TV

Demon Days without end

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Like science fiction, techno can elicit automatic cringes when dropped as a descriptor in mixed company. Haters give explanations that aren’t really explanations — much like vocabulary that doesn’t add up to an argument: it’s repetitive, boring, either icy and alienating or overblown and dramatic, frequently both at once. It’s a weird scene. They seem to use drugs in a way that’s both corny-sensual and ego-destroying. Ironically — though, in our irony-saturated discourse, the word may be redundant — with the arrival of digital ubiquity, techno is remarkable not for its insistence on a placeless, distanceless future, but on space, duration, history, and a certain quality of experience and memory that seems purged from the hyper-compressed torrent of pre-nostalgized bloghouse jams.

You can’t say Carl Craig’s name without the word "techno" slipping out of your mouth. As part of Detroit’s second wave of techno producers, he refined and extended the future-shock innovation of Juan Atkins’ and Richard Davis’ work as Cybotron under a number of monikers. Now an expat living in Berlin, Craig most recently released — under his own name and excluding this year’s remix compilation, Sessions (Studio !K7) — 1997’s More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art on his own Planet E label. Demon Days, a roving club night that Craig has been hosting since 2005 with New York’s DJ Gamall — better known as the guy who runs PR agency Backspin and a former member of Genesis P-Orridge’s postindustrial pranksters Psychic TV — offers a partial explanation of what else he’s been up to in the interim.

Even if Craig had remained silent after the release of More Songs instead of cranking out remixes and collaborations, his reputation would be secure: neither dance music nor trad techno, its tracks build and decay with patience and attention to nuance that’s still unlike anything this side of Berlin’s Basic Channel. And like that group’s work, More Songs‘ futurism hasn’t curdled into camp, and its moods are still penetrable, if odd at first. Despite the abundance of paramilitary imagery in 1990s techno — a tradition that traces back to Throbbing Gristle’s marriage of brutality and abject satire, an early influence on both Craig and Gamall — the album’s cover art literally explicates Craig’s vision of revolution as a basically a mental one. It’s unmistakably a home-listening record, much like this year’s Deutsche Grammophon-approved Recomposed, which appropriately finds Craig collaborating with Basic Channel’s Moritz Von Oswald, reworking orchestral pieces by Ravel and Mussorgsky into tentative, if fleetingly brilliant, new configurations that exist somewhere between minimal techno and the classical minimalism of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, et al.

Little if any of this material is likely to make it into Craig’s or Gamall’s set, which will probably highlight electro-historical bangers, their own remixes, and forthcoming releases from Planet E. But considering the general availability of the means of electronic music production — your cracked Ableton Live setup or the Roland TR-303 bass synth you downloaded to your iPhone — the fact that these guys know how pacing, thoughtfulness, and lineage inform, rather than detract, from body-rocking, their sets should act as a reminder. That is to say, you can come to engage with the tradition within techno that remains autonomous from the auto-nostalgic, meta-authentic economy of bloghouse/indie — or you can come to just dance.

This is electro music without hipster runoff’s signature, meaning-void stamp, "///miss u//." The omissions in their sets, not to mention an utter lack of MP3s, should be enough to make you think twice before unloading another mash-up on the world or listening to Justice’s wack Fabric mix. There is another world, people, and while it doesn’t escape being flawed, stupid, and fatally self-conscious like the indie-bred one that seems to control the Internet, you can at least pour your enthusiasms into this one without worrying about backlash. (Brandon Bussolini)

DEMON DAYS

With Carl Craig, Space Time Continuum, and Gamall

Thurs/11, 10 p.m., $14 advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Wow wow wow wow

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Kevin Killian is an inveterate and unapologetic collaborator: even when writing solo, there’s always another presence. Whether he ventriloquizes through this other, or assimilates or deconstructs it is the reader’s call, and it’s a difficult one to make. The poems in Killian’s most recent book of poetry, Action Kylie (In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, 128 pages, $15) are places where T.S. Eliot’s cats LOL, Antonio Banderas anagrams to "no brains on a date," and Kylie Minogue’s derivativeness is more compelling than genius. In the process, Killian sinks probes into public-celebrity exchanges that increasingly substitute for news. On the eve of the book’s upcoming release party, I spoke with him about Kylie, Amazon reviews, and Ted Berrigan’s Pepsi addiction.

SFBG When I first saw you in person, I noticed that you were drinking Diet Pepsi. Pepsi is also mentioned in the book, Kylie having been a Pepsi spokesperson. And there’s a video from a band called Ssion, a cover of the Young Marble Giants song "Credit in the Straight World," that starts with the singer drinking from a Pepsi can. So I’ve kind of had Pepsi on the brain. Didn’t Kylie do a Pepsi ad and get shit for it?

Kevin Killian Yeah, at a low point in her career she did a terrifying ad for Pepsi in Australia. In it, she’s on TV in a sexy video and a young boy, like 11 or 12, is watching. He opens a Pepsi, and she’s there in his bedroom, sitting on his lap, and is really tastelessly grinding into him. That video was too raw to be shown very widely. It wasn’t classy — what can I say?

SFBG Since the cola wars are over, I was wondering if there was some sort of cachet to Pepsi.

KK It was Ted Berrigan’s favorite drink. I didn’t know him, but I saw him a few times, and he guzzled it down. He would get a little antsy if he didn’t see a quart of it somewhere nearby.

SFBG There seems to be a kind of split between Action Kylie‘s first three sections, which are explicitly focused on Kylie as a subject, and the last four, where her relationship to the writing is less obvious.

KK The book was written roughly chronologically, and I guess my sense of her was so deep — it’s part of my identity now — that she’s in it equally all the way through. I’m thinking of incidents, circumstances, apparitions of her that maybe aren’t visible to you in those later poems.

SFBG The Action Kylie essay "Kylie Evidence" and the huge number of Amazon reviews you’ve authored collapse a lot of different registers. They’re not exactly straight criticism, or uncomplicatedly ironic. There’s a strange cacophony in the way they’re constructed, going from Wikipedia-style omniscience to something intensely personal. When you identify with Kylie as a "second- or third-rate talent," it’s hard not to feel like you’re giving yourself short shrift, because that kind of writing does something that’s pretty rare to both "creative" writing and journalism or criticism.

KK It wasn’t really a way of fishing for reinforcement, but I realize that’s what it does. I had spent years and years writing about Jack Spicer [resulting in the 1998 biography Poet, Be Like God] and seeing his status change from a kind of cult figure into [an element of] the canon. When I started writing [2001’s] Argento Series, few knew [Dario] Argento; now everybody does. There’s something about the situation of the cult figure that’s always exasperated me. I don’t like it, for some reason. I couldn’t figure out why.

When I started working on Kylie Minogue, I was drawn to her because she was a figure who seemed to me, at this one moment in 1998 or 1999, to have absolutely no talent. You know, she had something, but she had no talent, at all, period. And it’s the same old story: she is fabulous, it just took me a while to understand how. But it was a great period to be a fan. I think my essay was written in that tone.

SFBG Your Amazon reviews could be a conceptual project. Some of the lines are really killer, such as your description of Joe Jonas’ eyebrows being "like crow feathers — feathers from a 600-pound crow."

KK Well, when you do something every day … I had written about a thousand [reviews] before I realized that was an enormous number. I’d write three or four a day, and sometimes they’d be in themes: I’d pick up a dictionary and see a word — "midnight" is one I remember. I’d realize I knew a lot about books with "midnight" in the title — or movies, or records — so I would just do 40 of them, all about midnight. Maybe here or there there’d be something I actually didn’t read.

SFBG I wanted to ask about the Kylie lyrics that preface your book, "These are the dreams of an impossible princess."

KK It comes from an actual LP called Impossible Princess (Deconstruction, 1998). She took the name from Billy Childish, who had a book of poetry called Dreams of an Impossible Princess.

I’m having a book out next summer from City Lights, and it’s called Impossible Princess. It’s impossible for me to be a princess because I’m a man, beyond everything else, and there’s that kind of futility, that ambition to be something other than what you are, that drove her, and that drove me, I guess. Every year you’re alive, you’ll see some possibilities diminishing behind you, things you’ll never be. The good thing is, new windows open up, things you never thought you’d want. I never thought I’d write about Kylie Minogue, and what’s worse is that I can’t stop writing about her, either.

THE NEW READING SERIES AT 21 GRAND: KEVIN KILLIAN AND STEPHANIE YOUNG

Sun/14, 6:30 p.m., $5

21 Grand

415 25th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-7263

www.newyipes.blogspot.com

Dick in a box

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

If the assassination of JFK was a defining, traumatic blow to American hopefulness, the Watergate scandal a decade later arguably created something worse: a deep collective cynicism that our politics could never escape corruption, or that the guilty would be truly punished even when caught red-handed. How much worse have we shrugged off since?

As the most secretive White House in modern memory pulls up stakes, there’s a fear that particular history may repeat itself. What if Bush blanket-pardons his cabinet, as Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon, of any and all crimes not yet formally accused? In 1974, that move informed our great nation that at certain high levels, the concept of justice need not apply. In fact, it meant Dick. Nixon left the country in far better (shaky, but better) shape than W., but arguably suffered a greater popular backlash than Bush will. He never admitted any criminal wrongdoing, copping to vague "mistakes made" instead. He resigned to avoid impeachment, and the full airing of dirty laundry that would have required. Thus, the sweatiest president ever avoided total humiliation. But didn’t he owe us repentance?

The pardon and Nixon’s subsequent shrinking from public life left a majority feeling cheated. He owed us that pound of flesh — withholding it was intolerable arrogance. Adapted by Peter Morgan from his widely produced play, with the originating lead actors reprising their roles, Frost/Nixon dramatizes the moment when Tricky Dick did get called onto the public carpet to confess his sins. Which he did — well, sorta kinda. The disgraced prez (Frank Langella) is offered tempting scads of money to be interviewed on TV by an odd candidate for interrogator, the rather garish Brit chat show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) — a showbiz personality more akin to contemporaries the Galloping Gourmet and early Geraldo Rivera than, say, Walter Cronkite (or even Dick Cavett).

Nixon’s people (including Kevin Bacon as security chief) figure this presumably softball platform will provide opportunity to burnish his tarnished legacy as statesman. The team that womanizing, cheerfully shallow Frost assembles to prep for this American broadcast "comeback" worry that he lacks the depth of knowledge, experience, or backbone to pin subject to mat. All suspense here hinges on whether Frost can give his armchair opponent "the trial he never had." He’s seemingly outmatched: fallen yet not feebled, the ex-president proves a master of spin, evasion, and subterfuge.

George Clooney was reportedly eager to direct Frost/Nixon; he might’ve made something slyer and subtler than Ron Howard, who sometimes underlines performance nuances as if wielding a bullhorn and flashing neon sign. But it’s still the best movie he’s done, a nimble opening-up of a talky stage entity that only slightly exaggerates the import of real-life events. Langella makes one realize how seldom the most widely caricatured president in history has been portrayed as more than a collection of grotesque tics; Sheen is as expert here as he was playing Tony Blair in 2006’s The Queen. While its contemporary echoes aren’t overt, Frost/Nixon prods an important question: why do we demand even less accountability of our Commander-in-Chief now? What should have been lessons learned from Nixon instead begat heightened apathy, gullibility, and stupidity. As an electorate, we got the Commanders-in-Chief we deserved.

FROST/NIXON opens Fri/12 in San Francisco.

Help Wanted: New FCC Chair

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Let us not forget serious media reform as President-Elect Obama accelerates his work on his governing team and agenda. The Guardian, as attentive readers know, has long supported media reform on many fronts ranging from the overhaul of the federal antitrust laws and the Federal Communications Commission to the return of the Fairness Doctrine. We also support the important work and program of the Free Press media reform organization as a major force in driving these reforms. Here is its latest timely call to action and a media reform agenda the Guardian supports. .

FREE PRESS: ACTION ALERT!

Any moment now, President-elect Barack Obama will announce his choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission. We need to be sure the person he chooses lives up to Obama’s campaign pledges to reform the media in America.

To help, Free Press just placed a help wanted ad in four influential Washington publications. http://free.convio.net/site/R?i=vxNA8oF-OWQjvN-z9FX2dA..

Technically, we’re not doing the hiring, but the administration needs to be reminded by all of us that the new chair must put Main Street before Wall Street.

Weigh In on the Next FCC Chair http://free.convio.net/site/R?i=RJw5LxJD7psRSV9wtW3vLg..

The FCC has been held hostage by corporate interests for too long. Now is our best chance to change course and make real the possibility of universal broadband access, an open Internet, and more locally controlled radio and TV.

The new FCC chair will be charged with bringing American media into the 21st century, which is why Obama must hear from you before deciding.

Take Our Poll: Rank Your FCC Priorities http://free.convio.net/site/R?i=CFf_cKINwcx0oNQH6NmM6Q..

Tell us what you want the new FCC chair to do, and we’ll deliver the results of the poll to Obama’s transition team. It’s time the FCC met the challenges of reform and renewed the media’s role in our democracy.

This is one of the most important job openings to be filled by the next administration. Let’s speak out to make sure we find the right person for the job.

Onward,

Josh Stearns
Program Manager
Free Press
www.freepress.net

Click here to read 2009 Media & Tech Priorities: A Public Interest Agenda, from freepress.net

Dark knight

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TV EYED You know a show has gotten under your skin when it begins to trigger nightmares. That’s the case with Showtime’s Dexter, now winding up its third season after building, with frustrating slowness, its intertwined partnership narratives revolving around serial killer-turned-crime fighter Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall). Dexter was carefully trained by his adopted hero-cop father to blend in, closet his antisocial blood-thirsty desires, and channel those murderous impulses toward bad apples who slip the scales of justice. Sounds like another "post-racial," pro-assimilation narrative cluttered with Twilight and True Blood vampires looking for acceptance?

As developed from the 2004 novel by Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the series does wink at the unsavory secret history of superheroes: the difference between, say, Batman and Dexter is that the latter obviously gets off on his kills. Luckily the Miami Metro Police abounds with murderers within and without, although, Dexter, for all his sinister smarts, doesn’t seem to be self-aware enough to realize that his redemptive retraining and repurposing could be applied to the evildoers he so methodically destroys.

The nightmares enter the picture by way of the crack writing and insinuating acting — particularly by Hall, the golden boy with dead eyes, who was also so adept at unpeeling his character’s layers as Six Feet Under‘s dutiful gay conservative, and Jennifer Carpenter, who portrays his impulsive police officer sister, Debra, and rolled her cubist eyes to queasy effect in the title role of 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose. As for Dexter — so busy holding down a job as a blood-spatter forensic specialist at Miami Metro and solving crimes in order to satisfy his blood lust — is there a more untrustworthy narrator on television?

This season centers on Dexter’s continuing trust issues in the form of two partnerships that threaten to rock his world: his upcoming nuptials to damaged but increasingly grounded, pregnant girlfriend Rita (Julie Benz) and his accelerating friendship with Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits), an ambitious, charismatic assistant district attorney who thinks Dexter has done him the favor of stabbing his brother’s murderer, and seems to understand his needs. Their closeness develops to the point where Dexter mentors Miguel in his first righteous kill, but there’s more to Miguel than meets the eye — leave it to the cutthroat lawyer to really give it his so-called bleeding-heart-liberal public defender nemesis as the series teases out and critiques some of the politically conservative undertones of its quasi-pro-capital-punishment narrative. While the pregnant Rita satisfies her hunger pangs with chocolate at home, it appears that Dexter has created another monster of his own.

www.sho.com/site/dexter/home.do

‘Barf Manifesto’

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Maybe it’s the urge to purge months of presidential campaign propaganda or eight years of George W. Bush. Maybe it’s the holiday season. All I know is this: barf is in. The evidence is all around us. On TV, you’ll find Hurl, "an eating competition with an extreme sports chaser" that couples tunnel rides in steel balls with mac ‘n’ cheese gorge-fests in an attempt to make contestants vomit. On the magazine racks, no less a trend bible than Vice recently devoted an illustrated feature to a guy whose raison d’être is puking upon select stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Based on the photographic evidence, he chooses his targets well ("Wesley Snipes is my least favorite person on Earth. Have you heard about his ear hair?"). But I do have to quarrel with his belief that Elizabeth Taylor deserves a Technicolor yawn.

Without a doubt, the best addition to the thriving contemporary vomitorium is Dodie Bellamy’s Barf Manifesto (Ugly Ducking Presse, 32 pages, $7). The fact that Bellamy’s text is a sort of celebratory puke in response to Eileen Myles’ 2004 essay "Everyday Barf" only fortifies vomit’s role in contemporary consciousness. The publisher’s promo text for Barf Manifesto cheekily likens it to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as "an intimate account of a long, sometimes tortured but enduring friendship between two female writers." Taking that cue, I’ll risk sacrilege and say I prefer Bellamy’s book to Gertrude Stein’s.

It’s a mistake to assume, as I initially did, that Barf Manifesto might ideally be placed next to Valerie Solanas’ similarly slim yet convulsive 1968 SCUM Manifesto, which was recently republished by BüK America at the street tract value of $1.49. Not a rant so much as a pair of roiling bursts of text, Bellamy’s book has feminist intent, but ultimately it presents an artistic credo, in the manner of Andre Breton’s paeans to Surrealism. She sister-spews a trail of artistic connections that leads from Myles’ essay to the nauseating beauty and power of Op Art figurehead Bridget Riley’s imagery.

Bellamy weaves through the intestinal curves of a complex anecdotal maze — we accompany her and Myles through the violent smashing of a piñata, a vivid confrontation over a toilet, and a hilarious exchange about Lynndie England. Along the way, she works out the mother issues so often connected to stomach sickness. She declares that she’s out to "attack the essay" and (carrying on from her 2006 book Academonia) to "shit on academic pretension," but really, she pukes on the doctrinaire BS of insidious Professor X’s across the land. In the process, she transcends the occasionally overbearing libidinal influence of Kathy Acker on some of her other work. A bravura lindy hop through the possibilities of English, Barf Manifesto is too good for a porcelain god.

Nubostubalgubiuba!

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FREE TO BE TV If you were a kid in the late 1960s and early ’70s, you were an integral part of the counterculture’s trickling-down influence. Hitherto square as a toddler’s puzzle peg, children’s TV programming radicalized not long after various sexual and social revolutions liberated their parents from larger strangulations.

Displacing innocuous slapstick pacifiers, shows were redesigned to educate and empower. Or simply be groovy, like the Sid and Marty Krofft Brit-popping Bugaloos or then-teen idol Rick Springfield’s Mission: Magic! Kid Power stressed multiculturalism. Schoolhouse Rock made homework fiendishly catchy. Fat Albert brought the inner-city ghetto to Saturday mornings.

But the most innovative stuff came from PBS, at its peak of funding, popularity, and adventure. Beyond Sesame Street, there was "Laugh-in for kids," The Electric Company, ingenious labors of grownup performers, puppeteers, child psychologists, and so forth.

ZOOM was something else — a show exclusively performed and largely created by kids themselves, with the adult staff credited as mere "helpers." From 1972 to ’78, the original ZOOM (excluding its 1999-2005 revival) was all about participation, on and off-screen. "Who are you? Whaddaya do? / How are you? / Let’s hear from you /We need you!" the cast sang before trilling the post office box that jokes, games, stories, poems, and whatnot could be sent to.

Producer WBGH Boston has just released two-disc ZOOM: Back to the 70s. This DVD flashback — encompassing a documentary overview as well as four complete episodes — remains very DayGlo Me Decade. But it dates surprisingly well.

The seven grade-school cast members were no Mickey Mouse Club lil’ pros but ethnically diverse, Boston-accented reg’lar kids who line-stumbled, improvised, sang, and danced without polish. They had unscripted "rap sessions" to discuss interpersonal dynamics. They quarreled over jacks. They performed viewers’ submitted mini-plays, recipes, and science experiments. "ZOOMguest" segments profiled other kids’ interesting lives — as a violin prodigy, expat Cubana, budding claymationist, girl hockey player, ham radio enthusiast, or developmentally-disabled student.

ZOOM imprinted popular culture in enjoyably silly ways, from Zoomer uniforms (loud striped soccer jerseys) to gibberish language Ubbi Dubbi. What still refreshes, however, is how the show treats pre-adolescents sans condescension, as people whose opinions and questions aren’t just cutely immature but worth respect and encouragement. Even the increasingly slick, disco-funky presentation by season six couldn’t render ZOOM showbiz-as-usual.

"Confidence in yaself … that’ll help you a lot" says a hereditarily reading-challenged teen in Back to the 70s‘ final 1976 full episode. ZOOM not only portrays him sympathetically, but as a role model — someone whose handicaps inspire him to excel wherever he can. Pity such positive-messaging rings so nostalgic.

www.shop.wgbh.org/product/show/48031

Shwayze

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PREVIEW Shwayze would be impossible without reality TV, not only because Buzzin’, their own MTV vehicle, gives them the kind of exposure that YouTube, a place where music videos still circulate, couldn’t. Rather, the music on their self-titled Suretone/Geffen debut is about and of Los Angeles in a way that wasn’t thinkable before that form of programming legitimated some of the city’s embarrassingly tired clichés. Apply the sentiments of either of the Malibu duo’s charting singles — "Corona and Lime" and "Buzzin’" — to mainstream music during the early Bush administration, and you get Crazy Town’s "Butterfly" with an insanely pungent dash of LFO’s "Summer Girls." Not much new here, but the setting for these affectless feelings at least can finally be revealed.

What makes the duo feel current, if far from compelling, is that LA plays itself in their music, in a similar way the town stands for itself in, say, the Cobrasnake’s fake-real candids. From hook man Cisco Adler’s feather-weight, momentum-less production style — the template he figured out on Mickey Avalon’s "Jane Fonda" — to Shwayze’s max-relax loverman toasting, all their too-baked-for-love mellowship jams deliver some combination of the same three pieces of information: 1) girls in LA are probably the best ever; 2) there are a lot of parties in Malibu, and shit is laidback; 3) even if you’re broke, if you have weed, it’s chill — you can still hook up with girls.

Image-wise, Adler and Shwayze embody Urban Outfitters realness with a Pineapple Express sense of brofessionalism: both wear skinny jeans, slightly oversize tees, and high-tops, but Adler’s fedora and wayfarers tell us he’s the rock guy, while Shwayze’s cocked baseball hat tell us he’s the rapper dude. Lyrically, Schwayze’s concerned exclusively with girls — they talk about "girls" so much it’s hard not to imagine they’ve fallen in love with the word as a floating signifier. But watch a video and there they are, the word made flesh and Lycra.

SHWAYZE With Cisco Adler, DJ Skeet Skeet, and Krista. Sat/29, 8 p.m., $16.50. Grand Ballroom at the Regency Center, Van Ness and Sutter, SF. (415) 421-TIXS, www.goldenvoice.com

Sticky buns

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› le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS This Thanksgiving I am thankful for sushi, pre-cum, the hangtown fry, clam chowder, big green salads, soft-boiled eggs, carnitas tacos, biscotti, roasted chickens, cum, day-old sticky buns, and Canada. However, I have no plans for Thanksgiving dinner.

How can this happen? My favorite holiday! My only holiday!

Deevee and Gilley are going camping. I’m invited, but don’t like to be cold. The Maze invited me to San Diego for dinner with his parents. I like to be warm, but the train ticket costs $150 and you have to spend half the time on a bus. What kind of train ticket is that?

My new favorite country is Canada. Truth be told, Canada was my old favorite country too, only for different reasons. I used to like Canada because it seemed less like a country than other countries, the mouse sleeping next to the elephant. Its people, peaceful and funny.

Second City Television was my favorite TV show. "O Canada" stirred me more than "The Star-Spangled Banner." I almost died in Canada, in the late 1990s, and have only been back once since, to play cowboy songs for elderly shut-ins in Ottawa.

That was five years ago, and I was in a van. You don’t need a passport to get into Canada, just to come back. I learned. The hard way. I’m afraid to fly and can’t afford to and have no plans to visit my new favorite country, but that’s OK. Apparently, it will come to me.

In Canada all the animals are moose. If you have mice, and you trap one, you will find on closer inspection that your mouse is a little tiny moose. If you have a cat and a dog, you have a moose and a moose. Small ones. If you go to the zoo, or the circus, and they feature an elephant, it will be played by a humongous moose. And if you see an actual-size moose — say, on the side of a small road in the mountains — then that’s a moose too.

Thanksgiving in Canada happens in October and is not a big deal, according to my Canadian. After work I picked him up at the airport, and I took him out for sushi and then to a downtown hotel with clawfoot bathtubs.

We hardly slept that night, or the next, or the next. The groundwork had been laid online, which doesn’t sound right, I realize. But besides sex, we drove around and talked about food, and movies, and food. Fuck history, Canadians know as much about American barbecue as most Americans do. We’d eaten at a lot of the same places in the South. He knew where to get fried chicken in Missouri, and Buffalo wings in Buffalo. I showed him where to go for breakfast in San Francisco, lunch on the Sonoma Coast, and dinner in the wine country.

He bought me a bottle of great whiskey and a big book about road food. All weekend that weekend I didn’t check my e-mail or answer my cell phone, and my friends worried about me. They needn’t have. I was visiting Canada, in the comfort of my own county and country. And I found it infinitely sweet, hospitable, romantic, and, best of all, game.

The boys around here, you know, the too-cool-for-drool outside-the-box ones who describe themselves on the dating sites as open-minded, adventurous, looking for new experiences, blah blah barf … I hate to say this, my rad hipster sexually-liberated countrymen, but you were just schooled in all of the above by a middle-aged Canadian tweed with daughters and a favorite toothpaste.

He didn’t know I was trans when he first wrote to me, just liked my pics and words and food-itude. I told him right away. I told him and showed him: look, man, an outtie. And unlike you, he shrugged. Never been with a body like mine, he said, never even thought about it. But … he couldn’t wait to find out.

And did.

And loved it. And loves me. He said so.

"I love you too," I said. And I took him back to the airport and then went to play soccer as usual.

My new favorite restaurant is Sushi Man. Just for the name. That’s all. The sushi was … well, nobody got hurt or anything. I got sashimi hamachi and some saba, and the steamed spinach thing with sesame seeds, which was great. Better than the sushi. Nice atmosphere, surreal service, nobody there … *

SUSHI MAN

Daily: 5 p.m.–10:30 p.m.

731 Bush, SF

(415) 981-1313

Beer & wine

MC/V

Meister: ‘Homosexuals need not apply’

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By Dick Meister

The media coverage of the anniversary of the Milk/Moscone killings and hoopla over the new movie “Milk” reminded me of a TV news report I did from Milk’s Castro Street camera shop 0n Sept. 17, 1974. It was part of one of the nightly half-hour TV newscasts on “Newsroom of the Streets” that we reporters on “Newsroom” did on a public access channel from various Bay Area locations during our strike against KQED from September ’74 through January ’75. As often was the case with “Newsroom” stories, it was on an issue generally ignored by the commercial media — in this instance, employment discrimination against gays.

Behind “the Twinkie Defense”

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This month marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who wanted to decriminalize marijuana, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual to be elected to public office in America. November also marks the release of a film about the case titled Milk. Although a former policeman, homophobic Dan White, had confessed to the murders, he pleaded not guilty. I covered his trial for the Bay Guardian.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I said “Thank you” to the sheriff’s deputy who frisked me before I could enter the courtroom. However, this was a superfluous ritual, since any journalist who wanted to shoot White was prevented from doing so by wall-to-wall bulletproof glass.

Defense attorney Douglas Schmidt did not want any pro-gay sentiment polluting the verdict, but he wasn’t allowed to ask potential jurors if they were gay, so instead he would ask if they had ever supported controversial causes–“like homosexual rights, for instance.” One juror came from a family of cops — ordinarily, Schmidt would have craved for him to be on this jury — but the man mentioned, “I live with a roommate and lover.”

Schmidt phrased his next question: “Where does he or she work?”

The answer began, “He”–and the ball game was already over–“works at Holiday Inn.”

Through it all, White simply sat there as though he had been mainlining epoxy glue. He just stared directly ahead, his eyes focused on the crack between two adjacent boxes on the clerk’s desk, Olde English type identifiying them as “Deft” and “Pltff” for defendant and plaintiff. He did not testify. Rather, he told his story to several psychiatrists hired by the defense, and they repeated those details in court.

At a press conference, Berkeley psychiatrist Lee Coleman denounced the practice of psychiatric testimony, labeling it as “a disguised form of hearsay.”

* * *

J. I. Rodale, health food and publishing magnate, once claimed in an editorial in his magazine, Prevention, that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen holding a Coca-Cola bottle only minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He concluded that Oswald was not responsible for the killing because his brain was confused. He was a “sugar drunkard.” Rodale, who died of a heart attack during a taping of The Dick Cavett Show — in the midst of explaining how good nutrition guarantees a long life — called for a full-scale investigation of crimes caused by sugar consumption.

In a surprise move, Dan White’s defense team presented a similar bio-chemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a purely accidental attack. Dale Metcalf, a former member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters who had become a lawyer, told me how he happened to be playing chess with Steven Scheer, an associate of Dan White’s attorney.

Metcalf had just read Orthomolecular Nutrition by Abram Hoffer. He questioned Scherr about White’s diet and learned that, while under stress, White would consume candy bars and soft drinka. Metcalf recommended the book to Scherr, suggesting the author as an expert witness. In his book, Hoffer revealed a personal vendetta against doughnuts, and White had once eaten five doughnuts in a row.

During the trial, one psychiatrist stated that, on the night before the murders, while White was “getting depressed about the fact he would not be reappointed [as supervisor], he just sat there in front of the TV set, bingeing on Twinkies.” In my notebook, I immediately scribbled “the Twinkie defense,” and wrote about it in my next report.

This was the first time that phrase had been used, and it was picked up by the mainstream media.

In court, White just sat there in a state of complete control bordering on catatonia, as he listened to an assembly line of psychiatrists tell the jury how out of control he had been. One even testified that, “If not for the aggravating fact of junk food, the homicides might not have taken place.”

* * *

The Twinkie was invented in 1930 by James Dewar, who described it as “the best darn-tootin’ idea I ever had.” He got the idea of injecting little cakes with sugary cream-like filling and came up with the name while on a business trip, where he saw a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes. “I shortened it to make it a little zippier for the kids,” he said.

In the wake of the Twinkie defense, a representative of the ITT-owned Continental Baking Company asserted that the notion that overdosing on the cream-filled goodies could lead to murderous behavior was “poppycock” and “crap” — apparently two of the artificial ingredients in Twinkies, along with sodium pyrophosphate and yellow dye — while another spokesperson for ITT couldn’t believe “that a rational jury paid serious attention to that issue.”

Nevertheless, some jurors did. One remarked after the trial that “It sounded like Dan White had hypoglycemia.”

Doug Schmidt’s closing argument became almost an apologetic parody of his own defense. He told the jury that White did not have to be “slobbering at the mouth” to be subject to diminished capacity. Nor, he said, was this simply a case of “Eat a Twinkie and go crazy.”

When Superior Court Judge Walter Calcagno presented the jury with his instructions, he assured them access to the evidence, except that they would not be allowed to have possession of White’s .38 special and his ammunition at the same time. After all, these deliberations can get pretty heated. The judge was acting like a concerned schoolteacher offering Twinkies to students but witholding the cream-fillng to avoid any possible mess.

Each juror originally had to swear devotion to the criminal justice system. It was that very system that had allowed for a shrewd defense attorney’s transmutation of a double political execution into the mere White Sugar Murders. On the walls of the city, graffiti cautioned, “Eat a Twinkie — Kill a Cop!”

* * *

On the 50th anniversary of the Twinkie, inventor Dewar said, “Some people say Twinkies are the quintessential junk food, but I believe in the things. I fed them to my four kids, and they feed them to my 15 grandchildren. Twinkies never hurt them.” A year later, the world’s largest Twinkie was unveiled in Boston. It was 10 feet long, 3 feet 6 inches high, 3 feet 8 inches wide, and weighed more than a ton.

In January 1984, Dan White was released from prison. He had served a little more than five years. The estimated shelf life of a Twinkie was seven years. That’s two years longer than White spent behind bars. When he was released, that Twinkie in his cupboard was still edible. But perhaps, instead of eating it, he would have it bronzed.

In October 1985, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. He taped a note to the windshield of his car, reading, “I’m sorry for all the pain and trouble I’ve caused.”

I accepted his apology. I had gotten caught in the post-verdict riot and was beaten by a couple of cops. My gait was affected, and ultimately, as a result I now walk with a cane. At the airport, I have to put the cane on the conveyor belt along with my overnight bag and my shoes, but then I’m handed another cane to go through the metal detector. You just never know what could be hidden inside a cane.

Paul Krassner is the author of Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today, to be published by City Lights Books in July 2009.


Click here to read Krassner’s original coverage of the Dan White Trial from the Guardian in 1979.

>>Back to the Milk Issue

Holiday Guide 2008: Graphic gifts

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› culture@sfbg.com

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that the last few years have seen an impressive flowering of graphic novels and comic book art. These days, every self-respecting, well-read person should have a graphic novel or two on the shelf — and that makes this the perfect moment to give your fave loved one a comic as a holiday gift. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about a present with both?

FOR THE SMARTY-PANTS IN UNDEROOS


Watchmen changed the world of comic books when it debuted in 1986, ushering in an era of more serious and ambitious storytelling. Written by the revered Alan Moore, Watchmen uses the trope of superheroes to examine American culture. It won the Hugo Award that year (the first time a comic book had ever won a major literary award in America), was later named one of Time Magazine‘s "Best 100 Books of All Time" (the only comic book on the list), and is now being made into an movie. Watchmen dissects the superhero, revealing the elements of fascism, nihilism, and sexual obsession inherent in the genre, while always maintaining a sense of empathy for its characters’ humanity. It is beautiful, incredibly dense and intricate, and profoundly moving.

Watchmen: The Absolute Edition (DC Comics, 2008, 436 pages, $39.99) is a magnificent large-format reissue that beautifully shows off illustrator Dave Gibbon’s meticulous art, is completely re-colored, and has plenty of additional material. This is something that any geek would be proud to own.

FOR THE TWEEN WHO STILL BELIEVES IN MAGIC


Forget Harry Potter, Bone (Cartoon Books, 2004, 1300 pages, $39.95) is the bomb! Jeff Smith’s magnum opus is something truly rare in comics — a fully realized, all-ages fantasy story that balances thrilling adventure, humor, and lovable characters that develop and grow.

Three cousins stumble into a new land complete with dragons, a super-strong grandma, a princess with a destiny, a terrifying lord of locusts, and stupid rat creatures. As in the Harry Potter series, Bone becomes darker and more serious as the story progresses, but it never loses a delightful playfulness, both in the moments of comic relief and in Smith’s light, masterful brushwork. Bone can be found either as a single volume in its original black-and-white form, or as a set of color books from Scholastic Press.

FOR SCI-FI FANS WITH POST-APOCALYPTIC DAYDREAMS


Perhaps the best science fiction comic book ever produced starts off the way the best sci-fi stories do, with a simple premise that creates a ripple-effect of expanding consequences. In Y: The Last Man, all the males on the planet except for two die off from a sudden, horrifying plague, leaving poor Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand the last creatures alive with Y chromosomes.

Writer Brian K. Vaughn, one of the best of a new generation of comics writers and one of the principle writers for TV’s Lost, cut his teeth creating the Y saga, which has been seeping out in one-volume installments since 2003. He imagines a world without men in fascinating ways, but never lets the setting get in the way of a gripping, fast-paced story. Pia Guerra’s art is competent and engaging, and propels the story along at the same clip as the writing. The entire breathtaking story comes in 10 soft-cover volumes from publisher Vertigo for around $13–<\d>$15 each. A just-published comprehensive deluxe edition (Vertigo, 2008, 256 pages, $29.99) comprises the first five volumes, with the second installation scheduled to come out in May 2009.

FOR TORTURED, BEAUTIFUL SOULS


There is a long, venerable history to comics biographies and autobiographies, from Art Spiegleman’s Maus to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (fabulous gifts all). I want, however, to point out an often-overlooked book that deserves its place in the canon, Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl (Frog Books, 2002, 312 pages, $22.95), which is one of the most compelling accounts of a troubled childhood that I’ve ever read.

Diary is not just a comic book. It weaves together graphic chapters with diary-form prose and illustrations to tell the story of Minnie Goetze, a 15-year-old girl who has an affair with her mother’s boyfriend before spiraling downward into drugs and abusive relationships.

It all takes place in 1970s San Francisco, and the city is an integral part of the story, from Minnie’s home in a Victorian flat in Laurel Heights to the world of gay hustlers and runaways on Polk Street.

FOR ROCKET-POWERED LOVERS


Have someone on your gift list who loves the magical realism, multigenerational storylines, and fantastic characters of Gabriel García Márquez? How about someone who can’t get enough of cool-ass, punk-rock dykes? Well, I have the perfect graphic novels for you: Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (Fantagraphics, 2003, 512 pages, $39.95), which chronicles the adventures of the denizens of a fictional Central American village, and Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories (Fantagraphics, 2004, 712 pages, $49.95) by Jaime Hernandez, which centers around two punk girls in the Mexican barrios of Los Angeles.

Both collect stories originally serialized in what is arguably the greatest American comic ever produced, Love and Rockets (and yes, that’s where the band got its name), which has been published somewhat consistently since 1981.

FOR EPIC MEDICAL DRAMA QUEENS


Ode to Kirihito (Vertical, 2006, 832 pages, $24.95) will blow your mind. Created in 1969 by the stellar Osama Tezuka, godfather of manga and anime (Japanese comics and cartoons), it was markedly more sophisticated and accomplished than anything coming out of the United States at the time. In fact, American popular culture is only now catching up to Tezuka — we’re just now getting translations of his works. Luckily, the new American versions are well designed and nimbly translated.

Kirihito tells the story of a plague that turns people into doglike creatures, and reads like a combination of a medical drama (Tezuka was trained as a physician), a panoramic 19th-century novel, and an existentialist treatise à la Albert Camus. Maybe your loved ones think that manga is all melodramatic kids with big eyes, spiky hair, and cute pets that shoot lightning? Ode to Kirihito will expand their view.

FOR YOUR FAVORITE PERVERT


Best Erotic Comics 2008 (Last Gasp, 2008, 200 pages, $19.95) is trying to fill an important, ahem, hole in the world of alternative comics. As the current comics renaissance gains steam, it is becoming curiously less and less sexual. Compared to the wild antics of the underground cartoonists of the 1960s, today’s indie comics tend to be flaccid fare.

BEC 2008 aims to change all that, as the first of an annual series of anthologies devoted to showcasing the best of comics erotica and restoring sexuality as a centerpiece of the indie comics sensibility. Last Gasp, a venerable San Francisco–based comics and alt-media publisher and distributor, is putting out the series.

Impressively diverse on all levels, BEC 2008 features a young dyke’s first encounter with a vibrator, a dominatrix who hires a gay masseur to fuck her boyfriend, King Kong and Godzilla getting it on … there’s a little something here for every proud pervert to treasure. That’s the magic of the holiday season! 2

WHERE TO GET YOUR GIFTS

Isotope Comics 326 Fell, SF. (415) 621-6543, www.isotopecomics.com

Al’s Comics 1803 Market, SF. (415) 861-1220, www.alscomicssf.com

Whatever 548 Castro, SF. (415) 861-9428, www.whateverstoreonline.com

Comix Experience 305 Divisadero, SF. (415) 863-9258, www.comixexperience.com

Comic Relief 2026 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-5002, www.comicrelief.net

Justin Hall is a San Francisco–based comics artist and owner of All Thumbs Press (www.allthumbspress.com).

More Holiday Guide 2008.

‘Soft Focus’ on Jello and Bishop Brothers at Cobb’s

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jelloforsite11.jpg

This in from Jello Biafra‘s people:

“Cobb’s Comedy Club will host a taping of VBS.tv’s Soft Focus with Ian Svenonius. Svenonius will interview Jello Biafra as well as Alan and Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls in front of a live audience. The taping is free and open to the public. You must RSVP with your name and e-mail address at www.viceland.com/softfocussf.”

SOFT FOCUS
With host Ian Svenonius featuring interviews with Richard and Alan Bishop and Jello Biafra
Wed/19, 6:30 p.m.
Cobb’s Comedy Club
915 Columbus, SF
Space is limited; RSVP at www.viceland.com/softfocussf

I die

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

TV EYED Can’t live with ’em, can’t turn on the glass teat without spying a rerun. Still, the wasteland boasts a few reality TV characters worth studying.

THUS SPAKE ZOE-THUSTRA


Kill me now, club me with a Balenciaga handbag, drive a stake through my heart, and kick me into a coffin in a fabulous Ossie Clark caftan and a Biba head-wrap. Yes, you are driven bananas by the stylist-to-the-starz Rachel Zoe’s cute-speak, which rivals TV’s other Rach, namely Rachael Ray. But you found yourself surrendering to the too-easily-ridiculed, unrepentantly shopaholic Zoe-ster, who mostly resembles a heavily lashed, butterscotch Pekinese in vintage. The killer combo of her tearful, puffy, well-vaselined makeup-time confessionals to her adorable Prince-ling of a hairdresser and makeup artist Joey and her not-so-latent mothering of her feuding, odd-couple assistants (self-described "psycho bitch" Taylor and not-quite-perfect prepster Brad) made me want peer all the harder behind those bug-eyed sunglasses and those fluffed-up efforts at boring ole branding. Too bad the brief, campily cartoonish docu-reality series Rachel Zoe Project has been shut down — with Bravo yet to announce its renewal or demise. I know, "I die."

MYSTERY MEET


Credit goes to the Guardian’s Johnny Ray Huston for wingmaning me toward VH-1’s The Pick-Up Artist 2 and host Mystery, whose howlingly lame pimp-styley fake-fur hats and man-bejeweled talons make him the cheesiest burger yet to be tossed on the Barbie. And Barbies are the bait for the geeks, freaks, never-kissed, and outright virgins salivating gratefully for any insight into Mystery’s hottie-pulling technique. Are Mystery’s secrets simply common sense strategies on how to charm, bedazzle, and influence others that at one time dads or mentors might have showed these social misfits? I have a hard time believing a Criss Angel-like corn-meister like Mystery is the new Casanova. In the meantime I’m enjoying all the dated ’90s-rocker ensembles and guyliner abuse that happens along the way.

BEST SERVED QUIRKY


The fifth season of Top Chef — this time set in the Big brunoise-able Apple — fires up tonight, Nov. 12, and I already have at least two toques to watch: Richard, the cuddly bear from San Diego on Team Rainbow, the show’s petite LGBT contingent. He slices through his thumb during the first challenge, yet keeps on paring, and calls Tom Colicchio a "cutie," which will doubtless win the hearts of everyone crushed out on our angry Mr. Clean. And there’s Carla, the cafe-colored caterer with the soignée yet goofy demeanor and physique of a Saturday morning kids’ show giraffe. She issued my fave quip so far: "I want to be led to do this dish, basically, by my spirit guide." Yep, a Euro invasion amps up the competition — and challenges the language juggling abilities and skill sets of the American chefs. I sense the contest coming down between the hard-bitten — and bald — purveyors of seemingly effortless sophistication and the work-horses who knuckled down to scrape their way out of dishwashing. But it’s the quirkies that bring much-needed seasoning to the newly sped-up series, already on pace with the city that never sleeps.

V. Vale and RE/Search Publications

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Call him the monkish punk elder of counterculture in the Bay and fringes wherever they may fray. Behind a monochromatic, black-clad, black-banged façade and unassuming demeanor, V. Vale is a man of so many interests and accomplishments that it’s hard to know where to start. How about with Vale as Punk Showman?

"In 1984 I’m sure I put on one of the greatest shows ever to celebrate our J.G. Ballard book," the 50-plus publisher says. He’s tucked beside a thermos of tea in his book- and collection-crammed office-apartment in a North Beach edifice that, legend has it, Janis Joplin, Odetta, and Paul Robeson once dwelled in. Survival Research Labs and an S-M group were on the Fort Mason bill, and in honor of the occasion Vale visited the junkyard and had them deliver two cars that he selected. "I’m sure people had died in them — there was so much blood in the interior — and they were all crushed down. There’s no way you could survive that!"

Naturally, Vale and SRL rigged up the two bloody junkers to simulate a sex act — doggy-style — while yet another car with square wheels and a huge battering ram attacked the humping death-mobiles. The, ahem, climax: a performance by Public Image Ltd.

If that’s not punk — in the classic, highly original, high-low San Francisco style, full of hard-scrabble high spectacle and an edge you can lacerate yourself on — who knows what the fuck is?

It’s just one of many tales — about shooting pistols with "Uncle Bill" Burroughs or watching exotica innovator Martin Denny field a $25,000 royalty check — that emerge during an interview with this lifelong interviewer. His own narrative is just as riveting: he grew up, as part of a minuscule Japanese American minority, in a small town in Riverside County, raised on welfare by a mother who suffered from mental illness. The young Vale read voraciously, from the kitchen table to the bed, which led to his acceptance at Harvard, though an antipathy toward ivy made him choose to attend UC Berkeley instead. In the ’70s, he worked at City Lights, and in 1977, while ripping off the covers of unbought magazines and returning them, he formed the idea to start his own zine about the punk scene combusting right around the corner at Mabuhay Gardens. Search and Destroy was born, with $100 seed money from Allen Ginsberg and matching funds from his boss Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Now lauded as an invaluable document of early punk and a graphic design rule-breaker ("We’d do a layout meeting: ‘Here’s the text. Here are the pictures. Your job is to make this interview as rad as you can’"), Search and Destroy also became a way for Vale to make critical connections between the work and thoughts generated by punk groups and those formulated by artists in other media, as interviews with Vale’s mentors Ballard and Burroughs made their way into the zine.

When the Mabuhay scene turned toward servicing a younger, violent hardcore audience, the zine-maker’s interests shifted as well. Tapped to start a stateside headquarters for Rough Trade in 1980, he convinced founder Geoff Travis to fund a new tabloid, RE/Search, during an all-nighter. Three issues later, Vale moved on to launch a typesetting business, RE/Search Typography, which he ran in North Beach until he sold it in 1991 when he saw that the home computer had finally arrived.

In the meantime, the RE/Search series had become the equivalent of an ever-unfolding countercultural bible: essential reading not only for punks — all the books, Vale swears, are informed by that revolution — but artists, musicians, cultural fire-starters, and trouble-makers of every nonconformist stripe. In turn, Vale built a bridge with his paperbacks between the cultural movers around him and the world of books that has succored him. "I learned long ago that reading is not a passive process," says Vale. "I like to mark up my books. My books are heavily interacted with. I look at books not as books, but as conversations."

The RE/Search volumes Vale is most proud of, on Burroughs and Ballard, resuscitated the former author’s career and threw a proper coming-out party in America for the latter. Vale went so far as to help organize Burroughs’ tour with Laurie Anderson. Meanwhile, RE/Search’s sibling compendiums, Incredibly Strange Movies (1986) and Incredibly Strange Music (1993, Vol. 2 1995), were pivotal in placing filmmakers like Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis and music-makers such as Yma Sumac and Ken Nordine in a new canon for culturally conversant hipsters, leading to crucial reissues and reappraisals of their work.

And then there’s RE/Search’s biggest hit. "The most influential of all the books is Modern Primitives [1989], which sparked the whole mainstream mass interest in piercing and tattoos and body modification," says Jello Biafra, who first met Vale in 1978 when Biafra was simply an admirer of Search and Destroy and the vocalist for a then-new band called the Dead Kennedys. "There was very little of that going on compared to what happened after that book came out. Of course, now even secretaries and bank clerks and Bush administration bureaucrats have tattoos, and who knows how many pierced penises are on the Republican National Committee!"

With a new publication, prOnnovation? Pornography and Technological Innovation, just out, and books on Timothy Leary, Burning Man’s Piss Clear newspaper, and steampunk on the horizon, Vale doesn’t have time to be bitter that so many have grabbed ideas from his tomes and run with them. "I would say I’ve had a disproportionate amount of influence," he says. "People tell me, ‘Your Pranks [1987] book inspired Jackass, Punk’d, and god knows how many other TV shows.’ You just keep thinking of your next project and never look back."

www.researchpubs.com

Vampire romance

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REVIEW If you see but one preteen vampire romance this year, make it Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In. Rumor has it that Hollywood is looking to remake Alfredson’s adaptation of a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, with Cloverfield‘s Matt Reeves in the director’s seat. While Reeves might bring boffo box-office numbers, it’s safe to assume that he’ll either overlook or sledgehammer Alfredson’s sleight-of-hand talent for finding the art in pop iconography and vice-versa — areas where Alfredson rivals Bong Joon-ho. He brings fiery Carl Theodor Dreyer undercurrents to a Spielberg revenge of the nerds scenario, mining the dark heart of childhood with the same revelatory and musical assuredness that fellow Swedish director Lukas Moodysson (1998’s Show Me Love; 2002’s Lilya 4-ever) exhibited before falling into a digital black hole.

The story is simple: loner outcast Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) falls for Eli (the superb Lina Leandersson), a pale girl with a big secret. The pleasure of Let the Right One In resides in its flair for surprise, from the uncanny performances of the lead actors to humorous surreal motifs such as an enormous white poodle lapping at a plastic jug of blood abandoned in a forest. In one standout set piece with direct connections to the film’s title, Alfredson reverses the genuinely creepy window-tapping found in the original 1979 TV version of Salem’s Lot. Throughout, he explores the subversive age-spanning love scenarios in Lindqvist’s story with just the right amount of restraint, so that instead of provoking outrage, he unsettles assumptions. He’s not bad at executing decapitation and immolation scenes, either.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN opens Fri/7 at Bay Area theaters.

Yes on K waits …

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Saadia Malik reports:

Yes on K campaign workers were still waiting at Zeitgeist bar to hear if their measure had passed at 10:30pm. At this time, just a handful of people remained at the middle bar where the party was located, drinking beer and watching the news on TV.

As the others left, tired of waiting for the slow-coming results, campaign organizer Sadie Lune remained optimistic about results either way.

“Right now I’m so full of hope and joy” she said, after a day of last minute campaigning. She said she was unfamilar with the political campaign process prior to the yes on prop K ballot measure, but was pleased with the response from voters.

“Any result seems like a gateway for opportunity.”

Tears, cheers, and bubbly for Obama … and Sheehan?

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By Molly Freedenberg

There’s no sign at Inner Mission Tavern that this is a Cindy Sheehan party, but it’s most certainly one for Obama. When Virginia was announced for the Democratic nominee, the bar erupted in cheers – a sound dwarfed only by the joyous explosion when CNN predicted him the winner of the 2008 presidential election several minutes later. The night’s two bartenders (also the owners), both in Obama T-shirts, popped bottles of champagne for those lucky enough to be seated at the bar in the packed-beyond-belief room. The cheers, congratulations, and happy hugs stopped for Senator McCain’s speech, which was met first with a combination of boos and cheers, and then with appreciation for his surprisingly gracious concession speech. “This is my favorite McCain speech,” said one party attendee. As everyone waited for President-elect Obama to appear on CNN, the bar had to ask for patrons to pass their empty glasses to the front, as they’d run out of everything. “Obama’s so awesome he sold the bar out of beer!” someone exclaimed. And then Obama took the (TV) stage. Everyone in the room listened attentively. Some shed tears. Some of the biggest responses were to Obama’s acknowledgement of the millenial generation’s refusal to accept their reputation for apathy, and Obama’s mention that this is also a victory for those who are gay. Then, just like the live audience in Chicago, bar patrons chanted “Yes We Can” along with Obama’s pulpit-style closig. With the speech over and the bar starting to empty, there’s still no mention of Sheehan (nor any results available). But somehow, I imagine no matter the results of local elections tonight, most of these people will go home happy.

Vote; it’s not over

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By Tim Redmond

If you’re reading this, and you haven’t voted yet, get out of the house and do it. Now. Yes, the Fat Lady is humming her practice chords and it’s pretty clear that Barack Obama will be the next president. In fact, it’s shaping up as a night that will change the balance of power in DC dramatically, with major Democratic wins in the Senate. And Obama has already re-written the electoral map and changed American politics.

But he still has to win CA — and Californians still have to — have to — reject Prop. 8.

And the future of San Francisco is in the balance. We can move to clean energy (Yes on H!) affordable housing )Yes on B!) and elect progressive supervisors.

So this is going to be an historic night, and you still have an hour to be part of it. I just saw Gavin Newsom on TV saying that nobody would be turned away if they are in line outside a polling place at 8 pm. Go.

A PG&E VP at the door

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Steven Hill, director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation (www.newamerica.net) and author of “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy” (www.10Steps.net), sent this over. It’s a fascinating story that shows how PG&E is not only slinging mud but refusing to debate the real issues of Prop. H.

The political mudslide threatening to drown us all

by Steven Hill

You know you are in the height of the political season when you start receiving activists knocking on your door for political campaigns. But I was taken aback recently when the activist at my door was a vice president for Pacific Gas and Electric.

He, of course, wanted to talk about Proposition H, the San Francisco ballot measure known as the “Clean Energy Act” for which PG&E is the main opponent. Before I provide details on that conversation, let me step back for a moment and get something off my chest.

I don’t know about you, but in watching the presidential campaigns wage their mudslinging hack-attacks against each other, it’s clear to me that such “win at all costs” tactics not only degrade the electoral process, but those who participate in and are forced to witness it. From the McCain campaign and their supporters we have heard that Obama is a pal of terrorists, a supporter of infanticide, and a tax-and-spend liberal, with subtle allusions to his race.

From the Obama side we have heard that McCain is too old, too crotchety and too out of touch with Main Street. Both sides feel that their characterizations are fair and accurate — or at least close enough to sling the mud.

But from the voter’s perspective, it’s hard to watch. Instead of finding out what’s good about each candidate, and what stirring vision they have for these difficult times, we are finding out the worst about them. And then, following the election, the tainted winner is supposed to rally the country behind him, even though half the country now detests him.

Something is very wrong with this picture. Sure, we can rationalize it, say that this kind of mudslinging has long been part of American politics. But perhaps that’s partly why the public is so cynical about politicians, and so anti-government. That attitude has contributed to Republicans’ relentless bashing of government, which became the basis for massive deregulation of all stripes, including the financial, banking and home mortgage industries. “Get government out of the way,” was their rallying cry.

So this mudslinging and distorting of facts and information is not harmless or innocent. Those who practice it know exactly what they are doing.

Which brings me back to my curious door-knocker, the vice president for PG&E. I politely greeted him, and he launched into a tirade against Prop H. If passed, he said, this clean energy legislation would “take away my right to vote” (his exact words), raise electricity rates and force San Francisco to buy PG&E’s system (which oddly he implied was antiquated and not worth the money). And besides that, “it’s a power grab by the Board of Supervisors.”

Whew. I had just been doing my own research on Proposition H and other ballot measures to figure out how I would vote. So I knew he was tearing a page out of the Karl Rove campaign handbook. Unlike with the presidential campaigns, however, which happens far away like we are spectators in the 42nd row, here was one of the “candidates” right at my doorstep. PG&E had been spending barrels full of money, over $5 million, to defeat this measure. This was my chance, I figured, to have a real dialogue.

“The proponents of this measure dispute your claims,” I told him. “They say Proposition H will make the City study all possible ways to get to 100% clean energy, and then create a plan to make it happen. PG&E’s system can be part of this plan if you figure out how to deliver low-cost, clean energy. They also say that any bonds issued would have to be approved by the City Controller and the Public Utilities Commission, who are all appointed by the mayor. The Board of Supervisors can’t do anything by itself. What’s your response to that?”

His response was the Sarah Palin “deer in the headlights” look. I don’t think he had been knocking on too many doors of people who had done some homework. Isn’t that what the mudslingers always rely upon?

I was ready to engage and discuss. But instead he said, “I have to go.” And that’s what he did.

In this political season, I urge all voters to do your research, and don’t automatically believe the candidates or their proxies. With the country facing deep economic challenges, too much is at stake to take the word of the sharks at your door or on your TV screens. And please vote Yes on Proposition H.

The land of the screen

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>johnny@sfbg.com

My flight to Canada was delayed, so I missed James Benning’s RR, the first film I planned to see at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival. Plane snafus kept me from seeing Benning’s film about trains, which had graced the cover of a recent Guardian issue devoted to life on the rails (and by extension, American capitalism off the rails). The first face to greet me in Canada was that of Sarah Palin, on TV screens by the arrival gate and above the luggage carousel. There she was, again, this time at the Vice Presidential debate. Since the airport TVs were muted, her lines of dialogue took the form of subtitles.

Even though I missed RR, Benning’s influence was present in a pair of sharp-eyed features by women who map personal visions of the United States. Train-hopping figures in the beginning and end of Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt’s follow-up to 2006’s Old Joy. At the start of the film, Wendy (Michelle Williams, in a role that’s taken on an added subtext of grief) and Lucy (played by Reichardt’s dog of the same name) walk into a beatific but beat-up nighttime campfire scene that’s like a Polaroid Kidd photo come to life. By the end, at least one of them has forsaken fuel car for train car.

A different story involving one woman, a camera, and the land, Lee Anne Schmitt’s California Company Town takes a more direct look at the American landscape. Schmitt’s documentary adds another volume to a growing collection of rural and urban US portraits by Cal Arts alumni, from Benning to Thom Andersen (whose 2003 Los Angeles Plays Itself shares Schmitt’s focus on California history) and William E. Jones (whose increasingly significant 1991 Massillon might be the precedent for Schmitt’s mix of voiceover and radio chatter, as well as her use of 16mm film). No doubt about it: Schmitt’s dry, scathing report on the fatal nature of California capitalism and the greater American dream was the festival’s timeliest film.

The unsentimental relevance of California Company Town hasn’t kept some viewers from blaming the messenger, who aims to provoke by capping her survey of the state’s ghost towns with a voiceless look at Silicon Valley, where even nature takes on a sterile, cult-like ambiance. At Vancouver and elsewhere, Terence Davies has been praised for Of Time and the City, his voiceover-heavy screed against capitalism’s facelifts for Liverpool, yet Schmitt’s relatively low-key approach to similar subject matter pisses off more people. For some, maybe the truth — especially when accompanied by Irma Thomas’ "Time is on My Side"— stings most when spoken by a woman. Andersen and Fred Halsted have demonstrated that Los Angeles plays itself. Schmitt shows how California plays us.

Both capitalism and socialism are skewered with no mercy and maximum mirth by Jim Finn’s The Juche Idea, which takes the published film theories of none other than Kim Jong-Il as its point of entry. If the extreme solitude of Schmitt’s film demonstrates one type of (autobiographical) radical filmmaking ideal, then Finn’s madcap feature demonstrates another. It’s a playfully braided collaborative effort. The main actresses (Jung Yoon Lee, and Daniela Kostova — a painter, video artist, and "the lesbian" on Big Brother Bulgaria 4) wryly insert their authorial voices and visual creativity into the film’s world. And what a mad, mad, mad world it is: one where Korean language courses teach kids how to pronounce "Karl Marx was a friend to children" and instruct adults on how to relieve their "loose bowels."

This world — where shoveling duck dung together makes for a romantic first date — looks like North Korea, one has to guess, or at least "Dear Leader’s" ideal version. Still, reviewers who assume capitalism emerges unscathed from the uproarious Juche Idea are watching the movie with one eye closed. Finn spotlights hilarious propagandistic turns of phrase such as "the tiny dentures of imperialism." But with one capitalist land outside the movie screen saddled with a 700 billion dollar debt, a viewer is left to wonder who’s zooming who when passing through the film’s multi-faceted looking glass. Jaw-dropping stadium-size spectacle, punch line-worthy blue screen backdrops, a mural by SF painter Carolyn Ryder Cooley, and the type of absurd corporate training footage beloved by Animal Charm all figure within Finn’s one-of-a-kind picture. The closing titles credit more than one person with "Kim Jong Il Flyface Assistance." Make no mistake: The Juche Idea is a communal effort.

Communal cooperation and journeys through the looking glass are also at play in Albert Serra’s Birdsong and Vancouver International Film Fest programmer Mark Peranson’s documentary about Serra’s movie, Waiting for Sancho. If Schmitt’s California Company Town is near-academically reductive and definitive in its approach to land, Serra’s Birdsong couldn’t be less prescriptive: with help from Google Image, the director chose the Canary Islands as a last-minute setting for his idiosyncratic retelling of the birth of the Christ child.

Process is to the fore of Serra’s filmmaking, which combines Andy Warhol’s and Apichatpong’s interest in boredom (and Warhol’s carefree neglect of camerawork) with a comic view of the heroic quest. Serra’s more immediately pleasurable Honour of the Knights (2006) updated Don Quixote; this time, the Three Wise Men verge on Three Stooges trapped in a Beckett scenario. Birdsong improves after one observes its filming through the video camera of Peranson (who plays Joseph in Serra’s movie). The ancient Three Wise Men of Serra’s film multiply to become a contemporary crew in Peranson’s documentary, which charts an aimless yet instinctive search for just the right cinematic moment at just the right site.

Communal cinematic spirit also enlivens Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis, a day-in-the-life melodrama about a family that operates — and lives within — a soft-core porn theater where hustlers ply their trade. At Cannes this year, Mendoza’s movie inspired panty-twist outrage from critics rich enough to be proudly unaware that people have bodies and sex costs money. While Serbis definitely owes a debt to Tsai Ming-liang’s masterful Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2004) and Jacques Nolot’s Porn Theatre (2003), Mendoza charts out and navigates a unique meta-cinematic space that is somehow even sun-dappled. He’s helped considerably by the superb actress Gina Paredes — and by a last-minute cameo from a goat.

Cooperative efforts aside, Vancouver didn’t lack commercial films powered by old-school singular auteur visions. One such standout was Hunger, the directorial debut of the English artist (not the deceased American actor) Steve McQueen. The formal daring of McQueen’s rendering of Bobby Sands and the IRA — which veers from wordless passages into a one-take presentation of an extended conversation — doesn’t become apparent until the very end, when his film suddenly embraces the award-grubbing political docudrama clichés that it’s avoided. Regardless, McQueen’s talent for framing shots and constructing scenes is prodigious. Tomas Alfredson makes no such missteps with Let the Right One In. If you see only one Swedish preteen vampire romance in your life, make it this one. The planned US version by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves will almost certainly lack Alfredson’s pop translations of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s desire and fire. Likewise, the subversive preteen sexuality of Alfredson’s original is unlikely to make the trip from Sweden to California. Vampires bite, but Hollywood remakes really suck.

Doc workers

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More DocFest:

>>A cockeyed view of a kooky country

>>Musical outsider may be genius, werewolf

>>DocFest Web site

> cheryl@sfbg.com

The first thing I noticed about the 2008 San Francisco International Documentary Film Festival was its enormous size. Well, OK, I actually squealed in delight over the inclusion of a Bigfoot doc. Then I took stock of how many films were contained in this year’s program. DocFest’s seventh incarnation is actually larger than its parent fest, the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Along with the Another Hole in the Head horror festival, both are headed up by founder Jeff Ross.

"It’s the biggest festival I’ve ever done — it’s three weeks long, 48 programs, 107 screenings altogether," Ross explains. This year, DocFest also unfurls a week of films at Berkeley’s Shattuck Cinemas. "I think there’s going to be a strong audience in Berkeley. I just moved to the East Bay, so it’s kind of part of my personal agenda to bring more of my stuff over there." For the first time Ross is also giving an award, naming filmmaker Melody Gilbert "Someone To Watch" based on the strength of her small but growing body of work.

DocFest’s 2008 line-up represents the work of programmers Bill Banning (owner of the Roxie Cinema, the chief venue for Ross’ festivals) and Fay Dearborn, a former programmer at Cape Cod’s Woods Hole Film Festival. She met Ross while working at IndieFest; after what she calls "one of those festival romances," the two married earlier this year.

Dearborn and Ross are obviously in synch, but Dearborn and Banning are also complementary, at least in terms of their programming styles. Banning culls most of his picks from films he scouts at fests like Washington, DC’s Silverdocs, while Dearborn sifts through DocFest’s hundreds of unsolicited submissions.

"I think Fay found most of the fun docs, though [I chose] Hi My Name is Ryan, which is really fun. I saw it at Silverdocs, and the audience was literally in stitches," Banning says. "The idea is to mix it up. There were two really good boxing films I saw at Silverdocs, and we took the better of the two, Kassim the Dream, which is an incredible film. But we’re also looking for good docs from the Bay Area, and there are a number of them in [this year’s program.]"

Banning and Ross agree that the increasing popularity of documentaries is due to multiple factors. "Digital filmmaking has totally changed the documentary landscape," Banning says. "It used to cost so much money to shoot 10 minutes of film on 16mm film. Now you can buy a really great camera for $6,000 and shoot forever on it."

Ross points to films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me (both 2004) — as well as past DocFest hit Spellbound (2002) — as exposing non-narrative films to a wider audience. But as Dearborn explains, the DocFest audience isn’t necessarily looking for films that have mainstream appeal. "I think there’s a certain core DocFest watcher who comes to see slice-of-life documentaries about people who are just inherently interesting, but not in a National Geographic kind of way — sort of a human interest story that’s maybe a little more offbeat," she says, citing the weirdly compelling Elvis in East Peoria and Bunnyland (both 2007) as films she’s particularly excited to screen.

For the first time, DocFest has a presenting sponsor in San Francisco-based Current TV, a doc-focused channel co-founded by Al Gore. Ross sees the partnership as a good match, but he’s hesitant to predict what’s ahead for DocFest. Despite the sponsorship, Ross says that DocFest and IndieFest are still funded 85 percent from their ticket sales, "which is unheard-of in the film festival world."

"I do not have a plan for 2009," he says. "I’d like to see how the festival works [at a larger size]. Everything I do is kind of an experiment. We try different things — this year’s it’s the expansion to Berkeley, so we’ll see how it goes."


THE SEVENTH SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL runs Oct. 17–Nov. 6 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF and the Shattuck, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. For tickets (most shows $10.50) and more information, visit www.sfindie.com>.

A touch of Grayson

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SHOCKING PROFILE When I informed John Epperson, aka Lypsinka, that there was a biography of Grayson Hall, he said, "Of Grayson Hall?! God." Then I told him the title of the book, by R. J. Jamison: A Hard Act to Follow (iUniverse, 224 pages, $18.95). "A hard actress to follow," Epperson observed.

Epperson and I had reached the subject of Hall through a discussion of the thespian skills of Joan Bennett, whose plum-flavored line readings took on an extra coating of irony in Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria. The leap from Suspiria to a different sort of horror classic, the soap opera and movie series Dark Shadows, where Bennett and Hall were part of the cast, was natural — even if the actresses are two of the most artifice-laden in TV and film history.

Hall is entwined with her Dark Shadows character, Dr. Julia Hoffman. Yet she also garnered an Oscar nomination for her performance as Ava Gardner’s nemesis in John Huston’s 1964 The Night of the Iguana. (According to Jamison, though she wasn’t in the movie, Elizabeth Taylor was on set, sporting flowers made out of human hair.) Huston gave Hall the role because of a likeness to Katharine Hepburn, but there was also a bit of Kay Thompson to her onscreen presence, a characteristic photographer William Klein must have noted when he had her caricature his former boss Diana Vreeland in the fashion satire Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (1966).

Hall — real name: Shirley Grossman — is a camp and cult icon. "In death as in life," Jamison writes in A Hard Act to Follow, "she remains adored by a mixture of gay men, drag queens, and Dark Shadows enthusiasts." Hall’s arched brows and piercingly intelligent eyes were the standout features of a one-of-a-kind visage. Her mannerisms and cigarette-smoky voice telegraphed a complicated — dare I say neurotic — intelligence.

As Jamison’s book makes clear, Hall’s genius stroke in Dark Shadows was deciding to play her scientist character as if Hoffman was secretly in love with vampire Barnabas Collins, a facet that wasn’t explicated in the script. This week’s Shock It to Me! Film Festival spotlights Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis’ movie offshoots of the one-of-a-kind gothic soap opera, 1970’s House of Dark Shadows and 1971’s Night of Dark Shadows. In Night, Hall adds another Dark Shadows role to her turns as Hoffman and the gypsy fortune teller Magda Rakosi with housekeeper Carlotta Drake. Whatever the part, Grayson Hall made an impression.

"SHOCK IT TO ME!" DARK SHADOWS TRIBUTE

See Rep Clock.

www.shock-it-to-me.com

Feast: 8 great game-day bars

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As the nation kicks off another football season and gears up for baseball playoffs, San Franciscans may be wary of spending Saturday afternoons in ass-numbing bleachers or watching boozy out-of-towners roam the city in 49ers and Giants garb. But you don’t have to rub up against the sweaty enthusiasts who paint their potbellies and holler like animals in the stands in order to enjoy a good game. Why not show your spirit in sports bars instead? I’ve spent weeks eating spicy wings, drinking pints of beer, and enduring painful hangovers to track down the best lounges and pubs for catching a buzz and cheering on your teams.

GREENS SPORTS BAR


With 18 beers on tap and 25 high-def TVs, Greens was made for big groups enduring hazy weekends of Niner mania. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you hear rowdy applause echoing from the pub’s front patio throughout the otherwise quiet neighborhood. It’s BYOF (but with all those drink specials, who needs food?) and gets super packed — in a good way — by game time.

2239 Polk, SF. (415) 775-4287

GIORDANO BROS.


Native Pennsylvanians first opened Giordano Bros. to sell Pittsburgh’s famous "all-in-one" sandwiches — complete with fries and slaw packed between scrumptious bread slices. They’ve since transformed it into Steelers Central. During games, bartenders are known to pass out bottles of original Pittsburgh draft shipped from the source — and after big wins, they might even pour you a glass of bubbly on the house. (Sorry alkies, no hard liquor.) An East Coast vibe resonates throughout the joint, from outdoor seating to endless memorabilia. The staff says the question isn’t if you’re from Pittsburgh, it’s about what part of Pittsburgh you’re from. Good thing I can fake an accent.

303 Columbus, SF. (415) 397-2767

ACE’S


Ask any pigskin junkie where to watch last year’s Super Bowl champs, and you’ll get one answer: Ace’s, where on Sundays the dive transforms into a funky buffet house chock-full of barbecued chicken, salad, and New York Giants fans. Add the extra-stiff $5 Bloody Mary to the carte du jour, and you’re headed straight for football-watching paradise.

998 Sutter, SF. (415) 673-0644, www.acesbarsf.com

ROYAL EXCHANGE


The good news: the Royal Exchange is loaded with finger-lickin’ gorgonzola garlic fries ($6.95), rows of cozy booths beneath a massive TV, a savory dinner menu, and Monday Night Football specials (Firestone Double Barrel Ale and Pale 31 pints for $3.95). The bad news: it’s not open on weekends. Big deal. Cal alums and students still party here on Friday nights to pump up for Saturday Golden Bears games. More good news: the staff accommodates private parties of up to 300 people. And the owners are Bears alums, too.

301 Sacramento, SF. (415) 956-1710, www.royalexchange.com

R BAR


With five plasmas devoted to University of Oregon games and bartenders who knock back shots with fellow Duck fans, it’s no wonder regulars call this place the Oregon headquarters of San Francisco. Its full bar is dirt cheap; splurge for the two-dollar cans of Michelob during Saturday matchups or special events, which sometimes involve the staff barbecuing brats and burgers outside for customers. I recommend wearing green and yellow, unless you want to brawl.

1176 Sutter, SF. (415) 567-7441

MONAGHAN’S


You can watch a San Francisco Giants game in just about any well-respected sports bar in the city, but you can — and you should — watch the Chicago Cubs in only one spot: Monaghan’s. For starters, it’s got a new drink special every day of the week — $3 for 20-ounce pints of any Irish beer on Wednesdays and $2.50 Red Stripes on Fridays, to name two. Extra points for its daily happy hour: $2.50 well drinks from 4-7 p.m.

3259 Pierce, SF. (415) 567-4466, www.monaghanssf.com

KEZAR PUB & RESTAURANT


Two words: chicken wings. They’re damned spicy, but the zing doesn’t linger uncomfortably on your lips or in your throat for hours afterward. Or maybe it does, and I just eat so fast and drink so much I don’t notice. Either way, they’re a perfect addition to a pitcher of Coors and a soccer game. For dinner, choose from fish and chips, barbecued sandwiches, and salads. Plasma televisions transmit all kinds of sports, from baseball to rugby, and the pool tables and large seating areas draw crowds you’ll want to party with.

770 Stanyan, SF. (415) 386-9292

MAD DOG IN THE FOG


This super mellow hole-in-the-Haight draws everyone from free-spirited bohos to scholars downing extra-large pitchers of Anchor Steam, Guinness, and almost every other kind of beer. You can’t order food, but check out the killer German sausage joint across the street. Nosh on one at Mad Dog while watching European football and playing pop trivia on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This combo is right on the money.

530 Haight, SF. (415) 626-7279

>>More Feast: The Guardian Guide to Bay Area Dining and Drinking

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