Stardate 02282003
It’s a sad day in the neighborhood. Fred Rogers has taken the Magic Trolley to meet his maker. My childhood is officially, irrevocably, over.
What a long, strange trip its been. THE GRATEFUL DEAD are back again as THE DEAD and THE DOORS are back sans Jim Morrison. I don’t know if it’s this whole resurgence of a peace movement but that late-60’s psychedelic love groove is creeping its way back. There is one tiny part of me that is totally granola. Like, I wouldn’t sit in a tree to stop clear cutting, but I’d bring food to the camp. I like industrial grindage and urban decay as much as I like the mossy redwoods and fern-filled hollows of the Pacific Northwest.
I indulged my inner hippy for an entire day. My neighbor left her bong over at the apartment and when she came over to get it I was all, “Hey man, why don’t you hang out, Janice and Jimi are coming over later.” I started to channel 1968 and it was all about Ken Kesey and The Merry Prankster, Wavy Gravy and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The kids in Berkeley were getting gassed by the National Guard and the Diggers were finding donations for their Free Store in the Haight. There was so little that needed to be done other than hug and make vegetable soup. So all day long I was just feeling it and putting out the peaceful love vibes. And then I just couldn’t deal with being that loose anymore.
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Which snapped me out of my reverie. Bummer. That whole era feels like history but lots of those people are still walking among us and going strong. Wavy Gravy has a summer camp in Northern California called CAMP WINNARAINBOW. It’s basically a circus arts camp but more than that, deep play is explored as a way to bring creativity and inspiration into your everyday life. See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee) – FLOW, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE.
Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."
Which is how I feel when I sit down for the two days it takes to write this darn column.
There was this San Francisco band in the 80s that I thought was pretty groovy called VOICE FARM and they had this song called “Beatniks.” “We are the beatniks. We are absolute. We are absolutely right now.”
If you are always in the moment, nothing is ever old. It’s a strange experience to put your reference point into the present instead of the past or the future. It’s something you have to master when you learn improvisational acting. It certainly has a way of bringing you into your body.
I’ve been invoking the 60s a lot lately. I don’t think I could have been more prescient when I quoted that old Vietnam era peace movement song, “something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear” in the teaser for the last ABOUT TOWN. Little did I know how many people would come out for a worldwide day of protest that weekend.
I’m thinking that this is a serious, studied, global grassroots effort to address the real quality of life issues that threaten us today.
I’m not surprised that John Ashcroft, ever dutiful in his efforts to rid the world of evil, like the deveel, engaged in a massive bust of people who sell “illegal” drug paraphernalia.
I mean, c’mon, legalize it, already. Gasoline consumption is more dangerous to society than marijuana. Alcohol is more dangerous. Cigarettes are more dangerous. Legalizing marijuana is not the same as saying, “It’s okay to be stoned anywhere, anytime” anymore than saying anarchism is about doing whatever you want whenever you want.
Puff on this pipe, John.
John Ashcroft, just to remind you, is the one who used tax dollars for a curtain to cover the exposed breast of the statue of Justice at the White House (dot gov).
Obviously, the dude is just not down with feelin’ groovy. Janice and Jimi would be all, “Hey man, you’re a total bummer.” I wonder what he thinks about when he jacks off?
I’m just wary of these sudden shifts in agenda and especially the timing of those shifts. Our fearless leader of Homeland Security, if he was really looking out for us, would do something to address greenhouse gasses and global warming. Go after the corporate polluters to protect the people from a clear and present danger.
I’m glad I studied economics in college. Macroeconomics was especially useful in simply helping me be a more conscientious voter. There is no reason why everyone shouldn’t have the tools they need to understand how the world works, and if necessary, intervene to retool those processes.
It’s just so very simple. People with great ideas who are either frustrated by or shut out of the status quo are precisely the ones who need to find any means necessary to marry the system. Else all those juicy genes will just go to waste. The other night on THE TONIGHT SHOW, there was this jungen punken banden GOOD CHARLOTTE and they actually sang “Do you want to be like them? Go to college, get a good job, what’s that?” And this may have just been one of those coincidences that was so interesting just because of the rich story it told, they were yanked off the air and not only did my local NBC affiliate run extra ads, I guess to counteract the ideological damage already inflicted by the rabble-rousers, but there was also a “please stand by” placard that aired for a full minute. The name of GOOD CHARLOTTE’S album is THE YOUNG AND THE HOPELESS. How about the old and the hopeless?
Someone told me recently that his World War One era grandfather thought they were the last generation. And then the WW2 generation thought they were living the end of history. Then the boomers and the Viet Nam generation and the Gen-Xers. So that’s like three generations currently alive who have had some kind of apocalyptic fervor informing them. Wow.
Art without purpose is like a sexless marriage. What the hell is the point? Rock is supposed to be about subversion and rebellion.
It is still a good idea to go to college. Not because you’ll get a better job, but because the future needs leaders and thinkers. One can get an education and THEN sit around smoking pot and playing video games. That’s not just possible, it’s probable. I like to think of my peers as latent ninjas. We’ve read the books, wrote the papers and had the conversations and then that’s it. I get so excited thinking about all those fallow individuals, over-educated with too much time on their hands. Positively giddy. Don’t wait to be employed. Just go out there do something. Just for fun. Just because you can.
The one thing I like about George Bush Jr. is the series of ads where he says, “help your neighbors.” The cynic in me thinks, “CUZ WE SURE AIN’T.” But also, it’s just easier to live in little clusters than as discrete units.
I just don’t think the old version of the American Dream is going to hold out much longer. There are lots of people doing innovative things with the design of public and private space, sustainable economies and advocating for equal rights. As annoying as it is to be PC and you know, everyone once in a while you just have to make a joke about conservative commentators.
Speaking of conservative commentators, you know why their ratings are so high? Not Because all the disgusted liberals listen just to have something to talk about on the Internet. “Can you believe …?”
The Worldwatch Institute every year publishes “The State of The World,” a book that ends up on the desk of heads of states, economic planners, business leaders and policy makers. This year, they say that in two generations the current trends of continuing environmental damage will be irreversible.
That fact, when put up next to the one about perhaps 20 years left of an oil supply as population and consumption rise proportionately makes me stop and say, “hey, what can I do in my own life to address these very real threats to my quality of life.”
Are we going to make small, gradual, personal changes or are we going to wake up to disaster?
Speaking of voting, Gigi’s bit o’ wisdom for the week is, “We have to vote with our dollars. Under capitalism, the only thing people understand is money. Where you spend your money has more of an impact than who you vote for.”
The other day, Gigi found herself counseling a woman who suddenly was struck with SUV regret and was panicked about how exactly she was going to get rid of her car and what would happen to it after she sold it. And then at school, Gigi was suddenly information central for bringing some material about culture jamming into her design class that was busy working on a project creating advertising that short-circuit the buy impulse and instead trigger the thought-impulse. A younger student asked her how she felt about TV. She said she felt like after her presentation the people in class suddenly felt less alone and there was a renewed sense of common purpose.
My recent favorite Culture Jamming pranks are the ATM machine at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco and a billboard off I-580 in Oakland, California for the Hummer. Someone had replaced the H with a D so that the ad read, “DUMMER.” A few days later the D was gone. And this wasn’t no crappy spray-paint drive by. This was the same font and the same size lettering so the effect was seamless. It’s almost like a professionally trained designer with access to professional equipment did it. (See “go to college” above)
I have an interview coming up in OFF THE RADAR, I hope, with Jill Sharpe, the director of the documentary CULTURE JAM that was featured in this years SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. Slamdance runs concurrent with SUNDANCE in Park City as one of the many side festivals that have cropped up over the years. Among the supporters of Slamdance is Forrest Whitaker. Ms. Sharpe was in Mexico and now she’s in China and I’m waiting for her to get near a phone so’s we can have ourselves a little chat. A little chitty chat. Here, chitty chitty. Hey. Chitty rhymes with titty. What’s up with that? Are boobs funny? There should be a rule that all boobs on TV be at least a D cup. AT LEAST.
YES! There is still Rock and Roll
Or at least electronica. I did party with some actual rock stars this week. TELEPOPMUSIK, the band that does that song for the Nissan commercial, “Just breath, just believe” played at Ruby Skye. Martel, the promoter of SQUARE FRIDAYS gave us rock star treatment and let us dance behind the DJ booth. Telepopmusik is from France, by the way. I had them figured for Iceland. Personally, I prefer FAG FRIDAYS at the END-UP.
“Fashionable attire” is required so I have no idea why they let me in. There was a VIP room with glass windows so you could be separate but equal if you were, you know, important. So hey, Movie Stars, there is a place in San Francisco you can go to party in peace, but still be at the club. Go cause some excitement.
Celebrities should make more random appearances now and then. I know its not cool to care about celebrities but I swear when Telepopmusik started in on their “Just breathe” song, the crowd went wild not because of the song but because they were connecting with TV, our shared placenta. We gotta get our shared experiences in when we can. For the record, Telepopmusik has way better songs than “Just Breathe” which is weird for a car commercial anyway. It’s like saying, “Just don’t worry about the ramifications of your choices. Just breathe, Just believe, that some day, your gasoline powered automobile won’t have a collective detrimental effect on the ecosystem of the entire planet.”
Ooops. I did it again.
And now for something completely different.
There are, in case you didn’t know, conferences for Hackers, Crackers and Cypherpunks. DefCon which is held in Las Vegas is the most well known but there is also Codecon which took place this week in San Francisco.
Codecon is more about encryptian and security, which is of interest to those that do the watching and those who don’t want to be watched. In an era of shrinking privacy and greater government license to intrude into private spaces by all means necessary (and if they are going to watch, I say, give them a show) – these conferences move beyond technical seminars into broad discussions of issues of privacy, digital surveillance and the increasing tendency of being nothing more than a sequence of ones and zeros on a magnetic storage device. That ATM hack I wrote about earlier was debuted or at least noticed at CodeCon 2002.
I swear, I literally feel like a cog in a giant machine. An exercise wheel from which there is no escape.
My interview with Ed Wolf about HIV couldn’t have been more timely, either.
Bono is on the list of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with AIDS and various social causes and Elton John has just rolled out new public service campaign to promote HIV awareness. Mary J. Blige, in one of the ads, tells us that most new infections occur in people 25 and under and two-thirds of those infections are in African-Americans.
46th San Francisco International Film Festival begins April 17. Robert Altman will receive a lifetime achievement award in directing to be presented by none other than Lily Tomlin at a big fancy dinner on April 23rd. The gala event is a fundraiser for the festival. Which means it’s gonna cost bank to go and you’ll probably have to dress up. Maybe they’ll just rope the press off in a darkened corner of the Ritz-Carlton cuz I left my monkey suit on SURVIVOR island. Robin and Marsha Williams are this years honorary chairs of the Awards Night committee. C’mon Robin, cut a brother some slack. I’m po. I can’t afford no fancy dinner duds.
The 11th annual NoisePop festival of indie-rock is proceeding without incident. Replicator, a great band all on their own, opened for another local favorite Trans-Am at the Great American Music Hall on Wednesday. What I like about Replicator is that one, there is a guy named Conan who is like, the only other guy in the world named Conan, on guitar and that two, they use lots of pedals and other weird electronic tricks while they proceed to literally tear up their set. That and my ex-roomate Ben Adrian is the drummer and the one-third of the Replicator gestalt with all the equipment. Ben Adrian’s company FEEDBACK LOOP INDUSTRIES is a custom retro-amp and guitar repair service AND recording studio. That guy even knows vacuum tubes. I’m not sure if I was supposed to tell the world about this, cuz you know how indie people are all about only dealing with people who “in the know.” But oh well. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ruined his life.
I’m not that into Trans-Am but they are really popular.
And finally, and most importantly, I recently discovered that Kevin Spacey’s real name is Kevin Spacey Fowler.
No relation other than both growing up dirt-poor in range of KTLA.
IT’S A FREAK OUT. THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT’S TURNING ME ON, BABY!
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