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Queercore, many mornings after

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THE QUEER ISSUE Call it a harmonic convergence of two queer legends of indie rock and queercore. Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven and Jon Ginoli of Pansy Division got together recently to talk about the way it was, coming out in the repressed 1980s and coming into their own experientially, politically, and musically in 1990s San Francisco — each, as Krummenacher puts it, a "gay guy suddenly in Candyland." Life is still sweet — and hella active — for these old friends: Krummenacher celebrates Camper’s 25th anniversary with a June 28 show at the Fillmore, and Ginoli is unleashing Pansy Division’s new documentary, Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band, at Frameline June 26, complete with an afterparty performance at the Eagle. And naturally, this won’t be the last you’ll hear from these prolific players: Pansy Division is working on a new album and Ginoli has a memoir coming next year on SF’s Cleis Press, while Krummenacher is recording as McCabe and Mrs. Miller with the Sippy Cups’ Alison Faith Levy and recently completed a fifth solo full-length. (Kimberly Chun)

JON GINOLI Before I started Pansy Division, I’d been actively trying to find other gay musicians’ records. I’d listen to records, listen for hints, and it just seemed like I was always getting disappointed in that there were musicians I heard about who were supposed to be gay that would flat-out deny it in interviews. I thought, OK, if all these people who I think are lying are not going to come out, or really aren’t … that’s when it finally dawned on me that I should do this band. At the same time I had that idea, so did Tribe 8. It was Tribe 8 and us and Glen Meadmore in Los Angeles. When we started that’s what was going on in queer rock. The only other thing I knew about — and I didn’t know about this till I started playing — was Fifth Column in Toronto.

There really wasn’t much you could point to, and that’s partly why I wanted to be as out and blunt as I could. Because it seemed like if you were gay and you liked rock ‘n’ roll, it was something you had to hide and it was something that there was some shame attached to.

VICTOR KRUMMENACHER It was an interesting time. From my perspective, we had the [Michael] Stipe rumors and we had the Hüsker Dü rumors. But it was kind of, like, don’t ask, don’t tell. Kid Congo was always out. He was always what he was, which I admired a lot.

JG I remember meeting him in New York, in ’94, ’95, and by that time, I knew he was gay. But I’d been a fan of all bands he’d been in — the Gun Club, the Cramps, and the Bad Seeds — and I didn’t know he was gay until 10 years after I’d started buying his records.

VK A lot of the reason I was attracted to punk rock was because I knew queer people in it. My friends were gay, and I was coming out, and it was just really easy to deal with because they liked the same music, and it was fun. But it was a hard time, and the ’80s sucked. I’m 43 now, and I deal with people in their 20s who have no clue how much it sucked.

JG Only the highlights have filtered down to them.

VK There was Phranc, and there was some chatter about Morrissey.

JG It’s interesting — I was thinking, OK, it’s like a ladder. You’re taking a step at a time to reach a certain place, and I was thinking about the women’s music scene, the lesbian music scene, from the late ’70s. The folk scene.

VK Which seemed a little bit more coherent.

JG But it also seemed more insular, especially when I talk to people from that period. It was about being separate, and the thing about me wanting to do Pansy Division was that I wanted to engage by using rock music. It was kind of like taking the music that’s popular but doing something that people would consider subversive with it.

People were dying, and that’s why — even though I was horny and wanted to sing these pro-gay songs — we sang about condoms a lot. We had some songs that were cautionary tales. But for somebody who was born in 1987, there’s no way that they could have much of a clue about what we’re talking about, because they just didn’t see the people dying. I moved here in ’89 from Champaign, Illinois, and one of the first things I did was join ACT UP.

VK My experiences with ACT UP and Queer Nation meetings were rowdy good times — it was go out and be visible and be noisy — and then it got very bureaucratic, which I think was a natural progression.

JG ACT UP ran its course, which was right around the time I had the idea to do Pansy Division. I’m a political person, but I don’t like too much music that’s really didactic and up front about its politics. I didn’t want to make music that people would agree with but wouldn’t really enjoy. I thought this is my way to do cultural activism.

What I wanted to mention was I had a band [the Outnumbered] before Pansy Division that had three albums. They were indie in the ’80s, and at the time, I was out to my band members, I was out to people in Champaign, but I didn’t feel like I could write about being gay in my music because I was trying to represent the band and they were all hetero.

So did you have any bands before Camper?

VK Camper was my first band, when I was 18. It was funny — I came out, and my band broke up [in 1990]. It might have had something to do with why I wanted to leave the band at the time, but it had nothing to do with the band breaking up. Basically when I came out, they were like, "And … ?" I don’t think it was any great surprise.

But the interesting thing was as soon as I came out, it was immediate acceptance. Seldom did I run into any problem, which made me wonder, why the hell didn’t I do it sooner, and why the hell didn’t more people do it?

JG It seems to me both Michael Stipe and Bob Mould have made statements about how they didn’t want to come out because they didn’t want to be seen as role models. The problem was to me, well, you’re already role models to people and some of them are gay and some of them are straight.

My own thought about it was, well, if no one is going to come out and be out in music playing the style I like, then I’ll do it. I mean, I had nothing to lose, and I do respect that other people have a lot of pressures, record companies.

VK The truth of the matter is, you guys did a lot of legwork that did ripple up.

JG So now you’re doing Camper, and you’re out, and you’re in a long-term relationship. Were you been able to meet guys at shows, even if you wanted to back then, and now that you’re out, do you have a gay contingent at Camper shows?

VK I wind up with gay contingents usually in the strangest, most unexpected ways. It’s been more than once that I’ve gone home with a guy, and he figures out, "You look familiar." Anonymity can be something you can thrive on. Or I guess, bluntly, it’s nice to fuck around and have people not know who you are — because I’ve frequently been hit on because of who I am.

What I’m interested in is, where do you see younger people going?

JG We came along pre-MySpace, pre-Internet, really. It’s so different now. It used to be a guessing game where you’d trade rumors with other gay people about people you heard that were gay. Now Pansy Division has a MySpace page, and I’m getting messages and friend requests from other queer bands all the time and a lot of straight bands, too, that like our music. So I think it’s not that big of a deal anymore unless you’re trying to make it in the mainstream. Then there’s still a wall where you can’t make it unless you’re already successful to some point, or you set out to be. Look at Rufus Wainwright. He’s on a major label, but it was obvious from the outset that he was going to be a cult figure.

VK Especially if he’s going to be doing the Judy Garland things. Not to dig too hard, but I did actually see it the other night [on PBS], and it was, like, "Why did you do that?" In a certain way, ironically, it’s great progress — "Oh, yeah, a gay guy doing all of Judy at Carnegie Hall at Carnegie Hall." My mom used to play Judy at Carnegie Hall, and I’ve always loved Judy Garland, but then I was just going, "That’s not Judy Garland. That’s just Rufus Wainwright." I feel like he’s better in his own context.

JG Given that I’ve always chafed against the gay identity that posits show tunes as part of the essential experience, I made myself sit down with the Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall double CD, and, you know, his between-song patter was campy but he didn’t camp those songs up anymore than they already were. But I don’t want to hear anybody singing "The Trolley Song." I really don’t.

PANSY DIVISION: LIFE IN A GAY ROCK BAND

Screening Thurs/26, 7 p.m., $9–<\d>$10

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

Show begins 10 p.m., $7

Eagle

398 12th St., SF

www.frameline.org

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Sat/28, 9 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

The Queer Issue

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In this issue:

>>Scandalous Pride events

>>The Hot Pink List 2008: up-and-comers

>>Where to get married

>>Why not to get married

>>Charo spills the cuchi

>>Superhero tranny flushed into the ’70s

>>Visions of cruising past

>>Queercore makes a comeback

>>Once a riot grrrl, always an artist

>>Fresh Meat still breaks transgender ground

>>Lesbian pregnancy from hell

>>A gay pornocopia

>>The Busy World is Hushed

>>Apichatpong offers filmic bliss

Oh, hai, happy Pridez! Time again to lean back languidly and reflect — not just in your makeup mirror lined with curlicue lavender CFLs, but on where we are as a community. As usual, we straddle an odd queer moment. Yes, legalized same-sex marriage, California-style, is all the rage. Even my radical queer eye teared up when happily balled and chained couples streamed out of City Hall June 17. And you can bet I’ll be on the front lines fighting that awful November ballot initiative, defining marriage as exclusively between one tree and one Mormon.

Some queers want to get married (see "Tie the same-sex knot,"), some don’t ("Down with legitimacy,"). Others, like me, are simply hiding from their boyfriends. It’s yet another great diversity among us. The overall feeling at City Hall, though, besides sheer jubilance, was one of relief more than revolution. Four years ago, during the Winter of Love, rebellion — even talk of secession — crackled in the city’s air. But that scary "M" word, marriage, went the way of The L Word long ago into mainstream territory. Wedding rings were the new septum rings; now they’re just the new freedom rings. "What’s the big deal?" is the whole point.

The weird thing is that right as we’re being carried over the threshold of legal normalization, our outlaw history is roaring back in a big way. Eight years ago, a DJ named Bus Station John set out to highlight gay men’s bathhouse and hi-NRG disco heritage by playing old-school records, many of which he’d amassed from people who’d passed on from AIDS. This was a revelation to the new queer generation, raised with effective HIV meds but led to believe that gay musical history started with Madonna. It was a return of the repressed — an inspiring, AIDS-obscured swath of yesteryear suddenly came to light.

Now you can’t go anywhere without seeing mustaches, aviator glasses, and hipster variations of the clone look. The filming of Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk biopic Milk this winter costumed the city in pristine White Riot chic. Wonder of wonders, we even have a brand new SoMa leather bar, Chaps II, named after Miracle Mile’s infamous ’80s watering hole, Chaps — joining the great new retro Truck bar, expanded Hole in the Wall Saloon, Eagle Tavern, and Powerhouse. Take that, Internet! Queercore homeboy innovators Pansy Division ("Queercore, many mornings after,") get canonized with a doc at this year’s Frameline Film Fest. Most intel queers I know are gobbling up Terence Kissack’s recent tome, Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895–1917 from Oakland’s AK Press.

But the past isn’t just for gay men. The Fresh Meat festival has been breaking transgender performance ground since the millennium began ("Rare, medium, well-done,"). Nineties riot grrls are making strong artistic marks ("Heart shaped box," page 49), and I can’t step into a dyke bar lately without being immediately corralled into a Journey sing-along by Runaways look-alikes. The turbo-awesome current exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society (www.glbthistory.org), "Dykes on Bikes: 30 Years at the Forefront," reminds us not only that boobs are still illegal, but that rad women of all shapes and colors have led us from Gay Freedom Day to this week’s Pride. And it’s no surprise that the original Daughters of Bilitis, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, were the first couple to get legally married here, 53 years after starting the first official, highly persecutable, lesbian organization.

As we move seemingly inexorably toward mainstream acceptance, it’s nice to know that the heroes of our struggle, people who did things differently, are still fresh in our minds. This year the Guardian pays tribute to the LGBT underground past and present, and raises a toast to our deliciously shameless future.

› marke@sfbg.com

Cody’s closes, itty bitty book light in heaven goes out

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So, alas, storied 50+-year-old Berkeley bookstore Cody’s, firebombed in the ’80s for displaying Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, has closed rather abruptly due to flagging sales. I’m not going to go into the ironic narrative possibilities here — Rushdie was just in town this week to give a rare reading, and, like, where were the ubiquitous Berkeley treesitters protesting a legendary bookstore’s closure? Nor will this turn into another apocalyptic lecture on how the Internet is killing independent bookstores. I still retain vast hope that some can and will survive. Go shop a freakin’ independent bookstore, already! They’re awesome.

codyscloses.jpg
Photo from SFGate

Still, this news is pretty awful. The loss of a bookstore, to me, a complete ga-ga book hound and former indie bookstore manager, is a physical wound. If Amazon closed tomorrow, I’d miss nothing, remember vaguely. But I’ll always fondly recall the way the morning sun shone a certain way through Cody’s political books aisles and, a romantic Midwest native, thinking, “Cool. I’m in Berkeley, browsing through political books in the morning.”

Yes, there were some quality issues after the store moved from its original Telegraph location to Shattuck a little while ago. And sure, it could have concentrated more on used and antiquarian book sales, the last line of many indie booksellers’ defense. But, dudes, Cody’s closed. That’s kind of freaky. I’ll miss it.

Bag drag

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER As a once-impressionable protein unit who wrapped my eyeballs around any and all TV comedy, I’m slightly abashed to say I haven’t caught Saturday Night Live regularly in many a year. So I was surprised to hear rumors a while back that the series was allegedly biting off one of the Bay Area underground music scene’s fave figures: Jibz Cameron — known and loved for her garage-rock spaz-outs with the Roofies and her pretension-leveling levity behind the counter at Lost Weekend Video. And then there’s her super-girl-group of sorts, Dynasty, with Numbers drummer Indra Dunis and Neung Phak vocalist Diana Hayes, and her solo spin-off project, Dynasty Handbag.

“I don’t watch it either,” Cameron says from Brooklyn, as pet Chihuahuas struggle over a chew toy in the background. “But I get a phone call every other Saturday, ‘Omigod, you won’t fucking believe it…’ and I say, ‘I already know.'” She’s talking about SNL‘s house DJ Dynasty Handbag, a character that first popped up on the show in 2005, hosting a faux-MTV talk show. The occasional Kenan Thompson character is a far cry from Cameron’s Dynasty Handbag, a crazed kitsch-waver — a kind of schizo Bride of Peaches and Krystle Carrington — that Cameron developed on petite SF music stages before moving east four years ago. The project started life as the portable version of Dynasty and turned into a multi-referent alter ego.

The SNL character hasn’t reappeared in the last year, but it still offends. “It’s still on their DVDs, and I do performance that’s comedy-related,” she says. “People research me on the Internet, and my site comes up first, but they’re there, though I’m the OG, the OD, the OGD.” She says she sent SNL a cease-and-desist letter and when “that didn’t go anywhere, I took it to Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. I’m not in a full-blown lawsuit with them, but we’re sort of in discussion with them.” At press time, SNL representatives have not responded to requests for comment.

Cameron says she does have a new “plan of attack.” Her friend Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio will be producing a podcast radio show called Radio Woo Woo, which she will cohost. “My plan is to just keep talking about it on the air,” she says, adding that the podcast will premiere TV on the Radio’s new album this fall.

The low-broiling brouhaha hasn’t stopped Cameron from developing her Dynasty Handbag performances into narratives. This week she’ll unveil three short pieces at CounterPULSE. One, Bags, revolves around Cameron’s relationships with five empty shopping bags: “Each one sucks my soul in a different way, like bad relationships in my 20s. One is really needy; one’s really demanding; and one just wants to get fisted.” A work in progress, O Death, sees Cameron attempting to bury her own dead body.

Cameron has been far from dead and buried in New York: within months of moving to the Big Snapple she was crowned Miss Lower East Side in Murray Hill’s annual pageant, and she has presented solo shows at PS 122 and Galapagos Art Space. “Everybody works so hard here — it’s really influenced me to go ahead with my stuff. And there’s just the intensity of seeing so many insane people every day,” says Cameron, who was raised by hippie parents in Mendocino County (“My childhood was peppered by characters with beards and long, droopy fun bags”). “That’s really helpful, too.” *

DYNASTY HANDBAG: TALES FROM THE PURSE

Thurs/19 and Sat/21, 8 p.m., Fri/20 and Sun/22, 10 p.m., $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.directfromnyc.com

MAGIC NUMBERS, FLYING DRUMS: THESE NEW PURITANS

Southend-on-Sea, UK’s These New Puritans purvey an austere, twinkling breed of synthetic/organic art-pop — one that evokes both Wire and the Klaxons. Who suspected the murky mystical inclinations embedded in the band’s debut, Beat Pyramid (Domino)? “Pyramids are about secrets and chambers,” vocalist Jack Barnett, 20, offers from his band’s tour stop in Chicago. “Some of the songs have to do with magic.” He claims 16th-century occultist-mathematician John Dee plays into his searching New Puritans as much as the Wu-Tang Clan, which Barnett praises for the “eerie, tiny little sounds in the background” of their productions.

Now the combo is attempting to write music that marries “the round canons of Steve Reich” with the beats of dancehall — provided Barnett manages to dodge the projectiles heaved by his drummer twin, George. When making music with your twin, Jack says, “you’re honest to the point of getting completely out of hand. As in drums being thrown at me. On a regular basis.”

Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $12–$13. Popscene, 333 Ritch, SF. www.popscene-sf.com

THE HAPPENINGS?

 

100 YEARS AT THE HOTEL UTAH

The 1908 edifice where Robin Williams, Cake, Counting Crows, and countless others broke out brings back witnesses and whoops it up. With Penelope Houston, Paula Frazer, Jesse DeNatale, Colossal Yes, Greg Ashley, Blag Dahlia, and others. Thurs/19; reception 7 p.m., ceremony 7:30 p.m., music 9 p.m.; $8 show. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth St., SF. (415) 546-6300

 

JAYMAY

The bookish Long Island chanteuse flirts with song stylings slouching betwixt Feist and Keren Ann. Thurs/19, 9 p.m., $12. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016

 

GEORGE MICHAEL

He’s never going to dance again through this sort of arena show, the UK pop star hinted recently. Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $56–<\d>$176. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. (415) 421-TIXS

 

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

Narrow Stairs finds the Seattle cabbies stretching into darker realms. With Rogue Wave. Sat/21, 8 p.m., $39.50. Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk. www.apeconcerts.com

 

Sweet and spicy

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS I dreamed I was pouring hot sauce on my ice cream, and the thought I was thinking along with the action, in the dream, was: So, it has come to this. Hot sauce on every single thing, even ice cream. Is this my nature, then? To go around setting sweetness on fire?

Don’t you love it when the dream interprets the dream for you? And then all you have to do in the morning is make your coffee and sit outside in the sunshine, watching your chickens scratch for gold. You are free to think about other things. Or to go about your business, which in my case is Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, with 10-minute breaks in between for going bafroom, talking on the phone, reading, writing, and plucking.

My most angelic friend kinda wants to be a stripper. We talked on the phone for a long time last night. While we were talking, my mom called on the other phone, 2 a.m. her time, and sang a scary old church song to my answering machine. Poor thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it stops working, on principle, and I have to buy a new one.

"Make me a channel of your peace," my mother sang, after the beep. "Where there is hatred, let me bring your love. Where there is something, something something something." Her phone went bad, but as I recall the last line didn’t rhyme anyway.

If only my mom had electricity, I would buy her an answering machine and retaliate. I would call it at 2 a.m. my time (which is 5 a.m. there), and sing to it, to her, my latest sensitive singer-songwriter hymn about how I like it up the ass.

"Make me a channel of your piece" …

Oh, hi, St. Francis. I didn’t see you there. You’re my favorite saint, you know, even though if you were alive today you would probably be a member of PETA. And your songs don’t rhyme. But I think a city I love might have named itself after you, and I know I did, only I spelled it with an e. You are my middle name, but I don’t consider myself exactly Catholic, you see.

So the other person I talked to for hours yesterday was Johnny "Jack" Poetry. I can call him that again (instead of Johnny "Jack" Journalism) because he quit the paper and put his poems on the Internet. His wife, Mrs. "Jack" Poetry, one of my dearest, oldest, belovedest friends in her own right (I call her Mrs. "Jack" Poetry out of respect, ’cause she’s sort of a recovering feminist), recently became a Catholic. Now, I have only ever known lapsed Catholics, and occasionally, as in the case of much of my family, unlapsed ones. People who were born Catholic and stayed that way. Mrs. "J." P. is the first person I know to become one, by choice! And for this I love her madly.

So she was away at mass, the Mrs., then she came home from mass, while Johnny "Jack" and me were still on the phone, discussing secular matters such as poetry and pork rinds, and — lo and behold — she had a couple of nuns in tow!

My point being that this is exactly why I have two phones now. Because I live for moments like this. It’s right up there with the time the feds knocked on my mom’s door while we were talking, to account for her whereabouts because Bill Clinton was coming to town, make me a channel of your peace. Or the time the cops came and she dropped the phone, left me dangling, and swore at them until they left. Or arrested her, I forget.

Johnny "Jack" tele-described to me the vision of his sweet wife with a couple of elderly nuns, one wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh baseball cap over her habit, sallying into the wilderness on the world side of his window, hot day, Indian Valley, Idaho, tromping blessed and holy through the weeds, where the ticks are.

My new favorite restaurant is Khana Khazana. Spicy, good, Indian food in Emeryville. The service is very friendly and welcoming. Indeed, it stayed open just for us, even though we showed up five minutes after closing. Points for that, and for hot that means HOT. Portions could have been bigger, for the price. Or I can try and find more work. Either way. *

KHANA KHAZANA

4336 San Pablo, Emeryville

(510) 547-0992

Daily, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

Beer & wine

MC/V

Three Internet myths that won’t die

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Since I started writing this column in 1999, I’ve seen a thousand Internet businesses rise and die. I’ve watched the Web go from a medium you access via dial-up to the medium you carry around with you on your mobile. Still, there are three myths about the Internet that refuse to kick the bucket. Let’s hope the micro-generation that comes after the Web 2.0 weenies finally puts these misleading ideas to rest.

Myth: The Internet is free.

This is my favorite Internet myth because it has literally never been true. In the very early days of the Net, the only people who went online were university students or military researchers — students got accounts via the price of tuition; the military personnel got them as part of their jobs. Once the Internet was opened to the public, people could only access it by paying fees to their Internet service providers. And let’s not even get into the facts that you have to buy a computer or pay for time on one.

I think this myth got started because pundits wanted to compare the price of publishing or mailing something on the Internet to the price of doing so using paper or the United States Postal Service. Putting a Web site on the Net is "free" only if you pretend you don’t have to pay your ISP and a Web hosting service to do it. No doubt it is cheaper than printing and distributing a magazine to thousands of people, but it’s not free. Same goes for e-mail. Sure it’s "free" to send an e-mail, but you’re still paying your ISP for Internet access to send that letter.

The poisonous part of this myth is that it sets up the false idea that the Internet removes all barriers to free expression. The Internet removes some barriers, but it erects others. You can get a few free minutes online in your local public library, maybe, and set up a Web site using a free service (if the library’s filtering software allows that). But will you be able to catch anyone’s attention if you publish under those constraints?

Myth: The Internet knows no boundaries.

Despite the Great Firewall of China, an elaborate system of Internet filters that prevent Chinese citizens from accessing Web sites not approved by the government, many people still believe the Internet is a glorious international space that can bring the whole world together. When the government of a country like Pakistan can choose to block YouTube — which it has and does — it’s impossible to say the Internet has no boundaries.

The Internet does have boundaries, and they are often drawn along national lines. Of course, closed cultures are not the only source of these boundaries. Many people living in African and South American nations have little access to the Internet, mostly due to poverty. As long as we continue to behave as if the Internet is completely international, we forget that putting something online does not make it available to the whole world. And we also forget that communications technology alone cannot undo centuries of mistrust between various regions of the world.

Myth: The Internet is full of danger.

Perhaps because the previous two myths are so powerful, many people have come to believe that the Internet is a dangerous place — sort of like the "bad" part of a city, where you’re likely to get mugged or hassled late at night. The so-called dangers of the Internet were highlighted in two recent media frenzies: the MySpace child-predator bust, in which Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen discovered that a registered sex offender was actively befriending and trolling MySpace for kids; and the harassment of Web pundit Kathy Sierra by a group of people who posted cruelly Photoshopped pictures of her, called for her death, and posted her home address.

Despite the genuine scariness represented by both these incidents, I would submit they are no less scary than what one could encounter offline in real life. In general, the Internet is a far safer place for kids and vulnerable people than almost anywhere else. As long as you don’t hand out your address to strangers, you’ve got a cushion of anonymity and protection online that you’ll never have in the real world. It’s no surprise that our myths of the Internet overestimate both its ability to bring the world together and to destroy us individually. 2

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who is biased in favor of facts.

CFAC: Opening up China’s Great Firewall

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), a free press advocacy group, is testifying before a congressional commission in Washington on Wednesday, June 18, on the Chinese government’s system of internet censorship.
The testimony by Gilbert Kaplan, a free trade
law expert in Washington, is a key part of CFAC’s campaign contesting China’s censorship of many U.S.-based and other western websites that are deemed offensive by Chinese government censors. Here is CFAC’s press release explaining the campaign and the issue:

Continue reading for press release.

Althousing odyssey

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Marianne Moore takes you on a guided tour through the often confusing, always thrilling world of Bay Area alternative housing

We all know San Francisco housing is murder, with median rent for a one-bedroom apartment going for nearly $2200. So when I came home from college for my sweet but unpaid SF Bay Guardian internship, I knew I would have to be resourceful. I was prepared to live anywhere and do (almost) anything, as long as it was cheap. If you’re a local reading this via free wireless in your rent-controlled apartment (enjoy it while it lasts!), you may find this information irrelevant and stressful; or maybe you’ve been through it all. But if, like me, you can visit the beautiful Bay only for too-short summers, or you’re passing through or in transition, read on.

USA Hostel.jpg
Home sweet hostel? Not if you’re local.

The USA hostel on Post, like most hostels, will sometimes let you work a certain number of hours per week in exchange for a free bed. You have to work at least 24 hours and the nightly rate is $25 for paying guests, so it comes out to about $7.50 an hour, well below minimum wage in San Francisco. When I tried to arrange things over the phone from New York, I was told by the bored-sounding receptionist that I would just have to show up for a couple nights so they could “see if they liked me.” That made me a little nervous, but since I’m not totally unlikable I still thought it was worth a try. When I checked in and presented my California driver’s license, I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to stay unless I could show an out-of-state ID. Apparently the company has a policy against boarding California residents, a policy specifically designed (it seems to me) to keep out homeless people. This isn’t typical for hostels; places I’ve stayed in New York City are regularly used as stopgaps by people between apartments. I couldn’t help but think that the hostel shuts out native Californians to protect their guests (mostly drunk-ass Eurotrash on holiday) from the realities of life in SF, presenting a tourist experience in line with trips to Ghiradelli Square and Pier 39.That, plus the popularity contest application process, had me heading straight for the nearest internet café and the dizzying wilderness of options that is Craig’s List .

“You Make Me Make You”

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REVIEW We photograph stuff and immediately pass it on to everyone who has Internet access. We ingest news events recorded only moments ago — and expect information on the next event even before it has completely unfolded. Artist Suzanne Husky is also driven to document what is happening right now: from social concerns to what she witnesses in her community. But she doesn’t give it to us flat, like so much documentation via electronic media. Instead, Husky renders her vision in 3-D and makes them potentially huggable.

In her current show at Triple Base Gallery, Husky has sewn, stuffed, and collaged a miniature wonderland that merges her social network with ecological and pop-cultural concerns. The initial effect of the installation is like seeing a grade-schooler’s attempt to recreate a Christmas window at FAO Schwartz. But these toy-size dioramas were designed for adults to contemplate. That desire to immediately disseminate information, the urge to make real what is only flat onscreen, and seeing the big picture are some of the ideas that come to mind when viewing her work — after you’re done chuckling over details like the composting toilet (Humanure). Husky wants her viewers to become social anthropologists and make their own connections. Using photographs for doll faces so there is no mistaking who is represented, the artist gives us Kobe Bryant dunking a basketball, her friends at a gallery opening, and that ever-present naked guy doing yoga in Berkeley Hot Tub. The herd from the Highway 5 stockyards, Chinese factory workers, and an activist aloft in the University of California, Berkeley oak trees also are reproduced with sad and funny results.

YOU MAKE ME MAKE YOU Through June 29. Artists Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine discuss Husky’s work at a dinner lecture, June 27, 7 p.m.; e-mail triplebase@gmail.com for reservations. Thurs.–Sun., noon–5 p.m. Triple Base, 3041 24th St., SF. (303) 909-5481, www.basebasebase.com

Shock and aw

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

The White Stripes may be dormant and the Black Keys may be slowly incinerating their blues-rock genre confines, but elsewhere the minimalist, ’00s-styley, binary-busting power of two remains potent. Recent releases by No Age and Crystal Castles — Nouns (Sub Pop) and Crystal Castles (Lies/Last Gang) respectively — demonstrate as much. At first listen, the pair of twosomes seems spazzily coupled, sharing a short-attention-span feel and what-the-fuck adventurousness.

Yet it only takes a few listens to uncover major divergences. No Age’s two-part cluster bomb boasts forward-facing rock juxtaposed with moments of Sonic Youth–like distorto-delicacy. They may be a two-fer, but they’re also a clear segment of a community: witness the rainbow connection of faces in Nouns‘ booklet. Meanwhile Crystal Castles finds Ethan Fawn, né Kath, and Alice Glass looking determinedly toward the future, in us-against-the-world lonesomeness — armed with keys modified, as legend has it, with an Atari 5200 sound chip. Though their simultaneously noisy and dancey, agitated pop — searching, sample-heavy, and propelled by Glass’s effects-doused coos and cries — comes off as surprisingly accessible, theirs isn’t a trillion-bit future of audiophile perfection. And definitely don’t call the Toronto twosome nu rave, even though they remixed pals the Klaxons early in their four-year existence.

"There is nothing ‘rave’ about the way we sound," Kath writes in an e-mail from Moscow. "There is nothing ‘rave’ about the way we look." Instead, he adds, Crystal Castles’ earliest idea was "to try putting a New Order beat under noise-punk."

The duo met while reading to the blind as part of "community service punishment," as Kath puts it. "I was in a metal band, and we could not cross the US border because I had a criminal record. I did the community service work to clear my record. Instead I met Alice. We bonded over our shared love of noise-punk bands. She invited me to see her noise-punk band [Fetus Fatale], and I fell in love with her lyrics."

According to Kath, he left his group, Kill Cheerleader, on the verge of major record deal to make music with Glass under a name cribbed from She-Ra’s stronghold. "We are named after a line in a commercial for the toy version of She-Ra’s castles," writes Kath. "The line is ‘the fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles.’"

The collaboration grew from a handful of Kath guitar-noise tracks supplemented with Glass’ vocals, to a second batch that, he offers, "were 100 percent based on samples (Madonna, Joy Division, Death from Above 1979, 8bitcommunity, Grand Master Flash). In 2005 we abandoned the idea of using samples and began looking for own our songs."

Meanwhile their experiment has been catching on: an early "Alice Practice" track put out as a 500-copy 7-inch by London’s Merok Records sold out within three days. More recently Crystal Castles — which compiles "Alice Practice" and other sold-out singles, unreleased tracks from the same era like "Courtship Dating" and "Vanished," and new tracks such as "Black Panther" and "Through the Hosiery" — has established a beachhead on CMJ charts.

The duo may never have thought their remixes of Bloc Party, among others, would be popular ("The [Klaxons] remix was so well-received that other bands began offering me money to remix them as well. It was at a time when we couldn’t afford a small bag of chips, so I was saying yes to everything," writes Kath). And they may have never imagined their so-called failures would find life online. For "Crime Wave [Crystal Castles vs. Health], Kath says, "I tried to cut up the vocal track from a Health song and place it over an unused CC rhythm track. I believed it was a failed experiment, but the track leaked and people were trading it on the Internet and finally in 2007 a label called Trouble Records decided to release it as a limited seven-inch single. It sold 2,000 copies in a week." But at least part of the world outside Crystal Castles listened closely.

All of which explains some of the controversy swirling around the band. In April the Torontoist and Pitchfork reported on the duo’s use of Trevor Brown’s black-eyed Madonna image for T-shirts, the "Alice Practice" single cover, and an early "banned" Crystal Castles cover. The band has stated that they initially found the art uncredited on an old flyer, and went on to form a handshake agreement with the artist. Brown, on the other hand, alleges he was never paid for the work’s use, while the group and its management allege that they tried to contact him without success.

Furthermore, the chiptune or 8-bit community appears to be up in arms regarding Crystal Castles’ sampling, leading BlogTo.com to report on Crystal Castles’ alleged use of Belgian producer Lo-bat’s "My Little Droid Needs a Hand" for their track "Insecticon," which some say is outside the provisions of Creative Commons licensing (the work was available free for noncommercial uses, though some chip-tuners claim "Insecticon" has been used promotionally in a way that violates Creative Commons’ spirit).

Meanwhile Crystal Castles, which has deferred comment on the allegations, continues to navigate a fine, fragile line. Though the fortress has clearly been breached, the duo emphasizes its hermetic remove ("We created the songs in isolation," Kath writes), which is colored by a somewhat understandable defensiveness. ("We think there is hostility in all the tracks"). "People seem to love or hate the music," Kath writes. "We never thought about our listeners. We put these songs together for ourselves, and it’s a shock that anyone is listening."

At the very least, the twosome have retained the kind of fatalistic humor that surely led them to create the Crystal Castles CD art: an image of the pair looking down, faces hidden, and bowing — or rising up. "In the universe of pop music," Kath opines, "we are the litter collecting at the sewer grate."

CRYSTAL CASTLES

Tues/10, 8 p.m., $16

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

The Cool Kids

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PREVIEW With the success of their BMX ode "Black Mags" ghost-riding beyond the Internet echo chamber, the Cool Kids are on a roll. After one single for Nick Catchdubs and A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold imprint and a year spent performing live, including 30 dates with M.I.A., the 10-cut Bake Sale EP comes courtesy of C.A.K.E. Recordings/Chocolate Industries, home or former home to such acts as Prefuse 73 and Lady Sovereign. It’s slated to be followed by a proper album, When Fish Ride Bicycles, but right now the Cool Kids are back onstage, peddling — or pedaling? — their own blend of stripped-down hip-hop.

Though many latch onto the Chicago duo’s 1980s fixation and look no further, the carefully casual drawl of 19-year-old Antoine Reed (Mikey Rocks) and the spare, angular beats of 23-year-old Evan Ingersoll (Chuck Inglish) owe as much to Spank Rock or the Neptunes as the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC. With its brassy, clanging drums and tightly reverbed vocals, it’s no surprise that "88" has been snatched up by both HBO and NBA Live 08. If it’s possible to be aggressively nerdy, this pair, who first met on MySpace, are doing it. On "What Up Man," lanky Mikey Rocks raps, "I can build a sandcastle without bringing a pail / And go catfish fishing and come up with a whale," while the rhythm track, built from Inglish’s processed ticks, claps, and basses, chugs greasily along. From the uptempo, hi-trilling "Bassment Party" to the lethargic one-in-four boom of "Jingling" — an off-the-cuff riff on the sound of keys in your pocket — the Cool Kids make hip-hop akin to busting a wheelie. It looks pretty simple, but it’s damned hard to do.

THE COOL KIDS Tues/3, 9 p.m., $18. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422 www.theindependentsf.com

Disobey!

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Last week I wrote about the premise of Oxford professor Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Yale University Press). He warns about a future of "tethered" technologies like the digital video recorder and smartphones that often are programmed remotely by the companies that make them rather than being programmed by users, as PCs are. As a partial solution, Zittrain offers up the idea of Wikipedia-style communities, where users create their own services without being "tethered" to a company that can change the rules any time.

Unfortunately, crowds of people running Web services or technologies online cannot save us from the problem of tethered technology. Indeed, Zittrain’s crowds might even unwittingly be tightening the stranglehold of tethering by lulling us into a false sense of freedom.

It’s actually in the best interest of companies like Apple, Comcast, or News Corp to encourage democratic, freewheeling enclaves like Wikipedia or MySpace to convince people that their whole lives aren’t defined by tethering. When you get sick of corporate-mandated content and software, you can visit Wikipedia or MySpace. If you want a DVR that can’t be reprogrammed by Comcast at any time, you can look up how to build your own software TV tuner on Wikipedia. See? You have freedom!

Unfortunately, your homemade DVR software doesn’t have the kind of easy-to-use features that make it viable for most consumers. At the same time, it does prove that tethered technologies aren’t your only option. Because there’s this little puddle of freedom in the desert of technology tethering, crowd-loving liberals are placated while the majority of consumers are tied down by corporate-controlled gadgets.

In this way, a democratic project like Wikipedia becomes a kind of theoretical freedom — similar to the way in which the US constitutional right to freedom of speech is theoretical for most people. Sure, you can write almost anything you want. But will you be able to publish it? Will you be able to get a high enough ranking on Google to be findable when people search your topic? Probably not. So your speech is free, but nobody can hear it. Yes, it is a real freedom. Yes, real people participate in it and provide a model to others. And sometimes it can make a huge difference. But most of the time, people whose free speech flies in the face of conventional wisdom or corporate plans don’t have much of an effect on mainstream society.

What I’m trying to say is that Wikipedia and "good crowds" can’t fight the forces of corporate tethering — just as one person’s self-published, free-speechy essay online can’t fix giant, complicated social problems. At best, such efforts can create lively subcultures where a few lucky or smart people will find that they have total control over their gadgets and can do really neat things with them. But if the denizens of that subculture want millions of people to do neat things too, they have to deal with Comcast. And Comcast will probably say, "Hell no, but we’re not taking away your freedom entirely because look, we have this special area for you and 20 other people to do complicated things with your DVRs." If you’re lucky, Comcast will rip off the subculture’s idea and turn it into a tethered application.

So what is the solution, if it isn’t nice crowds of people creating their own content and building their own tether-free DVRs? My honest answer is that we need organized crowds of people systematically and concertedly breaking the tethers on consumer technology. Yes, we need safe spaces like Wikipedia, but we also need to be affirmatively making things uncomfortable for the companies that keep us tethered. We need to build technologies that set Comcast DVRs free, that let people run any applications they want on iPhones, that fool ISPs into running peer-to-peer traffic. We need to hand out easy-to-use tools to everyone so crowds of consumers can control what happens to their technologies. In short, we need to disobey. *

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd whose
best ideas have all been appropriated and copyrighted by corporations.

Love those Girls at Rickshaw Stop

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Girls make us dance – whether we want to or not. Photo by Jen Synder.

By Jen Snyder

I know that there’s a big battle going on about whether or not the Internet is evil – and whether or not technology is making people super-mean. But you’ve got to admit that while some things may be getting a more impersonal, others are getting a lot cooler. Like bands.

Has anyone noticed that there are a million groups out there that are actually really good? That is so weird. Remember when you used to go to the Warehouse with your dad and every other CD was completely horrible? Now I walk around a music store so bewildered by all the pretty album covers that I get an intimidation contact high and end up leaving with my 19th Leonard Cohen album. Geez. I blame the Internet and its infallible ability to get awesome stuff to anyone, even if you don’t live in a cultural hub like San Francisco.

So the next time you’re stumbling around Amoeba, wondering which disc has the sweet song your coworker played for you, just go to the G section and go pick out anything by Girls. Actually, they don’t have an official album out, but I do know that they have some great songs on their MySpace page, including a particular favorite of mine, “Hellhole Ratrace.” Their songs evoke the pleasantly masochistic feelings you get from listening to something like Nirvana Unplugged. And in an era where one can describe the ’80s and even the ’90s as vintage, Girls has this “yesterday” feel to them that makes you yearn for those years when you were sadder and more creative.

Razzed and dazzled

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CHEAP EATS My new favorite hair chopper is a magician’s assistant named Dazzle, thanks to whom I accidentally got beautiful. I admit this defies logic, not to mention math. But defying those kinds of disciplines — with the help of elves and pixies with names like Dazzle — turns out to be one of my specialties.

I wish there was a way to use time-lapse photography in Cheap Eats. Hairstylistically speaking, in the past four years, I have gone from a 40-year-old rapidly recedingly hairlined dude, to a 41-year-old piratesexual in hoop earrings and bandanna, to a 42-year-old aging-rock-starsexual with way-too-long greasy locks, to a 43-year-old passable transsexual, to, now, a 39-year-old hot chick.

How I know is because I put one of those personal ads on the Internet one night and the next morning there were eight guys — some in their early 20s — telling me I was beautiful. And by the time I finished writing long, thoughtful, philosophical letters back to each of them, proving them wrong, eight more guys were telling me I was beautiful. I’m learning to leave it at that after two or three days.

"Thank you, dear, that’s sweet," I say. "You don’t look too much like a ham-and-potato-chip sandwich yourself!" They’re not sure how to take that, but we make a date for coffee anyway, and they stand me up.

Which I totally deserve because, as you know, I’m already dating someone. But 74.4 miles is a long way away from the woods where I live. And the woods are dark and cold, and I get pretty lonely between weekends. So I told him, over chicken soup and tortilla chips, that I was going to start dating other people too — find me a little something snuggly a little closer to home.

Last time I tried something like this was a year or so ago, and guys weren’t buying it. But that was before I had bangs. Still, I didn’t expect to have any better luck this time. And, truth be told, I haven’t. Unless by some geographical razzle-dazzle, Truckee, Denver, Florida, New Hampshire, and Belgium are now "closer to home" than Alameda.

If there’s a way to have online sex, I haven’t figured it out yet. And anyway, it doesn’t sound very warm, or snuggly. Guys keep asking for more pictures, more pictures. And I don’t know what else to do, so I take shots of my chickens. Or what’s for dinner. There’s one pic of half a barbecued chicken I find particularly attractive, myself, but, like I said, I tend to get stood up by the local boys.

The ones in Belgium, New Hampshire, and such, they’re all hooked. Packing up their houses, giving notice at work, learning English, scouring their local libraries for books about chickens…

I should probably not be allowed to do this sort of thing. Online dating. I’m serious. Sometimes I feel like a professional boxer about to get into a drunken bar brawl, like … uh-oh, this has got to be unfair, if not illegal.

Then I remember that, in the words of Clint Eastwood, "fair’s got nothing to do with it." Since when did Clint Eastwood become my rabbi? Since he said to Gene Hackman, near the end of Unforgiven, "Fair’s got nothing to do with it."

So, glory be to Dazzle (a.k.a. Karianne) at Peter Thomas in Berkeley, I’ve got all these electronic guys, all over the electrified world, e-coming all over me. Let me rephrase that. Coming on to me. Some are articulate and romantic and want to buy me dinner. Others come right out with their "thick cocks" this and "my clit" that. Don’t fear for my life, dear reader. They know what that word means, in the context that is me. And anyway, those ones go straight to the slush pile.

Someone told me it’s my natural prerogative as a woman to get to choose. That now they have to prove themselves to me. What a novel idea! Can it be true?

Clint? *

The Internet dystopia

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION A couple of weeks ago I went to the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, an event where people from all over the world gather for a giant DIY technology show-and-tell extravaganza. There are robots, kinetic sculptures, rockets, remote-controlled battleship contests, music-controlled light shows, home electronics kits, ill-advised science experiments (like the Mentos–Diet Coke explosions), and even a barn full of people who make their own clothing, pillows, bags, and more. Basically, it’s a weekend celebration of how human freedom combined with technology creates a pleasing but cacophonous symphony of coolness.

And yet the Maker Faire takes place against a backdrop of increasing constraints on our freedom to innovate with technology, as Oxford University researcher Jonathan Zittrain points out in his latest book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (Yale University Press). After spending several years investigating the social and political rules that govern the Internet — and spearheading the Net censorship tracking project OpenNet Initiative — Zittrain looks back on the Net’s development and predicts a dystopian future. What’s chilling is that his dystopia is already coming to pass.

Zittrain traces the Net’s history through three phases. Initially it was composed of what he calls "sterile" technologies: vast mainframes owned by IBM, which companies could rent time on. What made those technologies sterile is that nobody could experiment with them (except IBM), and therefore innovation related to them stagnated.

That’s why the invention of the desktop PC and popularization of the Internet ushered in an era of unprecedented high-tech innovation. Zittrain calls these open-ended technologies "generative." Anybody can build other technologies that work with them. So, for example, people built Skype and the World Wide Web, both software technologies that sit on top of the basic network software infrastructure of the Internet. Similarly, anybody can build a program that runs on Windows.

But Zittrain thinks we’re seeing the end of the freewheeling Internet and PC era. He calls the technologies of today "tethered" technologies. Tethered technologies are items like iPhones or many brands of DVR — they’re sterile to their owners, who aren’t allowed to build software that runs on them. But they’re generative to the companies that make them, in the sense that Comcast can update your DVR remotely, or Apple can brick your iPhone remotely if you try to do something naughty to it (like run your own software program on it).

In some ways, tethered technologies are worse than plain old sterile technologies. They allow for abuses undreamed of in the IBM mainframe era. For example, iPhone tethering could lead to law enforcement going to Apple and saying, "Please activate the microphone on this iPhone that we know is being carried by a suspect." The device turns into an instant bug, without all the fuss of following the suspect around or installing surveillance crap in her apartment. This isn’t idle speculation, by the way. OnStar, the manufacturer of a car emergency system, was asked by law enforcement to activate the mics in certain cars using its system. It refused and went to court.

Zittrain’s solution to the tethering problem is to encourage the existence of communities like the ones who participate in Maker Faire or who edit Wikipedia. These are people who work together to create open, untethered technologies and information repositories. They are the force that pushes back against companies that want to sterilize the Internet and turn it back into something that spits information at you, television-style. I think this is a good start, but there are a lot of problems with depending on communities of DIY enthusiasts to fix a system created by corporate juggernauts. As I mentioned in my column ("User-Generated Censorship," 4/30/08), you can’t always depend on communities of users to do the right thing. In addition, companies can create an incredibly oppressive tethering regime while still allowing users to think they have control. Tune in next week, and I’ll tell you how Zittrain’s solution might lead to an even more dystopian future.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thinks up dystopias in her spare time.

Newsom axes sunshine

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EDITORIAL Shortly before he left on a trip to Israel last week, Mayor Gavin Newsom quietly vetoed a bill that would have greatly expanded public access to the workings of San Francisco government. The supervisors need to override that veto as quickly as possible.

The measure, by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, seems so simple that it’s hard to imagine why it would be controversial. Mirkarimi wants the city to audiotape or videotape any meeting of any public agency at City Hall, and post that tape on the Web within 72 hours.

That would make it much easier for people following local government actions to see or hear the actual testimony and discussion at board and commission meetings, most of which take place during the day when people with jobs can’t attend. The Board of Supervisors meetings are televised, as are most board committee meetings, but dozens of other agencies meet regularly with few people attending and virtually no press coverage. And there’s no easy way to find out exactly what went on at those meetings.

Posting the recordings on the Web is part of a larger agenda promoted by sunshine advocates who want to see the city use easily available and inexpensive modern technology to promote open government (see Sunshine in the digital age, 3/12/08). Among their proposals: at the very least, post and stream the audio portion of all meetings on the Internet. Most meetings are already recorded anyway, and all the meeting rooms are equipped with recording gear. But those recordings aren’t easy to access. The only way to get a copy of the proceedings is to send $10 for a DVD and $1 for an audiotape to the city, then wait a week for your media to arrive in the mail. How hard could it be to put that material on the Web?

Sunshine activists want to go a lot further. They suggest, for example, that every document and e-mail created by a city employee be sent automatically to a public server where it can be viewed over the Internet. And if there was adequate wi-fi service at City Hall (there isn’t), bloggers could post video of the meetings themselves.

Mirkarimi’s bill didn’t go anywhere near that far. All he asked was that the meetings that take place in rooms equipped for audio or video taping be recorded and that the files be placed on the Web. The total cost was pegged at $131,000 per year, but the city’s cable-TV franchise deal would require Comcast to pay $55,000 for the necessary new equipment. So the final tab would be only $72,000 a year. That’s such a minuscule percentage of the city’s $5 billion budget that it fits into the category of what Mirkarimi calls "decimal dust."

And yet in an April 30 veto message, Newsom said he found the cost too high. "I would urge the Board of Supervisors to hold off on new spending initiatives" until the next budget cycle, he said.

That’s crazy. We recognize that money is tight, but Newsom has pushed all sorts of new programs and initiatives that cost more than $72,000. In fact, he spent almost twice that much ($139,700) gussying up his office back in January.

Four supervisors voted against Mirkarimi’s bill: Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd, Jake McGoldrick, and Michela Alioto-Pier, so Mirkarimi appears to have seven votes to override the veto. It will take one more — one more supervisor willing to stand up for open government — to make this program happen. It’s embarrassing to see neighborhood supervisors voting against sunshine. Call the four and demand they vote to override. Chu: 554-7460. Elsbernd: 554-6516. McGoldrick: 554-7410. Alioto-Pier: 554-7752.

Children of the (pop)corn

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Must be summer — every movie I want to see in the next three months is either a sequel, a superhero movie, or a superhero movie sequel. Granted, I’m girly enough to want to see Sex and the City (May 30), snarky enough to eagerly anticipate M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (June 13), and arty enough to get excited about Werner Herzog’s Antarctica doc Encounters at the End of the World (June 27). But extra-butter cinema is the season’s stock in trade, and if you can’t squeal like a teenage boy over the following, you might as well go live in a cave till fall. All dates subject to change.

Iron Man (May 2) He’s smart, rich, and glamorous, with a built-in Black Sabbath theme song. What’s not to love? Robert Downey Jr. is an inspired choice to play Marvel’s billionaire inventor, and if the movie is half as good as the trailer suggests, Iron Man‘s gonna have theaters full of believers even before the Stan Lee cameo.

Speed Racer (May 9) Normally I don’t care for kid’s movies, but if those wacky Wachowski brothers are involved, I’m curious. Burning question, though: is Chim Chim gonna get the crucial role he deserves?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22) If you’re not excited about this movie, you might want to seek professional help.

The Incredible Hulk (June 13) Will the sour taste of Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003) be erased by this new take, featuring Edward Norton as the big green guy? Though Internet snipers have fussed over the film’s über-emo poster, Marvel’s other summer beefcake still looks intriguing — and it’s hard to deny the inherent radness of "Hulk smash!"

Hancock (July 2) I didn’t like I Am Legend. Win me back, Will Smith.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (July 11) Guillermo del Toro is one of the most imaginative directors working today. Ron Perlman is a cool cat no matter how many prosthetics he happens to be wearing. The first movie (2004) ruled. How can Hellboy II miss?

The Dark Knight (July 18) Heath Ledger’s death cast an instant pall over this one — but Batman was always a melancholy fellow, and Christopher Nolan’s first Caped Crusader flick (2005) still rules as one of the best comic book adaptations ever. Plus, in this sequel: no Katie Holmes!

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (July 25) I’d pretty much follow Fox Mulder anywhere, even to a movie that arrives way, way past the X-Files sell-by date.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Aug 1) I actually liked the first two movies. I even liked that spin-off prequel, or whatever it was, with the Rock. I just like mummies, OK? Anyway, this one is set in China and co-stars Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, and the ever-cool Anthony Wong, in addition to Brendan Fraser, that annoying British guy, and an inevitable army of CG beasties.

Tropic Thunder (Aug 15) To borrow a line from The X-Files, I want to believe this Hollywood spoof–war movie mélange from Ben Stiller and company will make me laugh my ass off.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Aug 15) George Lucas finally does away with those pesky flesh-and-blood actors once and for all in this animated series entry, about which little is known other than when (a long time ago) and where (a galaxy far, far away) it takes place.

SPORTS: The F-in’ ballgame

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By A.J. Hayes

Carbon dioxide, deforestation, and nitrous oxide all shoulder their share of the blame for Global Warming. But what about Lee Elia?

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Now, you won’t find Elia’s name mentioned in any Al Gore lecture. He’s not a greedy corporate bigwig, an eco terrorist, or a clueless oil tanker captain – just a curmudgeonly baseball lifer.

But 25 years ago this week, during a highly unsuccessful two-season stint managing the Chicago Cubs, Elia emitted the most extreme, paint-peeling meltdowns in the history of sports.

When he was done blasting away at Cubs fans with an obscenity-laced rant that included a jaw-dropping 36 F-bombs over the first three minutes, Elia surely had released enough green house gasses to liquidate massive mountain glaciers and multiply the thermal expansion of upper ocean layers from Pacifica to Antarctica. .

A quarter century later, Elia’s diatribe still ranks as the No. 1 outburst in the history of sports – eclipsing Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy (I’m a man! I’m 40!”); Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Mora (Playoffs?! Are you kidding?! Playoffs?!) and any number of profanity laced diatribes by former Dodgers skipper Tommy Lasorda.

The Legend of Elia rant has grown so much over the years, that every April 29, sports radio broadcasters from coast- to- coast gather for a moment to celebrate “Lee Elia Day” – popping multi-generational copies of the tirade into their Monrantz tape decks and laughing hysterically.

After dealing with mounds of monotone sports clichés on a daily basis, Elia’s rant allows beleaguered sound bite gathers a moment to smile. Obviously, because of Elia’s unrestrained profanity, only carefully edited versions of Elia’s adult content diatribe have ever made it to the public airwaves.

Now, thanks to the internet of course, Elia’s diatribe can be heard in all its profane glory.

The hapless Cubs were off to a typical dreary start to their ’83, settling into last place in the National League East place after a 4-3 loss to the Dodgers at Wrigley Field that afternoon.

As the Cubs exited the field and the 9,391 fans in attendance filed out of the grand stand, a couple of jerks pelted Chicago’s Keith Moreland and Larry Bowa with stadium trash.

“About 85 percent of the (f-ing) world is working,” Elia growled into the microphone of Chicago radio man Les Grobstein, one of a half dozen reporters to witness the rant first hand. “The other 15 come out here.”

He was far from finished.
Moments later, Elia’s season-long slow burn escalated into an inferno. He lit not only into the debris flinging morons, but each and every Cubs fan that had ever skipped school or work to take in a mid-week day game at the “Friendly Confines.”

Hot Tubbin’ with Ashkon

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By Justin Juul

Like perhaps everyone in the world for the past two years, I can’t stop watching certain YouTube clips. And blogging about them. There’s the Danzig vs. Shakira mideo, the Mike Tyson montage, The Mini-Mall Rapper Guy , Trapped in The Closet (duh), and now there’s Ashkon, a Bay Area rapper whose latest song/video “Hot Tubbin’”, was released to YouTube on March 24.

It unexpectedly got placed on the site’s front page the very next day, propelling the relatively unknown artist into the weird world of Interstardom. The Guardian caught up with Ashkon recently (by calling the phone number he forgot to edit out of the final cut for Hot Tubbin’) to see how it feels to be Internet-famous.

SFBG: Hello, is this Ashkon?
Ashkon: Yeah man. It’s me. Who’s this?

SFBG: It’s Justin Juul from The SF Bay Guardian. I just wanted to find out if the rumors were true, that the number you show in your Hot Tubbin’ video really connects to you.
Ashkon: Ha! Yeah. It’s me. Definitely.

SFBG: That’s pretty brave dude. Has your life changed at all since your video hit the front page on YouTube?
Ashkon:Ha ha. Yeah it has. Now I get thousands of phone calls a week from random people like you.

ashkona.jpg

SFBG: Have you gotten any weird ones?
Ashkon: Oh hell yeah. I had this one stalker, some guy, who was calling me like every day. That was kind of creepy. Also, a lot of people have taken it as an opportunity to just call up and mess with me, as you could probably imagine.

Let it go

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I broke up with my boyfriend when he moved to another city after a short but intense relationship. Since then, we’ve visited each other regularly and continued having a sexual relationship. I’ve been fancying/dating/shagging other people for basically the whole time. But now he’s started expressing interest in another girl and I’m jealous, though I’m trying not to let him know.

I don’t want to get back together. Apart from the long-distance factor, every time I see him I’m reminded of all the ways in which we are incompatible. The sex is good, but not the best ever. Still, I spend a lot of time missing him, thinking about him, and feeling resentful of this new woman! Why can’t I let go of this?

Love,

Pouting

Dear Pout:

Oh, who knows. I think we’re just mammals and once we’ve marked something or someone with our (insert yucky metaphor here), that something must forever remain at least partly ours. Yesterday my daughter claimed an empty kefir bottle and carried it around with her for hours, reclaiming it this morning the minute she saw it in the recycling. OK, she’s a toddler, but I don’t know how much we ever mature past the "Mine! You can’t have it!" stage.

It’s hard to let go, even when what you’re hanging on to is entirely unsuitable. You don’t really want that empty yogurt jug; you just don’t want anyone else to claim it. But someone will, and you’ll be fine. In other words, it’s not that you can’t let go, it’s just that you haven’t yet.

It should be obvious that the best way to get you past this in a hurry is to stop seeing the guy. You don’t really want to be this dude’s booty call, do you? And he doesn’t seem like such a great pick to be your booty call, since he’s only pretty good at the only thing you’re likely to be doing together. It would be different if you were, say, an aspiring singer and he were the only accompanist who understands … oh, never mind. This story is going nowhere, just like what’s left of your relationship with Visit Guy. You miss him because you see him. And you resent the new girl because she’s taking some of what you’ve got left. Give her the whole thing. You don’t need it.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I am confused by my thoughts. I fantasize constantly about my wife having sex with other men. She’s refused, so I quit asking her about it. But now I can’t sleep. I am 36 with three children, and am having three or four wet dreams a week about my wife having sex with other men. Most of the time the men don’t even have faces — it’s just me watching my wife have sex. I love my wife very much and wonder why I have this fantasy.

Love,

Sleepless

Dear Sleepy:
Nobody knows why, so don’t look at me. I mean it — nobody knows why anybody fantasizes about or fixates on anything. It’s not just that nobody knows why you, the guy who wrote Andrea a letter, fixates on seeing his wife have sex with another guy. It may help to know that you have a great deal of company; indeed, accessing a little porn on the theme may help take some pressure off. Your search terms are probably "cuckold" (now that‘s a word with some years under its belt) and "hot wife" (although there’s also "troilism" and "candaulism" if you want to get technical). If you do not want to see or read some porn, I suggest you never, under any circumstances, Google any of those terms. Even "wife" alone will get you some things you’d probably never want to tell your spouse that you’ve seen — especially since you’ve asked her, been turned down, and she’d probably prefer not to have that particular discussion again.

While I was waiting for the coffee to kick in this morning and trying to force my brain to cough up the term "troilism" for you, I did a little search myself and found this quite nice article on Nerve that goes into great detail about the culture that has grown up around cuckolding-the-fetish — which is not the sort of thing that could have flourished in the pre-Internet age but has certainly come into its own. And aren’t we proud?

Actually, I have no problem with it, provided it isn’t one of those situations where the man (usually) begs and whines and cajoles and bothers the woman (usually) past the point where it makes sense to do so. Either she won’t change her mind or she’ll agree to it, meet someone else, and leave the first guy. Either way is OK with me. But neither of these things applies in your case. You’re OK. If you can’t sleep, try exercise, melatonin, or masturbation.
Love,
Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Microhoo!

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION For weeks now, analysts and armchair financial nerds have been mulling over what it will mean if software megacorp Microsoft buys Web monkey farm Yahoo! Would Microsoft-Yahoo! (known forevermore as Microhoo!) challenge Google to some kind of Web domination duel and win? Probably not. As much as I would love to see Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Jerry Yang in some kind of unholy three-way Jell-O wrestling match, I know it will never come to pass.

Microhoo! won’t ever have what Google has right now. Sure, Microhoo! will have some solid assets: control of most PC desktops with the Windows OS, Microsoft Office crap, and the Internet Explorer browser. After chomping up Yahoo!, Microhoo! will have a second-rate search engine used by a forlorn 22 percent of Web searchers, followed by a very confused 10 percent who use Microsoft search — I bet you didn’t know Microsoft even had a search engine, did you? It would also have a giant mess of users on free Yahoo! mail, as well as Yahoo! instant messenger. Plus it would acquire a host of Yahoo! things you also didn’t know existed, like Yahoo! Buzz and Yahoo! Answers. Along with about 8 percent of the Web advertising market.

What does Google have? Sure, it has a million things like Android and Orkut and Gmail and Reader and Blogger and Scoop and Zanyblob. But what it really has is Search. Fifty-nine percent of online searches go through Google servers. And if it can sell ads to 59 percent of the billions online? It owns the attention of the majority of the market. Google wins. That’s why the company isn’t worrying so much about Microhoo! and instead is doing things like investing in alternative energy research and letting its employees make psychotically long, company-wide e-mail arguments about whether it’s Earth-friendly to provide plastic bottles of water in the lunchrooms.

I shouldn’t be so glib. Google is making a halfhearted attempt to prevent Microhoo! from being born. The company offered Yahoo! an ad-sharing partnership where the two could pool their networks, put more ads in front of more eyes, and come out as an even more giant advertising machine. They’re doing a very limited test of the ad partnership over the next couple of weeks. Maybe we’ll see a Goohoo! after all.

I don’t think so. Most business pundits think the Goohoo! deal is just Yahoo!’s last-ditch effort to get a bigger offer from Microsoft. Apparently Yahoo! wants about $50 billion to become Microhoo!, and Microsoft is currently offering a little more than $40 billion. No matter what the price tag, my bet is that we’re going to see Microhoo! by this time next year. Microsoft is even contemputf8g a hostile takeover — that’s how serious the situation is.

So what does Microhoo! mean for us, the little guys, who just want a nice search engine that helps us find "hot XXX pussy" or "free MP3" on the Web? For one thing, it means we’ll have fewer options when it comes to online searches, using Web mail, and just plain goofing around online. Microsoft actually considered bringing News Corp, owners of MySpace, in on the Microhoo! deal. That would mean MySpace, Hotmail, Yahoo! mail, and your PC software would all come from a merged corporate entity.

Let’s say we did get a Micronewshoo! It’s online offerings, combined, would be very much a version of Google’s online offerings: mail, social networking, search, Web fun. There would be no cool new thing, no sudden breakthrough application that would transform our relationship to the Web the way Search did. It would be more of the same stuff, but from fewer players — and therefore blander and bigger, like Hollywood blockbusters. New applications and content creators on the Web will be incredibly hard to find unless they have a deal with Microhoo! or Google.

Then in 20 years, a woman in a physics graduate program in China will come up with an idea for the next cool communications network. At last, we’ll say, we finally have a network free from advertising! A place where we can share information without Big Business intruding! Not like the Web, which is all corporate content and has no place for the little guy.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who thinks Google should start recycling dinosaur bones.

Fool’s Gold vs. Dim Mak

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PREVIEW Here’s how the grumpy jockey wonkette in me kinda wishes the Fool’s Gold vs. Dim Mak record label showdown goes down. In this corner: Montreal vinyl cut-up whiz and Fool’s Gold cofounder A-Trak, winner of the 1997 DMC World DJ Championship at 15 and prime mover of the ’90s turntablism movement. In that corner: Dim Mak owner Steve Aoki, a self-proclaimed "kid millionaire party king" who barely touches vinyl, inspires an entire Internet hatrix due to his immense popularity on the neon indie/cheap sunglasses scene, and often raises the question, if a DJ can’t mix for shit but the party still goes off, does it matter?

Ding! We have a winner. Sorry, Aoki, but Monsieur A-Trak’s all up in your laptop ass like the A in Canada. Everybody switch back to vinyl.

But I gotta be fair. After years of relentless touring, Aoki’s gone easier on the Human League sing-alongs and Michael Jackson breakdowns and has pepped up his sets with some much-needed prickly subversion. Meanwhile, A-Trak has been warming up crowds for Kanye West by backspinning Justin Timberlake. Now is it an even playing field? We’ll see on Saturday, when both take the stage with wacky Sammy Bananas, Alameda’s Trackademicks, and electro-hopper Sinden.

A-TRAK AND STEVE AOKI With Sammy Bananas, Trackademicks, and Sinden. Sat/19, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15–$20. 103 Harriet, SF. www.blasthaus.com

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