By Steven T. Jones
Contrary to the demented hopes of conservative ideologues like the Examiner’s Ken Garcia, there is no joy on the left over the sordid sex scandal that has now engulfed Mayor Gavin Newsom. Sure, it opens up this year’s mayor’s race and illustrates some of the character flaws of Newsom’s administration, which have manifested themselves in how he conducts himself professionally, not just personally. But nobody’s happy to see this, not the Guardian (which has also heard these rumors for the last six months but couldn’t confirm the story enough to print it) nor the politicians and activists on the left. Several of them happened to be gathered last night when the news hit, and I can tell you there was no glee in that room. Sup. Chris Daly’s public comments have been respectful and reserved and in private, he genuinely felt bad for Alex Tourk. Everybody did. Matt Gonzalez, who has been rumored to be considering a run for mayor, spent more time considering how this incident places City Hall in a bad light and in legal jeopardy than he did calculating his own prospects. And my sweetie Alix Rosenthal, who is president of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the other women in the room are bracing for attempts to inappropriately delve into Ruby Tourk’s private life and are ready to fight back if Newsom’s people or their proxies go that route.
In the coming days or weeks, after the shock of this wears off and it becomes acceptable to make jokes or calculate its political implications, we’ll rejoin the battle for this city’s soul and actively try to help point the way forward from here. But today, we’re all just shaking our heads.
sex
No joy
Newer skin
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Readers:
Who would have thought that the column with the letter from the guy who was contemputf8g gluing his dick shut to spare his wife contact with his precome would have garnered so much attention?
Mainly, I got suggestions for changing the flavor of semen (nobody but me seemed to notice that it was not semen but Cowper’s gland fluid that was bugging them), most involving pineapple juice. This subject has been covered and covered but suffice it to say that some people get good results with pineapple juice or parsley or figs wrapped in prosciutto or whatever the experts are suggesting these days, and others diligently down the stuff and remain pretty gamy. The last time I wrote about this I made fun of Yum-Cum or whatever, that powdered stuff that was hawked all over the Web a few years ago; I heard back from some indignant executive for Yum-Cum who wanted to send me a sample, but my lab partner wasn’t having any of that.
Precome is pretty near flavorless, and if someone’s were actively raunchy, I’d be sending that dude straight to urology. I assumed that the wife was just an unusually delicate flower, a princess and the pee hole, if you will, but when body fluids are a little too piquant, I recommend starting with lots of water and fewer bitter alkaloids such as nicotine and caffeine before making any dire dietary changes. Ingesting lots of fresh, sweet fruits and vegetables is rather nice, though; so by all means, eat up if the spirit moves you.
After the pineapple juice people, the next guy suggested a thumb cot, which is pretty much the same suggestion as a condom rolled down to cover only the head, except nobody seems to carry (or make?) thumb cots. Finger cots, sure. The only thumb cots I could find were wool-lined, and that just cannot be good. I did find a rather startling product, though: Finger Gloves. They are eight to ten times thicker than a finger cot, so are probably not ideal for our purposes, but they "snugly conform," and the Web site, www.fingergloves.com, is strangely alluring — rather beautifully designed and given to eccentric but persuasive pronouncements of product virtue: "Can be utilized during virtually any circumstance. A contingency where rigid inflexible tools awkwardly struggle." I’m not at all sure to what sexual purpose Finger Gloves might properly be put, but I urge someone to figure it out.
And then there was this guy, whose letter I present chopped to bits, as it was about eleventy billion paragraphs long.
You missed one suggestion that’s perfect for this guy, and it’s a big miss — from Mantak Chia’s book Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, "External Locking: the Three Fingers Method."
A man can press an area near the perineum right before the point of ejaculation. [Complicated instructions, etc.] He still has wonderful orgasms, except this external pressure blocks the semen from shooting out the penis and into his wife’s mouth. It gets reabsorbed into the body (and doesn’t leave a man in that worn-out, must-sleep post-come state, either). I did this for a few months, and it was amazing — come without the mess.
You can get to the point where you can do it with your internal musculature, but that takes a lot of training. There are more amazing benefits to it, but one of those will be keeping his foul-tasting semen from his wife’s mouth. I’m sorry, but it sounds like you’re not empathizing with how much a layer of latex decreases the sensitivity of a penis. He wanted uncovered penis solutions, not creative condom usage.
Anyway, he should practice it solo before giving it a try with the partner.
You must know about Chia’s The Multiorgasmic Man. I’ll assume you have ignored his earlier works because their Taoist approach brought you horrid visions of new age, aikido-practicing, vibing, oversensitive, and completely unfuckable men.
Yep, right on the money there, chum. I’m not opposed to Taoist-tantric-shamanistic-kabbalistic-woohooistic ways of knowing, as long as I don’t have to practice them myself. I do know people who have learned some pretty advanced tricks (sorry, I do think of them as tricks, like eating light bulbs or squirting water out your eye) that way. I do believe this writer when he claims to have successfully cultivated a habit of retrograde ejaculation, the only remaining question is, why bother? All the theories about the benefits of conserving precious bodily fluids kind of fall apart when you realize that the body is saving exactly nothing — no calories, no nutrients, no effort — by depositing semen into the bladder instead of into a wad of dirty laundry. It’s a little less messy is all. The other "amazing benefits" are ineffable as well as unquantifiable and unfalsifiable, being more in your head than in your pants. But hey, you go. It still won’t help our guy, though, since it wasn’t semen. It was precome, and I dare you to stop precome by humming at it and poking yourself in the perineum.
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.
Up the butt, Bob
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
My girlfriend and I came home from the club blind drunk and started getting a little crazy. I was in her vagina as well as her anus and swapping between without cleaning myself. I also didn’t wear a condom. In the morning, I noticed there were blood stains on the sheets from her anus. I also licked her anus that night, but I’m not sure whether or not I got any blood in my mouth. I am really worried about diseases and infections even though we are both healthy with no infections. She has diabetes, however. Please help! I don’t know what to do.
Love,
Fretting
Dear Fret:
You can stop worrying about catching diabetes, for one thing. Type 1 diabetes is a luck-of-the-draw thing, not brought on by excessive donut consumption nor certainly by having drunken butt sex with a diabetic person. You knew this, right? Tell me you knew this.
This is not to say that what you and you girlfriend got up to that night was not stupid. It was not smart. In a long-term partnership it’s possible to anticipate most moderately plausible disaster scenarios and come to some mutual agreement about what to do if X happens. There are some Xs that ought to be avoided no matter what, but I trust mature long-term partners to make reasonable decisions about who can be exposed to what (fertile gametes included here) and when. And then there are the couples I wouldn’t trust as far as I could roll their drunken asses down the stairs.
If neither of you has any infections, why are you "really worried" about diseases? I mean, chances are good neither of you is actually harboring anything ghastly, but I’m going to guess you actually know that. For instance, there is some disagreement in my sex ed circle as to who originated the line "If rimming did not exist, hepatitis would have had to invent it." (It was me, me, me!) You have to consider heps A, B, and C if you’re going to — there’s really no delicate way to put this — lick blood off of somebody’s asshole. Or you could just not do that, which means looking before you, uh, leap, and maybe trying new, potentially problematic activities while sober enough to think, if not to drive.
In all likelihood, the most you’ve done is put your girlfriend at risk for bacterial vaginosis, but if you feel sick or turn yellow or anything else dramatic happens, see the doctor. And both of you, go get tested for a whole bunch of stuff (including pregnancy — hello, condoms aren’t just for prophylaxis, you know) before you go quite that crazy again. You have not proven yourselves smart enough to act that stupid all the time and get away with it.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
My boyfriend and I were having sex, and he asked if I’d like it up my butt. I told him to go for it. It was a little painful at first but then started to feel kind of nice. He asked if he could come in me, and the thought turned me on, but I didn’t know what bad things might happen. After searching the Internet and finding only porn, I thought I’d ask you.
Should I have any concerns about him coming in there? Will I drip for hours? Will it all drip out? Also, he has tested negative for HIV. However, I have not. What would be the chance of him getting HIV from me in this situation (not that I have any reason at all to believe I have it)? Lastly, I would like to clean myself before if possible. If I wanted to give myself an enema of some sort, how should I time it?
Love,
So Many Questions!
Dear Quez:
Wow, you don’t waste any time, do you? One little spontaneous anal episode and look at you now!
I’m not one of those condom-every-time people. I’m really not, especially when we’re talking about (presumably) monogamous couples, but I can’t help noticing that nearly every one of your concerns could be addressed by 75 cents worth of latex. Nothing will drip (it doesn’t much anyway, since the lining of the rectum is nothing if not absorbent); HIV worries would be assuaged (as the penetrator he’d be at little risk from the virus you don’t have); and anything messy can be skinned off and disposed of, never to be thought of again. If that’s not clean enough for you, you can get a "rectal syringe for anus hygiene." I think you’ll find them next to the hemorrhoid cream and just down from the Depends, but you can mail-order if shopping in that aisle makes you want to die. You can use it whenever, unlike a real enema, which must be done the night before if you want to avoid a horrible mess.
Condoms are neater, but nothing too terrible will come of bare-backing with a trusted partner, although it may not be a habit you want to cultivate.
Love,
Andrea
Anti-Christian mythology
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION For several years I’ve heard Philip Pullman’s young-adult fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials called an antireligious response to the mega-Christian Chronicles of Narnia. Progressive fantasy about troubles with an otherworldly version of the Christian right? I’m there. So I snapped up Pullman’s three novels — The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — each named after a magical device that aids our heroes in a quest through parallel universes, including a parallel Oxford, England.
Right away, however, I discovered that these are not antireligious novels. Certainly, there are some bad Christians, but there are also a god and tons of angels. Plus, all the universes are united via a spiritual substance called Dust — or, in our world, dark matter. Turns out dark matter is a kind of psychic life-essence that fuels angels and souls. The Dust thing really bugged me. I expect magic in fantasy worlds, but Pullman turns astrophysics into spiritual goo. It was a rhetorical move right out of Jesusland, where believers have managed to convert science into intelligent design. There’s a difference between creating a magical world with its own rules and claiming that scientifically observable phenomena in our own world can actually be explained with angels.
So why has this trilogy been touted by the London Telegraph and countless grumpy evangelicals as anti-Christian? Probably because Pullman portrays the ruling Christian sects in a parallel England as bloodthirsty and cruel. In this enchanted version of our world, all humans have an animal familiar who represents an aspect of their souls — the emotional part that takes pleasure in worldly things. The government is disturbed by the anti-Christian sensuality represented by the human-familiar bond and gives some Christians money to experiment with separating children from their familiars so that they won’t ever become "fallen." After these operations, the "severed" children are either mentally broken or so overwhelmed with grief that they kill themselves. It’s a pretty nifty little allegory for all the freaky shit Christians have done to kids to crush their sexual urges.
But the problem here isn’t Christianity itself. It’s with a bunch of antipleasure adults who want to torture erotic desire out of kids in the name of God. In addition, as we learn in the later books, a similar social problem has emerged in the world of angels. The Christian God is actually a frail old creature being kept alive by fascistic, high-level angels who are using his reputation to reestablish the authority of the kingdom of heaven throughout all the parallel universes. And somehow, because our heroes are fighting to stop these power-mad angels and bad-actor Christians, we’re supposed to think the book is antireligion?
Perhaps the West is so steeped in Christian mythology that we can’t imagine an outside to Christianity. Pullman gets to be antireligious simply because he criticizes one aspect of Christianity. Instead of pushing hierarchy and sexual repression, he celebrates individualism and sexual expression — as long as everybody is heterosexual, in love, and conforms to appropriate gender roles.
Lyra, an adventurous little girl from parallel Oxford who rescues a bunch of children from the evil Christian sect in The Golden Compass, defies God but remains in thrall to biblical gender roles. The closer to puberty she gets, the more she hands off her power to violent, strong men. Eventually, she reaches puberty and falls in love with Will, whose "subtle knife" can cut doorways between worlds. After the two young teens have sex, they radiate enough Dust to help save the world. This moment of sex-positivity is Pullman’s way of signaling to us that the new "republic of heaven" will be better than the old one.
But many other tenets of Christianity remain intact: the belief that spirituality, rather than science, can explain the world; and the idea that it is natural for women to subordinate themselves to men. When Lyra returns to her Oxford, where only men attend university, she can only hope to be educated at a less-prestigious women’s college. And her attachment to Will has robbed her of her only power: reading the golden compass of truth. If Lyra’s transformation from hero to second-class citizen is what passes for anti-Christian storytelling, maybe we should be looking for a new way out of the religion problem. *
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who would rather open the doorways between worlds than kill a God who doesn’t exist anyway.
SATURDAY
JAN. 20
FILM
Ocean Film Festival
You can keep your March of the Penguins — I’m more a
march-of-the-creepy-crawlies gal, so I’ll be happy as
a clam at the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival when I
check out The World of the Gastropods, by Danny van
Belle, a slow-motion video on the deep-sea environment
of the nudibranch and the sea snail. The second
ocean-related film festival in the world, this series
of seven programs of short films ranges in topic from
life in an Australian whaling village to a slumside
surfing school in Rio de Janeiro. (Nicole Gluckstern)
Also Sun/21; see Web site for times
$10 individual programs; $60 festival pass
Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center
Marina at Laguna, SF
(415) 561-6251
www.oceanfilmfest.org
MUSIC
Rhett Miller
Rhett Miller is probably as well known for his great
contributions to alt-country as he is for being an
indie heartthrob. The singer and principal songwriter
for the rock-laced country quartet the Old 97’s wrote
the melodic title track on his recent solo release,
The Believer (Verve Forecast, 2006), as a reaction to
the tragic suicide of his friend, musician Elliott
Smith. Don’t worry: the album has a lighter side. The
rest of The Believer, according to Miller, was
inspired by “sex, war, love, and death … but mostly
sex.” (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)
With Gran Bel Fisher
7:30 p.m., $25
Swedish Music Hall
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
The ballad of Carmelo
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
By the time you read this, a whole lot of filmmakers, publicists, journalists, and miscellaneous affiliates from Los Angeles will have once again descended on Utah for the annual feeding frenzy known as Sundance. Just what the aforementioned feed on isn’t always or exactly movies — the original raison d’être can get lost in the general scuffle. Classic old-school festival films — those quiet, starless character dramas and vérité documentaries sans hot-button topic and celebrity endorsement — tend to get elbowed to the back of the crowd by more pushy types.
Such was the case two years ago for Romántico, which finally gets a theatrical release this week. As good as if not better than anything else in Sundance’s 2005 American Documentary Competition, it nonetheless attracted no awards and scant interest. Admittedly, a film about undocumented immigrant Mexican musicians in San Francisco didn’t sound so compelling next to docs about mentally ill indie rock heroes, death row exonerations, Enron, kick-ass jock paraplegics, clergy sex abuse, and every comedian in the world telling one dirty joke. Plus, there had been a lot of documentaries about undocumented Latin Americans in the States of late — like Iraq (and clergy sex abuse), it’s an inevitable subject du jour for nonfiction cinema.
Most similarly themed docs before and since Romántico have had a ripped-from-the-headlines feel, tackling specific issues with activist zeal. Several (Wetback: The Undocumented Documentary and Un Franco, 14 Pesetas among them) have been very good. But despite the concern they share, they’re like well-crafted news bulletins, while at core Romántico seems like something else entirely — soulful and poetic, its tone and narrative oddly reminiscent of ’40s Italian neorealist classics.
Part of the reason is that it simply looks great. A frequent cinematographer on other directors’ projects, Mark Becker shot his own first feature himself. Not only does he have a definite eye, but he also made the deliberate decision to shoot on film (16mm and Super 16) — an approach practically unheard of for a documentary these days. Yeah, yeah, new formats have done a great service in making the so-called seventh art more affordable, immediate, flexible, democratic, and so forth. But anyone who tells you video can look just as rich as film stock is high. It (still) just ain’t so.
Though he’s since moved to New York City, Becker was living in the Mission District when he became intrigued by Mexican émigré musicians who play for tips in the area’s restaurants and on its streets. They form a subterranean "bachelor culture," making enough money to support the wives and children back home they might not see for years on end.
Becker had a short film in mind until he met a protagonist worthy of long-form scrutiny — Carmelo Muñiz Sanchez, who serenades diners with familiar tragic love ballads as half of a duo with Arturo Arias. When Sanchez abruptly returned to Mexico for the first time in four years in late 2000, after hearing that his diabetic mother’s health had worsened, Becker followed.
Romántico was shot sporadically over a three-and-a-half-year span, time enough to capture dramatic changes in the lives of both Sanchez and Arias. When we first meet them, they’re sharing a minuscule flat with two other Mexicans and four Guatemalans who all work at the same car wash. (The number of roommates seems limited only by the amount of floor space on which to sleep.) Our protagonists also log long hours as entertainers, making as much as $50 each on a good night. This might seem a threadbare existence, but it allows Sanchez to support his mom, wife, and two daughters (both preadolescent when he left in 1997) in relative comfort. In their town of Salvatierra, less fortunate families routinely compel female members into prostitution to survive. Sanchez will do anything to shield his loved ones from that and from privation, even if it means painful separation from them. The more footloose Arias has fewer responsibilities. In fact, his tendency to fly off on benders of unpredictable duration is one of Sanchez’s biggest headaches.
A dignified but unpretentious man nearing 60 at the film’s start, Sanchez makes an engrossing hero, and he’s very interested in telling his story. His whole life has been a struggle, its only goal that his children’s lives not be. The reverse immigration journey of sorts that he undertakes is joyous because it leads to a family reunion. But it also soon underlines why he left in the first place: his earning prospects in Mexico, where his job options are limited to playing in mariachi bands and selling flavored ice from a pushcart for far less income, are a fragment of what they were off the grid in the United States. With getting a legal worker’s visa near impossible, he must consider a second dangerous border crossing at an age when many Northern gringos mull retirement. This isn’t a matter of creature comforts — it’s about money to keep his daughters alive, in school, and off the streets.
At just 80 minutes in length, Romántico doesn’t dawdle. Yet it has a contemplative tenor seldom found in contemporary documentaries, and the frequent beauty of its images is amplified by Raz Mesinai’s ethereal instrumental score as well as the mini–passion plays Sanchez and Arias sing. Like those theatrically despairing, sometimes suicidal, and frequently sexist songs of love gone wrong, Romántico is seductive in its melancholy — and so easily overwhelms emotional defenses that you’ll probably find yourself desperate to know what’s happened to Sanchez and Arias since the end of filming. *
ROMANTICO
Opens Fri/19
Lumiere
Shattuck Cinemas
See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com
www.meteorfilms.org
CineKink 2007
The simple act of witnessing can transform sex into politics, so it’s not hard to see why privacy (like permission) is sacred. The quaint notion of the boudoir is ingrained in most acts of physical intimacy — whether lovers seek haven in the bedroom or take joy in rejecting it. More like Wild Kingdom than Girls Gone Wild, the CineKink 2007 series at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts neutrally observes sexual transgression: the forms it takes, the relief it offers, and the privacy it (often jubilantly) breaches.
More fun than watching actual webcam girls, Aerlyn Weissman’s doc WebCam Girls (Thurs/18, 9 p.m.) looks at three successful mavens and frames their stories with academic analysis. These women all began their journeys in the world of semivoyeurism from a place of corporate exploitation, so it’s ironic that they, like their patrons (commonly nine-to-five cubicle dwellers), are surveyed at work … well, at their home offices. In this surveillance their homes are as public as their patrons’ cubicles — to the 15 people (as opposed to 15 minutes) for whom they’re famous. Their identities are their brands, putting them in vulnerable positions both figuratively and literally.
Almost a brother film to WebCam Girls, Damon and Hunter: Doing It Together is a short feature nested in the Passion Plays Program (Fri/19, 9 p.m.). For the women of WebCam Girls, the issue of individualism is essential (Anna Voog makes Rorschach-inspired videos for her word-association songs, and Ducky Doolittle puts on fashion shows), but Damon and Hunter are like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: porn stars with protected identities as opposed to global brands. Primarily composed of one talking head interview with the two lovers, director Tony Comstock’s documentary intercuts a XXX scene that is more sweet than erotic. The footage feels deliberately contrary to a porn aesthetic, giving the impression that we’re observing, with anthropological so-called neutrality, the well-worn sex life of a couple. One partner asks, "Are you comfortable?" and the request for consent is like a demonstration of love.
Unlike the docs in the CineKink Series, Going Under (Sat/20, 7 p.m.), a sensitive and occasionally vague narrative feature, expressively represents the erotic and ultimately calmative values of nonvanilla sex. Psychoanalyst-turned-filmmaker Eric Werthman’s movie is about a relationship between psychoanalyst Peter (Roger Rees) and his dominatrix, Suzanne (Geno Lechner). Exhausted by her field of work, Suzanne announces her retirement, which signals an opportunity for them to see each other "outside." The two bond over childhood trauma: for them, history is a tragic theme. "I can never forget how we met" is an important sentence: not so much shamed as burdened, Suzanne struggles with the couple’s desires outside the security of her leather-bound workplace.
Fans of Going Under will find a good companion piece in Howard Scott Warshaw’s documentary Vice and Consent: The Art of Wrapping Intimacy in Very Scary Paper (Fri/18, 7 p.m.). Offering a more incisive view of BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism) than Going Under, Vice and Consent initiates a remarkable dialogue about the transcendence that results from this highly rigorous discipline. The hour-long doc has a homespun production value that gives a kind of authenticity to its interviews but also somewhat clouds its dialogue about sex as an exploration of human consciousness. Exhaustively, this film discusses the means by which the community rejects "vanilla" — and poetically, the world outside vanilla is as infinite as the characters who go searching. (Sara Schieron)
CINEKINK 2007
Thurs/18–Sat/20, 7 and 9 p.m. (Thurs/18, 6 p.m. free reception), $6–$8
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission, SF
(415) 978-2787
www.ybca.org
Make a wish
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS Sockywonk came back from Florida completely bald and we sat in the waiting room at the Kaiser lab, looking at pictures. In fluorescent lights, in the hospital hum, in the stony glare of disease … here was Florida, her Florida friends, her Florida sister, sunshine and tank tops, big smiles, water. Here was Sockywonk sitting in the haircut chair clowning for the camera, yanking fistfuls of hair right out of her scalp, waiting for the shave.
The last two things she did with her hair, when she had it, and knew she only had it for a couple more weeks, was she cut it into a Mohawk and then bleached it blond. Nowadays she wears a Davy Crockett hat with a tail, some kind of animal, and you know that I love her for this.
She took the hat off and showed me. There were lingering patches of black stubble, random and Rorschach. I put my hand there. It was warm and bristly.
I made a wish.
Once when I used to shave my head and people, including me, always wanted to touch it, I told a coworker while she was rubbing my snow dome that she could make a wish and she did and got pregnant. This was 20 years ago, more or less, in another time zone, and I can’t remember the mother’s or the father’s name, but I imagine the child of that wish, now more or less an adult, tracking me down and appearing at my door one day with a basket of fruit or a cheese tray.
"Hi!"
It had been cloudy and drizzly but mild all morning, and when we came out of Kaiser it was brilliantly sunny and freezing. "What do you really really want to eat?" I said. "More than anything in the world right now, for lunch."
"Soup," said Sockywonk. "Japanese."
It’s not like her to be decisive and I was thrilled. Soup, in particular Japanese style, is one of my favorite things in the world. On our way to my car she stepped in one of my least favorite things. I found an old copy of the Guardian in the back of the truck, opened it to Cheap Eats, and laid it out on the passenger floor.
In Japantown Center, sucking down edamame outside of Suzu because there weren’t any open tables inside, we looked at more pictures while waiting for our noodles. One of Sockywonk’s Florida girlfriends is pushing 60, and looks like she’s 35. There’s a big house, a deck, a river. Sockywonk says something about maybe moving back there.
"Would you do it?"
She doesn’t know. She’s been living in a rent-controlled apartment here for 15, 20 years. Has a lot of cool and beautiful San Francisco friends too. Some of whom, if not all of whom, are bigger than her and will chain her to a parking meter, if that’s what it comes to.
Here was a picture of Sockywonk flashing her boobs.
And here was our soup, finally, and oh-sweet-Jesus I have a new favorite restaurant! Not only do they have karaage ramen, which is fried chicken noodle soup, and not only are the noodles homemade and perfect, but the fried chicken comes in a separate bowl on the side so that, for slow eaters like me, you don’t wind up eating sog-monster mush.
I chopsticked a crispy chunk of chicken, dipped and dunked it into the dark, salty broth, and came up with an unexpected spot of ginger hanging on somewhere, a stowaway. Biting into it was like sex, if I remember correctly. Sex, not soup; the soup I remember perfectly, almost tearfully. The most succulent, deliciousest thing you can even imagine.
Fried chicken soup. Sockywonk had a combination plate, tempura over rice, and udon soup. Oh, and we also had shrimp dumplings and they were pretty good too. But how can someone who’s 60 look 35?
Chemo conks you on the head and makes you move a little slow.
Fried chicken does the same thing to me, so I had no trouble keeping step with Sockywonk on our way up the stairs to the restrooms, which of course are gender specific: one for this kind, one for that. But in this case I didn’t mind, ’cause we got to pee in harmony and wash our hands in harmony and look together into the mirror, thinking about Florida. *
SUZU JAPANESE RESTAURANT
Lunch: Mon. and Wed.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.
Dinner: Mon. and Wed.–Fri., 5–10 p.m.; Sat., 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sun., 11:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m.
1581 Webster, SF
(415) 346-5083
Takeout available
Beer and wine
MC/V
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible
Skin Flick
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
Your question form says to "try to be interesting." Hmm, performance anxiety … and I’m only talking about sex!
My wife is very sensitive to tastes, and she gags on my pre-come. On the other hand, I really don’t like the reduced sensation of using a condom during oral sex. So I was considering temporarily sealing my urethra with some of that "liquid bandage" stuff — no mess for her, plenty of good feelings for me.
I have several concerns. This stuff is used on small cuts, so it should be safe, but are there any nasty solvents that would make it problematic? After it’s dried, are there any risks if it’s ingested? If it works, I hope to use it often, so how can it be removed without lasting damage?
Love,
New Skin
Dear Skin:
Well, you succeeded. Your idea is interesting, and (this hardly ever happens) it is new. We oughtn’t let the fact that it’s also kind of crazy stop us from celebrating its novelty.
Dude. New-Skin contains alcohol and oil of cloves. Fingernail polish may dissolve it. It can, apparently, stain floors and countertops. It is labeled for external use only, of course, and also as not for use on "mucous materials." Is the inside of your urethra not a mucous material? My guess is this stuff will not permanently damage you but will hurt like hell and be difficult to remove if it gets inside. It’s not designed to fill holes anyway, so it wouldn’t even work.
Or did you mean the newer, higher-tech liquid bandage, the stuff that’s basically Dermabond, a.k.a. superglue? Have you not thought through the ejaculation problem? How, exactly, do you expect this to work?
This leaves us with three possibilities: The spray-on latex condom, although offering many opportunities for hilarity, won’t work, because it’s supposed to cover your entire penis (you stick your dick in the can, I believe) and because it isn’t on the market yet. Paint-on sex latex (google "liquid latex" or "deviant") is nontoxic and more or less meant to go naughty places but also is not meant as a gap filler — not that your urethra is a gap, precisely, but you know what I mean. Plus, latex is meant to be kept out of body cavities.
Last up: using a regular condom but rolling it down to cover just the glans. This is probably your best bet. It’s not creepy-cool like fake skin nor especially innovative, but it’s also not likely to maim you or require dramatic and embarrassing medical intervention, which, if you think about it, is really the least we can ask of our marital aids.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I love having raspberries blown on my tummy — you know, when the lips are placed against the tummy and then blown, causing a vibrating and tickling sensation. I’ve loved this ever since I was a child and also love doing it. I don’t know how to bring it up with friends because I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird. I only like women to do it to me, not guys! Is this unusual?
Love,
Herbert
Dear Herb:
Not at all. I know a number of people who are fond of the zerbert, at least one of whom can be instantly yanked out of the deepest, sloughiest slough of despond by the judicious application of sputtering lips to belly — but they are all babies. The reason nobody talks about this is that it’s something we do to entertain infants, like making faces or putting unusual objects on our heads. Few adults continue to laugh hysterically every time you put a stuffed pig on your head, and most would look askance at you for doing so.
Look, I don’t think this is even sex — it’s just something you do with your body that isn’t eating or excreting or sports, and we have trouble categorizing bodily acts that aren’t sex and aren’t any of those things either. We’re just weird about bodies. Perhaps we should all try to get over that, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
All that aside, though, nobody wants to hear you talk about this. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself frolicking naked with a likely female prospect, you can probably get away with it as a lighthearted, jokey thing, but do not bring it up over dinner, the way one might broach the topic of, say, S-M. People who wouldn’t blink on hearing that you are fond of pain or sex parties or any other normal kink like that might never feel quite the same about you after hearing you wax rhapsodic about belly raspberries. Probably because of the association with babies, the only people whose shirts we are allowed, even encouraged, to yank up without prelude or permission to shmoozle their tummy-tum-tums, it just seems a little unseemly.
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.
The Stop Online Expression Act
› annalee@techsploitation.com
TECHSPLOITATION Now that Congress is back in session, I’m bracing myself for the resurrection of the Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act. This is yet another bill, in a long line dating back to the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act, that attempts to curtail free expression online by raising the specter of child abuse. First proposed at the end of last session, the bill is the brainchild of Sens. John McCain and Charles Schumer.
Leaked drafts of the Stop Online Exploitation of Our Children Act read like a speech squasher’s gift list. The bill requires the government to create a list containing the e-mail addresses of known sex offenders — probably compiled from various state databases of sex offenders. All online publishers, including bloggers and blog aggregators like LiveJournal, will be forced to police everything posted on their sites, searching for e-mails from this list. If they find a match, publishers must delete the accounts associated with the offending e-mail address — as well as anything the owner has published on the site. Failure to do so will result in steep fines. Fines will also be imposed if publishers fail to report behavior that might involve child porn or obscene behavior.
Here are four good reasons to oppose this legislation:
1. It imposes an undue burden on small publishers. Under the proposed rule even small bloggers, chat room operators, social networking sites, and webzine publishers will have to comb through the content on their site, looking for things that appear to have been written by people on the list of sex offenders that the government will compile. In practice this will probably mean that sites offering community forums, such as Alternet and even Slashdot, simply have to stop allowing people to post. There will be too great a risk that they’ll be fined if they miss a post by an alleged sex offender.
2. It misses the target. Keeping e-mail lists and deleting things written by "sex offenders" is dangerous because the category is very capacious. In states like Texas, people arrested for streaking or public nudity are classed as sex offenders. In Illinois, convicted skinny-dippers (i.e., people engaging in "public indecency") must register as sex offenders. In addition, many databases of sex offenders have been shown to be full of errors — and it’s possible for two people to have very similar e-mail addresses. Too many innocent people will get caught up in this net and find their words deleted from the Web.
3. It will not stop people who are currently committing crimes. This proposed law focuses on persecuting people who once engaged in criminal acts, rather than people currently engaged in criminal acts. If a former sex offender is posting appropriate messages in a therapy group, or talking with other model-train hobbyists, there is absolutely no reason — other than sheer prejudice — for deleting what he or she has written. In fact, preventing convicted sex offenders from having a social outlet online might lead to more recidivism. Moreover, if publishers are throwing all their energies into hunting down and deleting convicted sex offenders, publishers may not have enough resources to track down nonconvicts who are posting comments that are genuinely harmful to children.
4. It sets a bad precedent by asking untrained citizens to report on one another. Certain groups, such as doctors and therapists, are required by law to report if one of their clients is a danger to him- or herself or others. Schools are required to report suspected child abuse. But these groups are full of professionals who are trained to identify dangerous behavior that may affect children. Publishers are not trained to identify such behavior, nor should they be asked to do so. If we force Web publishers to turn in or silence their fellow citizens, which group will be forced to do it next? Sales clerks? Librarians? Rental car agents? Forcing citizens to turn against one another is not going to prevent crime. It’s only going to spark prejudice and lead to greater social injustice.
Be on the lookout for the next version of the McCain-Schumer "Stop Online Expression" bill — especially as election season draws a bit nearer. Don’t let it fool you. This isn’t about saving the children. It’s about scapegoating and censorship. And it will let the real criminals go free. *
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who isn’t in your database.
Sex on wheels
I promised this blog wouldn’t turn into a cornucopia of hot-boy postings, but hey, they asked for it! The new 2007 San Francisco Bike Messenger Calendar is here …
All local SF models — the designers and printers too. You can get a copy (or several if you’re prone to sticky fingers) at Box Dog Bikes and Refried Cycles. No word yet on whether the proceeds go to the Home for Wayward Messengers aka my light well …..
PS I totally get points for not making any “package delivery in the rear” jokes. I do!
New wave on the tracks
› johnny@sfbg.com
Hip-hop’s maze is infinite in size, shape, and perspective, but sometimes MCs get trapped at an impasse and start repeating each other like a gaggle of parrots. During times like that — times like now — it takes imaginative minds to break through and open new verbal doors. That’s what the two-brained Bay Area rhyme machine known as Kirb and Chris does on Niggaz and White Girlz (Rapitalism), a mixtape-turned-CD that launches the sound of new wave thuggin’: loops of ’80s hits and obscurities coupled with hard and hilarious truths about sex and race in America.
"We liked to go to the new wave clubs and do our thing," Kirby Dominant says when asked about the inspiration behind the concept. "We’d go out during the week and then on Sunday just compose what we went through, whether it was little chicks fuckin’ with us, kissin’ on us or dudes tryin’ to downplay us. We wanted to come through and fuck with taboos and myths and stereotypes. It’s not necessarily something we take to heart — I’ll fuck anything that moves, first of all, I don’t care what color it is."
Before they began recording, Kirb and Chris tried out the title Niggaz and White Girlz in social situations to see what kind of reactions it provoked. "A lot of people in our crew were, like, ‘Dude, that’s fucking ignorant,’ " Dominant remembers. "I’d say, ‘But if I called it Niggaz and Mexicans, you wouldn’t say anything, huh?’ "
"Or Niggaz with Niggaz," Chris Sinister adds.
Dominant claims some black-on-both-sides (or in clear jewel boxes and on the outs?) big names were up for cameos — until they heard about the subject matter. "I’m not going for these rappers saying they aren’t fucking white girls," he says. "I’ve been on tour, and there ain’t no fuckin’ black girls in Canada. I’m not believin’ it. I’ve been to those towns!"
The truth is calling the shots on Niggaz and White Girlz, and it’s open season on any gender or color that just can’t get enough. Dominant and Sinister sprinkle a ton of pop culture references on top of what one of the album’s characters calls a "Rick James and Teena Marie love" theme that could have been just a gimmick: Hill Street Blues, the Cosby kids, New Kids on the Block, Vampire’s Kiss, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Malcolm Little are all recruited for dissing or boasting purposes.
But dig beneath, and you’ll find track after track that takes post–P.M. Dawn new wave rap in unexpected directions. The keyboard stabs of Gary Numan’s "Down in the Park," for example, are an ideal sonic setting for Sinister to live up to his last name with a realist tale of the hustling that takes over city rec areas at night. Inspirational and even kind of spine-chilling, "In You" keeps Bono’s histrionics on "With or Without You" to a minimum, allowing Sinister and Dominant to spin candidly detailed morality tales with different endings about a greedy promoter and a woman turning tricks to support a habit. "Human" gives Dominant an opportunity to provide the frankly hilarious sequel that LL Cool J never made for "I Need Love." On "Money" the duo get hot but not counterfeit, and DJ Ice Water is at his coldest in revealing what the B-52’s "Legal Tender" has been all along — a prototypical money-stacking rap track, complete with synths and hand claps.
Some of the more obscure musical sources on Niggaz and White Girlz give Kirb and Chris the chance to lay down tracks on which the new wave sound is wholly submerged. "Change Your Mind" might be the album’s hottest cut, with Dominant mocking the "foul quotations and little heart murmurs" of MCs who have a fear of the kind of music made by, say, the Talking Heads. But the most mind-blowing moment is "Doorstep, Girl." There the duo flow over Morrissey — specifically, the Smiths’ single-mom scenario "This Night Has Opened My Eyes." Sinister, whose mother, Diane, gave him a copy of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis when he was young, taps into his own version of Moz’s melancholic and literary approach to lyric writing, addressing a girl who "turned my open heart into an abyss."
"Before the album I really got my heart broke," Sinister says when asked about his words. "I think the best thing is that Kirb really told me, ‘Man, just talk about what’s goin’ on.’ "
"A lot of times, people in hip-hop, they try to tell their whole life in one song," Dominant says. "I study songs, and I’m, like, ‘How come you can’t write a song about just waking up in the morning and how the sun looks while your girl’s still asleep?’ "
Misery and comedy live next door to each other on Niggaz and White Girlz. The many skits that Kirb and Chris create don’t just shame all the wack between-song scripts that have stunk up too many recordings since gangsta crashed Prince Paul’s party — they’re better and more perceptive than most sketches by comedians. On "Don’t You (Take All My Money)," Ice Water scratches and scribbles over the voice of a woman who says, among other things, "Y’all wasn’t playing when you said ’80s dance music shit!" According to Dominant, the woman’s cameo came from club hopping on the block during a typical 16-hour recording session. "We were at Hyde Street [Studios], and I was, like, ‘I need chicks.’ "
"Literally, we pulled those girls out of the club and got them in the studio," Sinister adds.
Dominant: "All we did was play the song and put them in the studio and let them talk over it. Whatever we liked, we took."
Sinister: "We could do outtakes of the shit they were sayin’. And that was a beautiful woman too."
A top contender for funniest skit has to be "Fuck You and White Bitches," in which a Goapele-loving young woman gets heated with Dominant because he took a girl named Becky to see Revenge of the Sith. "It got really strange, because I swear to God, when Kirb was doing that skit with her, she really started feelin’ it," Sinister says, referring to the skit’s actress, the cousin of one of Dominant’s ex-girlfriends.
"You know the part when she says, ‘I bet she can’t ride a dick like I can,’ and the white girl goes, ‘You wanna bet?,’ " Dominant asks. "That was my uncle’s idea."
"At first it just ended, but my uncle was, like, ‘You should add "You wanna bet?" on that shit,’ " he says to general laughter.
Creativity is a family affair in the world of Kirb and Chris. "No one could have made this album but us," Dominant says. "How many hood-ass niggas are you going to find listening to the B-52’s and knowing about them who can rap?" *
KIRB AND CHRIS
With C.L.A.W.S., Matthew Africa, Ryan Poulsen, and Special Fun Ambassador Cims
Sat/13, 9 p.m.
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
$8
www.kirbandchris.com
www.rapitalism.com
Careers and Ed: Hard on the job
› culture@sfbg.com
Just a short walk northeast from the Hall of Justice in SoMa lies an internationally renowned palace of forbidden pleasure.
The nondescript four-story stone building is the headquarters for Kink, an online enterprise specializing in the production of short, sexy, streaming BDSM videos, available for a monthly subscription fee. Started by British bondage aficionado Peter Ackworth about a decade ago, Kink is home to such fetish favorites as Hogtied, Fucking Machines, and Ultimate Surrender (in which the winner of a female wrestling competition in a Greco-Roman setting gets to fuck the loser). It’s also — perhaps surprisingly — a great place to work, according to the people who work there. And that’s not just those strapped down in front of the cameras talking.
Granted, when you were young and dreaming of a fabulous career in film, porn might not have been your chosen niche. But if you’re looking for a job in media and are unenthused by the paltry postings on Craigslist offering the opportunity to work in the lackluster world of industrial video production, you might want to broaden your options. There used to be a steadier stream of work shooting commercials and Hollywood films on location here, but the high costs have caused that flow to taper off. Still, the Bay Area harbors a vibrant industry creating DVD and Internet adult content.
Crack all the jokes you want about the sleaziness of the porn business, but there’s some real dedication behind it. I used to have a job where I regularly interviewed people about their jobs: dot-com jobs, to be specific. Most of the time, the Web guru, marketing guru, or whatever guru I was interrogating would stare at me with a Stepford wife’s eyes and tell me what a blast it was to work at blobbity-blah.com. All the while I could hear the voice in his or her head blaring, "If my stock options end up amounting to nothing more than toilet paper, I’m gonna be pissed!"
Many local erotica production studios, on the other hand, offer a positive and creative work environment, upward mobility, and good pay with full benefits for everyone from customer service representatives to IT workers and video editors.
ONE HECK OF A DAY JOB
As I’m guided through the maze of sets at Kink — a jail cell, a dirty bathroom, a dungeon with vaulted ceilings reminiscent of the Doom video game, even a sci-fi room — I pass workers who are going about the business of making naughty fantasies come to life. Production assistants in black jumpsuits prepare sets for shoots. Set builders in flannels construct a booth in the back lot for the imminent Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. A model naps in the green room before his close-up.
In the office space where the postproduction editors work with the directors to piece together videos on large, brilliant flat-panel monitors, everyone I see looks like someone who could be working at an indie rock record label. They’re hip, young, hard at work, and having a good time.
I get to interview some of them on the canopied roof deck, replete with a bar, heat lamps, and a hot tub. Kelly Schaefer, a young woman with jagged layers of blond locks jutting to her chin, tells me she’s worked at Kink for about a year. Now the lead production assistant, in charge of scheduling and training all the other PAs for shoots and making sure everything runs smoothly, she started out as a model, performing in Kink’s Ultimate Surrender. The former Good Vibrations sales associate still models, because she really enjoys the wrestling. But she’s also working toward becoming a full-fledged producer.
Schaefer has a rep around Kink for being motivated, which is partly why she was able to move into a different role with greater responsibility. Since she didn’t have a background in production, being a model helped her get a foot in the door. For those interested, Schaefer says, "It’s a great company if you’re just getting started in BDSM." Kink follows the BDSM credo of safe, consensual, and respectful play and trains its PAs to make sure that all models are treated well, taking care to stop the shoot when limbs fall asleep during difficult poses involving mouth gags and rope.
Her coworker Guillermo Garcia, a videographer and PA, got his start by taking a number of production and editing classes in Final Cut Pro at City College. In addition to gaining more experience in lighting a soundstage on the job, the dreadlocked musician from Medellín, Colombia, says he enjoyed scoring the theme to Ultimate Surrender. He also has to make sure all the gadgets for the Fucking Machines series are in proper working order and, truth be told, clean the sex toys.
PERKS AND PACKAGES
Over at Colt Studios, which is in a converted warehouse near Potrero Hill that also houses an accounting firm, a team of 19 people works hard to produce slick and beautiful photos, calendars, and videos of handsome, masculine guys.
President John Rutherford, who got his degree in broadcasting at San Francisco State, realized that making internal videos at Hewlett-Packard with straight guys wasn’t in his future. He started working at San Francisco’s famed hardcore gay porn company Falcon Studios just as he was coming out. Rutherford said he aims to run a team of creative and self-directed people who are serious about attaining company goals. He likens working with porn to a nurse working with blood. "I can’t even watch Nip/Tuck, but here I think, ‘Hey, that’s a great picture; that’s a big dick.’ " It’s all in a day’s work.
His business partner, Tom Settle, says, "Our customer service agents get the question at least once a day: ‘Well, what’s it like to work there?’ People have a fantasy that models walk around servicing our customer service agents all day…. We’ve had people come to work here looking for the forbidden fruit. When they find out it’s not what they expect, they think, ‘Well, I could never tell anyone I work here.’ "
Not that it’s dull working at Colt, a company with a 40-year history of male erotica production, mind you. The elegant offices are filled with fine art. Georgia, Rutherford’s beagle, roams freely. The staff is urbane and witty.
Kim Ionesco, a Colt customer service rep who is starting to work more in marketing, jokes that she never thought her career would flourish in male porn. "I didn’t hit the glass ceiling," she exclaims, sipping a Red Bull. When she started working at Colt, all her lesbian friends began clamoring for DVDs starring Chris Wide, a hot property in Colt’s exclusive stable. She had no idea her girlfriends would know who he was. Then again, she quips, "I appreciate nice, polite, good-looking gay men." So why wouldn’t other dykes feel the same way?
Even straight IT professionals such as Aaron Golub find working in male, mostly gay porn surprisingly refreshing too. Previously, he worked as an IT director at a multinational company but quit because, as he explains, "I did not feel like what I was doing was noble. I feel more guilty about generating junk mail. I’ve never sat there and said, ‘Oh, I need some advertising,’ but I’ve definitely felt like I needed porn. I feel like what we’re doing is for people who really, truly want it. Where I worked before, I didn’t feel like that was truly the case."
Aside from working toward the common goal of providing customers with images of Colt’s much-admired, wood-chopping manly men, the twentysomething IT whiz gets to work with technology on the cutting edge. "We’re doing things you don’t do when you’re developing a site for IBM." He wouldn’t tip his hand, but basically he means that by making downloads and streams seamless and infallible, online porn is on the forefront of content delivery.
When I ask him if working in porn might cause some stigmatization with future employers, he says, "I’m in a different boat than actors or directors, because my skills are very transportable. I’m not in a situation where I’m going to have to present a reel." He also echoes what every other worker I interviewed told me.
"I wouldn’t want to work for someone who has a problem with what I do." *
› culture@sfbg.com Swanky-ass bars, high-end restaurants, sex, drugs — they’re all great things to love about San Francisco, but they can be cruel and constant symbols of failure to the scrilla deprived. With one-bedroom apartments currently priced at about $1,600 a month, cell phone bills hovering in the $75 to $150 range, and PG&E. religiously raping us for half our salaries, it’s amazing anyone can afford to live in this city, let alone enjoy its vast array of entertainment. But San Francisco has a secret. Unlike most cities, San Francisco pays its waiters, bartenders, and bussers almost $10 an hour. Add to that a healthy tip stash, and there’s at least a little disposable income to hit the town with. Of all the jobs the service industry has to offer, bartending rules. We’re talking potentially $200 to $500 for six hours of work. OK, count me in. The major problem, though, is acquiring the skills to qualify. San Francisco has almost as many service-industry schools as it does bars and restaurants. Would I get scammed if I enrolled in one? With the ultimate goal of becoming a bartender, I spent a month researching the cultlike world of barkeep education, starting with a quest for the perfect school. In order to minimize any money and time investments, I first looked for Web classes and free tutorials. I should have known better. Looking for a free or relatively inexpensive online course in bartending turned out to be a bigger waste of time than the hours I logged scouring the Internet for free porn as a young man. The sites of my youth always promised girl-on-girl action, fist-fucking, and bizarre fetish acts but only generated advertisements for sketchy online subscriptions or outrageously expensive chat sessions. The same was true, metaphorically, of www.bartendingcollegeonline.com, www.ebartending.com, and www.zizoo.com. Each one taunted me with screen shots and personal testimonies but wouldn’t give up the goods without a credit card number. So I passed on the virtual cocktail-slinging and set about finding a real-world educator. ABC Nationwide Bartending School (www.abcbartending.com, 1-888-262-5824) looked promising but seemed a little too corporate for my taste. Other schools, such as National Bartenders School (870 Market, suite 828, SF; 415-677-9777, www.nationalbartenders.com), seemed legitimate but didn’t quite have the attitude and style I associate with the glamorous life of a bartender. I want to be Tom Cruise in Cocktail, not the sad barkeep from Billy Joel’s "Piano Man." I want to serve mojitos, cosmos, and lemon drops to drunk yuppies, ending every night with fistfuls of easy cash and invitations to cologne-drenched orgies. Glamour! Eventually, I seemed to find perfection in the San Francisco School of Bartending (760 Market, suite 833, SF; 415-362-1116, www.sfbartending.com), a school run and taught by local SF bartenders — sort of a FUBU for mixologists. It works like this: for about $300 (a slow night’s tips for the average SF bartender) you get hands-on training and insider information from a seasoned professional. The classroom simulates an average pub, with music, neon beer signs, and a supersize bar with a pouring station for each student. There’s homework every night, a daily quiz, and a final exam. Near the end of every minisemester, students get a consultation with a professional résumé builder who has magical contacts to the city’s premier restaurants and bars. It’s a boot camp for bartenders, taught by some of the toughest and most knowledgeable drill sergeants around. The slick Web site, affordable price, and sense of community won me over. After a few simple clicks I was all signed up for a two-week course ($295, financing available). When I arrived at the SFSOB bright and early on a Monday morning, I was immediately greeted by Gretchen Mitchell, a veteran bartender who has served in more than 50 restaurants and bars in her 19 years in the industry. She wasted no time getting started. "All right class, answer me this: if someone comes up to my bar and tries to get a slow screw up against the wall, what am I going to do?" There were blank stares all around as the other students and I tried to think of the right answer. "Should I give a knowing smile and assume the position?" she said. "Hell no! I don’t think so. A Slow Screw Up Against the Wall is a mixture of sloe gin, vodka, and orange juice with a splash of Galliano. I know this, not because I have it memorized, but because I think like a bartender, and that’s exactly what we’re going to teach you to do over the next two weeks. Now get behind your stations and get ready for some action." She paused, then added, "You’re gonna thank me, guys. In no time at all you’ll be having ‘creamy sex on the beach’ with a whole gang of ‘redheaded sluts.’ And ladies, you’ll be serving up expert ‘blow jobs’ and ‘screaming orgasms.’ " With that, class had begun. I usually wait until around noon to have my first alcoholic beverage, but today was different. It was only 9:30 a.m., and here I was under the soothing neon lights of a real bar. Credence Clearwater Revival played in the background as I wiped down my section of mahogany, filled my ice chest, and got ready to make some drinks. Mitchell passed out laminated cards with pictures of simple drinks like tequila sunrises and screwdrivers and then drew our attention to overhead computer monitors. She was now the patron, and the other students and I were the all-powerful barkeeps. Laid out before us were soda guns, ice scoops, and quick-access mixers. Behind us were countless bottles of fake alcohol, glasses, and towels. We were ready. "All right, guys, here’s how it’s gonna work: I’m going to walk you through the first couple of drinks, show you how to measure an accurate one-ounce shot without a cup, demonstrate the proper way to hold things, and so on. Then the computer is going to take over for a while. But before I do all that, I want to see what you already know." Mitchell took a breath, looked around, and then said, "Make me a screwdriver right now." It seemed like an easy request, but as I fumbled around looking for orange juice and vodka, I realized I didn’t know how to mix them correctly. Mitchell watched as we tried to bullshit our way through the exercise. Some scooped ice with their glasses (a major no-no), poured in the orange juice, and then topped the concoction off with a haphazard shot of vodka. Others grabbed the vodka with two hands and then apprehensively poured it into an empty glass before adding the other ingredients. Our new sensei watched in disgust. Soon there were 11 crappy-looking screwdrivers sitting on the bar. The lesson behind the exercise was unmistakable: we didn’t know shit. We spent the rest of the morning learning proper pouring techniques, standardized orders of mixing, and some light terminology. After lunch we came back and stumbled through a simulated happy hour during which the computer flashed orders while Mitchell marched to and fro shouting suggestions. I thought it would never end. With sweat pouring down my face, fake liquor soaking my shirt, and freezing hands, I poured drink after drink until Mitchell suddenly screamed, "Last call!" The computer stopped flashing. "Good job, guys," she said. "Shift’s over. Now clean up your stations and go home. Remember today’s lesson: bartending is a lot more complicated than you think. It’s not just Bukowski. It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald too." The rest of the week followed a similar pattern. Mitchell lectured the class on a particular aspect of bartending and then turned the computer on and paced back and forth as we struggled to make drinks. Her teaching style grew warmer over time; eventually, she replaced her cold commands with a soft hand and a helpful voice. Under Mitchell’s guidance mixing drinks became second nature. I could pour a mai tai in a second. Mojitos, cosmos, dirty martinis — I could shoot them all out with ease. By the fifth day I felt like a pro, but I wondered if it was going to work. Would a two-week bartending course be all I needed to get a job? I sought the advice of some experienced bartenders. According to Cory Norris, a bartender at an Irish pub in the Mission, the answer is no. "Man, people come in with those certificates, acting like professionals, but once they get behind the bar, they’re fucking lost. The only way to get good at bartending is to jump in the fire. Those classes only work for people with big tits and blue eyes." Another bartender, Tommy Basso, owner of Delirium, reiterated Norris’s sentiments. "You can’t learn bartending at a fucking school, kid. You’re gonna get back here and choke. You’re gonna have five dudes mad doggin’ you in the corner ’cause you forgot their beers, two chicks at one end of the bar stealing your cherries, two others chicks distracting you with their tits in the middle, and 20 drinks to make. You’re not gonna know what the fuck to do. Those schools are bullshit." Basso and Norris scared me. Had my $300 been spent in vain? Had I been duped? In an attempt to assuage my anxiety, I went back to the SFSOB and asked Shawn Refoua, one of the other instructors there, about the real-world difficulties of gaining a foothold behind the bar. Refoua was familiar with the antischool attitude. "There is a scholastic component to every trade." he said. "I mean, can it really be true that bartending is so magical that you can only learn it in the field? That line of thinking just doesn’t make sense." Refoua has been teaching classes at the SFSOB for almost two years and has seen hundreds of students get good jobs. Like most teachers there, he keeps in close contact with his students via the Internet, using his MySpace page to notify them of job openings and changes in the industry. "I wouldn’t worry about people who say bartending schools don’t work," he said. "It’s true that a lot of people either fall into bartending or lie their way in. Maybe that’s why there are so many shitty bartenders around here. Many states actually require certification, you know." As an SFSOB teacher, Refoua could be a little biased, of course. And real-world bartenders naturally look down on newbies. Any smart-ass could conclude, though, that both have good points. A self-taught bartender knows how to deal with a drunken crowd, and a school-taught applicant comes equipped with a deep understanding of liquor ratios, bar etiquette, and efficient pouring techniques. I now feel confident enough to submit my résumé to all the places in my SFSOB counselor’s little black book. I can shake, stir, pour, mix, blend, and guess the ingredients in foreign drink names with ease. As far as handling belligerent drunks — well, I’m not worried in the slightest. My friends have taught me well. Just last night I had to stop one of them from jumping out of a fourth-story apartment, slap another in the face for throwing an egg at my girlfriend, and convince yet another to not buy more cocaine at 4 a.m. Bar owners of San Francisco, prepare yourselves. There’s a new cocktail jock in town. *
Careers and Ed: Cocktail frosh
THE SEARCH
ORIENTATION
LEARNING TO POUR
THE REAL WORLD
Quid pro shmo
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
My girlfriend and I met in Europe. We were simply friends because she had a boyfriend. She came to the United States for grad school, and now we’re dating. But, she still hasn’t broken up with her boyfriend over there. She doesn’t want to do it over the phone because she’s been with him for about five years. She says she’ll break up with him over summer break when she can do it in person. Does this mean I could also have another girlfriend? I don’t want to be the asshole boyfriend who tells her to break up with her undergrad boyfriend, yet it’d be great if I could be that guy without being an asshole. Help?
Love,
Confused
Dear Fuse:
You’re not confused; you’re just a bit dumb. You’re not really her boyfriend either; you’re the Guy She’s Seeing behind Her Boyfriend’s Back. As a GSSBHBB, you don’t get to tell her to break up with her boyfriend. If you want two girlfriends, well, people do do that. but it’s A) not likely to work out and B) best not demanded as quid pro quo. That’s just childish. You don’t really want to get all "Mo-o-m, she got more pudding than I did! It’s not fair!" about this, do you?
It’s perfectly OK to tell her you’d like to be her boyfriend after she breaks up with Euroboy — saying what you can and cannot put up with doesn’t make you an asshole, it just makes you not a doormat. Right now she assumes you don’t really mind being the guy she keeps stateside while she dangles Euroboyfriend on a very long string. And why shouldn’t she?
If she really believes letting him think all is hunky-dory (substitute appropriate folksy Yurpean idiom here) for another six months and then ruining his summer is kinder than dispatching him swiftly and judiciously, then I really don’t know what to think of her. Clueless, thoughtless, or cruel? Hmm … I just don’t know which one to pick — they all sound so good!
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I have been cohabitating with a woman for 10 years. We were a couple for half that time, but due to her bipolar disorder, my issues, and the resulting incompatibility, I insisted we officially break up. However, I’m still providing considerable financial support and have continued living under these less than ideal conditions as she strives to get her life back in order. Slowly. As if this were not enough, our apartment is in shambles. All the while I’ve lived virtually as an ascetic monk.
A number of opportunities have gone by due to my unorthodox, awkward living arrangement. I’ve wavered from one extreme to the other — going through periods of resigning myself to never having sex again or else being absolutely, uncontrollably obsessed. At this point, not knowing when my apartment and my life will be my own again, I am about to climb the walls. I lust after just about any female that crosses my path, including those to whom I would not ordinarily give a second look. Although my roommate gives lip service (the only kind I’ve received during the past five years) to my seeing other people, she also has no problem making it known how uncomfortable it would make her feel. Meanwhile, I am going stark raving mad. Look forward to hearing what, if anything, you can offer.
Love,
No Monk
Dear Monk:
Yeah, well, I’m not offering the only thing we’re both sure would make you feel better, so don’t get too excited.
Look, you know what I’m going to say. Loyalty is great, and taking care of those less able is great, but there’s a lot to be said for taking care of yourself too. You’ve done well by her. Now help her get set up with some services and take yourself (or, preferably, her) to Craigslist and find her a room. Pay her rent if necessary. Be her friend. But get her and her discomfort the hell out of your apartment.
I had to cut a lot out of your letter, which felt as long to me as your period of enforced and guilt-ridden celibacy has to you, but it seems you feel a little awkward about being so sexed up in your situation and at your age. Well, unless you’ve got a better plan, you’re just going to have to be 60 and starting over. That’s not the greatest but how much better is it than being 60 and done already, huh? Huh?
A side benefit of all this, which you probably haven’t considered, is that having been such a loyal caretaker will make you very attractive to certain types of women. It’s kind of the way the single mothers at the playground cannot stop themselves from crawling all over married men who show up with a baby. Or a puppy. (What is up with that, anyway? Women, cut that out!)
You will get free of this, and you will get laid. Do it in that order if that’s the only way you feel comfortable, but do it.
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.
Call the pedophile police
I just spent an inordinate amount of important mirror time in thrall to 16-year Brit sensation Lil Chris. Somebody shoot me. Winner of some sort of British Idol-like contest progged by Gene Simmons from Kiss, he’s like Hanson singing Buzzcocks songs. Yes this is enormous sacrilege — but didn’t we know that pop music was spinning in this direction?
His producers are doing everything they can to “sex him up” with all the double entendres and accidental shirt-lifts they can. But he’s really just this tiny teenager “rocking out” and clearly pleased to be alive — something distinctly missing in his female counterparts (let alone Justin … or even Aaron Carter, where’d he go? Popsicle rehab?) Either that or he’s constipated. The vid for “Getting Enough??” is reason alone for me to want to marry him in several, several years. Tiny tiny tiny!
Rapists and fishwives
› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Popular cinema places a lot of stock in stories about the redemptive power of love — stories in which love turns a skeptic into a true believer, an ill-tempered miser into a philanthropist, or a broken spirit into an undamaged specimen free from the taint of failures past. This year’s Berlin and Beyond Film Festival offers two very different takes on the theme: Matthias Glasner’s The Free Will (Der Freie Wille) and Doris Dörrie’s The Fisherman and His Wife — Why Women Never Get Enough (Der Fischer und Seine Frau — Warum Frauen Nie Genug Bekommen).
No Berlin and Beyond would be complete without at least one film that turns the concept of redemptive love upside down and inside out with relentless aggression. In 2005 that film was Head-On (Gegen die Wand), directed by Fatih Akin. Its gritty exploration of a mutually destructive downward spiral forged within a marriage of convenience was mercilessly high impact and emotionally challenging. This year’s contender for most controversial confrontation with the devil inside is The Free Will, a movie about an unlikely love affair set within the context of a current hot-button topic: the effectiveness of rehabilitation for repeat sex offenders.
Opening with a scene of brutal rape, The Free Will doesn’t immediately elicit much sympathy for its protagonist, Theo (Jürgen Vogel), a marginalized dishwasher in a middle-school cafeteria. Cut to nine years and four months later, as Theo is being released from a mental institution into a halfway house for a crew of equally wayward characters. "They tell you at the hospital it’s a new chance," the home’s caretaker, Sascha (André Hennicke), cautions him. "But the others call the front door the gateway to hell." Nevertheless, Theo seeks to refamiliarize himself with normality. He lands a job in a print shop, buys himself new clothing, eats his dinners at the neighborhood trattoria. He forces himself into a punishing exercise regime, while down the hall his flatmates cry out at night and blast heavy metal through the walls. He and Sascha become fast friends and sparring partners at the local dojo, and for a time it seems as if Theo’s demons have moved on to more susceptible prey.
Enter Nettie (Sabine Timoteo): awkward, unsmiling, and living on her own for the first time at the advanced age of 27 in an attempt to break away from her overbearing father’s influence. After an initially unrewarding encounter with Theo during which she tells him she hates all men (and he lets her know he’s not that fond of Frauen), they begin to reach out to each other and eventually become a couple.
Naturally, the tensions of their unspoken personal histories remain, seething below the surface of a tenuous bond based on mutual loneliness. At the end of this unflinchingly deliberate two-and-half-hour film, director Glasner leaves the audience grappling with almost the same conundrums he presented in the beginning: can forgiveness be granted even when unsought, and can the unforgivable ever truly be redeemed?
On the opposite face of the aggression-versus-love coin is Dörrie’s reconstruction of an old Grimm’s fairy tale. Otto (Christian Ulmen) is a soft-spoken fish parasitologist whose unlikely whirlwind romance in Japan with a backpacking fabric designer results in a marriage of mismatched expectations. His new wife, Ida (Alexandra Maria Lara), quickly asserts herself as a woman of ambition, designing first scarves and then dresses based on the various distinctive markings of the koi fish she encounters through Otto. Soon her material desires outstrip Otto’s modest means, and the two find themselves locked in a passive-aggressive struggle that is both familiar and poignant. Ida has no difficulty defining what she wants, but what does Otto want? Does he even want to be with her? Why can’t he say so? For Otto, Ida’s insatiable aspirations are baffling. Why can’t she be content with what they have at the moment? "Why is the here and now an obstacle that has to be overcome?" he asks, not understanding that her relentless quest for more is an attempt to compensate for the affection Otto has trouble articuutf8g — and that she has trouble detecting in his actions.
Like those of the demanding fishwife in the fairy tale, Ida’s dreams soon outstrip all realistic measure, and her seemingly endless good fortune catapults them from camper van to condo to country home in quick succession. The more preposterous their prosperity, though, the greater the gap becomes between their understanding of each other’s emotional needs, and it’s increasingly apparent that something will have to give if love is to be preserved. Narrated in part by a chorus of tategoi who await their own transformation, The Fisherman and His Wife examines the age-old dilemma of miscommunication between the sexes and the modern-day struggle for a balance of family, career, and koi — a word that means not just fish but love. *
The 12th annual Berlin and Beyond Film Festival runs Jan. 11–20 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Goethe-Institut, 530 Bush, SF; and Point Arena Theatre, Hwy. One, Point Arena. Tickets (most shows $5–$15) are available at www.ticketweb.com; for additional information, visit www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco.
Emily Postfeminist
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
Recently, my boyfriend and I were at a strip club and bought a lap dance. My experience has been that, as a girl, the hands-off rule generally doesn’t apply to me. However, out of respect for the girl, I don’t touch until she invites me to. This one invited me to touch her. Caught up in the moment, my boyfriend asked, "Can she touch your pussy?" I was a bit shocked because I assumed that was off-limits, but she said, "She can, but you can’t." So I started touching her on the outside of her G-string. I got a little braver and went under her G-string but still stayed outside. She moved a certain way during her dance, and my thumb kind of slipped right in. A few seconds later, she stopped it. She was nice and hugged me and told us to come back anytime. Did I go too far? I feel guilty that I may have made her feel like a hooker. Or is it really no big deal? I’m embarrassed to go back, and I’ve asked my boyfriend to not make that request in the future. How often does this sort of thing happen to a dancer?
Love,
Thumbelina
Dear Thumb:
Just what we needed, a new set of ethical dilemmas and moral failings to keep us awake and tossing on those long dark nights of the soul that tend to hit around this time of year. I really don’t think this is the sort of thing that used to bother people before half the female grad students in the country started stripping and writing books and doing performance art (oh, so much performance art) about it. For that matter, I don’t think other girls used to feel either as permitted or as obligated to go grope those girls for money at their places of work. I’m not entirely sure that what we’re seeing here is really an accurate demonstration of human sexual behavior in the wild — there are too many layers of politics and performance in there to tell what’s really happening — but I’m confident we’re at least seeing some genuinely new situations and their accompanying etiquette issues in play.
I’ve known any number of posteverything strippers, hookers, and dominatrices, but one in particular comes to mind. She’d been working at a womyn-owned crunchy organic peep show, but — surprise! — she could barely make her rent, so like so many before her, she’d given up her ideals and gone where the money is. Hired on at the grimy mainstream porn theater and Olde Lappe Dance Emporium, she was coming home with her pockets and God knows what else stuffed with 50s every night but complained to me that some guy came while she was wiggling around on him and ew, ew, gross, yuck, how dare he? I commiserated at the time because I’m a wimp like that, but honestly, isn’t this an occupational hazard? If you’re going to be a sex worker, you deserve to be treated with respect and decency, of course, and what you say goes as far as who’s allowed to touch where with what and so forth, but come on. Into each stripper’s life a little semen must fall. If that’s absolutely not going to work for you, dance behind glass (for lower tips) or, hey, get your Realtor’s license or something.
Most of the female sex workers I’ve known have been at least passingly bisexual, but even those who really aren’t seem quite genuinely enthusiastic about female customers, both prospective and actual. There are elements of novelty to the appeal, I’m sure, just as there are elements of safety and sisterly enthusiasm. What there ought not to be, and what you ought not to worry about, is an expectation that female customers aren’t really customers at all, that is to say, are not paying the sex worker for sex. While many women who go to strip clubs or book time with a dominatrix may be doing it to please a (male) partner or as a learning experience or a lark or just to make a statement of some sort, it would be pretty silly for a sex worker to be surprised when a customer, male or female, appears to be interested in having some sort of sex with her.
Your dancer granted you access. Maybe she liked you (or likes girls in general) or maybe she was milking you for tips, but whatever, she said yes. She has a sense of how sturdy or flimsy a barrier her G-string presents to curious fingers and was probably not surprised when you got where you got. Most tellingly, she invited you back whenever, which she was certainly under no obligation to do. I think it would be fine to go back there and fine to whisper "Sorry I got fresh last time" and fine not to. It would also be fine for her, in turn, to refuse you service, but I bet she doesn’t.
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.
Cinema 2006
CRAIG BALDWIN’S PRIZED CINEMATIC PEANUTS
Ever wonder why there’s an Automotive section in the newspaper every week … and perhaps consider that the Film section might also be driven by the same industry forces?
And so commercial cinema, dinosaurlike as it is, does continue to lumber along. ‘Tis built on the model of the automobile industry, and hey neighbor, why don’t you get yourself a moped (or an electric bike)?
For me, what’s most interesting in the motion picture arts and sciences is the move to molecularize — smaller, more intimate, even itinerant salons, installations, and interventions, bolstered not by (master-)narrative architectures of the cinema experience but by the satisfaction that the truly curious take in its dismantling, to analyze its history and process, and hell yeah, to repurpose its tropes for the contemporary moment.
Against this year’s model, this molecular filmwork acknowledges rather than erases what is resonant in film history, remediating the genre motifs as Menippean satire and inspired human-scale critical agency.
Speaking of scale, it was the six-inch-small twin girls named the Peanuts who paradoxically topped my list of ’06 epiphanies. While we were ensconced in the veritable bowels of the Artists’ Television Access basement for its life-saving fundraiser, David Cox’s nuanced, obsessively detailed three-hour deconstruction of kaiju — the Japanese rubber-monster idiom — demonstrated oh-so-marvelously how personal (and political) meaning can blossom from the Other-worldly visions of fantasy and exploitation film just like the aforementioned fairies, sprouting from the ferns of a lush jungle tableau. In Cox’s essay-cum-homage, here are dinosaurs (and giant moths, dragons, and smog monsters!) that we can use for allegory and imaginative play, not those that consume us in a vicious cycle of oil addiction and predatory foreign wars.
The Peanuts rhapsodize:
Mothra oh Mothra
The people have forgotten kindness
Their spirit falls to ruin
We shall pray for the people as we sing
This song of love
Craig Baldwin programs "Other Cinema" at the ATA and is the director of Spectres of the Spectrum, Sonic Outlaws, Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America, and other movies.
BONG JOON-HO’S TOP EIGHT MOVIES
(1) Family Ties (Kim Tae-yong, South Korea)
(2) In Between Days (Kim So-yong, US/Canada/South Korea)
(3) Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico/Spain/US)
(4) The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, France/Italy)
(5) The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US)
(6) Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
(7) Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
(8) Yureru (Miwa Nishikawa, Japan)
Bong Joon-ho is the director of The Host, Memories of Murder, and Barking Dogs Never Bite.
BRYAN BOYCE’S TOP 10 SIGHTS
• Au Bonheur des Dames (Julien Duvivier, France, 1930) at the SF Silent Film Festival on July 15.
• The sauerkraut western Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, US, 1952).
• Guy "King of the Q&A" Maddin presenting a program of his short films at the SF International Film Festival on April 25.
• Rest in peace Shelley Winters, peerless in Larceny (George Sherman, US, 1948), at the Noir City Film Festival on Jan. 15.
• Portrait #2: Trojan (Vanessa Renwick, US).
• Sword of Doom (Kihachi Okamoto, Japan, 1966).
• Not bad for a work-in-progress: Miranda July’s Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About at SF Cinematheque on Oct. 23.
• Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29.
• Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, Italy, 1961).
• Crispin Glover’s 1987 Late Night with David Letterman platform shoe karate kick demonstration, on YouTube.
Bryan Boyce is the director of America’s Biggest Dick, Rumsfeld Rules, and other movies.
MICHELLE DEVEREAUX’S 10 BEST AND 10 WORST
• Best walkies: Helen Mirren, black labs, and corgis, The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK/France/Italy)
• Best 1/8th mighty Choctaw: John Michael Higgins, For Your Consideration (Christopher Guest, US)
• Best German whore: Cate Blanchett, The Good German (Steven Soderbergh, US)
• Best Russian whore: Vera Farmiga, Breaking and Entering (Anthony Minghella, UK/US)
• Best ex-junkie whore: Amy Sedaris, Strangers with Candy (Paul Dinello, US)
• Best bloodsucking: Stockard Channing, 3 Needles (Thom Fitzgerald, Canada)
• Best unnecessary invention: 3-D glasses for real life, The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, France/Italy)
• Best western: The Proposition (John Hillcoat, Australia/UK)
• Best meltdown: Frances McDormand, Friends with Money (Nicole Holofcener, US)
• Best performance by the artist formerly known as Marky Mark: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US)
• Worst performance by the artist formerly known as Marky Mark: Mark Wahlberg, Invincible (Ericson Core, US)
• Worst meltdown: polar ice caps, An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, US)
• Worst nudity: Ken Davitian, Borat (Larry Charles, US)
• Worst role model for Britney Spears (excluding Paris Hilton): Rinko Kikuchi, Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, US/Mexico)
• Worst date movie: United 93 (Paul Greenglass, US/UK/France)
• Worst love interest for Tom Cruise since Katie Holmes: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, US/Germany)
• Worst stand-in for Margot Kidder: Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, US/Australia)
• Worst reason to become a vegetarian: Barnyard (Steve Oedekerk, US/Germany)
• Worst emoter (someone give this man a lozenge): Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, US)
• Worst excuse for two upcoming sequels: Goal! The Dream Begins (Danny Cannon, US)
Michelle Devereaux is a Guardian contributing writer.
SARAH ENID HAGEY’S PRESCRIPTIVE LOOK AT THE CINEMATIC CRYSTAL BALL
Here is my prediction for the coming year of film. I know I may sound like a new age mumbo-jumboist, but I sense a return to mysticism and spirituality. The age of nihilism is really just some shortchange bullshit. The postmodern, amoral, canned reality period has proved its point and has been nothing more than a carbuncle. What, then, is my prescription? The surreal, detached from reality, psychedelic, hallucinogenic, optimistic fantasy film. In the words of my dear friend Chad Peterson, "Fantasy intoxicates only the strong mind. It is horror and humor, the twin children of their mother imagination, which open a sea chest of all memories, hanging above the heart an anchor and above the plow a star." Fantasy embraces the nostalgia and hope that we’ve spent our angsty years repressing. When you think all hope is lost but then that Giorgio Moroder track starts, you just weep like a very small child.
Sarah Enid Hagey’s short films include The Great Unknown and Lovelorn Domestic.
JESSE HAWTHORNE FICKS’S 10 PICKS*
(1) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US).
(2) The New World (Terrence Malick, US).
(3) L’Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France). Be patient with this quiet cinematic poem — along with my first two picks, it will completely break your heart.
(4) Battlestar Galactica (created by Michael Rymer, US). I know, I know, it’s on the SciFi Channel. But seriously, this show is more thought-provoking than most feature films.
(5) A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, US). Creatively hypnotizing and terrifyingly relevant.
(6) The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US). Best performance of the year, easily: Marky Mark.
(7) District B13 (Pierre Morel, France). The Transporter + John Carpenter’s politics = sheer bliss.
(8) Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, US). It’s embarrassing to connect so strongly to these awkward hipsters attempting to figure themselves out.
(9) Hostel (Eli Roth, US). How satisfying is it to watch a bunch of sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Americans get horrifically sliced and diced? Try multiple viewings.
(10) BloodRayne (Uwe Bol, US/Germany). Another supersleazy, terrifically pathetic video game adaptation by the master of contemporary B-movies.
* Though he hasn’t seen David Lynch’s Inland Empire yet.
Jesse Hawthorne Ficks teaches film history at the Academy of Art University and programs "Midnites for Maniacs" at the Castro Theatre.
SAM GREEN’S TOP 10
(1) "The Tailenders," P.O.V. (Adele Horne, US)
(2) John and Jane (Ashim Ahluwalia, India)
(3) Portrait #2: Trojan (Vanessa Renwick, US)
(4) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US)
(5) Reporter Zero (Carrie Lozano, US)
(6) Rap Dreams (Kevin Epps, US)
(7) "Lampoons and Eye-tunes," an evening of Bryan Boyce’s short films at the ATA on Oct. 7
(8) Workingman’s Death (Michael Glawogger, Austria/Germany)
(9) "War-Gaming in the New World Order," presentation by film critic Ed Halter at the ATA on Oct. 21
(10) American Blackout (Ian Inaba, US)
Sam Green is the director of The Weather Underground and Lot 63, Grave C.
DENNIS HARVEY’S 10 MOST ALARMING PORN TITLES (NO, HE DID NOT MAKE THESE UP)
• Bareback Twink Squat
• Hole Sweet Hole
• Dirt Pipe Milkshakes
• I Dig ‘Em in Pigtails 2
• Boob Exam Scam 3
• CSI: Cum Swappers Incorporated
• Gorgeous Chloroformed Women!
• A Little Cumster in the Dumpster
• What Happens Between My Tits Stays Between My Tits
• Ass Jazz 2
Dennis Harvey is a Guardian contributing writer and a reviewer for Variety.
RIAN JOHNSON ON THE TELEVISION RENAISSANCE OF 2006
I resisted for a long while. Even as the rising tide of TiVo-wielding friends and coworkers lapped at my doorstep, I stiff-armed them with the dismissive battle cry "I don’t really watch TV." I’m not sure what happened in the past year, but the levee has broken. Big-time. I have no shame. I pimp Lost like no one’s business. I spread box sets of 24 like some modern-day Johnny Appleseed. The scales have fallen from my eyes: any given episode of South Park contains more hilarious and incisive satire than American cinema has offered in decades. Freaks and Geeks is the most painfully true window into adolescence since the glory days of John Hughes. And the new Battlestar Galactica (I swear to God) stands shoulder to shoulder with the best cinematic sci-fi of the past century. So drop your burdens by the coaxial river, all ye high-cultured unbelievers, and join us. The water’s fine.
Rian Johnson is the writer-director of Brick.
JONATHAN L. KNAPP’S TOP 10 CINEMATIC RETURNS AND ARRIVALS
(1) The return of Big Edie and Little Edie, plus the Marble Faun (a.k.a. Jerry Torre), who accompanied the screenings of Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, US, 1975) and The Beales of Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, US) at the Castro on Nov. 22.
(2) The Up series: 49 Up (Michael Apted, UK) may not have been the most eventful chapter, but a new installment is always welcome.
(3) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, France) at the Castro Theatre
(4) Scott Walker in the video for "Jesse" (Graham Wood, UK) plus various clips on YouTube.
(5) The Criterion Collection DVD of Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, US, 1939), a film that equals any of the director’s beloved westerns.
(6) The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan), SF International Film Fest screening at the Castro Theatre on April 23.
(7) The Host (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea), opening night SF Animation Festival screening at the SF Museum of Modern Art on Oct. 12.
(8) Brick (Rian Johnson, US).
(9) The Descent (Neil Marshall, UK).
(10) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US).
Jonathan L. Knapp is a Guardian contributing writer.
JOÃO PEDRO RODRIGUES’S MOST REVEALING MOVIE MOMENT
On Dec. 9 I saw John Ford’s The Searchers in the same theater where I had seen it for the first time when I was 15. It was a Saturday evening; 25 years ago, it had been a Thursday evening. Back then, I had never thought a western could be as moving as a Robert Bresson film.
This time the projectionist oddly forgot to put the VistaVision mask in the film projector, and I (and everybody else that was in the audience, even if nobody complained) saw a film "around" the film that continuously took me out of the tale of revenge happening below. Things that shouldn’t be seen, that usually remain hidden were revealed. I saw the lights, the microphones, the sets. I was outside the drama, but it was as if the film turned inside out in front of me.
How new can an old film be?
João Pedro Rodrigues is the director of Two Drifters and O Fantasma.
JOEL SHEPARD’S 11 FAVORITE FILMS (PLUS RUNNERS-UP AND MEMORABLE ODDITIES)
(1) I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/France/Austria).
(2) Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, US).
(3) Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria).
(4) "The Dundies" and "A Benihana Christmas," The Office.
(5) Miami Vice (Michael Mann, US/Germany). Except for the lame part where they go to Cuba.
(6) Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, US).
(7) The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US).
(8) Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea).
(9) United 93 (Paul Greengrass, US/UK/France).
(10) "A Time for Love" segment of Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, France/Taiwan).
(11) Jackass Number Two (Jeff Tremaine, US).
RUNNERS-UP AND MEMORABLE ODDITIES:
• Shadowboxer (Lee Daniels, US). What? Helen Mirren as a female assassin, Cuba Gooding Jr. as her lover, and lots of nudity and graphic sex? I am in awe of its stupidity.
• Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria).
• The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania).
• Same Day Nice Biscotts (Luther Price, US). Price takes 13 identical, abandoned 16mm film prints and turns them into one of the most emotionally wrenching shorts I’ve ever seen.
• www.sexandsubmission.com. Um, isn’t this illegal?
• Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan, US).
• The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (Thomas Clay, UK). Offensive, mean, juvenile garbage, and I’ve never seen a more pissed-off audience reaction at the Rotterdam Film Festival — no small feat against the unshockable Dutch.
• For Your Consideration (Christopher Guest, US).
• Sitting alone in a decrepit theater watching a triple feature of generic "pink" films in Beppu, Japan, feeling boredom and pain so intensely that I began to travel through time and space.
• "The Last Wild Tigers," 60 Minutes, Nov. 19.
• Gravedancers (Mike Mendez, US). Delightful old-fashioned horror, from "After Dark Horrorfest: Eight Films to Die For."
• "Evelyn Lin," sigh.
Joel Shepard is film and video curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
SEAN UYEHARA’S COUNTDOWN OF THE 10 MOST OVERUSED DEVICES AND PLOT POINTS IN FILM FESTIVAL ENTRIES
(10) My pet is cute.
(9) To me, "experimental" means playing the same thing 412 times in a row. Crazy, huh?
(8) This old person is kind and sage. Listen to him/her. Or: these old people are kind and sage. Listen to them.
(7) Things are happening to these 10 people. Wait, they all know each other in different ways. Weird.
(6) Someone is following me. I know it because I can hear their echoey footsteps.
(5) I am a struggling writer/director/actor/painter/chef/mime/dancer/sculptor/other, and I smoke cigarettes, and I won’t compromise.
(4) There is a woman. She’s just like you and me, except that she is a prostitute/stripper — and she is so hot. Just watch her.
(4a) It’s hard out here for a pimp.
(3) Strange things keep happening to me. Additionally, I am somewhere where I don’t know where I am.
(2) God talks to me.
(1) You thought this was real? No way, this is a "mockumentary"!
Sean Uyehara is a programming associate at the San Francisco Film Society.
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL’S 10 FILM-RELATED FAVORITES
(1) The Boy from Mars, film installation by Philippe Parreno.
(2) Hamaca Paraguaya (Paz Encina, Argentina/Paraguay/Netherlands/Austria/France/Germany).
(3) Los Angeles–based Festival Management no longer works for the Bangkok International Film Festival.
(4) Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea).
(5) www.brucebaillie.net.
(6) Quay Brothers — the Short Films 1979–2003 DVD (BFI).
(7) Tokyo Filmex.
(8) Nintendo Wii. It’s sort of new cinema.
(9) The Wave (Kumar Shahani, India, 1984).
(10) Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria).
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is the director of Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, and other films.
PINKY AND D. ERIC BECKLES OF TV CARNAGE LOOK BACK AT A LITIGIOUS YEAR
For us, 2006 was the year of the entertainment lawyer. It’s not a year recognized by the Chinese calendar yet, probably because being born during the year of the entertainment lawyer would be the worst thing in the fucking world.
Our year in TV and film was made love to by the word vetting — the process by which people’s thoughts and ideas are raked over, much like hot hands raking over unsuspecting pubes. (Trust me on that one.) When lawyers start examining your phrases and intentions, existence enters another dimension. It’s beyond psychedelic; it’s an assault by litigious wizards on a naive concept of freedom of speech. No matter what your intentions are, they will be examined and altered to a level of incompetence that makes you embarrassed for even having parents who engaged in the intercourse that made you.
Lawyers make work for lawyers. No one is oblivious to this, but the times spent waiting for their responses are the golden moments or the reeking turds of life, depending on the situation.
In the case of a recent situation I was privy to, we waited in real time as lawyers in another city examined the use and placement of words in a sentence to such a horrific degree it was obscene. The problem is these guys and gals (I’m so open-minded I even realize women can be lawyers) are zingless word calculators. They have the comedic timing of a court stenographer reading back testimony. So when they finally rewrite something, it feels like you’re reading an autopsy report. They ruin everything with a fear of being sued that they use to make everyone paranoid so they can get as much money from your fear-induced wallet as they can.
TV Carnage’s videos include A Sore for Sighted Eyes and When Television Attacks.
Eleven patriot acts
(1) Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand). It isn’t just the laugh-out-loud third-act arrival of a typically grin-struck and beehive-hairdoed MD who keeps a pint of Mekong whiskey in her prosthetic leg that’ll leave you convinced that Syndromes is Apichatpong’s funniest film to date. A blissfully bonkers daydream about intoxicating orchids, unrelieved erections, the possible meanings of the acronym DDT, and the smoke-snarfling blowhorn in the bowels of a Bangkok hospital, Syndromes — commissioned as part of the Mozart-celebrating New Crowned Hope series — is so stuffed with surrealist comedy that it might serve as an ultracryptic gloss on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. While Tony Jaa heads the world over turning most of what might have become a truly modern Thai cinema into some sort of throwback kickboxing hall of shame and even the brightest of contemporary Thai filmmakers seem increasingly content to play catch-up with their own shadows (Wisit Sasanatieng’s politely nostalgic ghost story, The Unseeable; Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s short treatise on air travel and irrational longing, "Twelve Twenty," in Digital Sam in Sam Saek 2006: Talk to Her), Apichatpong’s unattenuated ability to keep bending time’s arrows to his own cinematic desires seems almost as remarkable as his always Cupid-like inclination to keep firing them straight into our hearts.
(2) I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/Malaysia). Diehard Tsai aficionados will no doubt recall that this leading light of modern Taiwanese cinema is actually a native Malaysian — but who could have anticipated a sex-comedy-slash-love-hate-letter to old Kuala Lumpur as sweaty, scrungy, narratively schizoid, and violently scrubbed and scoured as this? Fans of the foot-stompin’ fellatio follies of Tsai’s last film, The Wayward Cloud, that’s who. Splitting his constant muse, Lee Kang-sheng, into two separate but similarly catatonic parts, each of them oblivious to the admirers who covet and caress his mostly supine form, Tsai burrows beneath and brazenly overenlarges the seediest sounds, side streets, and half-finished architectural skeletons of the country’s monsoon-moist first city in ways that even Malaysia’s brave new breed of cine indies rarely dare. As bizarre and visual gorgeous as it is brutally suspicious of Kuala Lumpur’s racially polyglot society, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone shifts the director’s patented mannerisms and love-blossoms-in-the-ruins paradigm only slightly — but just enough to remind viewers that even the moldiest mansions can prove breeding grounds for desire and that scratching an itch only makes it worse when the bedbugs start to bite.
(3) and (4) The Host (Bong Joon-ho, Korea) and The Departed (Martin Scorsese, US). Two mass-market blockbusters from opposite if equally cinephilic corners of the multiplex world, relative newcomer Bong’s politically loaded sci-fi spectacular and past master Scorsese’s performance-driven, pretzel-logic policier both made buckets of ducats at box offices across the planet, even as they were winning the most fickle of film critic’s hearts and minds. That The Host would immediately be optioned for a Hollywood remake surprised no one; that The Departed would manage to reinvigorate and at times even overshadow its already quite vibrant Hong Kong source material surprised almost everyone. (Christopher Doyle, eat your hat.) OK, so Martin Sheen’s no Anthony Wong — how about the mouth on Mark Wahlberg? Or the riotously rat-infested payoff of the movie’s final shot? And as for the blend of blighted familial relations, bitter anti-Americana, and run-Run-RUN! hyperkineticism that fuels The Host — to say nothing of the exquisite Zen archery of Bae Doo-na — well, when faced with the task of trying to improve upon the effortless zap and zeal of Bong’s filmmaking, the chopshop chumps in Hollywood haven’t got a chance.
(5) and (6) Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, US) and A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, US). I’ve loved Kelly Reichardt’s deliberately lo-fi reconsiderations of many of the early 1970s’ most cherished genre-memes since her Badlands-on-a-lunch-money-budget first feature, River of Grass. My feelings about almost every Richard Linklater film I’ve suffered through since Slacker have run entirely to the opposite extreme. So while the inclusion of Old Joy — Reichardt’s gorgeously drifty riff on modern American malaise and misfit male bonding — seems an entirely natural inclusion on this list, the appearance of Linklater’s fear-soaked and ferociously rotoscopic incarnation of Philip K. Dick’s most harrowing and heartbreaking book surprises no one more than me. But from the first volley to the film’s inescapably haunting final thought — "I saw death growing up from the earth" — A Scanner Darkly‘s inescapably despairing analysis of lives sucked hollow by addiction had me hooked.
(7) through (11) The Wire, The Sopranos, The Shield, Deadwood, Dexter (various directors, US). I may have already perilously and uncharacteristically overburdened this list with Americana, but the ways in which so much of modern American television, now some five or six years into its latest and most glorious golden age, has risen to the occasion provided by modern American cinema’s almost wholesale evasion of politically progressive and powerfully open-ended storytelling is a phenomenon no one can afford to ignore. From the battle of the Wills (Shakespeare versus Burroughs) that underscores the sixth season of The Sopranos and the seriously fucked-up bad cop–bad cop antiheroics of The Shield to the symposium on the failure of social systems borrowed from the poetics of the ancient Greeks by The Wire and the McCabe and Mrs. Miller–meets–Berlin Alexanderplatz frontier profanities of Deadwood, today’s American television is as much a source of constant pleasure as an unprecedentedly complex nexus of narrative sophistication and moral-vacuum despair. That the "hero" of this season’s best new program, Showtime’s Dexter, isn’t just a lovably humanized sociopath (à la Tony Soprano), a homicidal policeman (à la Vic Mackey), or a basket case forensics specialist (à la the entire cast of CSI: Miami) but a huggable (and strangely pink-lipsticked) combination of all three delivers ineluctable proof positive that where once lay a vast wasteland populated by Gilligans and Gidgets now blossoms the promise of a brave new world. (Chuck Stephens)
Don’t mess with it
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
In last week’s response to "Pill or No Pill," I’m glad that you mentioned that playing around with endocrine systems can be harmful. When I was diagnosed with anorexia, the doctors told me that if I kept missing periods, I would be at risk for things like low bone density and osteoporosis. It seems suspect that doctors and pharmaceutical companies are now advocating pills that limit a woman’s period to four times a year. What can you tell me about it?
Love,
Keeping My Period
PS In regard to "Pill or No Pill," why can’t they have sex during her period?
Dear Period:
I don’t get a chance to say this very often, but your doctors misspoke. There’s no doubt that your endocrine system was messed up good while you were anorexic, but it wasn’t the missing periods that were doing the damage. Both the amenorrhea (lack of periods) and the potential bone loss were symptoms of messing with your endocrine system. When one hormone gets knocked out, the entire chain is broken, and all sorts of havoc potentially ensues. You weren’t menstruating because you weren’t ovuutf8g because your ovaries weren’t getting the right hormonal cues because your pituitary gland wasn’t sending them because your hypothalamus wasn’t sending them because you were starving. It’s actually a good idea, if you’re an ovum, to avoid getting ovulated and fertilized while there’s no good material with which to build a baby.
Somewhere in there your ovaries also failed to get the hint to produce lots of estrogen, which is required for the absorption of calcium, and there go your bones. So yes, of course it’s potentially dangerous to mess around with your endocrine system, but we should remember that millions of women do just that every day when they take their pill, and they’re just fine. Better, even, since they’re not having to squeeze out another baby every year or so for the entire span of their reproductive years, the way our "ansisters" did and as women still do wherever reliable birth control is unavailable or forbidden. And speaking of our ancestors …
We (the Western, industrialized, supermarket-shopping we) are the freaks in a long line of normal people. As any number of evolutionary biologists and other researchers have pointed out recently, it is not at all the natural state of women to menstruate every damn month for 45 (damn) years. Contemporary hunter-gatherer (mostly gatherer) women start late, have a bunch of babies, breast-feed them forever, and die young, totaling about 100 or 150 periods in a lifetime. By contrast, supermarket women reach for the tampon box approximately 450 times. No wonder we’re crabby.
So is menstruation natural? Well, obviously, but an argument can be made that not menstruating is even more so. What seems a brute biological fact ("women bleed every month") turns out to be in part a social construct. Isn’t that cool? This sort of thinking isn’t really new — the developers of the original pill built in the bleedy part, the placebos at the end of the cycle, because they thought not menstruating would freak women out, not because it was medically necessary — but it’s not the sort of thing people tend to talk about. It will be, though, by necessity, and soon. As new products make four periods a year or no periods a year (seriously, this one has been extensively studied and so far so good for safety) increasingly popular, menstruation will become a lifestyle choice like any other. This will disgust the more moon-goddessy type feminists and please the "it’s all about choice" ones. For everyone else, after a while, it will just seem, well, natural.
You also asked, very reasonably, why the couple in the original letter (she wanted to take something to suppress her periods so they could have romantic weekends) couldn’t just have sex, blood or no blood. The answer is they could, of course. I’m willing to bet that they hadn’t even discussed and dismissed that option, as "no sex when the painters are in" is just one of those things everybody takes on faith until they don’t. If a woman’s "monthlies" turn out to be at least partly a social invention, the menstrual taboo is entirely one. Barring the presence of something nasty, blood-borne, and contagious, there’s no reason on earth (or the moon, for that matter, and aren’t we going back soon?) why a couple can’t have a threesome with him, her, and Aunt Flo.
Speaking of the moon: women down here have connected their sexuality and fertility with the phases and pull of our satellite for so long that I have to wonder what happens to all that lunar blood magic when we’re living in bubbles on the moon. Nothing takes the mystery out of a hunk of rock and dust like having to dig holes in it to build a privy.
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.
A geek’s new year
TECHSPLOITATION I’m going to spend New Year’s Eve in Berlin with a large group of hackers gathered by the venerable Chaos Computer Club. Something about the idea of going to a foreign country to celebrate the new year has made me want to do the traditional thing and make a list of resolutions. Just to be sure I follow through on them, I’m presenting to you the unexpurgated list of my top eight geeky resolutions for 2007.
Relearn French. I took French classes from eighth grade all the way through graduate school, and at one (triumphant) point I was actually able to read André Gide’s L’Immoraliste entirely in French. It probably helped that the novel was full of gay sex, which has always been one of my favorite topics. But sadly, my French has withered away — much to the chagrin of my sweetie, who speaks with an enviable accent. Next year I will relearn and go to Paris. J’ai envie de manger le brie et les baguettes à côté de la Seine! Plus, every geek should be fluent in at least two natural languages.
Share more media. I’ve got a terabyte RAID array full of music. I’ve got DVDs full of TV shows I’ve downloaded from the Interwebs. I’ve got movies and games and a disgustingly huge book collection. Next year, I’m going to create more opportunities to share them with friends, acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, whatever. Set the media free, I say.
Watch out for videomining. Now that Google owns YouTube and everybody is freaking out over video archives, I’m looking out for the ultimate videomining software. Ideally, I’d like a program that could find items in a video archive by genre (e.g., "look up all horror films") or search through them for sequences of images (e.g., "find scenes featuring dragons"). I’d also like a program that could search an individual movie for a scene or phrase (e.g., "find me a scene where Captain Kirk says, ‘Boo!’ ").
Protest the Schumer-McCain privacy-reaming bill. Senators Charles Schumer and John McCain have promised to introduce legislation next year aimed at stopping child porn and sex offenders from traipsing online. It would involve the creation of an "e-mail registry" for sex offenders and would force online service providers to police content on their sites, looking for the aliases of sex offenders and images of child porn. Not only is there a potential here for squelching free speech but also for invading privacy. Keep an eye on this one.
Laugh more frequently at the comments on my blogs. I get bizarrely bent out of shape when people make stupid comments about blog posts I’ve written. Despite the fact that blog comments as a genre are characterized by assholishness and snark, I continue to feel inexplicably wronged by them. This has got to stop. It’s time to view blog comments for what they are: comedies of the human condition.
Install Ubuntu on my desktop. I miss Linux. It just so happens that the two computers I use most are both running Windows XP, and neither is suitable for a Vista upgrade. My cute Vaio laptop has a laughable sticker that says "Vista capable," which roughly translated means "Screw you, hippie." When a friend of mine asked some of the Vista geeks at Microsoft if they’d tried the new OS on my laptop model, they apparently giggled uncontrollably. So it’s back to Linux for me, and I welcome the return of my open-source overlord.
Kill people in Halo. In my living room, nestled beneath my 50-inch plasma screen TV, are an Xbox and an Xbox 360. And yet I rarely use them to kill people. What the hell is wrong with me? Am I insane? The entire purpose of these devices is to turn myself into a cyberkiller and shoot the crap out of 13-year-olds in Singapore or Texas or some other exotic locale. Next year I will spend at least one weekend doing nothing but sitting in front of the TV and practicing my death moves. Watch out for me on Xbox Live — I’m going to hunt you down and blow your guts out. Then I’ll share some of my media collection with you to make up for it. But I will not buy a Wii. Do not try to make me buy one.
Hang out with mechanical engineers. Unlike electrical engineers and computer scientists, mechanical engineers know how to do useful postapocalyptic stuff like build bridges and generators and engines. They study extremely concrete things like, well, concrete. But they also study the way concrete shatters when hit by bombs. I want to know more about the mysterious ways of physical objects. Take me to your mechanical engineering lab. *
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who wishes all the geeks and nerds and dorks and weirdos a happy new year.