despite partnering with a well-known human rights leader. Enzinna’s FOIA requests for course materials were rejected by the government, so no one knows exactly what the school is teaching, or to whom.

Sources: "Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America," "Community in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador," Upside Down World, June 14, 2007; "Another SOA?" Wes Enzinna, NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008; "ILEA funding approved by Salvadoran right wing legislators," CISPES, March 15, 2007; "Is George Bush restarting Latin America’s ‘dirty wars?’<0x2009>" Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet, Aug. 31, 2007.

5. SEIZING PROTEST

Protesting war could get you into big trouble, according to a critical read of two executive orders recently signed by President Bush. The first, issued July 17, 2007, and titled, "Blocking property of certain persons who threaten stabilization efforts in Iraq," allows the feds to seize assets from anyone who "directly or indirectly" poses a risk to the US war in Iraq. And, citing the modern technological ease of transferring funds and assets, the order states that no prior notice is necessary before the raid.

On Aug. 1, Bush signed another order, similar but directed toward anyone undermining the "sovereignty of Lebanon or its democratic processes and institutions." In this case, the Secretary of the Treasury can seize the assets of anyone perceived as posing a risk of violence, as well as the assets of their spouses and dependents, and bans them from receiving any humanitarian aid.

Critics say the orders bypass the right to due process and the vague language makes manipulation and abuse possible. Protesting the war could be perceived as undermining or threatening US efforts in Iraq. "This is so sweeping, it’s staggering," said Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Justice Department who editorialized against it in the Washington Times. "It expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population."

Sources: "Bush executive order: Criminalizing the antiwar movement," Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 2007; "Bush’s executive order even worse than the one on Iraq," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Aug. 2007.

6. RADICALS = TERRORISTS

On Oct. 23, 2007, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed — by a vote of 404-6 — the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," designed to root out the causes of radicalization in Americans.

With an estimated four-year cost of $22 million, the act establishes a 10-member National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, as well as a university-based Center of Excellence "to examine the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of domestic terrorism," according to a press release from the bill’s author, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Los Angeles).

During debate on the bill, Harman said, "Free speech, espousing even very radical beliefs, is protected by our Constitution. But violent behavior is not."

Jessica Lee, writing in the Indypendent, a newspaper put out by the New York Independent Media Center, pointed out that in a later press release Harman stated: "the National Commission [will] propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent."

Which could be when they’re speaking, writing, and organizing in ways that are protected by the First Amendment. This redefines civil disobedience as terrorism, say civil rights experts, and the wording is too vague. For example, the definition of "violent radicalization" is "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

"What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this? These are broad definitions that encompass so much…. It is criminalizing thought and ideology," said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center in Portland, Ore.

Though the ACLU recommended some changes that were adopted, it continued to criticize the bill. Harman, in a response letter, said free speech is still free and stood by the need to curb ideologically-based violence.

The story didn’t make it onto the CNN ticker, but enough independent sources reported on it that the equivalent Senate Bill 1959 has since stalled. After introducing the bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), later joined forces with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a report criticizing the Internet as a tool for violent Islamic extremism.

Despite an outcry from civil liberties groups, days after the report was released Lieberman demanded that YouTube remove a number of Islamist propaganda videos. YouTube canned some that broke their rules regarding violence and hate speech, but resisted censoring others. The ensuing battle caught the attention of the New York Times, and on May 25 it editorialized against Lieberman and S 1959.

Sources: "Bringing the war on terrorism home," Jessica Lee, Indypendent, Nov. 16, 2007; "Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," Lindsay Beyerstein, In These Times, Nov. 2007; "The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," Matt Renner, Truthout, Nov. 20, 2007

7. SLAVERY’S RUNNER-UP

Every year, about 121,000 people legally enter the United States to work with H-2 visas, a program legislators are touting as part of future immigration reform. But Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) called this guest worker program "the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery."

The Southern Poverty Law Center likened it to "modern day indentured servitude." They interviewed thousands of guest workers and reviewed legal cases for a report released in March 2007, in which authors Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds wrote, "Unlike US citizens, guest workers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who ‘import’ them. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting, or other retaliation."

When visas expire, workers must leave the country, hardly making this the path to permanent citizenship legislators are looking for. The H-2 program mimics the controversial bracero program, established through a joint agreement between Mexico and the United States in 1942 that brought 4.5 million workers over the border during the 22 years it was in effect.

Many legal protections were written into the program, but in most cases they existed only on paper in a language unreadable to employees. In 1964 the program was shuttered amid scores of human rights abuses and complaints that it undermined petitions for higher wages from US workers. Soon after, United Farm Workers organized, which César Chávez said would have been impossible if the bracero program still existed.

Years later, it essentially still does. The H-2A program, which accounted for 32,000 agricultural workers in 2005, has many of the same protections — and many of the same abuses. Even worse is the H-2B program, used by 89,000 non-agricultural workers annually. Created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, none of the safeguards of the H-2A visa are legally required for H-2B workers.

Still, Mexicans are literally lining up for H-2B status, the stark details of which were reported by Felicia Mello in The Nation. Furthermore, thousands of illegal immigrants are employed throughout the country, providing cheap, unprotected labor and further undermining the scant provisions of the laws. Labor contractors who connect immigrants with employers are stuffing their pockets with cash, while the workers return home with very little money.

The Southern Poverty Law Center outlined a list of comprehensive changes needed in the program, concluding, "For too long, our country has benefited from the labor provided by guest workers but has failed to provide a fair system that respects their human rights and upholds the most basic values of our democracy. The time has come for Congress to overhaul our shamefully abusive guest worker system."

Sources: "Close to Slavery," Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 2007; "Coming to America," Felicia Mello, The Nation, June 25, 2007; "Trafficking racket," Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, March 10, 2008.

8. BUSH CHANGES THE RULES

The Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice has been issuing classified legal opinions about surveillance for years. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) had access to the DOJ opinions on presidential power and had three declassified to show how the judicial branch has, in a bizarre and chilling way, assisted President Bush in circumventing its own power.

According to the three memos:

"There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it";

"The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II," and

"The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations."

Or, as Whitehouse rephrased in a Dec. 7, 2007, Senate speech: "I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them. I get to determine what my own powers are. The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is. I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

The issue arose within the context of the Protect America Act, which expands government surveillance powers and gives telecom companies legal immunity for helping. Whitehouse called it "a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush administration."

He pointed out that the act does not prohibit spying on Americans overseas — with the exception of an executive order that permits surveillance only of Americans whom the Attorney General determines to be "agents of a foreign power."

"In other words, the only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and government wiretap is an executive order," Whitehouse said in an April 12 speech. "An order this president, under the first legal theory I cited, claims he has no legal obligation to obey."

Whitehouse, a former US Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s governor, and Rhode Island Attorney General who took office in 2006, went on to point out that Marbury vs. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, established that it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

Sources: "In FISA Speech, Whitehouse sharply criticizes Bush Administration’s assertion of executive power," Sheldon Whitehouse, Dec. 7, 2007; "Down the Rabbit Hole," Marcy Wheeler, The Guardian (UK), Dec. 26, 2007.

9. SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT

Hearing soldiers recount their war experiences is the closest many people come to understanding the real horror, pain, and confusion of combat. One would think that might make compelling copy or powerful footage for a news outlet. But in March, when more than 300 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan convened for four days of public testimony on the war, they were largely ignored by the media.

Winter Soldier was designed to give soldiers a public forum to air some of the atrocities they witnessed. Originally convened by Vietnam Vets Against the War in January 1971, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians described their war experiences, including rapes, torture, brutalities, and killing of non-combatants. The testimony was entered into the Congressional Record, filmed, and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iraq Veterans Against the War hosted the 2008 reprise of the 1971 hearings. Aaron Glantz, writing in One World, recalled testimony from former Marine Cpl. Jason Washburn, who said, "his commanders encouraged lawless behavior. ‘We were encouraged to bring ‘drop weapons,’ or shovels. In case we accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body and pretend they were an insurgent.’<0x2009>"

An investigation by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian in The Nation that included interviews with 50 Iraq war veterans also revealed an overwhelming lack of training and resources, and a general disregard for the traditional rules of war.

Though most major news outlets sent staff to cover New York’s Fashion Week, few made it to Silver Spring, Md. for the Winter Soldier hearings. Fortunately, KPFA and Pacifica Radio broadcast the testimonies live and, in an update to the story, said they were "deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and blog posts from service members, veterans, and military families thanking us for breaking a cultural norm of silence about the reality of war." Testimonies can still be heard at www.ivaw.org.

Sources: "Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan eyewitness accounts of the occupation," Iraq Veterans Against the War, March 13-16, 2008; "War comes home," Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison, and Esther Manilla, Pacifica Radio, March 14-16, 2008; "US Soldiers testify about war crimes," Aaron Glantz, One World, March 19, 2008; "The Other War," Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, The Nation, July 30, 2007.

10. APA HELPS CIA TORTURE

Psychologists have been assisting the CIA and US military with interrogation and torture of Guantánamo detainees — which the American Psychological Association has said is fine, despite objections from many of its 148,000 members.

A 10-member APA task force convened on the divisive issue in July 2005 and found that assistance from psychologists was making the interrogations safe and the group deferred to US standards on torture over international human-rights organizations’ definitions.

The task force was criticized by APA members for deliberating in secret, and later it was revealed that six of the 10 participants had ties to the armed services. Not only that, but as Katherine Eban reported in Vanity Fair, "Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the CIA."

In particular, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, neither of whom are APA members, honed a classified military training program known as SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape] that teaches soldiers how to tough out torture if captured by enemies. "Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror," Eban wrote.

And, as Mark Benjamin noted in a Salon article, employing SERE training — which is designed to replicate torture tactics that don’t abide by Geneva Convention standards — refutes past administration assertions that current CIA torture techniques are safe and legal. "Soldiers undergoing SERE training are subject to forced nudity, stress positions, lengthy isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, exhaustion from exercise, and the use of water to create a sensation of suffocation," Benjamin wrote.

Eban’s story outlined how SERE tactics were spun as "science" despite a lack of data and the critique that building rapport works better than blows to the head. Specifically, he said, it’s been misreported that CIA torture techniques got Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to talk, when it was actually FBI rapport-building. In spite of this, SERE techniques became standards in interrogation manuals that eventually made their way to US officers guarding Abu Ghraib.

Ongoing uproar within the APA resulted in a petition to make an official policy limiting psychologists’ involvement in interrogations. On Sept. 17, a majority of 15,000 voting members approved a resolution stating that psychologists may not work in settings where "persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

Sources: "The CIA’s torture teachers," Mark Benjamin, Salon, June 21, 2007; "Rorschach and awe," Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007.

Electric gospel

September 30, 2008

PREVIEW As I find myself in another part of the world, I ask myself, "How did I get here?" Then I realize everything’s same as it ever was, and that I need to get this piece in at some sort of reasonable hour.

But seriously, Talking Heads’ "Once in a Lifetime" was synthesizer rock glory. On NPR’s "All Things Considered," the band recalled becoming "human samplers" while making "Once in a Lifetime," back when hip-hop was in its genesis and sampling wasn’t even a method. Rather than write their songs first and play later, singer-songwriter David Byrne, composer-producer Brian Eno, and the band would improvise, manually repeat the layers they liked, then stack those layers on top of each other until they got the finished result.

Byrne and Eno would repeat this approach on their own collaboration in 1981, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Nonesuch). Percussion-heavy and Afrobeat-oriented, Ghosts provided a vivid look into combinations of international rhythms and sampled vocals, inspiring producers like Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy and Moby.

The pair reconnected during the 25th anniversary rerelease of Ghosts, and surmised that the world could handle another collaborative effort; Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Todo Mundo, 2008) is the result.

Even "as the days go by," Byrne and Eno demonstrate that their musical bond resonates, even if they are sending their snippets and works-in-progress via e-mail. For the most part, Eno opts for straightforward rock riffs with some traditional folk chord structures and a trademark smattering of electronic, atmospheric effects. Byrne follows Eno through these uplifting melodies and, in typical fashion, lends vocal harmony, depth, and variation, raising the cadence, complementing and augmenting Eno’s production. If this is "electronic gospel," as both proclaim, here’s to preaching to the choir.

DAVID BYRNE Mon/6, 8 p.m., $59.50–$89.50. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. (415) 621-6600, www.davidbyrne.com

Dirty young man

September 24, 2008

The man himself would probably enjoy his artistic evolution being described as ass-backward. After a few years’ absence, Italian director Tinto Brass re-emerged in the late 1970s with two world-class sleaze hits — Nazisploitation opus Salon Kitty (1976) and the notorious Penthouse-produced Caligula (1979), which he and scenarist Gore Vidal disowned (for different reasons). Thereafter he settled into glossy softcore romps whose fetish focus made him cinema’s Trunk-Junk Laureate to Russ Meyer’s Bard of Boob. Now 80-something, Tinto enjoys the long-running dirty-old-man status change of national embarrassment to cultural institution.

Yet before finding his professional-ogler niche, Brass was a young artist of the ’60s — doing that Marx-and-Coca Cola thing like everyone else, stirring together the avant-garde, genre trash, and whatnot. He made not one but two films with the era’s socialist It couple, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero; a spaghetti western called Yankee (1966); and several anarchic movies as distinctively of their countercultural moment as a Peter Max poster.

Two such works get a rare big-screen unearthing in this week’s YBCA mini-retrospective "Psychotic and Erotic: Rare Films by Tinto Brass." They recall a time in which no op-art design, split-screen image, cineast in-joke, or gratuitous Holocaust insert was beyond reach of a wide-open European commercial market where radical capitalists like Brass could cut creative teeth.

The quasi-giallo Deadly Sweet (1967) sets lovebirds Jean-Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin (a Miss Teen International who would next incarnate Terry Southern’s porn ingenue Candy and endure costar Marlon Brando’s alleged pawings) in Swinging London, pursued by kidnappers, blackmailers, police, and one mean dwarf. If a fashion-shoot montage doesn’t remind you of the prior year’s Blow Up, that film’s poster is glimpsed for good measure.

Arbitrarily switching from color to black-and-white, this giddy lark remains your sole chance to witness the Conformist (1970) and Z (1969) star delivering a Tarzan yell while playing drums in his underpants, let alone enduring eyebrow torture. Its ending eerily anticipates 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, once intended for Trintignant. (Brando’s buttery costar Maria Schneider later stormed out on more degradation as Caligula’s original female lead.)

Even prankier, 1970’s The Howl arrives at a Hippie Trail internationalism as ideologically pure as it is hindsight-campy. More a trippy lifestyle statement than a coherent political one, it runs Chaplinesque Gigi Proietti and flower-child Tina Aumont through a gauntlet of surreal Bunuel/Jorodowsky/Arrabal–esque horrors, including animal slaughter, historical atrocity clips, and mime. Spoken placards inform "Contemplation is bourgeois attitude" and "Anger must explode. Hate must burst!" Papism is ridiculed, though madonna/whore equations go unexamined. (You can take the artist out of Italy, but … )

This agitprop fantasia eventually wears one out. Still, how can one dislike any movie that "ends" with a giant onscreen question mark that keeps doodling along, just to mess with ya? That’s the Tinto Brass a Vanessa Redgrave could call comrade. The subsequent auteur of Paprika: Life in a Brothel (1991) — not so much.

"PSYCHOTIC AND EROTIC: RARE FILMS BY TINTO BRASS"

The Howl, Wed/24, 7:30 p.m.; Deadly Sweet, Sun/28, 7:30 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Too hot

September 10, 2008

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Turn down the grill, puleeze — last week felt like a little time-traveling trip to Nellyville (Universal), a throwback to ’02, as in "I’m getting too hot / I wanna take my clothes off." That snatch of "Hot in Herre," Country Grammar king Nelly’s collabo with the Neptunes, could have been the recurring refrain throughout the 80-degree-plus Indian summer sizzle engulfing San Francisky. And frankly I prefer Nelly’s get-nekkid vision of toasty times to the heat that seems to be driving the kids on my street to shoot each other up. Nightlife shouldn’t mean a fight for your life, and who can blame the Mission District teens who want to get out of their suffocating family apartments? Still, you wonder drowsily, when roused at 4:45 a.m. to the sound of five gunshots and some murder-minded creep speeding off: why do the shooters have such ready access to firearms?

I say, let’s cut the vengeance-minded, pistol-packing heat and up the glammed-up, sexy swelter instead. We can use a little more ye olde "Hot in Herre" and less hot-under-the-collar shoot-’em-ups. So the timing was perfect to check in with Nelly, a.k.a. Cornell Haynes Jr., about his latest album, Brass Knuckles (Derrty/Universal), on the verge of an intimate national tour alongside his chums St. Lunatics.

The finished product took a great deal of tweaking — hence the multiple delays, says the soft-spoken rapper, fashion impresario, and collaborator with everyone from T.I. (Creatively, "he’s a beast," swears Nelly) to Tim McGraw. Though Nelly’s intent on trying out new sounds, fans seem to prefer the rapper’s smoother R&B side, as exhibited by the popularity of his Suit disc over his hip-hoppier Sweat full-length (both Derrty/Universal, 2004). And the third single off Brass Knuckles, "Body on Me," which brings the St. Louis rapper together with Akon and rumored squeeze Ashanti, has done considerably better than his fun-loving, shout-along foray betwixt crunk and hyphy, "Stepped on My J’z" ("My ode to the joy of the sneaker," he says).

But all that doesn’t mean the Charlotte Bobcats co-owner wants to skew toward safe choices amid industry uncertainty and his own tussles with Universal ("Definitely I was unhappy with the situation," Nelly says of the negotiations that led him to make the 2007 throwaway "Wadsyaname" single. "Sometimes I think the only leverage that entertainers have is the music."): after all, he did try to assemble a vocal threesome with Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson for Brass Knuckles as well as a bro-down with Bruce Springsteen.

"Don’t be afraid of change," he tells me over the phone. "I think that’s the thing that scares people the most. You can’t tell fans what they should buy. You can’t tell fans what they should like. It looks funny! ‘Yo, don’t buy that — buy this. You’re wrong!’<0x2009>" The still-budding thespian within — Nelly will appear in the CSI: NY season opener — rears its head as the rapper imagines a bullied fan. "’But, but, it’s my money!’

"That’s something you don’t want to get into," he continues, reassuming his proper role. "You’re always a student."

This time around, Nelly says, "I wanted to do things a little differently — bring an energy to the album that I maybe haven’t in a while as far as tempos and selection of people that I used." To support that he wants to spend this tour "just explaining the songs and explaining what went into the album."

Apparently there’s more than a little of the down-home Midwesterner in the rapper, who continues to reside in his hometown of St. Louis. There, keeping it real — and cool — means knowing when to lay low. Having finally finished the album a week and a half ago, he’s now in the middle of promotions, marketing, and tour preparations, and his typical day can mean doing interviews at four New York City radio stations in one fell swoop, or "a good nap all day because I’m exhausted," he sighs. "Because I’ve probably been up for four or five days in a row. No exaggeration. It’s something that stays on you." *

NELLY

With St. Lunatics and Avery Storm

Sat/13, 9 p.m. doors, $40–$55

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 820-9669

www.mezzaninesf.com

COME OUT SWINGING

BEATEN BY THEM

The native Australians — and onetime San Franciscans — hammered out a fascinating Signs of Life (Logicpole/Thrill Jockey, 2007) at Tiny Telephone studio. With one f and the Healing Curse. Wed/10, 9 p.m., $6. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. www.hotelutah.com

FLOATING CORPSES, HUNX AND HIS PUNX, AND YOUNGER LOVERS

Wreak havoc with Roxy Monoxide alongside Gravy Train!!!!’s punk poobah and Brontez’s ever-lovin’ latest. With No Gos and Bridez. Sat/13, 8 p.m., $5–$7. 924 Gilman Street Project, Berk. www.924gilman.org

MARY HALVORSON AND JESSICA PAVONE

The Brooklyn chamber-folk experimentalists are on critics’ short lists for On and Off (Skirl). With Xiu Xiu, Evangelista, and Prurient. Sat/13, 9 p.m., $12–$14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

JANET JACKSON

Jacko may have snubbed his sis at her BMI lifetime achievement ceremony, but she continues to "Rock Witchu" despite turmoil with Island Def Jam. Sat/13, 7:30 p.m., $37.50–$123.25. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum, Oakl. www.livenation.com

TRICKY

The trip-hoppin’ hip-hopper delves into his tough council estate upbringing with Knowle West Boy. (Domino). With Sonny. Sun/14, 9 p.m., $30. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Death and the maiden

September 3, 2008

› kimberly@sfbg.com

REVIEW Somewhat eclipsed by the mob scene upstairs at "Frida Kahlo," the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s "The Art of Lee Miller" abounds with riveting images — not least those of the late photographer herself, who was, at different times, a nude model for her father, a high fashion mannequin for Vogue, and a muse and collaborator for her onetime lover Man Ray. Many will fix in your mind long after this sizable show ends — the tattered window into an otherworldly Egypt of Portrait of Space (1937), the chorus line of dangling rat posteriors in Untitled (Rat Tails) (1930), and the persistently chic English ladies in wartime protective headgear of Women with Fire Masks, London (1941).

But two Miller images — sensational were they not so sober — bid you return to examine them further: The Suicided Burgermeister’s Daughter, Leipzig, Germany (1945) and Untitled [Severed Breast from Radical Mastectomy] (circa 1930). Both play morbidly within the haunted dreamscapes of surrealism, teasing out a certain tongue-in-cheek formalism, or, in the case of the portrait of the deceased fräulein, upend classical aesthetic values with a detachment that’s chilled to the bone and coolly black-humored.

Experimenting with architecturally focused abstraction, dadaism, and surrealism in the early ’30s, during her Parisian tryst with Man Ray, Lee said she was working as a medical photographer in the city when she managed to spirit away a breast amputated in a mastectomy operation from a local hospital. Back at the studio she photographed it two ways: once with its sagging skin-side exterior facing her camera, and again with its gory innards threatening to spill out like kidney pie. In both images the breast lies in an elegant ivory plate on a creased, innocuously striped, lightly grid-printed place mat, with a fork and knife laid out for an imagined meal. The two perspectives on print are displayed side by side, as if to ironically mimic the natural placement of these mammaries. If not for the card, one would mistake the slab on the plate for a somewhat unappetizing kidney pie or pig’s ear. Whitney Chadwick, the author of Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (Thames & Hudson, 1991), described Miller re-envisioning this breast "not as an object of male desire, but as dead meat," and it does seem as if Miller sought to load these life-giving symbols of nurturance and desire with connotations of vulnerability and sacrifice. She takes the dismembered body part’s symbolism to its bitter end — while referencing the common surrealist obsession with those primal glands as well as the Catholic iconography of St. Agatha, who is often pictured proffering her plated breasts to devout viewers. The frequently and easily commodifiable body parts are served up for your visual consumption.

Exhibition catalog author Mark Haworth-Booth points to the surrealist notion of "convulsive beauty" and the movement’s general fascination with effigies in reference to Miller’s stunningly lit and composed The Suicided Burgermeister’s Daughter, shot during her tenure as the only female photojournalist allowed into combat during World War II. The body’s hair, skin, brow, pretty lids, and steepled nose evoke the eternal appeal of an angel aloft above a headstone. Her arms caress the front of her heavy wool Nazi nurse’s coat. Her lips, unnaturally pale and marble-like, are slightly parted, revealing perfect teeth with a whiff of inadvertent eroticism, and she lies on a leather couch — on which the one distended button and a small rip in the leather arm are the only hints of decay.

Most intriguing, Miller seems to have blurred the area above the body, making it appear as if a fine mist or fog is descending on the prone form. In the accompanying original dispatch for Vogue, the magazine she once posed for and later reported for, Miller writes of "the love of death which is the under-pattern of the German living caught up with the high officials of the regime," text that went unpublished in the magazine. The careful formality of Burgermeister’s Daughter‘s composition brings to mind and counterpoints those of more recently deceased Germans: Gerhard Richter’s paintings of the also-suicided members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Yet, with Burgermeister’s Daughter and Untitled, it’s hard to imagine another artist so associated with the temporal flash of fashion making images as powerful and as fueled by the death urge.

THE ART OF LEE MILLER

Through Sept. 14.

Mon.–Tues., Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

$7–<\d>$12.50, free for members and 12 and under (free first Tues.; half price Thurs., 6–8:45 p.m.)

(415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Semiconscious Consumerism: Leather Vegans

August 28, 2008

Blogger Justin Juul weighs in — just in time for Slow Food Nation this weekend — on the contradictions of fashion and philosophy. Read his thoughts on high-end street gear in a time of economic crisis here, his saga of American Spirits here, and his sassy deconstruction of the Nike and American Apparel connection here.

I became a vegetarian the year my father moved the family from Southern California to a ranch in North Carolina, right across the street from a cow farm. My dad had just retired from the Marine Corps and was on a mission to return to the farm-life he’d abandoned when he enlisted 20 years before. It was totally normal for him, but that shit freaked me out. I’d grown up in small cities on the fringes of military bases across the country and here I was at seventeen years old, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but my two little dogs and a giant herd of cows to keep me company.

Needless to say, I got out of there quick. I jumped on a greyhound bus back to California the day I turned 18 and I haven’t looked back since. But the image of those peaceful cows never left me. Watching them play with my dogs made me realize that animals were pretty similar across the board. I would never eat Burny or Katy, I rationed, so I probably shouldn’t eat the cows either. And so it went. I became a vegetarian because I realized that eating animals is cruel, but wearing them? Well, that’s another story.

You see, although I hate to admit it, I’m sort of a hipster.

Connect four

August 26, 2008

Photos by Jeffery Cross

GUILLERMO GÓMEZ PEÑA

SFBG Who is inspiring — or revolting — to you, in terms of art and performance, including political performance?

Guillermo Gómez-Peña The best and — most inspiring performance I’ve experienced took place in the Mexico City zocalo. A group of 100 indigenous men from the Coordinadora de los 400 pueblos, tired of waiting for the mayor to listen to their claims, decided to take off their clothes, each drink a liter of water, and pee in unison against the walls of the Palacio Nacional. The power of this action was not in the collective pissing ritual but rather in the exposure of the nude indigenous body, marked by the scars of hard labor and history. The image has been haunting me.

SFBG What do you hope will happen in the US presidential election?

GGP In the realm of symbolic politics, the best thing that can happen is for the United States to elect an articulate mulatto president, the son of a Kenyan immigrant, whose second name is Hussein. But in reality, it worries me that Obama’s project of hope sounds more and more like Hallmark humanism.

SFBG What is your favorite time of year in seasonless San Francisco?

GGP I love it when the sun comes out in earnest and tropicalism hits the streets for a few days. I love to bar hop in the Mission and watch the myriad subcultures show off their self-styled fashion, muscles, tattoos and nalgas palidas. But I also love certain neighborhoods under heavy fog. I feel I am walking in the middle of a British gothic novel. My worry is that this gorgeous city is slowly becoming a bohemian theme park.

I FEEL THAT I AM FREE BUT I KNOW I AM NOT

Oct. 2, 5–8 p.m.; Oct.11, 3–5 p.m.; and Oct. 21, 5–8 p.m.; free, $5

SF Camerawork

657 Mission (second floor), SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

MAPA/CORPO 3

Oct. 23–25; times and prices TBD

Project Artaud Theater

450 Florida, SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

www.litquake.org

———-

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE

SFBG What are your plans for this fall?

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE I’m going on a crazy cross-country book tour, starting with the book launch Oct. 8 at City Lights — check my Web site (www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) for details.

SFBG Your novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, is published by City Lights. A recent review in Publishers Weekly seems to think the book’s protagonist is a woman. What did you learn from that review?

MBS I learned most people are even more confused about gender than me. But guess what — the book is already available in Bay Area stores, so readers can rush to figure it out, just like the latest John Grisham.

SFBG So, are you allergic to oxygen?

MBS These days, who isn’t?

SFBG Where’s your favorite sex place in SF, or maybe better, where in SF needs to be turned into a sex spot?

MBS City Hall would be fun. So much elegance and charm, as long as they get rid of everyone who’s usually there. The 38 Geary would be perfect: I always get horny on that bus. Anywhere on my late-night walks — I usually walk up Leavenworth and Hyde from O’Farrell to Bush or so. Feel free to stalk me!

SFBG What do you want to happen in the presidential election?

MBS Do we still call that an election?

SFBG What is your favorite time of year in seasonless San Francisco?

MBS Anytime when the fog rolls in and I can breathe.

SO MANY WAYS TO SLEEP BADLY RELEASE PARTY

Oct. 8, 7:30 p.m.

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus, SF

(415) 362-8193

www.citylights.com

———–

JOANN SELISKER

SFBG Your new show, Off Leash: Who’s a Good Girl?, ponders the canine-human continuum. What have you learned?

JoAnn Selisker In terms of interspecies relationships, I find human behavior and motivation to be much more strange and unfathomable (and sometimes disturbing) than that of the canine. I speak human, so I ought to understand where humans are coming from. If dogs weren’t so helpless, misunderstood, disregarded, and maltreated, I would prefer to be a dog.

SFBG What do you think of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer?

JS I think he makes some nice dog beds. You can get anything he thinks your dog needs with his "brand" on it. You could call him the Martha Stewart of the dog world. She reaches us through Wal-Mart, and he reaches us through PETCO. They both give us simple how-to instructions and affordable, quality products. All we have to do is buy the videos, magazines, supplies, and accessories, follow step-by-step instructions, and … voilà! The perfect dinner party; the well-mannered pet.

SFBG In your earlier show, Begin with a Box, you put creative instructions by Twyla Tharp to the test. What did you discover?

JS Well, how interesting — Twyla Tharp is a lot like the Dog Whisperer and Martha Stewart! Each of these masters generously shares secrets to success, in simple, step-by-step format. We can all become Twyla Tharp, the Dog Whisperer and/or Martha Stewart.

I discovered that I will never become Twyla Tharp. I started the Begin with a Box project with a box, just like she says, and proceeded step-by-step to completion. I should now be a MacArthur genius, with name recognition and a project with Prince.

OFF LEASH: WHO’S A GOOD GIRL?

Oct. 8, 8 p.m.; Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m.; $15–$18

Project Theater Artaud

450 Florida, SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

www.litquake.org

———-

TIM SULLIVAN

SFBG What are your plans for this fall?

TIM SULLIVAN I traveled all summer, so I’m going to try my best to stay put. I have two shows opening this fall, one at SF Camerawork and one in Dallas. I’ll be teaching a class at San Francisco Art Institute and continuing to make things.

SFBG Your contribution to SF Camerawork’s fall exhibition, "I Feel I Am Free But I Know I Am Not," involves a rowboat. What should people expect if they step into the boat?

TS Everyone who gets into the boat will be instantly transformed into a movie star in a recreation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944). I really need people to come out and participate to make this work.

SFBG You’ve collaborated with George Kuchar before. Do you have a favorite Kuchar quote, or Kuchar story?

TS A few years back I was in Kuchar’s class film, Kiss of Frankenstein. On the first day he handed us the script, I was rolling on the floor laughing. The entire script is hilarious and quote-worthy! It was definitely the best reading I did in graduate school. The last line (spoiler alert!) always gets me: "Kiss me sloppy."

SFBG What is your favorite time of year in seasonless San Francisco?

TS Fall is always my favorite season. In my home state of Wisconsin I love it because the leaves fall off the trees. Here in SF I love it because the tourists leave and the streets thin out.

I FEEL I AM FREE BUT I KNOW I AM NOT

Sept. 4, 5–8 p.m., free; Sept. 13 and 27, 2–5 p.m., $5

SF Camerawork

657 Mission (second floor), SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Fall fashion tip: Solar Neckties

-

August 20, 2008
2

It’s no secret that Gavin Newsom wants to be the greenest mayor that ever walked our fair state. So, the solar-powered necktie seems like his obvious fashion choice this fall, even if it doesn’t come in blue. According to the folks at the Coolest Gadgets website, this tie has a hidden pouch for stashing your cellphone away while the tie charges it up, using only the power of the sun.

Or is Newsom’s greenness more talk than walk?

Critical sass

-

August 19, 2008
0

ISBN REAL This month, a collection of Daniel Mendelsohn’s essays on books, plays, and films is being published. How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken (Harper, 480 pages, $26.95) is excellent. But it lacks something I can’t help wanting from the criticism I read, no matter how often some denunciation tries to shame the desire out of me. One of Mendelsohn’s pieces even takes novelist and literary critic Dale Peck’s 2005 review collection, Hatchet Jobs (New Press, 240 pages, $14.95) to task for indulging in the very thing I look for: bitchiness.

According to Mendelsohn, Peck’s analysis of any book cedes too much space to his caustic persona. Mendelsohn suspects that "what’s really going on here isn’t so much criticism as a kind of performance."

This is a common complaint. As standard as it’s become for critics to coat their reviews in personality, extravagantly painting their territory with barbed humor and a couple catalogs’ worth of references, there’s no scarcity of resistance to that practice, either. Just last week, on Mark Sarvas’ blog The Elegant Variation (www.marksarvas.blogs.com), writer Benjamin Percy expanded on Sarvas’ disgust over an excessively autobiographical review of Julia Reed’s memoir, The House on First Street (Ecco, 208 pages, $23.95) in the Aug. 3 The New York Times Book Review. Percy suggested a causal connection between the swell of infantile pop punditry on cable news channels and "those critics who spotlight their voice, their life, upstaging the assigned book."

Within How Beautiful It Is, Mendelsohn quotes Peck’s response to the controversy surrounding his critical flaying of Rick Moody a few years ago. Here we-go-’round-the criticism-bush: in turn, Peck’s quote mentions Heidi Julavits’ highly-regarded piece about the future of literary culture from the March 2003 maiden issue of The Believer. There, Julavits appeals to book critics to cool it already with the self-serving wisecracks. In fact, she mentions Mendelsohn as an exemplar of considered evaluation free from the static of the vitriol that’s come into fashion.

Julavits’ major beef was with the sadism of the bitchy critic, and in large part, that’s the same problem Mendelsohn has with Peck’s reviews. I have a lot of inner ethical debates queued up before I ever address, let alone endorse, the matter of the clever takedown. What I am willing to dispute right here, right now, is the puzzling belief that caustic criticism is not just ethically but also artistically deficient.

It’s one thing to frown upon a mean-spirited performance that gets away from the reviewed work as well as the rhythm of its own structure. I could even grudgingly comprehend were a canonical critic like Dorothy Parker called out for wandering too far into the realm of bilious stand-up comedy. (So much for wicked stand-up criticism as only a current trend). Regarding Peck, Mendelsohn is not wrong to point out the ungainliness of his grabs at attention. I can appreciate the argument that one’s limited reserve of creative energy should be spent in the service of creation and not destruction, particularly in the assessment of writers who don’t deserve the baroque angst their crappy books inspire.

But is there really no understanding that the affected horror of the cranky critic is a ritualized template for evaluation, and one that is as valid — when done well — as any other? If there isn’t, we’re all in trouble.

Cava22

-

August 19, 2008
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

If, like me, you occasionally succumb to the temptation to judge a restaurant by its name, you might suppose that Cava22 is some kind of champagne bar … all right, a cava bar, cava being the word the Spanish came up with to describe their méthode champenoise–style sparkling wines. And you wouldn’t be completely wrong; the place, opened last winter by the Valle brothers (Ramón and Samuel) and Roger Magaña in a cavernous Mission District setting that had previously been the home of Bahia Restaurant, does offer a token selection of sparkling wines, including a rather wonderful espumosa de muscatel from Reymos ($7 a glass): a bit on the fruity-sweet side, but not cloying.

But despite the name, the big deal at Cava22, booze-wise, isn’t the selection of cavas and other sparkling wines. The big deal is tequila, of which several dozen varieties from the different age groups (blanco, reposado, añejo) are offered to purists and aficionados by the (shot) glass, mostly for less than $10 each. At least in this sense, then, Cava22 is the Mission’s answer to Tres Agaves in ballpark yuppieland. And since non-aficionados can be found all over town — even writing pieces like this one — the drinks menu also includes an array of margaritas and infused tequilas, along with a smattering of concoctions made with other liquors. Or you can simply turn the sheet over to find a nice selection of beer and wine. Many of the wines are from Spain and Argentina, several are available by the glass, and all are reasonably priced.

If I’m making Cava22 sound like a gigantic bar, this is because in many respects it is. Certainly it’s gigantic, a box with a high ceiling supported by a line of wooden pillars marching down the middle of the room. And certainly there’s a bar, lit by a line of bordello-red ceiling lanterns and complete with a television mounted over the door so bar patrons can watch fútbol matches on Telemundo. But there’s also chef Roman Beltran’s food; it’s good food, a sort of Spanish-Mexican amalgam, and fairly priced. That, plus the drink, plus the large number of tables, means that Cava22 is a good place to know about if you’re flying out the door by the seat of your pants, hoping to indulge one of the great pleasures available to the urban diner: that of just drifting along with friends until a suitable place presents itself, complete with an available table.

The guacamole ($5.50) disappointed me, I must say, notwithstanding the generous allotment of deeply crisped tortilla chips. It was too oniony. (I have been making guacamole often in recent weeks, and my version includes, in addition to avocados, just some minced garlic, a pinch of cayenne, a squeeze of lime juice, a pinch of salt, and some chopped cilantro. No party-crashing by onions!) On the other hand, we loved and devoured a plate of roasted garlic cloves and fig compote ($6.50) — a clever variation on the classic Spanish quince paste known as membrillo — suitable for spreading over grilled bread spears with some cambozola cheese. The cloves themselves looked a little drab, like old rubber fittings the plumber might be replacing, but roasting gave them a mellow sweetness and an almost buttery spreadability. Cambozola cheese, incidentally, isn’t as fancy as it sounds; it’s an industrial German product, with a manufactured name meant to make us think of two of its more storied relations, camembert and gorgonzola. Still, it’s tasty enough and a good value. It’s also vegetarian-friendly, as are the empanadas ($6), a pair of corn-dough canapés filled with squash and peppers and napped with a sharp-edged tomato sauce.

But this is not a vegetarian restaurant. Meat is the motif among the main courses, although there is a paella on offer along with a sizable list of seafood dishes. Typical of the meat possibilities is the Argentine milanesa ($11): thin slices of beefsteak that are breaded, fried, and served with beans and rice. The name refers to Milan, of course, Argentina having substantial Italian ancestry. In a small irony, the Italians themselves call breaded, fried filets (usually of fish or veal) "all’inglese" — "in the English fashion." So, fingers pointing in every direction here. Cava22’s milanesa steaks are profoundly breaded and fried indeed; by the time they reach the table, they’re nearly geological in their earthy crispness and twisted shapes.

Camarones à la diabla ($12), also known as prawns in spicy sauce, is one of those preparations you see on menus all over the place. Here the shrimp are peeled, which is certainly a blessing for the person eating them, and the tomatoey-looking "devil" sauce packs a real wallop. I can’t recall having a more boldly chilefied sauce in any restaurant, and I liked it. Seafood dishes include a choice of sides — beans, rice, roasted potatoes, a few others — and these are on the good side of ordinary.

Service is knowledgeable and efficient, although the dining room is so big that sitting at one of the window tables is like being near the end of a bus line: it takes some chugging to move things from kitchen to table and back again, and you can see your server coming from quite a distance. Luckily the table linens are well-starched and the street spectacle is unending: a human parade dressed every which way and heading in every direction, with many posses making stops at Papa Toby’s Revolution Café across the street, possibly to make inquiry as to the whereabouts of an interesting new tequila bar and restaurant they’d heard about.

CAVA22

Dinner: Sun.–Thurs., 5–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5–11 p.m.

3239 22nd St., SF

(415) 642-7224

www.cava22sf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Semiconscious Consumerism: Dope gear for idiots

-

August 18, 2008
4

Blogger Justin Juul ponders high-end street gear in a time of economic crisis. Read his saga of American Spirits here, and his sassy deconstruction of the Nike and American Apparel connection here.

Here’s a bunch of shit I bought because I thought I was the only person in San Francisco tuned into the world of supercool urban fashion. Most of these items cost hundreds of dollars and almost nothing fit straight out of the box. So, genius that I am, instead of re-selling my stuff on Ebay for a profit, I took everything to a tailor for resizing. Which, most times, wound up costing almost as much as the actual item.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been right, if indeed I could ever hope to know more about “high-end streetwear” than your average 15 year-old skater thug. But I don’t. By the time most of this stuff got my to house you could buy knock-off versions at any store on Sixth Street. And besides, look at it! I’m almost thirty years old, man. I can’t go outside in this shit. Still, even though I never wear any of the stuff I buy, and even though I’m fully aware that the whole street wear industry is a marketing sham that preys on the ridiculous aspirations of clueless suburban kids, I’m insanely proud of my ghetto-fab wardrobe.

I mean, whatever, right? These clothes may not be worth the money I spent on them, and they may not make me cool, but I have them and you don’t, so there. You can call me shallow and you can call me crazy, but you can’t deny that if you could get your hands on my gear you’d be happy for life. I win.

Here Are the Top Five Coolest Garments in my Collection:

The “ultra-liberal” city

-

August 15, 2008
19

By Tim Redmond

I don’t know what Heather Knight means by “ultra-liberal,” but to say that the San Francisco Democratic Party has taken a “sharp turn to the left” is a bit miselading. Yes, the progressives ran an agressive campaign and picked up some seats this spring, but most of the votes on most of the issues were pretty close to unanimous; public power, fro example, had support from across the spectrum. Same with most of the supervisors races.

In fact, the only reason the Democratic Party seems a little more progressive now is that it has so often in the past been controlled by moderates (and in the days of Willie Brown, by a political machine).

So what’s up with the “ultra-liberal,” anyway?

I mean, the word “liberal” used to mean someone who believed that government was part of the solution to social problems, that income ought to be redistributed and the weathy should pay their fair share and that taxes levied and collected in a progressive fashion should be used for programs to help the needy.

That describes most of the people the Chron is now calling “ultra-liberal.” It does not describe, for example, Gavin Newsom.

In San Francisco, taking liberal stands on social issues is easy. The economic issues are a lot more tough, and that’s where you can draw political lines. The Shorensteins, Walter and Doug, are (generaly speaking) social liberals who give money to Democrats, and they always have. But when it comes to regulating land use and development and taxing downtown — when it hits the Shorensteins in the pocket book — they’re as anti-tax and anti-regulation as most Republicans.

John Burton asked me once why I didn’t call him a progressive, and I told him that the difference between a liberal and a progressive these days is that progressives don’t trust real-estate developers. That’s just a small example, but it makes the point. The progressives in San Francisco stand for both social and economic justice.

Here’s what I think is going on: The Newsom camp is angry about the use of the term “progressive” to describe Newsom’s critics, because it implies that Newsom somehow isn’t progressive. (Honestly, by any meaning of the word, he’s not. Care not Cash was the opposite of a progressive program. His budget is the opposite of a progressive budget. On economic issues, he’s very much a centrist.)

But Newsom’s operatives have been putting pressure on the media, and I’m sure on the Chron, to change that terminology. So now that Chron has come up with the disparaging term “ultra-liberal.”

Really, based on the recent endorsement, the Democratic Party in SF today pretty closely reflects San Francisco values. The nasty label’s got to go.

Photo Issue: Molly Decoudreaux looks beneath the nightlife

-

August 11, 2008
3

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.”

Click-click, bag-bag: Procrastinate with style

-

July 29, 2008
3

By Dona Bridges

Everyday fashion via sfstyle.blogspot.com

Rejoice, voyeurs and procrastinators! I have found a new timesuck for you. My longtime perusal of Jezebel, Fashionista.com, and Facehunter led me to the truly amazing wastes of time that are personal and street fashion/style blogs. I gobble them up like candy, and during some of my over-consumption sessions I’ve managed to find a few that deal with Bay Area fashion specifically:

Rumi mugs on fashiontoast.com

Coquetteis a general fashion and style blog by SF writer Natalie Zee Drieu, with some coverage of local designers and stores.

SF Indie Fashion concentrates on local independent designers, stores and events.

SFBayStyle is a local fashion e-zine/blog with multiple contributors, many of whom are based in the Peninsula; it has a slightly more mainstream focus.

Fashiontoast is the personal style page of SF girl Rumi, with lots of pretty pictures of her in Kate Moss-ish getups, along with links and reviews relating to fashion.

SFStyle does street fashion ala Facehunter, except with tons of hilarious analysis and commentary.

Streetfancy is another street fashion blog, very heavy on nightlife coverage and very recognizable locals like Merkley. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated in almost six months.

You didn’t expect to actually get any work done today, did you? You’re welcome.

Fishing for hooks

-

July 23, 2008
0

Jackson, Miss., might not top everyone’s cities-to-see list, but Juan Velazquez of Chino band Abe Vigoda makes it sound like a damn fun place to play a show. "Everyone was really psyched, and there were a bunch of younger people there," raved Velazquez by phone while en route from Atlanta to Athens, Ga. "It was really, really fun." He and the rest of the band are pretty young themselves: they’re currently taking a break from their work and collegiate studies to tour across the states with their cloudy pop homies in No Age, fellow fixtures at the Smell in downtown Los Angeles.

Making time has allowed the four-year-old Abe Vigoda some taking of time, especially with the recording process. They just released their third full-length, Skeleton (PPM), which sharpens their tightly wound, clanging sensibilities into a set of songs more aggressively constructed than anything they’ve committed to tape before.

Various listeners and critics have been trumpeting Abe Vigoda’s racket as "tropical punk/pop," a label that the band sees little reason to complain about, even if it is arbitrary pigeonholing to a certain degree. "People like to make up genres for things, and I’m a little tired of it, especially because a lot of our new songs aren’t like that," Velazquez said. "But nobody’s calling it ‘shit punk’ or ‘shit rock,’ so it’s OK." Shit it is not. The record reveals itself to be a few shades darker than its murky production on repeat listens, but its enthusiasm and refined approach makes Skeleton Abe Vigoda’s first record that allows listeners to dig deeper. Songs like "Cranes" and "Hyacinth Girls" have an Afro-pop beat, care of drummer Reggie Guerrero and corroborated by David Reichart’s bass playing, and the zap-gun guitars of "Endless Sleeper" collide in rousing, unusually anthemic fashion.

To produce their wire-crossed jangle, Velazquez explains that the group’s other singer-guitarist Michael Vidal plays "thick-sounding and full" chords on his guitar in standard tuning, while Velazquez employs an alternate tuning that he’s been using since 2007’s Kid City (Olfactory) and a Ricky Wilson–esque employment of single, finger-picked notes. "It’s more jarring live because we’re playing very high frequencies that are off from each other — harsh, ringing, and kinda kraut rock–sounding."

Although the group has become more traditional in its song structure, it’s not really "pop" that they put together: their cataclysmic, yelping noise of yore has given way to a polyrhythmic pogo twist with opportunities aplenty for fist-shaking and epic metalhead finger-waving.

ABE VIGODA

With No Age and Mika Miko

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

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Also Club Sandwich’s second anniversary with No Age, Mika Miko, and KIT

Tues/29, 7 p.m., $8

Lobot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

For more on the show and No Age, see this week’s Sonic Reducer.

Orphan storm

-

July 8, 2008
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The orphan was a staple figure in silent cinema. She or he evoked the pathos required in sentimental melodramas, and also highlighted a prevalent social problem. The predicament wasn’t that orphans existed so much as that orphanages did. Dickensian clichés of wicked minders profiting from the ill-keeping of abused and undernourished charges were often not far from the truth.

The notion that flowers of pure innocence might spring from this kind of environmental mire was a popular dramatic conceit. It floated entire careers for such variably waiflike or plucky Pollyannas as Janet Gaynor, Lillian Gish, Mary Miles Minter (until she went down in a murder scandal), and of course, Mary Pickford, who was still playing foundlings in 1926, at 34. Their male counterparts were generally allowed to be scrappier: sad from being misunderstood, but gosh-darn-determined to prove the haters and snobs wrong.

One of the least-known titles in the 13th San Francisco Silent Film Festival, The Soul of Youth is a small delight that hews to and transcends the reigning tropes of screen ragamuffinery circa 1920. It opens on a note of heavy moral correctitude, as titles inform us that "A woman, who pray God there be no more like, has offered for sale her unborn child. Think of it: a helpless little baby, before its eyes have opened on the world, labeled ‘unwanted’ and sold!" Framed only to call the mother’s character into question, it’s no matter that this woman is impoverished, or that she dies after giving birth, or that she was initially tricked into the exchange by an addict who had the goods on her errant politician boyfriend.

Little Ed is then dumped into the nearest orphanage, a cruel place where — when next encountered at age 14, as played by 17-year-old Lewis Sergant — he is considered incorrigible and unfairly blamed for thefts and other misdeeds. His rescue of an imperiled black babe (cringingly named Rastus) goes unappreciated. It’s only when he secretly takes in a fellow underdog — a stray canine named Simp — that "for the first time, love enters Ed’s life." When this uninvited boarder is discovered, the pair must escape the orphanage and then the police, landing on that "Mecca of the homeless — the streets."

Meanwhile it turns out the sleazebag who rejected him as a son is now a corrupt mayoral candidate angling to defeat a terribly upstanding one. Ed’s accidental involvement in that race — by risking his neck to preserve the respectability of virtuous rich folk and becoming a hero — proves his ultimate salvation. In classic wish-fulfillment fashion, he ends up (à la Little Orphan Annie) rewarded via adoption by the morally superior luxury class. But Soul of Youth is savvy enough to contrast Ed’s new family with a wealthy neighbor who thinks she can replace her beloved lap-cat with a cherub sporting "blue eyes and golden curls." Just like Paris Hilton and her impulse-buy menagerie!

Soul of Youth was directed by William Desmond Taylor, whose yet-unsolved 1922 murder destroyed the futures of actresses (and intimates) Minter and Mabel Normand. The lovely work he does here makes one lament his too-short career. His protagonist, the floppy-banged, spunkily adorable Sargent, played Huckleberry Finn the same year. He subsequently suffered the usual post-juvenile career slide, resurfacing as a pal of Tarzan in mid-’30s serials and exiting as an unidentified thug in Miss Mink, a beyond-obscure film from 1949. He spent the next 20 years as a California state probation officer.

During Taylor’s youth as a performer, Victorian morality still targeted his own lack of a parent — as well as his outright illegitimacy — as inherently morally suspect and something to be overcome. Simultaneously prim and liberal in teaching its big lesson, Soul of Youth winds up firmly on the side of nurture over nature. "The kind of man this boy will make depends on his surroundings. It’s up to us, dear," the film’s virtuous tycoon tells his vain socialite wife.

Alongside the poorhouse and the asylum, the orphanage was a widespread 19th-century American public entity later disgraced/dismantled by reformists. The orphanage helped usher in the "welfare" era — stressing economic support where parents couldn’t manage rather than pushing abandoned, "bastard," or otherwise problematic kids into warehouse institutions. (Those group and foster homes they were shunted toward hardly fixed all historic problems, however.) Soul of Youth retains charm for insisting class, economic, and other social divisions might well tumble before the sheer force of Ed’s nascent Boy Scout–dom.

THE SOUL OF YOUTH Sat/12, 11:40 a.m., Castro

THE 13TH SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL runs July 11–13 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF. Advance tickets (most shows $12–$17) are available by calling 1-800-838-3006 or visiting www.silentfilm.org

The Fourth of July in Rock Rapids, Iowa, 1940-53

-

July 3, 2008
0

The good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa,
the Fourth of July, l940-53

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Note: In July of l972, when the Guardian was short a Fourth of July story, I sat down and cranked out this one for the front page on my trusty Royal Typewriter. I now reprint it each year on the Bruce blog, with some San Francisco updates and postscripts.)

Back where I come from, a small town beneath a tall standpipe in northwestern Iowa, the Fourth of July was the best day of a long, hot summer.

The Fourth came after YMCA camp and Scout camp and church camp, but before the older boys had to worry about getting into shape for football. It was welcome relief from the scalding, 100-degree heat in a town without a swimming pool and whose swimming holes at Scout Island were usually dried up by early July. But best of all, it had the kind of excitement that began building weeks in advance.

The calm of the summer dawn and the cooing of the mourning doves on the telephone wires would be broken early on July Fourth: The Creglow boys would be up by 7 a.m. and out on the lawn shooting off their arsenal of firecrackers. They were older and had somehow sent their agents by car across the state line and into South Dakota where, not far above the highway curves of Larchwood, you could legally buy fireworks at roadside stands.

Ted Fisch, Jim Ramsey, Wiener Winters, the Cook boys, Hermie Casjens, Jerry Prahl, and the rest of the neighborhood would race of their houses to catch the action. Some of them had cajoled firecrackers from their parents or bartered from the older boys in the neighborhood: some torpedoes (the kind you smashed against the sidewalk); lots of 2 and 3-inchers, occasionally the granddaddy of them all, the cherry bomb (the really explosive firecracker, stubby, cherry red, with a wick sticking up menacingly from its middle; the kind of firecracker you’d gladly trade away your best set of Submariner comics for).

Ah, the cherry bomb. It was a microcosm of excitement and mischief and good fun. Bob Creglow, the most resourceful of the Creglow boys, would take a cherry bomb, set it beneath a tin can on a porch, light the fuse, then head for the lilac bushes behind the barn.

“The trick,” he would say, imparting wisdom of the highest order, “is to place the can on a wood porch with a wood roof. Then it will hit the top of the porch, bang, then the bottom of the porch, bang. That’s how you get the biggest clatter.”

So I trudged off to the Linkenheil house, the nearest front porch suitable for cherry bombing, to try my hand at small-town demolition. Bang went the firecracker. Bang went the can on the roof. Bang went the can on the floor. Bang went the screen door as Karl Linkenheil roared out in a sweat, and I lit out for the lilacs behind the barn with my dog, Oscar.

It was glorious stuff – not to be outdone for years, I found out later, until the Halloween eve in high school when Dave Dietz, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Bob Babl, and rest of the Hermie Casjens gang and I made the big time and twice pushed a boxcar loaded with lumber across Main Street and blocked it for hours. But that’s another story in my Halloween blog of last year.

Shooting off fireworks was, of course, illegal in Rock Rapids, but Chief of Police Del Woodburn and later Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger used to lay low on the Fourth. I don’t recall ever seeing them about in our neighborhood and I don’t think they ever arrested anybody, although each year the Rock Rapids Reporter would carry vague warnings about everybody cooperating to have “a safe and sane Fourth of July.”

Perhaps it was just too dangerous for them to start making firecracker arrests on the Fourth – on the same principle, I guess, that it was dangerous to do too much about the swashbuckling on Halloween or start running down dogs without leashes (Mayor Earl Fisher used to run on the platform that, as long as he was in office, no dog in town would have to be leashed. The neighborhood consensus was that Fisher’s dog, a big, boisterous boxer, was one of the few that ought to be leashed).

We handled the cherry bombs and other fireworks in our possession with extreme care and cultivation; I can’t remember a single mishap. Yet, even then, the handwriting was on the wall. There was talk of cutting off the fireworks supply in South Dakota because it was dangerous for young boys. Pretty soon, they did cut off the cherry bomb traffic and about all that was left, when I came back from college and the Roger boys had replaced the Creglow boys next door, was little stuff appropriately called ladyfingers.

Fireworks are dangerous, our parents would say, and each year they would dust off the old chestnut about the drugstore in Spencer that had a big stock of fireworks and they caught fire one night and much of the downtown went up in a spectacular shower of roman candles and sparkling fountains.

The story was hard to pin down, and seemed to get more gruesome every year – but, we were told, this was why Iowa banned fireworks years before, why they were so dangerous and why little boys shouldn’t be setting them off. The story, of course, never made quite the intended impression; we just wished we’d been on the scene.
My grandfather was the town druggist (Brugmann’s Drugstore, “where drugs and gold are fairly sold,” since 1902) and he said he knew the Spencer druggist personally. Fireworks put him out of business and into the poorhouse, he’d say, and walk away shaking his head.

In any event, firecrackers weren’t much of an issue past noon – the Fourth celebration at the fairgrounds was getting underway and there was too much else to do. Appropriately, the celebration was sponsored by the Rex Strait post of the American Legion (Strait, so the story went, was the first boy from Rock Rapids to die on foreign soil during World War I); the legionnaires were a bunch of good guys from the cleaners and the feed store and the bank who sponsored the American Legion baseball team each summer.

There was always a big carnival, with a ferris wheel somewhere in the center for the kids, a bingo stand for the elders, a booth where the ladies from the Methodist Church sold homemade baked goods, sometimes a hootchy dancer or two, and a couple of dank watering holes beneath the grandstand where the VFW and the Legion sold Grainbelt and Hamms at 30¢ a bottle to anybody who looked of age.

Later on, when the farmboys came in from George and Alvord, there was lots of pushing and shoving, and a fist fight or two.

In front of the grandstand, out in the dust and the sun, would come a succession of shows that made the summer rounds of the little towns. One year it would be Joey Chitwood and his daredevil drivers. (The announcer always fascinated me: “Here he comes, folks, rounding the far turn…he is doing a great job out there tonight…let’s give him a big, big hand as he pulls up in front on the grandstand…”)

Another year it would be harness racing and Mr. Hardy, our local trainer from Doon, would be in his moment of glory. Another year it was tag team wrestling and a couple of barrel-chested goons from Omaha, playing the mean heavies and rabbit-punching their opponents from the back, would provoke roars of disgust from the grandstand. ( The biggest barrel-chest would lean back on the ropes, looking menacingly at the crowd and yell, “ Aw, you dumb farmers. What the hell do you know anyway?” And the grandstand would roar back in glee.)

One year, Cedric Adams, the Herb Caen of Minneapolis and the Star-Tribune, would tour the provinces as the emcee of a variety show. “It’s great to be in Rock Rapids,” he would say expansively, “because it’s always been known as the ‘Gateway to Magnolia.” (Magnolia, he didn’t need to say, was a little town just over the state line in Minnesota which was known throughout the territory for its liquor-by-the-drink roadhouses. It was also Cedric Adams’ hometown: his “Sackamenna.”) Adams kissed each girl (soundly) who came on the platform to perform and, at the end, hushed the crowd for his radio broadcast to the big city “direct from the stage of the Lyon County Fairgrounds in Rock Rapids, Iowa.”

For a couple of years, when Rock Rapids had a “town team,” and a couple of imported left-handed pitchers named Peewee Wenger and Karl Kletschke, we would have some rousing baseball games with the best semi-pro team around, Larchwood and its gang of Snyder brothers: Barney the eldest at shortstop, Jimmy the youngest at third base, John in center field, Paul in left field, another Snyder behind the plate and a couple on the bench. They were as tough as they came in Iowa baseball.

I can remember it as if it were yesterday at Candlestick, the 1948 game with the Snyders of Larchwood. Peewee Wenger, a gawky, 17-year-old kid right off a high school team, was pitching for Rock Rapids and holding down the Snyder artillery in splendid fashion. Inning after inning he went on, nursing a small lead, mastering one tough Larchwood batter after another, with a blistering fastball and a curve that sliced wickedly into the bat handles of the right-handed Larchwood line-up.

Then the cagey Barney Snyder laid a slow bunt down the third base line. Wenger stumbled, lurched, almost fell getting to the ball, then toppled off balance again, stood helplessly holding the ball. He couldn’t make the throw to first. Barney was safe, cocky and firing insults like machine gun bullets at Peewee from first base.

Peewee, visibly shaken, went back to the mound. He pitched, the next Larchwood batter bunted, this time down the first base line. Peewee lurched for the ball, but couldn’t come up with it. A couple more bunts, a shot through the pitcher’s mound, more bunts and Peewee was out. He could pitch, but, alas, he was too clumsy to field. In came Bill Jammer, now in his late 30’s, but in his day the man who beat the University of Iowa while pitching at a small college called Simpson.

Now he was pitching on guts and beer, a combination good enough for many teams and on good days even to take on the Snyders. Jammer did well for a couple of innings, then he let two men on base, then came a close call at the plate. Jammer got mad. Both teams were off the bench and onto the field and, as Fred Roach wrote in the Rock Rapids Reporter, “fisticuffs erupted at home plate.” When the dust cleared, Jammer has a broken jaw, and for the next two weeks had to drink his soup through a straw at the Joy Lunch. John Snyder, it was said later, came all the way in from center field to throw the punch, but nobody knew for sure and he stayed in the game. I can’t remember the score or who won the game, but I remember it as the best Fourth ever.

At dusk, the people moved out on their porches or put up folding chairs on the lawn. Those who didn’t have a good view drove out to the New Addition or parked out near Mark Curtis’ place or along the river roads that snaked out to the five-mile bridge and Virgil Hasche’s place.

A hush came over the town. Fireflies started flickering in the river bottom and, along about 8:30, the first puff of smoke rose above the fairgrounds and an aerial bomb whistled into the heavens. BOOM! And the town shook as if hit by a clap of thunder.

Then the three-tiered sky bombs – pink, yellow, white, puff, puff, puff. The Niagara Falls and a gush of white sparks.

Then, in sudden fury, a dazzling display of sizzling comets and aerial bombs and star clusters that arched high, hung for a full breath and descended in a cascade of sparks that floated harmlessly over the meadows and cornfields. At the end, the flag – red, white and blue – would burst forth on the ground as the All-American finale in the darkest of the dark summer nights. On cue, the cheers rolled out from the grandstand and the cars honked from the high ground and the people trundled up their lawn chairs and everybody headed for home.

Well, I live in San Francisco now, and I drive to Daly City with my son, Danny, to buy some anemic stuff in gaudy yellow and blue wrapping and I try unsuccessfully each year to get through the fog or the traffic to see the fireworks at Candlestick. But I feel better knowing that, back where I come from, everybody in town will be on their porches and on the backroads on the evening of the Fourth to watch the fireworks and that, somewhere in town, a little boy will put a big firecracker under a tin can on a wood porch, then light out for the lilacs behind the barn.

P.S. Our family moved in l965 from Daly City to a house in the West Portal area of San Francisco. There are, I assure you, few visible fireworks in that neighborhood. However, down where we work at the Guardian building at the bottom of Potrero Hill, the professional and amateur action is spectacular.

From the roof of our building at 135 Mississippi, and from any Potrero Hill height, you can see the fireworks in several directions: the waterfront fireworks in the city, fireworks on the Marin side of the Golden Gate bridge, fireworks at several points in the East Bay, fireworks along the Peninsula coast line.

And for the amateur action, parents with kids, kids of all ages, spectators in cars and on foot, congregate after dusk along Terry Francois Boulevard in San Francisco along the shoreline between the Giants ballpark and Kellys Mission Rock restaurant.
The action is informal but fiery and furious: cherry bombs, clusters, spinning wheels, high flying arcs, whizzers of all shapes and sizes. The cops are quite civilized and patrol the perimeter but don’t bother anybody. I go every year. I think it’s the best show in town. B3.

Speed Reading

-

July 1, 2008
0

FASHION: A PHILOSOPHY

By Lars Svendsen

Reaktion Books

188 pages

$24.95

As a once and future dandy, I’ve noted the growing field of fashion philosophy. In the realm of the academy, the idea of a unified theory of style has become something of a holy grail. The latest knight-errant, Lars Svendsen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Bergen in Norway, starts his quest by seeking the meaning of fashion.

Relying heavily on Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin, Svendsen (as translated by John Irons) creates a concise and comprehensive primer on fashion and clothing as it relates to identity. He then stitches on a virtual CliffsNotes of philosophy on fashion, citing Roland Barthes, Charles Baudelaire, and Michel Foucault, and then appliqués some hep quotes from Bret Easton Ellis, AbFab, and the Pet Shop Boys.

In the end, Svendsen finds that we cultivate surfaces, that we live in an increasingly fictionalized reality, and that our identities are in steady decline. He concludes that fashion is a highly diverse phenomenon that pretends to have meaning, but in reality "has meaning to only a limited extent." That’s it? Fashion has no meaning, but some meaning? How weak is that?

If philosophy wishes to find meaning in fashion, it must make room for the power of talisman, totem, and fetish — elements that pure reason cannot abide. Svendsen errs in a manner many fashion philosophers have, by refusing to look away from the runways of Europe toward the magical elements of dress in Africa, Asia, and South America. The eggheads just don’t get it.

1...535455...63 Page 54 of 63