TV

Freedom of Information: 2007 James Madison Award winners

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Click here for details on the First Amendment Awards Dinner.

Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award

DAN NOYES (COFOUNDER, CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM)


If journalists were the subjects of trading cards like baseball players, the Dan Noyes rookie card would be just as impressive as a 2008 career highlights card. Think Reggie Jackson: a long, impressive career, spanning multiple organizations and a propensity to come out swinging big at the end of a hard-fought battle.

Over a career spanning 30 years, Noyes has pursued serious investigations, some lasting as long as a year, into everything from questionable Liberian timber imports to illicit gun trafficking from United States suppliers to the Nuestra family gang. Journalism first interested Noyes during the crucial investigative reporting that sparked Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.

In 1977 Noyes cofounded the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), an independent news organization which produces in-depth stories and documentaries for all major news outlets. In 1979, reporting for the ABC News program 20/20, CIR broke a story on a swindling United Nations charity organization and its connections to international drug trafficking.

More recently, Noyes has done a series of print and broadcast pieces concerning gang violence in California and its effect on the lives of those surrounding the lifestyle. Noyes still holds an executive position at the CIR and continues to contribute to the world of investigative journalism.

Beverly Kees Educator Award

CLIFF MAYOTTE


Cliff Mayotte sees his Advanced Acting Class at Lick-Wilmerding High School as one that merges students’ "consciousness and awareness as young adults with their skills and energies as performance artists."

The subtitle of the course is "Theatre as Civic Dialogue," and the eight students enrolled during the 2007 spring semester used all their abilities to pull off a notable show.

After an introduction to Documentary Theatre — a form he described as "oral history turned into performance" — the group selected a topic that was important to them, giving birth to the "Censorship Project."

The students interviewed their peers, teachers, and administrators to gather perspectives on the ways in which expression and opinion can be muted or altered, both voluntarily and involuntarily. They reached out to organizations such as Project Censored, the First Amendment Project, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. They transcribed interviews and studied subjects in order to capture statements, word patterns, and mannerisms of interviewees, then shaped the themes into a 60-minute performance.

Professional Journalists

WILL DEBOARD


"Being a high school sports guy, I don’t get to do this very often," the Modesto Bee‘s Will DeBoard said of his first major foray into investigative reporting. He had gotten a tip that the California Interscholastic Federation was investigating recruiting violations by the football program at Franklin High School in Stockton, which competed with schools in his area. DeBoard asked the school and CIF about recruiting violations, but the football coach flatly denied the allegations and the CIF wasn’t much more helpful.

So DeBoard decided to make formal requests for public records with the help of business reporter Joanne Sbranti, and after fighting through some initial denials, he obtained hundreds of pages of investigatory documents from CIF showing how the school was recruiting players from American Samoa. "It really was a treasure trove of great stuff. We got two weeks’ worth of stories out of these documents," DeBoard said. "It really showed us that what the school was telling us just wasn’t true."

The documents detailed the recruiting scheme and gave DeBoard tons of leads for follow-up stories, including the address of "a home owned by the coach where there were all these gigantic Samoan linemen living there." DeBoard called the effort an "adrenaline rush" better than that caused by the best game he’s covered and a high point of his journalism career.

THOMAS PEELE


Contra Costa Times investigative reporter Thomas Peele has a long history of battling for public records access on behalf of both reporters and private citizens. Peele, who helps with projects for all the newspapers under the Bay Area News Group-East Bay ownership, helped ensure the recovery of thousands of e-mails from the Oakland mayoral tenure of Jerry Brown when he left office to become the state’s attorney general in 2006. Peele also helped conduct a statewide audit of Public Records Act compliance by law enforcement agencies with the nonprofit Californians Aware, which revealed glaring inconsistencies in how police across the state make information about their activity available to the public. And he’s been a major figure in helping the Chauncey Bailey Project pry out new information about Bailey’s murder last year and it’s connection to Your Black Muslim Bakery. He began his career in 1983 at a small weekly in Bridgehampton, N.Y., and moved from there in 1988 to the Ocean County Observer in New Jersey before joining the CCT in 2000.

ROLAND DE WOLK


KTVU-TV producer Roland De Wolk is leading the investigative team of photographer Tony Hedrick and video editor Ron Acker in a quest to get the names of drivers who regularly use FasTrak lanes but don’t pay anything. But to date, says De Volk, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has been blocking his team’s quest.

De Wolk told the Guardian that his team filed a California Public Records request when the MTC wouldn’t provide information on the amount of money it was losing thanks to drivers who don’t pay tolls when they use FasTrak lanes.

"We asked MTC for specific numbers last summer and got little information. That makes a reporter’s antennae quiver," said De Wolk.

But when he and his team asked for the numbers of people obstructing their plates, the MTC started acting squirrelly, De Wolk said.

"Finally, after six to eight weeks of asking we got an answer: a photo of a car whose plate was blank," fumed De Wolk, whose team continues to push for the names of the 10 most frequent FasTrak violators.

Broadcast News Outlet

KGO-TV


When KGO-TV reporter Dan Noyes and producer Steve Fyffe asked Muni to turn over records of public complaints against its drivers, they were ready for some bureaucratic foot dragging. But they never expected the yearlong grudge match that followed. First, the union representing Muni drivers sued to keep the records sealed. Then Muni’s parent department, the Municipal Transportation Agency, made a backroom deal with the union and released a blizzard of confusing and heavily redacted paperwork that would have made the Pentagon blush.

"It was essentially a big document dump," Fyffe told us. "There was no way to tell one form from another or which driver was which."

Noyes and Fyffe convinced their bosses at KGO-TV to file a lawsuit for full access to the records. The station prevailed, after which Noyes and Fyffe received over 1,200 pages of public complaints about 25 drivers. Recently, the station went back to court after Muni refused to release surveillance tapes of the drivers. As in the previous case, the judge ruled that the public had a right to the materials and forced the transit agency to hand the tapes over.

Fyffe said he sees KGO’s legal successes as small victories in a much larger fight. "I hope in the future that this case will make Muni and other city departments more [responsive] to records requests … these kinds of incremental victories hopefully lead, little by little, to a more open government."

Print News Outlet

SACRAMENTO BEE


The Sacramento Bee operates in a city run by top-tier politicians and their spinmeisters, so the editors and reporters there have placed increasingly high value on using documents to support their stories.

"We’ve always used public records here. Being in a state capital, we’re a little more aware of the necessarily of that," managing editor Joyce Terhaar said. "You just need to be able to tell a story about what’s really happening."

Yet she said that in recent years, the Bee has made a concerted effort to hire public-records experts and to have them share their knowledge with the paper’s staff through regular workshops. And last year, those efforts paid off with a string of big, impactful investigative stories.

Among them was Andy Furillo’s look at how much the state was spending to fight inmate care lawsuits, Andrew McIntosh’s exposé on the lack of oversight for paramedics and emergency medical technicians, and stories by John Hill and Kevin Yamamura on misconduct by the state’s Board of Chiropractic Examiners.

In selecting the Bee, Society of Professional Journalists judges recognized these individual efforts as well as the Bee‘s "institutional support of reporters and their use of public records for numerous stories."

Community Media

THE BERKELEY DAILY PLANET


One of the only ways to uncover corporate wrongdoing is to dig through court records, and it’s the job of the press to report what it discovers, said Becky O’Malley, executive editor for the Berkeley Daily Planet. She was convinced that a prior court order violated the public’s constitutional rights to see court documents, so the small daily newspaper sued and won in a California appeals court last year, making public 15,000 pages of records from a class-action suit filed against Wal-Mart in 2001.

The documents included allegations that the company had denied rest breaks to its workers and deleted hours from paychecks. In the Planet‘s freedom of information suit, the appeals court judges agreed with the paper’s attorneys that the case could set a dangerous precedent where the public would have to prove its right to access court records. "It’s becoming more of a trend for judges to grant permanent seals on court records," said O’Malley. That’s unfortunate, she added, since "the only way the public finds out about bad things going on in society is through court records."

Special Citation Award

CHAUNCEY BAILEY PROJECT


After Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey was murdered last August, a large group of Bay Area media organizations formed a rare coalition to investigate his death and the activities of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a long-time East Bay institution believed by police to be involved in the killing. Since then, the group has produced several stories complete with audio, video, and photo presentations, the most recent of which is a series by retired Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reporter Mary Fricker detailing the sexual assault allegations made by young women once in the custody of Yusuf Bey Sr., founder of the bakery. Fricker received help from independent radio journalist Bob Butler, investigative reporter A.C. Thompson, and MediaNews staff writers Cecily Burt, Thomas Peele and Josh Richman. Other stories have reported allegations of real estate fraud against bakery associates, explored potential coconspirators in Bailey’s death, and examined the bakery’s ties to several prominent politicians. More about the project — the first of its kind since a group of journalists investigated the murder of Don Bolles more than 30 years ago in Arizona — can be found at chaunceybaileyproject.org, or at www.sfbg.com/news/chaunceybailey.

Public Official

MARK LENO


It was a staff member, Kathryn Dresslar, who told Assemblymember Mark Leno how horrible state agencies had become at complying with the California Public Records Act. Dresslar served on the board of Californians Aware, a group that advocates for open government, and she described to her boss how a 1986 audit by the organization had given every one of the 33 agencies in California government a failing grade.

Ryan McKee, then a high-school student and the son of CalAware board president Rich McKee, had visited each agency and asked for a few simple things. He wanted to see each agency’s guidelines for public access, and he requested some basic information, including the salary of the agency director. Agency after agency refused to follow the law.

So Leno introduced legislation that would have mandated that every agency post its access guidelines on the Web — and included stiff fines for agencies that violated the Public Records Act. "It put some teeth into the law," Leno told us. "And I got 120 of 120 members of the state Legislature to vote for it.

That wasn’t enough for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed the bill, saying it wasn’t needed. The governor insisted that he had already ordered state agencies to fix the problem.

"It was a great eye-opener for me, and showed me the resistance this administration has to allowing public access to state government," Leno said. "Without that access the public is at a great disadvantage."

Library

UC BERKELEY’S BANCROFT LIBRARY LOYALTY OATH PROJECT


It might be hard to believe, but in 1949 the University of California Regents, a bastion of higher education, rode the wave of anticommunist fervor and McCarthyism, forcing all UC employees to take a loyalty oath. The Board of Regents adopted the rule that UC administrators pushed forth: denounce communism and swear loyalty to the state, or face losing your job.

As could be expected, people resisted and 31 faculty, workers, and student employees lost their jobs. They appealed the case to the California Supreme Court and eventually were reinstated in 1952, but the controversy cast a pall over the UC’s reputation and divided campuses. With the help of a grant from UC President Emeritus David Gardner, archivists from UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and other researchers painstakingly compiled 3500 pages of text, many audio statements, and photos from four UC collections.

The online collection, which went live in December 2007, serves as primary source material for students and researchers who want to understand how UC administrators got embroiled in and came to terms with the McCarthy-era tensions that rocked the country.

Legal Counsel

RACHEL MATTEO-BOEHM


Electronic data is the new frontier for public-records law, and Rachel Matteo-Boehm, a lawyer with Holme, Roberts and Owen, last year won a key case preserving the public’s right to access to what some public agencies have tried to claim was proprietary data.

The county of Santa Clara produced a digital map showing property lines, assessors parcels and other key real-estate data, and that became the basis for a geographic information system tool. The GIS would allow users to plot everything from property taxes to street repairs, public investment, political party registration, school test scores and other trends. But Santa Clara wasn’t giving it out to the public: The database cost more than $100,000, which meant only big businesses could use it.

Boehm went to court on behalf of the California First Amendment Coalition to argue that the data was public, and must be made available without high charges. "As information begins to be collected in electronic form, and governments choose to put information in sophisticated electronic formats, you can run into real public-access problems," Boehn told us.

Boehm convinced a Santa Clara Superior Court judge that the data was indeed covered under the California Public Records Act. Now Santa Clara must make the map available to the public — and other counties with similar data, seeing the results of the suit, are following that rule.

The decision was a key one, Boehm said: "One day we’re going to wake up and all there will be is electronic records," she noted. And if governments can apply different rules to those documents, "you can kiss the Public Records Act goodbye."

Whistleblower

DAN COOKE


When Dan Cooke shared details of an alleged sewage spill on Alcatraz Island with the Guardian, the health of the national park — where he’d been working as an historical interpreter for over a decade — was foremost on his mind. But he lost his job after the story was published — apparently for taking a proactive role in noting details of the spill in the island’s log book and speaking candidly to the press about what he’d seen. Wanting nothing more than a return to his job leading educational tours of the island, he filed an administrative claim with the US Department of Labor against the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy and the National Park Service. And he called the Guardian. We reported his firing. The next time Cooke called, it was to happily report he was back on the job.

Citizen

SUPERBOLD (BERKELEYANS ORGANIZED FOR LIBRARY DEFENSE)


SuperBOLD has accomplished something entirely different from what it set out to do. Originally, the small group of devoted Berkeley public library users organized to oppose the installation of RFID tags in books. "In the process of going to library board of trustees meetings, we discovered they were vioutf8g the Brown Act," said Gene Bernardi, who heads SuperBOLD’s steering committee with Jane Welford, Jim Fisher, and Peter Warfield. They found, among other things, that certain documents were only made available to trustees and a lottery system was employed in selecting speakers during public comment. They took their complaints to the Berkeley city attorney and joined up with the First Amendment Project, which threatened a lawsuit. Things have changed, though it’s still not perfect — city council meetings only allow 10 speakers and the library trustees still play the lottery for public comment, but marginal improvements portend better days.

"Now you can speak more than once," said Bernardi. "Now you can speak on consent calendar and agenda items. So there are more opportunities to speak … if the Mayor [Tom Bates] remembers to call public comment."

Electronic Access

CARL MALAMUD, PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG


For years, web pioneer Carl Malamud has sought ways to use the Internet to connect average citizens with their government. His new Web site public.resource.org helps that cause by excavating buried public domain information and posting it online. Though still in its early stages, the site already allows users to tap into hard-to-find records from places like the Smithsonian, Congress, and the federal courts system.

Even though most government records are part of the public domain, fishing them out from the bureaucratic depths can be a daunting and expensive task, even for someone like Malamud. During a lecture at UC Berkeley last year, he related his recent difficulties in acquiring a simple database from the Library of Congress. Instead of turning over the materials, officials at the Library cited dubious copyright protections and presented Malamud with a bill for over $85,000 — all for access to supposedly public information.

Thanks to Malamud’s Web site, that database and millions of other documents are now available with the click of a mouse. Ultimately, Malamud hopes public.resource.org will help bring about an age of "Internet governance," in which every last byte of public data winds up online for all to see, free of charge.

THE SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHAPTER presents the 23RD ANNUAL JAMES MADISON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AWARDS DINNER

MARCH 18, 2008
NEW DELHI RESTAURANT
160 ELLIS STREET
SAN FRANCISCO
No-host bar @ 5:30 p.m.
Dinner/Awards @ 6:30 p.m.

TICKETS:
$50 SPJ members & students
$70 General public
For more information, contact David Greene (dgreene@thefirstamendment.org)

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Saint Peter

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› a&e@sfbg.com

Arguably no modern film director made a better sustained entrance than Peter Bogdanovich, whose first four features were all triumphs. Targets (1968) was a chilling conceit that brought Hollywood pretend terror (Boris Karloff basically playing himself) against a modern real-world horror, the randomly mass-murdering sniper. That critical success led to a major studio deal to adapt (with then wife and collaborator Polly Platt) Larry McMurtry’s novel The Last Picture Show (1971), a melancholy black-and-white flashback to 1950s rural Texas. It won two Oscars, was nominated for five more, and served as a launching pad for actors including Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, and Cybill Shepherd. Next came What’s Up, Doc? (1972), a delightful, San Francisco–set nod to 1930s screwball comedies with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. Its huge success was equaled by 1976’s Paper Moon, with O’Neal and daughter Tatum as a Depression-era confidence duo.

That’s a heady four hits in five years — and they’ll all be shown at the Castro Theatre in a tribute to the director presented by Midnites for Maniacs’ Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. Another four films will be seen in director’s cuts different from original theatrical versions. Further, Bogdanovich himself will be on hand at all but the earliest matinees. He’s a great raconteur who’s insightfully frank about the ups and downs of an eventually checkered career.

"Ups and downs" puts it mildly. While Bogdanovich started out on top, Hollywood relished kicking him with each downward step. But he’s still here — and especially visible recently, thanks to his role on The Sopranos as Lorraine Bracco’s shrink. Behind the camera too, he’s gotten love lately from the four-hour DVD documentary Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream (2007). Bogdanovich, who hasn’t directed a big-screen movie since 2001’s lamentably underseen The Cat’s Meow with Kirsten Dunst, hopes to soon start shooting an adaptation of Tracey Letts’s jet-black stage comedy Killer Joe — and he’s got other irons in the fire.

If it’s thus a fine moment to be Bogdanovich, there have been many not-so-great ones. Phoning recently from Los Angeles, he recalls that before the debut of Daisy Miller (1974), his first commercial failure, critic Judith Crist asked him, "Is it good? It better be … because they’re waiting for you." Catching major flack for that film was Shepherd, the model-turned-actress he left Platt for.

"Peter and Cybill" were inseparable, possibly obnoxious. They cohosted The Tonight Show for a week and were reportedly arch as hell. They occupied the inaugural cover of People, with the headline "Living Together Is Sexy." The director quotes Cary Grant (doing a perfect vocal imitation) advising, "Petah, please stop telling people you’re happy and in love!" Asked why, Grant said, "Because they aren’t happy and in love."

Even those who liked Daisy Miller went Attila on 1975’s At Long Last Love, a lavish tribute to ’30s musicals with Cole Porter songs recorded live by some actors who were trained singers (Madeleine Kahn) and others who weren’t (Shepherd, Burt Reynolds). It was meant to be charming. It got the most vitriolic reviews this side of Battlefield Earth. Bogdanovich now says, "We rushed and fucked it up. The first preview in San Jose was an unmitigated disaster. Then we recut and remixed, and it played quite well. But I made some calamitous changes after that, and didn’t preview it again before release. We were just killed. Later we made a different edit. When Jesse called me to say he was showing it, I said, ‘Why?’ ‘I like it.’ ‘Oh, you’re the one.’<0x2009>"

The Castro will screen that improved edit — which is charming. Although the title is still a pseudonym for "turkey," At Long Last Love has never been released on video or DVD. In a town where success usually excuses all egotism, Bogdanovich had still somehow crossed a line. His failures were blamed on sheer arrogance. "I got a lot of that," he says — though back then a purportedly imperious on-set demeanor and statements like "I’m not modest, I’m not humble, and the more success I have, the more critics will resent me" surely didn’t help. He’d had the temerity to befriend Hollywood legends including Grant, John Ford, and Orson Welles — who was practically a permanent houseguest. Who the hell did he think he was?

Cynics had already interpreted Bogdanovich’s hit homages to Hollywood’s past as evidence he didn’t have an original thought in his head. Then they gloated over his nonhits. Despite the star power of Reynolds and both O’Neals, Nickelodeon was a 1976 Christmas flop. (Forced to shoot in color, Bogdanovich says, "It’s another movie in black and white" — which is how he’ll show it at the Castro.)

Despite excellent reviews, 1979’s Paul Theroux adaptation Saint Jack didn’t find an audience. Ditto 1981’s They All Laughed, an enchanting, ensemble romantic comedy. It was (among other things) a valentine to his new love and protégée, erstwhile Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten — who shortly after filming ended was killed by the thuggish promoter-husband she’d tried to leave amicably. That murder-suicide was followed by more ugliness: a war of words between Bogdanovich and Hugh Hefner; "dramatization" of the tragedy in 1983’s Star 80 ("I begged Bob Fosse not to do it") and a TV movie; and distribution problems for They All Laughed that cost him millions. Sympathy soured when Bogdanovich became involved with Dorothy’s younger sister, Louise — who was all of six months older than his own daughter. (Nonetheless, their eventual marriage lasted 13 years.)

Bogdanovich had a left-field comeback in 1985’s Mask, with Eric Stoltz as Elephant Kid and Cher as biker-chick mom. But even that was marred by public sparring with both Cher and studio execs. The latter substituted Bob Seger tunes for Bruce Springsteen ones key to the story’s real-life inspiration. (The Castro’s "theatrical world premiere" cut restores all the Bruuuuce.) Whether good, bad, or indifferent, his subsequent ventures flopped. In an eerie echo of past events, 1993’s The Thing Called Love came out (barely) after star River Phoenix OD’d. Bogdanovich turned to directing TV episodes (including for The Sopranos) and cable movies. It wasn’t a comedown, he says. "The scripts were good … and I got to work with actors like Cicely Tyson, Sidney Poitier, and George Segal."

Bogdanovich also relit an acting career abandoned decades earlier. Having written essays about film history (notably for Esquire) before moving to Hollywood, he thinks his industry hater trail is partly due to perception of him as critic turned filmmaker. He considers the roughly 45 stage productions he acted in (and the 6 he directed) from age 15 to 24 as his real prior job.

Given all past tempests, Bogdanovich seems on good terms with his exes — Shepherd (in town with the play Curvy Widow) has promised to show up at the Castro late Friday for The Last Picture Show and At Long Last Love; Louise is flying in to talk about her late sister when They All Laughed shows on Sunday.

Is it painful for them to see Dorothy Stratten onscreen? "Yeah, especially now that [costar] John Ritter has died," he says. "But you know, when you see it with an audience, it’s OK — it takes the pain somewhat away. One of the peripheral tragedies [to Stratten’s death] was that the movie was never properly seen in its day. You couldn’t really look at it in the way it was meant to be enjoyed."

A GENUINE TRIBUTE TO PETER BOGDANOVICH

Fri/7–Sun/9, $10 per day ($25 weekend pass)

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com, www.ticketweb.com

Scenesters

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New York playwright Theresa Rebeck has made a name for herself railing against the shallow, self-absorbed depravity of people. In her savagely written The Scene, four Manhattanites working in television (like Rebeck, who has written for Law and Order) demonstrate just how low they’ll stoop as they try to choose the lesser of evils.

Instead of sucking up to a cheesy TV producer, Charlie (Aaron Davidman), a long-out-of-work actor, sponges off his wife, Stella (played by Daphne Zuniga from Melrose Place), who makes a decent living booking guests on a vapid talk show that cons its audience into believing their salvation can be found in low-carb pasta.

The show opens with Charlie and his best friend, Lewis (Howard Swain), shmoozing at a party. Along comes Clea (Heather Gordon, in real life Miss Marin) — young, new to town, and the living embodiment of all that Charlie detests. She buzzes on incoherently about how New York City is so, like, surreal and is instantly drawn to Charlie as he flies into one of many eloquent tirades on banality. It’s their ill-conceived match that becomes the center of the play, which director Amy Glazer orchestrates with just the right flow. Meanwhile affable Lewis and virtuous Stella get caught in the scrimmage. All four deliver pitch-perfect performances. But guess which one steals the whole Scene?

THE SCENE

Through March 8

Wed–Sat, 8 p.m. (also Sat, 3 p.m.), $20–$65

San Francisco Playhouse

533 Sutter, SF

(415) 677-9596

Lee Friedlander’s lively American necrologies

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REVIEW Throughout Lee Friedlander’s 50-year oeuvre, much of which is now on display at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the photographer has been lauded for his liveliness, optimism, and mobility. Yet his paean to modern Americana often resembles monochrome memento mori. Taken as a whole, Friedlander’s work has always seemed driven to two poles: the ephemeral and the haunting.

Heavily impressed by the avant-naturalism of European photographers Eugène Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as the post–World War II experimentalism of Robert Frank, Friedlander staked his claim at a moment in the 1950s when the photograph transcended the moribund category of journalistic tool and became its own art form. Modeling much of his working method around Cartier-Bresson’s so-called decisive moment, Friedlander’s timeless images still have a striking past tense about them. Now ossified on film, these thousand microcosmic moments, captured throughout the 1960s and ’70s, seem like lively obituaries.

While Friedlander first made a name for himself as a contractor for Atlantic Records — where he shot such musicians as Ornette Coleman — he was never a celebrity photographer. In fact, his most intriguing work resulted from a personal obsession with traveling and shooting the country, crisscrossing between New York and his home state of Washington. And so the images of nocturnal motel rooms, cycloptic TV sets, and storefront tessellations conjure the American dynamism and dread of Vladimir Nabokov or David Lynch. The plethora of windows and mirrors in his street photography admit countless apertures through which to see his subjects. But Friedlander’s playful sense of humor always appears just within the clutches of something inexplicably sinister — like the cartoonish shadows that often hover into his frame. Though his more recent work — in portraiture, nudes, and particularly in nature — may suffer slightly from the inevitable cooling of youth’s ambition, Friedlander’s baroque attention to detail and depth of field are unmatched. This is a definitive exhibition on one of America’s most ingenious, albeit conflicted, photographers.

"FRIEDLANDER"

Through May 18

Mon.–Tues., Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.–8:45 p.m.

$7–$12.50, free for members and 12 and under

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

A look into the TV: Warhol Superstar documentaries

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A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory is playing at the Roxie Film Center right now, giving people a sustained glimpse of the competitiveness and back-stabbing that went on during the Factory’s heyday. Paul Morrissey in particular does not come off well, though director (and Williams’ niece) Esther Robinson’s attempts at drawing connections between Andy Warhol and her uncle’s death remain vague. If a documentary about a likely suicide can have a bright side, then Walk does: Robinson uncovers and spotlights Williams’s heretofore obscure film work, which is very impressive – as attractive and arresting in its use of black-and-white contrast as anything that ever came out of the Factory, which was essentially the MGM of underground cinema.

walk1.jpg
Andy Warhol and Danny Williams

With A Walk into the Sea currently screening, the time seems right to present a colorful but by no means definitive short guide to other docs or features about characters or Superstars perhaps best-known for floating through the realm of Warhol’s Factory:

Text-messaging the apocalypse

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HORROR FILM Jacob Gentry, one of the three codirectors of The Signal, assures me he’s "fully prepared for the zombie apocalypse." His cohorts, David Bruckner and Dan Bush, agree that they love zombie movies. But they would also like to make it clear that The Signal — which supposes that "a rift in the electromagnetic sector" has infected cell phones, televisions, and other devices, inspiring all who experience it to inflict terrible violence — is not a zombie movie.

"If you took all 360 channels of your satellite TV and spat them out in one single signal and turned the volume up, would you become a little bit more frantic?" Bruckner asks. "If it pushed one person to the point of pushing another person, could it start a giant chain reaction of violence across the country?"

Bush adds, "I look around me and I see a lot of pissed-off people that are really close to some sort of violence as it is. In our movie the people are conscious, they’re rational, they’re aware of their decisions — they’re not bloodsucking morons."

Yep, they’re rational — and that’s what makes them so spooky. The Signal unfolds in three chapters, each helmed by a different director. Every segment is told from the point of view of a different character: cheatin’ wife Mya (Anessa Ramsey), her lover Ben (Justin Welborn), and her jealous husband, Lewis (A.J. Bowen).

"The first section is visceral and straightforward," Bruckner explains. "Then we get into the second section and we get inside the head of someone who’s very, very signalized. From his perspective it takes on a black-comedy tone. Then we get to the third section and we focus on the hero and his journey."

Cinematic gore and chaos are always enjoyable, and The Signal, which taps into the totally legitimate notion that humans are slaves to their technology, conveys an overall feeling of psychic dread. But the film’s middle section, in which a weapons-wielding Lewis home-invades a failed New Year’s Eve party, is the film’s strongest. Perhaps it’s because humor is the most comfortable way to digest the film’s suggestion that anarchy is just one fucked-up frequency away.

THE SIGNAL

Opens Fri/22 in Bay Area theaters

Your funny Valentines

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s 60 percent embarrassing and 40 percent hot. And the hotness is derived from how embarrassing it is. Or maybe that’s just me."

Talkin’ ’bout Valentine’s Day, the big VD, that bad case of lovin’ you, with a digest-to-impress din-din and a small but meaningful token of my esteem. Specifically, Club Neon organizer Jamie Guzzi, a.k.a. DJ Jamie Jams, is speaking of Club Neon’s fourth annual Valentine’s Underwear Party.

Yep, I know you know good times sans culottes have been happening for aeons — years, even — on a, ahem, more informal basis, way before Fuse TV’s Pants-Off Dance-Off. But guarens, it’ll be way sweeter and sexier at Club Neon: the first year at the Hush Hush, in 2003, "people were pretty tentative, and there were still lurkers," Guzzi says. "When you hear about these sorts of events, it’s more of a creepier crowd. When people first hear about it, they think it’s a Power Exchange or more Burning Man kind of thing — a lot of people you don’t want to see in underwear leering at each other. But this is a more indie crowd, and the kids are all cute and twee, and everyone shows up in American Apparel underwear." At least the clothing company’s soft tease is good for something more than selling terry cloth hot pants: vive le thunderwear as social equalizer!

"When you’ve got a couple hundred people in underwear, it’s pretty hard to front," Guzzi says, explaining that the idea emerged after he got frustrated with kids dressed to the nines vibing one another. The bonus: once stripped down at Club Neon’s key soiree, Guzzi claims, "you end up realizing that a lot of your friends are way cute. It shuffles the deck in terms of who’s attractive!"

And thank St. Valentine for dynamos like Guzzi. Sour grapes, bitter pills, badasses, bummed punks, gloomy goths, and hardcore realists have long realized all holidays have become co-opted as multimillion-dollar promotional vehicles to buy more, by playing off residual guilt, goodwill, or simply that overarching existential emptiness concerning life’s perpetual gerbil wheel. But what if you decide to suspend disbelief and descend into the commercialized maelstrom, mindfully participating in the recommended shopping, wining, and dining rituals? You’re accustomed to rocking outside the system, so what to do with your bad self when you need back in? Still no reservations? I’ve got a few ideas for every subculty cutie.

Indie Rock Ian Grub: fixed with a laid-back bike ride to Bernal Heights’ MaggieMudd for Mallow Out! vegan cones. Gift: an all-show pass to the Noise Pop or Mission Creek music fest or a steamy copy of the baby-making Juno soundtrack.

Hyphy Heather Grub: grind down on maple syrup–braised short ribs at the bupscale 1300 on Fillmore. Or for old times’ sake, snatch Sunday brunch at the latest Powell’s Place in Bayview (2246 Jerrold) now that gospel star Emmitt Powell has been forced to relocate. Gift: she voted for Barack Obama, but today she’ll swoon for Mac Dre’s Pill Clinton (Thizz Ent., 2007).

Metal Sven Grub: pick up a nice red wine and some stinky cheese for a Mountain View Cemetery picnic in Oakland — pretend you’re downing the fresh blood and putrid flesh of virgins. Gift: Santa Cruz combo Decrepit Birth’s Diminishing Between Worlds (Unique Leader) inspires … birth control.

Techno Cal Grub: nibble sour plum, shiso, and flaxseed sushi and other vegan Japanese delights at Medicine New-Shojin Eatstation. Gift: avert your eyes from the Versace boutique on your way outta the Crocker Galleria minimall, and here you go, the Field’s From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt, 2007)

Country Kat Grub: fried rabbit — oh hell, we’re in former cow country, go for the porterhouse at the deliciously ’40s-western retro-authentic Hayward Ranch. Tip the blue-haired waitress well — she’s gotta have the patience of St. Val to deal with you two after your fourth Bloody Mary. Gift: seal the deal with Queen of the Coast (Bear Family, 2007), a four-CD box set of tunes by Bonnie Owens, who stole both Buck Owens’s and Merle Haggard’s hearts.

Jam Band Jessie Grub: grab your nut cream at Café Gratitude and chase each other around the table with wheatgrass shots. New game: if you don’t make me utter the goofy menu item names, I will be grateful. Gift: crash into the Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City Music Hall Blu-ray DVD (Sony, 2007).

So hurry up and give your favorite pop tot some love — or you just might find yourself without on VD.

CLUB NEON’S VALENTINE’S UNDERWEAR PARTY

With DJs Jamie Jams, Emdee, Little Melanie, and Aiadan

Thurs/14, 9 p.m., $5

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

www.neonsf.com

LOVE VENUS, LOVE DENGUE FEVER

J’adore Dengue Fever’s new Venus on Earth (M80), and the band provides the perfect post-love-in aperitif with Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. The John Pirozzi documentary on the Los Angeles combo’s trip to Cambodia ended up involving more than anyone anticipated. "Every contact was, like, ‘Don’t worry about anything! Just show up! Everything will be great!’<0x2009>" tour mastermind and bassist Senon Williams explains. "We’d be, like, ‘Where are we playing?’ ‘I don’t know. Just show up!’ So we were all nervous going over there. We had all our instruments, but we needed amplifiers and PAs and a crowd to play to." Fortunately, Dengue Fever were quickly booked to appear on Cambodian Television Network, and a two-song turn mushroomed into 10 numbers and a two-hour appearance. "Instantly, we became famous across the country," Williams tells me, "because everyone watches TV there."

SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE MEKONG

Fri/15, 9:30 p.m.; Sat/16, 12:30 p.m.; $10.50

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

Shocked, G?

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When I first heard Digital Underground in 1989, via "The Humpty Dance," little did I imagine it would someday fall to me to announce the group’s end. After a 20-year run — including five albums, one EP, one rarities disc, solo albums by Shock-G and Money B, and a helluva lot of touring — DU are calling it quits. Their Feb. 22 show at the Red Devil Lounge may be your last opportunity to see these putf8um Bay Area OGs. You’d be a fool to miss it: their shows are a cut above most live-rap, P-Funk-style fests, driven by Shock’s keyboards and an endless array of MCs, including, at one time, 2pac himself.

"Every group from [Public Enemy] to the Stones has experienced a hiatus, some straight-up fallouts," says Shock, a.k.a. Humpty Hump, on the phone from Los Angeles. "I think we hold the record for longest harmonious run without a breakup. I gave it a loyal 20 years — ya can’t be mad at that."

Despite the lack of internal beef, however, Shock’s decision to disband DU is both personal and artistic. Constant touring, for example, has taken its toll, particularly with the group’s partying reputation.

"The energy was gettin’ bad," Shock concedes. "Both the group and the audience were becoming a bunch of alcoholics. That means it’s time for a break.

"I did several sober shows over the past few years, like 1 in every 10. However, when I suggested this to the band, everyone looked at me like I’m crazy, as if I suggested doing the show naked!"

Even more pressing, however, is Shock’s desire to expand as an artist, musically and otherwise.

"I’ve always wanted to give serious musicianship a shot," he says, "to sit down at the piano like a jazz musician and do complicated arrangements and improvisations with other musicians. But it’s hard to be fully present anywhere when I’m outta town every weekend to do DU shows."

While Shock confirms he has about two albums’ worth of unreleased DU he’ll eventually drop and doesn’t rule out the possibility of a reunion — "Ask me in five years," he says — for now he wants to direct his energies in nonmusical directions.

"I wanna go down to Hollywood and see what it do: voice-overs, comedic acting, films, TV — stuff I never had time for from recording and touring. For the first time since 1987, I have time to commit to something else. I’m excited.

"I used to use George Clinton, Sting, and RZA as my models," he concludes. "Now I plan to be more Ice Cube, more Puffy, more Jamie Foxx, more wherever I wanna be."

DIGITAL UNDERGROUND

Feb. 22, 8 p.m., $20

Red Devil Lounge

1695 Polk, SF

1-866-468-3399

www.reddevillounge.com

Love on the road — and on the page

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Dean Wareham mainly remembers his last San Francisco performance for a "botched guitar solo." Though the alleged incident was hardly a blip during the seductive show he and wife Britta Phillips delivered with their band, he promises on the phone from New York City, "It won’t happen again."

We’ll see. Dean and Britta come back to San Francisco to play Yoshi’s with French postmodern chanteuse Keren Ann in the first nonjazz performance at the tony new venue on Fillmore.

Wareham met bassist-vocalist Phillips in 2000 when he was first considering leaving Luna, a band he fronted for 10 years and eight albums. She replaced longtime Luna member Justin Harwood, piquing Wareham’s interest in keeping the group together — at least for a little while.

"I was thinking, ‘I’m just not sure I want to do it without Justin,’" Wareham recalls.

Not only did he feel his longtime friend and bassist’s departure was a sign to move on, but the music business had entered a funk that had the modestly popular but hugely respected band scrambling for a label. Wareham wasn’t really a happy camper.

"Then Britta joined the band, and I have to say if I’m being honest with myself that that made it fun again," he says.

Indeed. The intriguing, siren-voiced Phillips was already something of a cult figure when she joined Luna, having gained notoriety as the singing voice of animated TV character Jem.

Wareham thinks the last two Luna records made with Phillips, Romantica and Rendezvous (Jetset; 2002, 2004), are two of the best from the group, which mainly developed its music together.

"We would be in a rehearsal studio playing electric guitars so it was a louder thing," Wareham says. "Someone would have an idea that we would just play again and again."

Luna played their final concert at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City on Feb. 28, 2005.

In contrast, Dean and Britta make silkier, sexier pop, though their first recording together, 2003’s L’Avventura (Jetset), started as a Wareham solo project that Phillips gradually became a part of. "Neither one of us really knew what we were doing," Wareham explains. "It was going to be all covers and then, bit by bit, sort of transformed into something else." The album encompasses an eclectic batch of songs by other writers — the Doors’ "Indian Summer," Madonna’s "I Deserve It," Buffy St. Marie’s "Moonshot" — but the couple’s intimate sound became defined by Wareham’s "Night Nurse" and two outrageously seductive Phillips originals, "Out Walking" and "Your Baby," as the couple’s vocals purr through floating washes of strings and vibes courtesy of producer Tony Visconti.

Wareham concedes last year’s Back Numbers (Zoe) was more thought-out. "We probably had a better plan, and more of it was recorded at home," he says. "The record was built brick by brick in the studio. Then we have to learn to play the songs live, which makes it quite a challenge, actually." The couple took time to get married when producer Visconti left to work on a Morrissey album in England.

Indie-rock gossip hounds might be interested to know that Wareham and Phillips didn’t become a couple immediately after they met — and they kept it on the down low even after they hooked up. Wareham promises to tell all in his new memoir, Black Postcards, which will be published by Penguin in March. "The dirt is going to be out there soon," he deadpans with a laugh. The frontman seems circumspect in conversation, though he also clearly strives for as much honesty as propriety allows.

"It covers a lot of personal stuff," he adds.

The writing was difficult for Wareham, and he likens the two-year process to a "very long therapy session," albeit one in which they pay you instead of the other way around.

"Obviously I’m used to writing, but when you write lyrics they can be cryptic and you don’t really need to reveal very much of yourself. Sometimes you might, but you can pretend something’s about you or it’s about someone else. This was a different kettle of fish," he says.

He believes people may be surprised by what he chooses to reveal, particularly fans of his first band, Galaxie 500, who thought he was "such a nice boy," as he puts it. "There will probably be some people who are disgusted with my behavior, but," he says, sighing, "oh well."

DEAN AND BRITTA

With Keren Ann

Mon/18, 8 p.m., $18–$22

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

Tiger Beat bard

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

If 1967 was the Summer of Love, then late 1968 through mid-1969 brought the seasons of mass deflowering. This wasn’t due to LSD, flower power, or even the trickling down of the sexual revolution. Rather, it was the perfidious influence of a nearly 400-year-old play that teenagers had previously read and watched with glazed eyes. Franco Zeffirelli’s big-screen version of Romeo and Juliet made underage sex look extremely hot, virtuous, and stick-it-to-the-man rebellious. And because it was rated G (until the Motion Picture Association of America subsequently wised up and gave it a PG) and based on, you know, the Bard, parents couldn’t object.

Foolish adults, so not with it! As sheer incitement to Get Laid Now, this Romeo and Juliet was the worst celluloid influence on America’s impressionable youth since Splendor in the Grass seven years earlier — and that was an old-fashioned movie whose mature stars (Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty) were only playing at being teens. Plus, they kept their clothes on.

Not so Zeffirelli discoveries Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, age 17 and 15, respectively. It took her frenziedly heaving bosom and his famously bare ass (the shot that perhaps heated up gay lib as much as Stonewall) to add new life to hitherto yawnsville poetry, making everyone under the age of consent desperate to be in love, thwarted, secretive, coital, and tragic. That last is, after all, the ultimate teenage fantasy: to die knowing that grown-ups will finally realize that crushing your delicate feelings drove you to it. Oh, now you’re sorry! Enjoy that eternal guilt! (In 1981, Zeffirelli would film the ultimate camp incarnation of this theme, Endless Love.)

Much was made of the principals’ youth, for once close to that of the characters as envisioned by Shakespeare. The most famous prior screen version, MGM’s 1936 extravaganza, had cast thirty- to fiftysomethings in the lead roles. Onstage, various famed thespians practically portrayed the young lovers into senility. Zeffirelli — who’d successfully tamed famous couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in a robust Taming of the Shrew the year before — not only selected young actors but also juiced Romeo and Juliet with a hyperbolic style designed to excite. The film’s color-saturated photography, costumes, and production design make Renaissance-era Veronese life the apex of sensuality. Nino Rota’s score (with a love theme that topped the United States pop charts as a Henry Mancini instrumental) is romantic catnip. Male testosterone — including that of Tybalt, as played by Michael York, who’d never seem so flamingly heterosexual again — jumps off the screen in splendor, with equally rattling sword fights and projectile codpieces.

The goal was intoxication, and as obvious as some of the above tactics might appear now, Romeo and Juliet remains a heady brew. The mega make-out movie’s principals handled such fantastic early pop culture fortunes with varying success. Hussey carved out a long, diverse adult acting career in projects around the globe. Whiting, an unhappy teen idol ("Oh Romeo, Romeo, why are you so difficult to talk to?" Tiger Beat lamented), tried to earn cred in an eccentric array of projects. But most were poorly received, apart from 1973’s exceptional all-star TV movie Frankenstein: The True Story, in which he played the bad doctor. The next year he retired to engage in other pursuits.

Zeffirelli — an opera director before, during, and after his relevancy as a screen auteur — revealed himself to be a maestro of overripe kitsch in such films as 1971’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon (a now-unwatchable Jesus People Movement–era shampoo-commercial take on St. Francis), 1988’s Young Toscanini (La Liz meets C. Thomas Howell), and 1999’s Cher-starring Fascist Italy soft sell Tea with Mussolini. He’s openly gay, yet a big-time papist (who supports the church’s stance on homosexuality), as well as a member of media magnate and corruption magnet Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative Forza Italia party. One of his greatest legacies may turn out to be inadvertent: Bruce Robinson, who plays Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet, later claimed Zeffirelli’s on-set overtures inspired the genius character of Uncle Monty in Robinson’s immortal 1987 directorial debut, Withnail and I.

Thanks to Marc Huestis’s one-night-only 40th anniversary revival at the Castro Theatre — with Hussey in person, interviewed, and no doubt impersonated by local personalities in the preshow — Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet will be celebrated as a cultural phenomenon. The cheesy contemporary amp-up that Baz Luhrmann engineered in 1996, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes doing the heavy breathing, also struck a popular adolescent chord, but its trendy vulgarity has already aged a whole lot worse than Zeffirelli’s version. The latter remains breathless, and is duly classic.

ROMEO AND JULIET

With Olivia Hussey in person

Thurs/14, 7 p.m., $12.50–$25

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 863-0611

www.castrotheatre.com

Amy Grammy double-whammy kills it

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Wow — on my second week in rehab I was scaling the drywall with toothpicks under my fingernails. But maybe if you put me in a closed studio packed full of record label plants and some stellar backing musicians (with an intro by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) then perhaps I could have delivered one of those super-extra special TV historical moments that Amy Winehouse provided last night at the Grammys, with the below double medley.

Her face at the end, a mask of screaming “fuck you” extrospective hypocrisy had me screaming “punk-ass goddess!!!”

Heyyy! Planet Unicorn 6!

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How long have I been waiting for this moment? Long enough to start fearing it would never come. But today my MySpace bulletins gave me the best belated Christmas present I could’ve hoped for: the next installment of Planet Unicorn (and yes, this one’s legit).

And while we’re on the subject of bizarre internet TV shows featuring talking unicorns, am I the only person who hasn’t seen Candy Mountain yet?

I’m waiting for some college kid to write a paper on how one “informs” the other. Hmmm?

IndieFest: “Sexina, Popstar PI”

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By Jennique Mason

“She has the boobs and brains of a queen, she’s every man’s dream …” When have truer words been spoken? As sung by Monkees heartthrob Davy Jones in the film’s theme, Sexina: Popstar, P.I. is the long-awaited answer to critically renowned films like Austin Powers and Legally Blonde.

sexinapostersm.jpg

Directed by Erik P. Sharkey, this East Coast production — complete with villain Adam West (TV’s Batman) — goes inside the pop music machine, literally! On the surface, Sexina may appear to be your average pop star singing sensation, but undercover she’s hot on the trail of a kidnapped scientist manufacturing cyborg boy bands. That sort of crime stopping clearly speaks for itself, but what I wanna know is, where did co-star Allyn Rachel come from? I want her to be in my movie. She may get overshadowed by Sexina (played by Lauren D’Avella), but Rachel’s lezzie publicist was sensational. As for the rest of the movie — chock full o’ elements like high school girls with brigades of vibrators, Paula Abdul fans, some unicorns, and oblique Britney references (“Kevin Tenderloin,” “I did what again?”) — Sexina is like totally crunk. I know that I won’t soon forget the film’s message (delivered in song!) that “having a vagina rules.” Indeed.

Sexina: Popstar, PI screens at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Feb 14 and Feb 16, 9:30 p.m., Roxie Film Center. For additional Guardian coverage of this year’s IndieFest, check out reviews here and here and right here — on upcoming PixelVision posts.

DJ Cheb i Sabbah speaks his Worldly mind

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DJ Cheb i Sabbah speaks his Worldly mind

 

This Saturday night (2/9) at the Worldly party at Temple, Cheb i Sabbah — the Algerian-born, San Francisco-based DJ and producer extraordinaire — celebrates the release of Devotion, his seventh album on Six Degrees Records.

Recorded and produced entirely in Delhi, Devotion is Cheb i Sabbah’s trance/fusion inspired take on raga (Indian classical music) and the rich and diverse musical traditions Hinduism, Sikhism, and Sufi Islam.

What sets Cheb i Sabbah apart from other producers of so-called global electronica –and what must partly explain a worldwide popularity that far exceeds his local fan base — is his ability to add modern beats to classical music in a way that preserves the integrity of the original forms.

At age 60, Cheb i Sabbah’s life has been as much a kaleidoscope of social and artistic movements as his music is of musical and spiritual traditions. In the early 1960s, Cheb i Sabbah was one of many Jews who fled Algeria after its independence and headed to Paris, where he spent his teenage years.

 

Cheb i Sabbah has had what he describes as three distinct incarnations as a DJ. The first was in 1964, when he was a 17-year old on his own in Paris making a living spinning Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Arethra Franklin. The second was in 1980, returning to Paris after over a decade of traveling, when he spun mainly Brazilian music. The final and most recent incarnation began in the early ’90s, when he started his “1002 Nights” weekly at Nickies in the Lower Haight, where he still spins North African, Middle Eastern, and South Asia beats every Tuesday.

The span of Cheb i Sabbah’s 40-year musical career was punctuated by involvement in two experimental theater groups — the Living Theater from the late-’60s through the ’70s, and the Tribal Warning Theater in the late ’80s — as well as a host of odd jobs, including work at Amoeba Records and Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. His music was also greatly influenced by a long-time friendship and collaboration with jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, whose music Cheb i Sabbah remixed with that of Ornette Coleman and the poetry of Ira Cohen to create his debut album, The Majoon Traveler, in 1994.

With a thick French accent and extraordinary patience for helping navigate the dense weave of movements and traditions that compose his life story, Cheb i Sabbah talked to the SFBG about his most recent album, Devotion, as well as his long career in music and theater.

SFBG: You recorded all of the music for several of your albums, including Devotion, in India. What is it like working with highly trained classical musicians?

Cheb i Sabbah: What has always struck me about working with those musicians is how humble and really sincere they are. You are dealing with people who have done this all of their lives. When they meet me, they have no idea who I am. But throughout the session, this friendship develops. There are many cups of Chai in between. Later on, we keep contact.

The concept for my music is very simple: take classical music and add modern beats to open it up to more people. The fact that [the classically trained musicians] went along with it to me is still pretty amazing.

I feel that I am lucky because there is a sense that in the end I will be respectful to what they are doing. They do want to be involved with something that will reach a Western audience and something modern. But they are not always sure. Because take Bollywood music its remixes, for example: some are good, some are quite awful. That is the thing they are weary about a little bit—not to end up with something they hate.

Working on Devotion, the musicians actually liked what they heard because the raga was still there, in a way, untouched. What was added to it wasn’t too much in the sense of distorting their thing. I seem to have been lucky enough to find the balance between putting the electronics with their classical thing and make something that was pleasing to them.

SFBG: Who composes the music?

CIS: It’s not really a question of composing or not composing. It’s more like — for Devotion, when you come to an artist who does Kirtan, which is a call-and-response devotional music, I will say, “I would like to do a couple of Kirtans with you,” and then he just sings them. The composition comes after the singing. The singer will say, “Yeah, okay, I’ll do it, but write me a simple melody.” So what we do is a little thing on a keyboard, send the MP3, and then they have that for a couple of days and return to the studio with the melody.

SFBG: Are the other musicians improvising?

CIS: No, they score the songs. Some do improvise — I work with three percussionists who play every percussion you can imagine. They will score each song individually. When you ask a sarangi or sitar player, they listen to it once and say, “Ok, I got it.” And then they just play—nothing is written whatsoever. They just play by ear, tune to the particular raga, and go from there. After that, of course, comes the electronic part, which is editing what you got from them, and take the best parts and maybe repeat it or loop a little bit of this or sample that.

SFBG: You’ve had a very interesting past. What was it like moving from Algeria to Paris as a 13-year old in the ’60s?

CIS: Of course when you are dropped from North Africa into a big place like Paris, as you can imagine, there is so much going on. I didn’t want to go to school, so I started to work when I was 15, which was even more freedom, all the way through May ’68, when France stopped for a few months — there was a general strike basically. I was involved with the artistic part and also with the Living Theater — which was Julian Beck and Judith Malina. They happened to be in France because they had been in Europe for a few years in exile from America and from the IRS.

SFBG: What is the story of the Living Theater?

CIS: If you lived in Paris at that time, Julian Beck and Judith Malina had been part of the ’50s bohemia trip in New York with Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Alan Ginsberg, and all of that. The Living Theater went to Europe and had become a mythical kind of a group — just the way they looked, the way they acted, the kind of theater that they did. I was a DJ so I had free time. I was basically free from everything, just living on my own when I was 17-years old in a hotel room and being a DJ at night. When you went to see the Living Theater, it was just an amazing kind of experience — I had never seen that before.

In ’68, some of us took [over] the Odéon Theater, which was the bastion of French culture. We lived there for a while and had assemblies and reunions and all of that. Then, a few months later, in July, I went down to the south of France and stayed with the Living Theater for a couple of months while they were working on a play called Paradise Now. I wanted to join, but at that time, after May ’68, they decided to split into three groups. One went to India, one stayed in Europe, and the one with Judith and Julian went to Brazil, where eventually they got arrested, went to jail, some members were tortured, beaten up, and all of that. Eventually they came out in 1970, and that’s when I joined the Living Theater — in New York City. We used to have a house across the street from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We rehearsed there everyday.

SFBG: What brought you to the States?

CIS: I found myself being taken to America by an American woman actually. She kidnapped me and took me first to New York and then to Berkeley. When I arrived in Berkeley, it was the whole thing about the People’s Park, and the Living Theater was touring the US. We met and reconnected with Living Theater in Berkeley. There was a memorable performance with Jim Morrison acting out during the play as an audience member but getting involved with Paradise Now, which was all about audience participation.

SFBG: How would you describe Berkeley and the Bay Area during that time?

CIS: It was the beginning of the end kind of thing. Compared to Paris, it was pretty lightweight. Because if you saw ten cops running, you saw hundreds of people running back, whereas in Paris it was a different thing in terms of the demonstrations.

SFBG: What was your role with the Living Theater?

CIS: My role was acting, but then I became Judith [Malina] and Julian [Beck’s] assistant. I was very fortunate because I had never taken an acting class — they just took me in. I would go on tour with them whenever they did lectures to raise money. They would go around East Coast campuses and give theater lectures, so I would always be with them taking care of little things, selling books. I have all that kind of training—a very close relationship with both of them. Then I became the money person. I would figure out the money with Julian and then pay the artists — which wasn’t very much money, but at least a weekly whatever, enough for subway and cigarettes maybe. Nobody got paid but we all lived, ate, and worked together.

SFBG: Was your involvement with the Living Theater through the ’70s?

CIS: Yes, from the late ’60s to the ’70s. We lived in Brooklyn, as I said before, and then we went back to Europe. I had residence in a few places in Italy. And then of course, we toured Europe—France, Germany, and everywhere. We were invited to Italy by the Communist Party. One thing about the Living Theater was that whenever we did a play in any country, we did it in the language of the country, even if some of us did not speak the language, we said our lines in the language of the country.

SFBG: What was your involvement with music during that period?

CIS: There was some but at that time I was just acting. It was when I left the Living Theater and came to San Francisco. Suzanne Thomas and I, we were a couple. We started a group called Tribal Warning Theater. It was very successful. We always played to packed sold-out audiences. But it was hard to keep it going, you know. Obviously, nobody involved got paid. Most people had jobs, so we rehearsed at night and on weekends—and we performed on weekends. We performed at The Lab. We used to open for Psychic TV. That was when I started to do soundtracks. At that time it was the height of the industrial music — you know, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and all of those groups that were doing industrial weird kind of music. I would do a multi-track collage of sound that we would use as a soundtrack along with our lines, but we had microphones and everything else. We had slide shows and videos—a multimedia kind of thing. Our soundtrack was as loud as Psychic TV live. When we came on, it was massive sound, besides the visuals and the actual acting.

SFBG: How did DJing grow out of your involvement in theater?

CIS: All those major kind of things I got involved in artistically — we’re not taking about the shit jobs in between—it was always kind of by chance. It was a simple thing: I was working at Rainbow Grocery on 15th and Mission. I was the buyer in charge of homeopathy and Chinese herbs. I worked in the vitamin department. Of course, I was still collecting music. I would make tapes for the customers. I had made a tape of Algerian raï music. This guy came in and the music caught his attention. He came to me and asked what kind of music. I said, “That’s considered Algerian raï rebel music.” He said, “That sounds pretty cool.” We started talking. He said, “You know, I run a place called Nickies in the Lower Haight. If you want to come and spin there, that would be cool.” So I showed up the next week at Nickies. This year is the 18th year spinning there.

SFBG: When did you start to perform with Don Cherry?

CIS: Right around that time too, because he had moved to San Francisco to work with the Hieroglyphic Ensemble. I had met him a few years before in Europe, while I was in the Living Theater. I would see him wherever he was—Vienna, Paris—I would go to his concerts or he would come to Living Theater shows. That is how I met him—he came to a Living Theater show in Torino, Italy. From that first night, I went back to his hotel room, we had this long—I guess—25-year friendship. When he came here, we met again, and then before I was a DJ, he actually performed with us as Tribal Warning Theater. Don Cherry always wanted to do theater but never had the patience to sit through rehearsals and all that. We did a few plays at the Victoria Theater.

SFBG: What was your introduction to India and Indian music?

CIS: The music was my first introduction to India. In the ’60s was yoga and everything—but I was never joining anything. That was another big thing with Don Cherry and I. If you look at the jazz musicians, most of them in the ’60s during all the Black Panthers and everything else, most African American jazz musicians went back to Africa and Islam, many of them changed their names. But Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Charles Lloyd—they didn’t go that route; they went to India, so did Alice Coltrane. They went to Indian spirituality. And that is an interesting kind of thing. Only a few did that. So Don Cherry and I had this other Indian music/spirituality and also Tibetan tantra.

SFBG: You have a large Western audience and are very popular in the Burning Man community. Do you ever feel that your Western fans exoticize Eastern and South Asian culture?

CIS: That’s a hard one. In the West, there is a lack of initiation ritual and other places because everything is such a mess. There is a lack of communion with the village. That is what class and race and all of that have become. If you take techno or trance music, which is really based on repetition, you can see how, in the right environment, it brings people together and gives a ritual of togetherness through vibration, which in the end, everything in the universe is about vibration. If you feel good or feel better after going to dance or listening to music, you are definitely more positive towards the universe. It is difficult to be positive these days. And music does have that power. It might be short-lived, but anything we can do or think that is positive is what is needed.

Cheb i Sabbah Devotion CD Release Party, February 9th, 10 p.m., Temple Bar, 540 Howard Street, $18.

Paul van Dyk

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PREVIEW In the late ’90s, Paul Oakenfold opted for pop stardom and Sasha and Digweed journeyed into the darker tones of progressive house, leaving Paul van Dyk as the final bastion of trance music’s golden age. Some might argue that one of the Dutch contingency — Armin van Burren, Ferry Corsten, and the prominent DJ Tiesto — has wrested the mantle of trance king from the Berlin DJ and producer. The short answer is a defiant nein. In their own ways, the Dutch headliners have attempted to shift away from traditional trance music’s familiar pattern of build-up then breakdown (now known as Euro or NRG). Trance’s new formula involves grounding a track with vocal talent, then layering melodies and synths on top. While the Hollanders achieve sufficient results, the accomplished van Dyk has overmastered them, even nabbing indie popsters St. Etienne in 2000 for "Tell Me Why (The Riddle)." Since then, his 2003 "Time of Our Lives" with Vega 4 has been played on American TV commercials, and "The Other Side" with Wayne Jackson won Best HI-NRG/Euro Track at the 2006 Winter Music Conference (it was also nominated for Best Progressive House/Trance Track — go figure). Van Dyk’s newest album, In Between (Mute US, 2007), continues the trend with a bevy of guest vocalists, including Jackson, David Byrne, and Jessica Sutta of the Pussycat Dolls. The album title could represent a transitional phase: on well-received single "White Lies" with Sutta, familiar drums and hi-hats mingle with a heavy bass line atypical of the German’s normally fleet-footed sound.

PAUL VAN DYK With Taj and Dirtyhertz. Fri/8, 9 p.m., $40. 1015, 1015 Folsom, SF. (415) 431-1200, www.1015.com

“CHANGE IS COMING TO AMERICA” (if you hadn’t heard)

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A large, dispersed crowd pressed towards the projector-sized screen at the front of the Grand Ballroom in the Fairmont Hotel when they saw that CNN was interrupting coverage of John McCain’s speech (yawn) to go to Barack Obama’s headquarters in Chicago.

The Democratic presidential candidate was making his way towards the stage, and the audiences here and on TV were equally ecstatic. Chants of “O-BA-MA!” rang out. CNN took the cue and dropped McCain entirely. A series of roars accompanied Obama’s speech, especially when he made the declaration that “Change is coming to America!”
That slogan was reiterated numerous times throughout the night. After Obama finished in Chicago, the attention in San Francisco turned to the front podium. Numerous elected officials took the stage to express their support of Obama.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee promised and re-promised, “California will never be the same because of what we’ve done in this movement. It will never be the same. Never.”

G-Spot: Nookie by the numbers

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› culture@sfbg.com

We asked and you answered — oh, how you answered. More than 200 of you responded to our questions about what goes on between your sheets, or at least between your legs. And although there are lots of you happily living your vanilla-and-roses love lives (straight! Missionary style! Share my partner? Never!), there are plenty more proving our city’s reputation for alternative gender and orientation identities, kinky sex, and free love is well deserved. Check out our poll results, as of Jan. 31, below. (Numbers are percentages.)

1. How do you identify, in terms of your sexual orientation?

Straight 59

Gay 12

Queer 10

Bi 9

Depends on how much I’ve had to drink 5

Alternative answers include four kinds of bisexual with caveats such as "bi-affectional" or "bi for political reasons," one transsexual, and one person who identifies simply as "feral." Meow.

2. How often do you have sex?

Once a day 11

Once a week 37

Once a month 10

Once upon a time 2

Alternate answers give even more specific frequencies, most often three to four times per week, as well as the fabulously Victorian answer "fortnightly." Several people said it depends on relationship status (though there was no mention of whether frequency increases or decreases with commitment). The one we identify with most? "As much as possible. Every day if you count with myself."

3. What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve done or would do?

Sex before marriage 15

Spanking 24

Suspension 16

"Two Girls, One Cup" 11

Alternative answers include bondage, multiple partners at one time ("ye olde three-way"), role play, sex in public places (bookstore? Hot), snowballing, sex with someone else’s date, anonymous encounters, homosexual dalliances, and the winner for Most Likely to Have Come from Lolita: "I got my chewing gum caught in a guy’s pubic hair once."

4. Where’s the craziest place you’ve ever had sex in San Francisco?

Mission Bar 8

16th and Mission Bart stop 4

My bed (missionary position, of course) 26

We’ve clearly been shopping in the wrong places. You people are having sex in Noe Valley storefronts, butcher shops, the dressing rooms of upscale retailers (Saks, JCrew, Banana Republic), and phone booths and against a wall in the Haight. How’d we miss this? Perhaps we were too busy with the rest of you in parks (Golden Gate, Balboa, Dolores), parking lots, school yards, and hot tubs. Some of our awards? Most original goes to "bowling alley in the back with the pins." Most ambitious? "Nothin’ crazy yet, but it’s only 9am. Give me a chance to wake up."

5. How polyamorous are you (or were you in your last committed relationship)?

Love is limitless and meant to be shared (my partner and I have other partners) 8

Love has limits, but sex is meant to be shared (my partner and I have other bed buddies) 13

Love and sex have limits, but some fantasies are meant to be shared (my partner and I occasionally invite others into bed with us) 12

Love, sex, and fantasies have limits, but dinner is meant to be shared (my partner and I have friends) 58

Most of you don’t want to share your partners — "I’m a jealous bitch," one person responded — though at least one of you wishes you could. But a good amount of you are open to all kinds of couplings, including the most open-minded of all: "AMA — all mammals allowed."

6. What gets you in the mood?

Gary Danko — foie gras and a 1985 Angelos Gaja 6

Amber — Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of well whiskey 15

The Stud — tequila and Trannyshack 8

What doesn’t? 54

For some of you, all you need to do is see your beau or betty and you’re ready for love. Others need drugs (weed and coke are favorites) and porn. And congrats to those of you who know exactly, specifically, without a doubt what you need: Morrissey and a Georges Bataille novel, horny thoughts and Spanish-language TV channel Azteca America, molasses coffee with grits, Madagascar chocolate from Recchiuti Confections, or rain. We love the answer "long tones." (Let’s talk about sax, baby.) And we’re not sure how to feel about the person who needs "a pint of Malibu and a good swift kick in the jewels."

G-Spot: U R mine … and so are U

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› culture@sfbg.com

Whether you’re single or attached, Valentine’s Day can be rough: either you’re planning that perfect date, which can’t possibly meet your special someone’s expectations, or you’re lamenting the fact that you don’t have a special someone to disappoint. Either way, it’s nothing compared to what the polyamorous have to deal with.

In case you don’t know, polyamorous (despite sounding like some kind of chemical compound) is a term referring to people who are comfortable having multiple loving relationships in which all parties are aware of what is happening (i.e., Gavin Newsom’s arrangement doesn’t count). The word was coined by Morning Glory Ravenheart Zell in the late ’90s.

"I love the word," says Dossie Easton, coauthor of The Ethical Slut (Greenery Press, 1998), the how-to bible on polyamory. "It’s a beautiful word meaning ‘loving many.’<0x2009>"

But what does loving many people mean when it comes to Valentine’s Day, the holiday set aside to celebrate romantic love?

As you might expect, Valentine’s Day is not a simple affair for many members of the nonmonog community. The holiday, like the year-round polyamorous lifestyle, requires patience, tact, and one hell of a good scheduling system.

In fact, nature photographer and polyamorist Joe Decker says many of his peers call PalmPilots "PolyPilots." "You certainly hear a lot of jokes about it," Decker says. (Kind of changes your view of the middle-aged businessperson with a handheld planner, doesn’t it?)

L, a polyamorous woman from San Francisco who wishes to remain anonymous, agrees that Valentine’s Day can be complicated by time constraints. "Though your capacity for love might be great and unlimited and encompass a great number of people, you still only have 24 hours in your day," L says, noting that in some relationships the primary partner gets Valentine’s Day and the secondary gets the day before or after. In another case, one involving one woman and two men, the woman splits Valentine’s Day between her partners.

"Time management is definitely an issue," L says. "A day planner is a necessity."

In addition to the difficulties inherent in scheduling, Decker says, the way he chooses to celebrate Valentine’s Day can sometimes result in unintended tension between him and people who are unfamiliar with the polyamorous community. For example, one year he ordered flowers for two girlfriends and his wife — all at the same time. "There was nervous laughter on the other end of the phone. The teleflorist dealt with it pretty gracefully," Decker says.

But not all polys feel that holidays need to be complicated. According to Easton, who has practiced polyamory since 1969, celebrating Valentine’s Day is not that hard. "What you should do for Valentine’s Day is have a big party with a very large box of chocolates. Everybody can wear red — I love it — and practice openheartedness," she says. She points out that in a polyamorous relationship structure, there isn’t necessarily a need to choose whom to revel with. "There’s no reason why a dozen people can’t get together and celebrate Valentine’s Day," she says. "There’s no reason why you choose. Are we going to tell the kindergartners they can only give one Valentine’s Day card because they can only have one friend?"

Others point out that while there may be some extra scheduling and unique circumstances for people with multiple lovers, the basic principle of arranging a good Valentine’s Day — understanding partners’ expectations — is the same as for a conventional couple. For example, Decker makes an effort to find out what his lovers expect for Valentine’s Day ahead of time. In his case, one particular partner doesn’t care for the holiday, so they don’t celebrate it. "What I want to do in a relationship is something that’s a function of the other person’s want. I don’t just do whatever they want, but if a partner doesn’t like Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t give me a lot of joy to make her celebrate it," he says.

While talking with these people, I was struck by a couple of things. First of all, holidays for the polyamorous must get pretty expensive, if, for instance, Decker’s buying three bouquets for V Day is anything like a widespread practice. It seems a good idea for anyone considering polyamory to set aside some savings first, or maybe wait until the Christmas–Valentine’s Day season is over. And second, as someone who can barely manage her sock drawer, I don’t think I could handle the level of organization needed to maintain several relationships. And without the organization, says another anonymous polyamorist, B, jealousy problems (the biggest obstacles in poly relationships) are more likely to arise. I’m not sure I want to add day planner to the list of things I think of — candles, flowers, scented oils — when I imagine romance.

This Valentine’s Day, I think I will use my meager time-management skills to plan a simple holiday evening for me and myself: watching the original Star Trek series on DVD before falling asleep in front of the TV. No PalmPilot required.

Hillary campaign headquarters

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By around 9:30 pm it seemed clear at Hillary’s campaign HQ that she had won the popular vote in California. A full room and diverse crowd gathered around the blaring TV, cheered and chanted her name. Rev. Amos Brown spoke to deafening cheers as he questioned the substance behind Obama’s rhetoric but praised the “two fine democratic competitors.” Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting spoke briefly.

Democratic Party Time

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About 75 Democrats clenching glasses of beer and wine gawk at plasma TV’s at Jillian’s bar in SOMA tonight predicting which candidate will win California and eventually the presidency.

San Francisco based Democracy Action is hosting the party for Democrats who eagerly await the primary results. They debate whether Obama or Clinton is the better choice.

“It’s too early to say who’s going to win,” Alec Bash, President of Democracy Action, told the Guardian. “Back in ’04, we thought Kerry would win by a landslide.”

Dinner for Dr. Paul

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It was a casual dinner affair for the supporters of Ron Paul on election night, with roughly thirty people showing up for dinner under the big screen at Thai Stick, 925 O’Farrell St. As the results came in from around the country, party-goers casually looked up from their animated conversations to remark at the TV screen.
George Gaboury, self-described “media support”, struggled with a projector and screen, but was finally able to set up a slide show of the groups’ past exploits – including the staged Ron Paul “TeaParty” in December. The projected video showed attendees throwing boxes with words like “Patriot Act” and “WTO” written on them off of a pier near the Ferry Building.
“For people who have been abused by the government for so long, this is almost therapy,” Gaboury said, watching the screen.

TRAGIC COUNT/COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS REPORT

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*Novye Izvestia*
No 17
February 5, 2008

*TRAGIC COUNT*

Author: Yevgenia Zubchenko

*COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS IS CRITICAL OF THE STATE OF AFFAIRS WITH FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN RUSSIA*

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) presented its latest report titled Attacks On The Media (2007). At least 65 journalists were murdered worldwide in the line of duty, almost half of them in Iraq. The state of affairs with freedom of expression in Russia was castigated as unacceptable.
CPJ, an international non-governmental organization with headquarters in New York, has been drafting these reports for years. Authors of the latest indicate that 2007 became the worst year since 1994 when 66 journalists had been killed. Iraq is branded in the document as “a slaughterhouse for the press”: over 170 journalists and technicians of media outlets perished in this country since March 2003. China on the other hand is the leader in the number of imprisoned journalists (29 editors and journalists). According to CPJ, 127 journalists were imprisoned throughout the world by December 1, 2007.
Authors of the report analyze the situation in Russia and point out that the recent parliamentary campaign included “certain events disturbing for the media and civil society.” CPJ experts are convinced that media outlets and non-governmental organizations in Russia with the temerity to criticize the regime are put under pressure or closed altogether. “The Russian authorities made use of the charges of extremism and bureaucratic means of punishment,” the report stated. Still, the authors did comment on “certain progress” made in investigation of assassinations of Igor Domnikov, Yuri Schekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya (all of them Novaya Gazeta journalists).
CPJ analysts also commented on the new trends in the relations between the powers-that-be and the media. “Regional authorities used fabricated charged in connection copyright violations or the use of piratical software to shut down independent or oppositionist media outlets on the eve of elections,” experts said. The report made a reference to Sergei Kurt-Adjiyev, Novaya Gazeta (Samara) editor charged with the use of unlicensed software.
As for assassinations, the CPJ report only mentions the death of Ivan Safronov, military observer of Kommersant. According to the Glasnost Protection Foundation in the meantime, 8 journalists including Safronov perished in Russia in 2007. “They mostly concentrate on whatever deaths foment scandals or whatever, while a great deal of journalists killed in the provinces are never even mentioned,” Glasnost Protection Foundation President Aleksei Simonov said. On the other hand, data always differ depending on the criteria used by the compiling organization. Reporters Without Frontiers, for example, claims that 86 journalists were killed in 2007 while the International Journalistic Organization compiled a list of 100 (but this structure does not differentiate between journalists and their assistants).
In any event, specialists tend to agree with CPJ’s conclusions on the state of affairs with freedom of expression in Russia. “They say true,” Igor Yakovenko, General Secretary of the Russian Journalistic Union, said. “Most media outlets accepted the rules of the game forced on them by the authorities. By and large, there is nobody left to apply pressure to.” “Most journalists are trying to revert to the double-think practiced in the Soviet Union,” Yakovenko said.
Simonov agrees that journalists in Russia gave in. “Freedom of expression exists only in several newspapers, one radio broadcaster, and one program on REN-TV channel,” Simonov said. “All others play one and the same tune.”

Clubs: Love hurts – so Die, Die, why don’t you?

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die die.bmp
Bloody hell happens in Lower Haight – just in time for Valentine’s Day! Photo by Joshua Rotter.

By Joshua Rotter

Love was the furthest thing from my mind on February’s first Friday, when I attended the “My Bloody Valentine” edition of monthly death-rock club Die, Die My Darling at Underground SF.

No, actually, it was all in my mind. Cross my heart. Since my recent break-up, I’ve thought about nothing else while catching up on TV and the latest snack foods and muting those pesky dating Web site commercials.

Fortunately, none of those shiny happy couples were represented here among the mixed crowd of mortals and ghouls adorned with pallid face paint and penciled-in eyebrows. Here were the disillusioned matched only by the bat cave classics – Bauhaus, Siouxsie, and Cure dirges – spun by host-DJ Jason El Diablo, which reaffirm that love is a bloody affair and no one’s hands are clean.

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