President Barack Obama is fond of reciting the Martin Luther King Jr. quote, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” On the issue of marriage equality, that arc looks more like a zig-zagging path that began when San Francisco unilaterally began issuing marriage license to same-sex couples just before Valentines Day in 2004 and ending — its backers hope — in June 2013 with the US Supreme Court affirming the basic constitutional right of everyone to marry whomever they want and to have those marriages treated equally under the law.
“We’ve seen the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows,” said City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who has watched court injunctions blocking marriages by the city, the California Supreme Court ruling that the ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution, the 2008 vote amending the constitution through Proposition. 8, and the Ninth Circuit Court ruling that the measure violated federal equal protection standards.
Yet few officials or legal experts are willing to predict with any certainty that this long and winding road will end with a definitive conclusion in June. In fact, Herrera and other same-sex marriage supporters expressed disappointment Dec. 7 when the Supreme Court announced it had decided to review the Ninth Circuit Court ruling that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional.
Letting the ruling in Perry v. Brown stand would have re-legalized same-sex marriages in California, which would have joined the nine other states and the District of Columbia as places where it’s legal for gays and lesbians to get hitched. Yet in taking the case — along with U.S. v. Windsor, which challenges the Defense of Marriage Act and its prohibition on recognizing the inheritance law and tax code rights of same-sex spouses — the court could issue a landmark civil rights ruling striking down all laws that discriminate against same-sex couples.
That’s the hope of California Attorney General Kamala Harris. “Are we a country that is true to its word and true to its spirit, or not?” was how Harris framed the question at a Dec. 7 press conference with Herrera. She focused on the basic equal protection argument and the need to “stand for the principle that we are equal and we will be treated that way.”
Herrera, who had just gotten off a conference call with lead attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies and the rest of the advocates who are defending same-sex marriage, told reporters that the main goal was a broad ruling: “Ted Olson has made it clear he’s going to make a very broad argument.” Yet the Supreme Court could also issue a narrow ruling, extending the twisty path of this issue.
As for reading the tea leaves, Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart, who has litigated the city’s position since the beginning, said she doesn’t think anyone knows how this case is going to be resolved — not even the Supreme Court justices themselves. “I don’t think they know, to be honest with you,” Stewart said when asked whether taking the Perry and DOMA cases indicate a willingness to finally settle the broad question of whether same-sex couples should be treated equally to heterosexual couples.
She noted that the Supreme Court waited until the last minute — its decision had initially been expected on Nov. 30 — to decide to take the cases: “They took a long time, so clearly they’re wrestling with it.”
Like many observers, Harris speculated that Justice Kennedy is the likely swing vote if the court reaches a 5-4 ruling on the issue, and some have speculated that Chief Justice Roberts could also be a surprisingly liberal vote on the issue, as he was earlier this year in upholding Obamacare. And the advocates say their optimism is reinforced by the long and meticulous case for marriage equality that advocates put together in the courtroom of federal Judge Vaughn Walker, whose 2010 ruling the Ninth Circuit upheld.
“We worked really hard to put in the best possible case,” Stewart said, while Herrera said, “I can think of no better case to take up than this case…The confidence level of all of us is high.”
Yet even if it turns out that there are a few more turns to navigate before justice prevails on what Harris called “the civil rights struggle of our time,” the advocates are pledging to win marriage equality in California next year, even if that means going back to the ballot. “We’re going to win this fight one way or another,” Sup. Scott Wiener said at the press conference, with Sup. David Campos later adding, “the question is whether the Supreme Court chooses to be on the right side or history or the wrong side of history.” It was a theme that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom — who started us down this path with his unilateral decision as mayor to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — echoed in public statement he released: “Today’s announcement starts the clock towards the final decision for California. History will one day be divided into the time before marriage equality and the period that follows. And thankfully, we will be on the side of history worthy of being proud of.”
EDITOR’S NOTES The two prominent lawyers who helped bring same-sex marriage to the US Supreme Court, Theodore Olson and David Boies, started out their case with the notion that it would get to the highest court, and that the Court would find a fundamental Constitutional right to marriage equality.
They’re both brilliant litigators who have argued more than 50 cases before the Supreme Court — and they think they know something. I can’t get into either man’s brain, but what legal scholars around the country are saying is that the fate (for now) of same-sex marriage may come down to one person, Justice Anthony Kennedy. And they figure he’s going to be on the right side.
I wouldn’t be surprised — those two have been here before, parsed this court, and been right enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. In fact, although 30-some states still ban same-sex marriage, I think the members of the Court see the direction that history is going. It’s moving fast, too — in five years, the tide will have fully turned, and the Court doesn’t want to be horribly embarrassed.
Kennedy, of course, is often the swing vote on the divided court — and in two prior cases, he wrote the decision affirming gay rights.
Kennedy was appointed by Ronald Reagan, but what hasn’t been mentioned much in the press was that he was a second choice. Reagan wanted Robert Bork in that position — and if Bork had gotten the job, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Bork is another Antonin Scalia and would have held down the right wing of the Court and ensured a 5-4 right-wing majority.
This goes back to 1987, ancient history for a lot of political people today. When Reagan, who mostly got his way, nominated Bork, an unheard-of coalition came together to oppose him. It seemed a long shot — it was rare for a Supreme Court nominee to get rejected. Some argued that it wouldn’t matter, anyway — if Bork lost, Reagan would nominate someone else just as bad.
But the opposition came together. The ACLU, which in its history had only opposed one other Supreme Court nominee, helped lead the way. Women’s groups around the country joined in, mostly because of Bork’s open hostility to abortion rights. The Guardian ran a front-page piece called “The case against Judge Bork.” It was a huge national issue.
Sen. Ted Kennedy led the Judiciary Committee opposition to Bork, and all of us were riveted to the proceedings, which aired on KPFA and NPR. Bork gave detailed answers to all the questions, explaining, for example, why he thought Roe v. Wade was “improperly decided.” In the end, his nomination was rejected, 58-42.
Reagan got the message. He nominated Anthony Kennedy — also a conservative, but not a Bork-style nut. And the course of legal history was changed.
So if the Court comes down 5-4 for same-sex marriage, and Kennedy is the fifth vote, we can all thank that massive mobilizing effort a quarter century ago that kept a young, healthy, wingnut who would still be there today from holding that critical seat.
IN OTHER NEWS: The mayor may think the scandal over Housing Authority Director Henry Alvarez is going to blow over, but he’s wrong. There are lots of problems in that agency. Among other things, as Citireport publisher Larry Bush has detailed over the past year, Alvarez used his official position (and city time) to go after a nonprofit, the Housing Rights Committee, that was advocating for public-housing tenants. Lee needs to distance himself from this guy, or he’s going to get dragged down with him.
YEAR IN MUSIC If you wanna rob a bank you must be aware. You gotta use the computer upstairs.
Back in June, Bob Boilen, the host of NPR’s All Songs Considered, posted “I Just Deleted All My Music.” It was a gee-how-the-times-they-are-a-changin’ sort of article detailing how Boilen had begun using Apple’s iTunes based cloud service for storing his music collection. It likely would have been shortly forgotten by everyone (including the author) if not for a follow-up response a couple weeks later by the show’s new intern, Emily White. With “I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With,” White — whose 11,000+ song library was largely ripped from her college radio station — confessed to having “never supported physical music as a consumer,” adding, “I honestly don’t think my peers and I will ever pay for albums.”
The subsequent fallout (Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery had a long response in which he rebuked “Congratulations, your generation is the first in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to weirdo freak musicians!”) became part of an ongoing debate over the state of the record industry. For more than a decade since Napster, the industry has been looking for a new bottom line as physical sales decline, and in keeping with tradition, it seems musicians have been getting shorted.
In a September cover story for New York Magazine, indie rockers Grizzly Bear revealed that despite debuting high on the shrinking Billboard Charts and selling out shows, the band was not exactly living the rockstar lifestyle of years past. Whereas it’s previously been taboo or damaging to integrity to air out money issues (::cough:: Metallica ::cough::), artists in 2012 were increasingly candid about the financial stakes.
Most candid, perhaps, was Damon Krukowski, who gave explicit numbers — in an opinion piece on Pitchfork — for how much his Galaxie 500 bandmates made from online music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. As the remaining major labels — there are, with EMI finally being acquired by Universal late this year, now three majors, including Sony and Warner Music — attempt to leverage their catalogs online, free streaming services are a major part.
When Pandora founder Tim Westergren — in a refreshing bit of transparency — detailed some financials in October, notably that “Drake and Lil Wayne are fast approaching a $3 million annual rate each,” it was an obvious boon for parent company Universal. For artists in the long-tail though, the rates are not so promising. By Krukowski’s calculations, Galaxie 500’s entire 64-song catalog earned $64.17 from Pandora in a quarter. Spotify in turn has an indie rate of paying $.005 per play, with the hope of scaling up as more people use the service and bring in revenue through either ads or subscription. For a small artist it amounts to a little more than the value of a handful of physical CD sold in the past. (To make matters worse, at the same time he announced large payments to labels, Westergren ironically sought to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act, which would greatly reduce the royalties streaming sites like Pandora would have to pay artists.)
When you reach the bottom line. The only thing to do is climb.
Krukowski didn’t just suggest people go back to buying CDs or records; at the end of his article he pointed in the direction of Bandcamp, an online distribution platform that allows bands to stream and market their own downloads and merchandise. Bandcamp still takes a cut, but it’s an inversion of the royalty scheme artists traditionally have had with labels and now streaming sites.
Visit the homepage of Bandcamp, and you’ll be greeted by a testimonial from singer Amanda Palmer: “I’ve always tried to be as directly connected with fans as possible, but until you guys came along the infrastructure was much more difficult. Bandcamp brings the whole picture together into a lovely package that not only works, but works WELL. Me and my team made more in one night than I’ve seen to date from my 2008 (major-label) album.” Having found success marketing her album on Bandcamp, Palmer in April attempted to raise some money in advance for her next project via the crowd-sourced funding platform Kickstarter.
Well, attempted is not the right word. Palmer maintains a close relationship with her fans via Twitter and blogs, and they in turn give her a sort of fervent reverence. On a goal of $100,000, the Kickstarter project raised $1.2 million, and Palmer immediately became a model for DIY financing: not only could a person sell an album online, they could produce it as well.
But with the added attention came close scrutiny: Palmer’s habit of having “volunteers” along side her paid band onstage for tour dates irked some outside observers, who felt that with all that money she could afford to pay musician’s wage. Initially, Palmer resisted, saying “If my fans are happy and my audience is happy and the musicians on stage are happy, where’s the problem?” before announcing that, in addition to beer and high-fives, the musicians who assisted her on tour would all receive checks after all. Supporting a Kickstarter often borders on philanthropy, and as a consequence, there’s an interest in making sure the money is well spent.
“A FULL-BLOWN MOTHERFUCKIN’ BATTLE between the old school (people must pay for digital content or musicians will starve and die!!!!) and the new school (digital content cannot be locked, the floodgates are open, let’s figure out a new creative solution!!!)”
That’s how Palmer described NPR intern Emily White’s critical “kerfuffle”, when the two met in September (while Palmer was still the subject of numerous blog posts and the recipient of emails addressed “dear amanda, you ignorant slut…”). But she could have been describing her own situation. Or any musician’s for that matter. Because that battle is going to go on until the record industry goes back to being a music industry, and if there’s been increased openness in the last year from both artists and conglomerates, it’s because they’re no longer alone in setting the terms.
RYAN PRENDIVILLE’S TOP TEN ANNOYING OR UNNECESSARY SUB-GENRES
10. Mashup — No. 9. Glitch — I’ll wait for post-Glitch. 8. Electro Swing — No bonus points for sampling from the public domain. 7. Blog House — Clearly all music originates from blogs at this point, so this is just unnecessary. 6. Future [whatever] — The future is not now. 5. Grimes — I liked “Oblivion” as much as the next person, but I really don’t think she deserves a genre unto herself. 4. EDM — No one listens to Acoustic Relaxing Music, this is just lazy. 3. PBR&B — If something is good, don’t put it in a little ghetto genre just to be clever. Call it R&B and let it redefine what that means. 2. Brostep — The popularization of this term hopefully means that the backlash is well on the way. 1. Trap — Having a conversation about Trap in 2012 is like having a conversation about Dubstep in 2007: with a lengthy, laborious explanation. Can’t wait to see what 2017 has in store.
YEAR IN MUSIC I’m at the Marina in Berkeley with J-Stalin around noon, waiting for producer-rapper Droop E to arrive so he and J can shoot a video for his upcoming EP, Hungry & Humble. I was invited, not by Droop but by his “Pops,” Bay Area legend E-40, to do an interview for 40’s epic, two-album collaboration with Too Short, History (HeavyOnTheGrind/EMI, 2012).
“Shiiit, me and you go way back, patna,” 40 said the week before over the phone, recalling prior interviews. “I just gotta film a cameo then we’ll do it there.” But since scheduling the article, I haven’t been able to reach him, either directly or by publicist, so Stalin took pity on me and brought me along to the shoot.
“I’m going on tour with Trae tha Truth,” Stalin says, referring to the Houston rapper signed to T.I.’s Grand Hustle label. “He flew out here and Ghazi from Empire Distribution picked him up from the airport; when Trae got in the car, he was like, ‘Who is J-Stalin? I need to work with him.'”
That word of Stalin has spread to Houston is an encouraging sign in the usually bleak landscape of Bay Area rap, and couldn’t come at a better time as the West Oakland MC prepares his fourth “official” solo album, On Behalf of the Streets, Pt 2. Like J’s debut, OBOTS2 is produced entirely by the Mekanix; the difference six years later is Stalin’s now the second bestselling local rapper after E-40 — according to Rasputin Records — and the Mekanix are among the Bay’s hottest producers, working with everyone from 40 on down. In the absence of local radio or major label support, the stakes continue to increase for the author of Memoirs of a Curb Server (Livewire/Fontana, 2012) and the proprietors of The Chop Shop (ZooEnt, 2012).
The day stretches on, tedious yet fascinating. Droop E’s got a serious film crew here and armed security to boot; the only thing missing is a permit. And 40. Various rappers drift in and out, like Cousin Fik, latest star of DJ Fresh’s ongoing Tonite Show series, or Lil Blood and Boo Banga, who released a syrup-drenched duo disc Cream Soda and Actavis (Livewire) this year. A member of Stalin’s Livewire crew from Oakland’s Dogtown neighborhood, Blood’s prepping his own official debut, Meet the Driver and the Shooter, for February. He takes off his ski hat and shows off his scalp, revealing an entrance wound and an exit wound about an inch and a half apart. Everybody laughs, but they don’t think it’s funny. It’s a stark reminder of how little insulation there is between the industry and the street out here.
HYPHY 2.0
Between takes, I get in some questions with Droop E. Besides launching his own career, Droop has had a big hand in his dad’s, co-executive producing four volumes of Revenue Retrievin’ (2010-11) and three of Block Brochure (2012) for his HeavyOnTheGrind imprint of 40’s Sick Wid It Records. Yet the 24-year-old veteran — who, as a teen, was one of the architects of hyphy, along with Rick Rock, Traxamillion, and ShoNuff — lives up to his EP’s title.
“I’m a partner but I’m still a protégé,” he says. “I’m learning a lot, seeing my Pops get into a whole nother mode of beastin’ and just making our own sound.”
That sound, judging from Block Brochure and History, has grown suspiciously more hyphy lately, in the wake of Drake’s double platinum “The Motto,” an overt homage to the Bay Area music of half a decade ago.
“That ended up being beneficial,” Droop says, “because look at the sound now in the Bay and L.A. ‘The Motto’ opened it up again.”
Given the bizarre local backlash against hyphy beginning mid-2007 — forcing its originators to prematurely back away from the sound — this is a remarkably philosophical purchase. Reached by phone, Traxamillion agrees, as his own 2012 disc My Radio (SMC) finds him revisiting the implications of the sound.
“I’m not mad,” he says. “I felt like I had an influence on music on a national level.”
OUT HERE TRYNA FUNCTION
The next night, I’m in a Dublin club, where we’re not allowed to drink, because this is a movie. Sympathetic to my long wait, Droop E’s somehow procures me some Jameson’s and the tawny liquid immediately catches E-40’s eye. “Gable, what you got there?” Dressed in a black pinstriped suit, 40 has finally arrived for his cameo, a series of elaborate tracking shots of him pouring a shot and toasting. Finally, I manage to catch him in an unoccupied moment and remind him about the interview; can we tape a few questions? He fixes me with a look of contempt.
“Nah, I ain’t fuckin’ with you.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. Then, with agonizing slowness, a smile begins to creep across his lips.
“Nah, I’m just playin’,” he says. “Let’s do it.”
Delays are nothing new to the Vallejo MC; he and Too Short first began announcing History in the late ’90s while they were both on Jive, but Jive never let it happen.
“It was 10 years in the making, but it didn’t take 10 years to make,” 40 says. “God work in mysterious ways so now’s the perfect time because we get all the marbles. We superindependent. We got a distribution deal through EMI.”
40’s made the most of his new freedom, only releasing albums in pairs and trios since parting with Warner after The Ball Street Journal (2008). Where BSJ bore clear signs of corporate overthink, 40’s prolific post-Warner output makes it obvious that he does his best work with a free hand. At age 45, the rapper scored one of his biggest hits this year with Block Brochure‘s “Function,” which in turn has provided a convenient new label to replace the toxic term “hyphy.” History‘s two volumes are thus divided into Mob Music and Function Music.
“Function music is more club, party music,” 40 says. “The difference between function music and mob music, function is the feel of the new era; we’re covering two and a half to three decades of music. We been doing it since the mid-’80s and here it’s almost 2013. Some people wish they could have one hit; I have had many hits in my life.”
“There’s people who don’t like me but I’ve carved my name into the history books,” he concludes. “There’ll never be another E-40 ever because I’m too different. One thing about the Bay Area: we some trendsetters and we got haters and they talk about us but they duplicate us later.”
APPETITE The past year saw a number of openings I hope will be around for years to come — here is my list, in order, of my favorites. As ever, my goal is to include more affordable spots alongside midrange or upscale openings, considering range and uniqueness. It being December, I cannot strictly cover the calendar year so, with each choice open at least two months, the opening date range goes back to October 2011 for a full year.
1. AQ
The one California restaurant nominated for Best New Restaurant in the US at this year’s James Beard Awards, AQ is my top selection for “the whole package.” While I find the food at the next two restaurants listed below equally inspiring, AQ combines food from talented young chef Mark Liberman, reinvented in delightfully surprising ways (think flavors of a pastrami sandwich turned on its head as shaved lamb heart “pastrami” with zucchini bread and house Thousand Island dressing), alongside an inventive cocktail list and accomplished bar staff. I’m still dreaming of this summer’s Maeklong Market Cocktail with a base of peanut-infused mekhong — a sugar cane, molasses, and rice-based Thai spirit — creamy with coconut milk, lime and kaffir lime leaves. As if this weren’t enough, the wine list shines and decor is the crowning touch in a two-level space with sexy downstairs lounge for private parties, plus greenery, glassware, and a bar top that changes with the season. When I’m asked (constantly) where to go by locals and visitors, AQ easily fits the bill for delicious, forward-thinking cuisine with warm service: a destination for both food and drink, with thoughtful attention to the environs.
Since Bon Appetit named State Bird Provisions best new restaurant in America this year, none of us can get a reservation in the small, modest space with pegboard and stone walls (like dining in a funky family garage). What makes State Bird so special, besides efficient, engaging service and husband-wife team Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski’s genuine welcome (they often greet diners themselves as they pass by the kitchen in the entrance), is that it’s something truly different. Affordable, unique, and imaginative plates flowing out dim sum-style on carts and trays, ever playful and satisfying — a prime example of what makes SF’s dining scene so exciting right now.
From another husband-wife duo, Evan and Sarah Rich’s Rich Table could easily be number one for food alongside State Bird and AQ. All three restaurants boast an uncommon vision in their cooking — Rich Table’s is one of an upscale nature in comfort food garb. Presentation can be exquisite, but the dishes gratify and assuage rather than feel fussy. Getting past the (worthy) din about those sardine-laced potato chips to start, pastas are unexpectedly one of the restaurant’s highlights, a duck lasagne layered with braised duck, light béchamel, and tart Santa Rosa plums, easily standing out as one of the best dishes of the year. Though short and sweet, the 4-5 cocktails on offer (now being updated by brand new bar manager Jason “Buffalo” LoGrasso from Cotogna) are clean, simple-yet-vivid stars in their own right.
A neighborhood diner and soda fountain, Ice Cream Bar deserves accolades for bringing us the kind of soda fountain menu unmatched in the country, yet sure to be copied. Recipes and practices date back to the 1800s with modern sensibility, showcased in drinks like the Bonne Vie No. 2, a citrus-garden delight of basil leaves, basil ice cream, and pink grapefruit, its sour-fresh qualities glorified with citric acid. There are boozy fountain drinks (like a perfect Angostura Phosphate), ice cream (the tart cherry remains my favorite), and darn good sandwiches (egg salad and tuna) on house brioche, with the soda fountain manned by gifted, friendly soda jerks who live and breathe the history of the craft.
With the food world in Scandinavian mode the last few years (the cuisine to take over where the El Bulli world of Spain ruled for so long), it’s a shame we haven’t had much Scandinavian food to speak of here, particularly of the nouveau wave à la Fäviken or Noma. Pläj (pronounced “play”) is gourmet-traditional Scandinavian fare with modern sensibilities from chef-owner Roberth Sundell, a Stockholm native. In the mellow Inn at the Opera, it’s a respite of a dinner with sincere service, shining particularly bright with seafood in the menu’s Fjord section. Herring trios, Swedish meatballs, Norwegian salmon belly gravlax and rounds of aquavit… I’ve been waiting for this one and hope it opens the door for more.
Don’t just call it a bakery. Craftsman & Wolves is a heightened sort of cafe where baked goods push boundaries and desserts are works of art. William Werner’s artistic eats, alongside sandwiches and salads, Sightglass Coffee, Naivetea, and dreamy drinking caramel made with salted butter, ensure this is an extraordinary addition to the SF food scene, standing apart from other cafes. Skylights, brick and clean lines make for a modern cafe setting, while items like the Rebel Within, an herb, cheese, sausage-studded muffin with a sous vide egg hidden inside, are already cult classics.
This sushi duo isn’t perfect, nor will either be the best sushi meal of your life. But in their infancy, they both represent the ideal neighborhood sushi outposts: friendly, laid back, almost hip, with spanking fresh fish and consistently interesting maki, nigiri, sashimi, tasting spoons (at Saru), and sizzling mango seabass (at Elephant). With a glass of sake, try firm-yet-silky squid in yuzu juice at Saru or bananas draped beautifully over Elephant’s Boom Box roll with scallop, avocado, and cucumber. Those lucky souls who live near either restaurant have themselves exemplary neighborhood sushi bars at which to unwind.
Mission Bowling Club (MBC) is significant: until now no bowling alley served food this good. Hipster, even upscale for a bowling alley, the open, industrial space, large front patio, and downstairs and upstairs dining rooms (the latter oversees the action) add up to a striking setting for Anthony Myint — he of Mission Chinese Food and Mission St. Food, no less — to unleash his beloved Mission Burger, a rich, granulated patty, lathered in caper aioli. Entrees like blackened salmon on a potato latke marked by salmon roe, cucumber, and horseradish are listed alongside a juicy sausage corn dog dipped in habanero crema. Bowling never tasted this sublime.
Despite being open only three days a week for lunch, with just-added Saturday night dinner service (reserve ahead!), FuseBOX is my favorite East Bay addition this year because of its unique approach to Asian cuisine. Such limited hours in a remote West Oakland block makes it a meal you have to work to get to, but the fusion of Korean and izakaya-style Japanese from Sunhui and Ellen Sebastian Chang is a welcoming, tiny haven (with large front patio) for creative Asian fare often in bite-size format allowing ample tasting. There are rotating robata bites or kimchee from bok choy to kale, interesting panchan/banchan (mini-dishes often accompanying a Korean meal), hamachi tartare topped with lime caviar, Tokyo po boys, and an unforgettable bacon mochi. And who else offers kimchee and coffee service with Korean beignets?
Gioia Pizzeria (2240 Polk, SF. (415) 359-0971, www.gioiapizzeria.com) for bringing Berkeley’s best NY pizza to SF; CatHead’s BBQ (1665 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-4242, www.catheadbbq.com) for some of the better BBQ in our city (“real deal” Southern BBQ being difficult to come by outside of the South); Abbott’s Cellar (742 Valencia, SF. (415) 626-8700, www.abbotscellar.com) for one of the best beer menus anywhere and elevated food to accompany it in a sleek-rustic dining room; Orexi (243 West Portal, SF. (415) 664-6739, www.orexisf.com) for daring to bring satisfying Greek food to our Greek-deficient dining scene; St. Vincent (1270 Valencia, SF. (415) 285-1200, www.stvincentsf.com) for a wine and beer geek’s dream menu partnered with forward-thinking interpretations of regional American dishes; Machka (584 Washington, SF. (415) 391-8228, www.machkasf.com) for a chic take on Turkish food.
When pop crooner Scott Walker plunged into the abyss on 1995’s Tilt, he initiated one of the most radical transformations in the history of recorded music, rejecting the tuneful chamber pop of his ’60s-’70s output for a pitch-black sludge of musique concrète, avant-classical, and industrial art-rock. Walker hasn’t looked back since, doubling down with 2005’s The Drift, and now Bish Bosch: an album as erratic, scary, unhinged, darkly hilarious, and wildly imaginative as any in recent memory.
Replacing The Drift’s murky, viscous slog with rapid-fire sequences of tension and release, Bish Bosch is defined by its jarring contrasts between musical extremes. Ominous electronic and orchestral drones barely establish themselves, before giving way to noisy, abrasive blocks of punishing drums and brawny guitar stabs.
Exotic instrumentation (harpsichords, Samba percussion, zithers, ukuleles), textural shifts, and lyrical themes (Julius Caesar, fart noises, Polynesia, Yo Mama jokes) pop up and recede impulsively, building an array of musical possibilities as dense, thorny, and encyclopedic as a Pynchon novel, with Walker’s quivering, operatic baritone as its sole, anchoring force.
Difficult as it is to proclaim Bish Bosch 2012’s best album, (its hulking weight and unyielding grimness renders casual listening a near impossibility) no LP this year has matched its gutsiness and sonic adventurousness, or consolidated so many ideas into a single musical statement.
With everyone from from McCartney to Rod Stewart sacrificing their integrity to fill arenas and Christmas stockings, Walker remains an anomaly among 70-year-olds in the music biz. May he continue on his long, strange trip down the rabbit hole.
The Chron’s conflict-laden columnist made an interesting admission Dec. 9: The multibillion-dollar tax loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessments under Prop. 13 was all his fault:
After voters approved Prop. 13 in 1978, capping property taxes for landowners, we had to sit down in the Legislature and figure out how to implement it. One of the biggest questions was how and when properties could be reassessed. We decided that should happen whenever a property was “transferred.” When you sold your home, it was transferred to someone else. The home was reassessed, and the taxes for the buyer were increased accordingly. What we did not realize was that corporations don’t actually transfer property – they transfer the stock in the company that owns the property. And Prop. 13 didn’t apply to stock.
Wait: In 1978, Brown (a lawyer) and the office of the Legislative Counsel and the rest of the lawyer-heavy Legislature didn’t know how corporations transfer property? It was all a big mistake? There were no corporate lobbyists in Sacramento trying to make sure that the loophole was created? Just the poor undereducated elected officials who got snookered by their own lack of information?
And remember: That was 1978. Brown was elected Speaker of the Assembly in 1980, and served for 14 years. Somewhere during that era, someone must have noticed what was going on (every county assessor in California did). There was ample opportunity to close that loophole, if the immensely powerful Speaker Brown had any desire to do so.
But somehow, it never happened. Funny thing, that.
So now Brown agrees that this problem should be fixed — but he says the person carrying the bill, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, shouldn’t be doing the work because he’s too liberal and pro-tax. Which is either stupidity (and Brown’s many things, but normally stupid isn’t one of them) or he’s still bitter that Ammiano forced him into a mayoral runoff in 1999 and lead the rebellion that ousted all of the mayor’s loyal supervisors a year later. Vindictive? Yeah, we’ve heard that about Willie Brown.
“He doesn’t even understand the history of the bill,” Ammiano told me. “I introduced it last year and got it out of committee and to the floor, which was a miracle.” And now, with a two-thirds majority in both houses, the Democrats can approve it without the Republican minority veto.
“I have cosponsors and I’m going to get more,” Ammiano said. “We may be able to make it part of the budget process.”
And since local governments all over the state, and anyone who believes in tax fairness, is going to support this, I think it’s got a pretty good chance of getting to the desk of the governor.
Willie Brown, as is his practice, didn’t return my call seeking comment.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Deputy City Attorney Theresa Stewart, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, and other officials who held a press conference at City Hall today admitted they were disappointed that the US Supreme Court has decided to review the Ninth Circuit Court ruling that Proposition 8, the 2008 measure banning same-sex marriage in California, was unconstitutional.
“But we can’t let that obscure the tremendous progress that we’ve made in California on marriage equality,” said Herrera, who has been at the center of a struggle that began in 2004 when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom decided the city should begin unilaterally issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in defiance of state and federal law.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little disappointed,” said Stewart, who has been the city’s main litigator on the issue as it moved through court injunctions blocking marriages by the city, the California Supreme Court ruling the ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution, the vote amending the constitution through Prop. 8, and the Ninth Circuit ruling Prop. 8 violated federal equal protection standards.
Herrera and Stewart both expressed confidence that the Prop. 8 case that the Supreme Court will review, Perry v. Brown, was put together in a solid, meticulous way that will make it difficult for the US Supreme Court to disagree with the Ninth Circuit conclusion. “We worked really hard to put in the best possible case,” Stewart said, while Herrera said, “I can think of no better case to take up than this case…The confidence level of all of us is high.”
They also expressed hopes that the strategy of lead attorney Theodore Olsen to make broad arguments that any legal distinctions denying rights to homosexuals are unconstitutional – as opposed to the city’s more narrow approach that Prop. 8 doesn’t pass legal muster, which Herrera called “complementary” to Olsen’s approach – would be successful in making this case a definitive civil rights victory.
“Are we a country that is true to its word and true to its spirit, or not?” is how Harris framed the question, focusing on the basic equal protection argument and the need to “stand for the principle that we are equal and we will be treated that way.”
She and others called this “the civil rights struggle of our time,” and they pledged to win this issue now, no matter what. “I am optimistic that we’re going to win at the Supreme Court,” Sup. Scott Wiener said, pledging to win the right to marry at the ballot box even if the court doesn’t affirm that right. “We’re going to win this fight one way or another.”
Sup. David Campos, who is also gay, agreed that same-sex marriage will again be legal in California and “the question is whether the Supreme Court chooses to be on the right side or history or the wrong side of history.”
Lots of statements getting issued on the Supreme Court’s decision, reflecting both the desire of many elected officials to weigh in on this momentus event and some interesting differences in tone.
Assembly Member Tom Ammiano:
“This doesn’t decide anything on its own, but it opens the door for the U.S. Supreme Court to acknowledge that people in every state of this union should be able to form marriage unions with the partner of their choosing and not be limited by outdated customs and laws.”
“It’s a bit disappointing that the Supreme Court isn’t already kicking Prop. 8 to the curb, but I’m hopeful that they will do that after hearing arguments. We can also hope that this court decides that it’s time to say, once and for all, that denying this right to same-sex couples is just as unconstitutional as denying marriage to mixed-race couples – a decision made decades ago.”
State Sen. Mark Leno:
“I am hopeful and encouraged about today’s decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Proposition 8 case, which is one of the most significant equal rights issues to come before the court in many decades,” said Senator Leno. “For the past four years we have argued that Proposition 8 is not only unconstitutional, but that it also violates the basic principles of respect, dignity and validation that every American deserves. I am confident that the Supreme Court will reaffirm these fundamental freedoms and uphold that a person’s right to be treated equally does not vanish simply because of who they are or whom they love.
“The momentum for marriage equality has never been stronger in our country. We have support from President Obama, recent victories at the ballot box, and polls that show a majority of Americans are with us. In addition, federal courts continue to strike down laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. I am convinced our triumphs will continue.”
Mayor Ed Lee:
“I am optimistic that the Supreme Court will reaffirm, as the Ninth Circuit Court did, that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
“We remain as deeply committed today as we were nearly eight years ago when then Mayor Gavin Newsom jumpstarted one of the most important civil rights movements of our generation. I would like to thank City Attorney Dennis Herrera for his work on this important issue and bringing us to this point. I thank the legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies and the American Foundation for Equal Rights for defending equality in this legal pursuit.
Same-sex marriage is legal, or will soon be, in nine states — Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington — and the District of Columbia. I look forward to the day when California joins this well-respected list.”
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom:
Today marks the beginning of the end for a California journey that started eight years ago when San Francisco issued same-sex marriage licenses. By agreeing to hear the Proposition 8 case the U.S. Supreme Court could end, once and for all, marriage inequity in California.
Forty-five years after the Supreme Court ruled that marriages between interracial couples were constitutional in Loving vs. Virginia, Justices can once again reaffirm the basic American principal of equality for all.
The singling out a class of Californians for discrimination violates the basic principles of who we are as a nation. It is important at this moment in time to recognize that individuals can be mightier together than apart, that there is strength in our diversity, power when we unite around our shared values and success when we advance together.
Today’s announcement starts the clock towards the final decision for California. History will one day be divided into the time before marriage equality and the period that follows. And thankfully, we will be on the side of history worthy of being proud of.
Assembly Speaker John Perez:
“Today’s announcement that the Supreme Court will take up Hollingsworth v. Perry and the challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act is a reminder that the pathway to justice is long and difficult. The plaintiffs in the initial challenge to Proposition 8, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, presented a powerful and compelling argument that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, which was eloquently recognized in Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in that case. I am very confident that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of our community in Hollingsworth v. Perry, as it is now known, and affirm that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. But until that outcome is secured, our community must continue to fight for justice on every front, from working to secure the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to addressing the issues of homelessness among LGBT Youth.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi:
With the Supreme Court’s decision, marriage equality will finally have its day in the highest court in the land. Americans will hear whether inequality and discrimination are consistent with the high standards and deepest values of our Constitution. We remain confident that the justices’ ruling will fall on the side of civil rights and discard DOMA and Prop 8 in the dustbin of history.
“From the start, Republicans have known that DOMA is unconstitutional, and that’s why Republicans have tried to pass legislation to prohibit judicial review of this disgraceful law. Speaker Boehner’s legal team repeatedly failed to convince the courts to keep denying basic rights to American families, all while wasting nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer funds. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether Edie Windsor deserved to face a penalty of hundreds of thousands of dollars after her partner of four decades passed away. We believe Ms. Windsor and couples like hers will see justice done in this case.
“By taking up the Prop 8 case, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to make a strong statement that laws, in California and nationwide, must not target the LGBT community unfairly and that families across our state and our country deserve fair and equal treatment under the law.
“We have now reached a landmark moment in the history of civil rights in our nation. Let’s end discrimination and ensure equality for all of America’s families. Let’s get this over with and on to the future!”
UPDATE:
Bay Guardian Controller Sandy Lange:
“Well, at least I don’t have to get married this weekend.”
At the end of the day Wednesday, the doors were open, the center was continuing business as usual – and the office of Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who is charged with carrying out the eviction, was telling reporters that Dec. 5 was never a firm deadline.
Kathy Gorwood, Mirkarimi’s chief of staff, told us that the law gives tenants five days from the service of an eviction notice before any law-enforcement action can take place. “But that’s not a legal mandate that we evict on the sixth day,” she said.
The notice was served Nov. 30.
Gorwood said all evictions are planned with officer safety, tenant hardships and staff scheduling in mind – and on Dec. 5, the sheriff wasn’t ready to move.
“We surveyed the property, the sheriff personally surveyed the property,” she said. “We can’t say, and we don’t say, when an eviction will take place.”
Gorwood said Mirkarimi wasn’t defying the law or refusing to carry out the eviction. But since there are likely to be protests, possibly civil disobedience, the deputies need to be prepared and the schedule set carefully.
Mirkarimi has a history of supporting HANC. As a former supervisor of District 5, which includes the Haight, he voted to urge SF Rec and Park to and find a solution to keep the center in Golden Gate Park. The vote was nonbinding. He clearly wants to avoid a nasty confrontation, and if he can find a way to work out a voluntary move-out, it’s likely he’ll take the time to negotiate it.
For the past ten years, The Department of Recreation and Parks has aggressively sought to oust HANC. Finally, this fall, Rec-Park filed an eviction through the City Attorney’s Office Interestingly, the “Notice to Vacate” served on the center was signed off by the City Attorney’s Office on September 14, 2012. However, the actual eviction date that SF Rec and Park requested was December 5, 2012.
Why wait three months to evict a center that Rec-Park has been trying to get rid of for a decade?
Jack Fong, a spokesperson for the City Attorney’s office, declined to say if there were any procedural or administrative reasons that an eviction notice given to the sheriff in September would take three months to go through.
We called Phil Ginsburg, director of Rec and Parks, and Sarah Ballard, its spokesperson, to ask about the time disparity. We did not hear back from them before press time.
But you don’t need to be a genius to figure it out — just look at what was happening in November. Ginsburg was pushing Proposition B, which secured $195 million in bonds to shore up neglected playgrounds and open spaces in San Francisco’s parks. The measure needed a two-thirds vote – and Rec-Park was nervous about any bad publicity.
The measure passed by a landslide. Butousting HANC, eliminating a revenue stream for the poor, the homeless, and working class people, would have been bad publicity leading up the November election.
Regina Dick-Endrizzi, the executive director of the Small Business Commission, told us that one business in the SOMA, which she declined to name, faced three months worth of the $100-a- day charge for not buying back recyclables from the state while trying to navigate applying for an exemption. Even after being granted the exemption, that’s a $9,000 charge, which for a small liquor store or grocer is not chump change.
There’s a precedent for a San Francisco sheriff refusing to carry out an eviction notice. Sheriff Richard Hongisto, who later served on the board of supervisors for three terms, famously refused to evict the Filipino and Chinese elderly tenants of the International Hotel in 1976. The scandal was even the subject of a documentary, “The Fall of the I-Hotel.
The International Hotel was sold to developers who were going to cast the elderly tenants out onto the street. News outlets as far flung as the New York and LA times wrote about the mass eviction, and many consider it a black eye on San Francisco to this day.
But this is a different situation: Mirkarimi hasn’t refused to follow the law, and in fact, Gorwood said that he has every intention of carrying out the eviction. The law, Mark Nicco, assistant counsel to the sheriff, told us, only says that an eviction has to happen in a timely manner – and there’s no definition of what that might be.
So if Ginsburg or the mayor think Mirkarimi is dragging his feet, the only recourse would be for Rec-Park to go to court and seek a judge’s order compelling the sheriff to evict the center in a stated period of time. All of which could take weeks.
So for the moment, HANC is still in business, Mirkarimi is avoiding an ugly eviction scene – and there’s still a chance for Rec-Park to come to its senses. But we’re not taking bets.
The Media Alliance, a local media watchdog group leading the media consolidation battles, says in an SOS message that the Federal Communications Commission is once again trying to jam through new rules during the Christmas rush to facilitate more media consolidation. The FCC, the Alliance points out, “touts localism, competition and diversity as the hallmarks of a healthy media ecosystem. This rule change guts all three.” Here is the Alliance’s action alert (b3):
New proposed rules relax media cross-ownership rules (again) paving the way for more media concentration and polishing the path for the Rupert Murdochs of the world to buy up everything that’s left.
In the now-familiar holiday season hurry-up employed by federal agencies when they want to sneak something through before the public has a chance to get outraged about it, FCC commissioner Julius Genachowski has proposed a relaxation of the media cross-ownership rules remarkably similar to Kevin Martin’s try at increasing media consolidation several years ago.
What can you do?
Tell the Democratic commissioners they need to fight this and that as a member of the public, you have their back if they publicly oppose the Christmas rush to media consolidation today – December 4th National Day of Action:
And then send a tweet @fcc no xmas sneak #mediajustice
Background:
The relaxation permits the same corporation to own print, radio and television outlets in the top 20 communication markets in the US, condemning urban populations to canned and repetitive news and information, especially those who depend heavily on free over-the-air broadcasts.
The FCC is trying to jam these rules through during the holiday siesta to avoid the outpouring of public protest engendered during the last attempt at relaxing the rules, when the FCC received the largest quantity of public comments in their history and eventually lost in court and rescinded the attempted rule change.
The FCC was ordered to do research into impact on the diversity of media ownership, particularly by women and minorities. Despite completing a comprehensive whose initial results indicate little to no improvement in increasing ownership diversity and not completing a full impact report on the mounds of ownership data received in the quadrennial report, the FCC seems to be determined to move ahead with the rule change in an evidence-free zone. The FCC touts localism, competition and diversity as the hallmarks of a healthy media ecosystem. This rule change guts all three.
Links:
Politifact ranks Obama’s promise to foster media diversity as a broken promise:
The National Rifle Association’s bid to kill two San Francisco gun control ordinances — which a federal judge initially rejected last week, although that legal process continues — highlights differing views on the issue in the violence-plagued Bayview, where two prominent activists have opposing viewpoints.
One ordinance requires guns in the home to be locked up when not on the owner’s person and the second bans the sale of fragmenting and expanding bullets, affecting only the city’s sole gun store: High Bridge Arms, in the Mission district.
The first ordinance was introduced in 2007 by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and supported by Sheriff and then-Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and opposed by three supervisors: Ed Jew, Aaron Peskin, and Chris Daly. City Attorney Dennis Herrera was pleased at the judge’s ruling.
“The NRA took aim at San Francisco’s Police Code,” Herrera said in a press release. “I’m proud of the efforts we’ve made to beat back these legal challenges, and preserve local laws that can save lives.”
NRA attorney C.D. Michel told the San Francisco Examiner, “This is not over, not by a long shot…What if you’re old and need glasses in the middle of the night, or you have kids at home to protect? Why are they being forced to keep their guns locked up?”
Interestingly, its not the NRA’s name on the front of the lawsuit, entitled “Espanola Jackson v. City and County of San Francisco.”
Jackson, a San Francisco native and longtime Bayview Hunter’s Point civil rights activist, has been fighting for the rights of minorities since she was old enough to hold a picket sign. She was recognized last May by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission with a “Legacy Award for a Lifetime in Human Rights Advocacy.”
So why is she advocating for unlocked guns in the home, and more lethal bullets?
“I live in the Bayview and I’m 79 years old,” she told The Guardian. “We’re mostly single women, but we need to have protection.”
She cited a recent police report she’d read of an elderly woman being assaulted by several teenage girls, just blocks from her home, as one of the many reasons she feels she needs protection in her own neighborhood.
Jackson said she’s had a lifetime of training with her firearm, although she wouldn’t identify the kind of weapon she wield. Back in the ’60s, she said, “they were calling us pistol packing mamas.” It’s that history, she said, that makes her feel safest with a gun in her drawer, where she can easily get it in case of a robbery.
But Theo Ellington — a board member of the Bayview Opera House and the Southeast Community Facilities Commission — sees the issue differently. Notably, as a member of the Young Black Democrats, he led the opposition against Mayor Ed Lee’s proposal to introduce “Stop and Frisk” policing to San Francisco. Lee abandoned the idea after activists cited rampant civil rights abuses under the policy in New York City.
Ellington thinks that overturning the San Francisco’s gun ordinances would be a bad idea. “We face a much greater risk if we fail to take measures to prevent [gun] accidents,” Ellington told us. “The last thing we want is for any weapons to be in the hands of children or for potential misuse.”
He has reason to be worried about the Bayview. Recent city statistics show an upswing in most crime categories in the district from 2011 to 2012, from homicides and rape to vehicle theft and burglaries. National studies have shown gun owners or their family members are more likely to get shot by guns kept in homes than are intruders. Public safety means different things in different areas, Ellington said, especially “when we’re dealing with a population that is plagued by gun violence.”
Since the late 1990s, Xara Thustra’s art has been inseparable from resistance and community in San Francisco, providing many of the signature visual images of the anti-displacement and anti-war struggles of the era. His work first appeared as graffiti in the streets of the city during the height of the first dot-com boom and soon grew to include artistic collaboration with and in support of neighborhood organizations, like the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition and the Coalition on Homelessness.
As his work evolved over time from agitprop street art into elaborate performance and filmmaking, Xara has collaborated with countless others on many now-legendary art events like the Anti-Capitalist Fashion Show, the 949 Market Squat, and the band Manhater, while contributing stunning murals to Clarion Alley Mural Project and the Mission Neighborhood Health Center (with Kyle Ranson). Xara appeared in the 2002 Bay Area Now show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but has since resisted overtures from the art world, and preferred to instead make work in spaces like Adobe Books, Needles and Pens, and, still, in the streets.
Thu/6 at a presentation of new work at Needles and Pens, Xara and friends will celebrate the release of the self-published, 500-page book, Friendship Between Artists is an Equation of Love and Survival. It’s an epic photo documentation of the past 15 years of his work and collaborations in San Francisco. Note: this interview took place between Erick Lyle (in Brooklyn) and Xara Thustra (in the Redstone Building) over Skype …
San Francisco Bay Guardian So, let’s talk about the book. I’ve read it twice this week — two four-hour sessions, straight through. Its pretty heavy shit.
Xara Thustra It’s deep. The book is deep.
SFBG As long as we’ve known each other, you’ve always been pretty quick to move on to the next thing. There’s a lot of self-reinvention in your work, not a lot of looking backward. I’m curious why it was then that you wanted to make this retrospective book now and bring all this material together from the past 15 years?
XT Well, it really doesn’t have much to do with the public. I had a pile of documentation that I had collected by throwing things that were mine into a box. I don’t know how much I really want to say about it in an article but the reality of it was that I was evicted about five times, and I kept moving and just throwing stuff in a box, and the box kept coming with me. That’s the stuff that didn’t get thrown out, those pictures.
Mostly, for me, though, it was that if I didn’t make a book out of that stuff then no one would know I did it, because, like you said, I keep moving on.
SFBG Was this the stuff you most wanted to intentionally save, or just what happened to be left over when you had a chance to look at it all?
XT This was just stuff that was saved, period. A lot of stuff was not saved. It’s interesting because [the book] seems like the whole ball of wax, but it really just is the cherries of individual moments — some of the nicer stuff to look at during those happenings. But, really, I’m not very focused on the book right now. I’m working on art show for the book release and I’m more interested in the art show right now.
SFBG OK. What is the art show at Needles and Pens about, then? How does that material for the book release show relate to the book?
XT The book is giving me footing to stand on to continue to speak to the public. Hopefully it creates a platform to show people that I am conscientious about my work and that it’s a daily practice. The residue of that daily practice is in visual form.
For Needles and Pens, I’m working on something about the Valencia Street corridor and its relationship to death from poverty in the streets. That’s the art show I’m working on.
SFBG That’s mostly what I think about these days when I am on Valencia Street. I wonder how you’re approaching that.
XT Well, jeez! [Laughs.] I don’t want to give the show away! That is the backstory of the show, and I just blurted that out. I don’t normally provide even that much information. But I’ll say their relationship will be seen through sugar coating and pretty colors [laughs].
SFBG It seems to me that now more than ever, public streets in SF really are a battleground. That’s something you and I have related to for the last 15 years in what we do. This book starts with pictures of the streets, like establishing shots in a movie, and the narrative that follows threads in and out of the streets. The things you see in the interiors are always situated specifically in the context of this city and, particularly, its streets: homeless guys and cops harassing them and graffiti and protests.
But the streets themselves feel a lot different to me now than when you started out doing work in the streets. Art in the streets is different, too. I wonder what your perspective is on how the streets feel now?
XT I would say I am not necessarily relating to the streets but more like being the streets. [Repeats like a mantra.] Being the streets, being the streets, being the streets … not that you were saying anything much contradictory to that. But, I am only looking at reality and the streets, how they are right in front of me in the present and not in relationship to anything.
Every street in SF is pretty different in a lot of ways. There are so many different realities in SF. But if we want to talk about the bougie rich folks, walking all over people — that’s happening on a lot of streets. The number of streets where that is happening has risen, and the number of streets where there’s good culture … Well, I can’t just say “good culture.” But as for culture that is deeply related to art, and the soul, and history, and kids, and love, and all that shit — yeah, those streets are dwindling.
I have to give it to the people who are able to utilize the Valencia corridor for their eating places. They are healthy, good-looking people. You can’t argue that! They’ve got the teeth and all that shit. They look great! [Laughs.] So you can’t really say nothing bad about them.
SFBG Yeah, but I guess I’m thinking about how it feels different to even put art in the streets now than it did during the first dot-com boom.
XT The demographics of the audience have switched so much to just being privileged people, period. When you are showing stuff to privileged people, they already have so much stuff to look at, so much stuff to choose from and their relationship to it is not the give and take it could be. It’s seen through a commercial lens.
Here’s one way to explain it: if I write the words “None Profit” on a wall in SF, it could easily be seen to be about folks here getting rich and getting money but still not profiting in some way. You’d be making a commentary. Write “None Profit” on the wall in St. Louis or Philadelphia and people walk by and feel like, “Yeah, no shit. Why you shitting on me?” The same words mean different things to different audiences.
SFBG The book features photos of performance in the streets, too. And in empty lots, in squatted abandoned buildings. Or smashed into a corner at Adobe Books — even crammed into a hallway in a house. In some ways, the book’s narrative is to me almost about this search for space in the city. It’s not necessarily a literal search for space, because we could, I suppose, be doing events any night of the week in a bar or something like that.
Even in the Bay Area, there is still space, per se. But it’s a search for a freer space. A non-commodified, less controlled space where perhaps we could be our true, authentic selves. What then is the relationship to this search for space in your work?
XT What’s my relationship to space? I could go for a lot of space! [Laughs.] Space that is lawless and fun and freedom-oriented and sustainable and nice! It’s just such an enormous issue. You and I ran in squats together to try to envision what we though would bring about community. Why did we have to squat a building to get that? It’s just ridiculous.
SFBG I think it’s been maybe 10 years since we sat down and did an interview like this together. At that time it seemed like you were moving past graffiti being your main focus. You were about to appear in the Yerba Buena Now show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but you were not excited about that either. You weren’t feeling like the museum was a real place to make art, and were wondering what for you is a good place for art.
Again, there is the search for a specific type of space. How are you feeling about that search for the right spaces to make art in today?
XT Well, there’s a lot in there, but first of all, graffiti has never NOT been my focus. It’s actually unfortunate how ridiculous of a main focus it has been for me. It’s like the only thing there is — being able to publicly express yourself freely. And I’m not saying that’s all that graffiti is. Sure, you’re taking advantage of people and being a vandal a little, too. But it also relates to what you are saying about space, because graffiti is about space.
SFBGDo you still get offers from museums or more traditional art world venues?
XT Not much right now. I’m fixing to try to get more offers by pushing in that community a little bit. If anybody wants to know, its basically true that if people call you and you don’t answer, and then people call and you tell them to go fuck themselves or whatever, and then they stop calling. So, yeah, I’m not getting too many offers!
SFBG I’m wondering, if you’re more interested now than you once were in doing shows in those environments, is it because there are different things you feel you can say there than, say, in the streets? What would you be looking to do?
XT I’m just trying to step up. In terms and space and the artwork I am interested in doing, I’ll take any stage I can get right now. Right now, I have this show at Needles and Pens and I ask myself first what is interesting to say in that space, and that’s what I always ask myself.
SFBG Where did the title of the book [Friendship Between Artists is an Equation of Love and Survival] come from?
XT I went and showed the book to my friend, Peter Plate, who is a writer and that’s the title he came up with. It’s a romantic title. There are a lot of ways to relate to it but its important to say that a lot of people’s energy and hard work went into the book. Other people’s photographs, too. The majority of the book, I have something to do with it in some manner, but people have been relating to it in their own personal ways and that’s nice.
SFBG And there are people in there that have since died. It’s a lot.
XT Yeah, that’s true. There is a storyline to it in that way, too.
SFBGOne thing I got out of it, was that it seemed that as the narrative of the book progresses, the art moves away from being in support of protest or being literally protest art, and moves into efforts to instead embody a different, freer world.
XT Yeah, I think you’ve said it really well. It’s not a finished conclusion of mine, or anything. But just in terms of time and energy, if I’m going to spend my time and energy fucking with people for change, I think that’s the way to go. But trying to embody freedom and learn how to be healthy and enjoy your mental state on a daily basis … that still goes hand in hand with trying to support organizations and people that are doing the logistical paperwork to fight the system.
SFBG The book’s title, the riff on love and survival, makes me think about how you’ve always been somewhat known for serving meals at your shows. When we were having that talk about Yerba Buena, I remember you were upset then because you wanted to do a big feeding of free food in the museum and they were not interested in allowing that at all. What is the importance of free food in your work?
XT [Laughs.] Uh, it’s actually, like, this cultural thing that people have been doing for years that has been lost on whatever the culture is right now. If you really want people to come and have a good time, there should be dinner there. It creates a vibe, where everybody is eating food and they’re eating the same food and they have different conversation relating to that. It creates warmth.
These days in this city that has shifted, as well, because free food is not really a necessity for people who are coming out to art shows or going to parties or whatever. But it still exists in my work.
SFBG Speaking of the changing demographics in the streets and at art shows, then, let’s talk about Clarion Alley. The Clarion Alley Mural Project just had its 20th anniversary. I think many of us have been thinking about the weird way that murals we have done there as a community to celebrate our lives and community and resistance have ironically ended up being so well-loved and such an attraction to the very people who are moving here to displace us.
It’s something people are starting to think about but it seems like no one really knows what to do about it. Someone told me you suggested that we actually just black out the murals in the alley in protest. I wanted to ask you about that.
XT Yeah, for me, I say buff it. Period. Just drop it. It’s really sad, it’s a terrible way to look at it, and it would be a lot to walk away from, to walk away from those murals. But who knows? It wouldn’t be the worst idea to say something like that, to say that as a group and as a community, we should buff that shit and split and move somewhere else. If we’re not having a conversation about it, then the conversation is just being run by other people, right?
SFBG Yeah. I can see that. It seems nihilistic to me to just self-erase like that, though. On the other hand, the murals themselves have become almost strictly commemorative.
XT Yeah, what happened at the anniversary party wasn’t a celebration of a community that lives here at all. This year it was part of a funeral. People come there to see their folks and relate to the dead. That’s no big deal. We’re all good hard-living people and we’ve moved on and we’re doing interesting shit. But it might not be right here in this neighborhood or within the city walls even right now. It’s in the cracks and on the edges for now. But we’ll see. Personally, I’m looking for Ditter to come out!
SFBG Ditter? What’s that?
XT Ditter! The thing that’s going to replace Twitter! Because you know something’s going to come, right? They think it won’t, but we saw a lot of suckers straight up sad last time this shit crashed. [Laughs.] The next time the crash comes, I just hope it’s not too hard, because all these healthy, good-looking people are basically just MEAT, walking around! Meat! Better hope that economy stays up, y’all!
SFBG [Laughs.] Oh shit! The free food at Xara’s show … “IT’S PEOPLE!” Well, here’s to Ditter … and whatever is next!
Check out Erick Lyle’s review of Friendship Between Artistshere.
XARA THUSTRA BOOK RELEASE AND SOLO SHOW Thu/6, 7-9pm, free Needles and Pens 3252 16th St., SF www.needles-pens.com
THEATER Tom Cruise, clad in military drag, descended last week by RAF helicopter into Trafalgar Square in what is best described as forced entertainment but was in fact a time-wasting scene from his upcoming blockbuster All You Need Is Kill. Not quite simultaneously but with considerably more stealth, I advanced into South London’s Battersea area, in a completely uncoordinated foray, to see the latest from famed Sheffield-based pomo theater artists Forced Entertainment.
Battersea Arts Centre, a bright red and white 1893 former town hall, is midway through a restoration process called “playgrounding” (putting artists and audiences at the center of the architectural redesign), and its many arches, rococo balustrades, and mosaic tile floors thrive amid an attractive combination of new paint and weathered surfaces. The place is an enviable model for an arts organization: a warm and bustling hub of community activity that is also a serious arts incubator and presenter, boasting 72 performance-tested spaces and a live-in residency program geared to the truly experimental and exceptional.
A nice place for Forced Entertainment to land, enthused artistic director Tim Etchells in a short interview before the evening’s program. He said FE was in fact lucky to find itself there, space in London being at a premium. This is apparently true for even so internationally successful and storied a group as Forced Entertainment.
And speaking of stories, audiences would be up to their ears and eyes in them that night — or rather the loose ends of stories, volleys, and nose-dives from a meta-narrative barrage that manifested itself across a series of readings, performances, and neon. The sign aglow in the Café Bar, where I spoke with Etchells, said simply, “end of story.” Another one said, “Shouting Your Demands from the Rooftop Should Be Considered a Last Resort.”
(All the variously colored neon phrases spread throughout the foyer and adjoining bar were by Etchells, whose many projects outside FE include visual art and writing. The evening kicked off with a book launch of his Vacuum Days, a large hospital-green compendium of daily headlines and announcements — the result of a 2011 internet-based project in which Etchells riffed on the news of the moment in dada-esque fashion. Flipping through the pages was an instant reminder of two things: it had been a hell of a year, and headlines are always loaded.)
The centerpiece of the evening was The Coming Storm. Forced Entertainment’s latest piece (in an unbroken line of group-devised work going back to the company’s founding in 1984) begins unassumingly, with the six performers in their street clothes lined up onstage facing the audience. One of them holds a microphone, and begins by slowly articulating the necessary ingredients of a “good story.” Soon the other performers grow visibly dubious and restless, until one snatches the microphone away and weighs in with a whopper of a tale, never completed, because also interrupted by another greedy storyteller.
And so on through aggressive, sly, and puerile mic-swipings and gradual, unexpected permutations — as those without the microphone do any manner of things to create their own counter-narratives or merely sabotage the one dominating at the moment. It’s a confluence of fractured accounts arranged like a 20-car pile-up, or a game of keep away, or a gentle dance of despair, with occasional live score, random costume changes, and a cluster of branches embraced (and debunked) as a soothing shelter of forest.
The Coming Storm ends up an exercise in failure and resilience at once, since even if no one completes a tale, the audience rushes to fill the void —our minds trained to shape every squiggle into a recognizable human form, however personal or outlandish the starting point. In that rowdy mutual tangle comes quiet reflection from the interstices of language and history.
It left one in just the right frame of mind to receive the last performance of the night, Sight Is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First, Etchells’ monologue for New York actor Jim Fletcher (lately of the title role in Elevator Repair Service’s acclaimed production, Gatz).
Sight proved no return to narrative but rather a concatenation of eccentric observations and pronouncements, undertaken by a nameless po-faced character standing center stage and meeting the audience’s gaze in a free-associative unburdening of “meaning,” desultory definitions that went along the lines of “Socks are gloves for the feet. Snow is cold. Water is the same thing as ice. In America things are bigger. America is a country. Korea is also a country.” Then, some time later, “Cats are afraid of dogs. Dogs like to chase cats. Some dogs like to bite the tire of a passing car.” Throughout this eccentric cataloguing and its naïve reverie, the audience again acts to complete the work wordlessly. Subtle suggestions come, vistas briefly open, demurring exceptions and musings flicker by, as the audience is tossed one wry bone after another, and a slow vague pathos accumulates.
FILM In the 1950s and ’60s silent comedy — which had hitherto seemed as extinct and useless as the dodo — experienced a popular revival, sparked by a Walter Kerr article in Life magazine and sustained by television broadcasts, compilation documentaries, the general rise of a cineaste culture, and the still-breathing status of a few old favorites. (Buster Keaton, for one, spent a very busy last 15 years making guest appearances on both the big and small screen.) That nostalgic interest didn’t greatly effect new Hollywood movies of the era, however, apart from a brief vogue for bloated homages like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), The Great Race (1965), and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), exercises in slapstick elephantiasis that placed mistaken belief in the notion that bigger is always better.
In France, by contrast, at least a couple notable careers emerged devoted to honoring and elaborating on the tropes of silent comedy. The obvious one belonged to Jacques Tati, whose elegant orchestration of the clash between progress and fallible humanity made the modern world its subject while pretty much dispensing with sound (or at least dialogue) cinema altogether.
But Tati also had a protégé of sorts, Pierre Étaix, who had his own similar yet distinct run of films that made comparatively little impact outside France. If they’re almost entirely unknown to us today, that’s in large part because legal complications kept them unavailable for many long years. It’s only recently that they’ve been restored and re-released, reaching the US in a traveling retrospective that lands at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center this weekend and next. “Pierre Étaix: Lost and Found” is well worth crossing the bridge for — the five features and three shorts it encompasses represent a decade of work for the most part so delightful it seems downright perverse we’re just now making their acquaintance.
Smitten by circus clowning at an early age but also developing considerable skills as a musician and designer, Étaix began a stage career in his late teens. But it was his talent as an illustrator that caught the eye of Tati, for whom he became an assistant during the four years of preproduction on the writer-director-actor’s third feature Mon Oncle (1958). After that Étaix returned to live performance with considerable success, his comedy act at one point opening for quintessential Gallic pop idol Johnny Halladay. It was suggested he try making short films, and the elaborate second such effort, Happy Anniversary, wound up winning the 1963 Oscar for Best Live Action Short.
Still, his producer was reluctant to commit to a feature, so Étaix and his writing partner Jean-Claude Carriere wrote a script episodic enough that it could be released as several separate shorts if necessary. The Suitor (1962) put the star’s flexible prior character — an approximate cross between Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Steve Carrell — into a series of awkward courtships in response to his exasperated parents’ concern that he will never marry. (The funniest involves his wrangling an extremely drunk woman home from a nightclub.)
It was a success, prompting the much more ambitious Yo Yo (1965), an absurdist microcosm of 20th century history with his titular protagonist reeling from Roaring Twenties to World War II to the gray flannel suit corporate era. The next year’s As Long as You’re Healthy retrenched a bit — it really was three separate shorts strung together (a fifth was rather inexplicably cut and released separately as Feeling Good). Three were amusing; the fourth, involving a farmer, a hunter, and two picnickers creating havoc for each other on a rural day out, is a masterpiece of slapstick intricacy.
After a circus tour, he made his first color feature, 1969’s Le Grand Amour. It had just a wisp of plot (involving the specter of infidelity threatening hero Pierre’s marriage to Florence, played by Étaix’s actual spouse Annie Fratellini), but a surfeit of exquisitely realized gags including a marvelous, surreal dream sequence with locomotive beds.
But then he made an apparently fatal mistake: taking an interesting gamble on 1971’s Land of Milk and Honey, a caustic documentary (and, to an extent, parody of documentaries) that starts out as deliberately clichéd ode to La France then rapidly turns into a prolonged sneer at its citizens. Dwelling on talentless would-be singers in some Gong Show-like forum and ordinary, unattractive bodies on full display at the beach, no more impressed by the hippies than the bourgeoise, its portrait of a vapidly complacent populace struck a nerve when the 1969-shot film was finally released in 1971. It was the wrong nerve — the movie was loathed, and feels mean-spirited even today. Still, it hardly should have ended Étaix’s entire screen career as star and director.
Somehow it did, though, more or less. Étaix found financing for just one more feature of his own (1987’s autumnal Monsieur is Getting Older, not in the Rafael series), otherwise occupying himself with more stage work and TV. He also acted for an interesting mix of directors including Nagisa Oshima, Philip Kaufman, Otar Iosseliani, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Aki Kaurismäki — in addition to having earlier worked with Robert Bresson, Louis Malle, and (in the notorious, unreleased The Day the Clown Cried) Jerry Lewis. Now in his mid-80s, he’s stuck around long enough to enjoy his prime work being rediscovered and celebrated for its sometimes hilarious, often near-balletic ingenuity.
Schedules are for Wed/5-Tue/11 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.
ABCO ARTSPACE 3135 Filbert, Oakl; www.everythingisterrible.com. $10. "Everything is Terrible! Holiday Special!," found-footage video collage, Sat, 10.
"ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL" Terra Gallery, 511 Harrison, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St; and Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.sfindie.com. Ninth annual festival of genre films, with 28 features and 26 shorts, Wed-Sun.
ANSWER COALITION 2969 Mission, SF; www.answersf.org. $5-10. Occupy the Bay (Riley, 2012), Thu, 7.
ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. "Other Cinema:" works by Jeremy Rourke, Ben Wood, and others celebrating forgotten formats and media archaeology, Sat, 8:30.
BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.cinemasf.com. $10. •Remembering Playland at the Beach (Wyrsch, 2010), Sat, noon, and Sutro’s: The Palace at Lands End (Wyrsch, 2011), Sat, 1:30. With director Tom Wyrsch in person.
CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •Get Carter (Hodges, 1971), Wed, 2:40, 7, and The Trip (Winterbottom, 2010), Wed, 4:50, 9:10. Mystical Traveler: The Life and Times of Dr. John-Roger (2013), Thu, 7:30. This event, $10; preceded by free video seminars from Dr. John-Roger, Thu, 9am-6pm. More info at www.mysticaltraveler.com. "Midnites for Maniacs: No Pain No Gain Triple Bill:" •Bring It On (Reed, 2000), Fri, 7:30; Hairspray (Waters, 1988), Fri, 9:30; and Kickboxer (DiSalle, 1989), Fri, 11:30. Samsara (Fricke, 2011), Sat-Sun, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:15. "Rick Prelinger Presents Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 7," Tue, 7:30. More info at www.longnow.org.
CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. A Late Quartet (Zilberman, 2012), call for dates and times. A Royal Affair (Arcel, 2012), call for dates and times. "Pierre Étaix: Lost and Found:" Le Grand Amour (1969) with "Happy Anniversary" (1962), Fri and Dec 13, 6:45 (also Fri, 4:30); The Suitor (1963) with "Rupture" (1961), Fri, 9; Sat, 2; Tue, 8:30; Yo Yo (1965), Sun, 5, 7:15; Dec 12, 8:30; As Long As You’re Healthy (1966) with "Feeling Good" (1969), Tue, 6:45; Dec 13, 9; Land of Milk and Honey (1971), Dec 12, 6:45. "Mysteries of the Krell: Making the Sci-Fi Epic Forbidden Planet," Sat, 7. This event, $12. White Christmas (Curtiz, 1954), Sun, 1. "A Century Ago: The Films of 1912," presented on a vintage projector with live accompaniment, Mon, 7. This event, $12.
PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. "Day With(out) Art:" United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Hubbard, 2012), Wed, 7. "Grand Illusions: French Cinema Classics, 1928-1960:" Crime and Punishment (Chenal, 1935), Thu, 7; Port of Shadows (Carné, 1938), Fri, 7; Eyes Without a Face (Franju, 1960), Fri, 8:50; Les orgueilleux (Allégret, 1953), Sun, 3; Carnival in Flanders (Feyder, 1935), Sun, 5. "Wild at Heart: Barry Gifford:" Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997), Sat, 6; Perdita Durango (de la Iglesia, 1997), Sat, 9:10.
ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, Wed-Fri. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule. Just 45 Minutes from Broadway (Jaglom, 2012), Wed-Thu, 7, 9:15.
SF CINEMATHEQUE San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St, SF; www.sfcinematheque.org. $10. "Shifting Geographies/Special Relativity:" Deep State (Butler and Mirza, 2012), with other works, presented in association with SFMOMA, Thu, 7.
VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; Facebook: The Vortex Room. $10. "The Vortex Apocalypse, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Thursday Film Cult:" •Chosen Survivors (Roley, 1974), Thu, 9, and The Last Days of Planet Earth (Masuda, 1974), Thu, 11.
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. "Honk If You’re Horny: Retro Sex Musicals:" Alice in Wonderland (Townsend, 1976), Thu, 7:30. Islam Unknown: Part Two (Elders, 2012), Sun, 2.
Spooky chanteuse Jill Tracy describes her new holiday release, Silver Smoke, Star of Night, as “the Christmas album for those who prefer the October chill.” She celebrates its release with three festive events, starting with tonight’s “Fragrance: The Allure and Magical History of Perfumes,” an after-hours party at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. The evening is both concert and launch of her limited-edition fragrances (appropriately, devoted to “dark elegance”), created with local perfumers Nocturne Alchemy. Sat/8, the Hypnodrome (where Tracy has been known to perform with the Thrillpeddlers) hosts “Creepshow Christmas” — a family-friendly show mixing ghost stories with live accompaniment. Finally, Silver Smoke‘s official CD release shindig is Dec. 19 at the DNA Lounge. Spirits will be bright! (Cheryl Eddy)
The young MCs in Seattle rap duo Blue Scholars met, quite appropriately, in a hip-hop club at the University of Washington. You can hear these academic roots clearly in DJs Sabzi and Geologic’s smart, searing rhymes. The heady lyrical content of their work tackles serious, political issues such as socioeconomic mobility, empowerment, and questioning authority. Even more impressively, these boys don’t just talk the talk. Geologic’s history of activism in the Filipino-American community and the duo’s headquarters in 98118, the country’s most ethnically diverse zip code, is the perfect recipe for the smart, relevant hip-hop that the scene most desperately needs (we’re looking at you, Chris Brown). (Haley Zaremba)
Verrrry clever, Castro Theatre — programming back-to-back screenings of Get Carter (1971) and The Trip (2010). Gritty Get Carter follows a snarling Michael Caine as he prowls around Newcastle, punching his way through the local gangster contingent he holds responsible for his brother’s death. The Trip, a travelogue featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing exaggerated versions of themselves), contains some genius and quotable comedy — ABBA sing-offs, mock-epic speeches — but none more memorable than the two actors going head to head with their Caine impressions: “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” Truly, an inspired double feature. (Cheryl Eddy)
Get Carter 2:40 and 7pm; The Trip 4:50 and 9:10pm, $8.50–$11
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … er, definitely something, flying at you with the unstoppable momentum of a two-story wig and a pair of birdseed-filled balloons. You already know what’s green and ice skates (Peggy Phlegm) now come find out what’s queen and ice wobbles — all those years in man-stilletos can’t help you out on the rink, honey. This cherished annual hoot features a wealth of San Francisco’s beloved gender clown personalities threading their way through bewildered tourist families in Union Square (who actually get really into it, and by the end it’s a heartwarming family affair, full of squeals of delight). You can even skate with these swanning lovelies! No money back if you end up with a weave in your face. The great Donna Sachet — she of the stunning, form-fitting, fake-fur-trimmed ravishing red holiday dress — mistresses the ceremonies. Grab a warming adult beverage from nearby Emporio Rulli Il Caffe and join in the fun. But don’t you dare judge, or you might get Nancy Kerrigan’d. Skates are blades, remember. (Marke B.)
I’ve had some good times listening to San Francisco’s Sly and the Family Stone — both letting my mind wander the groove of their funky sound and feeling the sense of pride in one’s self that Sly Stone sings so well — and I’d venture a guess that you have too. Though that innovate teacher and leader has opted for life out of the spotlight, three of the original members, Jerry Martini (saxophone), Cynthia Robinson(trumpet), and Greg Errico (drums), are keeping the music alive with the help of a few younger talents. Mostly hailing from the Las Vegas area, these new members are all performers with rich experiences listening to Sly’s music. This new Family Stone recreates the old hits in a fresh show, hoping to bring the music to all generations. (Molly Champlin)
Streetlight Manifesto was pretty late to the ska game, releasing its first album in 2003, well over a decade after the genre’s revival heyday. Though in a way, the band’s timing was actually perfect. Born out of the ashes of previous Jersey ska-punk heroes Catch-22 and One Cool Guy, Streetlight’s catchy tunes and punk rock virility have been nearly single-handedly keeping third-wave ska alive in a world dominated by hip-hop, mainstream pop, and EDM. The band is ringing in the new year with the release of its fifth album, The Hands That Thieve. During this tour, Streetlight Manifesto promises to play new songs, old favorites, and everything in between; so put on your skanking shoes and lace ’em up tight. It’s gonna be a good night. (Zaremba)
Kim Gordon, artist and gallery director at Modern Eden, has curated the one-night-only art show, Hope Beyond, a benefit for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. The assembled line-up includes an impressive selection of artists representing a variety of pop-surreal and contemporary styles. The work ranges from the graffiti style sharpie drawings of Kidlew to intricate fusion of nature images and Hindi symbolism by Inge Vandormael. Personally, I’m excited to see what all of these artists will contribute to the show. Especially Serge Gay Jr. — an artist whose paintings collage and reproduce pop culture images to create dichotomies between what’s real and what’s fake and make you to take a second look at his subjects: beauty, violence, drugs, and race. With all art priced below $100 and the proceeds going to Hurricane Sandy victims, what’s not to love? (Champlin)
The folks in Imperial Russia loved The Nutcracker and kept it alive during Soviet times. But the West never saw it until some White Russians, who had escaped to San Francisco, nagged then San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Willam Christensen to choreograph it in 1944. By now there are hundreds of versions all over the world; the oddest one I ever saw had Drosselmeyer arrive on a spaceship. SFB’s, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson in 2004, is set during the 1915 Panama International Exhibition. It lacks the cloying sweetness and sentimentality that infects so many others. Tomasson’s is a love letter to the City — cool, transparent, a little reserved and superbly elegant. (Rita Felciano)
Did you ever feel cheated as a kid when you would see cartoons and hear stories about elves making toys from scratch, then you got a Barbie doll or video game that obviously wasn’t cobbled at the North Pole? Well, now is your chance to watch the toys actually being made. Not by elves though, but by local artists. There will be over 35 of them at Root Division Art Space bringing creativity from their various fields (painting, sculpture, and illustration mostly) to the art of toy making. All the work will be sold for a flat rate of $40. Bring cash for some shopping, or just come to enjoy the atmosphere of creativity complete with music by DJ Yukon Cornelius. (Champlin)
I think I need to start with a disclaimer: I love John Prine. Yes, I’m completely biased when I say that he is one of the greatest living lyricists and you’d be lucky to go see him. But why take my word for it? His more than 40 years of successful songwriting can speak for themselves. Starting off as a Chicago-area postman doing open mics in his spare time, Prine eventually got noticed — by a young Roger Ebert. Now, almost 70 years after that glowing review, Prine is still an incredible songwriter and performer, and each song is a charming, witty, and poignant labor of love. In his time as a performer, many trends and genres have come and gone, but a great folk song never goes out of style. (Zaremba)
Continuing a long-running San Francisco tradition that takes advantage of the fact that the crab fishing season along the California coast coincides with the holiday season, the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District 2012 Crab Fest will offer up a tasty fete featuring the crustacean prepared in a variety of ways by local restaurants, along with exhibits, cooking demonstrations and more. A host of sustainably-produced regional wines will provide the perfect way to raise a toast to the annual event, which donates all proceeds to the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program and the San Francisco Police Department’s Youth Fishing Program. (Sean McCourt)
Though the weather outside is frightful, the smolderingly creative queers performing tonight at El Rio are more than capable of keeping your toasty warm. The lineup alone is worth the sleigh ride to El Rio — burlesque from the bountiful Ms. Vagina Jenkins, jazzy moves courtesy East Bay punker Brontez Purnell, the release performance of drag king blueser K.B. TuffNStuff’s Trans of Venus album, and so much more hotness. But as if that wasn’t enough to draw you like a moth to flame, this: the evening is a benefit for Queer Rebels’ year-round lineup of genderbending, empowering art events like the Exploding Lineage! experimental film fest, two-day summit of Asian American activists, and the group’s annual eponymous production of queer takes on the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. (Caitlin Donohue)
Whereas Lou Reed was the primary source of the Velvet Underground’s swagger, and hard-bitten lyricism, John Cale took charge of the group’s more avant-garde leanings. Even 45 years after leaving the band, Cale continues to challenge and surprise his listeners, as evidenced by the title of his latest LP: Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood. Largely devoid of the splintering bursts of noise that defined his formative years, and the rootsy pastoralism of Paris 1919 and Vintage Violence, Cale’s latest is an art-rock record in the tradition of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush: affecting in its ability to experiment and take risks while working squarely within the pop template. Another gutsy effort from an aging icon whose renegade streak hasn’t gone anywhere. See him while you can. (Taylor Kaplan)
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.
OPENING
Generation P When Babylen Tatarsky (Vladimir Epifantsev) meets an old friend by chance, he’s plucked from penny-ante street level entrepeneurship into the much higher stakes of advertising in early 1990s Russia — a brave new world of post-Communist consumerist capitalism bent on outperforming the West’s, in which new corrupt orders replace the old ones with dizzying speed. His rise from humble copy writer to a "living god" controlling mass reality one commercial at a time is accompanied by a whole lot of recreational drug use, mafia-style violence, and references to Mesopotamian mythology. Adapted from Victor Pelevin’s 1999 novel (published in the US as Homo Zapiens), Victor Ginzburg’s film preserves its heady, gonzo mix of Pynchon, cyberpunk, and Putney Swope (1969) as a satirical conspiracy fantasia in which excess is both the style and the subject. No doubt at least half the in-jokes are lost on non-Russian audiences, but Generation P is so dense and hyperactive you’ll be entertained by its fabulist sociopolitical onslaught regardless. (1:52) Embarcadero. (Harvey)
In the Family See "Father and Law." (2:49) Opera Plaza.
North Sea Texas Growing up is never easy — especially when you know who you are and who you love from a tender young age, and live in a sleepy Belgium coastal hamlet in the early ’70s. Sexual freedom begins at home, as filmmaker Bavo Defurne’s debut feature opens on our beautiful little protagonist, Pim — a melancholy, shy, diligent soul who has a talent for drawing, a responsible nature, and a yen for ritual dress-up in lipstick and lace. He has an over-the-top role model: an accordion-playing, zaftig mother who has a rep as the village floozy. Left alone far too often as his mom parties at a bar named Texas, Pim takes refuge with kindly single-mom neighbor Marcella, her earnest daughter, and her sexy, motorcycle-loving son, Gino, who turns out to be just Pim’s speed. But this childhood idyll is under threat: Gino’s new girlfriend and a handsome new boarder at Pim’s house promise to change everything. Displaying a gentle, empathetic touch for his cast of mildly quirky characters and a genuine knack for conjuring those long, sensual days of youth, Defurne manages to shine a fresh, romantic light on a somewhat familiar bildungsroman, leaving a lingering taste of sea salt and sweat along with the feeling of walking in one young boy’s very specific shoes. (1:36) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)
Playing For Keeps Gerard Butler plays a former sports star who aims to redeem himself by coaching his kid’s soccer team. (1:46)
"The Vortex Apocalypse, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Thursday Film Cult" With a respectful nod to the Mayans, the Vortex sees off 2012 with four weeks of movies depicting end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios. First up is an interesting duo from 1974. In Chosen Survivors, 11 strangers selected for their particular knowledge and skills are taken to an elaborate government bunker deep beneath the desert. They’re told they’re among several such groups in different secret locations chosen to preserve the human race in the immediate aftermath of total thermonuclear war. This is pretty hard to take, along with the notion that they’ll be spending at least the next five years in this very 1970s silver discotheque-spaceship environ. But soon the chosen few have an even more jarring crisis to deal with: the scientists who devised this sunken fortress neglected to note it is surrounded by caves filled with hungry vampire bats. There’s a very big twist at the one-hour point, but just when this rare theatrical feature by TV director Sutton Roley (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Airwolf, etc.) should kick into high gear, it actually seems to slow down. Still, there are a couple very tense sequences, and some interesting character fillips. The co-feature is The Last Days of Planet Earth a.k.a. Prophecies of Nostradamus, a Japanese superproduction that aimed to top both the then-prominent disaster movie genre and the strain of eco-horror dominating much of 1970s fantasy cinema. In addition to the expected earthquakes, tsunamis, and such, Earth’s meltdown triggers such phenomena as pterodactyl-sized vampire bats (again!) and bird-eating flowers. Toshio Masuda’s special effects spectacular also features a really weird modern dance performance, and — in the editorially butchered, atrociously dubbed US release version — dialogue like "But by not allowing them to live, you’re … killing them!" Vortex Room. (Harvey)
Waiting for Lightning The first voice you hear in Waiting for Lightning is pro skateboarder Danny Way’s mother: "I said, ‘Are you crazy? What do you think you’re doing?’" Can’t really blame her for worrying: Waiting for Lightning is a bio-doc following the fearless Way’s rise from littlest squirt at the Del Mar skate park to his determined quest to jump over the Great Wall of China in 2005. Growing up, he faced problems (his dad was killed in jail; his mom partied … a lot; his mentor died in a car crash; he suffered a broken neck after a surfing accident), but persevered to find his calling, pursuing what a peer calls "life-and-death stuntman shit." Like all docs about skateboarding — a sport that depends so much on cameras standing by — there’s no shortage of action footage, and big names like Tony Hawk and Christian Hosoi drop by to heap praise on Way’s talents and work ethic. Lightning is aimed mostly at an audience already fond of watching skate footage; it lacks the artistic heft of 2001’s Dogtown and Z-Boys, or the unusually compelling narrative of 2003’s Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, and the whole "Way is a golden god" theme gets a little tiresome. But it must be said: the Great Wall jump — a self-mythologizing publicity stunt that would do Evel Knievel proud — is rather spectacular. (1:32) Metreon. (Eddy)
ONGOING
Anna Karenina Joe Wright broke out of British TV with the 9,000th filmed Pride and Prejudice (2005), unnecessary but quite good. Too bad it immediately went to his head. His increasing showiness as director enlivened the silly teenage-superspy avenger fantasy Hanna (2011), but it started to get in the way of Atonement (2007), a fine book didn’t need camera gymnastics to make a great movie. Now it’s completely sunk a certified literary masterpiece still waiting for a worthy film adaptation. Keira Knightley plays the titular 19th century St. Petersburg aristocrat whose staid, happy-enough existence as a doting mother and dutiful wife (to deglammed Jude Law’s honorable but neglectful Karenin) is upended when she enters a mutually passionate affair with dashing military officer Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, miscast). Scandal and tragedy ensue. There’s nothing wrong with the screenplay, by Tom Stoppard no less. What’s wrong is Wright’s bright idea of staging the whole shebang as if it were indeed staged — a theatrical production in which nearly everything (even a crucial horse race) takes place on a proscenium stage, in the auditorium, or "backstage" among riggings. Whenever we move into a "real" location, the director makes sure that transition draws attention to its own cleverness as possible. What, you might ask, is the point? That the public social mores and society Anna lives in are a sort of "acting"? Like wow. Add to that another brittle, mannered performance by Wright’s muse Knightley, and there’s no hope of involvement here, let alone empathy — in love with its empty (but very prettily designed) layers of artifice, this movie ends up suffocating all emotion in gilded horseshit. The reversed-fortune romance between Levin (Domhall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander) does work quite well — though since Tolstoy called his novel Anna Karenina, it’s a pretty bad sign when the subsidiary storyline ends up vastly more engaging than hers. (2:10) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
Back to 1942 Multiple storylines wend through Feng Xiaogang’s historical epic about a devastating drought that brought famine to China’s Henan province. Abandoned by their government, millions of refugees would eventually die in a situation compounded by corrupt officials, the Chinese army’s demands on the region’s nonexistent grain stores, and looming Japanese troops. The scenes from the road are grim, on both small (a desperate family tries to trade their child for grain) and larger (Japanese bombing raids, cannibalism) scales — though there are moments of hope, as when rival families put aside their differences to help a pregnant daughter. (Hope doesn’t last, though: when the baby is born, the half-dead mother mutters, "Kill it.") Meanwhile, an American journalist (Adrien Brody) chases the story with the help of a priest (Tim Robbins, working a distracting accent); after witnessing horrors in Henan, his reporting helps nudge the government into action, however slightly. It would take an exceptionally even hand to prevent this heavily tragic material from sliding face first into melodrama, something Back to 1942 doesn’t even attempt to do. Whether you feel moved or manipulated is up to you. (2:26) Presidio. (Eddy)
The Big Picture Trading places, especially under sinister circumstances, seems unnervingly easy to do — if you’re the talented Mr. Ripley or The Big Picture‘s adorably scruffy bourgeois-on-the-run Paul (Romain Duris of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Coming from wealth and amiably going through the motions of upper-middle-class lawyerly life with his wife (Marina Fois) and kids, Paul is accustomed to relegating his love of photography to the sidelines as a hobby. So when photojournalist neighbor Gregoire (Eric Ruf) has a freakish accident, Paul throws himself down the rabbit hole of another man’s identity. Is it possible to completely start over — and is there a kind of freedom in death? Working from Douglas Kennedy’s novel, director and co-writer Eric Lartigau keeps his camera firmly fixed on his camera-wielding, metamorphosing lead, sidestepping the meta and going for the clearly Hitchcockian (though Hitch would probably reject the occasional cheesy slow-motion effect and reach for something more visually or technically audacious). To his credit, Lartigau keeps the audience guessing even beyond the credits, making this noir something of an artist’s parable, while Duris makes you root for his haunted, puppy-dog-ish Paul as he falls, finds his métier, and tumbles once more. (1:50) Embarcadero. (Chun)
Chasing Ice Even wild-eyed neocons might reconsider their declarations that global warming is a hoax after seeing the work of photographer James Balog, whose images of shrinking glaciers offer startling proof that our planet is indeed being ravaged by climate change (and it’s getting exponentially worse). Jeff Orlowski’s doc follows Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey team as they brave cruel elements in Iceland, Greenland, and Alaska, using time-lapse cameras to record glacier activity, some of it quite dramatic, over months and years. Balog is an affable subject, doggedly pursuing his work even after multiple knee surgeries make him a less-than-agile hiker, but it’s the photographs — as hauntingly beautiful as they are alarming — that make Chasing Ice so powerful. Could’ve done without Scarlett Johansson crooning over the end credits, though. (1:15) Embarcadero. (Eddy)
Cloud Atlas Cramming the six busy storylines of David Mitchell’s wildly ambitious novel into just three hours — the average reader might have thought at least 12 would be required — this impressive adaptation directed (in separate parts) by Tom Twyker (1998’s Run Lola Run) and Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski has a whole lot of narrative to get through, stretching around the globe and over centuries. In the mid 19th century, Jim Sturgess’ sickly American notory endures a long sea voyage as reluctant protector of a runaway-slave stowaway from the Chatham Islands (David Gyasi). In 1931 Belgium, a talented but criminally minded British musician (Ben Whishaw) wheedles his way into the household of a famous but long-inactive composer (Jim Broadbent). A chance encounter sets 1970s San Francisco journalist Luisa (Halle Berry) on the path of a massive cover-up conspiracy, swiftly putting her life in danger. Circa now, a reprobate London publisher’s (Broadbent) huge windfall turns into bad luck that gets even worse when he seeks help from his brother (Hugh Grant). In the not-so-distant future, a disposable "fabricant" server to the "consumer" classes (Doona Bae) finds herself plucked from her cog-like life for a rebellious higher purpose. Finally, in an indeterminately distant future after "the Fall," an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) forms a highly ambivalent relationship toward a visitor (Berry) from a more advanced but dying civilization. Mitchell’s book was divided into huge novella-sized blocks, with each thread split in two; the film wastes very little time establishing its individual stories before beginning to rapidly intercut between them. That may result in a sense of information (and eventually action) overload, particularly for non-readers, even as it clarifies the connective tissues running throughout. Compression robs some episodes of the cumulative impact they had on the page; the starry multicasting (which in addition to the above mentioned finds many uses for Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Susan Sarandon) can be a distraction; and there’s too much uplift forced on the six tales’ summation. Simply put, not everything here works; like the very different Watchmen, this is a rather brilliant "impossible adaptation" screenplay (by the directors) than nonetheless can’t help but be a bit too much. But so much does work — in alternating currents of satire, melodrama, pulp thriller, dystopian sci-fi, adventure, and so on — that Cloud Atlas must be forgiven for being imperfect. If it were perfect, it couldn’t possibly sprawl as imaginatively and challengingly as it does, and as mainstream movies very seldom do. (2:52) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)
The Collection As soon as you behold the neon sign "Hotel Argento" shining over the grim warehouse-cum-evil dead trap, you know exactly what you’re in for — a wink, and even a little bit of a horror superfan’s giggle. In other words, to tweak that killer Roach Motel tagline: kids check in, but they don’t check out. No need to see 2009’s The Collector — the previous movie by director-cowriter Marcus Dunstan and writer Patrick Melton (winners of the third season of Project Greenlight, now with the screenplays for multiple Saw films beneath their collective belt) — the giallo fanboy and gorehound hallmarks are there for all to enjoy: tarantulas (straight from 1981’s The Beyond), a factory kitted out as an elaborate murder machine, and end credits that capture characters’ last moments. Plus, plenty of fast-paced shocks and seemingly endless splatter, with a heavy sprinkle of wince-inducing compound fractures. The Collection ups the first film’s ante, as gamine Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) is lured to go dancing with her pals. Their underground party turns out to be way beyond the fringe, as the killer mows down the dance floor, literally, and gives the phrase "teen crush" a bloody new spin. Stumbling on The Collector‘s antihero thief Arkin (Josh Stewart) locked in a box, Elena releases him but can’t prevent her own capture, so killer-bodyguard Lucello (Oz‘s Lee Tergesen) snatches Arkin from the hospital and forces him to lead his team of toughs through a not-so-funhouse teeming with booby traps as well as victims-turned-insidious-weapons. All of which almost convinces you of nutty-nutball genius of the masked, dilated-pupiled Collector (here stuntman Randall Archer), who takes trendy taxidermy to icky extremes — even when his mechanism is threatened by a way smart last girl and a lock picker who’s adept at cracking building codes. Despite Dunstan’s obvious devotion to horror-movie landmarks, The Collection doesn’t turn out to be particularly original: rather, it attempts to stand on the shoulders — and arms and dismembered body parts — of others, in hopes of finding its place on a nonexistent drive-in bill. (1:23) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)
The Flat Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat begins as the filmmaker’s family descends upon the Tel Aviv apartment of his recently-deceased grandmother, "a bit of a hoarder" who lived to 95 and seemingly never got rid of anything. This includes, as Goldfinger discovers, copies of the Joseph Goebbels-founded newspaper Der Angriff, containing articles about "the Nazi who visited Palestine." The Nazi was Leopold von Mildenstein, an SS officer with an interest in Zionism. Turns out he made the journey in 1933 with his wife and a Jewish couple named Kurt and Gerda Tuchler — Goldfinger’s grandparents. Understandably intrigued and more than a little baffled, Goldfinger investigates, finding letters and diary entries that reveal the unlikely traveling companions were close friends, even after World War II. His mother, the Tuchler’s daughter, prefers to "keep the past out," but curiosity (and the pursuit of a good documentary) presses Goldfinger forward; he visits von Mildenstein’s elderly daughter in Germany, digs through German archives, and unearths even more suprises about his family tree. Broader themes about guilt and denial emerge — post-traumatic coping mechanisms that echo through generations.
(1:37) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)
Flight To twist the words of one troubled balladeer, he believes he can fly, he believes he can touch the sky. Unfortunately for Denzel Washington’s Whip Whitaker, another less savory connotation applies: his semi-sketchy airline captain is sailing on the overconfidence that comes with billowing clouds of blow. Beware the quickie TV spot — and Washington’s heroic stance in the poster — that plays this as a quasi-action flick: Flight is really about a man’s efforts to escape responsibility and his flight from facing his own addiction. It also sees Washington once again doing what he does so well: wrestling with the demons of a charismatic yet deeply flawed protagonist. We come upon Whip as he’s rousing himself from yet another bender, balancing himself out with a couple lines with a gorgeous, enabling flight attendant by his side. It’s a checks-and-balances routine we’re led to believe is business as usual, as he slides confidently into the cockpit, gives the passengers a good scare by charging through turbulence, and proceeds to doze off. The plane, however, goes into fail mode and forces the pilot to improvise brilliantly and kick into hero mode, though he can’t fly from his cover, which is slowly blown despite the ministrations of kindred addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly) and dealer Harling (John Goodman at his most ebullient) and the defensive moves of his pilots union cohort (Bruce Greenwood) and the airline’s lawyer (Don Cheadle). How can Whip fly out of the particular jam called his life? Working with what he’s given, Washington summons reserves of humanity, though he’s ultimately failed by John Gatins’ sanctimonious, recovery-by-the-numbers script and the tendency of seasoned director Robert Zemeckis to blithely skip over the personal history and background details that would have more completely filled out our picture of Whip. We’re left grasping for the highs, waiting for the instances that Harling sails into view and Whip tumbles off the wagon. (2:18) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
Hitchcock On the heels of last year’s My Week With Marilyn comes another biopic about an instantly recognizable celebrity viewed through the lens of a specific film shoot. Here, we have Anthony Hopkins (padded and prosthetic’d) playing the Master of Suspense, mulling over which project to pursue after the success of 1959’s North by Northwest. Even if you’re not a Hitch buff, it’s clear from the first scene that Psycho, based on Robert Bloch’s true crime-inspired pulpy thriller, is looming. We open on "Ed Gein’s Farmhouse, 1944;" Gein (Michael Wincott) is seen in his yard, his various heinous crimes — murder, grave-robbing, body-part hoarding, human-skin-mask crafting, etc. — as yet undiscovered. Hitchcock, portrayed by the guy who also played the Gein-inspired Hannibal Lecter, steps into the frame with that familiar droll greeting: "Guhhd eevvveeeening." And we’re off, following the veteran director as he muses "What if somebody really good made a horror picture?" Though his wife and collaborator, Alma (Helen Mirren), cautions him against doing something simply because everyone tells him not to, he plows ahead; the filmmaking scenes are peppered with behind-the-scenes moments detailed in Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the source material for John J. McLaughlin’s script. But as the film’s tagline — "Behind every Psycho is a great woman" — suggests, the relationship between Alma and Hitch is, stubbornly, Hitchcock‘s main focus. While Mirren is effective (and I’m all for seeing a lady who works hard behind the scenes get recognition), the Hitch-at-home subplot exists only to shoehorn more conflict into a tale that’s got plenty already. Elsewhere, however, Hitchcock director Sacha Gervasi — making his narrative debut after hit 2008 doc Anvil: The Story of Anvil — shows stylistic flair, working Hitchcock references into the mise-en-scène. (1:32) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
Holy Motors Holy moly. Offbeat auteur Leos Carax (1999’s Pola X) and frequent star Denis Lavant (1991’s Lovers on the Bridge) collaborate on one of the most bizarrely wonderful films of the year, or any year. Oscar (Lavant) spends every day riding around Paris in a white limo driven by Céline (Edith Scob, whose eerie role in 1960’s Eyes Without a Face is freely referenced here). After making use of the car’s full complement of wigs, theatrical make-up, and costumes, he emerges for "appointments" with unseen "clients," who apparently observe each vignette as it happens. And don’t even try to predict what’s coming next, or decipher what it all means, beyond an investigation of identity so original you won’t believe your eyes. This wickedly humorous trip through motion-capture suits, graveyard photo shoots, teen angst, back-alley gangsters, old age, and more (yep, that’s the theme from 1954’s Godzilla you hear; oh, and yep, that’s pop star Kylie Minogue) is equal parts disturbing and delightful. Movies don’t get more original or memorable than this. (1:56) Embarcadero. (Eddy)
Just 45 Minutes From Broadway (1:59) Roxie.
Killing Them Softly Lowest-level criminal fuckwits Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) are hired to rob a mob gambling den, a task which miraculously they fail to blow. Nevertheless, the repercussions are swift and harsh, as a middleman suit (Richard Jenkins) to the unseen bosses brings in one hitman (Brad Pitt), who brings in another (James Gandolfini) to figure out who the thieves are and administer extreme justice. Based on a 1970s novel by George V. Higgins, this latest collaboration by Pitt and director-scenarist Andrew Dominik would appear superficially to be a surer commercial bet after the box-office failure of their last, 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford — one of the great films of the last decade. But if you’re looking for action thrills or even Guy Ritchie-style swaggering mantalk (though there is some of that), you’ll be disappointed to find Killing more in the abstracted crime drama arena of Drive (2011) or The American (2010), landing somewhere between the riveting former and the arid latter. This meticulously crafted tale is never less than compelling in imaginative direction and expert performance, but it still carries a certain unshakable air of so-what. Some may be turned off by just how vividly unpleasant Mendelsohn’s junkie and Gandolfini’s alchie are. Others will shrug at the wisdom of re-setting this story in the fall of 2008, with financial-infrastructure collapse and the hollow promise of President-elect Obama’s "Change" providing ironical background noise. It’s all a little too little, too soon. (1:37) Four Star, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)
A Late Quartet Philip Seymour Hoffman is fed up playing second fiddle — literally. He stars in this grown-up soap opera about the internal dramas of a world-class string quartet. While the group is preparing for its 25th season, the eldest member (Christopher Walken) is diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s. As he’s the base note in the quartet, his retirement challenges the group’s future, not just his own. Hoffman’s second violinist sees the transition as an opportunity to challenge the first violin (Mark Ivanir) for an occasional Alpha role. When his wife, the quartet’s viola player (Catherine Keener), disagrees, it’s a slight ("You think I’m not good enough?") and a betrayal because prior to their marriage, viola and first violin would "duet" if you get my meaning. This becomes a grody aside when Hoffman and Keener’s violin prodigy daughter (Imogen Poots) falls for her mother’s old beau and Hoffman challenges their marriage with a flamenco dancer. These quiet people finds ways to use some loud instruments (a flamenco dancer, really?) and the music as well as the views of Manhattan create a deeply settled feeling of comfort in the cold —insulation can be a dangerous thing. When we see (real world) cellist Nina Lee play, and her full body interacts with a drama as big as vaudeville, we see what tension was left out of the playing and forced into the incestuous "family" conflicts. In A Late Quartet, pleasures are great and atmosphere, heavy. You couldn’t find a better advertisement for this symphonic season; I wanted to buy tickets immediately. And also vowed to stay away from musicians. (1:45) Smith Rafael. (Vizcarrondo)
Life of Pi Several filmmakers including Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and M. Night Shyamalan had a crack at Yann Martel’s "unfilmable" novel over the last decade, without success. That turns out to have been a very good thing, since Ang Lee and scenarist David Magee have made probably the best movie possible from the material — arguably even an improvement on it. Framed as the adult protagonist’s (Irrfan Khan) lengthy reminiscence to an interested writer (Rafe Spall) it chronicles his youthful experience accompanying his family and animals from their just shuttered zoo on a cargo ship voyage from India to Canada. But a storm capsizes the vessel, stranding teenaged Pi (Suraj Sharma) on a lifeboat with a mini menagerie — albeit one swiftly reduced by the food chain in action to one Richard Parker, a whimsically named Bengal tiger. This uneasy forced cohabitation between Hindu vegetarian and instinctual carnivore is an object lesson in survival as well as a fable about the existence of God, among other things. Shot in 3D, the movie has plenty of enchanted, original imagery, though its outstanding technical accomplishment may lie more in the application of CGI (rather than stereoscopic photography) to something reasonably intelligent for a change. First-time actor Sharma is a natural, while his costar gives the most remarkable performance by a wild animal this side of Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a charmed, lovely experience. (2:00) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Bridge, Embarcadero. (Chun)
Red Dawn A remake of a 1984 movie that seemed a pretty nutty ideological throwback even during the Reagan Era’s revived Cold War air conditioning, Red Dawn should have come out a couple years ago, having been shot late 2009. But in the meantime MGM was undergoing yet another seismic financial rupture, and as the film sat around for lack of the means needed for distribution and marketing, it occurred that perhaps it already had a fatal, internal flaw. You see, this update re-cast our invaders from Russkies to People’s Republicans, tapping into the modern fear of China as debtor and international bully. But: China is also a huge fledgling market for Hollywood product. So a tortured makeover of the remake ensued; scenes were added, re-shot, and digitally altered to impose a drastic narrative change. The new villain is absurd it gets acknowledged as such by dialogue: "North Korea? It doesn’t make any sense!" Yup, in the new Red Dawn a coastal Washington state burg is the first attack point in a wholesale invasion of the U.S. (pop. 315 million) by the Democratic People’s Republic (pop. 25 million). It’s football season, so a Spokane suburb’s team — Wolverines!! — lends its name as battle cry and its revved up healthy young flesh as guerilla martyrs to the fight for, ohm yeah, freedom. Do they drink beer? Do they rescue cheerleader girlfriends from concentration camps? Do they kick North Korean ass? Do you really need to ask? (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)
Rise of the Guardians There’s nothing so camp as "Heat Miser" from The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) in Rise of the Guardians,, but there’s plenty here to charm all ages. The mystery at its center: we open on Jack Frost (voiced by Chris Pine) being born, pulled from the depths of a frozen pond by the Man on the Moon and destined to spread ice and cold everywhere he goes, invisible to all living creatures. It’s an individualistic yet lonely lot for Jack, who’s styled as an impish snowboarder in a hoodie and armed with an icy scepter, until the Guardians — spirits like North/Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), and the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman) — call on him to join them. Pitch the Boogeyman (Jude Law) is threatening to snuff out all children’s hopes and dreams with fears and nightmares, and it’s up to the Guardians must keep belief in magic alive. But what’s in it for Jack, except the most important thing: namely who is he and what is his origin story? Director Peter Ramsey keeps those fragile dreams aloft with scenes awash with motion and animation that evokes the chubby figures and cozy warm tones of ’70s European storybooks. And though Pine verges on blandness with his vocal performance, Baldwin, Jackman, and Fisher winningly deliver the jokes. (1:38) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)
A Royal Affair At age 15 in 1766, British princess Caroline (Alicia Vikander) travels abroad to a new life — as queen to the new ruler of Denmark, her cousin. Attractive and accomplished, she is judged a great success by everyone but her husband. King Christian (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) is just a teenager himself, albeit one whose mental illness makes him behave alternately like a debauched libertine, a rude two year-old, a sulky-rebellious adolescent, and a plain old abusive spouse. Once her principal official duty is fulfilled — bearing a male heir — the two do their best to avoid each other. But on a tour of Europe Christian meets German doctor Johann Friedrich Struenesse (Mads Mikkelsen), a true man of the Enlightenment who not only has advanced notions about calming the monarch’s "eccentricities," but proves a tolerant and agreeable royal companion. Lured back to Denmark as the King’s personal physician, he soon infects the cultured Queen with the fervor of his progressive ideas, while the two find themselves mutually attracted on less intellectual levels as well. When they start manipulating their unstable but malleable ruler to push much-needed public reforms through in the still basically feudal nation, they begin acquiring powerful enemies. This very handsome-looking history lesson highlights a chapter relatively little-known here, and finds in it an interesting juncture in the eternal battle between masters and servants, the piously self-interested and the secular humanists. At the same time, Nikolaj Arcel’s impressively mounted and acted film is also somewhat pedestrian and overlong. It’s a quality costume drama, but not a great one. (2:17) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) Opera Plaza. (Chun)
The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Embarcadero. (Harvey)
Seven Psychopaths Those nostalgic for 1990s-style chatty assassins will find much to love in the broadly sketched Seven Psychopaths. Director-writer Martin McDonough already dipped a pen into Tarantino’s blood-splattered ink well with his 2008 debut feature, In Bruges, and Seven Psychopaths reads as larkier and more off-the-cuff, as the award-winning Irish playwright continues to try to find his own discomfiting, teasing balance between goofy Grand Guignol yuks and meta-minded storytelling. Structured, sort of, with the certified lucidity of a thrill killer, Seven Psychopaths opens on Boardwalk Empire heavies Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg bantering about the terrors of getting shot in the eyeball, while waiting to "kill a chick." The talky twosome don’t seem capable of harming a fat hen, in the face of the Jack of Spades serial killer, who happens to be Psychopath No. One and a serial destroyer of hired guns. The key to the rest of the psychopathic gang is locked in the noggin of screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell), who’s grappling with a major block and attempting the seeming impossible task of creating a peace-loving, Buddhist killer. Looking on are his girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish) and actor best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), who has a lucrative side gig as a dog kidnapper — and reward snatcher — with the dapper Hans (Christopher Walken). A teensy bit too enthusiastic about Marty’s screenplay, Billy displays a talent for stumbling over psychos, reeling in Zachariah (Tom Waits) and, on his doggie-grabbing adventures, Shih Tzu-loving gangster Charlie (Woody Harrelson). Unrest assured, leitmotifs from McDonough plays — like a preoccupation with fiction-making (The Pillowman) and the coupling of pet-loving sentimentality and primal violence (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) — crop up in Seven Psychopaths, though in rougher, less refined form, and sprinkled with a nervous, bromantic anxiety that barely skirts homophobia. Best to bask in the cute, dumb pleasures of a saucer-eyed lap dog and the considerably more mental joys of this cast, headed up by dear dog hunter Walken, who can still stir terror with just a withering gaze and a voice that can peel the finish off a watch. (1:45) Metreon. (Chun)
Silver Linings Playbook After guiding two actors to Best Supporting Oscars in 2010’s The Fighter, director David O. Russell returns (adapting his script from Matthew Quick’s novel) with another darkly comedic film about a complicated family that will probably earn some gold of its own. Though he’s obviously not ready to face the outside world, Pat (Bradley Cooper) checks out of the state institution he’s been court-ordered to spend eight months in after displaying some serious anger-management issues. He moves home with his football-obsessed father (Robert De Niro) and worrywart mother (Jacki Weaver of 2010’s Animal Kingdom), where he plunges into a plan to win back his estranged wife. Cooper plays Pat as a man vibrating with troubled energy — always in danger of flying into a rage, even as he pursues his forced-upbeat "silver linings" philosophy. But the movie belongs to Jennifer Lawrence, who proves the chops she showcased (pre-Hunger Games megafame) in 2010’s Winter’s Bone were no fluke. As the damaged-but-determined Tiffany, she’s the left-field element that jolts Pat out of his crazytown funk; she’s also the only reason Playbook‘s dance-competition subplot doesn’t feel eye-rollingly clichéd. The film’s not perfect, but Lawrence’s layered performance — emotional, demanding, bitchy, tough-yet-secretly-tender — damn near is. (2:01) SF Center. (Eddy)
Skyfall Top marks to Adele, who delivers a magnificent title song to cap off Skyfall‘s thrilling pre-credits chase scene. Unfortunate, then, that the film that follows squanders its initial promise. After a bomb attack on MI6, the clock is running out for Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench), accused of Cold War irrelevancy in a 21st century full of malevolent, stateless computer hackers. The audience, too, will yearn for a return to simpler times; dialogue about "firewalls" and "obfuscated code" never fails to sound faintly ridiculous, despite the efforts Ben Whishaw as the youthful new head of Q branch. Javier Bardem is creative and creepy as keyboard-tapping villain Raoul Silva, but would have done better with a megalomaniac scheme to take over the world. Instead, a small-potatoes revenge plot limps to a dull conclusion in the middle of nowhere. Skyfall never decides whether it prefers action, bons mots, and in-jokes to ponderous mythologizing and ripped-from-the-headlines speechifying — the result is a unsatisfying, uneven mixture. (2:23) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Ben Richardson)
Starlet Fresh off the bus from Florida, Jane (Dree Hemingway, daughter of the perennially undervalued Mariel) is living an indolent existence in the San Fernando Valley — it takes a while for us to realize she even has a job, albeit a pretty irregular and undemanding one. (Hint: What movie industry is largely based in the Valley? Second hint: It’s not the non-porn one.) Most of the time she just hangs about with her equally immature, similarly employed housemates, tanning and playing with her little dog. When a chance find at a yard sale yields a stash of hidden cash, Jane goes on a brief spending spree, then guiltily tries to return the remaining cash to Sadie (Besedka Johnson). The latter is an extra-cranky elderly woman who has no idea she’s missing any money and slams the door in Jane’s face before she can explain. Undaunted, perhaps needing some semblance of family in her vapid new life, Jane basically forces her friendship on the old lady, with eventual success albeit a few speed bumps. Sean Baker’s film is often an uncomfortable watch, because the dynamic between lead characters is so frequently awkward and discordant. (And also because the other major figures, Jane’s housemates played by Stella Maeve and James Ransome, are so completely obnoxious.) But its resistance to easy odd-couple sentimentality ultimately works to Starlet‘s favor, making the low key (like everything else here) close unexpectedly poignant. Real-life adult entertainment stars Manuel Ferrara and Asa Akira appear as themselves. (1:59) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 The final installment of the Twilight franchise picks up shortly after the medical-emergency vampirization of last year’s Breaking Dawn – Part 1, giving newly undead Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) just enough time to freshen up after nearly being torn asunder during labor by her hybrid spawn, Renesmee. In a just world, Bella and soul mate Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) would get more of a honeymoon period, given how badly Part 1‘s actual honeymoon turned out. Alas, there’s just enough time for some soft-focus vampire-on-vampire action (a letdown after all the talk of rowdy undead sex), some catamount hunting, some werewolf posturing, a reunion with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and a few seconds of Cullen family bonding, and then those creepy Volturi are back, convinced that the Cullens have committed a vampire capital crime and ready to exact penance. Director Bill Condon (1998’s Gods and Monsters, 2004’s Kinsey) knows what the Twi-hards want and methodically doles it out, but the overall effect is less sweeping action and shivery romance and more "I have bugs crawling on me — and yet I’m bored." Some of that isn’t his fault — he bears no responsibility for naming Renesmee, for instance, to say nothing of a January-May subplot that we’re asked to wrap our brains around. But the film maintains such a loose emotional grip, shifting clumsily and robotically from comic interludes to unintentionally comic interludes to soaring-music love scenes to attempted pathos to a snowy battlefield where the only moment of any dramatic value occurs. Weighed down by the responsibility of bringing The Twilight Saga to a close, it limps weakly to its anticlimax, leaving one almost — but not quite — wishing for one more installment, a chance for a more stirring farewell. (1:55) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)
Wreck-It Ralph Wreck-It Ralph cribs directly from the Toy Story series: when the lights go off in the arcade, video game characters gather to eat, drink, and endure existential crises. John C. Reilly is likable and idiosyncratic as Ralph, the hulking, ham-fisted villain of a game called Fix-It-Felix. Fed up with being the bad guy, Ralph sneaks into gritty combat sim Hero’s Duty under the nose of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a blond space marine who mixes Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard with a PG-rated R. Lee Ermey. Things go quickly awry, and soon Ralph is marooned in cart-racing candyland Sugar Rush, helping Vanellope Von Schweetz (a manic Sarah Silverman), with Calhoun and opposite number Felix (Jack McBrayer) hot on his heels. Though often aggressively childish, the humor will amuse kids, parents, and occasionally gamers, and the Disney-approved message about acceptance is moving without being maudlin. The animation, limber enough to portray 30 years of changing video game graphics, deserves special praise. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Ben Richardson)
Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.
THEATER
OPENING
The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; www.trannyshack.com. $30. Opens Thu/6, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 30. Four drag queens + The Golden Girls + Christmas = holiday magic.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $25-35. Opens Wed/5, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 5pm). Through Jan 26. Boxcar’s popular production of John Cameron Mitchell’s glam-rock musical returns, starring a rotating cast of Hedwigs.
"A Minor Cycle: Five Little Plays in One Starry Night" NOHspace, Project Artaud, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.theatreofyugen.org. $10-30. Previews Tue/11, 7pm. Opens Wed/12, 7pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 1pm. Through Dec 30. Theatre of Yugen presents the world premiere of five one-act plays based on tales of childhood, interpreted though traditional Japanese artistry.
"The San Francisco Olympians Festival" Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sfolympians.com. $10. Opens Wed/5, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through Dec 20. This 12-night festival features brand-new plays by Bay Area writers, each based on one of the 12 Olympian gods of ancient Greece.
ONGOING
A Christmas Carol Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-95. Tue-Sat, 7pm (no evening performance Thu/6, Tue/11, or Dec 18; also 2pm matinees Sat/8, Dec 12, 15, 21, and 22; Sun, 5:30pm (also 1pm matinees Sun/9, Dec 16, and 23); Dec 24, 1pm. Through Dec 24. American Conservatory Theater’s annual holiday performance features James Carpenter as Scrooge.
Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.
History: The Musical Un-Scripted Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 22. The Un-Scripted Theater Company performs "an unscripted romp through Western history."
Hysterical, Historical San Francisco: Holiday Edition Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $25-40. Fri-Sat and Dec 26-31, 9pm. Through Dec 31. Comedian Kurt Weitzmann takes on San Francisco history, adding some holiday flair along the way.
The Marvelous Wonderettes New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $27-46. Previews Wed/5-Fri/7, 8pm. Opens Sat/8, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm (no show Dec 23). Through Jan 13. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Roger Bean’s 1950s pop-hit musical.
The New California Traveling Jewish Theater, 470 Florida, SF; www.pianofight.com. $20-25. Wed, 8pm. Through Dec 19. PianoFight Productions’ female-centric sketch comedy group ForePlays presents an all-new variety show.
Open Shotwell Studios, 3252 19th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat and Mon, 8pm. Through Dec 17. A married couple decides to open up their relationship in Back Alley Theater and Footloose’s production of Jeff Bedillion’s comedy for mature audiences.
Pal Joey Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. $25-75. Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Dec 16. 42nd Street Moon performs the Rodgers and Hart classic.
The Rainmaker Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 22. Shelton Theatre preforms N. Richard Nash’s classic drama.
Slugs and Kicks Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-30. Wed/5-Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 3pm. In Theatre Rhinoceros’ new coming-of-age comedy from admired playwright-director John Fisher (Medea: The Musical, Fighting Mac!), Rory (Ben Calabrese) is a high-strung but affable 20-year-old virgin studying acting at Purgatoria State University in the 1980s, where he admits (in his own simultaneous but retrospective narration), "I learned all I needed to know about life." The lessons unfold in the course of a senior thesis play directed by its author, a bitchy boozy queen named Jerry (a sharp Zachary Isen) who hires Rory for a bit part and Rory’s friend and roommate Anis (Alexandra Izdebski) for the lead. Anis plays opposite Rory’s nemesis, Giles (Nicholas Trengove), a muscle-bound happy-go-lucky bloke who can’t bother to memorize his lines but gets called a good actor anyway because he’s English. Anis soon turns her frustrated affections for the timid Rory (who insists he’s not gay, a little too often to be believed) to the eager Giles. Rory, in turn, accepts the advances of Giles’ jilted but equally unconcerned girlfriend, Cynthia (Asali Echols), while also spending increasingly quality time with his other roommate Marty (Robert Kittler), a loquacious class-conscious stoner who enjoys excursions along the more formidable socioeconomic borders of the city. The newfound attention goes to Rory’s head, and guilt and bad behavior (tied ultimately to an aloof father) ensue amid backstage machinations that leave Rory, among other things, bereft of that annoying late-term virginity. But nothing ever too terrible happens. This is a gentle story — sparingly staged and rooted in lightly shaded, humor-laden nostalgia — with a gentle message about letting go of extraneous, socially oppressive categories and freeing up the self. If you learn that in college, virgin or no, you’re probably ahead of the curve. (Avila)
Speed-the-Plow Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through Dec 21. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet drama.
The Submission New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jeff Talbott’s drama about a playwright who falsifies his identity when he enters his latest work into a prestigious theater festival.
The Waiting Period Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu/6-Fri/7, 8pm; Sat/8, 5pm. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)
BAY AREA
Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Jan 5. Lynne Kaufman’s new play stars Warren David Keith as the noted spiritual figure.
Big River TheatreWorks, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 30. TheatreWorks performs the Tony-winning musical based on Mark Twain’s Huck Finn stories.
Dracula Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Fairview, Berk; www.infernotheatre.org. $12-25. Thu and Sat-Sun, 8pm; Fri, 9pm. Though Dec 16. Inferno Theatre Company performs Giulio Cesare Perrone’s adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic.
It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-57. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Thu/6, 1pm; Dec 15, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 16. Marin Theatre Company performs Joe Landry’s live radio play adaptation of the classic Capra film.
The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Dec 16. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability. Even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)
Toil and Trouble La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/6-Sat/8, 8pm. For a theater company known for its radical interpretations of the Shakespearean canon, a play such as Lauren Gunderson’s Toil and Trouble, a goofy Generation Why retelling of Macbeth, is a particularly good fit for Impact Theatre. Whittled down to a dynamic three-character chamber play featuring delusionary slackers plotting to turn their MBAs and nebulous SF Giants connections into a bloodless takeover of a remote island nation rather than get crappy café jobs to pay the rent, Toil throws baseball, investors, Wikipedia, fortune cookies, hypothetical sex, and real violence into one cauldron, letting them bubble and froth throughout the piece. The so-crazy-it-might-just-work plan hatched by Adam (Michael Delaney), a relentlessly cheerful narcissist, quickly leads to tension between the three, especially once the potential payout is estimated at 30 million dollars, and before their plot is even finalized, a tenuous, murderous alliance forms between the insufferably wimpy Matt (Will Hand) and the rage-aholic Beth (Jeanette Penley). All three actors play their all-too-familiar characters to the hilt, and Josh Costello’s direction is deft and assured. A surprise twist subverts the expected lull of tragedy, and all is resolved, more or less, in a manner more appropriate to this time and place than Shakespeare’s, though not without some grand sound and fury beforehand, signifying both. (Gluckstern)
The White Snake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-99. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Dec 13, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 23. In Mary Zimmerman’s The White Snake, nothing is quite as it seems. A mysterious stranger and her faithful servant are, in reality, a pair of shape-shifting serpents, the humble village pharmacy they build (with stolen money) is a front for their magical healing powers, a venerated Buddhist Abbott is actually a small-minded tyrant with a remarkably unholy obsession. Based on a Chinese myth dating to the 10th century, elements of "The White Snake" can be found in other mythologies around the world — from the biblical tempter in the Garden of Eden, to the healer snakes of Asclepius. However, in accordance with the tale’s historical evolution, from horror story to romance, Zimmerman’s treatment focuses mainly on the unusual love affair between Madame White (Amy Kim Waschke) and her karma-selected husband Xu Xian (Christopher Livingston). Weaving together fanciful design (a rainfall of ribbons, parasol puppetry, elegant period costuming and evocative video), elements of Chinese drama (amusingly described by narrators as they take place on stage), and a stirring reflection on the transformative power of love, complete with themes of self-sacrifice and endless fidelity, The White Snake, is a delicately-rendered fairytale which may not offer a way to enlightenment, but certainly clears a path to the heart. (Gluckstern)
Wilder Times Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Wed/5-Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2 and 7pm. Aurora Theatre performs a collection of one-acts by Thornton Wilder.
Woyzeck Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $23-35. Previews Wed/5-Thu/6, 7pm. Opens Fri/7, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Jan 27. Shotgun Players presents Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan, and Robert Wilson’s tragic musical, based on an unfinished 1837 play by Georg Büchner.
PERFORMANCE/DANCE
BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. $20. "Theatresports," Fri, 8pm, through Dec 21.
"Beyond the Land of the Sweets" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.presidiodance.org. Sun/9, 5pm, $35-50. Presidio Dance Theatre performs a multicultural, Nutcracker-inspired show.
"The Buddy Club Children’s Shows" Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/9, 11am-noon. $8. Body percussion, physical comedy, and juggling with Unique Derique.
"The Business" Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. Wed/5, 9pm. $5. Comedy with Derek Sheen.
"Comedy Bottle" Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.thepurpleonionatkells.com. Fri/7-Sat/8, 8:30pm. $15. Stand-up with Ali Mafi, Debbie Campo, and Lydia Popovich.
"Comedy Returns to El Rio!" El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.koshercomedy.com. Mon/10, 8pm. $7-20. With Dan St. Paul, Yayne Abeba, Kurt Weitzmann, Justin Lucas, and Lisa Geduldig.
"Cynic Cave" Cinecave (beneath Lost Weekend Video), 1034 Valencia, SF; facebook.com/cyniccave. $10. "Talkies: Holiday-Themed Show," multimedia show of holiday-themed comedy with DJ Real, Caitlin Gill, Sean Keane, and more, Fri/7, 7:30pm. "Cynic Cave," stand-up comedy with Mike Drucker, Kevin Camia, Marga Gomez, and more, Sat/8, 7:30pm.
"Dance-Along Nutcracker Goes Hollywood!" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.dancealongnutcracker.org. Sat/8, 2:30 and 7pm (7pm show, "Grownups Only Gala"); Sun/9, 1pm. $16-50. The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band presents its popular annual spin on the holiday classic.
"Drag Queens on Ice: Bigger! Better! Bawdier" Safeway Holiday Ice Rink, Union Square, Powell at Geary, SF; www.unionsquareicerink.com. Thu/6, 8-9:30pm. Free with admission ($6-$10) and skate rental ($5). Big hair takes the ice when Donna Sachet hosts this night of skating with Bay Area drag queens and kings.
"Hella Gay All Stars Comedy Show" Stage Werx Theater, 446 Valencia, SF; ww.stagewerx.org. Fri/7, 7:30pm. $5. Charlie Ballard hosts this night of stand-up, featuring Kate Willett, Loren Kraut, Shanti Charan, and more.
"Help is on the Way for the Holidays XI" Marines Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.helpisontheway.org. Mon/10, 7:30pm. $40-60. Shanti and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS benefit from this concert, feauring Mary Wilson, jazz singers Paula West and Tim Hockenberry, cast members from the touring productions of The Lion King and The Book of Mormon, and more.
"Instrument" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thu/6-Sun/9, 8pm. $15-20. A polymorphous individuality pertains to Instrument, a new solo dance-performance by Monique Jenkinson, which encompasses original choreography by Jenkinson and three other notable and very distinct artists — SF-based Chris Black, New York–based Miguel Gutierrez, and SF-based Amy Seiwert. It’s an intriguing departure for the dancer and performance maker best known for her endeavors at the forefront of the drag idiom (under the stage name Fauxnique). In the end, Jenkinson’s audacious venture (co-presented by CounterPULSE, de Young Museum, and Dancers’ Group) is both something more than a solo and less than a complete (or completely satisfying) work. Circling around her lifelong devotion to ballet and the ambivalent memories and associations it generates, the piece as edited by Jenkinson comes bracketed by an at times self-conscious, at times rapturous embrace of balletic form. But throughout come dissonances, departures, ruptures, and spoken ruminations that cross a wide swath of contemporary dance. The artist’s focused and untiring ability to zigzag through it all is something to see and admire, and the refraction of the body/self through so many lenses suggests a promising opportunity for exploration. Yet, while exploiting the potential flagged by the title is certainly part of the point, the erratic design generates a stiflingly formal rhythm and quality. Each modulation is too abbreviated (and of varying merit) to make the whole feel like much more than an exercise (at least much of the time). Moreover, the approach proves unproductively at odds with the autobiographical through-line, which ends up rather thin and sentimental. You can’t help feeling that if the better and riskier moments (many of which seem to have come from Gutierrez) had been sustained and elaborated, the self-reflective aspect would have given way to some quicksand in which the self risked a kind of creative obliteration. That frontier gets tantalizingly close at times, looming in the near distance. (Avila)
"The Not-the-Messiah December Choral Concert" St. Mark’s Lutheran, 1111 O’Farrell, SF; www.voltisf.org. Fri/7, 8pm. Also Sat/8, 8pm, David Brower Center, 2150 Allston, Berk. Both shows $30. Volti performs alternative holiday songs, including new works by Puerto Rican composter Armando Bayolo.
"Nutcracker" Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.cityboxoffice.com. Sat/8-Sun/9, 2pm (also Sat/8, 7pm). $25-35. City Ballet School performs its 10th annual Nutcracker, featuring student dancers ages 6-19.
San Francisco Comedy College Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.sfcomedycollege.com. $5-15; all shows ongoing. "Laughter Hour," Thu-Fri, 7pm. "Destini and Yonatan’s Stand-Up Rebellion," Thu, 8:30. "Comedy Bottle," Fri-Sat, 8:30pm. "Kells Comedy Saturday," Sat, 7pm. "New Talent Shows," Tue-Wed, 7. Also Larkspur Hotel, 524 Sutter, SF. "Rocket Salad," Sun, 7.
"San Francisco Magic Parlor" Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.
"SantaConCert" Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfgmc.org. Wed/6, 8pm. $25-27. Also Dec 24, 5, 7, and 9pm, Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performs.
"Songs and Stories from an Actor’s Life" Venetian Room, Fairmont San Francisco, 950 Mason, SF; www.bayareacabaret.org. Sun/9, 7pm. $47. Film and TV actor Peter Gallagher performs.
"Taking Me For a Ride?" Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, SF; www.generationtheatre.com. Sun/9, 3pm. $26-36. Louise Cormelin’s romantic comedy follows a man and a woman’s relationship over decades.
BAY AREA
"A Chanticleer Christmas" First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berk; www.chanticleer.org. Mon/10, 8pm. $30-65. Performances continue at various Northern California venues through Dec 23. The Grammy-winning vocal ensemble performs holiday songs.
"Let Us Break Bread Together: A Holiday Celebration" Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakl; www.oebs.org. Sun/9, 4pm. $15-50. With the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Klezmer band Kugelplex, and more.
"A Memory from the Future/Un Recuerdo del Futuro" Studio 8, 2525 Eighth St, Berk; www.theteadancers.org. Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 2pm. $20. The Tea Dancers/Ballet de la Compasion perform a bilingual multimedia show.
"Nutcracker" Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael; tickets.marincenter.org. Sat/8-Sun/9, 1pm (also Sat/8, 7pm; Sun/9, 5pm). $25-40. Marin Ballet performs choreography by Julia Adam.
"Selected Shorts" Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. Sat/8-Sun/9, 2pm (also Sat/8, 8pm; Sun/9, 7pm). $35 (half-price if under 30). Holiday tales with Kate Burton, Michael Imperioli, Linda Lavin, and René Auberjonois.
LATIN DISH Whenever politicians start talking immigration reform it always reminds me of the story—perhaps chisme—about that guy, who, you know, burned his neighbor’s house down, and then when the neighbors jumped over the fence to escape the fire, he complained bitterly, just bitterly, that they were trampling his rose garden.
It’s the same with the pejoratives “illegal alien,” or in a kinder mood “undocumented worker.” Both of these terms, like the phrase “immigration reform,” are tricks with words to hide the true status of this unique community.
Just think about the language for a minute. These 12 million human beings, this mass of humanity that has flooded over the southern border of the US, are neither illegal nor undocumented. The precise and accurate English word is refugees.
Why are they refugees? For the most part, the great majority of them are fleeing some sort of political, economic or military chaos—the metaphoric burning house.
You want to know who is burning down the house?
US foreign policy is like a match setting fire everywhere, a sort of scorched Earth in regards to Latin America.
Just so we don’t recount a whole catalogue of arson that is the story of US-Latin America relations in the last century, here’s a current example, that of Honduras, somewhere in Central America.
Even a democrat like President Obama couldn’t resist kicking out the elected president, Manuel Zelaya, in the middle of the night, as if he was a banana worker. I’m talking about the president of the country known as Honduras. The president. Sent out of the country in his pajamas in the middle of the night before the astonished eyes of Latin Americans, a noble action in support of a decrepit oligarchy that has impoverished the country for more than a hundred years as if in a magical-realism novel. And this coup d’ etat, this destabilization of the country, ushered in a whole new level of chaos with total impunity for the oligarchy and the military.
In the aftermath of that tragic June day, hundreds of people would be killed or disappeared. Journalists were assassinated at will. A country so on fire it now holds the sad distinction as the most violent place on earth, more violent deaths per capita than Iraq, Afghanistan, West Oakland or La Misión. Cartels up the yin000-yang — even the US Peace Corps pulled out, couldn’t handle the heat. Are we clear about this?
Now remind me — how many refugees were created by this chaos, by this sickening rerun of the banana-republic-soap-opera bullshit of the 20th century?
Then after his quick knock out in Honduras, President Obama showed his true hand by deporting 400,000 refugees a year in the greatest forced migration in human history. Many of these deportees were sent back to — Honduras, the house he just set on fire.
So you see — it’s a two-faced game, with a perfect cycle of opportunism.
Here’s part of the hypocrisy with this phony immigration reform debate. For the politicos — they only pontificate about their own little border. But this chaos doesn’t just destabilize the sacred border of the US, but also the southern border of Mexico, of Guatemala, of Belize, you know, the domino effect, something that politicos don’t talk about because they have no knowledge of geography.
Now why not use the word refugees? And since the US has just been re-elected to another three-year term on the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, shall we stop the name calling and get serious about the issue?
But wait — if they are named refugees then it would change their status, actually accord them rights and protection — just like any refugee in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. A whole series of UN protocols would come into effect. It would force this country to look hard and deep into its bloody history with the rest of the continent. What politico wants that? And what politico wants to lose million of workers who can be exploited perhaps for generations as long they are kept in the shadows?
So the next time you see someone who might be a refugee — especially a Latino, since Latinos seem to be the main focus of Immigration Control and Enforcement — ask yourself what country that person might be from. Ask yourself if the US created some chaos there — and if you don’t know, try reading some critical histories of the continent. Guatemala Country Occupied by Eduardo Galeano, Or Empire’s Workshop by Greg Grandin. or Mastersof War, by Clara Nieto or, well — you get my drift.
As long as the US doesn’t stop creating chaos, propping up mummies and dropping matches all over the neighborhood, you won’t be able to build a fence high enough or long enough to stop the flood of refugees from escaping the fire. Regardless what you do with the “reform” you’ll soon have millions more refugees.
As for the guy who complained about the neighbors trampling his rose garden—well, why did you burn your neighbor’s casita down for pendejo?
SUPER EGO Scene: Midnight, Tiara Sensation drag pageant, Rickshaw Stop, September. A naked, enormously white-and-purple-bewigged figure in two-foot-high Plexiglass heels, laid across three raised Plexiglass pillars, faces away from us. The pitched down strains of Frank Ocean’s “Pyramid,” his voice syrupped into a slo-mo Judy Garland phantasmagoria, drown us in waves of bass. Sheee’s wooorkiiing at the Pyyyramid toniiiight.
Awkwardly, riskily the figure rises almost to the rafters, its back still to us, spreads its legs, and begins to pull a tangled string of multicolored Christmas lights from her crotch. It performs this deliberately, turning the Rickshaw stage into a pressure cooker of strobe lights, sexual horror, and incipient danger — a strip club where no one can hear you scream. The atmosphere is so tense that when the figure finally turns around to reveal her eyeless, bloody-mouthed, death-pale self, as Ocean’s voice tweaks a level higher, shivers and gasps run right through the audience. Shiva the Great Destroyer, her tits bound with duct tape, a makeshift pouch at her crotch the source of her glittering lights.
It’s an out-of-body look that works. And it’s emblematic of a new glitchy-nightmare drag style (or the reboot of one) that’s bewitching clubgoers.
DIA DEAR
The performer was the amazing Dia Dear, one of a number of recent young arrivals who’ve zapped nightlife to another level by unselfconsciously — and quite organically — raiding the shelves of performance art, horror films, contemporary R&B, club kid history, and the Walgreen’s down the street to create striking personae for themselves, and electrify the city’s drag stages. They’re also so freaking smart it scares me, no Christmas crotch lights required.
Drag as confrontational, sometimes blood-spilling performance art has a long history here, of course, from the Cockettes in the 1970s, through the Popstitute and Club Uranus scenes in the early ’90s, through Trannyshack into the ’00s. It’s currently found a home at the Some Thing party every Friday at the Stud, High Fantasy every Tuesday at Aunt Charlie’s, and the Dark Room monthly party at Hot Spot. Iconic, sensibility-scrambling club kid styles like those of Michael Alig, Desi Monster, James St. James, our own Phatima Rude and Ggreg Taylor, and the ultimate drag inverter-perverter Leigh Bowery are all the rage in this retro-minded, post-Gaga moment. But something about this fresh wave, something about how it’s coming from people with no nightlife background at all, is different. Drag stages have become the affordable breeding ground for committed performance artists, expressing essential truths about our moment. Mere lipsyncing is so last century.
boychild
“I never even knew who Leigh Bowery was until people started mentioning his name this summer,” boychild, another of this new tribe, told me over the phone. (I live next door to boychild, and it’s not rare to find a neon-yellow spray-painted birdcage, a chandelier made of wigs, or an entire store display case sitting outside, waiting to become part of a perspective-shattering outfit or brandished onstage in a cyber-Wiccan, dystopian android ritual.) Like Dia, boychild just started going out to clubs very recently — pretty much arriving out of nowhere, both of them declining to share their pasts — and when she did she was almost fully formed as a stage presence, with a genius sense of makeup and a cerebral agenda.
http://www.vimeo.com/49244470
“Everything I do is a reaction to being categorized: as a person of color, as a female-bodied queer,” she said. “It’s really bad right now, because it’s so hip to be black, “urban culture” is being fetishized to an enormous extent. I feel I encounter so much that makes me angry just existing in this world as a queer creature. My performance and look ties everything to my experience through my body. That’s where I express myself most fluidly, more acutely and vividly than through language.”
“Horror is where I’m coming from and where I exist,” Vain Hein, another performer, told me. Unlike Boy Child and Dia Dear, Vain Hein is open about his past: raised as a Born Again Christian in both Puget Sound and Phoenix, Arizona — “My childhood consisted of traveling between extremes” — he eventually found his way to the San Francisco Art Institute to study New Genres (this is actually a program there!) Vain Hein, who also performs to music he chops and screws at home, most explicitly ties sex to horror in his work — it’s chockful of surprise lactations, menstrual blood, live births, prosthetic triple breasts, and weird asses.
VAIN HEIN (Photo by Eric Harvieux)
“I think a lot about the apocalypse, it’s how I filter and understand the world. Decay, destruction — everything I wear is just what’s at hand around my house, held together with scotch tape and nail glue, the shitty, shitty, shittest things ever that just fall apart during the night, even when I’m not performing. I literally shed my skin.”
Yet even as a queer art student in San Francisco, liberated from fundamentalism, he never went out until last year. “I just had preconceived notions about what going to a gay club involved. Then my friend dragged me to a drag show in the spring, and I was like, ‘I can do this.’ I had studied mostly performance art and video so it was a good fit.”
Being a young queer and not going to the clubs is incomprehensible to me — but of course these 20-somethings grew up with the Internet, where you can be gay by yourself, and which looms like a Poltergeist vortex over their work.
“Oh, the vast blessing of the Internet,” boychild half-laughs. “I wish I was better at it. We’re so bombarded with information and images, just so much shit. That can be great because my generation has all of the past available. But we’ve been drowning in this stream of complete crap, too. I can define myself as a freaky-freak just by how I navigate it. But the power of live performance is channeling all that into immediate emotion, a moment when everyone’s together, something that can’t and should never be documented as just images.”
The charming and soft-spoken Dia Dear, who has become kind of a mother the nascent phantasmic drag scene — even though she, like boychild and Vain Hein, operates mostly outside traditional drag house family structures — says, “I haven’t quite figured out my relationship to the Internet. I feel like it’s a positive tool because it can connect us to the spirit of people who are dead. But it’s also this kind of dark rectangle in the corner that can suck out all your energy. It exists for its own sake. But to be on the Internet now, you have to have a certain level of narcissism and self-interest. A lot like you have to have as a performer. Performance and the Internet should be natural lovers, in a sense. Twisted together …entwined.”
DISQUIET NIGHT
This live experimental music concert at the Luggage Store Gallery is the brainchild of one of the brainiest yet approachable people I know, Marc Weidenbaum, who started his fascinating daily music site, Disquiet.com, 15 years ago — way before blogs were invented. His project Disquiet Junto challenges Soundcloud members to respond to a prompt with unique compositions. This round: field recordings of Hurricane Sandy, with Cullen Miller, Subnaught, Jared Smith, and more.
Over the past year we’ve been treated to some tasty South African contemporary dance music flavor, from Black Coffee to Die Antewoord. (Somebody please get the Tshetsha Boys out here!) DJ Dee-toy, of Sebokeng Township continues this great microtrend with deep, deep house vibes and off-your-seat Afrofunk jams.
Fri/7, 10pm-4am, $15–$20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. afrofunk.eventbrite.com
GIGAMESH
Yeah, yeah, the phenomenally successful Minneapolitan remixes pop hits into slick little machines of hummable electro-disco bliss. He is also very, very fun.
Fri/7, 10pm-3am, $15–$20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com
TORMENTA TROPICAL 5-YEAR ANNIVERSARY
This monthly party launched the nu-cumbia sound in SF, splashing some much-needed Latin electronica onto our shores, while introducing global bass to a new generation of underground-minded clubgoers. Some major players have stomped the floor here, and quite a few sonic permutations of TT’s sound have found more mainstream success — but founders Shawn Reynaldo and oro11, who brought their inspiration directly from Argentina, are keeping it crazy and real with a marathon tag-team set in celebration.
Sat/8, 10pm, $5 before 10pm, $10 after. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com
ACCIDENTAL BEAR!
Gay people won’t stop rapping and blogging, and that’s OK! Our favorite local blogger (and perpetual crush) Mike “Accidental Bear” Enders covers way too much ground online. Now the super-enthusiastic cutie is celebrating two years of cybergossip by hosting a cartoon-colored gay rapstravaganza with Big Dipper, Rica Shay, and MC Crumbsnatcher, plus singer Tim Carr and DJs Medic and Dav-O of Double Duchess. There’ll be a lot of cute gay guys with beards.
Writer, drinker, arts-minded political activist, and bon vivant Hiya Swanhuyser is combining her interests in this neato, monthly, potentially wonderfully absurd thingie. Come to the Makeout Room, grab a drink, and then bang out a letter to any politician you have beef with. “One letter = 100 votes,” she says. Cocktails and truth to power, yasss. She’ll bring the actual, clickety-clackety typewriters! You bring the drink-fueled rage!
FAIR, the national media watchdog organization, has written an excellent critique of the coverage of the Bradley Manning case, one of the more shameful episodes in U.S.military and journalism history. KPFA’s “Democracy Now” radio program headed by Amy Goodman (9-10 weekdays) has also done regular superlative coverage. Here is FAIR’s report (B3):
Turning Their Back on Bradley Manning: Whistleblower speaks but press doesn’t listen
As the alleged source of many of the most vital WikiLeaks reports of the past several years, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning shed considerable light on how the United States has prosecuted the Iraq and Afghan wars. Other State Department cables reportedly leaked by Manning conveyed vital information about U.S. foreign policy.
Manning has, in other words, been connected to a lot of news (FAIR Media Advisories, 4/7/10, 12/16/10, 7/30/10): the video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed several civilians (two Reuters journalists died in the attack); the revelation that hundreds of U.S. attacks on civilians in Afghanistan had been recorded by the military– but were unreported elsewhere; the cache of diplomatic cables that uncovered U.S. efforts to stymie legal investigations into torture, U.S. involvement in airstrikes in Yemen; and much more. But the developments at his trial last week–including the first time Manning has spoken about his treatment–are evidently not newsworthy.
Manning has been held in conditions that have been criticized as psychological torture, including long periods of solitary confinement in a tiny cell, forced nudity and sleep deprivation.
Last week, the military trial at Fort Meade centered on the question of whether these pre-trial conditions were unlawful. Arrested in May 2010, Manning faces 22 counts associated with the leaks of classified material–including the government argument that Manning’s leaks constitute aiding the enemy, apparently because some of the materials he leaked made their way onto the computers of Al-Qaeda figures.
The government maintained that Manning’s treatment was based on a judgment that he was a suicide risk. But the court proceedings included testimony from military psychiatrists who disagreed, and recommended against holding Manning under such “clinically inappropriate” conditions–recommendations that were ignored at the Quantico military facility where Manning was confined (Guardian, 11/28/12).
These dramatic developments, in particular the testimony from Manning (11/29/12), were mostly unreported in corporate media. The New York Times ran a brief Associated Press wire story (11/30/12). Manning’s story was mentioned by just one of the three big network newscasts (CBS Evening News, 11/29/12). There was a brief mention on the PBS NewsHour (11/30/12), mostly about suicide risk.
CNN did regular reporting on the trial throughout the week. According to the Nexis news database, Manning’s trial last week was not mentioned on the liberal MSNBC channel until a discussion on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12). Democracy Now!, which has closely followed the Manning case for the past two years, featured thorough analysis of the trial.
It is not hard, on any level, to see the relevance of the Manning trial. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington argued on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12), the government’s argument in the case will have a chilling effect, which should obviously concern journalists:
You have to bear in mind that the main charge, charge No. 1 against him, is aiding the enemy. Now this is a massively chilling thing. What he’s being accused of is by posting something via WikiLeaks on the Internet, that by doing so he effectively gave it to Osama bin Laden. They don’t have to show–in the prosecution’s mind, the government’s mind–they don’t have to show that he intended to do that. They’re just saying by the sheer act of putting it on the Internet, it was available to Al-Qaeda.
Indeed, the notion that such trials constitute a threat to freedom of the press was part of the reason that the leak investigation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller was so closely followed by corporate media. Many outlets and editorial pages proclaimed the proceedings an attack on journalism itself–even though in that case, the reporter in question was seeking to protect a government source who was peddling information intended to diminish a government critic (Extra!, 9-10/05).
In the Manning case, the whistleblower apparently responsible for releasing documents that formed the basis for literally thousands of reports of incredible international significance is challenging government mistreatment. The questions about the case have been longstanding. As NPR’s All Things Considered noted (11/26/12), the secrecy around the proceedings has been “so intense that reporters and human rights groups have sued to get access to information.”
All that in mind, the minimal attention to Manning’s trial last week tells us how little corporate media care about the mistreatment of a government whistleblower. The revelations about U.S. foreign policy Manning allegedly made possible were news; the military’s abusive retaliation against him apparently is not.
FAIR, the national media watchdog organization, has written an excellent critique of the Bradley Manning case, one of the more shameful episodes in military and journalism history. Here is its report (B3): Turning Their Back on Bradley Manning Whistleblower speaks–but press doesn’t listen
As the alleged source of many of the most vital WikiLeaks reports of the past several years, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning shed considerable light on how the United States has prosecuted the Iraq and Afghan wars. Other State Department cables reportedly leaked by Manning conveyed vital information about U.S. foreign policy.
Manning has, in other words, been connected to a lot of news (FAIR Media Advisories, 4/7/10, 12/16/10, 7/30/10): the video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed several civilians (two Reuters journalists died in the attack); the revelation that hundreds of U.S. attacks on civilians in Afghanistan had been recorded by the military– but were unreported elsewhere; the cache of diplomatic cables that uncovered U.S. efforts to stymie legal investigations into torture, U.S. involvement in airstrikes in Yemen; and much more.
But the developments at his trial last week–including the first time Manning has spoken about his treatment–are evidently not newsworthy.
Manning has been held in conditions that have been criticized as psychological torture, including long periods of solitary confinement in a tiny cell, forced nudity and sleep deprivation.
Last week, the military trial at Fort Meade centered on the question of whether these pre-trial conditions were unlawful. Arrested in May 2010, Manning faces 22 counts associated with the leaks of classified material–including the government argument that Manning’s leaks constitute aiding the enemy, apparently because some of the materials he leaked made their way onto the computers of Al-Qaeda figures.
The government maintained that Manning’s treatment was based on a judgment that he was a suicide risk. But the court proceedings included testimony from military psychiatrists who disagreed, and recommended against holding Manning under such “clinically inappropriate” conditions–recommendations that were ignored at the Quantico military facility where Manning was confined (Guardian, 11/28/12).
These dramatic developments, in particular the testimony from Manning (11/29/12), were mostly unreported in corporate media. The New York Times ran a brief Associated Press wire story (11/30/12). Manning’s story was mentioned by just one of the three big network newscasts (CBS Evening News, 11/29/12). There was a brief mention on the PBS NewsHour (11/30/12), mostly about suicide risk.
CNN did regular reporting on the trial throughout the week. According to the Nexis news database, Manning’s trial last week was not mentioned on the liberal MSNBC channel until a discussion on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12). Democracy Now!, which has closely followed the Manning case for the past two years, featured thorough analysis of the trial.
It is not hard, on any level, to see the relevance of the Manning trial. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington argued on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12), the government’s argument in the case will have a chilling effect, which should obviously concern journalists:
You have to bear in mind that the main charge, charge No. 1 against him, is aiding the enemy. Now this is a massively chilling thing. What he’s being accused of is by posting something via WikiLeaks on the Internet, that by doing so he effectively gave it to Osama bin Laden. They don’t have to show–in the prosecution’s mind, the government’s mind–they don’t have to show that he intended to do that. They’re just saying by the sheer act of putting it on the Internet, it was available to Al-Qaeda.
Indeed, the notion that such trials constitute a threat to freedom of the press was part of the reason that the leak investigation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller was so closely followed by corporate media. Many outlets and editorial pages proclaimed the proceedings an attack on journalism itself–even though in that case, the reporter in question was seeking to protect a government source who was peddling information intended to diminish a government critic (Extra!, 9-10/05).
In the Manning case, the whistleblower apparently responsible for releasing documents that formed the basis for literally thousands of reports of incredible international significance is challenging government mistreatment. The questions about the case have been longstanding. As NPR’s All Things Considered noted (11/26/12), the secrecy around the proceedings has been “so intense that reporters and human rights groups have sued to get access to information.”
All that in mind, the minimal attention to Manning’s trial last week tells us how little corporate media care about the mistreatment of a government whistleblower. The revelations about U.S. foreign policy Manning allegedly made possible were news; the military’s abusive retaliation against him apparently is not.
Any time a band breaks up, the beef rumors immediately start to swirl. Throw in Twitter and Facebook, and that rumor tornado can spin quickly out of control – as it did within minutes thanks to the #dasracistbreakup hashtag this past weekend when rapper Heems, on a drunken whim, announced the group’s break up during a show in Berlin.
Interestingly, Das Racist had actually broken up back in September, which means Victor Vazquez aka KOOL A.D. wasn’t actually a part of Das Racist when I interviewed him right before the group’s show at the DNA lounge in October. I should probably go back and correct that.
As for the beef rumors, I don’t mean to disappoint, but when I contacted Vazquez he reassured me that nothing of that sort exists among him, Heems, and/or hypeman Dapwell. It seems the the break-up was a professional parting of ways and will go probably go down as one of the least dramatic endings in the history of hip-hop.
However, this certainly does not mean KOOL A.D. is done with the rap game. During these past couple months when he wasn’t doing Das Racist shows, Vazquez has been a complete studio denizen, working on a new mixtape with Seattle rapper and former Das Racist collaborator Kassa Overall called Peaceful Solutions which will be released early next year.
He also has three other albums in the works, all tentatively titled after AC transit buses just like his mixtape 51. And he co-wrote and executive-produced an EP for local post-poppers Cult Days. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
In addition, Vazquez also plans to return to his punk roots too. He’s reuniting with his old hardcore group Party Animal, for which he plays drums, for a new record that should come out sometime in 2013.
AC transit riders should keep an eye out for Vazquez because he plans to be here for another month. After that, he’ll be heading back to New York for a bit. Then what? Vazquez says, “I don’t know.”
Attention burrito vendors of the Mission, there is a sale to be made at the arrivals gate of SFO this weekend when newly-minted TV star W. Kamau Bell makes his triumphant return to the city in which he spent 15 years honing his comedic chops. He is aching for a Mission burrito like this city is aching for a more efficient MUNI system.
Culinary yearnings aside, this Sunday Bell headlines a standup show at the Fillmore as part of his “Kamau Mau Uprising” tour. The tour’s moniker should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Bell’s politically progressive, acerbic wit.
These days, that category includes more people than ever. Earlier this year Bell ditched left our lovely 49-square-mile patch for Gotham when he was offered his own TV show on FX (Thursdays at 11:30pm). And it looks like he’ll be spending more time back east — said show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell just got picked up for a second season that will start January 17.
In the inaugural season of Totally Biased, Bell and his crew of writers have covered a lot of ground, exploring the differences between Sikhs and Sheiks, sweet potato and pumpkin pies. They’ve made a fake PSA telling men to stay home and watch porn on Election Day instead of vote, and watched presidential election returns with the Brooklyn Young Republicans (some of whom are not, it turns out, are not so young.)
Now that both he and President Obama will be back in 2013, Bell looks forward to holding our Commander in Chief to task. Right before the Thanksgiving Break, and just hours after finding out his show got renewed, the self-proclaimed “billionth most famous person in the history of New York” took some time to chat with the Guardian about his homecoming, and on what makes a San Francisco comedian different from those from NY, LA, or Boston. Plus, on whether he’ll ever drop a “hella” on Totally Biased.
SFBG:In the past you’ve referred to Totally Biased executive producer Chris Rock as the “foul-mouthed Yoda.” How far along have you come in your Jedi training?
Assuming that this is the original prequel, I would say I’m probably halfway through the first movie. Although Yoda wasn’t in the first movie, so I’m screwing up my nerd status, but I’m at the very beginning of the Jedi training, if it’s Empire Strikes Back, I’m at the point where I lifted the thing out and then I got scared.
SFBG: What’s Mr. Rock’s involvement in the show? Is he more hands-on or hands-off?
WKB: I just talked to him and he literally said, “I’m around if you need me, call me.” He’s as available as we need him and he jokes that’s he’s on sabbatical from show business because he has no projects right now. He comes to all the tapings, but then again he also wants this to be my show so he allows me to use him as much or as little as I want to. Overall, I’ve used him a lot less than people thought I would.
SFBG: Would you say that your show is in competition with The Colbert Report and Daily Show?
WKB: Not really, but I would say that they’re a standard that we’re measuring ourselves against. You know, I’m just the new guy who likes “Hey guys can I hang out!” We’re certainly aiming for a lot of the same people, but I think that by the nature of Totally Biased we’re also reaching a group of way different people.
SFBG: Do you ever plan on saying hella during the show?
WKB: Here’s the thing, by the time I moved to San Francisco, I knew if I started saying hella, people from Chicago would think I had lost my mind. On the back of the set, we have these designs and there are a couple of Bay Area shout-outs and that’s the closest I’ll get to saying hella on air.
WKB: When I wrote that show, the idea behind it was: what kind of show would I write if I was famous? I would have a screen, I would have a computer, I would talk about the world, I would talk about racism all the time, and I would be very topical.
So I did Ending Racism the way I would do it if I had a TV show and through lots of luck and hard work I ended up with Totally Biased. I know for sure that I would not have gotten Totally Biased if I had just done stand up. And by the time Chris saw me at the UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade) Theatre in New York, I had already been doing for about three or four years.
SFBG:Do you have writers from the Bay?
WKB: Janine Brito, Kevin Avery, Kevin Kataoka, and Nato Green.
SFBG: What’s the history of your relationships with them?
WKB: I used to do “Siskel & Negro” with Kevin Avery, who’s from San Jose, on Live 105 back in the day and I met him right when I moved out to San Francisco. We did a lot of shows together, we were writing partners and almost got hired to do a D.L. Hughley show for CNN.
Kevin Kataoka is originally from Oakland and I met him when I first moved to San Francisco, in the SF comedy scene. He actually introduced me to Chuck Scolar who’s an executive producer of the show, and he’s the guy who introduced me to Chris Rock.
I’ve said many times that Janine is my comedy daughter, who’s this little hipster, half Cuban, all lesbian. I met Nato on the scene about six or seven years ago, so I had already been on the scene by the time I had met Nato and Janine.
Myself, Nato, Janine, and at one point Hari Kondabolu (fellow TB writer) had a three-headed standup comedy monster called “Laughter Against the Machine” that we started in the Bay Area and the New Parish in Oakland was the home base for that show. We’re currently working on a documentary about going on the road last year to various political hotspots in America.
SFBG:What’s your take on the SF comedy scene?
WKB: The thing about San Francisco is that it always has had a good reputation as a good comedy city. Ever since Mort Sahl stepped on stage at The Hungry i in the ‘50s San Francisco has had a great reputation as a comedy town. Even though we’re not the biggest city, all the greats come through San Francisco.
I remember seeing [Dave] Chappelle when I moved to town, and he was already packing the club despite not being nationally famous. This is was big because this was before the Internet took hold. He was already a legend and I remember one night when he was stage and he said yeah I just finished filming this movie and it’s all about weed! I saw him go to the next level when he got his own show, and so San Francisco is a great city for developing comedic talent.
If you come up in the San Francisco comedy scene, clubs like The Punchline and Cobb’s are loyal to local talent if you show loyalty to them. You will work with the best in the business. I’ve heard that New York comics say that San Francisco comics know more headliners and have more personal relationships with headliners than New York comics do because San Francisco comics hang out a lot before and after shows, whereas in New York everyone is always running to the next thing. The city is known for having good comedians but there’s not a style called “San Francisco comedian.” You can pick out a Boston, New York, or LA comedian but you can’t really pick out a San Francisco comedian.
SFBG: How does it feel to headline a show at The Fillmore?
WKB: In some sense that’s bigger than getting a TV show [laughs] when they said that I was going to play The Fillmore, I thought “wait a minute! It’s too soon!” And time will tell if it is too soon. It’s just weird to me that it’s happening now. I think a lot of it is because I’ve built up a name in the Bay Area.
SFBG: Will you have time to stop by your old spots?
WKB: I’ll have a chance to visit my old spots and look at the “did that really happen?!” look on people’s faces.
SFBG:What are places and things you miss the most about the Bay Area?
WKB: The one thing overall that both my wife — who’s from Monterrey — and I miss most is that the style of living in Northern California is so easy. When I think about my time in San Francisco, even walking outside my house, it feels like a baby bird being born. When I think about New York, every time I walk out of my house, I feel like a paratrooper jumping out of a plane. And there are definitely five or six Mission burritos in my future because New York does not understand how burritos work.
I also want to go back to The Punchline on a Sunday night where all of it really started for me. That place is my mecca. I just need to go there and walk around the stage seven times and really reflect on all that is happening. And oh! I’ll be probably ride the N-Judah and visit my old block of Ninth and Irving.
SFBG:I know you just found out about the second season but now that the election is over and your boy is back for a second term what direction do you think the show will be taking?
WKB: My career and act has followed Obama’s presidency and a lot of comics say it would have been better if Mitt Romney had won and I’m like noooooo this black president thing has worked out for me nicely. And the great thing about Romney being gone is that now we can actually talk about Obama from a more critical angle. Now we can talk about how Obama is not a great president, we can talk about Guantanamo and immigration. I don’t just want to be a cheerleader.
