Video

Wiggletronics

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO “Many people confuse us with Spain,” MC Kalaf of worldwide dance sensations Buraka Som Sistema says — a back-end hint of fado-like melancholy mixing into his unfailingly chipper voice — when we talk over the phone about how the fab foursome has finally put their homeland, Portugal, on the club-must map. Buraka, two of whose members hail originally from Angola and two from that sunny strip along the Atlantic, represents a double bubbling up of the repressed: the crew has exploded onto the nightlife radar by melding the underground sounds of Luanda’s bumping kuduro dance movement with Lisbon’s buzzy, overlooked electronic music scene.

Last year Buraka’s sophomore release Black Diamond (Enchufada/Sony BMG) quickly shot up the hit lists of beats connoisseurs by jumping the current trend of streaming developing-world rhythms through the latest sonic technology. “We took the sound of the Lisbon suburbs where many Angolan immigrants live — our suburbs are not like your ‘Desperate Housewife’ suburbs — and used our years of dance music on it, and the crowds loved it,” says Kalaf.

Kuduro is often translated as “stiff bottom,” heh, or “hard ass,” referencing the form of lowdown, hips-wiggling motion that sometimes accompanies the deliciously uptempo sound, a hybrid of sensuous zouk, raucous soca, and free-flow hip-hop that shares an affinity for analog atmospherics with early dub. (Or rather, that dance is mostly reserved for women — men tend to go pop and lock crazy, as you can see in the video below.) Along with Kalaf, Buraka members Li’l John, DJ Riot, and Conductor apply their extensive hip-hop, house, and breakbeat production experience to blow the lid off kuduro’s possibilities. 

The superkinetic results reference everything from Ed Banger hardcore and hyperdub freakouts to Orb-esque kaleidoscopics and the late ’80s Sheffield bleep scene. Scoring MIA to guest on “Sound of Kuduro” helped kick that track up the club charts, and basing the excellent “Kalemba (Wegue-Wegue)” on a misheard lyric from the classic Afro Acid house remix of More Kante’s “Yeke Yeke” gave fanboys a theoretical boner. Live, Buraka’s a tornado, with toasting MCs, fierce singers, and, as Kalaf points out, “anything that makes you scream.” Last time the crew was here, a topless female fan stormed the stage. Kalaf half-joked that an upcoming tour of Japan is brief because “if they throw us out of the country, at least we won’t lose a lot of money.”

Some things get lost in the laptop filtration, however. Kuduro isn’t just a groove; like rap, it’s built on extended narratives of hood life. Buraka jettisons those for catchy calls to the dance floor and global unity “I’m from Angola,” Kalaf admitted, “and even I can’t follow most of what they say.” And, for all the talk on its records of the primacy of Africa, the group has yet to tour the continent. “We’re going in 2010,” Kalaf said, “and to be honest, I’m a little afraid. It may be mental.” But Buraka has helped bring the Angolan guests on its tracks an international audience, while waking up the Western world to yet another vital cultural expression on its edges. Let’s get suburban, y’all.

BURAKA SOM SISTEMA

Tue/21, 8 p.m., $14. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com For more on Buraka’s kuduro connections, click here.

Astral peaks

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

If not for High on Fire, Mastodon might never have existed. The flame-bonging Oakland trio swung through Atlanta in 1999, playing what was presumably an eardrum-destroying gig in the basement of local musician Brent Hinds. At the show, Hinds and his friend, bassist Troy Sanders, met drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher, who had both recently arrived from Rochester, N.Y. The four were knit together by a love of the Melvins and Bay Area metal experimentalists Neurosis, and a decade later, they are a metal band of towering stature.

Mastodon’s Crack the Skye (Warner Bros./Reprise, 2009) is an appropriately mammoth undertaking, the final chapter in a four-album arc that ties each disc to an Aristotelian element. With fire (Remission, Relapse, 2002), water (Leviathan, Relapse, 2004), and earth (Blood Mountain, Warner Bros./Reprise, 2006) accounted for, Crack the Skye centers around ether, which (in the band’s typical fashion) serves as a jumping-off point for the story of a quadriplegic astral traveler who zooms through space and time only to arrive in tsarist Russia in time to warn Rasputin of his impending assassination.

Spanning only seven tracks but clocking in at roughly 50 minutes, the album is Mastodon’s most cohesive to date, its songs flowing into each other like the movements of a heavily distorted prog-rock symphony. With this in mind, the band will play the album in its entirety during its April 19 date at the Great American Music Hall, augmenting the performance with visual spectacle courtesy of an LED screen and Neurosis member Josh Graham.

Mastodon, “Iron Tusk”

Crack the Skye‘s title has a deeper meaning for drummer Dailor, whose contributions to the record are a tribute to his sister, Skye, who committed suicide at age 14. This multivalent phrase is an illuminating example of the band’s densely layered art, which combines the diverse songwriting of its members with a wealth of thematic and musical allusion.

It was Dailor who showed up in London after an exhausting plane trip clutching a copy of Moby Dick. Though the group had toyed with high- and pop-cultural references in the past, the drummer’s suggestion that their next album be centered around Herman Melville’s 1851 classic took a while to sink in. When I interviewed Kelliher recently by phone, he explained how it caught on: "We kind of saw ourselves in the same boat, literally, leaving our families and friends behind and jumping into this quest … going out in the world trying to make it, searching for our own white whale."

The album that resulted, Leviathan, was Mastodon’s defining work, mixing easy-to-grasp themes of harpooning and high-seas adventure with oceans of metaphorical extrapolation. The band has mined other allusive veins, modeling riffs from Blood Mountain’s "Crystal Skull" off tribal drum patterns in Peter Jackson’s 2005 take on King Kong and shooting a video for the Crack the Skye single "Divinations" that’s an uproarious tribute to John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing.

Between the nods to other works, the narrative lyrical themes, and the complex, progressive songwriting, Mastodon’s music can be overwhelming. Kelliher cops to some early writing conflicts with guitarist Hinds that involved a refrain of "No, man, it doesn’t go like that, it goes like this" in response to his opposite number’s deconstructive playing style. Soon, though, they learned to fuse their disparate riffs.

After four albums, it is possible to point to this relentlessly inclusive artistic tendency as the key to the band’s success. Mastodon has a rare kind of talent that suggests a pseudo-aphorism: more is more. Saddling their listeners with the full weight of their wide-ranging inspiration, the band’s albums are cohesive against the odds, rewarding careful, long-form listening sessions and a lot of revisiting. Beneath each layer of discovery lies another, and this feeling of excitement and expectation is crucial to the enjoyment of their music. Who knows what abstruse surprises they will conjure up in the future? We can only wait and hear. *

MASTODON

April 19

With Kylesa, Intronaut

7:30pm, $25 (sold out)

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Local Artist of the Week: Mike Kuchar

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LOCAL ARTIST Mike Kuchar

TITLE Myth Men

BIO Mike Kuchar, cinematographer, painter, writer, and brother of George Kuchar, was born in New York City. He began making 8 mm movies in the 1950s, switching over to 16 mm film production in 1960, and continues now, producing short motion pictures in the video and digital formats. He has also done illustrations for various erotic publications, including Manscape, Gay Heartthrobs comics, First Hand, and Meatmen.

SHOW "Dark Americana," through May 9. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, 172 Minna, SF. (415) 777-1366.

WEB www.baerridgway.com

Super Ego: Wicked dub ‘n Roni

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Whoa, total drum ’n bass flashback time, as one of the original innovators, Roni Size, reprazents on Friday at 103 Harriet with toasty Dynamite MC providing the wicked verbiage, and — what the freak — dub legend Mad Professor and the “dubstep prodigy” craziness of DJ Seven providing backup. Apparently Size still matters.The Bay’s fiery Compression crew opens up, so time to do some bass drops.

This party oughta be an ear-hair-blazing connect-the-dots from dub to drum ‘n bass to dubstep for all you hedz out there… and damn if looking up old Roni clips isn’t already hearkening me back to simpler days and thicker floors (especially this track, which pretty much worked as atmospheric-breaks gods LTJ Bukem and MC Conrad‘s main template for years — check out the second half of the live video below).
Roni Size w/ Mad Professor and Seven
Fri/17, 10 p.m., $15 advance
103 Harriet, SF
www.sunsetpromotions.net

Roni Size, “Dirty Beats”

Roni Size with Dynamite MC, live in Milan 02/08

Mad Professor, Kunta Kinte Dub ’91 (love, love this)

Super Ego: New-bass invades the Bay

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By Marke B.

Get ready, kids — this Saturday night’s all about the new-bass (and I go in deep on it in this week’s Super Ego clubs column). Do like I said and hit up both mindblowing parties featuring this amazing nightlife sound of now.

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Ghislain Poirier, helloooo

In one corner is Montreal’s “King of Bounce” Ghislain Poirier, whose Bounce Le Gros monthly in the MTL not only helped launch the careers of such wiggy Canadian future bass purveyors as Megasoid and the tres-tres atmospheric Sixtoo, but also put Quebec on the world dance music map. Ghislain will storm the Tormenta Tropical monthly’s electro-cumbia castle at Elbo Room.

Below are two video examples of how Poirier wonderfully “plays it both ways” as it were — super-danceable and brainily abstract — with the dancehall boinger “Blazin'” and the headphone freaker “Hit & Red.” The third vid, “Don’t Smile, It’s Postmodern” is his awesome kinda middle ground (although the visuals are waaaay goofy.)

Ghislain Poirier, “Blazin'” featuring Face-T

Ghislain Poirier, “Hit & Red”

Ghislain Poirier, “Don’t Smile”

AND in this other corner, righteous kings of woofer-blowing abstractitude Flying Lotus, Kode9, and the Bug hit Mighty for a jam called “The Future.” I’ll let the videos after the jump give you an idea of each of their genius individual styles, but DO NOT MISS THIS PARTY.

A guide to artists with famous namesakes

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Read the growing number of enthusiastic articles about Soundsuit creator Nick Cave and you’ll soon notice most of them have something in common — at one point or another, the journalist or author has to interject that this Nick Cave isn’t the Australian gothic blues dirge icon. Cave the dancer-turned-sculptor/designer likely faces his musical namesake at every turn, but he is just one contemporary visual artist with a well-known moniker. To clarify matters, behold this illustrated breakdown.

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NAME Nick Cave
FORTE Murder ballads
SIDE GIGS Writing, acting, and leading Sinnerman
CURRENT PROJECTS Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Mute, 2008); a screenplay with the Leonard Cohen-ish title Death of a Ladies’ Man
QUOTE “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth / And anyway I told the truth / And I’m not afraid to die.”

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NAME Nick Cave
FORTE Sculpture, video, and artistic fashion with untamed imagination
SIDE GIGS Dance and choreography
CURRENT PROJECTS “Meet Me at the Center of the Earth,” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; a 90 Soundsuit dance performance in 2012 at Chicago’s Millennium Park
QUOTE “The arts are our salvation — the only thing that allows us to heal and also helps us dream about what will make the world a better place.”

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NAME Phil Collins
FORTE Blue-eyed soul, romantic movie themes, turning prog into pop, drumming, Alamo artifact collecting, and becoming an icon of male pattern baldness
SIDE GIGS Duets with Billy Ocean, replacing Peter Gabriel in Genesis
CURRENT PROJECTS Fatherhood, greatest hits collections
QUOTE “She’s an easy lover / Before you know it you’ll be on your knees.”; “I feel so good if I just say the word / Su-su-sussudio.”

Board tells Newsom to support due process for all youth

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The SF Examiner and the Chronicle continue to beat the anti-immigrant drum, when it comes to mocking, downplaying or distorting the unconstitutional impact on children of San Francisco’s sanctuary policy.

So it may come as a surprise to learn that under the new policy direction that Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered last summer, just as he was announcing his gubernatorial run, San Francisco does nothing to accord due process to undocumented children that are charged with felonies by local law enforcement officials.

Now, if you ask the Mayor’s Office, if the sanctuary policy accords due process to juvenile youth, you’ll get, “Yes, the City Attorney vetted it.”
That is not an answer. It’s the giant sucking sound of mayoral advisers passing the buck.

Now, as Sup. David Campos points out, the City Attorney provides legal advice—what the law is, its parameters, its implications—not policy calls.

Campos reiterated that point this week, when he and seven other members of Board of Supervisors voted to pass a resolution urging the board to adopt the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which supports due process for youth. (You can watch the video of that meeting here. Look for item 17.)

“Changing Channels” tonight!

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Creative Growth is one of the best places — if not the best — to make art in the Bay Area, and is host to some of the Bay’s most imaginative artists, including Tara Tucker, Aurie Ramirez, and William Scott (whose visions of a better San Francisco are on view at a current White Columns solo show in New York).

Michael Hall originated the site’s Video Production workshop, which has already put together some entertaining animation-filled DVDs. Hall produced the latest Creative Growth video and animation project, “Changing Channels,” which includes CG’s first-ever exhibition devoted to those forms. Tonight there’s a free screening event with popcorn. Pow!

Fri/3, 7:30 p.m.
Creative Growth
355 24th St., Oakl.
(510) 836-2340 ext.15
www.creativegrowth.org

Smells like 20-something angst: 500 Days of Summer

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By Juliette Tang

Wednesday night at the Sebastiani Theatre in downtown Sonoma, the Sonoma International Festival kicked off with a showing of 500 Days of Summer, an indie-romance starring the lovely and blue-eyed Zooey Deschanel and the surprisingly-cuter-as-he-ages Joseph Gordon-Levitt, alum of 3rd Rock. Directed by music video director Marc Webb, the cloyingly sentimental movie makes liberal use of a twee ‘supermix’ of popular college radio love songs, which included The Smiths, Regina Spektor, Doves, Belle & Sebastian, Black Lips, Spoon, Jack Penate, and Feist — “Mushaboom,” during a wedding scene, no less. About an unstable romance between two scruffy, marginally hip 20-somethings in Los Angeles, the movie was a hit with a Sonoma audience, who clapped and cheered after the showing. It ought to be mentioned, though, that this audience inexplicably also loved the Comcast commercial that played during the previews, clapping and cheering after that as well.

Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt play Summer and Tom, two people who look like everything that protagonists in ‘quirky’ emo rom-coms are supposed to look like. She has long wavy hair with bangs, wears opaque tights, ballet flats, and little cardigans over vintage dresses. He appears to have a large collection skinny ties, sweater vests, Pumas, and messenger bags. Tellingly, in one scene, Tom actually admits that he fell in love with Summer at first sight, because she looks like what his dream girl would look like. Called 500 Days of Summer because Tom’s relationship with summer lasts – hah – 500 days, most of those 500 days are wasted away by Tom, who is either pining after Summer, or subsequently whining when their whirlwind relationship ends abruptly. The film’s message is that Tom’s grave was entirely self-dug because he didn’t recognize the warning signs. As viewers, we’re left wondering why we should feel sorry for Tom at all if the mess was of his own making.

Go into the light

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In an online interview, experimental filmmaker and violin drone pioneer Tony Conrad relates a story: one night, underground drag superstar Mario Montez wandered into the apartment Conrad shared with filmmaker Jack Smith, and at Smith’s behest began an impromptu performance. When Smith flicked on a beaten up 16mm projector to serve as a makeshift spotlight, he and Conrad became transfixed by the play of light that reflected off Montez’s sequined outfit. While it would be glib — and certainly fun — to declare that 1960s structural film was born from the glittering gyrations of a drag queen, Conrad’s anecdote is but one development in his longstanding fascination with the excessive sensory effects of shooting light out into the void. Conrad’s 1965 16mm film The Flicker is perhaps his purest and best-known manifestation of this — 30 minutes of black and white stroboscopic bliss (or hell) that cast its long shadows over Brian Gysin’s dream machines, and more contemporarily, Anthony McCall’s striking digital light and fog projections. You’ll have the chance to see how much flashing light your eyes can take when San Francisco Cinematheque presents screenings of Conrad’s films in conjunction with the New York-based polymath’s weekend-long residency at the concurrent Activating the Medium Festival. While Sunday night’s program features The Flicker, it also puts it into context as a jumping off point for Conrad’s subsequent process-based films and public access video works, in which activities such as electrocution and cooking take on a rhythm as mesmerizing as staring into the pulsating light of a film projector.

TONY CONRAD: FLICKERING JEWEL

Fri/3, 5 p.m. (Program One: "Window, Perspective Shadow")

Sat/4, 8 p.m. (Program Two, with Conrad in performance)

Sun/5, 7:30 p.m. (Program Three: "Flicker and Process Films/Works on Video"), $15

San Francisco Art Institute, 300 Chestnut, SF

www.sfcinematheque.org

The BART Board is clueless

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITORIAL The senseless and horrifying murder of four Oakland police officers March 21 has cast a pall over law enforcement agencies all over the Bay Area. It’s renewed calls for a federal ban on assault weapons, which is long overdue. (It’s also reminded us why a daily newspaper can be so valuable — Chronicle coverage of the incident, with numerous reporters quickly responding, is the kind of journalism that won’t happen if the city’s only major daily dies.)

Unfortunately, it’s also taken the focus away from other police issues, and while we mourn the four deaths of veteran officers who were killed trying to do their jobs, we can’t stop trying to solve the problems of cops who lack training, supervision, and oversight.

In that context, there is no other way to say this: the BART Board of Directors is as clueless as any governmental organization we’ve seen since the administration of George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq.

In the past 17 years, BART police officers have improperly shot and killed three people. There have been hundreds of complaints of unnecessary use of force. Most recently, a BART cop shot a young man point blank, and video recordings of the incident have created widespread anger and unrest.

Yet there is still nothing resembling a civilian oversight agency for that 200-member force — and the BART Board members are once again asking the public to trust them to take care of the situation.

Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Leland Yee are sponsoring state legislation that would force the BART Board to establish a San Francisco-style office of citizen complaints to handle all civilian complaints about BART police officer conduct. There are ways Assembly Bill 312 can be improved, and Ammiano, who is guiding the measure through its first legislative hearings, is open to productive suggestions. But when the BART Board sent a delegation to meet with Ammiano, the transit directors had only one basic message: they said AB 312 was "too prescriptive" — that is, it sought to set clear, strong rules for what BART has to do. BART would rather that the Legislature make some broad suggestions but let the folks who run the district shape the final outcome.

That’s simply unacceptable. BART has had plenty of time to address this problem, and plenty of notice that something is terribly wrong. In 1992 a BART cop shot and killed 20-year-old Jerold Hall near the Hayward Station, firing a shotgun into the back of Hall’s head as the unarmed young man was walking away. The shooting violated BART’s own police procedures and the rules that govern the use of deadly force at nearly every modern law enforcement agency in America — but the officer received no disciplinary action, not even a reprimand. In 2001 another BART cop shot and killed a mentally ill man who was lying naked on the ground. Again, BART declared the shooting perfectly okay. With that kind of lack of oversight, it’s not surprising that Oscar Grant was shot and killed early New Year’s Day — the BART police have never been held accountable for improper killings.

And the BART Board has never done a damn thing about it.

Now there is a special board committee that’s supposed to study police oversight. It has never held a single public meeting. Board member Tom Radulovich, who represents San Francisco and sits on the committee, told us there will be public meetings soon. But so far, all that the four-member panel has done is hold private discussions with local interest groups, with no public notice. We would argue that those meetings were a clear violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Brown Act, which mandates that government agencies hold open meetings. But more than that, the closed meetings suggest that the BART Board has no understanding of the public anger and impatience with its 17-year record of failing to keep its police force in line.

Ammiano and Yee should refuse to compromise the basic premise of their bill. The state of California, which gave BART the right to create a police force, must now mandate exactly how that force will be managed. The BART Board had its chance and failed. We simply can’t trust that ineffective agency to get it right this time. * *

GAYVNs: the long, hard rundown of events

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By Marke B.

The GayVN Awards: You’ve felt the gay dude excitement, you’ve felt the straight dude excitement. Now, feel the excitement for yourself at the upcoming onslaught of gay porn-related events, as we explode through the wormhole of this weekend’s fabulous — and flab-u-less — events. OMG — meet the stars! Share the love! Be a part of history!

Hey, don’t shoot me — I’m just the 12-inch pianist.

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Will the violent, controversial To the Last Man from Raging Stallion take home the GayVN for Best Picture? Will you take home its stars? Maybe

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Friday, March 27th

6PM

Falcon Studios’ GayVN Weekend Kick-off Party
Hosted By Juanita MORE!
Q Bar
456 Castro

Roll In Style
A Safer Sex Fashion Show
With NakedSwordsman 2009 Steve Cruz
Sui Generis
218 Church

To The Last Man Signing
Does Your Mother Know?
4141 18th St.

7PM

Raging Stallion Studios Party
The Edge
4149 18th St.

Bel Ami Studios Party
440 Castro
440 Castro

Barrett Long’s Cockstar
Moby Dick
4049 18th St.

Jet Set Men Studios Party
The Mix
4086 18th St.

Dirty Boy Video Studios Party
Twin Peaks
401 Castro

GayRealityPorn and PornTeam
The Midnight Sun
4067 18th St.

Guild corrects SFBG, invites freelancers to join union

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Carl Hall, the Chronicle’s California Media Workers Guild representative, just emailed me, regarding my article in today’s newspaper about the future of journalism

Hall wrote to point out that I had inaccurately reported that the Guild has “voted to accept 150 layoffs and accept seniority considerations” at the Chronicle.

But as Hall notes, “Our contract like most guild contracts does not contain any prohibition against layoffs, and there’s not been any requirement that the employer obtain our agreement before laying anyone off. We voted to lift seniority protection against layoff in exchange for severance – that’s the new part. We also voted a number of other changes to reduce costs one way or another.”

“One other detail you might not realize,” Hall continued, “is that the Guild contract already had a provision allowing the management to protect up to 25% of low-seniority employees in a layoff round, meaning they could keep those individuals because of their importance in the operation and lay off more senior employees instead.”

Hall said he was saying all this because he continues to see, “everybody claiming that we voted to accept layoffs, when in fact we did not.”

“The company told us they were prepared to implement layoffs of about 225 of our members, with no severance, or close the paper or sell it, in which case all 500 of us would risk being laid off, with no severance,” Hall explained. “Maybe we could have chosen some suicidal path of bluff-calling or whatever, but our members chose the path we are on — a selfless choice for the senior people who nearly all voted to open themselves up to more individual layoff risk for a mere one year’s pay.”

“As a union however we did not vote to accept 150 layoffs,” Hall stated. “ We expect that number will be laid off because of this management’s short-sighted, destructive business plan and failure to make the Chronicle thrive as a top-quality paper, in print and online. I don’t hold any particular ill will toward the Hearst Corp., and credit them for the patience they have shown over these past few years when they’ve tolerated purported losses far exceeding those being reported elsewhere.”

Hall ended by saying that he was, “encouraging our members and the entire community to focus on what truly matters — quality jobs and quality journalism, and yes we do see a quality connection between the jobs and the journalism. (i.e., no reliance on “volunteers” or low-paid exploited at-will news workers, such as may be the case at the anti-union outfits such as — cheap shot alert! — the SFBG.)

“In a word, here’s the plan,” Hall stated. ” Organize! If you want to start, we will show you how.”

The Guild is holding its first meeting of its newly formed freelancers unit at Noon, Friday April 3. Third-floor conference room, California Media Workers. 433 Natoma Street, San Francisco.

For more information, or to R.S.V.P., check out the Guild’s site here, where you can also watch the video of the Society of Professional Journalists’ March 17 “Conversation about the Chronicle<" in which 15 panelists brainstormed about the crisis currently affecting the newspaper industry,

Fluffy bunners

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› superego@sfbg.com

Look about you, horny toad. There may not be wee lambykins gamboling on your microlawn or the scent of fresh asparagus pervading your water closet yet, but all the mad party signs of spring are sneaking up to floor you: secret sunset shindigs (www.pacificsound.net), hunky Jesus Easter bonnets (www.thesisters.org), blackout drag road trips to Reno (www.trannyshack.com), and, that ultimate in vernal equinoxious signals, a flood of out-of-state gay porn stars looking for extra cash on Rentboy.com and the back pages of the Bay Area Reporter. Spring has sprung! And will probably be passed out in its stiff leather chaps, turquoise Lycra dress shirt, knock off Gucci wraparounds, and George Michael stubble on the corner of 18th and Market soon.

That’s right, those "Oscars of gay porn," the annual GayVN Awards, are coming upon us yet again, as the Castro Theatre plays host to the biggest circle jerk in the butt biz for another year. Downsizing, of course, is out of the question, despite the rash of porno pink slips being fisted out across the industry, which has been hit hard by a combo of economic deflators, internal tussles, and continued grappling with amateur Web competition. (We’ll see if the upcoming onslaught of 3-D dick flicks provides the stimulus package our local studios — second only to backwoods Eastern Europe in terms of sticky-fingered output — so sorely need.)

No, GayVN organizers are gut-pumping all the lubricious glitz they can into a whole weekend of kiki hurrah, with pre-parties, post-parties, Tupperware parties, and brunches that no one will eat at galore. Inflatable personality Janice Dickinson hosts the awards ceremony itself, with backup from homegirl Margaret Cho and Alec Mapa from Ugly Betty (ha!). Online erotic video-on-demand powerhouse Naked Sword, a.k.a. the giant candy-colored Flash octopus that froze my dinky Windows and made me cry with my pants down, will host the official afterparty, Shameless — "the party you’ll never forget, or remember!" — with some big-name DJs and performers I already can’t! It’ll be a wondrous semi-tragedy unfolding in fast motion, worth it if only to ogle the prancing scene. Just please try not to look at the camera when it’s over.

GAYVN AWARDS CEREMONY Sat/28, 7 p.m., $95. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. gayvnawards.avn.com

SHAMELESS GAYVN AFTERPARTY Sat/28, 10 p.m., $25. Wunderland, 181 Eddy, SF. www.nakedsword.com

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TINGEL TANGEL CLUB


The louche cabaret monthly celebrates a year of mingling salacious New York City talent and West Coast underground hotness. Original Cockettes Rumi and Scrumbly, singer Novice Theory, "hypersexual" musicians SlowMo Erotic and more light up the stage, and ever-crushable JD Samson of Le Tigre will Sam Ronson the turntables afterward. Tingel Tangel Le Tigre — it’s an anagram.

Wed/25, 8 p.m., $16. Café du Nord, 2170 Market, SF.

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FUCK MIAMI


Oh dear, is it that time of year again? Half our stellar nightlife talents (and a lot of pre-tanned wannabes) will be sucked into the studiously Spandexed and belotioned black hole that is the Winter Music Conference in Miami. If you’re too broke — or too allergic to aggressive slickness and pushy V.I.P. chicks — to jet to the coca beach, share the moment with a slew of worthy left-behinds at this lengthy affair.

Fri/27, 4 p.m.- 2 a.m., free. Mars Bar, 798 Brannan, SF.

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"HOMELESS NIGHT"


This party promises to be wronger than shitting in a urinal: anarchic drag weekly Charlie Horse is hosting a homeless-themed night. Partially controversial gender clown Monistat joins perky Percocetted hostess Anna Conda to present shameful acts by talented messes to actually help benefit homeless services. La-da-dee, la-da-dah, don’t try to rip the wigs off these queens or they will cut you.

Fri/27, 10 p.m., free. The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF.

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LOOK OUT WEEKEND


Happy hours are all the populist rage, especially in these queasy economics, no? One of the biggest and brightest, Look Out Weekend, is moving into new quarters at Vessel off Union Square. The delicious electronic stylings of Oh Land and DJing by the Magnificent Seven complement yummy eats and fashionable freaks at the relaunch. Will L.O.W. 2.0 be as raucous as the first version? Hey, it’s free, so go see for yourself.

Fridays, 4 p.m.-9 p.m., free. Vessel, 85 Campton Place, SF.

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ROYALTY


Well! It may be a bit bombastic, but the name just fits. SF soulful house music king DJ David Harness inaugurates a new monthly to rain some of that ol’ hands-in-the-air spirit down on the children-in-waiting at the lovely Triple Crown. The Crown’s sound system is winning extreme plaudits, so be prepared for a high-fidelity throwdown.

Fri/27, 10 p.m., $5. 1760 Market, SF.

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DEVOTION


A few years ago, DJ Ruben Mancias packed up his little glam-house weekly at the EndUp, Devotion, and skedaddled to NYC to find fame, fortune, and a lot of really neat T-shirts. He’s occasionally popped back into town to show off each, and remind Latin- and soul-tinged house fans of past EndUp glories. Devotion’s eight-year-anniversary will find him back at the space with Oakland house princes Cecil and Dedan warming up. Memories!

Sun/29, 8 p.m.-4 a.m. The EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF.

When protesters become ‘terrorists’

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

When does passionate protest become a terrorist threat? Is it when activists choose to target someone’s house, or when the subject of the protest feels scared? Why single out animal rights activists for special treatment? And if the definition of terrorism is expanded for them, what group is next in these turbulent times?

These are the questions being raised by the federal prosecution of four local animal rights activists. Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope, and Adriana Stumpo pleaded not guilty March 19 to charges of using threats and violence to interfere with University of California animal researchers, in violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA).

A coalition of civil liberties defense groups have come to their defense, arguing that the law is unconstitutional and that the activists were merely exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly.

AETA specifically protects research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and other businesses that use animals from individuals who "interfere with" their operations. Anyone using threats, vandalism, property damage, trespassing, harassment, or intimidation to cause someone connected with an animal enterprise to have "reasonable fear of death or bodily injury" can be tried under the law. But critics say the statute is over-broad, arguing that legal activity like boycotts can be construed as a form of interfering with a business’ operations.

"In its abstract form, and now with these arrests, the AETA is a full frontal assault by the U.S. government on the First Amendment," says San Francisco-based attorney Ben Rosenfeld, a member of the National Lawyers Guild. "Everybody, whether they identify with animal rights causes or not, ought to be very alarmed."

According to an FBI affidavit filed by special agent Lisa Shaffer, the activists took part in actions targeting UC researchers who conduct experiments on animals. They didn’t free caged animals, torch laboratories, or slash tires. Instead the defendants were caught picketing, chanting, and creating flyers. And while the complaint cites an alleged assault, it never states that any of the four defendants was responsible. Yet they each face up to five years in prison.

In October 2007, the complaint alleges, the defendants joined a group of protesters outside a UC researcher’s home in El Cerrito where they marched, chanted things like "vivisectors go to hell!" and rang the doorbell. The second incident took place in January 2008, when a group of about a dozen people "wearing bandanas over their nose and mouth" allegedly drove to a number of researchers’ homes in the East Bay. They "marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks in front of the residences."

The complaint says UC researchers felt harassed, intimidated, and terrified. Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in New York City, says AETA is flawed in that prosecutions are based on the targets’ reactions, not the protesters’ intent. "Basing prosecutions on the subjective feelings of individuals to whom no harm was inflicted undermines the foundation of criminal law, which punishes those who commit crimes with the intent to do so," Boghosian told us. "Demonstrating — even noisy, angry demonstrating that may be uncomfortable to others — is still protected under the First Amendment."

During the third incident, six bandana-clad protesters allegedly approached the home of a UC Santa Cruz researcher. Her husband heard banging on the glass pane of the door, opened it, and then "struggled with one individual and was hit with a dark, firm object," according to the complaint. The protesters dispersed, and one allegedly yelled, "We’re gonna get you!" Santa Cruz police later seized a vehicle belonging to one of the activists. Bandanas found inside the car were later sampled for DNA, linking them with three of the defendants.

The complaint doesn’t indicate whether any of the four defendants struck the researcher’s husband or yelled a threat. But that hardly matters. "Another flaw of the AETA is its ‘course of conduct’ language," Boghosian said. "If one protester commits a single unlawful act at a protest … but five others were present, all may be charged with engaging in a course of conduct that interferes or attempts to interfere with the operations of an animal enterprise."

Finally, the FBI charges that in July 2008, a stack of flyers listing the home addresses of two UC professors under the headline "murderers and torturers" was discovered at a Santa Cruz cafe. The FBI tapped security camera footage and Internet use logs to link three of the defendants to the stack of flyers.

Several days after the flyers were discovered, a firebombing took place at one of those researchers’ homes — but the federal complaint doesn’t mention it. When asked if there might be a connection, FBI special agent Joseph Shadler told the Guardian that the complaint speaks for itself.

Several civil liberties groups have been wary of AETA since it was enacted. "The law is so overly broad and so vague that no one knows what’s legal and illegal," Odette Wilkins, who is pushing for a repeal of the bill through her organization, the Maryland-based Equal Justice Alliance, told us. "The USA Patriot Act makes it very, very clear what terrorism is. It’s anything that causes mass destruction … or places the entire civilian population in fear. I don’t see how people exercising their First Amendment rights … rises to the level of terrorism. It’s ludicrous."

FBI special agent Schadler sees it differently. "As far as the distinction between free speech protected by the Constitution and what we would consider terrorism, whenever somebody’s purpose is to cause fear to get their point across, that’s terrorism," he told the Guardian. "The definition of terrorism is using threat of violence, or violence, to accomplish a political means. And the threat of violence — when you are actually going out and threatening to hurt people, or causing people to believe that they’re going to be hurt, or actually hurting them to get your movement or your political voice heard — then you are committing terrorism."

Lauren Regan, executive director of the Eugene, Ore.-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, helped create Coalition to Abolish the AETA. "We were working on putting together a civil lawsuit simply challenging the constitutionality of the law when the criminal indictments happened," she explained.

Regan has been on the case since a previous law, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, was in place. That statute was upgraded to the AETA in 2006 in the wake of aggressive tactics employed by a radical animal rights group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). "Many felt [the AEPA] was also unnecessary," she told us. "Because there are already statutes for burglary, theft, vandalism, arson [etc]. Any of the crimes that could have fallen within the AEPA were already federal and state crimes."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein cosponsored AETA along with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), saying it would "ensure that eco-terrorists do not impede important medical progress in California." Before the bill passed, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) voiced the lone complaint against it. "I am not for anyone … damaging another person’s property or person. But I am for protecting the First Amendment and not creating a special class of violations for a specific type of protest."

No one else was persuaded. The bill was bundled with other legislation deemed to be noncontroversial then passed by voice vote. The American Civil Liberties Union didn’t oppose it after an amendment was added guaranteeing that it wouldn’t restrict First Amendment rights. The ACLU declined to comment for this story.

Regan says broadening the definition of terrorism can stifle important campaigns. She points to the example of a widely publicized video released by the Humane Society last year that showed disturbing footage of downed cows at a beef processing facility. Though it spurred one of the largest beef recalls in history (and saved school kids from consuming an unsafe meat product), the cameraperson could be tried as a terrorist under the AETA, Regan says, because it was necessary to trespass to shoot the film.

She also criticizes the FBI’s excessive use of paid informants. "This has happened across the country — if someone posts a vegan potluck, the FBI is showing up to see who’s there and what they’re doing," she says. Between 1993 and 2003, the FBI’s counterterrorism division increased 224 percent, according to its Web site.

While advocates are quick to point out that there are no documented deaths associated with animal rights activism, the movement has a history of employing firebombs, threatening phone calls, and other creepy tactics in pressing to end animal cruelty — a trend that led to the passage of the domestic terrorism bill.

"The AETA has backfired, causing an increase in underground activism," says Los Angeles-based activist Jerry Vlasak, whose inflammatory language against animal researchers was quoted extensively during the 2006 Congressional hearing on AETA. Vlasak is a media contact for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which operates a Web site featuring anonymous "communiqués" sent in by clandestine activists. In a posting dated March 6, a group called the Animal Liberation Brigade takes credit for burning the car of a Los Angeles primate researcher. "We will come for you when you least expect it and do a lot more damanage [sic] than to your property," the message reads. "Where ever you go and what ever you do we’ll be watching you as long as you continue to do your disgusting experiments on monkeys. And a special message for the FBI, the more legit activists you fuck with the more it inspires us since wer’re [sic] the people whom you least suspect and when we hit we hit hard."

Will Potter, a Washington, D.C.journalist who runs a Web site called Green Is The New Red, testified before Congress prior to the passage of the AETA, arguing that the law would not deter underground activists. Instead he predicts it will have a chilling effect on protests staged in broad daylight. "This legislation will … risk painting legal activity and nonviolent civil disobedience with the same broad brush as illegal activists," he said.

That, says Rosenfeld, is precisely what’s happened. "The whole underpinning of a democratic society is that it’s rights-based, and government power is limited and checked by law," he says. "Here we have a complete perversion of that process. The government gives itself this over-broad, sweeping power to go after anyone it wants and then seeks to reassure people that it will only use those laws against the real bad guys."

Replay: Lapdancing with Good Vibes

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We’ve had several requests to repost Ariel Soto’s Good Vibes interview/lapdancing class video slideshow that was previously on our front page. Enjoy!

Back to nature

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

ODC/Dance opened its 38th season with world premieres by artistic director Brenda Way and co-artistic director KT Nelson. Neither Way’s In the Memory of the Forest nor Nelson’s Grassland broke new ground. But novelty is overrated. What you want from experienced choreographers is that they continue challenging themselves with ideas that are compellingly realized. If both works need some settling, the rest of the season should take care of that. In upcoming performances they will be presented as part of the repertoire, which will give them a warmer context than the opening gala did. The dancers, who now include Robert Dekkers and Vanessa Thiessen, look as good as you may want them.

Nelson set her Grassland to a commissioned score by Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos, with whom she collaborated for her 2006 Stomp a Waltz. It’s a restless, driving piece of music, forcefully interpreted by a piano quintet and well-suited to Nelson’s equally restless, driving choreography. She kept the relationship to the music elastic, sometimes following its rhythmic impulse but also anticipating its sweep or going against its complexity.

Even without direct references to natural phenomena, Grassland suggests a vast sense of open space. Dancers tore in and out of the wings; they walked or scurried on tiptoe as if trying to see beyond the horizon. Legs swept the floor like scythes; four-legged critters scrambled across. The beautifully individualized duets for Daniel Santos and Yaoi Kambara, Anne Zivolich and Corey Brady, and Elizabeth Farotte and Jeremy Smith involved collisions and interlockings that then split, slithered, or scooted apart. The whole suggested a pulsating sense of aliveness, sometimes almost too much to take in.

Way’s elegiac In the Memory of the Forest was inspired by her mother-in-law’s escape from Poland in 1941 to find the man she loved. The work ended with parts of a recording — incorporated into Jay Cloidt’s musical score — of Iza Erlich telling her story. The audio was fragmented, pensive, and a little scratchy, just like Way’s choreography. Instead of fashioning a narrative, Way explored the anxiety, uncertainty, and determination — as well as the innocence and sense of loss — inherent in Erlich’s experience. More than anything, this is a piece about remembering. Cloidt’s music was multilayered and supportive; in the hands of Elaine Buckholtz’s set and lighting design, David and Hi-Jin Hodge’s video work looked first rate.

The piece opened with a stunning line of hand-holding dancers stepping from video images of woods; their line then began to fracture as if an earthquake had broken the ground beneath them. Joining them were video images of white-clad dancers who accumulated until they gave the sense of a world about to drown. But Way kept the focus on the private. Couples fused and separated, sometimes like silhouettes, sometimes very physically. Kambara was the heroine who flitted hither and yon. A limp Zivolich, dragged around by Santos, seemed to be an alter-ego whom Kambara befriended. In good movie tradition, it was not the men’s uniform gestures but Cloidt’s sound track that terrified. When Kambara finally threw herself against a slightly overwhelmed looking Smith, both froze and began to turn like music box figurines, while the shadows kept pace with their own whirling dance.

ODC/DANCE DOWNTOWN

Through March 29, $10–$45

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF

(415) 978-ARTS, www.odcdance.org

Too many str8 boys kissing, maybe

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By Marke B.

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OK, all this may be a little tired by now, but I’m still in full agreement with Kimberly Chun’s expert take down of Katy “UR So Gay” Perry from January of last year. That was published before Perry’s odiously catchy “I Kissed a Girl” became impossible to escape last summer — the ditty managed to “have it both ways,” heh, playing both anti-gay conservatives and LGBTs for maximum chart effect. That’s clever, but the song’s lame sentiment (kissing girls turns my boyfriend on — lesbians are only here for my amusement!) still makes my stomach churn.

The parodies came swift and mercilessly, from “I Kissed a Squirrel” (available in many versions) to “I Kissed a Granny” (yeesh!) to “I Kissed a Dog.” Oh, enough already, YouTube Nation.

And then, of course, teh gay. I should have known there would be an onslaught of over-the-top backlash when drag superstar Lady Bunny unleashed “I Licked a Girl” on the world last year (first minute below):

Lady Bunny, “I Licked a Girl” at Southern Decadence

Yay, overly familiar gynophobia! Still, it could all be called hilarious if it wasn’t a trend. Now, the pendulum has swung back, with emo boys embracing the kissing hysteria, and a flood of “I Kissed a Boy” guyliner-bedecked parodies, headed up by primo “hip” parody purveyors Cobra Starship’s version from a Fall Out Boy (!) mixtape. I knew I was gonna have to surrender my critical faculties and just go with the flow when one of my smartest gay friends told me he was completely Lady GaGa for the boy in the video, followed by my bf Hunky Beau’s comment: “Oh goodie, he takes his shirt off.” At least the dood-singer Gabe lipsyncher (a reader informs us in the that this is a fan vid, not Cobra Starship itself) plays with the whole baseball-bat-bashing theme a little, even if he can’t quite bring himself to admit the “he liked it” more than just wanting to “start shit.”

Cobra Starship, “I Kissed A Boy”

So much confliction! Smash! Twist! Contort! Feint! Poor thing. I guess my question is, is kissing really that big a deal? And also, with the super-prominence of porn availability in the Internet age, has kissing become the final frontier of sexual boundaries — the last retainer of intimacy now that all other sex acts have been publicized/commodified? Janet Jackson’s boob, Paris and Britney’s flashed beavers, and then Katy’s emo lesbo-liplock spawn. Well, I guess whatever automatically short circuits “fag” in the comments section these days is maybe a good thing?

After the jump, an explosion of “I Kissed a Boys,” with various degrees of homophobic liberation. Thanks, Katy!

Oakland activist critically wounded in West Bank

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By Rebecca Bowe

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Oakland activist Tristan Anderson, 38, was critically wounded March 13 in the village of Ni’lin in the West Bank, when he was shot in the head with a high-powered tear-gas canister fired by Israeli forces.

The shooting occurred during a protest over the separation barrier that Israel is erecting between itself and the West Bank, according to a press release from the International Solidarity Movement.

Anderson is a dedicated activist who has traveled to conflict zones in Oaxaca, Iraq and other conflicted regions and reported on the struggles there. He was also among a group of tree-sitters who fought to save a grove of oaks and redwoods next to UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium.

He was taken to an Israeli hospital, Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, where he underwent brain surgery and is in critical condition. In-depth reports, including a graphic video filmed just after the shooting took place, can be found here, here and here.

The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008, according to ISM. The black canister can shoot over 400 meters.

On March 16, at 4 p.m., a protest will be staged in front of the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, according to a post on IndyBay.org.

Ask a Porn Star: Sex with Stephen Boyer

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In Which Super Sexy Porn People Answer Questions — each week — From Bay Area Locals
Mediated by Justin Juul

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Fielding your questions this month is local writer/porn star, Stephen Boyer. Check out some of his movies/pics here and an excerpt from his upcoming novel here. Read our 2008 interview with Boyer here, and the last installment of Ask a Porn Star here.

James N: Do you enjoy the sex you have on camera or do you just sort of block it out and then count the money?

Boyer: I enjoy it for the most part. I got into the industry to pay rent. Then I started branching out more with my sexuality. Then I found Kink.com and a world full of toys I could explore and that is when sex got really fun and interesting. The great thing about porn, for me, was that it allowed me to try sexual positions and feel sensations that required toys that I couldn’t afford because I was poor. Doing it on video both paid my rent and gave me the opportunity to have sexual experiences with attractive contemporaries.

Elan F: What is the one thing you hate the most about sex?

Freeing the press

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Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award

ROBERT PORTERFIELD


Bob Porterfield is a shit-disturber, an old-fashioned investigative reporter who has no favorites, no sacred cows, and no fear of offending anyone. Since his first story — a profile of a YMCA social program published in Eugene, Ore.’s The Register-Guard in 1959, when he was 15 — Porterfield has had ink in his veins. He’s shared two Pulitzer Prizes (first for an Anchorage Daily News report on the Teamsters Union in 1975 and then for a series on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for The Boston Globe), won more than two dozen other prizes and worked on a long list of major investigative projects.

He has become something of an expert in computer-assisted reporting and information systems — but is still a down-to-earth guy who never forgot the value of traditional, hands-on digging. Back in 1986, he was on a team at Newsday looking into the federal Synfuels Corp., a scandal-plagued agency that was shut down in the wake of his stories.

"I remember once we were looking for property records on a Synfuels Corp. project linked to [former CIA Director) Bill Casey," he told me. "I wound up going down to Plymouth, N.C., (population 4,000), and I found this musty old office with two older women sitting there, knitting. There was no index book, nothing computerized. But when I explained what I was looking for, one of the women remembered the parcel of land I was talking about and pulled out the exact documents for me."

Porterfield has devoted a tremendous amount of time to teaching and mentoring, showing young reporters how to use public records to find stories. "I’m glad to see [President Obama’s] new directive on openness, but I hope it trickles down to the independent agencies," he said. "Because there’s been way, way too much secrecy." (Tim Redmond)

Beverly Kees Educator Award

ALAN GIBSON


Alan Gibson is reclaiming the Founding Fathers from conservatives with

his recent book Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions (University Press of Kansas, 2007). It examines the progressive ideals that guided early American political thought.

"The Founding Fathers are often captured by conservatives," Gibson told the Guardian. "But there is no clear line of legacy. It is much more complex than that. Conservative restoration politics are dangerous and not historically accurate."

As an undergraduate, Gibson cultivated an interest in issues of separation of church and state, which led to doctoral studies on James Madison, the namesake of the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Freedom of Information awards. "Madison was the most progressive of all [the Founding Fathers] when it comes to freedom of the press," Gibson said. "He helped develop the idea that American government should be responsive to public opinion, and the role of newspapers was to make sure that an authentic public opinion was set forth." Gibson, a political science professor at California State University-Chico, lectures at various colleges across the country. Understanding the Founding will be published in paperback later this year. (Laura Peach)

Professional Journalists

MARJIE LUNDSTROM


Journalists often get alarming tips about practices within Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies, but it has always been a nearly impossible task to overcome privacy protections and get even basic information about how CPS handles reports of child abuse or neglect.

"It’s a difficult agency to write about, for some good reasons," Sacramento Bee reporter Marjie Lundstrom, who set out in 2007 to investigate complaints about Sacramento’s CPS, told the Guardian. "They operate in such a vacuum with very little public scrutiny."

She had started to piece together some information from coroner’s records and other public documents when Senate Bill 39 went into effect in January 2008, "and it was just amazing what it opened up."

The bill reveals CPS files in cases where the child has died, allowing Lundstrom to expose the negligence of CPS workers in responding to abuse reports, even those from doctors. "I do feel like what we were able to show, because of the law, where workers made flagrant mistakes that costs kids their lives," she said.

But many CPS records are still secret. Next, after writing several stories about CPS that sparked a grand jury investigation, Lundstrom intends to expose problems within the internal accountability procedures at CPS. (Steven T. Jones)

HILARY COSTA AND JOHN SIMERMAN


When the news broke last September that 15-year-old Jazzmin Davis had been murdered by her aunt after suffering months of abuse and neglect in her Antioch home, Bay Area News Group reporters Hilary Costa and John Simerman submitted a public records request about the girl’s case history with the San Francisco Human Services Agency.

The city denied the request for nearly two months, using a privacy claim. Undeterred, the journalists took the step of testing out Senate Bill 39, a relatively new piece of legislation that mandates public disclosure of findings and information about children who have died of abuse or neglect. A judge eventually ordered that the records be released.

Although highly redacted, the nearly 700-page paper trail told the girl’s story in the form of hand-written notes, report cards, medical records, caseworker visits, and other detailed documents. The records led to a package of stories that exposed a series of failures and violations of state regulations by an HSA social worker, raising questions about agency practices and spurring a review of hundreds of other foster care cases.

"This story’s been so important to me," Costa told the Guardian. "It felt like somebody owed it to Jazzmin to find out what happened to her." (Rebecca Bowe)

Interactive Media

AUTUMN CRUZ AND MITCHELL BROOKS


Sacramento Bee photographer Autumn Cruz had been covering the trial of three-year-old K.C. Balbuena’s murder for several months when she came up with the concept of creating an interactive online courtroom. With the help of Bee graphic journalist Mitchell Brooks, Cruz made public the essential pieces of evidence and information to those outside the courtroom doors.

Viewers can take a virtual tour of the exhibits and documents, along with video and audio statements and interrogations. "As a journalist, you’re fighting every day for your right to information," Cruz told the Guardian.

Although Balbuena’s mother and roommate were found guilty of the murder in early 2008, Cruz laments her inability to bring back the child she grew to know so intimately only after his life was cut short. "I think my bringing his plight to the public will hopefully prevent similar things from happening to other children." (Joe Sciareillo)

Citizen

BERT ROBINSON


Journalist Bert Robinson is a longtime journalist who now serves as assistant managing editor for the San Jose Mercury News. But he’s being honored for his work as a citizen serving on San Jose’s Sunshine Reform Task Force.

"We set out on our sunshine ordinance adventure a few years ago. We found we were faring worse in court, and we couldn’t afford increased court costs," Robinson, a member of the California First Amendment Coalition, told the Guardian.

The project received political endorsements across the spectrum, but the initiative has had problems with the city council’s Rules Committee, controlled by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who has supported sunshine in the past.

"We achieved progress with public meeting requirements, but when you get into public records, city staff argue that rules are ‘too cumbersome’ … They say all sorts of things might happen if they become public, [which is] entirely hypothetical," Robinson said.

Task Force work that was slated to last six months has now dragged on for two years. "The city process grinds you down," Robinson said. But he says he’s committed to seeing it through. (Ben Terrall)

Legal Counsel

JAMES EWERT


James Ewert, an attorney with the California Newspaper Publishers Association, has long battled what he calls widespread secrecy in government. So in 2004, he played an instrumental role in providing greater public access to government meetings and records, resulting in the passage that November of Proposition 59, the Sunshine Amendment of California’s constitution.

Most recently Ewert helped Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) with legislation protecting teachers from retribution from administrators when they defend the First Amendment rights of journalism students. Next Ewert hopes to allow greater scrutiny of public/press partnerships and how tax dollars are used in labor negotiations by the public university systems.

Ewert says the public’s right to know is still severely hampered by public safety concerns, including restrictions on journalists’ rights to interview prisoners and obtain information about police officers. But luckily for the public, Ewert is still on the job. (Andrew Shaw)

Student Journalists — High School

REDWOOD BARK


Before April 2008, Drew Ross had never had to defend the existence of the Eureka High School Redwood Bark, where he was the editor. But after arriving on campus one Monday morning to find that former principal Robert Steffen had removed 450 copies of a 20-page color edition of the paper, Ross and his staff fought back.

Steffen claimed that the nude, dream-like drawing by artist Natalie Gonzalez had ushered in a handful of complaints from students and parents. Steffen justified the action by saying he was "stomping out the flames before they became a forest fire."

"We told him we wanted to hold onto the paper but he recycled them," Ross told the Guardian. "We don’t make the paper for it to be thrown away. And we lost a lot of advertising on this."

Ross complained about censorship and got help from the Student Press Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. By the next day, the censorship story went front page at newspapers and Internet sites all over the country. Eventually Steffen not only sent out a public apology, he paid for the next 20-page color edition.

"We are now armed with knowledge of our rights," Ross said. "And the community knows the Redwood Bark has rights." (Deia de Brito)

SHASTA HIGH SCHOOL’S THE VOLCANO


Shasta High School student Amanda Cope speaks passionately about freedom of speech after her brush with censorship, telling the Guardian, "We are preserving the validity of the Constitution. Free speech is a protection, a safety, that lets us function normally without fear."

Cope was editor-in-chief of the Shasta High School student paper, The Volcano, when a controversy flared over the paper’s end-of-year issue, which featured a front-page image of a student burning an American flag. Shasta High principal Milan Woollard was already considering shutting down The Volcano when the issue came out and publicly stated: "This cements that decision."

But following a maelstrom of objection from Cope and the rest of The Volcano staff in what looked like a form of censorship in schools, the school district reversed its decision. "I think a lot of students feel they are marginalized in society. They’re teenagers. They don’t have many rights and they feel like they’re squished by adults and people in general," Cope said. "The student paper becomes an outlet for those feelings, and a way for students to explore their world." (Juliette Tang)

THE SCOTS EXPRESS


Last November, the principal of Carlmont High School in Belmont shut down the student paper, The Scots Express. School officials claimed that the paper lacked adequate faculty oversight after it published a satirical article about the writer’s sex appeal.

Editor-in-chief Alex Zhang fought back against what he saw as censorship and rejected school officials’ justifications. "I just wanted my paper back," he told the Guardian.

In response to the uproar over what many saw as a muzzling of the press, the Sequoia Union High School District began training Carlmont staff on First Amendment rights and mandated an overhaul of the school’s freedom of speech policy. The district is planning an expansion of its journalism programs in the school curriculum and a partnership with the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.

Zhang is working on relaunching the publication in late March under the faculty oversight of English teacher Raphael Kauffmann. "You can’t have a democracy without freedom of information," Zhang said. "And I’m proud to be one of those young journalists who care about the freedom of information." (Joe Sciarrillo)

Advocacy

KATHI AUSTIN


As the Guardian chronicled in a cover story last year ("Hunting the lord of war," June 23, 2008), San Francisco-based human rights investigator Kathi Austin has spent almost two decades tracking down and exposing those who have made a business out of human rights violations.

Most recently, Austin helped bring the notorious Viktor Bout, a Russian entrepreneur accused of illegally trafficking weapons to brutal regimes from Colombia to the Congo.

"A human rights violation is considered a violation that is carried out by a state actor," Austin told the Guardian. "We were trying to change the whole field of human rights to philosophically say we should be going after these private perpetrators as well."

Thanks largely to Austin’s work, Bout was arrested in Thailand in March 2008 and will likely face criminal charges in the United States. Despite working in treacherous places like Angola and Rwanda, doing meticulous and time-consuming research, Austin said her approach is simple: "What’s wrong and who’s doing it?"

Her patience and persistent pursuit of international justice have led Austin to positions at the U.N., the World Bank, the Center for Human Rights, and the Council on Foreign Relations, to name a few. A Paramount picture featuring Angelina Jolie as Austin is reportedly in production — a fittingly karmic return of celebrity for someone who has worked so long under the public radar. (Breena Kerr)

Electronic access

MAPLIGHT.ORG


Once upon a time, before 2005, the only way to connect the dots between the dollars contributed to politicians and the special access and favorable laws they subsequently granted to contributors was to wade through reams of campaign finance filings. While everyone knew that money talked, few knew just how much campaign cash was dictating public policy.

But now, thanks to MAPlight.org, a Berkeley nonprofit that uses sophisticated analytical tools to produce visually pleasing, easy-to-use charts, there is now a fun, simple way to follow the money.

MAPlight began by putting up data connected to the pro-consumer bill informally known as the Car Buyer’s Bill of Rights. "The data showed that car dealers gave twice as much to Sacramento legislators who voted to kill the bill than to those who voted to pass it," executive director David Newman recalled.

Next, MAPlight pioneered the combination of campaign dollars and politicians’ votes when it launched its U.S. Congress site in May 2007. Most recently its research showed that House members who voted for the $700 billion financial bailout bill received 50 percent more money from the financial services industry than those who voted against it.

Newman plans to expand to all 50 states. "Wherever there is journalism to be done, MAPlight can provide support and help promote openness and transparency in government." (Sarah Phelan)


The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists hosts its annual James Madison Awards dinner March 18 in the New Delhi Restaurant, 160 Ellis St., SF. The no-host reception begins at 5:50 p.m. followed by dinner and the awards programs at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 for SPJ members and $70 for non-members. For reservations or information, contact Freedom of Information Committee chair David Greene at (510) 208-7744 or dgreene@thefirstamendment.org or visit www.spjchapters.org/norcal.

“transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix”

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REVIEW Spam, napalm, and derivative pop songs weren’t quite the only legacy of U.S. military sojourns through Asia — and specifically Korea and Vietnam — as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ "transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix" exhibit demonstrates. The artists gathered by curators Viet Le and Yong Soon Min are the children of Andy Warhol and Coca-Cola.

Credit goes to the organizers for pointing to the connections between Vietnam and Korea, which are seldom at the foreground stateside: both shared a history of rapid modernization facilitated by U.S. wartime adventures, and Korea benefited economically for their hand in the Vietnam War, as the second largest foreign military and economic presence. Trade in pop culture — film, music, TV, fashion — has evidently continued between the two countries. But despite the presence of a book and zine reading room filled with Korean, Vietnamese, and American transplants’ ballads, bubblegum, rockers, and protest music, this grab bag of an exhibition manifests little of the fizzy wit and energy implied in its title. Instead it assumes a primarily somber, somewhat cryptic tone — more wall text would have helped. This solemn quality is most forthrightly and movingly manifested in Dinh Q. Lê’s video triptych, The Farmers and the Helicopters (2007).

The exceptions make their mélange of pop and politics simultaneously pointed and explicit: examples include Tiffany Chung’s video works, Lam Truong (2007) and the scooter-guys (2007), which juxtapose the frenetic movements of Viet boy bands with bands of working delivery boys; and Min Hwa Choi Chul-Hwan’s 2006 To the Rockers paintings of lost-looking urban youth, paired with Twentieth Century — 1972.6 III (2006), his blown-up deconstruction of AP photographer Nick Ut’s 1972 image of a naked Vietnamese girl burnt by napalm running toward the viewer. Would Warhol have approved? And do any works make as much of a stealth impact as Oh Yongseok’s video montages Drama No. 3 and Drama No. 5 (both 2004-2005)? Cornered by these pieced-together panoramas, which appropriate snippets of Asian films and TV, one is confronted by both the Korean tradition of landscape painting and small, startling moments of violence and disquiet that rupture the stillness at the edges of the frame.

TRANSPOP: KOREA VIETNAM REMIX Through Sun/15. Tues.–Wed., Fri.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.; Thurs., noon–8 p.m. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. $6; $3 seniors, students, and youth; free for members (free first Tues.). (415) 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org

Yes, cameras in the state Supreme Court on Prop 8

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Prop 8 Supreme Court hearing is best evidence yet for allowing cameras into the courtroom

By Peter Scheer
(Peter Scheer is the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition)

The California Supreme Court’s hearing yesterday in the Prop 8 case–broadcast live over the internet via streaming video–erased any doubt about the wisdom of allowing cameras into the nation’s courts.

Let’s hope US Supreme Court Justices David Souter, Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Antonio Scalia and Clarence Thomas were watching the oral arguments on Prop 8’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. They are the camera-allergic justices who have publicly stated their opposition to televising the US Supreme Court’s oral arguments (and other public proceedings).

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