Nature

Love machine

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW To look at the formally austere self-portraits made by the American artist Charles Sheeler (1883–1965) at various points throughout his career, you might surmise, from the repeated images of his stiff, unsmiling visage, that he toiled in obscurity for dry, dusty decades as an administrative underling at a low-level law firm, forever obsessed with organizing his paper clips, pausing from his tedious task only long enough to clean his spectacles on a crisply starched pocket handkerchief and tie the laces of his uncomfortable shoes, polished deep black the previous evening while listening to news of the Lindbergh kidnapping on his wooden Philco tube radio. As the crotchety stepfather of modernism, Sheeler cultivated a stern yet slightly mewling look of quotidian routine, as if neither he nor any other mere individual should assume particular importance amid the daunting technological advancements of his era. Like all true-blue men of meager means in the early part of the 20th century, Sheeler was enthralled with industrial progress and glorified all things steel and chrome. If this clerk allowed himself one indulgence, it was basking in the cult of the machine.

If modernism taught us anything, however, it’s that appearances can — no, should — be deceiving. Hat, coat, and desk chair notwithstanding, Sheeler was no paper-pushing nine-to-fiver. Indeed (a word I imagine he uttered frequently, accompanied by a nearly imperceptible tilt of the head), this self-proclaimed precisionist was rather radical in behavior, artistic methodology, and aesthetic philosophizing — though always politely so. Working with deliberate pacing and patience as a filmmaker, photographer, and painter and alarmingly proficient at drawing and printmaking, Sheeler established a unique dichotomy between new and old, rendering the former as oddly antiquated and the latter as the cat’s pajamas. Fittingly, his remarkable body of work remains strikingly contemporary; thus the "Charles Sheeler: Across Media" exhibition, handsomely installed in the upper galleries of the appropriately angular de Young Museum, has not the aged patina of a haphazard retrospective begrudgingly granted to a doddering éminence grise of yesteryear but the luminous sheen of a classy chassis careening into J.G. Ballard’s Crash by way of the icy David Cronenberg adaptation. Sheeler is Vaughan, so turned on by cogs and shafts, bolts and pylons, that he becomes the ghost in his own machine.

Born in Philadelphia, Sheeler studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, then booked passage for Paris, where he looked askance at Pablo Picasso’s and Georges Braque’s cubist conundrums before returning to the States, plonking down a fiver on a Brownie camera and taking up commercial photography with an emphasis on architecture.

In 1920, Sheeler collaborated with photographer Paul Strand on Manhatta, a six-minute city-symphony film ostensibly based on portions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass yet excising virtually all traces of the bearded bard’s insatiable lust for life in favor of abstractions formed by bridges, skyscrapers, and the sun setting over the Hudson River. Widely considered the first American avant-garde film, Manhatta screens repeatedly in the gallery and is surrounded by related photographs that further reveal Sheeler’s New York state of mind.

Sheeler soon settled in a rented farmhouse in Doylestown, Penn., with fellow artist Morton Shamberg, but it was the home’s 19th-century stove that Sheeler referred to as his "companion," so enamored was he of its utilitarian exactitude and sensuous shape. Comfortably ensconced in the farmhouse, Sheeler spent years deftly rendering his kitchen and bathroom in ink, paint, and the darkroom’s chemical bath.

Having gained a reputation as a fastidious exemplar of precisionism, Sheeler was hired by the Ford Motor Co. to photograph and make paintings of its factories. Soon after, Fortune magazine commissioned Sheeler to produce a half dozen paintings that "reflect life through forms and trace the firm pattern of the human mind." Naturally, Sheeler looked not to living things for inspiration but to objects simultaneously beautiful in their simplicity and threatening in their potential to destroy: waterwheel, railroad, airplane, dam, steam turbine, and hydroelectric turbine (he really loved turbines).

Among many other career and exhibition highlights are the iconic, ironic American Landscape, in which human-made structures — cylinders, silos, smokestacks — have entirely supplanted natural splendor (score one for culture); experimental photographs of the interior of an 18th-century Quaker fieldstone house; and the dazzling The Artist Looks at Nature, from 1943, in which Sheeler paints himself in the process of sketching his 1932 drawing Interior with Stove, which in turn was based on his much earlier photograph The Stove. In this singular work, Sheeler links various media in which he excelled, positions himself in a perfectly logical space-time continuum, and moves into the realm of the uncanny. For an artist who implicitly championed the places, products, and processes of capitalism and whose every invisible brushstroke stoked the fires of the first corporation generation, this tricky bit of derring-do signals a metarebellion against the industry under whose wheels Sheeler’s entire century would soon be crushed. It’s enough to make you fall in love with that old stove all over again. *

CHARLES SHEELER: ACROSS MEDIA

Through May 6

Tues.–Thurs. and Sat.–Sun., 9:30 a.m.–5:15 p.m.; Fri., 9:30 a.m.–8:45 p.m.

De Young Museum

Golden Gate Park

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF

$6–$10 (free first Tuesday)

(415) 750-3614

www.thinker.org/deyoung

>

Open water

-
0

› deborah@sfbg.com

For the casual stroller, a walk under the 101 interchange at César Chávez is none too inviting. Trucks and cars zoom off the freeway and onto the street all day long, bringing noise and exhaust with them. An atmosphere of abandonment and neglect allows crime to fester.

And if you dare to walk far enough under the highway, you might notice that water often floods the lowest point of the underpass.

That’s not rain collecting; it’s water seeping into the streets from the paved-over Islais Creek, which runs through Glen Park to the eastern neighborhoods and ultimately channels into the bay.

It’s just one of a network of creeks that flow through San Francisco, invisible urban treasures that have long since been filled in or paved over. The city has been burying the creeks since the 1906 earthquake. Back then the Board of Supervisors voted to fill the marshy lands near Islais with debris from the fires.

Standing under the overpass, Bonnie Ora Sherk, artist and founder of the urban planning nonprofit Life Frames, reaches for some leaves poking through a chain-link fence that separates the path from mostly empty islands of space. I can barely hear her through the ongoing traffic din when she says, "I haven’t been here in so long…. See those roses? We planted those."

Sherk dreams of allowing some of the water in the area to emerge from its underground culvert and fill a pond surrounded by beautiful riparian plantings such as willow trees.

With the Planning Department putting the finishing touches on its eastern neighborhoods plan and the Mayor’s Office launching its Better Streets program — which will put $20 million toward improving streets, sidewalks, and unused spaces — it’s a good time to talk about daylighting Islais Creek.

Sherk wants only a small piece of the underground stream brought back to life, but in theory San Francisco could open up much bigger stretches, allowing water to flow through neighborhoods and parks between its source in Glen Canyon Park and its outflow.

Sherk has been turning forsaken lots and concrete jungles into thriving natural areas that provide educational opportunities for children since she started the Crossroads Community art collective, also known as the Farm, under the freeway in 1974. With a colony of artists, she turned the void into a crossroad for the Bayview, Bernal Heights, and Mission District communities. During her six years at the collective, she led children from the neighborhoods in planting and gardening, built a barn for chickens and goats, and curated art shows.

Check out the photos on a Living Library Web site (www.alivinglibrary.org), and you’ll see how that area flourished during Sherk’s days as the collective’s executive director. Back then a landscape of native plants grew under the overpass. Now fences enclose these scraps of dead space to keep homeless people from setting up encampments in them.

When Sherk learned from old maps that the area was built over a watershed of intersecting creeks that feed into Islais, she tried to convince the city to uncover some of the creek water that flows under an open space next to the Farm, what is now Potrero del Sol Park.

The city built the park as she suggested but separated it from the artist community by a fence. Her idea to expose the creek wasn’t adapted either. A concrete-bottom pond fed by Hetch Hetchy water was installed instead. Soon it will be transformed into a skateboarding area, which Sherk thinks is better than constantly piping in precious reservoir water.

But she hasn’t given up on the idea of daylighting Islais at the interchange. She envisions diverting the off-ramps a bit to make way for the pond at the center of the underpass. From there César Chávez would be resculpted into a curving road, forcing traffic to slow down. Poplars could line the street, and educational artwork could be added to the mix. The fences would come down under the freeway, and the area once again would be replanted. It would be a nice place to drive and walk. Perhaps the crime and litter would disappear.

According to Sherk, the idea of an urban environment needs a paradigm shift from the days of factory-school settings. To her, it’s not just a matter of beautification or convenience. "Why do one thing when you can do 10 things simultaneously?" she asks — meaning a pond isn’t just a pool of water, it’s part of a place where nature intersects with industry, technology, and our everyday culture and where we can look at all of those elements, as she often says, "through the lens of time." *

Bernal owl dies

-
0

owl2.jpg

By Tim Redmond

Sad news. For months now, all of us in the neighborhood have enjoyed watching a pair of Great Horned owls, who had made their home in a tree on Bernal Hill. They were a reminder that amazing bits of nature can appear in this crowded city; we all hoped they were a nesting pair, and that we’d see owlets this summer.

But alas, one of the owls was found dead last week. Nobody knows why; they seemed to be quite happy eating mice, voles and snakes on the hill. I hope it wasn’t some sort of pesticide poisoning, which would be a different kind of reminder indeed.

Keys of life

-
0

PIANO MAN On April 13, 1957, at an assembly room in the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, George Michalski gave his first piano recital. He played John W. Schaum’s "Snake Dance" and "The Sphinx" and closed with "My First Waltz," by Bjarne Rolseth, from G. Schirmer’s Piano Solo series for students. "My mom was so excited leaving the house that she tripped and sprained her ankle," Michalski remembers. "She went to the show anyway and stayed for the whole recital — then we took care of her leg."

On April 13, 2007, Michalski will put on another piano recital in San Francisco. This time it won’t be at the library, but his mother will attend. So will some special guests — unsurprising, since in the 50 years after his first performance, Michalski’s ivory-tickling talent has led to collaborations with everyone from Blue Cheer to Barbra Streisand.

"The most exciting thing about making music is to go from Blue Cheer to someone like Streisand," Michalski says while discussing his special anniversary show, which one friend has described as vaudevillian. "Blue Cheer is so far into [pure volume and distortion] that I think of them as classical music. The biggest challenge of playing with them was peer pressure. When I worked with Streisand [on songs such as "The Man I Love" and the soundtrack to 1979’s The Main Event], I tried to get her to listen to blues. She was very open-minded."

A member of Foxtrot — the onetime house band at both Los Angeles’s Whisky a Go Go and its chief competitor, the Starwood, and also the first white group signed to Motown Records (where Smokey Robinson gave Michalski a piano and Berry Gordy’s mother, Bertha, signed his checks) — Michalski has rubbed creative shoulders with everyone from Don Johnson to some of the best-known mimes in the world and crossed paths with political figures such as Bill Clinton and Desmond Tutu.

The ’70s television mainstays Shields and Yarnell, currently on a reunion farewell tour, are the aforementioned mimes. "Robert [Shields] was discovered right here in the Bay Area, in Union Square — the term street mime was invented to describe him," Michalski says, then adds some funny details that could cause someone wearing pancake makeup to become red-faced. "Robert hates most street mimes — because they’re not very good and they give mimes a bad name. I’ve seen him stand there, watch a mime, and rip the guy to shreds. And when mimes recognize that it’s Robert watching them, boy, do they get nervous."

In recent years Michalski has been making music with the original tabloid target, Eddie Fisher. "Confidential magazine got started by writing about him — he was on their first cover," Michalski says, while praising Fisher’s gentle nature. "The whole notion of the paparazzi partly started with him and Liz [Taylor]. That guy has seen a lot, and what he hasn’t seen, his daughters have — Carrie Fisher is no slouch."

To put together his anniversary show, Michalski drew from an idea he first landed on with his friend the late Vince Welnick, keyboardist for the Tubes, in which a strange array of friends stop by his apartment to perform. In addition to unconventional cover versions of songs that have made a few of the special guests famous and some dueling piano boogie-woogie interludes, the evening — presided over by MC Steve Parrish — will likely include numbers from Michalski’s most recent recordings, including San Francisco (Masia Music, 2002), which transforms his love of the city into a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, song-by-song portrait. "This show is different, but there’s no dead time," Michalski says at the end of our conversation before leaving to meet his mother. "It runs like an Italian train system." (Johnny Ray Huston)

AN EVENING WITH GEORGE MICHALSKI

Fri/13, 7:30 p.m., $20

Fat City

314 11th St., SF

www.ticketfusion.com

www.georgemichalski.com

>

Still evolving

-
0

The human race either sinks or swims. That’s evolution as Charles Darwin first saw it. But flippers and a seal pelt, that’s pure Kurt Vonnegut. The novelist plays God like no other, wresting the species from its self-destruction, then sending it on its wobbly way with a childlike capacity for invention and a wry if discontented grasp of human folly. That’s Galápagos, anyway, his 1985 best-seller in which evolution saves humankind from its big and mischievous brains by sending it back to the sea. And although the transition from page to stage is probably as slippery as that first fin step on dry land, Vonnegut fans (a species unto themselves) will no doubt flock to see the book’s adaptation in the world premiere of Galáp, by San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre.

In a year that found the young company variously pitched in the sand at Baker Beach and careening onboard the Mexican Bus’s rolling party platform, it hardly surprises one to see the itinerant Boxcar pulling into the Cadillac Building at 1000 Van Ness to occupy the vacated offices of an online shoe company as it brings its inaugural season (aptly titled "Journeys") to a close. And indeed, a better-sounding setting for a play inspired by a Vonnegut story is hard to imagine.

Artistic director Nick A. Olivero wants to make the most of it too. His imaginative, kinetic staging contains continual surprises, aided by the aquatic and exotic atmosphere summoned through Lisa Lutkenhouse’s resourceful costumes, Norm Munoz’s puppets, and David Sophia Siegel’s jaunty original score. The room itself is divided into several stages, more or less enveloping the audience in the play’s fractured story line, which looks back one million years through the eyes of a ghost (Josh Truett) at the troubled but pivotal year of 1986 as several hapless tourists aboard "the nature cruise of the century" to Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands become the progenitors of the next wave in human evolution.

The six-member cast cycles through a number of characters, sometimes sharing duties in a single role. If the hardworking cast begins to win us over, it also never masters the rigors of the material or Vonnegut’s satirical style. Poor sight lines, moreover, make some scenes impossible to view from certain seats. Boxcar’s ambitious closer is a mixed bag, in other words, but like Vonnegut’s relentless survivors, the company shows it can adapt. (Robert Avila)

GALÁP

Through April 27

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $12–$28

AMC Cadillac Bldg.

1000 Van Ness, SF

(415) 776-1747

www.boxcartheatre.org

>

Why people get mad at the media (l3) The latest example of how Hearst and Singleton monopolize the news in the Reilly antitrust case

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

The Guardian and Media Alliance won a major victory in federal court to unseal the records in the Reilly vs. Hearst antitrust trial but it didn’t last long: Hearst and Singleton quickly went into overdrive to maintain their cloak of secrecy and monopolize the news in the latest round in court.

Here’s how they did it: The newspaper chains that are trying to kill daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area tried to knock Reilly out of court by claiming in a specious argument for summary judgment that he was just a lone reader, poor soul, and thus did not have standing in court. Reilly and his attorney Joe Alioto are suing to block the Hearst/Singleton deal.

The San Francisco Chronicle story on the filing, by Bob Egelko, laid out the publishers’ case in detail with lots of quotes in a page 2 story in the Bay Area section. He didn’t report the Reilly side of the story because (a) he didn’t contact either Reilly or Alioto for comment and (b) Reilly’s legal response was under court seal and Federal Judge Susan Illston allowed them to stay under seal despite her earlier ruling to open.

The publishers, who usually are bellowing away about courts and government suppressing documents, submitted declarations in support of keeping the documents secret from Daniel S. Ehrman, vice president of planning and development for Gannett, and Joseph J. Lodovic, president of Singleton’s Media News Group.
And then, in virtually identical proposed orders to seal, they laid out the “compelling reasons to maintain the documents and excerpts of documents…under seal.”

So the Hearst/Singleton side of the story got published in their papers, not the Reilly side. And then on Saturday April 7 the Chronicle continued the publishers first coverage with a short story on the hearing the day before.
“Mr. Reilly’s injury here is pure speculation,” the Chronicle quoted Gary Halling, Singleton attorney, as saying.
The Reilly/Alioto comments were at the end of the story. The story reported that Illston was inclined to allow Reilly to sue as an individual, which is likely to be her ruling.

Hey, Citizen Reilly here is representing the public and he, as well as the rest of us, deserve to know the grisly details of how the barons got together and how they are dividing and clustering up the Bay Area newspaper market to their financial advantage and to the public’s disadvantage. So our attorneys, James Wheaton, David Greene, and Pondra Perkins of the First Amendment Project in Oakland, went back into court to reup their court victory and try to open up the records and maintain a public policy of sunshine in the courts.

The key journalistic and public policy point: not one iota of the Hearst/Singleton’s repeat move for secrecy was considered newsworthy by any of their papers. The first time around, as attentive Bruce blog readers will remember, they mangled the story, made it look as if the Guardian lost our motion to open the records, and we even had to ask the Associated Press, their wire service, for a correction.
Stay tuned. B3

P.S. The Hearst/Singleton reasons for secrecy and stonewalling are delicious, so delicious that tomorrow I will put them up on line for readers to savor in the original (I am a typewriter fugitive and need help on these things.)
A preview of coming attractions: the proposed order to seal the documents says, for example,
that “the court finds that the Subject Documents contain information that was not prepared not for public consumption but to analyze the proposed acquisition of the McClatchy newspapers and to negotiate a single equity investment by Hearst. these documents contain detailed non-public financial information about MediaNews and/or CNP (the special partnership arrangement), including valuations of certain company assets, projections for future earnings, pro forma financial information about the company’s current and future business plans. MediaNews and CNP do not publicly disclose information of this nature.”

Tough: if you want to monopolize an entire region, and seriously undercut the marketplace of ideas principle underlying the First Amendment the big boys love to quote, then you’d better be prepared to disclose these basic documents in court when you are sued in a public-spirited antitrust case.

P.S. Repeating for emphasis: Where is the U.S. attorney’s office, which was so quick to put Josh Wolf in jail and keep him there for 226 days, when the real lawbreakers in the publishing business are making monopoly millions by eliminating competition? And where is Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who lives in Oakland under the shadow Dean Singleton’s Oakland Tribune?

Oh dad, poor dad

-
0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have a bit of a problem. It’s not a huge one, but I’d like to get past it. A long time ago (maybe 15 years ago or more), I had a dream that my dad was molesting me. Now, I love my dad, and I have nothing but respect for him. I know he would never do anything like that to me. But right after the dream I started to feel uncomfortable around him. If I sat next to him on the couch, I’d sit at the other end and keep a pillow between us. If he went to hug me, I’d want to pull away. I would especially hate it when he’d kiss my cheek. On my wedding day (I’m divorced now — that’s another story), he kissed me on my mouth so as not to mess my makeup, he said. I pulled away and tried to make the kiss land on my cheek. I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but it bothered me. The situation has gotten a little better over the years, but I’m still bothered if he sits too close to me or tries to hug me.

It’s a problem because my dad is a very affectionate person by nature. All my life I’ve always been a daddy’s girl (my mom died when I was young). Now that I’m an adult, he and I are like good friends. I want it to stay that way, but I need to get over this dislike of being touched. What can I do?

Love,

In Dreams

Dear Dreams:

Wow. I don’t get to say this often, but I don’t believe I’ve heard this one before. There’s a similar phenomenon — the friend or coworker sex dream, usually starring someone completely inappropriate or out-of-the-question — that does come up pretty often. Unlike your supercreepy version, of course, the coworker sex dream is at least kind of funny, although it can have oddly lingering effects: you find yourself glancing speculatively at the dream object, against all common sense, or blushing furiously when said coworker brushes your shoulder in the corridor on the way to the break room.

Yours, though, is more like a dream I had when I was five or so, in which my grandmother (in real life, batty and irritating but harmless) was trying to poison me. I gave her a wide berth for weeks, and I distinctly remember refusing food she offered (not a bad idea in general, come to think of it, with that particular grandma). But lady, 15 years of feeling weird about your poor old dad? That’s plenty, already. Good god, let it go.

I know, I know, you want to. If giving yourself a stern talking-to before a visit with dad — reminding yourself that nothing bad ever happened between you and therefore nothing bad will happen if you let him hug you — doesn’t work and neither does deep breathing or stiff drinking, it’s time to call in the pros. I’m pretty sure a short course of cognitive-behavioral therapy would be of use to you. CBT (this abbreviation always startles me, since I doubt very much you’d be interested in cock and ball torture) is based on the belief that the way we think determines the way we feel: change the thoughts and you change the feelings. You seem like a good candidate, given that what’s going on with you is 100 percent internal and that nothing your father has done or could do could affect things in the slightest. You really do need to change the way you think, don’t you think?

If CBT sounds too, I dunno, therapy-y to you, you might consider hypnotherapy, guided relaxation-meditation, or even EMDR, which I spent half a column making fun of just a few weeks back (3/7/07). It doesn’t matter, really. They all work OK. Just do something. This is a really stupid way to be broken, so get it fixed.

There is one word of caution I don’t feel like including here but suppose I must: be very sure of whom you’re talking to before you tell a therapist that you feel creeped out at the slightest physical contact with your father. Recovered memory may no longer be the "it" diagnosis (serious memory research having put the kibosh on that hogwash), but a therapist would not have to be an ’80s-style witch-hunting hysteric to wonder if there might be anything going on here besides a 15-year-old dream with no more basis in reality than the one I had about my grammy in the basement with a sandwich. I believe you that nothing bad happened, but when you add in the early widowerhood and all, you’ve got to admit that there are people who would hear this story and look at you funny. Just don’t be shocked if they do.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

FEAST: the Guardian Guide to spring food and drink

-
0

Click here to check out out FEAST picks!

Taking it in

It’s no secret that we are what we eat. But it’s as true on a collective level as it is on a personal one. I’ve been struck by this fact as I’ve toured my new hometown with an eye for Bloody Marys and bloody steaks, learning about the life, vibrancy, art, and activism of San Francisco through its tamales and tajines. Having come most recently from Los Angeles, with the strip-mall predictability of its restaurants, I find myself falling more in love with this bayside city with every PBR I polish off. Not that there aren’t good places to eat in LA — there are. But a city’s culinary landscape is indicative of its culture, values, and politics — and while LA’s sweet spots are few and far between, hidden, often elitist, usually too expensive, and always hard to get to (hello, traffic), San Francisco’s are plentiful, varied, egalitarian, ecofriendly, and accessible. They have personality and heart. They provide nourishment and pleasure. Most of all, they serve damned good food. This is a guide to this city’s characteristic places for dining and drinking, the places that express our great diversity and our activist nature, the places that cater to our exciting nightlife and to the many ways we recover from it. From green restaurants to places to get cocktails, from high-end to lowbrow, from ethnic treasures to all-American classics, these are some of our favorites. This list is by no means comprehensive, as we are blessed to live in a city with so much to offer that a full list of places worth visiting would read like a phone book. For even more, check out our weekly restaurant reviews, in the paper and online at www.sfbg.com, and keep an eye out for our Best of the Bay issue in July. And in the meantime, raise your glass — or your fork — to the fact that we live in one of the most exciting, eclectic, good-eatin’ cities in the world. I for one am happy to drink to that.

Molly Freedenberg

Feast 2007 editor

molly@sfbg.com

“Good German,” bad German

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The title of David Wiltse’s 2003 play, The Good German, points in two directions at once: there’s the image of the individual who stands up to the injustice being perpetrated by his or her government, and there’s the image of the individual who follows the flag, however reluctantly, wherever it may lead. Of the play’s four characters, only one looks even remotely like a saint, and she’s killed early on. The other three, all of them men, have to negotiate a more twisted path between these two poles.

Wiltse’s supple and engrossing drama, now making a stellar West Coast debut at the Marin Theatre Company (and which, incidentally, has no relation to the recent Steven Soderbergh film), takes place entirely in the middle-class home of a middle-aged couple. The flawed but sympathetic Dr. Karl Vogel (Warren David Keith) is a professor of chemistry, and his wife, Gretel (Anne Darragh), is a nurse. Gretel has brought home Herr Braun (Brian Herndon), a German Jew who recently lost his wife and his child when his home was deliberately set ablaze with the intention of sequestering him. Karl is reluctant, being timid and aloof by nature and harboring an all too typical strain of anti-Semitism, which makes him "philosophically" antagonistic to the desperate man at his doorstep.

Karl nonetheless can refuse his beloved wife nothing and allows Braun to stay as a servant even after learning about his Jewish identity. Karl’s good friend Siemi (Darren Bridgett), meanwhile, initially appears only too willing to help a stranger in distress. As a member of the Nazi bureaucracy, though, he slowly gives himself over to the organized mass cultivation of hatred sweeping through the country at large. In the end, the bourgeois domesticity all three men cling to — even more so after Gretel’s death — is no guard against the spiraling madness of the outside world: sooner or later they have to face a life-and-death decision about who they are and what they stand for. Or rather, what they will and won’t stand for.

That choice — their dilemma — is very clearly our own. Wiltse’s play deliberately sets itself in Adolf Hitler’s Germany in order to address George W. Bush’s America. Although this is not the first time the Nazis have served onstage as a mirror to America’s totalitarian tendencies (John O’Keefe’s brilliant 2002 drama, Times Like These, and Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day are just two examples), The Good German proves exceptionally vital. Confidently helmed by director Kent Nicholson and featuring riveting performances, it’s a provocative mediation on questions confronting average — that is to say, flawed — individuals in extraordinary times.

WOYZECK


There is no escape into domesticity for Franz Woyzeck either. Georg Büchner’s classic antihero, a lowly 30-year-old soldier beset by the complementary machinery of the military and medical science, finds only mockery and infidelity in the home and hearth he shares with his mistress, Marie, a former prostitute, and their illegitimate child. In his fevered brain a rebellion of sorts, prompted by a blood-red moon, is on slow boil. It’s a tragedy of minor and quintessentially modern proportions that is so apt, so portentous, that it has inspired countless productions and adaptations since its unearthing in the late 19th century (including Alban Berg’s opera and at least a couple brilliant films) and still amazes one to think it was penned (and left unfinished) in 1836 by a brilliant young chemist and revolutionary carried off by typhus at age 23.

But despite its popularity, Woyzeck is not an easy play to get right. Cutting Ball’s current stab impressively conveys the work’s jagged protoexpressionist spirit. Artistic director Rob Melrose’s able new translation also serves the play’s coruscating imagery. And yet director Adriana Baer has not managed to find a compelling way into the play. Casting accounts for part of the trouble. Moreover, there’s something staid in a scene like the opening tableau, in which all the characters peek from behind the set’s back wall of shelving to whisper maddening things into the ear of a progressively agitated Woyzeck. In the end, we never quite hear what all the fuss was about. *

THE GOOD GERMAN

Through April 15

See Stage listings for show info $29–$47

Marin Theatre Company

297 Miller, Mill Valley

(415) 388-5208

www.marintheatre.org

WOYZECK

Through April 7

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $25

Exit Stage Left

156 Eddy, SF

1-800-838-3006

www.cuttingball.com

>

Innervisions

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but cinema’s eternal enfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard did direct Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, Masculine-Feminine, Two or Three Things I Know about Her, and Weekend (and a few others too) in the four years leading up to the political explosions of 1968. These trenchant, tenacious films are as good a record as any we have of an era when light-speed changes in culture and politics only seemed to make history grind to a halt. Each represents a blast of here-and-now consciousness.

Given the feverish tenor of this output, the relative quietude of 1967’s Two or Three Things I Know about Her (playing at the Castro Theatre in a striking new 35mm print from Rialto Pictures) comes as something of a surprise 40 years on. Sandwiched between the hyperventiutf8g back-and-forth of Masculine-Feminine and Weekend ‘s apocalyptic moan, the film is the eye of the storm of Godard’s ’60s, that crucial moment between impact and explosion. The director supposedly got the idea for Two or Three Things from reading a news piece on the phenomenon of middle-class Parisian women working as prostitutes to pay for their bourgeois accoutrement. This loaded role comes to life in Juliette, introduced to us twice, via a typically Brechtian flourish, as both character and actress (Marina Vlady).

Her life’s arrangement is not a story so much as a situation for Godard, and correspondingly, the film isn’t a narrative but rather a study. The Summer of Love notwithstanding, Two or Three Things isn’t concerned with Juliette’s sexuality (any sensuousness is incidental to Raoul Coutard’s color-mad cinematography) or psychology (something that Godard never has much use for, especially when it comes to his female characters); a poster for Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu is the only evidence of female suffering here. For Godard, prostitution is simply an apt metaphor for the dreary life of the new, amorphous Paris to which the "her" of the title refers: the Paris of the outer rings, then being settled by a disassociated middle class and recently set ablaze by more indignant communities.

So then, will the real belle du jour please stand up? It’s Juliette who tends to occupy the frame, sleepwalking through boutiques and barren apartment spaces (like Woody Allen’s, Godard’s film style often seems a matter of real estate), but Two or Three Things‘ most intimate presence isn’t visualized at all. Throughout the film Godard himself interrupts with a whispered, reflective voice-over: an existential director’s commentary track 30 years before DVD technology made this kind of authorial expressivity standard-issue.

No one Godard film is any more "Godard" than another, though Two or Three Things does feel unusually direct in its peripatetic meditations. Conversations, when they occur, are still tête-à-tête volleys (talk never flows with Godard), but more often than not it seems the characters are simply verbalizing their own reveries on life in the pseudocity. The maestro reserves the most powerfully searching musings for his own voice: in particular, the famous "clouds in my coffee" sequence, in which he parses the irresolvable tension between "crushing" objectivity and "isoutf8g" subjectivity amid extreme, lyrical close-ups of a coffee’s swirl, bubbles bursting and shades swallowed by the closeness of his voice.

As with most things Godard, there are multiple meanings to this series of shots, which simultaneously emphasize existential dread and a remarkable capacity for abstraction. It’s direct contact with an imagination on fire, reveling in the difference between thought and expression. Of course, a film built entirely on asides — in addition to Godard’s and Juliette’s reflections, we get many landscapes surveying Paris under construction and the usual café dialogues — is as likely to be a soporific as a revelation; reverie and sleepiness are frequent bedfellows in the movie theater and never more so than here. Certainly, Two or Three Things lacks the pop frisson of Masculine-Feminine or Weekend, but it’s also, in many ways, a more palatable work — not least of all for a toning down of the toxic sexism that mars Godard’s best, angriest work.

Two or Three Things will always be thought of as a stepping stone, though the film’s beauty lies in its singularity. In another, less famous but no less profound voice-over sequence, Godard contemplates the nature of his representations of reality ("Should I have talked about Juliette or the leaves?") while Juliette has her car washed. As the car (lollipop red, of course) shuttles from station to station, so too does Godard’s mind lurch from idea to idea before settling on an underlying truth: the necessity for an indefatigable "passion for expression." The world can be anything he wishes to make it. It’s a beautiful, surprisingly hopeful idea, and for a moment all that followed Two or Three Things slips away, leaving us only this unwieldy, pregnant now. *

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

March 30–April 5

Mon.–Wed. and Fri.–Sun., 7 and 9 p.m. (also Wed. and Sat.–Sun., 1, 3, and 5 p.m.), $6–$9

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

>

Superlist No. 827: Disc golf courses

-
0

› superlists@sfbg.com

While golf has traditionally provided an escape for wealthy elitist types, people in our progressive city may find that land alteration, plant destruction, constant mowing, and excessive watering spoil the purpose of being out in nature. But disc golf, played much the same as traditional golf, successfully coexists with other park uses and doesn’t require intensive landscaping. Perhaps because California is the birth state of disc golf, plenty of free courses dot the Bay Area. All of these use metal target baskets and also have free parking (except at Stafford Lake, where it costs $3 to $8). So grab your long-range, overstable driver and extradistance putt discs, and hit these local fairways. But remember: if you’re a beginner wanting to be taken seriously, don’t call it Frisbee golf.

The Aquatic Park Disc Golf Course (80 Bolivar Drive, Berk. 510-981-6700) at the foot of Bancroft Way is a long and flat 18-hole course that runs alongside Aquatic Park Lake. Players must work the first nine holes with the lake on the right, then turn around and toss their discs through the last nine holes over the same ground with the lake on the left. Though it’s rated an intermediate course, approach strategies on certain holes require throwing discs out over the lake and counting on a good hook to pull them back onto the green. Even seasoned veterans are likely to lose a disc (if not two or three). Short and long tees are provided on most holes. The park is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., so break out those glow-in-the-dark discs for a night game.

Perfect for beginners, the Chabot Disc Golf Course (1898 Estudillo, San Leandro. 925-228-0308), situated off Interstate 580 in the Chabot Regional Park, is a short and mostly flat nine-hole course with dirt tees and fixed pin positions. Most holes are fewer than 200 feet, and the park is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Moraga Commons Disc Golf Course (1149 Moraga Road, Moraga. 415-420-5425) is a long and scenic nine-hole course that winds over and around a beautiful hillside. Open from dusk until dawn, the intermediate-level course has mostly dirt tees and fixed pin positions and challenges players with several long uphill and downhill holes. The brick tee on hole six provides an adequate spot to launch your 431-foot shot down the hill and across the pathway.

Lucchesi Park provides a flat and open space for the Petaluma Disc Golf Course (320 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma. 707-836-1170), a nine-hole beginner course that winds around a small lake. The terrain is good for those just starting out or looking for an easier practice course. Playing competitively is challenging, however, as there is no course map and some of the holes aren’t marked. Check it out between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.

San Francisco Disc Golf Club founder Greg Quiroga promises city players a world-class 18-hole experience come March 31 with the reopening of the Golden Gate Park Disc Golf Course (Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park, Fulton and 25th Street, SF. www.sfdiscgolf.org), which has been closed for reconstruction since December 2005. The project marks a unique collaboration between the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and Quiroga’s group, which raised all the money for the course and donated all the labor. Tees are concrete with fixed pins.

The Stafford Lake Disc Golf Course (3549 Novato Blvd., Novato. 707-836-1170) is a huge 18-hole course for advanced players that winds up and over several steep hills, offering several alternate pin and tee positions. The first five holes are particularly long and can be discouraging for novices. Arrive early and bring water and snacks to consume while playing this scenic monster course, which is home to the Bay Area’s longest hole, stretching 1,044 feet. And don’t let your car get locked in when the lot closes at 8 p.m. (5 p.m. during winter months). *

SUNDAY

-
0

March 25

MUSIC

Elvis Perkins in Dearland

If Fat Tuesday is about masquerading in costume, then Ash Wednesday reminds us that without these adornments, we are the dust of the earth. Folk rock quartet Elvis Perkins in Dearland’s debut LP, Ash Wednesday (XL Recordings), brings the theme home with a back-to-basics approach, forgoing digital software and studio subterfuge for analog tape and home-grown demos to create emotionally authentic autobiographical tracks. (Joshua Rotter)

With Let’s Go Sailing
8 p.m., $12
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com

MUSIC

Gilberto Gil

Breaking it down and bringing fierce and introspective grooves, Bahia, Brazil, native Gilberto Gil has shown that you can be both a groundbreaker and a policy maker. Brazil’s minister of culture for the last four years, Gil and fellow musician Caetano Veloso led the musical-sociocultural movement Tropicália in the ’60s. The Tropicalista’s fightin’ nature is little evident on Gil’s lovely recent solo guitar and vocal album, Gil Luminoso (DRG), a haunting collection of spare, evocative songs written over the last 25 years. (Kimberly Chun)

7 p.m., $36–$68
Zellerbach Hall
UC Berkeley, Lower Sproul Plaza
(near Bancroft at Telegraph), Berk.
(510) 642-9988

Also March 28, 7:30 p.m., $45-$65
Fox Theatre
2209, Broadway, Redwood City
www.foxdream.com

Angel’s wing

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Kudos to SF Playhouse for its part in introducing Bay Area audiences to Stephen Adly Guirgis. Guirgis is a member of New York’s LAByrinth Theater Company — a collective that includes playwright John Patrick Shanley and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Guirgis has been making a name for himself during the past decade as an actor, director, television writer, and more particularly, the author of several engagingly sharp and gritty off-Broadway comedies.

SF Playhouse had a hit on its hands last season with its slick West Coast premiere of Guirgis’s 2002 Our Lady of 121st Street. In that play, a circle of former Catholic schoolmates from Harlem reconvenes in the old neighborhood for the funeral of their bad ol’ but beloved teacher, Sister Rose. Alternately saint and sinner, more or less like the rest of them, Rose is seemingly larger than life now that she’s gone. Really gone: as the play opens, someone has swiped her embalmed remains from the mortuary, throwing the whole service into limbo as the characters, in a state of anxious expectancy, rip open both fresh and long-festering wounds. Together their stories slyly interrogate the nature of free will, right and wrong, and our ambivalent reliance on forms of moral accountability. Artistic director Bill English’s shrewd casting and razor-sharp staging brought the high-spirited ensemble work and Guirgis’s loosely interlocked scenes to life.

In Jesus Hopped the "A" Train, a Guirgis play originally produced in 2000 and now at SF Playhouse, a young Puerto Rican man named Angel Cruz (Daveed Diggs) finds himself in jail — after bursting into the church of a cult leader responsible for brainwashing his best friend and shooting the former in the ass. Angel, having tried every other means of rescuing his childhood pal, cannot see much of a crime in this desperate act. Mary Jane Hanrahan (Susi Damilano), the public defender initially assigned to his case, begs to differ. Yet something draws the haggard but upright lawyer to the recalcitrant Angel’s side. In a monologue addressed to the audience, she recounts a childhood memory of a similar (if not quite as illicit) act by her working-class Irish father.

Angel’s plight and Mary Jane’s legal defense make up one half of the play. Brutally assaulted in jail and in dire threat of being killed after his target, the Sun Myung Moon–like Reverend Kim, unexpectedly dies, Angel soon finds himself in a special protective custody lockdown wing at Rikers Island prison. The wing is overseen by a guard named Valdez (Gabriel Marin), whose frustration with institutionalized justice has given way to sadism. A deeply shaken Angel shares the yard with a kindly born-again serial killer named Lucius Jenkins (Carl Lumbly) as the latter fights extradition back to Florida, where he would face the death penalty.

As an exploration of ethics and the nature of personal responsibility, Jesus Hopped the "A" Train takes a slightly different route from Our Lady but winds up in notably similar territory. It teases out volatile questions from complacent notions of faith and justice while demonstrating the playwright’s marked gift for dialogue that is gritty but also dazzlingly vibrant and ferociously funny. English again shows judiciousness in direction and casting, and Lumbly in the role of Lucius is a real coup. Lumbly (the Berkeley actor best known for work in films and television shows such as Alias) turns in a finely tuned performance that is one of the best things on a Bay Area stage at the moment. Also, Diggs, a relatively young actor recently seen in Magic Theatre’s production of Elaine May’s triptych Moving Along, continues to prove himself capable of great things. The resulting production is a winner, no matter what a jury may decide.

UNDER THE RADAR


Last week Jess Curtis/Gravity’s Under the Radar slipped into San Francisco from Berlin for a smooth and gentle (except when it didn’t want to be) landing on the CounterPULSE stage. It’s a decidedly unsentimental and altogether moving night of dance theater that is, despite the name of the company, anything but heavy.

Two years in the making, this cabaret-style movement-based exploration of virtuosity and disability — or the mental limits we set for one another and ourselves — features an international seven-member ensemble. It’s composed of dancer-singer-musician-performers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and (in the case of the Chico-born, longtime Bay Area–based Curtis) the United States. Under the Radar‘s winning chemistry includes casual, puckish humor (the performers, who variously play instruments as a band or climb into harnesses for aerial solos or duets, watch each other perform with admiring and catty commentary that is surely meant to prod stultified consciences). The evening’s almost nonchalant quality belies its technical rigor, striking eclecticism, and inspired invention.

Axis and other dance companies have long made integrated work (for disabled and other performers) a staple of the Bay Area dance scene, and the addition of circus and cabaret elements is not in itself new either. But Under the Radar‘s highly theatrical amalgam is nonetheless freshly inventive, fun, and lovely to behold. What willingly comes down to earth can rebound to heavenly heights. *

JESUS HOPPED THE "A" TRAIN

Through April 21

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; $18–$60

SF Playhouse

533 Sutter, SF

(415) 677-9596

www.sfplayhouse.org

UNDER THE RADAR

Through April 1

Wed.–Sun., 8 p.m., $18–$30

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 435-7552

www.counterpulse.org

www.jesscurtisgravity.org

>

Screaming for vengeance

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It was the unquiet dead, whispering in the dark, who set John Cobbett on his path.

In December 2001, Cobbett — a longtime Mission District rocker and guitar hero with such notably heavy outfits as Slough Feg, Ludicra, and Hammers of Misfortune — was on the East Coast visiting his identical twin brother, Aaron, a photographer living in Brooklyn, just across the East River from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center.

"I visited the site. It was at night and freezing cold," Cobbett notes. "I remember the sounds of the cranes and demolition machinery wrenching huge slabs of twisted metal and concrete from the wreckage. All through the night these eerie, mournful sounds reverberated off the surrounding towers. It was an incredibly haunted place."

The wound at that time was still so fresh, you see. But the grief, fear, and uncertainty were being transformed, alchemically, inexorably, into something very different: a television spectacle and a justification for war far removed from the dust, the heat, and the stench of burning corpses that Cobbett says lingered in his brother’s neighborhood for months.

As the tragedy played out — the dead painstakingly named and numbered, the TV newscasters falling easily into the cadence of wartime rhetoric — Cobbett realized he had to respond. But the methods of political rock seemed far too self-righteous, and even patronizing, given the scale of bloodletting and demagoguery.

The way forward was finally revealed one month later, during the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show, which included a performance by U2 and a remarkable moment of patriotic kitsch: at the show’s climax, Bono, with the names of the 9/11 victims scrolling overhead on a huge banner, opened his leather jacket to reveal the Stars and Stripes beneath.

The crowd went wild, but for Cobbett it was shameless propaganda. The phrase "trot out the dead" leaped into his head, and music and lyrics quickly followed.

"I got so fucking pissed," Cobbett says. "These victims are rolling over in the superheated rubble below Ground Zero. It was so cheap and so tawdry. I decided, ‘I’m going to take these motherfuckers to task.’ "

Gloriously rocking and extraordinarily angry, "Trot Out the Dead" would become one of several jaw-dropping centerpieces of The Locust Years (Cruz del Sur Music), a record that took five more years and several new band members to complete and may well be one of the most urgent and affecting works of rock ‘n’ roll — not to mention protest music — produced by a band in San Francisco or anywhere else. It is the soundtrack to the George W. Bush years, a musical wail of sorrow and fury all the more overwhelming for its mythic metal lyrics and its seamless blend of prog rock ambition, hard and heavy bombast, and massively killer riffage.

If this sounds over the top, well, it is, a fact to which Cobbett gleefully cops.

"No matter how ridiculous we are, no way can we get more stupid and ridiculous than the real thing," he says. "No matter how grandiose I can get with a metal song, there’s no way I can go to Iraq and start a war. No matter how sanctimonious I get, there’s no way I could match what was coming out of Rumsfeld’s mouth. The shit coming out of those people’s mouths — it was gold."

HAMMERS COME AND GO


One of five siblings born to a middle-class Rochester, NY, family ultimately sundered by divorce, the teenage Cobbett wound up in Washington, DC, in the 1980s and quickly fell in with the breakthrough hardcore scene of the era. Minor Threat, Bad Brains, and the Obsessed were his bread and butter, but with the emergence of Revolution Summer’s early emo bands in 1986, the music became, in his words, "specious and cloying."

Taking his cue from a friend who said he’d like San Francisco, Cobbett spontaneously packed his gear and hit the road. "Within a week I was living in the Mission District," he says, "and still do."

Before too long he had fallen in with Chewy Marzolo, a drummer with the heavy and hardcore outfit Osgood Slaughter. That carried them both into the 1990s, at which point the musical chairs began in earnest. Cobbett joined the Lord Weird Slough Feg, a band packing equal parts Celtic folk mythos and old-school metal pomp. There he connected with vocalist Mike Scalzi, who would later help define Hammers’ sound with a manly, operatic holler that would do Rob Halford proud.

Marzolo, meanwhile, was busily following what he calls a "one-band-to-the-next continuum" all the way to Cobbett’s first incarnation of Hammers of Misfortune in 1998. Along the way he founded Poverty Records, a vital imprint that documented the Mission’s explosion of grimy and creatively unfettered rock ‘n’ punk with a slew of 7-inch records and CDs from such essential bands as Fuckface, Lost Goat, Towel, and Hickey.

After an initial outing as Unholy Cadaver — a devil-voiced combo that congealed around San Francisco’s cultish homegrown black metal scene, along with such peers as Weakling and Ludicra — Hammers’ lineup was refined and completed with the addition of vocalist-bassist Janis Tanaka, late of L7 and Stone Fox. Black metal became not an end in itself but a subordinate element in a larger musical palette that came together on Hammers’ full-throttle debut, The Bastard (tUMULt, 2001). Despite its acoustic flourishes, spooky harmonies, medievalist illustrations, and Joseph Campbell–inspired lyrics, it ain’t no teenage Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure rewarding its heroes with heaps of treasure and experience points. The Bastard turns out to be an ecological revenge fantasy, in which the "trolls of wood and stone" storm the village to "slay the ones who chop and cut / Slay them in the their wooden huts." It’s a wicked metaphor for the fate awaiting those mortals who dare abuse the blessings of nature.

Despite the record’s subcultural acclaim from magazines such as Terrorizer and Lamentations of the Flame Princess — and the admiration heaped on its follow-up, The August Engine (Cruz del Sur Music, 2003), a hard rock parable of cliquish music-scene self-destruction — Hammers of Misfortune had chosen a road that was neither wide nor easy. What kind of metal was this anyway? True? Black? Epic? These fine points of genre fidelity may seem irrelevant to a die-hard music fan, but for labels the difference is a record they can sell or not. "I loved Hammers the first time I heard them, and it never occurred to me to question or examine their sound, which was this gloriously confusional, amazing, and intricate chunk of mind-blowing music, metal or otherwise," says Andee Connors, who put out The Bastard on his tUMULt imprint. "It might be confusing for folks who are very strict with their genre divisions."

There is only so much small labels can do, however, and Tanaka’s departure to play with pop vocalist Pink was another monkey wrench. The addition of Jamie Myers on bass and vocals carried Hammers through The Locust Years‘ recording sessions until she too took a bow, moving to Texas to raise her first child. Scalzi, disinclined to divide his time between two bands, also departed, to focus his attention entirely on Slough Feg.

ANTHEMS FOR DARK DAYS


Today Hammers are touring with a refreshed and potent lineup, teaming Marzolo and Cobbett with bassist Ron Nichols; vocalist and second guitarist Patrick Goodwin of retro muscle rockers Dirty Power; and the musically omnivorous vocalist Jessie Quattro, who was raised on Doc Watson and the hymns and "occasional barking" of Pentecostal Christianity. Sigrid Sheie, a classically trained pianist, has been a constant on the last two records, bringing musical formality and some of the most boss Hammond B-3 and Leslie keyboards heard in rock since the ’70s heyday of Deep Purple — particularly notable on "Election Day," the penultimate track on The Locust Years. The tune is a whirlwind instrumental workout that recalls such classics as Focus’s "Hocus Pocus" and Edgar Winter’s "Frankenstein."

The song is a joy to hear simply as rock ‘n’ roll and exemplifies the real musical exuberance Hammers bring to what is otherwise grim and woeful fare. The whole record leavens its bleak social commentary with what Cobbett describes as "little-kid enthusiasm" for rocking out in high style. The lyrics, while not necessarily dactylic hexameter, are still richly allusive as metalhead poetry, inviting listeners to suspend their disbelief, find their own meaning, and let the emotional sweep of the music fill in the blanks. Anything unstated by, for example, "Chastity Rides," a harmonically gorgeous paean to the Platonic ideal of politically conservative virtue, is made ever so explicit by the snarling, minor-key instrumental bridge. The same technique is also applied to great effect in "War Anthem," a stirring call to arms that blatantly steals its sentimental grandeur from "The Star-Spangled Banner" then yanks the veil aside to reveal the bald-faced rapacity of the masters of the war on terror — be they Islamofascists, Christian supremacists, or military-industrial profiteers.

From the record’s opening moments, with Cobbett’s guitar wailing like a thousand 9/11 banshees, to the dreadful prophecy of "Famine’s Lamp" — certainly one of the great rock ‘n’ roll dirges — clear through to the gleaming, high-tech, satellite-guided apocalypse of the album-closing "Widow’s Wall," The Locust Years appeals to me as a ferocious summation of all the shameless hypocrisy, betrayal, and avarice of the last six years. It is tremendously cathartic but not necessarily hopeful. The album’s title — borrowed from Winston Churchill, who coined the phrase in reference to the declines and compromises of the 1930s and their resolution in the gas chambers and killing fields of World War II — is an embittered indictment of the flag-waving, churchgoing citizen-consumer. Good Germans all, dutifully following their leader as the abyss yawns ever wider.

LITTLE USE FOR ILLUSION


No one in the band has any delusions that their underground heavy metal record is going to change the world — and not one of them seems willing to suck up to a music industry that would only turn it into focus-group approved, prechewed rage against the generic machine. Hammers is truly a Mission District group, deeply rooted in a seething community of fiercely — even dysfunctionally — independent musicians, labels, and fans with roots dating back at least 20 years.

But Hammers of Misfortune are also a band with a mission and a message — and a whole of good rockin’ to come. Sheie modestly hopes for at least a European tour and enough earnings to not have to worry about covering practice-space fees — then confesses she thinks the record deserves a Grammy. Quattro is in a similar mood, daydreaming of playing to an arena of "30,000 screaming fans." I hope it all comes true in spades.

As for Cobbett, he’s been touring with Ludicra and, fresh from exhibiting Hammers at South by Southwest, has a new concept album germinating in his mind. Something to do with a perfect storm known as Hurricane Katrina and the drowned city of New Orleans. Another victim of the locust years, to be immortalized in song.

The gods of metal are angry and sharpening their swords. *

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE

With Genghis Tron and Kylesa

Sun/25, 9 p.m., $10, all ages

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

>

Exploitation

-
0

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Among hackers, exploitation is a social good. Exploiting a piece of software means discovering a little chink in its armor, a vulnerability that could allow a crook to slip through and do unwanted things to innocent people’s computers. Researchers write an exploit — a little program that takes advantage of the vulnerability — and then show it to everybody involved so that the vulnerability can be patched up.

But things are not always so tidy, and a case in point is an exploit recently released by a researcher named HD Moore. He publicized a vulnerability in a system called Tor, which facilitates anonymous Web surfing and online publishing. Used by political dissidents, journalists, and people who just want additional privacy, Tor routes Internet traffic through a special network of protected servers run by thousands of volunteers.

To run his exploit, dubbed Torment, Moore set up a series of fake Tor nodes that did the opposite of what a real Tor node would do: they looked at every bit of traffic passing through and did some tricks to tag that traffic and follow it back to its source so that the people using Tor could be identified. Like many exploits, Torment only works on people who have misconfigured Tor. So anyone who has faithfully followed the instructions on how to use Tor is still safe — but of course, even the most anal-retentive of us make mistakes sometimes when installing and configuring software.

Moore has said that he decided to launch this attack on Tor because he suspects that child pornographers are using the anonymous network to hand out kiddie porn. But it’s also more than that. Via e-mail, he told me, "If anything, I want my demonstration site to serve as a warning for anyone who believes their Web traffic is actually anonymous."

There are two problems here. First, there’s a technical problem. Moore’s exploit isn’t new research that will help improve Tor’s security — it’s simply a rehash of exploits that work on anyone who has misconfigured their browser software. As Tor developer Nick Mathewson pointed out in an online chat with me, "I don’t think that polishing exploit code for existing attacks that depend on users being improperly configured really helps the research field much. When you’re demonstrating new attacks, that looks like research to me."

Contrast Moore’s work with that of UK researcher Steven Murdoch, who last year published an unusual new exploit that could reveal the identities of Tor users who have all the proper configurations. In other words, Murdoch found a vulnerability in Tor; Moore found a vulnerability in software users — they misconfigure stuff — that would apply no matter what program they used.

And this leads to the second problem that Moore’s exploit raises. Given that he found a general problem that goes far beyond Tor, why call it a vulnerability in Tor? It would almost be more accurate to say he’s noticed that it’s hard to surf the Internet anonymously while using a browser because most browsers hand out your IP address to anyone who asks for it. Although I can’t speculate about Moore’s motivations, his disclosure winds up coming across as a potshot at the Tor community. The way Torment works only shores up this interpretation. He’s asked people who use Torment to watch the traffic going through their fake Tor nodes. He wants them to read and track people’s private data — not only in violation of those people’s wishes, but also potentially in violation of the law.

It would be easy to claim that Moore’s motivation is political in nature. He says he built Torment to help law enforcement. Perhaps he believes only criminals want anonymity and innocent people shouldn’t be worried about publishing articles that can be traced back to their computers’ IP addresses. Those of us who want to protect the identities of dissident journalists, privacy lovers, queer activists, and human rights workers in Central America obviously feel otherwise.

Of course, this debate highlights the problem with releasing exploits in general. When hackers find vulnerabilities in Windows, they’re accused of wanting to destroy Microsoft rather than make the world a safer place. Same goes for hackers who exploit government computer networks. But unlike real-world exploitation, nearly all computer exploitation can be turned to good in the end. Even Torment has had good side-effects. "We’re working on clarifying the instructions for configuring Firefox and Tor," Mathewson said. "Moore has helped us to realize we should do that." *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who isn’t anonymous but is glad that she could be.

Calling all nudes: Flesh on Bark moment

-
0

By Sarah Phelan

Nothing draws attention to the beauty of an oak tree better than a bunch of nudes draped across its naked branches, their soft curves pressed into the tree’s whorly bark. And trees are, to quote famed nature photographer Jack Gescheidt, “a beautiful miracle that provides shade but that we take for granted.”

Famous for his portraits of nudes
on and among trees, Gescheidt has decided to step into the midst of the debacle surrounding the threatened Memorial Oak Grove at UC Berkeley by taking a photograph using a bunch of nude volunteer models. And by bunch, he means hundreds and hundreds of people.

“I can accommodate 400 to 500 people,” says Gescheidt, noting that this is the first time he’s had advance press for a nude photo, but this time it’s inevitable since this in an existing situation full of tree sitters, university officials, athletes and of course, the trees.

“The trees will help remind me to stay grounded, that there is no rush, and that this is an opportunity for meditation,” says Gescheidt. “I’m a simple guy, but the reason I’m getting involved is that it’s clear there is an alternative to cutting the trees down.”

Save the Oaks organizer Doug Buckwald says people are staying in the trees, even though there is a temporary injunction against removing the trees, “because UC Berkeley has announced that it still plans to cut down the trees and build a stadium.”

“They must have sat in a room and said, what’s the one thing we could do to anger everyone in Berkeley,” says Buckwald of the decision to cut down this grove of 38 mature coast live oaks, which is home to countless squirrels, birds and insects, and frequented by a “wonderfully playful pair of red foxes.”

As for UC Berkeley 3 for I promise to plant three trees for every one axed, Buckwald is unimpressed.

There is no comparison between young sapling s with about 100 leaves and mature trees with 10,000 to 100,000 leaves,” he says. ‘What matters is biomess, which creates more niches and more space for organisms. If you cut down a wonderful old tree, there’s no way you can replace that by planting 3 saplings, or even 10 for that matter, since they take 80-200 years to grow.”

To take part in Gesheidt’s naked photo, meet at the Memorial Oak Grove at 8:30 am.
For instructions to the Grove
go to www. savetheoaks.com and click on the “Find the Grove” button.

Big wheel

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Perhaps Fall Out Boy said it most succinctly: this ain’t a scene — it’s an arms race. Joe Boyd — Hannibal Records founder, producer, general 1960s-era scenemaker and welcome arm for many an intrepid musical tourist, and now author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent’s Tail, $18) — has seen battle on the front lines of UK rock. He knows when to drop his fascinating bombs, when to jump into the fray — such as when he stage-managed Bob Dylan’s landmark electric Newport performance — and when to step back and let nature or L. Ron Hubbard take the course — like the time his discoveries the Incredible String Band glommed on to Scientology. Battle-scarred but unbroken, Boyd has soldiered on down the road with Muddy Waters and Coleman Hawkins, scored early production credits overseeing Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse’s “Crossroads” and Pink Floyd’s first single, discovered Nick Drake and Fairport Convention, and gone on to make records for songwriting enlistees ranging from Toots and the Maytals and REM to Billy Bragg and Vashti Bunyan, in addition to organizing inspired scores for films such as McCabe and Mrs. Miller. So trust that Boyd knows whereof he speaks when he says that when it came to writing his first book, it was best to take a long view.
“Of course, I have read a lot of music books in my time,” the 64-year-old says on the phone from London, “and there’s a lot of books that I’ve read that are full of interesting information, but they’re very stodgy, and they’re very crammed with information that only guys who live alone with 8,000 LPs really want to know about. So I was very conscious of wanting to write a book that, every once in a while, occasionally, a young person or a female might want to read.”
Is Boyd trying to say that most music books seem to cater to male collectors? “Yeah, I’ve done a lot of book signings, and I can tell you what the queue looks like. There’s a lot of beards. There’s a lot of bald pates. There’s a lot of gray hair, and every once in a while there’s a twentysomething woman in the queue, and then you kind of make sure your hair is combed straight,” Boyd says mirthfully. “Then she comes up to the head of the queue and says, ‘Will you please sign it “To Peter”? It’s for my father for his 60th birthday.’<\!q>”
Of course, in attempting to dodge the earnest fan, Boyd has taken fire from the obsessives who say he didn’t include enough about, for instance, John Martyn. And some women, as luck and long lines would have it, have griped that he didn’t include enough about his love life. Guess they didn’t get to the end of a chapter deep in where, almost as a punch line, he allows that his on-and-off girlfriend Linda Peters — who was with him when he was producing his sole number one hit, “Dueling Banjos,” for Deliverance — eventually married Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson.
Telling his tales plainly as if, he confesses, he’s “sitting at a table with a bottle of wine, dominating the conversation,” Boyd throws out his take on the fetal ABBA; the quasi-resident combo at his UFO Club, Pink Floyd; artists less known stateside, such as the Watersons; and crazy diamonds in the elegant rough such as the painfully shy Drake. Boyd produced 1969’s Five Leaves Left and 1970’s Bryter Layter (both Hannibal) and witnessed some of Drake’s sad decline, going as far to write, “There is certainly a virginal quality about his music, and I never saw him behaving in a sexual way with anyone, male or female. Linda Thompson tried to seduce Nick once, but he just sat on the end of the bed, fully clothed, looking at his hands…. Yet Nick’s music is supremely sensual: the delicate whisper of his voice, the romantic melodies, the tenderly sad lyrics, the intricate dexterity of his fingers on the guitar.”
“I don’t really say anything that isn’t already out there,” Boyd says now. “In a way what I’m saying is his privacy remains inviolate.” Boyd’s ear has also remained inviolate, as seen with the ’90s attention to Drake, whose “Pink Moon” Boyd licensed to Volkswagen, although “by the time the commercial came out, the records had been selling more and more,” from the initial 3,000 to 100,000 a year. “My feelings are best described as ‘what took you so long?’<\!q>”
Regardless, he continues, “I never made the sort of records that you put into the normal process. You had to come up with original strategies and eccentric ways of presenting a group in order for the kind of records that I made to sell.”
These days Boyd prefers to battle the page (his next book is on world music) rather than run a label after all he has been through with Rykodisc, which bought Hannibal, and Palm Pictures, which in turn swallowed Rykodisc. Still, the feisty music lover isn’t above a parting volley. “I’m optimistic about the music industry,” he says, equal parts wag and curmudgeon. “I think the dinosaurs will go to the tar pits and that will be fine. And all their distant cousins will turn into birds.”<\!s>SFBG
JOE BOYD
Tues/20, 7:30 p.m., free
Black Oak Books
1491 Shattuck, Berk.
(510) 486-0698
Also March 21, 7 p.m., free
Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688
LISTEN, DON’T BE DISSIN’
DR. DOG
We All Belong (Park the Van) finds the Philly psych-swamp canines breaking out some toothsome songcraft. Thurs/15, 9 p.m., $10–<\d>$12. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016
PINK CLOUDS AND THE PSYCRONS
Gnarly SF psych rockers caterwaul alongside paisley-drenched Kyoto kids — all hail garage skronk, mademoiselle. Sun/18, 8 p.m., $10–<\d>$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455
UNDER BYEN
Does this highly touted sprawling ensemble boil down to Denmark’s Bjorkestra — with kalimba, strings, and tuba? Mon/19, 8 p.m., $13. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750
SNAKE FLOWER II
Matthew M. Melton (Memphis Break-ups, the River City Tanlines) was stranded by his bandmates in San Francisco but has managed to peel out the muy groovy reptilian garage punk once more. March 26, 8 p.m., $5–<\d>$20 (Mission Creek fundraiser). 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF.

The ethics of flacks

-
0

› steve@sfbg.com

They go by many names: public relations professionals, spokespeople, public information officers, press secretaries, liaisons, public affairs practitioners, press agents, or — the widely used slang — flacks. They are the gatekeepers of records and access to their powerful bosses, either a conduit or barrier for those seeking information.

A spotlight was shined on the role of flacks in San Francisco last month when Peter Ragone, then the influential press secretary for Mayor Gavin Newsom, was caught posting comments under fake names on some local blogs and then lying about it to journalists.

The incident prompted Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin to call for Ragone’s ouster (which Newsom resisted, before last week transferring Ragone to his reelection campaign team, where he’s not dealing directly with the press or public) and to craft legislation creating standards of conduct for the city’s public information officers.

"There are bright ethical lines that cannot be crossed," Peskin told the Guardian. "Passing this is a wake-up call to people so busy playing politics that they’ve forgotten their moral responsibility."

The code calls for the city’s public information officers to be honest and accessible and to "advance the free flow of accurate and truthful information to the public and the press."

The legislation, which will soon be heard in the Rules Committee before going to the full board, notes that "it is critically important that Public Information [Officers] are viewed by citizens and the media as honest and trustworthy brokers of information" and "deception and disinformation severely damages the public trust and limits the City’s ability to serve the public."

Many activists and journalists say that’s a serious problem right now, particularly in the Mayor’s Office of Communications, which has become known for aggressively pushing deceptive political spin and repeatedly blocking the release of public documents, according to rulings by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. In addition to Ragone, deputy press secretary Jennifer Petrucione is widely seen by those she deals with as a less than forthright and forthcoming broker of information.

But new press secretary Nathan Ballard, whose first day was March 5, said he supports the Peskin legislation and promises to maintain high ethical standards. "My overall philosophy is I’d like an accessible press office. You should be able to get the information you need with dispatch," he told us. "The public has a right to receive information from us that is true, accurate, and fair."

He made a distinction between private-sector public relations people and public-sector information officers, noting that the latter should be held to a higher standard of conduct because they work for taxpayers, not corporations or just politicians. It was a point echoed by City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey, one of the most widely respected flacks in San Francisco.

"I have a duty to taxpayers and citizens to provide information, whether it’s good for my client or not," Dorsey told us. "Even when you’re working for an elected official, it’s the taxpayers who pay you."

Dorsey accepts that it’s the nature of the job and a free democratic society that sometimes his boss will take lumps in the press, but he said, "I will never hold it against a journalist for portraying the city attorney as a bad guy when we do look like the bad guy."

Eileen Shields, spokesperson for the Department of Public Health, agreed: "I don’t think of my client as the Department of Public Health of Mitch Katz. I think of it as the people of San Francisco."

But other flacks, such as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Maggie Lynch, have a more adversarial relationship with the press and have been known to chew out journalists who write unflattering stories, although she agrees that flacks should maintain high ethical standards.

"It’s my job to point out what’s good about what the agency does," Lynch told us. "I pride myself on my directness and my honesty…. I think the standards should be the same for reporters and public information officers, that you need to be honest."

As the tenor of her comments indicates, there can be a dynamic tension between flacks and journalists that sometimes gets testy. And that can be exacerbated when the flack works for an agency under strong public scrutiny, such as Muni or the Mayor’s Office.

That’s why Peskin said his code is important. "Transparency in an electoral democracy is what keeps the system honest," said Peskin, who agreed that the issues associated with the Mayor’s Office of Communications go beyond the lie Ragone told about his blogging. "There is no question the Mayor’s Office has repeatedly failed to adhere to the Sunshine Ordinance."

Without commenting on the past, Ballard pledged to cooperate in the future. "We will comply with the spirit and the letter of the Sunshine Ordinance."

In addition to Peskin’s legislation, City Attorney Dennis Herrera has announced a new program that offers expanded training for the city’s flacks, covering Sunshine Ordinance compliance, legal guidance, and ethical guidelines. "It would be up to policy makers whether they want to make it mandatory," Dorsey said.

Ironically, the Guardian attempted to interview someone from the Public Relations Society of America (whose code of conduct Peskin incorporated into his legislation) for this story, but we were unsuccessful despite days of trying. Judy Voss, the contact person listed in its code of ethics, referred me to Janet Troy, the vice president of public relations, who spent 10 minutes asking me questions about the questions I had and said she would have someone get back to me. Despite several days of my calling and e-mailing her, neither she nor anyone from the PRSA got back to me by press time.

Luckily, there are alternatives to the PRSA. The National Association of Government Communicators has an even stricter code of conduct for public-sector flacks. It includes this central tenet: "We believe that truth is inviolable and sacred; that providing public information is an essential civil service; and that the public-at-large and each citizen therein has a right to equal, full, understandable, and timely facts about their government." *

It came from San Francisco

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Crazed sea lizard terrorizes Seoul! US military negligence spawns bloodthirsty mutant! Breaking news: beast came from San Francisco!

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s The Host is just a movie, so the red, white, and blue can’t really be blamed for unleashing a monster on his country’s populace. But Bong’s beast came to life in a part of San Francisco steeped in military history. Tucked away in the Presidio, amid old army barracks, tree-lined drives, and cutting-edge nonprofit facilities is the Orphanage, an upstart special effects company aiming to shape the future of film.

The Orphanage already had a number of high-profile projects under its belt when it eagerly took on The Host. It ended up with its defining achievement to date. When New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, writing from last year’s Cannes Film Festival, called Bong’s movie "the best film I’ve seen at this year’s [festival]," it quickly became the subject of rapturous buzz from all corners: erudite cinema journals, mainstream magazines, and blogs. One of the most consistent subjects of praise has been the movie’s creature. The horror site Bloody Disgusting calls its design "the most astounding part of the film … remarkable and incredibly ambitious … a cross between a dinosaur, a tremor, and a giant squid with giant teeth." Another site describes it as "some kind of aqua-lizard thing that looks as real as anything else in the frame." Bong deserves much of this praise, but he couldn’t have gotten it without the Orphanage, which has joined the long line of important F/X names to emerge from the Bay Area.

When George Lucas moved his F/X company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), to Marin in 1980, he made the Bay Area ground zero for film’s technological advances. Pixar and DreamWorks Animation SKG also call the region home, with home bases in Emeryville and Redwood City, respectively. Lucas relocated ILM to the Presidio in 1995, erecting a statue of Yoda to watch over the campus. Though meant to symbolize Lucas’s venerable legacy as an innovator and a maverick, the statue now carries connotations of a different sort: that of an elder accessible only to a select few.

The Orphanage was born of this legacy. Jonathan Rothbart, Stuart Maschwitz, and Scott Stewart — all ILM veterans — founded the company in 1999, landing Brian de Palma’s Mission to Mars as their first feature project. The Orphanage has worked on several of the biggest box office successes of the past few years, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Superman Returns, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But its partnership with a director on the fringe of the mainstream, Robert Rodriguez, has been its most enduring. The F/X house has worked on three of his features, most notably the "Yellow Bastard" section of Sin City, and is currently finishing Grindhouse, the filmmaker’s collaboration with Quentin Tarantino.

It’s this sense of partnership that prepared the Orphanage for its collaboration with Bong on The Host. Based on the success of his playfully wry 2003 thriller, Memories of Murder, the director received $10 million to make The Host, a budget quite large by Korean standards but extremely modest by Hollywood’s. Unschooled in CGI but knowing he needed animators, he shopped the film around to a number of companies. "Director Bong didn’t choose the Orphanage because of our creature experience; we didn’t really have a whole lot — almost none at all," Arin Finger, the film’s visual F/X producer, says. "[He] approached houses like ILM and the big giants, but what they were going to charge was way out of his budget" — Bong and his producers spent $3 million on the effects for the film — "so it was a great opportunity for us."

The Host is many things: a comedy-drama about a fractured family brought together by catastrophe, a political critique, a horror movie, a revenge tale. But above all it’s about a monster — and quite a monster. Equally capable of frightening grace and endearing clumsiness, the creature and its parts don’t resemble anything in the animal kingdom so much as everything in the animal kingdom: reptile, amphibian, fish, worm, monkey, and at least one bit of human anatomy. Having just dabbled in small-scale creature work with films such as Hellboy and Jeepers Creepers 2, the Orphanage accepted a daunting task when it agreed to animate Bong’s monster, the main character of his film. "We were kind of looking at this project as one where [we] could really develop a creature department," sequence supervisor Brian Kulig says. "On top of that, the creature is running around in darkness, in broad daylight, it’s on fire, it’s drooling, it’s in the rain, it’s swimming. Everything that could possibly happen to this creature pretty much did."

As Finger, Kulig, and fellow sequence supervisor Michael Spaw discuss their work on The Host, the interview site — a stately room just above the rest of the company’s creative team — gives a snapshot of the Orphanage in action. Its headquarters strongly resembles an older part of the Presidio’s history: an army intelligence bunker. Rows of people sit diligently at their computers, with only a sliver of natural light seeping through the occasional ground-level window. One gets the distinct impression that the company has expanded rapidly in recent years and may soon outgrow its home.

Much of this growth can be attributed to The Host and its creature team, whose mastermind was Kevin Rafferty, the visual F/X supervisor. Rafferty, another ILM veteran who has supervised the effects on numerous Hollywood blockbusters, spent much of The Host‘ s shoot on set with Bong and his crew. This level of on-set presence is rare in the F/X world, according to Finger, Kulig, and Spaw — all three of whom also logged hours in Seoul. Oftentimes, as Spaw put it, the F/X team "is only associated after principal photography is done, and you’re handed plates, and you make everything work. Actually being on set was an invaluable experience." When the trio speak about their time in Korea, they say Bong, the cast, and the crew were eager to collaborate, accessible and gracious in a way unknown in Hollywood, and game for whatever it took to capture a shot.

Having first dreamed up the idea for The Host in high school, Bong had the nature of his beast largely worked out in his head — a vision he articulated to the Orphanage during a two-week visit prior to the shoot. "Director Bong treated the creature like one of his actors. He worked with the animators one-on-one to dial in the expressions and emotions of the character," Finger says, the reference to "Director Bong" a sign of his and his cohorts’ reverence for the filmmaker. Spaw adds, "Director Bong made it clear to us that sure, you have this monster film, a horror film — or however you want to classify this rather interesting piece of cinema — but if you didn’t understand how [the creature] was thinking or how the real physical actors were reutf8g to it, it wouldn’t work."

For the movement of the monster, the Orphanage team used a variety of reference points, including Jurassic Park. But due to the unique nature of Bong’s creature, none was definitive. As Finger says, "You never see a dinosaur swinging by its tail." (The tail is one of the monster’s stronger physical traits, capable of grabbing people and allowing it to latch on to structures and hang in midair.)

Other touchstones in creating the monster — including walruses, crocodiles, and paraplegics — were less predictable. Footage of paraplegics in motion, for example, was useful because Bong and the Orphanage’s creation has just two legs at the very front of its long body. Though incredibly graceful in water, it is challenged on land, where it has a baby’s unpredictable sense of balance. "There is a shot when [it] is first kind of rampaging around in this park area along the Han River, and [it] stumbles and basically does a face-plant and kicks up some dust," Spaw says. "It’s great, really engaging the audience to believe that this thing is not perfect."

To create the CGI version of the monster, the Orphanage relied on a small clay model, or maquette, sculpted by the New Zealand F/X house Weta Digital (King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy), which was constructed using a design that Bong commissioned from artist Chin Wei-chen. Bong had wanted the creature to be completely CGI, but when Rafferty realized there would be significant close-ups involving live actors and the creature, he petitioned for a live puppet as well.

Consequently, the Australian company John Cox Creature Workshop constructed a two-ton model of the beast’s head, a particularly complex piece of art. While the head as a whole resembles a nasty fish, the open mouth is bizarre and unique, as if a vagina had sprouted leathery butterfly wings adorned with spikes. The Orphanage had to adapt its animation to the Cox model, ensuring that the digital monster’s movements and characteristics matched those of the puppet. "We had to cater the animation process, which we normally don’t do — like how the creature’s mouth opens and closes," Kulig says. "The mouth alone had so many intricate parts."

One possible reason for The Host‘s success is that the Orphanage and Bong’s South Korean crew routinely defied convention throughout their collaboration. "It was amazing to watch how Director Bong’s mind worked," Kulig says. "He would react to CGI footage we already had and shoot all these shots that weren’t on the schedule. None of us could figure out what he was doing. But when we showed up the next day and saw the footage edited, it worked beautifully."

Constantly interacting with the Orphanage representatives on set, Bong also recorded daily videos for the SF team in which he critiqued footage projected on a wall behind him. He was adamant that the creature look ungainly and act awkwardly — like, as Kulig puts it, a "fish out of water." Both despite and because of its clumsiness, the creature wreaks considerable havoc on the residents of Seoul and, in particular, a few of the film’s main characters. In some cases the violence proved too great to use actual people. For these shots the Orphanage employed what it calls "digital doubles," or animated versions of the actors. But whenever possible Bong used his cast, who gamely submitted to a variety of miserable scenarios, including being pummeled by cushion-wielding men (stand-ins for the creature) and getting repeatedly dragged through the Han River.

As the South Korean film industry’s cachet has risen worldwide, coproductions with other countries have become more commonplace. The Host, the first major F/X film in Korean history, is also the first to employ a company with strong ties to Hollywood. Finger, Kulig, and Spaw describe an on-set camaraderie in which everyone was both intensely hardworking and jovial. "The opportunity to work with pretty much the most famous Korean actors out there was amazing," Finger says. "On a typical US blockbuster movie, that never happens — the actors are in their trailer and they’re off. We were drinking and singing karaoke with these guys after the shoot, and the director [and crew] as well."

At the center of everything, confident in his vision but eager to use the expertise of others, was Bong. F/X people are used to playing a secondary role as, to paraphrase Spaw, service providers whose job is to make pixels. But on this occasion, the Orphanage’s experience was different. "Every now and then, you have the opportunity to work in service of a great piece of art [that] wouldn’t be the same without your contribution," Spaw says. "That’s why you look to work with someone like Director Bong. Both sides have gotten something truly unique out of the experience." One unique reward: they’ve created the biggest box office hit ever in South Korea. Another: they’ve made a great movie that just might become a classic. *

More on The Host:

Cheryl Eddy’s review

Johnny Ray Huston on director Bong Joon-ho

A talk with Bong Joon-ho

The sushi house rules

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

An old rule of prudence teaches that you should never eat raw oysters in a month whose name doesn’t have an "r" in it — from May to August, more or less — the warm-weather months elevating the danger of spoilage. Rain and cold do present their inconveniences and discomforts, but they are also balm in the matter of seafood, most of which is delicate and turns bad easily if the temperature starts to rise. One does not like to think of oysters being hauled along I-5 on some infernal July afternoon.

The rule has never been extended to sushi, so far as I know, but it wouldn’t be the worst idea. Although my best sushi experiences have been in balmy Hawaii, and while I have eaten raw seafood here in every season, even our autumnal summer, I am most at ease doing so in winter, when the world itself seems well refrigerated and the albacore tuna, plucked from cold seas, is rushed to the chilly city, where we eagerly await it in a restaurant that, perhaps — with any luck — is well heated.

Barracuda Sushi, which opened last year on a glam stretch of Market Street that includes Café Flore, Bagdad Café, and Lime, is well heated. It is also quite nice looking, with a rust and jade paint scheme, banquettes upholstered in fabrics with fine geometric patterns, and bars fore and aft (the latter a sushi bar). The place is less clubby-looking than Lime (which is a door or two away), but there’s a powerful nightlife pulse nonetheless. If you knew this space as the onetime home of such restaurants as Tin Pan and Repastoria Satyricon, you might not recognize it.

It is one of my pet theories that oft-flipped restaurant spaces at last achieve stability when they become Japanese restaurants. Après le déluge, sushi. Houses of Japanese cuisine must fail occasionally, but the attrition rate is low. So Barracuda (which has a pair of sibling restaurants down the Peninsula) opens with at least one structural advantage.

Another plus, more sensual or aesthetic in nature, is the swirling of Peruvian and Brazilian touches into the food, a reflection not of the kitchen’s whimsy (or not just of its whimsy) but of the large Japanese migrations to South America in the first half of the 20th century. Who could forget that a recent president of Peru bore the unlikely name Alberto Fujimori? Of course, he was forced out in disgrace, but still.

A nice introduction to this pan-Pacific sensibility is the sushi napoleon ($11.95), a disk of rice about the size of a single-serve cheesecake topped with chunks of tuna and avocado — a pair of roll regulars — along with blueberries, slices of mango, and a slathering of mayonnaise. It sounds awful, like something a latchkey kid might throw together as an after-school snack, but it turned out to be both beautiful (with the colors of some elaborate ice cream confection) and tasty-rich in a way Japanese food seldom is.

Most of the food isn’t so aggressively inventive. Gyoza ($5.95), the Japanese pot stickers, are familiar and friendly, though we found the skins to be thinner than usual, and the ponzu sauce on the side was spiked with some minced jalapeño pepper for added excitement. Seaweed salad ($6.95) was presented as an upmarket trio, with three varieties of seaweed (wakame, goma wakame, and hijiki) given three saucings of aji amarillo (mayonnaise-like and made from the mild yellow Peruvian chile), orange tobiko, and lemon. A sushi set ($11.95) consisted of California roll (crab and avocado) and a selection of nigiri, including tuna, salmon, and shrimp; it was good, but you could get it anywhere, even at the supermarket.

But even the fanciest supermarket probably wouldn’t offer anything to compare with the hamachi ceviche ($11.95), the thin bricks of flesh doused with a basil-yuzu-wasabi sauce — truly a New World combination, which produced a memorable sweet pepper-fire effect — and topped with tiny cubes of purplish bronze geutf8 — like jewels — we could not identify. Also distinctive are many of the rolls, including the Barracuda crunchy roll ($12): broiled tuna and avocado wrapped in a long tube of rice, which is then dipped in a light batter and flash-fried. The result is something like a Japanese chimichanga, tasty but quite rich.

We tend to associate Japanese cuisine so strongly with uncooked seafood that we are at risk of forgetting that the Japanese cook a lot of their food too and with their own sort of élan. The lunch menu offers us a series of vivid reminders of this, from udon (the pho-like noodle soup) to various types of panko-crusted cutlets, or katsu. There is even a breaded calamari steak (the poor man’s abalone), which turned up for me in a bento box ($9.50) in the company of a California roll, a pat of white rice, a mixed salad with creamy dressing, and (most welcome on a leaden, tule-fog day) a bowl of miso soup on the side. Across the table, miso soup was neither necessary nor missed, for there came a great bowl of udon ($9.95), steaming like a caldera on some volcanic plain. In the concentrated chicken broth lurked a Medusa’s wig of fat noodles, with flecks of shiso and scallion and slivers of shiitake mushrooms. The tempura shrimp were presented on the side, and we briefly considered the likelihood that we were expected to dump them into the bowl. We didn’t, and they turned out to do nicely when eaten on the side … but had we broken a rule? *

BARRACUDA SUSHI

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m.–3:30 p.m. Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11 a.m.–3:30 p.m. Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5–10:30 p.m.; Fri.–Sun., 5–11:30 p.m.

2251 Market, SF

(415) 558-8567

www.barracudasushi.com

Full bar

AE/DC/DISC/MC/V

Noisy if busy

Wheelchair accessible

>

Noise Pop: Basking in their luster

-
0

Oh me, oh my, love that country pie, and oh me, oh my, the influence of Devendra Banhart and Will Oldham is now as long and thick as their beards. Actually, Brightblack Morning Light’s Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes were opening for Oldham when Banhart was making the leap from homemade cassette to Young God. But in the autumn of 2006, around when they landed a primo spot opening for Os Mutantes at the Fillmore and then walked onto the cover of Arthur like it was a throne lying in wait for them, the applause for and catcalls about their group really began to fly back and forth. Spiritualized acolytes old enough to have gone high-igh-igh with Spacemen 3 the first time around praised Brightblack’s "heroin-gospel" sound, while other older folks who’d seen one too many white people claim an American Indian great-grandmother cried foul. Younger fans espoused nature love as their more cynical peers held their noses — that is, with whichever hand wasn’t masturbating an iPod with carpal tunnel–ridden thumbs. At the end of last year, as rock critics assembled top 10 lists, there were many rivers to cross — some leading to the Walkmen’s cover of Harry Nilsson’s Pussycats — and yet just about all roads led to the Rhodes-dominated sound of Brightblack Morning Light (Matador). This show should offer some hints about the follow-up. (Johnny Ray Huston)

BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT

With Women and Children, Mariee Sioux, and Karl Blau

March 3, 8 p.m., $14

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

>

Fighting the Monster

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

On Valentine’s Day, Yi Jun Huang, a smiling 65-year-old Chinese immigrant, walked into the Apple store near Union Square and handed the manager a large chocolate heart and a pink valentine as about 40 laid-off Monster Cable workers and their supporters rallied outside. It was one of several appeals to electronics stores to honor a boycott and stop carrying Monster products.

Huang had worked in a Monster Cable factory producing high-end audio cables for 16 years and was fired last October with more than 120 mostly Chinese immigrant workers when the company decided to outsource their jobs.

"The production manager openly told us that production was moving to Mexico," Huang said.

Now, despite a boycott launched by the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), a slew of protests by the workers, and a resolution passed Feb. 13 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors urging the company to address worker concerns, Monster Cable still refuses to budge.

"A multibillion-dollar company should not springboard off their workers for the sake of profit and then kick them to the curb," said Shirley Lorence, an organizer with Rise Up, a caucus within the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. "That’s wrong."

The recently laid-off workers have an average tenure of eight years, with many having around 15 to 20 years, according to the CPA. Many workers are in their 40s and 50s. With these layoffs, Monster Cable broke from its previous policy of providing four weeks’ severance pay plus one week for every year of service, and it did not offer job placement, retraining, or community support for any of the workers.

The Board of Supervisors resolution asks Monster Cable, which spent $6 million buying the naming rights to the city-owned Candlestick Park, to give $2 million for a Worker and Community Transition Fund and its workers a more generous severance package.

"The problem of outsourcing is something we have to make a statement on," said Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who sponsored the resolution, which passed 8–3, with Sups. Michela Alioto-Pier, Sean Elsbernd, and Ed Jew in opposition.

Elsbernd took issue with asking a company to provide a more generous severance package than what the city itself offers. Jew thought the city was being too hard on a native company in a competitive field.

Leon Chow, chair of the CPA, was very disappointed that Jew, being the only Chinese American on the board, opposed the measure. He and others said Monster appears to be financially healthy and the outsourcing was based simply on greed.

"We saw no evidence that times are tough," Huang said. "We know their sales are up to a billion dollars annually. We’re the ones who work there, and there have been no signs that things are slowing down."

But CEO, or "Head Monster" as he calls himself, Noel Lee wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to the board, "We have to yield to the competitive nature of the marketplace where global sourcing is the norm." *

Valentine’s Day shopping guide

-
0

culture@sfbg.com
Valentine’s Day can be a sneaky, if not downright dangerous, holiday. It has a way of rushing you on the 12th, taking you down in the tackle on the 13th, and — if you fail to deliver the gifty goods — knocking you out on the 14th. Fortunately for you, you’re still in the 7-day-advance safety zone, with enough time to perfect your game plan. To help you avoid an embarrassing fumble, we’ve scoured SF’s best gift and novelty stores for some guaranteed-to-please gift ideas. So read carefully and choose wisely, and when the big day comes, you could be well on your way to scoring.

The Classics

Church Street Flowers
This floral boutique is no stranger to the Guardian’s Best of the Bay Issue, as it has taken the title five out of the past six years. You can’t go wrong with the old red rose standby, with its universal message of true love. But if you want to get a bit more creative and/or specific, ask the staff for their recommendations. (For example, try red-tipped yellow roses, which mean the giver is falling in love, or a red and white bouquet, which is a symbol of unity.) The shop does deliver, so there’s no excuse for allowing your paramour to leave work envious or empty-handed.
212 Church St, SF. (415) 553-7762, www.churchstreetflowers.com

Bittersweet, the Chocolate Café
Buying your Valentine’s gifts at Bittersweet doesn’t only benefit your V-Day date; it gives you a chance to indulge in some of the shop’s sinful creations while you’re there. Check out the vast array of Belgian, Swiss, Dutch, or Italian chocolates, bound to appeal to the international lover – er, chocolate lover — in your life. (And for folks who are solo and sad about it this Valentine’s Day, try one of Bittersweet’s rich hot chocolates to fill the void.)
2123 Fillmore St, SF. (415) 346-8715, www.bittersweetcafe.com

Qoio
Think buying jewelry has to mean DeBeers and dollar signs? Think again. This little Noe Valley treasure is the perfect alternative for buying unusual (and affordable) amorous adornments. Here, you’ll undoubtedly find the owner, Guatemalan-born Gilbertina Guarini, painstakingly stringing together her latest one-of-a-kind design while perched behind the counter-cum-workspace. And since Guarini’s nature-themed pieces that are not only beautiful themselves, but are beautifully showcased by color and gemstone, visiting this Valentine haven is as easy on the eyes as it is on your wallet.
3961 24th St, SF. (415) 206-0704

Carol Doda’s Champagne and Lace Lingerie Boutique
San Francisco icon, the Condor’s own Carol Doda, has the perfect the recipe for a steamy Valentine’s date: a bottle of bubbly and a little lace number from her Union street boutique. You might have to go elsewhere for the champagne, but this is your one-stop-shop for intimate wear – for him and for her. And don’t worry if your date isn’t on the Don’t-Eat-Diet: the pinup queen’s specialty is still those bodacious plus sizes.
1850 Union St, SF. (415) 776-6900

Distinctive and Deviant

Beadissimo
Does your honey already own a gemstone in every color of the gay pride rainbow? Or does your lover only wear jewelry that could double as sailing rope? Either way, if it’s jewelry you want, but convention you don’t, try making some yourself at Beadissimo, the holy grail of bead stores. The beads and stringing options come in every shape, size and color. The workstation in the back boasts every beading tool the savvy professional could want. And if you’re a clumsy novice, there’s a dexterous, young staff just waiting to help you figure out what to do with all this bounty. (Workshops also are offered year round.)
1051 Valencia St, SF. (415) 282-2323, www.beadissimo.com

Flax
If off-the-shelf art supplies simply won’t cut it for your creative-type cuddle partner, try shopping at Flax. The place is so comprehensive, assistants are only familiar with the supplies in their specific section. But this 69-year-old establishment is a serious art store, so if all you need is some construction paper and doilies, don’t bother. If you want artsy options and creative ideas about how to use them, though, check out the store and then visit their detailed Website.
1699 Market St, SF. (800) 343-3529, www.flaxart.com

Lo-Fi Customs
For Valentines who like it when you to turn up the heat, panties screen-printed with “Property of (your name here)” and embossed with a ghost flame logo may be the perfect gift – and this shop, co-founded by a motorcycle-messenger-turned-artist, is the perfect place to get them. Feel free to be as raunchy, risqué, or ridiculous as you want – there’s nothing the Lo-Fi staff won’t write on a T-shirt. Too busy getting last-minute dinner reservations to stop by the store? You can place an order by phone or online, too.
69A Duboce Ave, SF. (415) 861-0500, www.loficustoms.com

Good Vibrations
This isn’t the retail version of the innocent Beach Boys’ classic. Think of it more as the adult version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, where pleasure comes not from candy but, well, from coming. This is a world of pure, uncensored imagination, where there’s a fix for every adult Candyman’s fetish. (The edible cherry pasties chocolate body pens and peppermint nipples are scrumdiddlyumptious.) A gift from here may well be your golden ticket.
603 Valencia St, SF. (415) 522-5460; 1620 Polk Street, SF. (415) 345-0400, www.goodvibes.com

Ferry Plaza
If you think dining out on Valentine’s Day is just such a cliché, or you simply forgot to make reservations, consider the delights of a gourmet, home-cooked dinner. Even if you’re no Wolfgang Puck, Ferry Plaza and the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Markets will provide the ingredients and the inspiration for a still-better-than-Shake-n-Bake meal. And if the specialty groceries here can’t make a chef out of you, fall back on the staples — great seafood, cheese, breads, wine, berries, and chocolate — where all you need to do is provide serving plates. (The Fish Company’s prawns are right from the boat and the farm fresh produce is trucked in daily. Yum!)
One Ferry Building at Embarcadero at Market, SF. (415) 693-0996, www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com

About Face and Body Day Spa
With the drudgery of tax season just around the corner, you can kill two birds with one stone (express V-Day love and prevent T-Day meltdowns) by pampering your lover with a gift certificate from the East Bay’s favorite day spa. With customizable massages and aromatherapy add-ons, this gift guarantees a major return on your investment. (Special service packages and discounts on walk-in waxing also are available.)
3190 College Ave, Berk. (510) 428-2600

American Conservatory Theater
Keep the drama on stage this Valentine’s with tickets to opening night of A.C.T.’s newest show, Hedda Gabler, directed by Richard E.T. White. Called the “female Hamlet,” Hedda Gabler is a woman whose married life (unlike yours, of course) is rife with controversy. She is either a murderous infidel or idealistic heroine, and the implications of her actions have struck a chord with audiences for over a century. Get tickets online, by phone, or at the box office, and remind your sweetie how good you two really do have it.
405 Geary St, SF. (415) 749-2228, www.act-sfbay.org

1...545556...59Page 55 of 59

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